Hump day in the Buff (part 1)

Since good ole blogspot limits my total picture uploads, I've been forced to break this entry into 2 parts. In the first I'll cover mill training and gastronomy, and in the second I'll show you the cool stuff I found after work.

Since the hotel buffet sucked like a big suckin' thing, I decided to give my new friend Tim Horton a chance at breakfast. They have an assortment of breakfast combos ranging from simple muffin and coffee to full blown sandwich with choice of side and choice of beverage. I opted for the full deal, sausage-egg-and-cheese-on-toasted-sesame-bagel with XL coffee and glazed sour cream doughnut as my side instead of hashbrowns. The coffee was good, if a little weak for my taste, and the sandwich was top notch. Nicely toasted bagel with solid, nongreasy sausage and a fluffy egg, and they had it ready in a heartbeat. It's not what you'd call gourmet, but it's hard to go wrong with solid food done well. The doughnut was as fantastic as the one yesterday, so no complaints, only raves. Total for the meal? $4.85 with tax.


I took a minute to look at the lunch combo menu. You can get a sandwich or roll-up combo with a cup of soup with your choice of beverage for $6.99. If you just want fries, it's even cheaper. Not bad. The shot below is the interior of the restaurant, all decorated for "Camp Day." They collect donations one day a year to send needy kids to summer camp. Pretty cool.


For lunch, Jeff and Stu ordered pizza and wings from their favorite local joint, whose name I'll have to find out tomorrow. The local pizza is a semi-deep dish affair, not quite the bread-fest that Chicago deep dish pizza is, but far from the thin-and-floppy NYC stuff. Honestly, I can easily understand why Pizza Hut and Papa Johns went out of business here. These guys put 1/2" of cheese on top of a hand tossed crust with sauce that's MADE FROM SCRATCH every day. Wow. The Cheese and pepporoni we had was easily the best simple pizza I've every had.
The wings were really good, nice and meaty with a good crisp base and a tasty hot sauce, coupled with a kickin blue cheese dip. To be honest, I don't think that Buffalo has some magic touchjust because they invented the wing. THese wings were really good, but I'v ehad a good run of wings back home that would go toe-to-toe with these. Specifically, I'm thinking of The Wild Wing Cafe in North Macon on a good night. Honestly, I don't want to diminish the rating on the ings I had today, but if you can't get wings next time you're in Buffalo, don't let it keep you up at night.

Post work I visited the Buffalo Naval and Maritime Museum (see part 2 of this post for details) and then went back to the Pearl St Brewery for a couple beers. Since I was planning on having leftover wings and pizza, I didn't sample the food this time, only the beer. I started with a pint of their Lake Effect IPA. It was good, but not the kick-in-the-teeth IPA I've become accustomed to. It was darker than most IPAs, and had a nice sweet touch. I followed that with a pint of thei Street Brawler Oatmeal Stout. It was VERY good, bringin in a distinctly smoky flavor with lots of stout meatiness, but finishing mild with little to no metallic aftertaste. It was also lighter on the palette than most without the syrupy edge that some stouts develop. Taking a risk, i opted to get a growler of their seasonal Saber's Edge Double IPA to take back to the hotel and enjoy with the leftovers from lunch. For those of you not familiar with local brew pubs, a 'growler' is a half-gallon, refillable bottle that can be brought back to the brewery and filled with any of their house brews. To give you an idea why this was a good idea, a pint costs $4 and a half-gallon is only $19. It's even cheaper if you bring it back for a refill. I really lucked out on the double IPA. It's by far the best I've had from their brewed-on-site offerings. It's very hoppy, but not quick the swift kick to the head that you get from Stone Brewery's Ruination. It's more like Stone's standard IPA or Sweetwater's IPA, but with a darker nut-brown color and lots of thick sweetness. It almost tastes like there's lots of local honey involved. Its very drinkable without the normal bad aftertaste of a really hoppy IPA. SO drinkable that I finished the growler, and now I'm having a hard time typing.

The back decks of the Pearl St. Brewery as seen from the Parking lot

The first level deck (2nd story) has a great view of the strangest interstate exchange I've ever seen. You really have to drive this beast to understand how odd it is.

Yes, Virginia, you can make a cooler out of a hotel bathroom sink. MacGuyver, Take that!

You can't go wrong with leftovers, especially paired with good local beer.