Yummy Food in Soggy Van Nuys

After arriving in a rain storm, we spent a wet night in Van Nuys. It didn’t stop me from enjoying some awesome food, though!

I would never let weather keep me from that!

For dinner, we went back to our old stand-by, the Sherman Oaks Galleria Mall. Lots of eating choices, and they just so happened to have one of the largest Christmas trees that I’ve ever seen.

Done and done.

I’m so glad that El Capitan was willing to try a new place. I love eating somewhere new, and being on the road is the best place to make that happen!

We tried a fairly expensive Mexican place called El Torito Grill.

The menu made it difficult to decide which wonderful piece of Mexican love was going to find its way into my mouth! I really like Mexican food, in case you couldn’t tell.

I decided to get the Steak Nachos from the Small Bites Menu.

The complimentary appetizer was something cool and different, too. Rather than bringing us chips and salsa to completely fill our stomachs munch on while we waited for dinner, we were brought a trio of pepper jellies and honey butter.

I like where this is going.

And to eat with them, these incredible homemade flour tortillas. To be honest, I could have eaten roughly four-dozen of these for my meal. They were that good! But you can probably tell that from the picture, huh?

It’s a beautiful restaurant. We timed it perfectly to be empty since we arrived around 4:00 PM. There wasn’t much people-watching-during-dinner today!

But then the main event arrived, and I forgot all about watching people.

This was El Capitan’s dinner. It looks like the perfect dish for the indecisive, since it comes with a taste of almost everything that they make! This looked incredibly yummy.

And these were my nachos. The taste was awesome, but I guess I would have liked a few more than just nine chips. Perhaps that’s what “Small Bites” means? It was still very good, even though it ended up being about a dollar per chip.

As we left the restaurant, we passed this gorgeous curtained lounge. How fun would it be to grab all of your friends and sip some virgin margaritas in here?! So dreamy!

And, of course, I can’t leave this mall without popping my head into my absolute favorite home store. Urban Home isn’t in Arizona…yet. But I keep holding my breath!

Oh boy. If you’ll just excuse me for a few hours…that’s how long I could spend in this place and still not be bored!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone. So I just quickly walked through to the other door while trying to grasp everything within touching distance! I really like this store.

And, had these six pig name card placeholders not been $30, I would have bought two boxes. How wonderful are these?! I need to check back, since they could very well be on clearance now.

Oink oink

I love this look of mixing old with new. Look at those ancient Amish chairs next to the modern nail head-trimmed upholstered chairs. What a pretty look! And the table is very nice, too, if I must say so.

The next morning, I awoke to slightly sunnier skies. But that was only for a few minutes before the next series of rainstorms pushed their way through town.

My poor family! They are two hours south of me enjoying their last day at Disneyland today! Why couldn’t the rain have waited just a little longer?

Well, that wasn’t long enough. Our drive back to the airport was wet and more wet.

We borrowed a crew car to grab a quick lunch before heading home this afternoon. We both decided that after such lovely Mexican food the night before, it only made sense to eat Italian food for lunch today.

Done and done.

So away to Fratelli’s we went! I had never been here before and was a little worried when we were the only ones in the restaurant. But then I checked my watch and realized that it was barely 10:30 AM, and most normal people were still finishing breakfast at this time of day!

Crickets. But the food was delicious!

They shouldn’t have brought this out before the meal, as it was very buttery and hard to resist! I managed to leave one of my pieces to eat with my meal.

But it wasn’t easy, just so you know.

And my meal consisted of a good portion of my calcium content for the day…thanks, Fettuccine Alfredo!

It isn’t something that I order very often, so today was a true treat. And, while it poured outside, this type of comfort food was just what I needed today!

Now we can head back to the airport on happy, full stomachs to wait for our two passengers to arrive. Then it’s heading home and away from these rainstorms!