I signed up to receive Amazon Treasure Truck email notifications in San Diego earlier this year. Treasure Truck is a new special promotion service by Amazon for select US cities including San Diego. They have several surprise offers a week but the catch is that you must pick up during a certain window of time at one of their truck stop locations. The locations vary but it is never hard to spot this bright blue truck. There's no need to come early because they open right on time (not before). The pickup was simple, where I just showed my confirmation code to receive my item. A friend can pick this up as long as you pass the confirmation code to them. There's a limited number of items sold so don't wait to purchase if you really want something. We've ordered a few items so far which we'll review in the next sections.
I enjoy the occasional glass of wine (our wine rack is never empty) so was interested in the chance to try out a new Wine and Cheese Club here in San Diego. Boutique Vino was started about a year ago in August and is an online “pop up” wine shop. Every month the shop pops open online for around 10 days at a time (new wines are discounted) and then closes. It then reopens the next month with a whole new line up of wines. The limited production wines are available afterwards at regular price until sold out.
I met with the creators Justus and his wife Michelle to find out a little more about their business. They try every wine themselves before deciding to feature it on their site and focus on small, family owned boutique wines as well as unique varietals or wines from lesser known regions. There's an exisiting Wine Club and they've partnered with Venissimo cheese (another local San Diego Shop) to start a wine and cheese club. Each month, club members are sent 2 wines and 2 cheeses (approx. 1/3lb) each...
An actual CHEESE Festival? Why yes there is! Escondido (north county San Diego) produces the Wedge Cheese Festival, a glorious event of cheesy goodness paired with beer and wine. I heard about it after attending the Escondido Chocolate Festival in February and knew we'd have to check it out as well!
Cheese and beer? It's definitely October now! We've been invited to check out The Wedge Escondido, an event we heard about earlier this year through the Escondido Chocolate Festival. The event will also be held along Grand Avenue so we're anticipating the delicious delights of restaurants we previously sampled as well as some new ones! Cheese styled. We're ready! Are you?
We did some wine tasting in Sonoma Wine Country a while back and had asked several folks if they could recommend a place for dinner. One of the most common responses was The Girl and the Fig.
I tried to make a same-day reservation but the restaurant was booked solid. We decided to try our luck with an early dinner walk-in around 5pm which worked out perfectly. We were seated next to the window and had a nice view of the passerby's. I loved that they had the paper tablecloths which you could doodle on! The walls also had multiple paintings of a woman, usually holding a fig but FYI her breasts were exposed, though in an artistic way.
Some very tasty appetizer bread and an olive platter (with 2-3 different types of olives) were brought to our table complimentary! What a great start! I am not into olives because they are too salty but Dennis really enjoyed sampling multiple types. The least salty ones were the dark red-purple olives...
