Dining Out / QuiltCon in Pasadena

I am often asked how I choose the restaurants to dine at when I am traveling.  So, today I am sharing one of my plans when I drove to Pasadena for QuiltCon in February.

First, I draw a very rough map of the area.  How far from point A to point B?  Mainly my hotel and the convention center. How far to walk, how far to take a shuttle?  I use Google Maps on my iPhone when I travel, so I know where I am going and it will tell me how far it is by car or by walking

Now for the list of places that interest me.  I find these through Yelp using the search "farm to table" because I want to eat the freshest foods.  I find they are the most delicious.  After the choices are narrowed down, like for dinner places, I use Open Table to get a reservation.  We also ate at Wahoo's Fish Tacos and PF Chang's.

The Meat District is where we dined on Thursday night. We took the hotel shuttle.  Their memus are in the shape of cleavers!  The boast of having the best burger.  I ordered mine medium, it came crawling off the plate. That's how they like to serve it. It didn't cut the mustard.  No real 'meat' flavors, because in my humble opinion, it wasn't cooked enough.  Salt would have been good.  Those bones in the middle?  Bone marrow. I didn't order them, but they tasted like fish, which can't be good.  Were they stored next to fish in the frig? I don't recommend this restaurant.  The service was good though.

This restaurant wasn't on my list, because some friends recommended it. Dog Haus - with a great selection of hot dogs - all kinds - great selection.  A nice outside patio and within walking distance to the Pasadena Convention Center. It's in Old Pasadena - around the corner is Blick Art Supplies.  I can't remember today what was on my dog, but it was utterly delicious.  Good fries, tatertots and sweet potato fries.  I would highly recommend this restaurant.  Come to find out there are two of these restaurants near me in Orange County, CA.  Hot dogs!

A longer walk that first realized, but such great scenery along the way and the lunch was oh so delicious and fresh. They have wonderful salads, you can have meat added, and lovely veggie sides. I had one of the most delicious cookies there (white chocolate and cranberry).  Tender Greens - and they have many other locations, which I am happy about.

This was a great find.  Azeen's Afghani restaurant, on Yelp, of course.  A small and intimate restaurant with great service, larger portions to share and the food was divine!  We had a table of 7 people who could talk easily and hear ourselves. Great setting.  A car ride away from our hotel.