Costa Mesa restaurant week - olive oils, spreads, and gooey cheese

This week marked the annual Costa Mesa Restaurant Week. MOH and I decided to go crazy on cheese, spreads, and oils. This feels like a deja vu from last week - we walked around the shopping mall, glossing over all the designer stores like Gucci and Prada, only to leave the mall with chocolate truffles and chocolate-dipped strawberries (strawberries were gone by the ride home). We just love food.

But the stuff we got today was REALLY tasty.

Basil olive oil and tapenade - YUMMY

We ventured into two main stores, one a little shop that specializes in olive oil called We Olive. We Olive sells various types of olive oils, balsamics, and spreads that all taste amazing. You have oils that are zesty (Jalapeno Olive Oil), sour (Meyer Lemon Olive Oil), and herb-infused (basil olive oil). These kinds of oils would go great as finishes to salads, pasta, or for bread. They also have a well received black olive tapenade (mixture usually of olives, capers, anchovies) that you can dip with bread or top with cheese. The tapenade has this great salty kick to it that I think can even taste great with salads or as a sandwich spread.

The second shop we explored was a cute little cheese shop (called The Cheese Shop at The Mix) that had a restaurant week special: get a baguette, wildflower honey, and fromager d'affino cheese for $7. MOH and I love cheese.

Cheese galore (photo courtesy of Tomas Regner)

Cheese that's soft, hard, creamy, rich, harsh, savory and sweet. We love it all. One of our favorite food memories was sitting in a dinky hotel room after going to a wedding, cramming our faces with beef jerky and truffle cheese - classy I know. Since that memory so many years ago, one of our favorite things to do while grocery shopping is to browse through the cheese gallery.

Cheese goodies with basil olive oil and tapenade on the side

This cheese was PHENOMENAL. If you're at all partial to soft cheeses, you'll love this (though I still attest that my favorite cheese is sharp cheddar, call me a simpleton). Very similar in taste to Brie, fromager d'affino is a double cream, soft cheese that is particularly soft and tastes like butter. If you drizzle some honey atop, the sweet and creamy taste goes together so well. This cheese would taste great with bread or a hearty cracker. And the honey? So rich and delicious - the honey is so concentrated that it's like eating honey in applesauce consistency. Yummy.

If you have a restaurant week in your hometown, definitely check it out. You get the chance to sample different foods for slashed prices that you probably wouldn't think about trying in the first place.

Until next time, happy eating all!