Ron planned us a nice trip for the long weekend. We left late morning so didn’t arrive at our destination until 1:30pm. We drove about 3 hours to Fort Bragg… driving along the coast was beautiful.

We arrived first at the North Coast Brewing Company Restaurant. They usually have tours on Saturdays but we were late (it starts at 12pm) and actually they didn’t have a tour due to an illness.

We got to try 4-oz samples of 12 beers.

I ordered the deep fried shrimp po’ boy. A bit hard to eat because the shrimp kept on wanting to escape but overall pretty good. The shrimp tasted really fresh and freshly fried, not soggy at all.

Mmm…

Ron had the pulled pork sandwich with the garlic criss cut fries. The sandwich was very messy to eat. The garlic fries didn’t have quite enough garlic.

Our favorite beers are the ones with the glasses removed… the dark beers are really good when cold but at room temperature a bit weird, kind of like cold coffee. Their light beers in general were good. I hope we can find it somewhere in SF, Bevmo is probably a good place to check. Scrimshaw was my favorite.

After lunch we went to Glass Beach to walk off our full bellies. Glass Beach used to be a local dumping ground and it’s been mostly cleaned up. What is left though are the broken glass bottles that have been polished by the waves and rocks over the years. What you end up with are these small polished “stones”. We went beach combing and collected some pretty rocks while waiting for the sun to set.

We saw all these washed up jellyfish on the beach. A bit sad but also still dangerous, according to a local there, they can still sting so don’t touch them.

There were small tide pools as well. Ron found this cool anemone.

Ron carrying my handbag… he he…

We are still learning our digital SLR so our pictures are coming out a bit funky, looks like the setting sun is a explosion on the horizon.

After our walk, we checked into the Beach House Inn and had a nap before going out for dinner. The inn was actually a hotel but the interesting thing about the place is having a huge tub in the living area.

Ron made reservations for dinner at the Rendezvous Inn. We ended up ordering their two tasting menus, Ron ordered the crab with wines and I had the mushrooms (without wine).

I was feeling self conscious so only took pictures of my food 😀 My first course was the mushroom soup with these interesting mushrooms. The soup was full of flavor and the mushrooms (to me) tasted like meat… it was rich and filling.

My second course was venison with mushroom polenta and some squash. The venison was delicious, never had it like this before and I think I like it. The meat is a bit tough but very lean. I didn’t really like the polenta though so only picked out the mushrooms.

My last course was the bone marrow, made into a custard in the bone and also the tail meat with mashed potatoes. The bone marrow custard was a bit weird, not actually that flavorful. The meat though was very fatty but the meat very tender. I was already so full after the venison that I could only eat a few bites before packing the rest for later.

Ron had a crab bisque, crab ravioli, and these are the crab cakes.

I would say the mushroom tasting menu was better. It’s deceiving because you think you’re only getting mushrooms but then comes out all this meat! Oh so full!

To top it off, passion fruit pastry… so yummy! We both wanted a bigger one, these were only one bite each.

The weekend just keeps on getting better.