Full-to-bursting after Melting Pot’s food tasting tours

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Now that today’s story on Melting Pot Food Tours is officially in the world, I can finally bring myself to tell the tale of what I consumed during my two daring days of tour-dom with sisters Lisa and Diane Scalia.

There simply wasn’t room for a full accounting in the story. The list is too long. And I am too full. Still. (Keep in mind that when I list a food item, it was given to me as a ‘taste,’ but a ‘taste’ often translates to a large slice, a hefty chunk or more.)

On the Original Farmers Market/3rd Street tour I ate and drank (in chronological order): cinnamon roll, chocolate honey wheat doughnut, maple-glazed bar and coffee and cream at Bob’s Coffee & Doughnuts; French baguette, ‘caviar cheese’ and olives at Monsieur Marcel; toffee at Littlejohn’s English Toffee House; fresh peanut butter at Magee’s House of Nuts where they roast over 100,000 pounds of peanuts each year; monkey bread at Thee’s Continental Pastries; sirloin steak seasoned with rock salt and garlic, linguica sausage, deep-fried yucca, cheese rolls and hot sauce at Pampas Grill; cinnamon-glazed coffee cake at Kiss My Bundt; macarons at the Little Next Door; Chinese chicken salad, Sardinian flatbread, lemon squares and brownies at Joan’s on Third; a tea tasting at Chado Tea Room; and spider roll, soba noodles and seaweed-soy broth at Mishima.

Oh man. I was stuffed.

On the Old Pasadena tour I ate and drank: carne asada torta and pineapple agua fresca at Tortas Mexico; falafel and tahini at Father Nature; shrimp shumai and basil mignon at Equator Restaurant & Cafe; six-layer opera cake with buttercream and chocolate ganache at Aux Delices Bakery & Cafe; a tea tasting at Bird Pick Tea & Herb; chocolate gelato and orange sorbet at Tutti Gelati; a ‘sensory taste’ of handmade soaps and oils at the Soap Kitchen; chicken curry, spinach and tofu, and lentil rice at Tibet-Nepal House; and a green tea truffle at Mignon Chocolate Boutique.

There. I’ve said it. I ate all that. And I loved every second of it.

-- Jessica Gelt