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I like to get bananas to eat for breakfast, especially on the weekends. I usually either take one or two from Lowry or buy some from the C-store or Knowlton. It’s always a little hard to find a fresh or ripe banana on campus; normally, the ones that are available would be better suited for making banana bread. Whenever we go to Walmart I notice that the bananas in the store, which are the exact same brand as the ones that the school buys, are fresher. Not only are those bananas riper, but they’re also cheaper! I wanted to show the comparison of a banana I got from Lowry vs. the one I bought from Walmart on the same day. 

Lowry and Kittredge always have dull options for dinner on the weekends, so my friends and I tend to order dinner or go out to eat off-campus. This past weekend we decided to get Chinese food. Unlike most Lowry meals I’ve had in the past week, the meal actually looks appetizing. I think it says a lot about our school’s dining situation that there’s never anything appetizing in the dining hall. It’s a little annoying that we pay for a meal plan, yet we spend so much money eating off-campus because there are so few meals we enjoy here. Considering how many students we see going off-campus to eat along with us, I think the college should really reconsider its meal options and come up with some new meals. 

Back home in Rhode Island, my family’s favorite restaurant is Al Forno in the capital city of Providence. We’ve been going to this restaurant for as long as I can remember and it’s always a special occasion. It was founded by a married couple who both went to school at RISD in Providence with my mother which makes our connection to the restaurant that much more special. They are known for their tucked away location right near the Providence River in their subtle building. But even more than that, they are known (obviously) for their delicious food. There are a few details that make their menu unique, they have a core set of appetizers, entrees and desserts, but the majority of their menu rotates based on the season. It makes it fun to visit and try all the different dishes they serve at different times in the year. While I love the half chicken entree, the most popular dish is the four cheese pasta (first picture). when it comes to desert there is a fairly unanimous decision on which is best, and that is the flourless chocolate cake (second picture). That is one that I definitely agree with.

This restaurant is a very important place to my family and we were very glad to see it make it through COVID when so many similar small restaurants similar to this struggled and failed. Almost every birthday, graduation, anniversary or any other special occasion was spent there. We were even lucky enough to be some of the first customers back after the pandemic break.

Eggs Benedict is breakfast/brunch classic whose orginis date back over 100 years. Back in 1942, a retired New York stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict gave an interview to The New Yorker magazine in which he claimed he walked into the Waldorf Hotel 48 years earlier in 1894 looking for a cure for his morning hangover and reportedly ordered “buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon and a hooker of hollandaise.” The restaurant later added his order to the menu but replaced the bacon and toast for ham and a toasted english muffin. This was how it all started.

Today, the dish is served practically everywhere and there are many varieties and ways one can enjoy eggs Benedict. Below is my all time favorite version of the dish from a restaurant called ‘Cremat 11’. In this case we would call this a lox-pancake Benedict. Here, instead of english muffins and Canadian bacon, the restaurant utilizes savory-fluffy pancakes and fresh smoked salmon alongside the butteriest hollandaise sauce ever. Let me tell you did this exceed my expectations. Every bite melts in your mouth and the touch of dill in the hollandaise adds a nice touch. I’ve got to the say the most important element to any great eggs Benedict are the poached eggs. Every time I ordered this during my week long vacation (went back 3 times) the eggs were cooked to perfection and oozed down to provide moisture to the components below. If you’re ever in Spain its an unreal breakfast place with eggs Benedict, pancakes, fresh juice, good coffee … everything you need to start your day right! Better be early or you need to wait a long time to get a table… which is always a very good sign!

It is clear though that the dish pictured above is most definitely on the heavier side. I think one great thing about a more traditional eggs Benedict is that it is relatively healthy, quick, and light on your stomach. So when I’m not in the mood to get too full or have to an active day ahead of me I go for something more like the Benedict scramble at ‘La Malcriada’ pictured below. Here we have a classic english muffin topped with tender pieces of bacon, cheesy scrambled eggs and a soft boiled egg on top for extra protein. The Benedict is paired with a side of breakfast potatoes on top of purple mashed potatoes and a side salad.

The bacon at this restaurant was perfectly grilled, juicy and very tasty. The plating was beautiful, the interior of the store was also very nice, and the staff were really friendly. The potatoes and salad tasted even better than they look and provided something refreshing the pancake Benedict lacked.