america-land of the feast

Before anyone starts, I must apologise for my tardiness, as I have been back from America for over two weeks now, and haven’t found time to share my experiences from the other side of the pond till now.
there are dedicated posts coming up for several of the restaurants I ate at whilst over there, including several of chef Jose Andres eateries-zyatinya, jaleo and minibar (I know-again?!?) as well as the big one, and if it came down to it, I would be torn to decide whether the main reason for my trip was to visit my sister and her hubby or the meal at Grant Achatz's best restaurant in the world-in waiting, Alinea . For family harmony, let’s just say both are fabulous reasons to travel to the states.
while you all wait for the individual rundowns, I just wanted to share a few photos on here from a few of the meals I had, we worked out that in the space of 5 meals at various places I ate over 110 courses of varying style, standard and size. That’s a lot. Even for me.
Before I went to America for the first time, my preconceptions of their food was pretty much the same as yours I imagine, burgers, hot dogs and massive piles of fries. Whilst i'm sure all of those get served in abundance, the truth is that the standard over there is, in my opinion, vastly superior to our own. whether its the small mom and pop operations working out of a side street cafe in old Leesburg (my sister's new home town!) , mid range chain restaurants and burger bars or the very top end Michelin star chasing foodie Mecca in Chicago (go on-guess) what you receive for your dollar far outweighs anything on offer around the uk.
The Americans have a great attitude toward eating out-they love it, and it is as easy and cost effective as eating at home. Shopping for fresh meat, fish and vegetables was a real eye-opener. It’s so expensive! Cheese was another thing that was hard to get hold of and really expensive when you could find it. Compared to eating out at any one of a massive choice of food offerings it is no wonder people eat out so much.
Constantly I was surprised by the food, and look forward to sampling more, on my next trip west.