Local Foods

Before I get started on this blog post and telling you about all the yummy things I found at a lovely restaurant called Local Foods here in Houston, I have to get something out of the way.

Ahem…

It’s officially fall!!

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Even if it still feels like summer outside, with plenty of humidity and highs of 90 degrees, I don’t care. The time is coming for cozy sweaters, holiday cooking, and pumpkin-flavored everything! Fall, winter, and all the holidays that come with them are definitely my favorite time of the year, so expect to see plenty of evidence thereof on this blog. Not to mention that this is my first holiday season on Pinterest, which will either result in a series of fantastically festive craft projects or a series of embittered tirades against hot glue and tinsel. Whatever happens, it will be extremely entertaining.

Now, on to the main event—Local Foods. After reading customer reviews and the like online, I really wanted to give this place a try. The food sounded like a great mixture of homey comforts and fun punches of flavor, all wrapped up in an approachably modern package. Priding itself on locally-sourced ingredients, this restaurant has taken that sense of community and created a really lovely place.

On my trip to Local Foods we got a mix of sandwiches and perfectly portioned sides that spanned some of the restaurant’s most popular offerings. First, there was the Crunchy Chicken Sandwich. Nut-crusted chicken, buttermilk ranch dressing, and chips all piled up inside a pretzel bun. Very cool.

Truffled Egg Salad Sandwich. 

Gobuythisnowitsthegrestestthingever.

Ahem. I mean, I highly recommend that you purchase this sandwich at your earliest convenience. Egg salad spiked with truffle oil is, simply put, a brilliant idea. In the past I had an unjustly unfavorable opinion of truffles, thanks to some cheap, awful truffle butter I tried a couple of years ago and this sandwich totally changed my mind. It’s just delicious, especially how the creamy egg salad and mayonnaise gets soaked up by yet another gorgeous pretzel bun.

All sandwiches should be on pretzel buns.

I’m starting a petition.

Finally for the sandwiches, we’ve got a Capered Tuna Salad Sandwich. This one was also a major hit, thanks to the yummy tuna salad and crunchy onion strips. Unfortunately no pretzel bun on this one, but the ciabatta bun was quite tasty as well.

Each sandwich came with a choice of two sides or a soup. The sides that we chose were…

Couscous with carrots, Cabbage Slaw….

…Quinoa with chayote squash and chimichurri (sadly not chimichurri enough for me), Tuscan Kale with parmesan and golden raisins (this was my favorite)…

…and Market Ratatouille with orzo.

Besides yummy entrees and a gorgeous interior restaurant (some examples via Yelp here, here, and here), Local Foods has a fantastic spread of desserts to go along with their yummy food. After sampling quite a few, I actually found them to be a bit hit-and-miss. None were bad, don’t get me wrong, but there were some that I wouldn’t buy a second time.

However—and this is a big “however”—there was one dessert that completely knocked my socks off. This Butterscotch Blondie was hands-down the best blondie I’ve ever had. These chewy blondies manage to impart a great butterscotch flavor without being cloyingly sweet, a feat that can be hard to manage when it comes to butterscotch-y business (believe me, I would know). We only bought two and my entire family fought over every delicious crumb.

In short, would I return for another visit? Yep! Just writing this blog post made me want another truffled egg salad sandwich reeeally bad. And, looking at the above photo, I can almost taste the butterscotch blondies again, so add that to the list. Not to mention that there’s plenty of other sandwiches, sides, and salads that I’ve yet to try. On the whole, Local Foods is a fun, fresh place to grab a fun, fresh lunch.

And twelve butterscotch blondies.