World Famous Pea Soup!

disney feel

As noted a few posts back, the road trip meal is always a risky one. For our travels back, we decided it was necessary to go to the most overly advertised place on the southern 101, Pea Soup Andersen's in Buellton. We honestly saw like 6 billboard's for this place touting it's world famous Pea Soup. How could we not check it out?!

mascots Hap-pea and Pea-wee

As expected, it was a big, highly touristy/Disneyland looking building with German theming, a specialty store attached, and lot's of fun knick-knacks. We were quickly seated, and of course ordered Split Pea Soup in a bread bowl. They had an interesting looking "traveler's special" that included bottomless soup and any beverage (including a milkshake!!! :O) for $9. Since I was already a hugefast all weekend, I refrained :(.

split pea soup in a bread bowl! mmm

fun menu

soup toppings

The menu had a fun chart on it that showed the distances from a bunch of random places in CA to each other, and to Andersen's famous soup. It was another, I wish I had come here when I was 8, type places. The pea soup was pretty tasty :) it came with a bunch of toppings like chives to dump in which made it better. 

Truthfully, I've never had pea soup before so I have no frame of reference. I think it was decent, surely not the world's best :P, but the ambiance of the place was fun enough that I would definitely stop by if you are passing through.

Fun at the Apple Farm

ROAD TRIP!!! Eugi and I decided to celebrate the long weekend by making a 1.5 day road trip to Santa Barbara. It's always a dangerous line to walk figuring out where to stop for food on the road. You don't want to end up at a chain, but at the same time you don't want to go to some crap-ass random diner in the middle of nowhere. Also! It's hard to know when to stop, cuz you don't want to waste your intake on a truck stop if a fun town is on its way, but then you don't wanna be 3 hours with nothing :S:S:S. We lucked out this time, and guessed perfectly to stop @ the billboard advertised Apple Farm in San Luis Obispo. 

I LOVE POTATO PANCAKES!!

From the outside, this place appears tiny. Once you enter you realize it's actual a huge place, kitschy country store included :). rock on!! We got seated in the furthest of four wings of the restaurant. Each one had it's own cottagey feel. I totally wish I had come here when I was 8. The menu was massive and dinerey, but I immediately eyed "potato pancakes." I've never had those before, nor did I know what it meant... it seemed like the perfect breakfast/lunch fusion. Well played Sharon :D. They were AWESOME!! It reminded me a lot of a Chinese green onion pancake. The texture was like a normal pancake, but the flavor was much more savory with a hint of like, onion? chive? iono, it was good though! It came with sour cream spread, mmm. 

Eugi ended up getting mac + cheese, my second choice, so we split half and half. It was also quite tasty, baked and crispy, but not quite as stand out :O as the potato pancakes. Either way I was mucho satisfied. 

baked mac and fruit

Since I'm still a kid at heart, I had to buy a couple of the specialty flavored candy cane sticks. They totally remind me of being young and going special stores with my mom :). The one I had was kind of gross and melted to the wrapper, but I don't regret dishing out 20 cents purely for nostalgia.

nostalgia flavored candy sticks

P.S. Does anyone have recommends for more places I can try potato pancakes?? Totally loved them :D I tried to look it up on Wikipedia on my phone on the drive back, but it was kind of a fail. It called them "Latka" and then informed me for information on "Latka Gravas" I needed to click thru to a diff page. If there is one thing that will distract me in to laughter fits, it's unexpected Taxi allusions. How can I do research after that?!?!