Road Trip through Oregon Day 4 - Suttle Lodge to Bend

 

Check out Day 1's blog here, Day 2's blog here, Day 3's blog here. 

Today, we woke up to the beautiful Suttle Lake. We hiked around the lake before having breakfast.

Suttle Lake

Next we checked out of our hotel and we are en route to Bend, Oregon! For breakfast, we are going to The Victorian Cafe, a very popular local breakfast joint.

They are known for their list of Bloody Mary's, especially the 24 oz. Proud Mary Bloody. It comes with a skewer with charbroiled smokey prawn, housemaid andouille sausage, cube of pepper jack cheese, olive, pepperoncini, red onion, lemon, and grape tomato. 

Proud Mary Bloody

For food, I ordered the Sweet Hash of Joy, and Teddy ordered the Victorian Breakfast. Both were excellent. 

Sweet Hash of Joy

Victorian Breakfast

A word of caution - this restaurant is INSANELY popular. If you plan to visit, make sure you get there EARLY. 

Victorian Cafe in Bend

Next, we head to Newberry National Volcanic Monument's Lava Lands Visitor Center. There are lots to see and do around here, starting with the trail, Trail of the Molten Land, which starts at the visitor center. It's an interpretive trail that tells us about the volcanoes that happened in the area and how things are formed.

Trail of the Molten Land

This trail is only roughly 1 mile and it's easy to do. 

Trail of the Molten Land

Next, we went to the Lava River Cave. This is a lava tube that requires advanced reservation, so make sure you reserve on recreation.gov in advance. It's $5 a person and the reservation wasn't hard to get for us. This is a seasonal attraction. When you check-in, you will be given some instructions, then you will have an opportunity to rent a flashlight. It's $7 to rent one flashlight, which I highly recommend. Many will say your cellphone light is sufficient. I can tell you right now, it's really not the same. The flashlight is absolutely necessary for a beginner. If it's your second time doing this hike, then maybe you can do without it. Teddy and I rented one, which means he used it for the whole time and I barely was able to manage by staying close by and using my own cellphone light. This is a REALLY cool activity that I've never seen elsewhere before so I think it's really well worth it. Due to the fact the inside of the cave is basically pitch black except for where your flashlight shines, I wasn't able to get any great pictures. This hike is 2.2 miles roundtrip.

The entrance of the Lava River Cave

Inside the cave is quite chilly. There are ice and icicles inside as well.

Icicles inside the cave

This is what your trail in the cave looks like.

Lava River Cave Trail

Much of the trail is made of metal.

Lava River Cave Trail

At the end of the trail, you'll see this stop sign and you'll have to turn around.

End of Lava River Cave Trail

This trail isn't overly difficult but make sure you come prepared with a jacket and that flashlight rental. Next, we head to the last Blockbuster on earth.

Last Blockbuster on earth

Not only is it the last Blockbuster, it's still much like the Blockbuster as I remembered it. This is a must-do in my opinion. Totally cool. 

DVDs and even VHS's are still popular here. The computer they use to check you out still runs on DOS. They key in your credit card info - no modern day swipe or tap or insert.

Next stop, Deschutes Brewery. There are lots of breweries (and wineries) around here I assume because the area is so lush with so much mountain water. We ordered the Classic Tray of Tasting Trays.

They also give each person a freebie sample of the day beer here. Love that. Teddy also ordered a French Onion Soup. We didn't order any other food because we have a big dinner coming soon.

French Onion Soup

Afterwards, we checked in to our hotel for the night and freshen up for dinner. The hotel for tonight is Fairfield Inn & Suites Bend Downtown. I was very surprised with how nice and spacious our room is - it's the cheapest room of this trip and there's even a TV!

Tonight's restaurant is Yoli, for Chef's Tasting Menu. $135 a person. The restaurant is surprisingly hard to find - one of the common occurrences with tasting menu restaurants. 

Our dinner started with some Gansig (snacks), they include Wonppul (kaluga, seaweed, lobster, mousse), Gimbap (toro, egg, chive, gim, rice), Yukhoe (a5 wagyu, creme fraiche, pear, potato), Hwe (amberjack, chive, soy, tuna, kkanipp, huckleberry), Juk (caviar rice porridge), gyranjjim (truffle egg custard, broccoli), Baemjang-eo (eel & granola tart). Can we say, WOW?

Snacks

Everything tasted AMAZING and the presentation is absolutely phenomenal. Very Michelin like. Next up is a fun course too, called Doenjang Guk (Korean miso consomme, truffle noodles, kimchi, seaweed). The consomme is a clear broth, the rest of the items are made into the piping bag and the server taught us how to squeeze it into the consomme, which comes out looking like noodles. The consomme would "cook" the "noodles", making it like a noodle soup. Fun and delicious.

Doenjang Guk

Next up, Kkoli Rose Tteok (lobster tail, creamy gochujang, rice cakes, mushroom). Delicious, but I do not eat rice cakes. I don't know why, but I have never liked them. I admit, I didn't even try these rice cakes.

Kkoli Rose Tteok

The lobster and the mushrooms were delicious. I love edible flowers in my food - pretty and tasty and healthy. Next course, Puageula (foie gras, doenjang, brioche). This might be my favorite course of the night, although it's hard to beat some of the items in the first snack course. Funnily, the manager told us they've had people calling their restaurant to let them know that because they serve foie gras, they would never go to their restaurant. Isn't that sad?

Puageula

This course was just absolutely amazing. The fruit jam with the doenjang create such an amazing flavor. I can't recall what fruit it is, and I wonder if they intentionally left it off the menu because they don't want others to copy it. Next up, Dalg (chicken, truffles, cabbage, chestnut). 

Dalg

I'm not a big fan of reusing ingredients in tasting menus, unless it's some of my favorite ingredients (like I stated earlier with the edible flowers). Here we are seeing truffles again, which is once again, one of my favorite ingredients, so I was very happy. However, this chicken had a very unique flavor. It's not bad. It's quite good really, but it's got a very earthy, gamey, almost bitter flavor that I'm not sure how to describe. It reminds me of the taste of guinea fowl or pheasant. I don't feel like it was needed, to be honest. 

Next course, Bidulgi (squab breast, squab leg, squab jang). This was very good also. No bitter flavor this time. Although I question whether it was needed as well.

Bidulgi

Next course is Ssam (wagyu ms-9, eye of round, ny strip, angus short rib, kobe ribeye, jang, lettuce, gim, rice). I wasn't sure what to expect before this showed up. Teddy and I were discussing the long list of types of beef and wondered are we really going to be presented with all that? Yup. We are. We are already stuffed by this point so we were trying to figure out what to do with all this food.

Ssam

There are 5 cuts of beef, counting the one in the middle (already cut up for easy sharing). This is so we can taste each piece and decide which cut we like best. In reality, I barely tasted one cut. We were also given many options to wrap the meat with, from different types of seaweed, lettuce, to leaves. Also lots of different sauces and pickled veggies. I tasted those pickles and sauces. They are very good. We have a big day of hiking tomorrow. I'm not sure if we'd be able to eat it but I'm certainly going to try. We asked the server to pack it all up which they happily obliged and told us that it's very very rare that someone finishes everything on this meal. 

This is undoubtedly the best value I've ever seen of a tasting menu. Not just the menu, but the wine pairing is a great value as well, at $55 a person, you are given a glass (half pour) for every course, which means you get 7 glasses (half pours) plus a port for the dessert. I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's talk about the dessert, Keikeu (chocolate, omija cake, mango kimchi sherbert). Absolutely amazing.

Keikeu

And the mignardise at the end:

Huge food coma afterwards. Amazing experience. One of the best. Check out tomorrow's blog here!