Wild Plum Bakery and Cafe

On Saturday two of my friends from San Jose were in town. Sarah and Brian drove down the night before for their pal's housewarming party. We decided to meet up for lunch and it was my task to find a "cute spot" to blog about! I'm glad Sarah keeps me accountable.


But where to go? Little known sandwich spot? Somewhere on Alvarado? Hit up the municipal wharf?








A few weeks ago, my friend Maren wrote a review of Wild Plum Cafe and Bakery after she had lunch there with her bf Max. I hadn't ever seen the Wild Plum Cafe, hadn't heard about it, but oh man - based on her pictures, I definitely had to file it away in my "gotta try" list. So, when I met up with Sarah and Brian for lunch, the Wild Plum was the place to go!


I'm a big fan of Yelp. I don't really ever write reviews, but I love reading them. Before texting Sarah and Kyle (yep - he met us there) the address, I quickly looked at what Yelpers had to say.  Cons: unprofessional, stressed owner, understaffed. Oh Phooey! They don't know anything.


Check out that one ^^ "Yum. Lunch." My thoughts exactly.

Wild Plum Cafe is right behind Denny's (I think) and has a couple of outdoor tables. We went on a rainy day, and were lucky that an inside table opened up right as we walked in the door. Our waiter brought coffee and water as soon as we sat down. 
We grabbed our menus but didn't look closely look at them for another 10 minutes or so. Our waiter returned probably once every 2 minutes to see if we were ready to order. That means that we had to apologize about 5 times for not being ready to order. Can you blame us though? We had to catch up!!

So 10 minutes later, we had made the HARD decision and each figured out what we wanted to order. Of course, that's when Kyle walked in and he had about 10 seconds to make his mind up... 

I chose the 1/2 sandwich (veggie sandwich) 1/2 salad (sesame chicken) option. So effin good - the bread started crumbling apart, but it was covered in avocado and pesto and who cares if I need to attack my sandwich with a fork? Not me, and not when it's this good!




Brian picked the 1/2 sandwich (grilled chicken sandwich) and 1/2 soup (...soup of the day?). Kyle picked the same sandwich, but the full size. I had a bite and it was warm and cheesy - highly recommend.

Sarah went with the full sesame chicken salad.

Everything was delicious! There were about 5 or 6 things on the menu that I still want to try, so I'll have to come back someday.


MMM food & friends FTW! (I just learned that means For The Win and now I can't stop saying it in my head). We talked about lots of stuff - jobs, challenges facing the educators of America, secret clearances, wedding parties, and... my impending MOVE. Dun Dun Dunnnn... Yup, I decided to move back to San Jose to be closer with the ones I love: family, friends, Jan Hagel, Valley Fair, Orange Leaf frozen yogurt... 
As I write this it's easy to see why moving is the right thing for me. I LOVE Monterey. It's a beautiful town, has lots of charm, and is great to explore with people who make you happy. However, I'm a numbers girl, and the numbers point to San Jose. I am eager to be back in a city that has a higher percentage of people I can go out and experience life with. Let's bring back the kickball games, the random mall trips, and MOM time :) I'm going to miss living here, miss my roommates, but there's absolutely nothing stopping me from future weekend trips.....

No Garlic Ice Cream

What's that sign say? Garlic Ice Cream??

Sadly those are not my hands (eek! man hands attack!) ... and no they are not Kyle's hands. Those babies belong to a stranger. A stranger holding the mystical garlic ice cream. To make it better (or more strange?) the ice cream is served in half a cantaloupe. We went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival and I was so excited to try the garlic ice cream but that never happened. Here is why:

We got to the fairgrounds and did a loop around to check everything out.

OMG. LOVE DUNKIN DONUTS! Bring the stores to CALIFORNIA!!

We stopped and spun the prize wheel. No cool winnings.

We stopped to check out these giant chickens. They were really well trained.

We walked into this demo area and someone tossed us some free garlic!

They told us how to make their prize-winning scampi sauce.

He was afraid of the giant chickens from earlier.

We continued to walk ... SO MANY PEOPLE! And lots of food options...

For example, these enchanted escargot.

If you are a real badass you could just eat the garlic like an apple.

Then we found one of the 2 stages and listened to a lady rock out. SERIOUSLY she was a rocker. 

Okay. HUNGRY now! All the food was locally grown. 

MMM... this sounds delicious.

And it was! It was overflowing with green and red peppers, onions, garlic of course...

Ultimately this was the reason why I did not have the garlic ice cream...

Can you blame me? Nicole knows about my love for anything related to frozen yogurt. I'm not going to say I would always choose froyo over ice cream, but today froyo won! Kyle and I also had the garlic fries (in fact it was the first thing we ate!)

General thoughts about the Gilroy Garlic Festival:

- tons of people! 

- repetitive food stalls (all of them had garlic for some reason ...jk)

- art sampling (diverse but nothing that sticks out as WOOOAHHHH)

- pickled garlic: I liked it while Kyle thought it was detestable. If you ever decide to try it, make sure you are a fan of brine preservation.

- Dunkin Donuts spin wheel is rigged so no one can win

- giant chicken Halloween costume might not be a bad idea

- garlic fries are awesome, if only Jan Hagel would have let me try the one with crab (I don't care if it's fake crab!)

- there really isn't a whole lot to do - eat, walk, eat, sit, eat ... eat eat eat!

Breakfast Club, Biking, Homemade Thai

Remember how we won two free meals at The Taste of Seaside's Breakfast Club booth? Well the morning after the event we decided to check it out. A lot of my friends have tried it before and all have said really great things about it....

The inside was big - lots of tables. When we got there, we waited behind two other groups, but everyone was seated fairly quickly. While we waited I enjoyed a cuppa coffee.

I brought the coffee with me to the table and kept asking for refills! They have the best creamer selection at The Breakfast Club. Coffee-mate? Are you for serious? I lovooovovoeeeee Hazelnut Coffee-mate! Nicole knows. Anyways, free coffee refills + hazelnut creamer = dangerous combo. Check out the other goodies they have - Pepper Plant Hot Sauce AND Cayenne Pepper shaker? SO AWESOME!

psst they also have a special stash of Tapatio and if you ask nicely they'll give it to you.

Kyle and I split the mixed berry + banana waffle. YUMMMM

Second pick: an omelet with biscuit & (spicy) gravy on the side and breakfast potatoes.

Honestly, this all happened so long ago I don't remember what was INSIDE the omelet. I remember it being yummy. I'm guilty of always choosing the waffle/pancake/crepe over any sort of omelet/scramble so I think that justifies why I can't recall (?)

After breakfast we drove from upper Seaside to the McDonalds in lower Seaside to park his car and pull out Murray - my shining tandem bike. 

All aboard!

We rode the coastal trail through Cannery Row area and continued towards Pacific Grove.

Pretty...

The sun started to come out and views across the bay were gorgeous. I love riding the tandem bike! 

On our way back into Monterey, we parked the bike near Cannery Row and walked around.

We popped into a random magic shop and peeked around. Strange stuff in there!

It was the same weekend as the Red Bull U.S. Moto Grand Prix at Laguna Seca so Cannery Row was FULL of crazy cool looking motorcycles and lots of biker dudes. 

I'm pretty sure this was the same day we ducked into Cannery Row Brewing Co up the street and tried one of their house brews. They have over 70 beers on tap so I knew I wanted to do a return trip soon (plus their menu looked awesome).

PS I went back with Katie (read her recap here) and plan on writing up about that too!

For dinner we decided to try our own take on a Thai dish. We chopped up lots of veggies.

That looks like a potato, but I don't remember (nor can I figure it out from the picture haha)

The sauce we relied on to bring it all together.... it wasn't all that good to be honest. The red curry flavors just fell flat.

Add some chicken....

With Trader Joe's brown rice....

And a cupcake to finish it off a la Hugo from LOST. Bottom goes on the top to make a sandwich. These red velvet cupcakes were SOOOO good.