California Pizza Kitchen in Salt Lake City

It was Memorial Day Weekend and it was still dumping snow! Will our trails EVER dry?!

Bored with home-cooking and crafts, I shoved everyone into the car and headed to Salt Lake City. It was going to be a day of California Pizza Kitchen (aka CPK) and The Discovery Gateway Children's Museum at the Gateway Mall! CPK is enormous value for your buck, especially when you bring the kids.

Activity Books from CPK rule! Generous colored pages of tic-tac-toe, mazes, coloring pages, etc. and a set of primary colored crayons are given to each kid along with a selection of delicious kiddie meals for $5.49 a head. I love this place.

The dishes come with drinks and free refills, btw. My kids still order just water.

Fusilli and Meat Sauce.  Perfectly portioned, al dente and seasoned.

Hummus and Pita Bread.  Our family favorite. Their pita is freshly baked in the pizza oven, so it's moist and chewy. Hummus is creamy and tangy.

Macaroni and Cheese.  A light deliciously cheesy dish served with al dente fusilli.

Chicken Nuggets with Broccolini.  Chicken breast, seasoned crust, gorgeous brocollini.

Fusilli with Butter.  Another al dente fusilli with light toss of butter.

Sundaes for 99 cents.  Seriously, all this goodness for a dollar!

We order the special Sundaes with all the fixings on the side (just to complicate things). Now we get hands-on do-it-yourself element ;')

The hot fudge is to die for—hot, gooey, dark and rich.

Now with our bellies filled, we head out to the Discovery Center.

Large roomy elevators call for busting out into breaking...headspins, spider crawls, back hand stands...yo!

Here's my baby b-boy. xo

California Pizza Kitchen at Gateway Mall

(801) 456-0075

156 South 400 West

Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Official site for CPK.

Golden Dragon banquet dinner

IKEA restaurant in Draper

FYI, I'm sort of a die-hard IKEA fan and was totally stoked when they opened their first Utah store in Draper—finally, stylish and chic home decorating at affordable prices! And there's drop-off daycare while you shop! And they have Dyson hand-dryers in their restrooms! And I love building all that stuff myself! (I know, it's crazy.)

(I know there are plenty of you IKEA-haters out there and you probably are disgusted with their food too...) The cafeteria, known as the IKEA Restaurant, is conveniently located near the home accessories where you can, half way through your shopping, nourish yourselves with yummy Euro comfort food before you tough it through to the finish line, I mean, check-out line ;')

We ended up getting...

Swedish Meatballs, $3.99.  Yes, these are the famous meatballs served with fluffy mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. (Unfortunately the food is not consistent—yes, I've had some terrible meatballs.) Before you order the meatballs, make sure they look browned and crisp on the outside for great texture and flavor.

Potato Broccoli Hashbrowns.  Most, dense, light, crisp and so flavorful. These were delicious!

Spinach Cheese Crepes, $2.99.  I thought I was ordering pancakes with fresh fruit, so the flavors caught me off-guard. They were rich, cheesy, chewy and pretty good.

IKEA Restaurant

(801) 572-4532

67 West Ikea Way

Draper, UT 84020

Official site for IKEA Draper.

Official site for IKEA Restaurant at Draper.

Shoyu in Park City, Utah

It was mommy-Max dinner night after piano lessons at the Utah Conservatory so we hit Shoyu downstairs. Shoyu is small, casual, intimate, delicious and reasonably priced. 

Agadashi Tofu.  Traditional standard silken tofu that is lightly coated in cornstarch, then deep fried and served in tentsuyu, a sauce usually containing 3 parts dashi, one part mirin and one part soy sauce, and then topped with scallion and bonito flakes. Love this—serious comfort food warms your soul :)

Crispy Calamari.  The batter was too thick so we ended peeled off the coating.

Crispy Roll.  This actually looks a way creepy, but it was amazing. Tuna, avocado inside-out and deep fried with some eel sauce and spicy mayo. Max inhaled this one.

Spider Roll.  The crab was exploding out of the roll. Simple and traditional, humongous crab, light on the rice. I really appreciate Shoyu's large protein to small rice ratios.

Shoyu

(435) 901-3990

1612 Ute Blvd #116

Park City, UT 84098

Official site for Shoyu.