Cafe Rio

So, hardly a month has gone by since I said I wanted to cook every week. Who would have thought that it would be so hard to prepare one meal in an entire week? Well, it is. This past week I was working a class in Palisades, NY, which is a "suburb" of New York that is in the middle of nowhere and isn't really a town at all, but the trees were lovely. So I ate there all week and then I fully intended to cook something (maybe even something new) when I got back to Maryland late last Friday. As luck would have it, it's been a busy weekend and the whole cooking thing flew out the window at the first opportunity.

On Saturday I went apple picking up in Damascus, Maryland (the cutest town ever!), so look for an apple recipe or two in the coming weeks. After picking my fill of apples one of my roommates and I drove up to the newest delicious "mexican" restaurant in Olney. Cafe Rio has finally come to the DC Metro area! There are now two locations--one in Maryland and one Virginia. And I'm pretty sure that it is the place for displaced Utahns to eat. And the food is just as good as it is in Provo.

I say that as if I actually liked Cafe Rio when I lived in Provo--that's not strictly speaking true. The first time I ate there was shortly after I'd moved to Provo, and being from Arizona just couldn't understand why a "Mexican" restaurant would put rice in their burritos; no self-respecting Mexican would ever do that. Somewhere along the way I realized that Cafe Rio falls into a category with Chipotle and Qdoba and all those other very delicious burrito-restaurants: not Mexican food, but delicious. After I made that realization everything changed. You just can't pass up that pork salad. It is definitely worth the half-hour drive each way to buy an $8 salad. Besides, I ate that salad for dinner on Saturday and finished it up for lunch on Sunday (hence why I didn't cook all weekend). So, if you're ever find yourself in the DC area looking for a good 'ole taste of Utah stop in at Cafe Rio. It's worth the drive.