The Source Weekly is accepting your votes for their “Best of” list. Only a couple more days to vote although I’m not sure it matters. I mean is it different from year to year? Seems like the same people and places make the list each year. Let me guess, Kristi Miller will get the Best TV Personality for like the 20th time in a row….is there another TV personality out there?

Feel free to copy my answers for Best of Food since I am right and everyone that disagrees is just wrong.

Best Fine Dining – The Jackalope Grill

Best Place to Buy Fresh Veggies & Fruit – I don’t buy either of these normally but the wife loves going to the Farmers Market so that’s my vote. When the farmers market is not available, Rays has some good produce.

Best Casual Dining – Deschutes Brew Pub. Now, this has been a staple of mine for a long time but they have recently gone through a major restructuring. They lost some management, servers, and kitchen staff. All on top of a new menu. The service has been great especially when we get one of the waitresses that have been there a while and knows us. But the food has been taking forever to get out of the kitchen. Hopefully things will get back to the way they were.

Best Service – El Caporal or Les Schwab. Les Schwab counts doesn’t it? They have popcorn and free beef.

Best Rookie Restaurant – Deep (of course)

Best Vegetarian – I didn’t answer…I have no idea. “Vegetables are what food eats”.

Best Bakery – Hurricanes

Best Grocery Store – I know you will all say Newport or something lame but for me it has to be Rays…they have a liquor store, hands down the winner.

Best Lunch – Toomies can’t be beat for $5.95 you get a small salad with peanut sauce, rice, phad thai, and whatever your dish is.

Best Cheap Eats – Reyes Tortillaria

Best Breakfast – I now you will say The Vic but for me it’s Westside Bakery.

Best Coffee House – Thump is pretty cool.

Best BBQ – Really? Does this really need to be a category. It’s obviously Baldy’s…is there another BBQ joint in town? Don’t you dare say the all you can eat one on 97, when was the last time they were robbed?

Best Pizza – Cibelli’s on the West Side.

Best Sushi – Another obvious choice…Deep.

Best Mexican – Nice category…sooo many places to choose from it should almost be top 5 Mexican restaurants. I listed Pepe’s as my favorite even though I’ve only been there once. My top 5 would be:

Pepe’s
El Caporal
Hola!
Reyes Tortillaria
Taco Stand

Now Hola! has been getting some jacked up comments on their post lately. I have had good experiences there but it’s been a while.

Best Asian – I’m not even sure how to answer this one. I guessed SOBA since they have a variety of Asian dishes.

Best Italian – I didn’t know Bend has any Italian restaurants so I said Cibelli’s.

Best Steak – The Jackalope Grill…I know you didn’t think the $32 Zydeco steak was going to get my vote.

Best Seafood – I think I made a mistake on my form when I submitted to the source, I put Cork. Why would I do that? I had fish there once and it was delicious….I should have said Bend Fish Company or even better, Baltazar’s! Yeah that’s right, I said it, Baltazar’s Seafood and Spirits. Bring the hate comments on, I don’t care. I like Baltazar’s and many of my friends have admitted to going there knowing full well of the news coverage. And these are friends with kids. Why do they go there? “We wanted to go somewhere without kids on our night out”. Interesting.

Best Dessert – Can’t beat the sampler for two at The Blacksmith.

Best Bagel – Big O’ Bagels

Best Burger – Dandy’s. Skip Pilot Butte, they win every year.

Best Ethnic – I thought for a long while on this and finally decided that you can’t get more “ethnic” than Reyes Tortillaria.

Best Patio Dining – At least until construction starts I like Bend Brewing Company’s patio for it’s location downtown but not on the sidewalk. The outdoor seating at the Bendistillery is pretty sweet too. I don’t like outdoor seating when people can walk too close to your table…especially with their dogs…not a fan.

Best Wine List – Merenda’s? I don’t know. Oh shoot! I should have said Cork! My bad.

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Anthony’s HomePort

Anthony’s Sunset Dinner is a four-course dinner that includes a choice of appetizer, chowder or salad, entree and dessert and is served Monday through Friday, until 6 p.m.

I went for the shrimp cocktail app, the chowder, prawns, and the chocholate moose. The wife got the same starters, the salmon, and the burnt cream.

For $18 it seemed like a great deal at the time. But as we worked our way through the meal, it was apparent that there were corners being cut. Like the cocktail looks good but if you look closely you’ll see that more than half of the glass is filled with diced celery. My prawns were small in size and quantity. I mean I like the variety of courses but it just seemed to be lacking in quality for each course.

My prawns were drenched in butter/oil and it wasn’t that good. The rice and green beans were underseasoned. Overall we felt the meals were quite bland.