2024

Archive for the year 2024

FioRito Restaurante

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Ching under Food and Drink.

I don’t think I’ve posted about FioRito yet but it’s quickly becoming one of our faves. It’s on the corner of Douglas and Hillside, which really isn’t the best location and, thus, a lot of restaurants have come and gone in that spot. FioRito is sticking around though, and I think it’s because their food is actually good. If you have good food and great service, people are going to come and they will return and continue to support your establishment.

They have a lovely patio which would be perfect if it weren’t for the traffic noise. Unfortunately, Douglas and Hillside is a pretty busy corner.

These are some pictures of the food we enjoyed when Brian and I had dinner there a couple of months ago.

One of the best things about FioRito is they have happy hour twice. There’s an early happy hour from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM Tuesday through Thursday and a late night happy hour everyday from 8:00 PM to close. You can’t beat cheap food and drinks!

We liked it so much that we recently returned with some friends a few weeks ago. However, I forgot that there’s no early happy hour on Fridays so we missed out on the deals. The food prices are pretty reasonable but the drinks are quite expensive so I may not be drinking there going forward if it’s not happy hour.

We did all of the dipping sauces for the bread this time.

Here are some more pictures of food.

If you’ve never been to FioRito, we highly recommend checking it out.

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First Time at Pho KC

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Ching under Food and Drink.

Tried a new Vietnamese restaurant a couple of months ago. The blog is super behind so I’m only now posting about it.

I’ve seen some negative reviews (mostly about cleanliness, not as much the quality of the food and the service) on Facebook but, when my coworker Chris and I went (the two times we’d been recently), we really didn’t have any issues. I think we need to be more observant, I guess. I had pho and it was really good.

I would go there more frequently but it’s just not in a part of town that is convenient for me and Brian. We don’t venture out to the South side of Wichita much, as we really have no reason to. And, when I’m craving pho, we have Kim’s Noodles which is super close to our house. In fact, we took mom and dad there the other day for dinner. They’d never been before and I think they liked it.

Here are some pics of our Kim’s Noodle dinner for comparison:

It’s kind of hard to top a place that’s less than five minutes from your house. LOL.

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Poplar Pizza

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Ching under Food and Drink.

Brian and I finally got around to checking out Poplar Pizza a couple of months ago and, in all the years that we’ve been living on this side of town, I can’t believe it was our first time. How have we not tried this place before? It was so good!

I think part of the reason that’s kept us from venturing out and trying more new places is that we’ve been on this Hello Fresh cooking at home kick. We usually get three or four meals a week, and you have to make them pretty much right away after you receive them so that usually prevents us from going out to eat. That’s not a bad thing but it does keep us from checking out all of the new or already existing restaurants in town that we’ve never been to yet.

Here’s a picture of the “specials” board on the day we went to Poplar.

They had lots of options on their cocktail menu and the drink prices are actually quite reasonable. It’s almost like happy hour prices everyday, all day. LOL.

I’m a sucker for puns so I obviously ordered the friend chicken. I am happy to report that I was not disappointed.

I think Brian got the country fried steak that day.

We shared a slice of the French silk pie for dessert.

It was really quite good. I have to say, Poplar is one of the gems of Andover. No wonder they have been around forever. We are going to have to make a return trip very, very soon!

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Pickleball Everywhere

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Ching under Pickleball, Travel.

While we were on the Garden of the Gods trolley tour a couple of months ago, we happened upon Fields Park on the South outskirts of the park. There were people playing on the two courts early in the morning while we were on the trolley tour so we decided that we would go back there after we were done exploring the park.

Alas, when we returned later in the day, there was absolutely no one there. I took pictures of the beautiful courts though. If you’re in the area and have at least three friends willing to play with you, this is a great spot.

I found out later through their local Facebook group that there is usually a group that plays there in the morning (around the time we came by on the trolley tour) but it wraps up around 11 am. If you want to meet people, go around that time. If you want the courts to yourself, it looks like you can have both courts to yourself and don’t have to fight anyone off in the afternoon.

About 40 minutes away, in ritzy Banning Lewis Ranch, we found 8 dedicated pickleball courts at Vista Park. They were having a tournament that day so I couldn’t take photos of just the courts but the satellite view shows the courts, a spacious parking lot, and a nice dog park across the lot.

Each court is fenced and they are lighted so you can play at night. I took a photo of the posted rules. I think this is probably quite a pickleball hotbed for the area which seemed to me a more affluent area in Colorado Springs based off the look of the surrounding homes and neighborhood. If you’re looking to relocate to Colorado Springs and enjoy pickleball, Lewis Banning Ranch is a winner.

It seems pickleball courts are popping up everywhere and they’re the latest popular new amenity that most housing developments and subdivisions now offer. Pickleball fanatics everywhere are also building private pickleball courts in their backyards. People seem to be opting for courts instead of swimming pools these days. Maybe someday I’ll be able to live somewhere that I have access to one of these. In the meantime, I just gotta settle for the options we have here in Wichita.