Posted by: Nysssa

I needed a mental health day, Springviolet was celebrating Christmas.  Why not meet up and knit and have some lunch before heading to fiber nite?

We decided to meet at our Tuesday night spot, Higher Grounds, where we’d feel comfortable sitting and knitting and waiting while we ran whatever errands if we couldn’t meet when we wanted to.  I sat by the window, had some chai, and worked on my Destroyed Cowl.  I had to park in a two hour spot, the ‘unlimited’ parking was all full, but it would hold me over for a while.

Springviolet arrived, also ordered some chai, and set about winding yarn for her Robot Hat.  I lameneted my lack of EVER using Manos.  I should fix that soon.

In any case, my parking spot was about turn my car into a ticket, so we decided to peruse the neighborhood for some food.  Koi was our first choice, for some sushi to celebrate Springviolet’s vegetarianism, but it looked closed.  So we decided to look for Honey’s Sit and Eat, a local hot spot that we’d both never been to, but had heard much about (especially about the hours long waits that occured for brunch time on the weekends).

We forgot where it was exactly, so we drove around Northern Liberties for a little while and finally found it.  I grabbed the first parking spot I saw (and could have found a closer one, but it is what it is).  We walked in and there were only a few tables taken, apparently we had good timing.  We were seated, and given the breakfast and lunch menus to order from.

Springviolet picked the chorizo omelet.  I’ll let her describe it for you, but I know she ate all of it :)

I had a shrimp po-boy sandwich and an order of brussell sprouts.  The sandwich came out open-faced, and in my effort to consume less bread, and because I had no idea how to pick it up to put it in my face, I ate with a fork and knife.  The sauce was delicious and I ate more of the bread than I intended because I wanted the sauce.  The shrimp were cooked perfectly and were spicy and nice.  The sprouts were also very good.  Very garlic-y – and a tad undercooked for my preference, but I still ate them all!

We agreed that we probably wouldn’t wait to wait in line for hours on the weekend, but it was definitely worth coming back during the day when you could walk in and sit down.

The placemat which had ads and a map of local businesses, and we still had several hours until fiber night, so we decided to try out the Random Tea Room, just a few blocks away on 4th Street.  We walked, since it wasn’t worth getting my car in case we weren’t going to stay there.  The sign outside advertised a $1 house Chai, so we went inside to investigate.

It was cute!  There were a few people there using laptops, and talking with the proprietress, and the whole room smelled like chai.  There was room to sit and we ordered tea (I got my first taste of pu erh, and I believe Springviolet got honeybush).  We decided to sit an knit, so I went back to the car for my project and found a parking spot right in front, refreshing my two hour parking time from the previous spot where I had parked from Honey’s.

There was a sweet Boston Terrier sleeping nearby, and while the chairs weren’t set up great for face to face conversation, we were able to sit and chat and drink and knit comfortable for a few hours. 

We commented that a 2-hour time limit cafe crawl would be a lot of fun for the sooner than later future, if we could manage to coordinate it, where we’d visit small local spots, eat/drink and knit for two hours and then move along to the next one.

We finally tried the house chai, which was very tasty and I purchased two ounces of another loose tea (the minimum, even though tea is priced by the ounce)  for my Pollyanna partner. 

I kept the placemat – there are few more places on it that we have to visit!