Today we have for you some photos taken from our first Taste Winchester History Specialty Valentine’s Dessert Tour! We are pleased to report that is was so much fun and such a smashing success that we have already made the decision to do similar style specialty tours more frequently. It truly exceeded our expectations, both in terms of the amazing sweets our guests were able to enjoy, but also testing couples to see how well they knew each other! To simply say we laughed a lot would truly be an understatement. We visited five wonderful partners to overdose on sugary sweets!
First, we offer many thanks to Kevin and the amazing staff at El Centro Winchester. A last-minute snag found us scrambling for someone to step in, and a quick phone call to El Centro closed the gap quickly and seamlessly! We simply can’t thank them enough for stepping up on a cold call, providing a great dessert and atmosphere for our guests and we’ll have to see if we can peer-pressure them into joining the tour as regulars. This is not our first feature for El Centro, so if you want to check out one of our prior visits, we did a Tasting Tuesday Feature Video, when the Winchester Food Tour at El Centro enjoyed a tequila tasting! It was actually our very first Tasting Tuesday video and you can see it here:  Tasting Tuesday – Tequila Tasting at El Centro.
For our Specialty Dessert Tour, El Centro treated us to a sweet, sweet sopopilla with cinnamon and cream, drizzled gently with honey. A sopopilla is a sweet pastry of Mexican origin, said to have been created over 200 years ago. A sopapilla is a crispy, deep-fried pastry. It is often served covered with honey or syrup. The pastry is common in Hispanic culture and is a favorite among many Hispanic cuisines. Sopapillas can be served salty or sweet. Needless to say, we went sweet…
Victoria Kidd at the Hideaway Cafe, our opening act, buried us in an avalanche of desserts! We have featured Hideaway Cafe many times on the blog, a regular Historic Food Tour partner. We were surprised to discover after the delivery of brownies topped with chocolate and bacon (by far the favorite of Anthony), that there was more to come. Out came an apple crisp dish, topped with whipped cream that was amazing. But wait, that wasn’t all as that, too, was followed by an orange sponge cake that was almost too beautiful to eat! Pics below, but keep an eye on the blog for we’ll be doing a full feature post about some great dessert news coming out of Hideaway Cafe including, among other great news, they are expanding our menu to include higher-end dessert items that allow patrons an opportunity to enjoy a delightful tea time or offer more reasons to be your ideal spot for after-dinner coffee and cake! (Did we mention homemade?)
We were thrilled when The Red Fox Creamery of Winchester, one of Virginia’s Finest, agreed to be a Specialty Dessert Tour destination, and guests were treated to their Top 3 sellers in the ice cream arena! Red Fox started their operation in Middleburg, Virginia as the Middleburg Creamery. Now known as The Red Fox Creamery, it is a bounty of sweetness with homemade treats of every kind, including the homemade ice cream that we can all now enjoy as we stroll down the Old Town Walking Mall year-round! And you can follow them on Facebook – Red Fox Creamery, too!
Then it was on to The German Table and the homemade German Chocolate Souffle by Nathalie Miller. We just did a Tasting Tuesday segment with Nathalie that you can see here: Winchester Food Tour at The German Table. It was like a warm bowl of chocolate overload that I think had some eyes rolling into the backs of heads because it was simply fabulous! German food, German Beer, German Desserts, a trifecta of goodies that you must come on over to visit and partake, regardless of whether you’ve already been there or not!
And we wrapped things up at the Fellowship of the Sip Organic Tea House & Restaurant where Dori and Victor treated the crew to a hot cup of their drinking chocolate, which is amazing. This isn’t hot chocolate out of a packet, this is the real deal and may overload even the heaviest sugar junkies! Additionally, the chocolate ginger topped with cream and cherries was quite special. And what Valentine’s celebration would close without…
…smiles on the faces of our tour guests, roses for the men and the ladies, and a champagne toast for everyone! We can’t wait to do this again, and we promise we won’t wait until next Valentine’s Day… we’re hard at work on our next specialty tour, some come back and visit often!
Thank you so much to all of our guests and our hosts! You make this work a tremendous amount of fun!
