cupcakes and the counter

one of my all time favorite restaurants is a place in vegas called burger bar.  i LOVE a good burger, and i love the ability this place gives me to choose my patty (type of meat, size, etc.) and then customize my burger with some unique toppings as well as some traditional ones.  and let me tell ya, me and burger bar make a mean burger.

it's the only thing about vegas that i really enjoy, and when jami and i made plans for dinner a couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that there was a burger joint that had come highly recommended by a mutual friend of ours.  what i didn't know is that the concept at the counter is similar to that of burger bar.

in this case you're given a clipboard and a pencil, and you fill out your own order form before handing it off to the waitress.  i was pleasantly surprised to find that the choice of toppings far exceeded that of burger bar, and while we waited for our meat to cook, we passed the time sharing the. best. fries i. have. ever. had. so, if you ever find yourself at the counter, the parmesan fries are mandatory.  more than mandatory. you have not lived until....well, you get the idea!

when our burgers arrived, we found that they were every bit as tasty as we had hoped.  in fact, there was only one area in which the counter fell short of the burger bar, and i can't hold them tooo accountable for not having a nutella milkshake since i've never seen it anywhere else.

but after the delicious and savory dinner, we were craving a tasty treat, and with sprinkles just around the corner, it sounded like the perfect choice...until we realized it had closed five minutes earlier.

now, there are a lot of naysayers who will tell you that sprinkles cupcakes are overpriced and 'not that good,' and they're just plain wrong.  well, about the 'not that good' part, anyway.  don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise, some people just insist on anti-establishmentarianism (is that a word?), but they are del-i-cious.  and ever since then, i've been craving cupcakes.

when someone off-handedly mentioned this weekend that there was a great cupcake place in long beach, i hied myself to the frosted cupcakery to pick up a dozen for myself and my team.  and with flavors like chocolate peanut butter, chocolate caramel buttercream toffee, vanilla nutella, and chocolate peppermint, my mouth was watering long before i took my first bite.

my co-workers and i agreed that they were every bit as yummy as they sounded, and my favorite turned out to be the chocolate peppermint (but i'm kind of on a peppermint kick lately). the frosted cupcakery was just the antidote to my cupcake craving, and also made me a hero with my staff!