Event Review: Tampa Greek Festival

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I've been so busy with work and just life in general lately.

This weekend I had the opportunity to go to the Tampa Greek Festival being held at the St. John Greek Orthodox Church here in South Tampa. My boyfriend is a huge fan of Greek food and the more Americanized gyro sandwich so we stopped by on Friday night to enjoy the food, dancing and fun!

Dolmathes-A Greek appetizer of grape leaves stuffed with rice and veggies. 

My plate: Greek meatballs, Greek-style green beans (SO good) and feta cheese. 

Close-up of the feta cheese. Anyone that knows me knows I'm a huge cheese lover so I made sure to grab a plate of this stuff when I went. It was really tasty. 

There was quite an impressive array of Greek desserts at the Tampa Greek Festival. The whoopie-pie looking dessert is called Kok. It's a sponge cake with custard in the middle. To the right is Kataifi, a pastry made with shredded dough soaked in syrup. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

How can I forget the Baklava? Mmm. I'm a huge fan of Baklava and this looked sooo tasty. There was even a Baklava sundae station at the Greek festival! I didn't get around to trying one, but imagine the equation of a Baklava sundae goes something like this...ice cream + baklava=pure bliss. 

The Tampa Greek Festival runs until Sunday. If you haven't been yet, I highly suggest checking it out. There was dancing, shopping, and great live music as well. It's not very often that we have these kinds of festivals in Tampa, so definitely stop by if you're looking for some fun this weekend!

Tampa Greek Festival 

St. John Greek Orthodox Church 

2418 W. Swann Avenue 

Tampa FL, 33609

Dessert Spotlight: D'Lites

Anyone that knows me knows I have a horrible sweet tooth. I love all things sweet -- pastries, cakes, candy, chocolate -- oh, I just love it all and I'd probably eat sweets until I passed out and/or my stomach exploded.

But while I really love my sweets, I also really value my health. For that reason, I try to opt for healthier options when my sugar craving kicks in.

And so, in my quest to be healthy (but still indulge), I found D'Lites.

It's basically an ice cream place with loads of different flavors (changing every day) and all of the options are low calorie and low carb.  Each flavor has around 50 calories per 4 oz. serving which is great because that way, I can eat ice cream without feeling guilty afterwards.

The last time I went to D'Lites, I got the red velvet and mint chocolate chip flavors. I know, the two don't really sound like they'd go together, so I had the nice people working at D'Lites them put side by side in a cup:

SO. GOOD. The red velvet tasted just like red velvet cake and the mint chocolate chip reminded me a lot of what a Thin Mint would taste like if converted into soft serve ice cream.

Some of my other favorite flavors (and there are so many varieties) are: Snickers, Oreo, Samoa, and any cheesecake flavor. Like I said earlier, the flavors change daily, so there are always new and interesting types of ice cream to try. All of them are made either out of the chocolate or vanilla ice cream, so they all have the same caloric content.

All in all, I'd definitely suggest D'Lites to anybody who is either trying to make healthy choices or just wants some good ice cream. They've got lots of options for everyone here. I'll definitely be back!

D'Lites
1906 S. Dale Mabry Hwy
Tampa, FL 33629

Intro Post/Welcome!

Ever since I moved to Tampa in May, I've been surprisingly overwhelmed by the vast amounts of different places to eat there are around here. I was actually pretty surprised after coming from a huge foodie town like Nashville that people might be just as crazy about food as I am!

It's taken me a few months to get around to some of the Tampa "staples." Even after five months here, I still have a long list of places to dine at.

That's where this blog comes in. I'll be documenting my trips to different restaurants throughout the Tampa Bay area in my quest to find the best of the best. I've got an entire spreadsheet of restaurants I need to go through, so this blog will be part of my journey!

Hope you enjoy! :)

Allison