Rochester Chop House & What I Ate Wednesday #104

Happy Hump Day!

I’m coming to you later in the morning, thanks to my body desperately needing to catch up on some rest and a morning barre class. I only have a few minutes to pop in and chat before I need to get over to Birmingham, so let’s jump right to it.

Today I am covering another edition of What I Ate Wednesday that takes you through an entire day of eats. Yesterday, however, was a little out of the ordinary, thanks to a very special birthday celebration. Here we go!

 

What I Ate Wednesday Tuesday

 

My morning started with an early morning gym date with Scott. There’s a free hour at our gym every Tuesday and Thursday with the sunrise, so we’ve been taking it!

Since I’ve been taking a lot of barre classes, I wanted to make sure and get in some cardio. I hopped on the stationary bike and completed a 30 minute climb workout I will share on the blog soon. I finished my workout with a short ab circuit (ab wheels, stability ball sit-ups and side plank pulses) and some stretching.

Scott used a workout app on his phone called Sworkit to complete a full upper body workout that had him doing about 1,000 push-ups. It was crazy to watch!

We wrapped our workouts up with just enough time for me to get home, jump in the shower, get out the door, and on my way to the work at the nursery at church. Scott was sweet and made me breakfast #2. (I inhaled a banana on the way to our workout!)

Van’s gluten-free French toast sticks (together) smeared with hazelnut butter with a side of Dunkin’ Donuts pumpkin spice coffee (yes!).

I had a great morning with the kiddos. They were surprisingly very mellow, considering Daylight Savings Time happened over the weekend and a handful of moms had mentioned that it messed with their sleeping schedules.

Scott picked me up at a quarter to noon, and we hurried back over to the gym for me to get ready for a lunch break appointment with a client. As you can imagine, I was working up quite the appetite by the time lunch rolled around.

 

Rochester Chop House (Downtown Rochester)

Yesterday was Scott’s birthday! Knowing my day and night was on the busier side, I set aside three hours of my afternoon to take the birthday boy out to lunch and spend time with him.

We had a Kruse & Muer Restaurants gift card to use, so we took this as the perfect opportunity to check out a new (to us) restaurant in Downtown Rochester.

Rochester Chop House is located right on Main Street, and we have only heard wonderful things about the food and dining experience. It was almost 2 p.m. by the time we walked in, so it wasn’t surprising that we were close to the only ones in the entire restaurant!

The front of the restaurant is an oyster bar (Kabin Kruser’s Oyster Bar), and is always packed with a wait during the peak night and weekend dining hours. We didn’t venture out to the front, but we loved the old steakhouse atmosphere in the back. There were caricatures of famous people and customer lining the walls, and the environment felt like we had stepped into a fancy lodge.

Per usual, I took advantage of the paper tablecloths and crayons just sitting around.

Mike was our server, and he was fabulous. He wished Scott a Happy Birthday and gave us special attention. Even though it wasn’t terribly busy, we appreciated the extra time he took at our table to explain the menu and give his best recommendations.

We knew this was going to be our big meal of the day, so we went all out. I ordered an entree that came with a side of cole slaw, but since I don’t like horse radish (<- seriously, it makes me hurl), I upgraded to a side House 306 Salad.

It was fabulous and came with a honey tarragon salad dressing. I picked the Stuffed Shrimp meal and was thankful to see the lunch portion arrive. I loved the combination of crab, lobster, and shrimp and the added sweetness to the rice with dried cranberries.

Scott ordered an opened-face crab cake sandwich that came with a side of chowder and the same rice, and we both couldn’t get enough of it. We were pretty full by the time dessert was offered, but since we were celebrating, we took a look at the menu… just in case.

Everything looked amazing, but we settled on the apple crisp bake topped in vanilla ice cream that had a great flavor with cranberries. It was so good!

We practically had to roll ourselves out of the restaurant, and took a quick tour of the upstairs before we left. It’s a neat place we would like to return to in the future.

Happy Birthday, Scotty!

We ran a few errands and went to the mall for a while before I needed to hurry back to the gym for my final shift of the day. I had a personal training session followed by three small group training classes, and I was hungry again by the time I finally made it home close to 9 p.m.

Feeling whipped, I took a hot bath (the best) and then came downstairs to pull out whatever we had in our vegetable drawer to make us salads for a late dinner.

Chopped kale, cabbage, and lettuce with tomatoes, cucumbers, black olives, cracked pepper deli turkey, pepper jack cheese, hard boiled eggs, and ground pepper drizzled in a raspberry vinaigrette dressing

I immediately returned to the refrigerator when I finished cleaning up to grab my nightly tall glass of dark chocolate almond milk for dessert.

This time I started with crushed ice and loved it!

I began to draft this post, but then felt my eyelids closing before I could finish. For the first time in a long time, we hit the hay before 11 p.m.!

 

***

While I don’t normally get to dine out quite that extravagantly for lunch, I hope you enjoyed a peek into our day. If you’re ever around the Rochester area, I highly recommend Rochester Chop House! We’d love to revisit the Oyster Bar, too.

 

Well, I better run. Have a great rest of your Wednesday!

 

Questions of the Day

• Do you like oysters?

• What have you been loving on your salads? (I’m in need of some inspiration!)

 

You can always find my latest What I Ate Wednesday posts by exploring the “WIAW” category on the right hand sidebar.

Please note: What I Ate Wednesday features an entire day of my unfiltered eats. In no way do I change what I eat just for the sake of documenting it. While I try to be mindful with portions, I don’t count calories. I do, however, take into account how much activity I am going to be doing that day, and I plan my meals and snacks accordingly.