Boise Restaurants

What else do you do when you have an hour to pass before a business meeting, and you have not researched the town you are in? Why not go into a coffee shop in the middle of downtown!

Goldy's had an interesting mix of college students, Air Force Officers, and construction workers. It was very unique to me, although from what I have seen, this could just be the way Boise is!

I noticed alot of people eating the biscuits and gravy, although I only had room for a cup of coffee!

This is a good place in downtown Boise to get good pizza and a good, very large, selection of beer. The pizza is not real Chicago-style pizza, but it is good, especially considering that this is a chain. It also has a very large selection of beers, most in the bottle, but with still a vry good range on tap. These include both some better imports and a very good choice of craft beers, with slight emphasis on local western/Pacific NW beers.

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This is a great breakfast-lunch cafe & bakery, with a slight European-oriented/influenced menu and approach. It has excellent pancakes, fritattas, other egg-dishes, pastries, bread puddings, cakes, and more.

It is right downtown in the striking, historic old Idanha Hotel building.

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this is a very good pub with a wide range of food, generally very good, some good desserts. It has more than the usual, basic pub food, with more varied choices. It has has a good selection of local and non-local, good-quality beers, including various craft beers.

It has nice outdoor seating on the sidewalk, under leafy trees. This is along N. 8th, the main pedestrian-oriented eating-shopping street in the heart of downtown, on the block with many other eateries and many nice, shady trees, important in the hot, sunny Boise summers. This is one of the nicest blocks in downtown.

So we took a look at the menu and decided to try it out. This place is very small, with just as many outdoor tables as inside. You can view the small kitchen from the inside. I ordered the lamb stew, and my husband the lamb kabobs, but there were half a dozen other things that also looked yummy. We ordered "croquetas" for the side dish...which are these yummy fried dumpling type things, said to be made out of flour, butter, chicken, milk, and...? They were divine also. The lamb stew I could have eaten a gallon of. They delivered our food with this "tiger sauce" which was great on the meat and the croquetas. We then had a very delicious flan for desert. The clencher? 2 dinners, 2 drinks, and dessert set us back $32. Seriously!

The service was attentive and casual. This place is a real gem.

This is a cozy restaurant but we were able to get a table mid morning (granted it was a weekday). We chose to sit "upstairs" in the tiny loft. There's an espresso bar as well. The atmosphere is very laid back and friendly. Our waiter seemed to enjoy nothing more than checking in with great sincerity.

Favorite Dish: My friend had the frittata special - it was amazing. I tried the smoked salmon hash. Maybe it sounds like a strange combination, but I loved it. Also, it was one of the smaller items on the menu and I wasn't starving.

I'd heard great things about Goldy's and I wasn't disapointed in the least!

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I failed to find an outdoor table along any of the 8th Street cafes that serve full breakfast, not just coffee and pastry, so I opted to cycle around to this pleasant restaurant right in view of the capitol dome. The outdoor seating is on decking a step above the sidewalk, and a partition railing provided a place to lean my bike. Inside, a beavy of pretty 20 something waitresses greeted me from behind a glass display of lovely French pastries. A charming display of basketry and loaves of bread captured my attention to the left just inside the door. I was invited to seat myself anywhere outside, and soon my waitress brought me ice water and a double latte. I considered the large brunch menu and was inspired to choose a fritatta made with duck eggs, gruyere cheeze, asparagus, and bellpepper. Baby potatoes and a tomato salsa came with the egg dish. Presentation of the food was exellent--a individualized caseroule on a plank. Unfortunately, the fritatta was slightly overdone and dry, the portions surprisingly meager given the price. The coffee at Starbucks next door would be a better deal. Neverthess, the sidewalk cafe atmosphere and enthusiastic service was enough for me to consider this place again, should the more established and popular places along 8th Street be overly crowded. This restaurant is concerned about finding sustaining and organic farm fresh produce, and provides special occasion dinners from time to time.

The food was prepared quickly and with less than satisfactory ingredients. The lettuce in my salad was yellowing and cut up instead of torn. I ordered a version of chicken alfredo that also included shrimp. The chicken was pounded paper thin and was quickly heated. The alfredo sauce was a tasteless paste on the noodles and the shrimp was unwashed, because got a nice bite of sand when I ate one. I sent the food back because it was nearly unedible, when the manager came over she was distracted and seemed to think that I was the one at fault. She did offer to "get me something I liked" which I turned down.

Favorite Dish: Just don't bother