One of the projects I picked to try out for the Pinterest Challenge was a dining passport (see the original pin here). It wasn’t too heavy on materials: just a small Moleskine notebook I picked up at B&N, and some pens I already had. It was a little more effort-intensive figuring out the places to put into it. The original poster had just listed the name and address of the place, with a grading box for when it had been visited. Given Ian’s wonky work schedule, I thought having the hours of each place listed would be handy, too. And then I added an (admittedly vague) system for how expensive/fancy a place was, ranging from $ to $$$$. Because nobody wants to randomly pick the $$$$ place and show up in flip flops. And while we have a blank checkbox for each place, we’re just going to use an A to F grading scale instead of color-coded stickers. Also… being a designer, I may have gotten carried away trying to mimic each restaurant’s logo font for their entry… Take a look at how ours turned out:
We’ve actually already used it twice! I plan on picking a place from it for date night this coming week. And there are still plenty of blank places in the back. I’m keeping it in my purse so that if we’re out and about and see some place we want to try, into the dining passport it goes. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this project, and think Ian & I will both have fun getting out to new-to-us places in Austin. 🙂
Speaking of food in Austin, I found out over the weekend that Round Rock (Austin’s northern suburb, aka. where I live) has it’s own Taste of Round Rock event. You may remember me posting about the Taste of Austin event that I like to go to. So I was pretty excited to learn little ol’ Round Rock has its own version. And it’s tomorrow! So if you are in the area and feel like small samples of yumminess from 40-ish different restaurants/caterers, come get a ticket/check it out.
Have you ever done a dining passport or something similar? Or gone to a Taste of [Your City] event?
14 comments
That’s an awesome idea. I might even have a moleskine notebook hanging around in my office… This might be a potential gift for my husband, since he’s crazy hard to buy for.
Do it! It’s fun to make, and really fun to use.
That’s a pretty neat idea. If I lived somewhere with enough restaurants that weren’t just chains I would probably do this xD
Hmm, true, it does help to be in a bigger city. Though you could always adapt it to something like a Drink Passport for different drinks you want to try (if you drink alcohol), or different things you want to see around your state (Roadtrip Passport?).
I love how your passport came out, it would be such a cute gift idea as well (for someone who just moved there, or just a friend/family member). I have been to a Taste of the Town event before and it was so fun! I bet the Austin one is really unique, too. 🙂
Thanks! And you’re right, it would be a cool gift for a town newbie, too.
The Taste of Austin night is fun! I haven’t heard anything about the 2013 one yet, but I’m keeping my eye out.
What a great idea!
I can only take credit for the execution in this instance, but yes! I thought it was a cool idea, too.
What a fun idea! And I LOVE that you mimicked their fonts, totally something I would do -I’m such a design nerd. 😉 ~Sarah
Haha, yay! Glad I’m not the only one. Thanks 🙂
I love this idea so much that I will probably copy it! There are so many awesome restaurants in our area, but we seem to always visit the same three places over and over. This would help to break out of that rut!
Exactly! That’s why we made one, too. We kept going to the same places. And they are super tasty, which is why they’re our favorites, but Austin has SO MANY restaurants we’d really be missing out if we never branched out. It’s been fun so far! We’ve used it 3 times. 🙂
I’ve just finished making mine! It was a lot of work to research all the different places in our area, but now that it’s done, I’m totally rearing to get out there and try some of these awesome restaurants. Thanks so much for sharing this idea.
Awesome! And I know what you mean, picking out the restaurants and finding their info was definitely the most time-consuming part. Glad you liked it! 🙂