A Few Wonderful Hours at The Summit

My mom, my girls and I ventured out yesterday for lunch and to find the youngest some shoes for Easter Sunday.

Our favorite place to shop in Birmingham is hands down, The Summit.

It seems insulting to call The Summit a shopping mall.

Because it is so much more than that.

The Summit is kinda like Disney World...

different areas...different kinds of stores...big names as well as smaller boutiques...and lots of really nice places to eat...no way possible to do everything at The Summit in one day.

One of the newest places to eat a recently opened section of The Summit is a place called Flip Burger.

Rhoda at Southern Hospitality suggested it a few posts ago, so I put it on my list for this trip.

When you walk through the door, the first thing you see is this cool mural that is on the ceiling.

You also hear music...hip, popular rock music.

We waited for about 20 minutes for a table...Flip Burger is not a huge restaurant...it's long and rectangular, divided into 3 long rectangular sections, a bar, a regular seating area down the center and a row of booths.

Here are my oldest and middle children sitting in one of the booths...almost like sitting in a space capsule.

The oldest said she felt like she was in Japan.

My firstborn is a connoisseur of potato soup, so she order this as an appetizer and got a surprise extra serving with her meal...which we all sampled :)

DELICIOUS!

If you like real hamburgers, put together with all kinds of other fresh ingredients, and fresh unique sides, you would like Flip Burger. 

You might even have a conversation about foie gras like we did :)

You can add foie gras to your milkshake if you want...but we didn't.

Especially after we had a long conversation about duck liver.

This is my middle child's lunch...those fries are fresh cut as are the pickles...the pickles are really marinated cucumbers...fresh and crispy...and the taste just pops in your mouth.

They don't have a kids' menu...so my youngest ordered the basic Flip Burger with all the extras on the side...she's a hamburger with ketchup only kinda gal. 

The folks at Flip Burger were more than happy to oblige her.

These are the sweet potato fries...

which are really tempura sweet potatoes...

and are scrumptious!

How about asparagus fries?

When I saw these on the menu, I wasn't really sure...

But, my mom ordered them and let me have some of hers...

again, sorta like tempura asparagus...but oh...so fresh and good!

Of all the interesting decor elements, this t.v. frame was my favorite.

I can so see this hanging on either of my teenager's walls.

After we left Flip Burger, we walked down one side of the new section at The Summit. 

We spotted a new boutique called Gloss.

The "big girls" are experts at finding new and interesting places to shop.

My firstborn is the most fashion conscious of all of us...

Once she enters a store, she has her own agenda and she doesn't really talk to anybody else...she goes around mentally putting pieces together in her head..

My youngest is used to walking into these kinds of stores, taking a look around and realizing pretty quickly that there's nothing here for her.  Her first question today was, "When are we going to Gymboree?"

My middle child, who likes clothes just as much as her big sister, doesn't have quite the same shopping strategy.  She's been known to completely lose control and walk around picking up handfuls of stuff to try on. 

I turn my midle child over to my mother whenever we go shopping.

Gloss has beautiful clothes! My firstborn was excited about the new possibilities at hand. 

The scope is casual, but the tops and dresses are feminine, silky and blousy.

Thank-you God that tight shirts are leaving us this season.

Tight knits are not made for women who have given birth to three children.

Thank you very much!

After being reassured that Gymboree was still on our agenda, my youngest spied the brownies and cookies and planted herself on the couch next to the chocolate.

The ladies at Gloss had already offered these to us, but we were so distracted by the clothes when we first walked in the door that we really didn't notice these goodies.

My youngest did though.

The store itself is really pretty...wood floors and shiny...

not overly packed to the gills with 800 of the same items so that you meet yourself coming and going all season. 

I realize that sounds snobby...I'm not a snob, I promise...I do, however, like unique things.  I don't mind sharing, but I don't want clothes that are exactly like everybody else's. 

I'm not a fan of the "Stepford" look.

My firstborn and middle child scored several pretty new tops and got distracted again by the jewelry at the counter.

I actually think my mom was just as distracted as they were :)

My youngest was still keeping watch over the cookies...but beginning to get a little ancy herself.

When she starts this kind of stuff, I know we've almost pushed her to her limit.

She's going to need a Gymboree fix soon.

Ahhhhhh...so much ahead of us.

After we left Gloss, I felt a pull from down the sidewalk...

I knew when I saw this insignia hanging on the window, that I was really in big trouble.

Holy Smokes!

There's a Brighton store at The Summit!!

Now, the folks at Brighton have little kids just as figured out as those smart folks at Gloss...

instead of chocolate, they offered my youngest a basket full of toys, which she immediately began to plunder.

The Brighton folks want the adults to have all their attention on their wares.

Lord, help me control myself.

Help me, please.

This season they've even added flip flops to the shoe selection.

Since I began to have trouble concentrating, and I convinced myself that the purse I attached myself to from the moment I crossed the threshold was really too small, we decided to keep moving...

Anthropologie sucks our "big girls" right inside every single time.

Gymboree is within sight of Anthropologie so there was no way to keep control of the youngest any longer...plus, she'd been more than cooperative so far.

The youngest took control of her destiny at this point of the afternoon.  She has an agenda that gives her oldest sister a run for her money.

The youngest did score some yellow espadrilles to go with her yellow Easter dress...more on that tomorrow.

While I would love to share some photos of my youngest in her element, shopping for shoes at Gymboree, I won't be able to because of this this freak of nature...

I'm sorry for being mean...

but this woman is one of those people who thinks she's the only person on the face of the earth.

She walked into the store talking to someone on her mobile ear device...at about 3 times the volume normal people talk.

I promise.

I'm not exaggerating.

She was rude.

She was obnoxious.

She was evil.

Why can't these folks shop online??????

 

We ended the day at another iconic restaurant in Birmingham, Johnny Ray's.

We've eaten at Johnny Ray's since the original place on Hwy 31.

This is the new Johnny Ray's at the Colennade.

There's nothing better than a Johnny Ray's pulled pork sandwich...

But, the very best thing at Johnny Ray's is their Coconut Cream Pie.

Oh my...

Please don't tell Jillian Michaels.