We ♥ Zeke's Beans N Bowls

When my friend Molly first told me about Zeke's Beans and Bowls, out by the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach, I wasn't quite convinced. A coffee shop -- that also serves Hawaiian food? How do those two things even remotely go together? But after our visit last month, I was more than willing to admit I was wrong. It works. It just does.

We arrived on a snowy afternoon with three kids (one of them our very own Zeke) and a hankering for lunch, and ordered up smoothies and PB&Js and poke bowls, mounds of raw tuna served over rice and smothered in green onions and wasabi peas. You can see the photo, above -- it looked so pretty in person that when I saw the waiter coming toward our table with it, I actually said out loud, "Oooh, I hope that's mine!" Each bite was a burst of flavor and the latte that I ordered with it was strong enough to make me forget about a morning of toddler antics and fortify me for the afternoon ahead.

I haven't come across anything quite like it anywhere else in the area, which is saying a lot (if you follow our 12 in 12 project, you can see that we also ♥ eating out). But the food, despite how good it is, was only one of the great things about Zeke's. The other was the atmosphere -- laid back and quirky. The kids really enjoyed exploring Zeke's vintage decor -- looking at the painted signs, poking through the stacks of vintage record albums and playing with the "analog computer" (aka old-school typewriter).

Thank you everybody at Zeke's! And thank you, too, guy at the neighboring table, who didn't side eye us once despite our very enthusiastic (and vocal) kid contingent.