Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a Paleo “pop up” dinner at the Busy Bee Cafe in downtown Raleigh.

I found out about the event as it was being planned by a friend of mine, David, who runs a super cool website called Get Offline. I use this site ALL THE TIME to help me plan my weekend outings around Raleigh, Durham, and the Triangle in general. I highly recommend checking it out to get insider tips on fun happenings around the Raleigh area. There are even paleo-friendly recommendations so there’s no excuse not to have something to do on the weekends!

The food was amazing, and I got to hang out with lots of my Paleo, food-obessed friends, particularly the lovely ladies that work at Bloom Integrative Health, where my office is located. We had a great time and I’m hoping to convince Meaghan (aka Dr. Dishman) to start sharing some of her vast knowledge about alternative and holistic health and healing modalities. We’ll see if I can convince her to get over her social media-phobia!

We heard the chef speak about each course, about how he prepared the meals and what kind of changes he had to make to make the item Paleo. We discussed the reasons why restaurants use non-Paleo foods like crappy vegetable oils, refined grains, and processed sugars – cost was a big concern, but a simple lack of knowledge by the cooks combined with a low demand for this type of food product seemed to be the biggest barrier. Let’s hope that this ancestral health trend keeps expanding, and one day chefs will start making their own bone broth, choosing grass-fed meat products, and creating desserts that (nearly) everyone can eat!

[Tweet “Great pictures by @AncestralizeMe from the #Paleo Pop Up Dinner at @BUSYBEECAFE in #Raleigh”]

Here are some pictures of the event. I really hope there’s another one sometime soon!

I had a lovely time with these lovely ladies!

Check out this fabulous menu!

This was my first time trying Omission gluten-free beer and I thought it was pretty darn good!

This picture does not do justice to the deliciousness that was the duck breast in it’s own broth.

We had some yummy NorCal Margaritas!

Again, pictures cannot capture the amazing taste of this beef tartare. Lurrrrrve me some raw meat!

The main dish was a smoked venison loin. I don’t know if I can ever eat venison again without wishing it was this dish!

This was a friggin’ amazing cocktail too, with fresh grapefruit juice and rosemary bitters to compliment the sweet potato vodka.

And you can’t go wrong with a coconut flour chocolate cake with local Videri chocolate! Yummmmm.

So glad I attended this event, and I hope you will join me at the next one! Now if only they had a restaurant in Raleigh that served this level of Paleo foods…

Make sure to follow me on Instagram for lots of other pictures of my daily ancestral food, fitness, and fun!