As I live near Highway 101 in beautiful, coastal Encinitas/Leucadia, I thought it would be appropriate to give some love to the local merchants and restraunts and feature them here.
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Pok Pok Portland is Chef Andy Ricker's original Thai street food outpost. It even looks like a typical restaurant in Thailand. If you haven't seen Anthony Bourdain's trip to Thailand with Andy Ricker make sure you do before you partake of Pok Pok's fare you'll understand it better.
Here is a picture of Maddie's favorite sandwich (so far) that I've made. It's Albacore Tuna salad with heirloom tomatoes, shaved Jarlsberg Swiss Cheese on toasted Boudin's sourdough. The Albacore salad has 2 kinds of mayonnaise, 2 kinds of mustard and various secret ingredients that you'll figure out when/if you're lucky enough to eat one with us.
He took his shot and promptly choked on it. Maddie and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for him to be gallant and take this poor girl home she was attractive after all. She offered to give Maddie a shot as well. I've drank soju in Korea and I try to avoid it as much as possible. I've seen Korean women drink multiple bottles of soju and not pass out. We were concerned that our drunk Cinderella would not make it home safely from the ball so we wanted to make sure she didn't get into her car and try to drive back to LaMesa, which is pretty far away. We told her to go to the crepe place down the way for dessert and coffee to sober up. Our gallant gentlemen cut and ran as soon as he could he didn't even want to try to bed Cinderella this night. We paid our check and walked down to the crepe place to make sure Cinderella was eating a crepe and ordering coffee. We found her safely inside ordering away. So if your sister tells you to drink Soju, she's either Korean or she's got an iron stomach and gigantic liver. Asians typically like distilled spirits with soju, baidu, and moutai leading the way.
Sunday night Maddie and I set out on a dinner adventure. We wanted to try someplace new, maybe something from a food group that is slightly off the radar. If you know me you know my main food groups are: pizza, gelato/ice cream, fried chicken, Asian cuisines, and sandwiches. We went to our usual hood, Asian food central on Convoy street. We started out thinking we'd go for Shabu Shabu, then when we got to the strip center that houses Shabu Shabu Lounge, Red Moon Noodle House, Pokeritto, Raki Raki Tsukemen, Tasty Noodle House. We decided to eat at Tofu House. Tofu House specializes in Korean Soondubu Jjigae or soft tofu soup and hot stone rice bowls (Bibimbap) This would be Maddie's first Korean Food adventure. It took us a while to decipher the menu as there were lots of selections. We looked all around to see what everyone else was eating, but that wasn't much help. We settled on a Sapporo Beer, a combo dinner of Galbi with fisherman's hot stone rice bowl and a seafood soondubu. For those who live in cold weather locales Soondubu and hot stone bibimbap are great for those freezing winter evenings as these dishes come out really, really, hot, the Soondubu comes out still bubbling and boiling and the hot stone bowl is nuclear hot as it's designed to cook and crisp the rice that comes in contact with the bowl. For those who have had crispy Persian rice or Tahdig, you know how yummy and addicting this can be. Korean crispy rice kicks persian rice's ass as it combines crispy, crunchy goodness with many levels of flavors and textures. Banchan's arrived shortly after we ordered, for the uninitiated banchan are small side dishes that accompany every Korean meal, at least one of the side dishes is usually a kimchi. We received a kimchi, pickled spicy cucumber, pickled daikon radish and a dish of fish flavored dried tofu strips.
Korean food rule number one: Banchan's have unlimited refills, so eat as much of these as you like. Korean food rule number two: the fancier the restaurant the more banchans you get. The Galbi arrived first along with the traditional stainless steel individual rice containers. The Soondubu followed shortly boiling and bubbling away with its red-orange soup and sea creatures poking out from the surface. I told Maddie not to even try to eat it at this point, let cool down from its thermonuclear temperature or risk losing all your tastebuds. When we were waiting for our table we saw a young man put 5 eggs into his soondubu he probably wanted to get his money's worth as eggs are free. Adding raw egg to your boiling soup is the traditional way to eat soondubu. The raw egg adds a richness to the soup but if you add it when the soup first arrives it will instantly cook and adds bulk to your soondubu, if you wait a bit it wont cook as much and it adds richness to the broth. Maddie elected to add only one egg not 5. You're supposed to eat the spicy soup with the rice and soft tofu. The rice mediates the spicy heat a bit. If it's not spicy enough there's gokujang spicy chili paste on the table along with dried red chili flakes (gokujaru) on the table. The hot rice bowl arrived smoking and sizzling. You have to stir the bowl up to circulate the rice so that it gets crispy and not burned. The trick is to stir it just enough so that it doesn't burn but not too much that it doesn't get thick and crispy. They provided some soy based salt to add some flavor to the rice and I added some gochujang to the rice and gently stirred it occasionally making sure that the bottom was getting crispy and GBD (Golden Brown & Delicious) not BBB (Black, Burned, Bummer). The rice bowl with its seafood bounty was very flavorful and we both loved the crunchy rice. As the bowl starts out red hot the food stays hot throughout the meal and the seafood continues to cook, so for those of you who like their ocean creatures well cooked will be very happy with this method of cooking. For Maddie's first Korean food adventure she did very well she loved the soondubu and the crunchy rice. Now maybe it's time for more exotic Korean foods. Tofu House 4646 Convoy Street, suite 116 open 11:00AM-10:00PM 7 days a week If you have ever been to a chip shop in the UK you know what we call fish and chips here is nothing like the real deal in the UK. In Las Vegas we found a proper fish and chip shop brought to us by someone who should know how proper fish and chips should be made-Chef Gordon Ramsay. For $15.95 you get 3 pieces of cod along with a heaping of hand cut chips which you can augment with gourmet flavors such as truffle parmesan and chipotle jalapeño. You also get your choice of two sauces: curry mango, Sriracha Aioli, European Mayonnaise, Gordon's Tartar Sauce, Artisanal Ketchup and Southwest Ranch. My friend who lived in London for a number of years said that Gordon Ramsay finally brought proper fish and chips to America.
Happy Cinco De Mayo Amigos y Amigas!
Nate's Korner in Santa Ana is famous for their breakfast burritos. Orange County breakfast burrito aficionados all know about Nate's. What you see below is a 3 egg, 3 meat breakfast burrito. It has bacon, sausage and ham with 3 fried over easy eggs and crispy, shredded hash browns all wrapped up in a large flour tortilla. Served with fresh salsa it perfect breakfast for 2 or a breakfast and lunch for one person. www.nateskorner.com Old school Cash only Chinese food in hipster Kearny Mesa. Sam Woo has many outlets across Southern California and even some in the Chinese enclave Vancouver, B.C., Canada. It wouldn't be an old school Chinese restaurant without the requisite elderly Chinese waitress or waiter. Our waitress was a sweet older lady who couldn't have been nice to us. We ordered Shrimp Chow mien with crispy noodles, rock fish fillet with black bean sauce and fresh mushrooms with the famous or infamous X.O. sauce. The food was in large portions and was flavorful and spiced just enough.
In China Pizza Hut is one of the fancier western restaurants you can eat in. They have waiters, a wine list and and extensive menu that also just happens to have pizza. We actually didn't see anyone eating pizza at Pizza Hut they were eating every but Pizza it seemed like. |
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August 2018
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