Latin Chef & Azucar

I am on a roll people. I'm frantically trying to post all these backlogged entries before I leave for NYC next week. I'll be visiting N & L in Astoria, Queens and hanging out with them for a few days. It's still Saturday, September 6 despite the date you see this being posted. About a week after we ate at Asia Cafe, the same friend and I went to Latin Chef in PB. I was worried about parking because parking always seems to suck in PB. Well, lo and behold, there was a space right in front. Score! We wanted to eat at Latin Chef because both of us aren't familiar with Peruvian food. I've only had it once, at El Dorado on Palomar Street and 3rd in Chula Vista. Plus, I've read reviews from other food bloggers that were favorable, so Latin Chef it was.

We got there, and turned out to be the only people in the place almost the whole time. Actually, some beach bunny chicks came in but left. Oh and some guy came in, but only to get water for his dog's water bowl (he sat outside). The only person we saw was the lone waitress who turned out to be from Taiwan. We weren't sure if she was from Peru (well, Peru does have Asians). Latin Chef's free appetizer are fried and salted corn kernels called "canchitas". These were okay - not very filling if that's what you're going for.

We got to pick where we wanted to sit since it was so not busy. It seemed pretty clean. It was small, but not tiny and our waitress was very nice.

We perused the menu...

My friend got the special of the day, which was a good deal, $8.90 for two items with salad and rice and a soda. The one of the left was mine, the Inka cola, which was not really a cola, but more of a super sweet soft drink of untraceable flavor origin. When I hear the word 'cola', I think of something that tastes Coca-Cola or Pepsi-like. This tasted like a melted Jolly Rancher. Some ice would have been nice too. The drink was cold though, but yeah, ice next time please. Hers was the purplish one (Chicha Morada) - it had a faint bit of a spice taste to it. Not spicy hot, but something else I can't put my finger on. We kept joking that she should have ordered (if they offered it) the Peruvian drink where they spit in it.

Here's her entree - the fried fish with Aji Gallena (chicken with yellow chili sauce) with rice and salad. According to the description on the menu and from what I could read in my scratchy handwritten notes, the aji gallena was supposed to be served with boiled eggs and olives on top. As you can see, both are MIA, but we didn't really notice until after the fact and at that point, who cares right? Her fish was so good - the batter was very light. It wasn't greasy at all. I wish I'd ordered what she had...

I got the Lomo Saltado which is beef with onions and tomatoes served with french fries. The sauce was also very delicious - it had a bit of a tang to it and wasn't too salty (like the one I had at El Dorado). I think my husband would like this, being a meat and potatoes kind of guy.

Mmmm...lomo!

For dessert we ordered one each. We chose the alfajores (Peruvian caramel cookies) and the lucuma (egg fruit) ice cream. The cookies were tiny and bite size, sprinkled with powdered sugar and the sides rolled in coconut. The caramel filling was super sweet. Sugar overload! These would have been good with coffee (If I drank the stuff).

Here's the lucuma ice cream. I was suprised they gave us so many scoops. We ended up not finishing it actually. That's a first. We normally scarf everything! The lucuma fruit grows only in Peru. We both thought that the flavor was kind of starchy, kind of like ube (purple yam). It wasn't too sweet either, but it was still refreshing to have a bit of ice cream on a hot day...

After having two desserts, we wanted...more dessert! There was a write up on this new Cuban cafe type place in OB so we took the scenic route and headed over to Newport Ave to Azucar.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the interior. Too many people. It was kind of crowded. Lots of moms and their babies there. I liked the color scheme - very bright and tropical. Lots of lime green and dark brown. There were some pretty floral arrangements by the display cases which held different kinds of pastries (many were $1.50), cookies, and sweets. There was another case that had fancier desserts (those cost about $5 or more).

Since I was still kind of full from lunch, I only got a tiny pastry - the rolled cream cheese pastry ($1.50). I was surprised that it was served warm. I don't like my pastries hot or even close to warm, but it was okay. Not mind blowing.

My friend got the guava puff pastry, also $1.50. This was kind of plain. I could make this myself

with Pepperidge farm puff pastry from Ralph's and spread some guava jelly in there and bake that shit up. Does that tell you anything? I'm sure the other desserts, especially the fancier French ones, are wonderful, but the ones we picked weren't that great. Maybe next time we'll try the owner's other offerings and maybe even try her Cuban sandwiches.

This was a meat pie I bought for Bert. It was kind of small. Sorry, no cross section of it here since I bought it to go. But the filling was beef with a lot of green pepper in it. This was also $1.50. It was okay, but I'd rather eat a more substantial meat pie. This was a dinky appetizer sized portion.

It was fun driving around in PB to get to OB - taking the scenic route and listening to 80's music in her truck. It's been nice for me to get out of the house and enjoy lunch out. Summertime is usually the time for me to do this with her because once school starts, no more lunch outings on the weekdays.

Asia Cafe, Eclipse & Candy Shop

A few weeks ago, my lunch partner (she made me that mix CD)and I went to Asia Cafe. She's never had Laotian food so we went to Asia Cafe in the hood. It as pretty damn hot that day from what I remember. Luckily it wasn't so busy when we got there so we got a good table and felt the breeze from the open door, which unfortunately let in flies. She picked the dish above---I dont' remember what it was called but it was a mixture of seafood (fish, fish cake, squid, shrimp, scallop and fake Krab---points off for the fake Krab)with flat rice noodles and vegetables. I know it kind of looks like a mess, but trust me, it tasted pretty good. So good that nothing was left over.

The greens were for the Nem Khao (Laotian fried rice) which is NOT pictured below. Oops. It's just a close up of the dish I forgot the name of. I liked the scored squid. Fk that "calamari" title - it's squid to me!

In addition to the unknown noodle dish, I ordered See Nam Toke, a marinated beef dish served with a citrusy fish sauce. The cut of meat is kind of tough, but it's not so tough that you're chewing twenty minutes. Just ten. Just kidding. But seriously, it's pretty good, especially with Nem Khao or sticky rice.

My friend really liked the Nem Khao (which isn't on the menu) which is an explosion of flavors and textures. I like crispy - so it's represented by the crunchy bits of fried rice clumps and peanuts. There is also sour pork sausage with long tentacles of whatever (I wonder if it's fat or something else? It's pretty stringy), hot chili peppers, green onions, and cilantro. So much flavor and so much crunch! I wonder how the cook does it - I can never get my fried rice clumps to stay that crunchy without burning it. By the way, the word "clump" doesn't sound really appetizing, but I can't think of any other words to describe it.

And because we just finished lunch, we wanted to make a trip up to Eclipse Chocolat located on

street walker territory. Yes, El Cajon Blvd. But the kind of better part of the Blvd. Last time we went to Eclipse, we bought their paninis for lunch and candy bars to go. This time, we splurged on cupcakes. This was mine - and dammit, I can't remember the offical name or description of this, but it was basically a super rich chocolate cupcake with a rosemary mint filling. The cupcake is covered in dark chocolate ganache and sprinkled with cocoa nibs.

My friend got the Lavender Sea Salt cup cake with the caramel filling.

Here's the cross section for mine. This was very rich and decadent. I didn't really taste the rosemary in the filling, which is kind of good, because I'm not much of a rosemary fan. It was an interesting combination though, mint and rosemary. The mint flavor was much more pronounced. The cocoa nibs were a nice touch - bitter and crunchy!

Here's the other cupcake - the filling was caramel - The topping was sea salt with lavender. I didn't really take the topping for hers, but the filling was pretty good! Very moist. Just like a Prince song from his Dirty Mind era. Ewwww. Sorry! Had to throw that in.

A few steps down from Eclipse was this shop:

It's pretty small inside. But there is an actual theatre in the back. I imagine they make good candy sales before and after patrons watch the shows here. We wanted to check it out because even after eating those cupcakes, we wanted yet more sugar. But really, we were curious. We saw the owner (I think that's who she was) fixing the mannequin in front of the store. We also took some funny photos with it, but those aren't posted! The owner was super nice and seemed to like the color purple. She was wearing it in several different shades! Purple is also one of my fave colors. Very Prince. I bought a few things. I've never seen this brand so I bought one London Mint. Unfortunately, it tasted terribly like chalky toothpaste. But brown.

The not so good tasting chocolate mint. I only had one bit and threw the rest away. What a waste of 35 cents.

I bought a packet of Strawberry flavored Pop Rocks for TC. I remember when this stuff first came out - 1977. I was in 3rd grade. Star Wars was in full force and so was Saturday Night Fever. Chinese jacks were also a big craze on the playground. There was a rumor (now known as an urban myth) that if you drank soda and combined it with pop rocks you would die. I think I also had a friend that tried to feed this to a seagull, or was it Tums? Yeah, that's pretty fkd up eh.

Oops, I messed up with the spacing between those photos above...The candy above was pretty good. It's actually very tiny and it tastes just like Neapolitan ice cream. Yeah, you know, the ice cream with three flavors that everyone would only eat the chocolate parts and leave the vanilla because it was the most boring flavor. At least that's how it was in our household...Interesting candy store...She had a lot of old time candy in there plus a lot of unfamiliar ones.

Playlist test

(9/5/08 edit - I moved the playlist to the bottom of this page)

This playlist is based from a CD made by my very good GBF (gay boyfriend). He made me this CD mix to cheer me up several weeks ago. I tried to recreate it on Playlists.com, but couldn't find the exact same version of "Electric Dreams" (his was by Outta Control and yes, it's the title song of that 80's movie), plus he had a special Tom Jones Mix. The other song I couldn't find was "We Close Our Eyes" by Go West. It was pretty fun listening to this because a few months ago, we were at Pure Yogurt (now renamed as NuYo) and watching old school videos, like Freeez's "AEIOU", Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" (remember the robotic boots?) and the classic Grand Master Flash's "Scorpio". We couldn't stop cracking up at the videos. So....he made this for me with a few surprises thrown in...Like Rick Astley! Not that I like that song! I don't!!! But we loved to make fun of that video! Skinny dorky white British guy with a black sounding voice! Priceless! I have to give my friend props for resurrecting Nolan Thomas's one and only hit (that I know of), "Yo Little Brother"! Bad memories of dancing in high school to "Diamond Girl" too! Ha ha.

Otay Ranch Farmer's Market

There is a new Farmer's Market at the Otay Ranch Town Center every Tuesday. It's been going on for about maybe 2 or 3 months now. I"m actually writing this post on Saturday, September 6th. Yeah, I've been behind with my posting.

This was a booth serving Ghanian food. Sorry for the poor picture quality. Although their food looked interesting, we wanted to see the other booths before making a decision.

Their offerings...

There was another African foodbooth, this time from Kenya. Oh wait, it says "Kenyan Inspired". WTF? Turns out they only had sambussas. There's another booth, which wasn't there the day we went, that used to specialize in sambussas. They are called 'Red' African and the folks hail from Ethiopa.

We bought a few sambussas - the beef, chicken and potato. This is the beef - you can see the red flecks of chili pepper in there. Good stuff that.

I was looking for this British food booth I saw a few months back. When I first saw it, I was curious because they had Scotch eggs, which are hard boiled eggs that are wrapped in sausage and deep fried. Yeah...fried. But alas, the British food booth wasn't there. They also sold meat pies and such, but it was the Scotch eggs I was looking for. The picture below (Argentinean empanadas) was just to show the variety of international foods at the market. We didn't buy this because the last time we did, we werent' impressed with the pastry dough. It tasted flat and flavorless and wasn't crisp at all.

The empanadas we didn't buy:

"It's Beef Jerky Time!" (Eddie Murphy masquerading as an African man in the classic "Trading Places" - the train scene near the end). Bert ended up buying this pack of beef jerky...Kicks ass on those crappy Slim Jims. It was more like Steak jerky and the pieces were thick, with FAT and flavor and Spice!

I got yer beef jerky right here...(that's TC's hand):

Before we left, there was a booth selling French pastries. Turns out they were from Opera, which used to be located downtown on 5th and Ash (L'Opera Pattisserie<----shit that's probably spelled wrong, but I'm too lazy to fix it). I haven't had macarons since they closed down last year. I bought a box for old times sake, ha ha. It lasted less than 12 hours. There were a dozen macarons in there, 2 of each flavor - dulce de leche, raspberry, passionfruit/coconut, chocolate, and a few others I don't remember.

Photo of macaron before going down the hatch...

Besides the food booths, the Farmer's Mrket also had vegetable and flower stalls as well as folks trying to sell home made soaps, salsa, jewelry and such. It's kind of small now but I hope that the Farmer's Market survives. Several years ago, they used to have one in the Southwestern College parking lot. That didn't last. Then they had one in the Wal-Mart Parking lot in Eastlake. That, too, also got deep sixed so hopefully, this one at the Otay Ranch mall (I know it's not a mall but wtf) will last.