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.