Nucleus - Harry Potter Tribute Art Exhibit

Last weekend we made a special trip up to Alhambra to see the Harry Potter Tribute Art Exhibition at Gallery Nucleus...

It was also an excuse to go up to Wandering Chopsticks' 'hood and have lunch with her! By the way, the exhibit closes tomorrow so if you're a Harry Potter fan, you still have some time to see it! Hurry! Put that pedal to the metal!

Donut Star again..

After our lunch at Nijiya, we headed over to Donut Star to meet up with Darlene and Paulin their 'hood.

They had a goodie bag from the Comic Con to give us along with a few other items I asked them to purchase for me.

Pangea Bakery

After months of putting it off, we finally went here to check it out, Pangea Bakery Cafe...

This whole area near Convoy is the motherlode of all the Asian markets. Nijiya, Mitsuwa, Marukai, Zion, and a few miles away on Clairemont Mesa Blvd, 99 Ranch. Now they have an Taiwanese style bakery. One caveat about Pangea...their parking lot is narrow!!! Have fun with that!

Lunch at Nijiya

What a miracle...I'm posting on the same day! 

TC and I had a few errands to run, but first, lunch at Nijiya Market on Convoy.  We saw that Curry House was now Koon Thai Food. How quickly things change!

We selected a few snacks and ate our lunch at an outside table.  The item on the left was actually some sort of shaped fried seafood thing on a stick (stick not pictured). The other item was a crunchy seafood pancake which was really good.

I was tempted to get more fried stuff like croquettes, but this was about it, along with some "kaki" (fried oysters)...

Gunco Ramen

Sometime last week we went out for dinner. TC was craving sushi so we thought we'd go to Kanpai...

Turns out the Kanpai side was packed so we had to sit on the Gunco Ramen side...

Mission Carmel

Since we were in the area, we wanted to make a quick stop at San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission, which is more popularly known as the Mission Carmel. Founded in 1770, the Mission Carmel served as headquarters of the Missions in upper California.

We were able to get in free since my Ninong smoothtalked the lady working in the giftshop. He used some line about being parishioners there (which they really are) and how they were entertaining out of town guests blah blah blah...

Day 5 - From Scratch

I am just posting these in Geologic time, aren't it?  I hope it doesn't take me a year like my Canada posts!

After last night's "hairy" experience, we hoped for something better for breakfast. My godparents took us to another one of their favorite places (favorite meaning a place where there were a lot of "senior citizens") in Carmel, From Scratch, which is located in a shopping complex curiously named The Barnyard.

There goes my white Ninong wearing his golf cap and his Pebble Beach Hawaiian shirt...

It's that "casual old man" style. My dad dresses similarly. Some sort of printed Aloha shirt (like Tommy Bahama) and shorts. At least he's not wearing black socks with sandals and Jorts (jean shorts) pulled up past his nipples.

Le Normandie

Dinner was at one of their favorite spots in Pacific Grove. It was housed in this big building complex that sold antiques.
On the bottom floor of the Holman building was Le Normandie, a French restaurant owned by a French couple.

Pebble Beach bound...

So this was our second time to visit my Ninang and Ninong in Pebble Beach. Our first visit was two years ago and I'll never forget that day because that was the day Michael Jackson died.

The U.S. Open was held at Pebble Beach last year. This is a real BFD for those into golfing.

Brodard Chateau

Going back to earlier this month...

Before returning to San Diego, we had lunch with Bert's bro/SIL at  Brodard Chateau, a Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove. It is the more "upscale" sister restaurant of Brodard's, also in Little Saigon.

I'd been wanting to go here since reading about it on Wandering Chopsticks' blog (post linked at the end). Plus, my SIL is a new convert to Vietnamese food and was also curious to try this place...

Choke on this!

After having lunch at the Garlic Capital of the World, we headed south to the Artichoke Capital of the World, Castroville...

I swear artichokes are like weeds here. You can buy them dirt cheap, like 10 for $1.00. I love how you can just buy all kinds of fresh produce off the side of the road here in the Central Coast...

Gilroy Bowl

I forgot to mention in my previous post that the Garlic Shoppe guy had asked if we liked Loco Mocos. Bert said he did, but I'm not really into them. The reason he asked was because there was a little place in downtown Gilroy owned by Japanese Americans from Hawaii. I forget if they were 3rd or 4th generation. In any case, our interest was piqued...

He said the name of the restaurant was Scotty's and it was located within Gilroy Bowl, a bowling alley.

The Garlic Shoppe

We didn't come here to shop for bargains. Dude, it was time for a bathroom break. We couldn't find one in the outlets so we went to Home Depot (nice and airconditioned) for their facilities. TC also bought a few rolls of colored duct tape (purple and blue) for future crafts. My cousin's daughter is into crafting and her latest obsession was making things out of duct tape, like wallets and bracelets and such. TC wanted to try this craft for herself.

Funny how this is named San Ysidro since there are outlets in the San Ysidro down here. But I digress. We were in Gilroy, the Garlic Capitol of the World. We figured we'd check out at least one shop that specialized in garlic products.

Day 4 - Bite This!

Yay, our Fast Trak from San Diego also works up here! Heading west on the Oakland Bay Bridge...
We had to see this particular roadside attraction...

Dinner, Eton Mess and Breakfast...

The kids and husbands had a great time at the community pool. While they were out splashing and swimming around, my SIL and I took care of dinner and dessert forthe night. The lumpia, believe it or not, was from the grocery store frozen section. These were beef lumpia. She bought two boxes which had about a dozen each...

I played sous chef to my SIL, helping prep the vegetables...

Mongkut Thai

This is whwer we ended up having lunch...Mongkut Thai.

Our lunch was rather late, nearing 2 pm. All of our window shopping and browsing through the thrift stores made us pretty hungry.

San Clemente

The same weekend of our anniversary was also July 4th weekend. After our excitement over the breads at 85C Bakery in Irvine and Cream Pan in Tustin, Bert and I headed back to his bro's house in Aliso Viejo. Bert and his brother were planning to take the kids out for some bowling (which turned out to be swimming instead). My SIL had plans to take me to San Clemente just a few miles south of their place. This is one of those cities that we drive past everytime we go up north to their place or to L.A. but we've never taken the time to actually check out the city...

She wanted to show me some of their antique shops on one of the main drags. Apparently there were A SHIT TON of antique/thrift/consignment stores concentrated in San Clemente.

Burma Superstar

We were going to dinner with one of my former students (MFS c/o 2000) and her BF. She is a musician and is in a band (plays bass, keyboards, guitar and sings). I can't believe she's nearing her 30's!

I'd been wanting to try Burma Superstar since reading about it on Wandering Chopstick's blog...

BBQ Crawl - Stop 4: Huffman's

[Update - Closed as of early 2012. Bummer...]

Believe it or not, we went to one last place. So we were supposed to go here after Barnes but we knew that this place did NOT have a public bathroom so we opted to go to The Barbecue Pit first. Located right off the 805 and Imperial Ave exit just past Lincoln High in a tiny strip mall which is named after the late Mr. Huffman himself, The Brooks Huffman Plaza. Although he passed away eleven years ago, his widow still runs the restaurant that bears his name, which is next to Valencia Market, a small liquor store.

BBQ Crawl - Stop 3: The Barbecue Pit in National City

Our third destination was actually reversed. Originally it was to be Huffman's on Imperial Avenue but we knew that Huffman's did not have public bathrooms (which several of us were in dire need). Plus the Barbecue Pit was a larger venue that definitely had public bathrooms. We headed south on 805 and went to Filipino-Land (otherwise known as National City) by heading west on Plaza Blvd. The Barbecue Pit will be on your left before you hit Price breakers and Highland Ave.  Although there was a lot of parking, it was already pretty crowded, unless you wanted to park closer to Price Breakers.

BBQ Crawl - Stop 2: Barnes BBQ

The second stop of the Crawl took us a few miles away near the corner of Broadway and Lemon Grove...

Yes, that is indeed a Giant Lemon! A few months ago, Bert and I were in the area. Check out my original post on this famous landmark and other tidbits on Lemon Grove here...

BBQ Crawl - Stop 1: Coop's West Texas BBQ

Hey now...(say in a Howard Stern voice)!

Several SD Foodbloggers met up today for a BBQ Crawl, organized by the awesome C of CAB Cooks. Joining the group were myself, Dennis from Radiused Corner, Mary (and BF Jake) from Foodies: A SoCal Food Blog, Marie (and husband Dan) from Meandering Eats, Leanne (and husband Travis) from Three Dog Kitchen, and Kirbie (and her FH "future husband") from Kirbie's Cravings. A few other folks weren'table to make it, but hopefully for the next themed crawl they will...

First stop was a fairly new bbq place, Coop's West Texas BBQ in Lemon Grove, which opened up last year in the old Barnes BBQ location (the new location of Barnes was Stop 2 of the Crawl). I've seen the coupons in the SD Reader and it was recently reviewed (link at the end of this post). One of the criteria of the crawl was that the place had to have a smoker which Coop's had (using red or white oak chips).

HPDH Part 2

Finally saw the last Harry Potter film last night with TC and Bert! Too bad about work, otherwise we would have done the midnight showing but settled for late Fri night instead!

Return to the Fish House and more!

Mondays must be trash day in Berkeley...

We couldn't pass up the opportunity to look at THIS house again...

Tara's Organic Ice Cream - Berkeley

WTF, another ice cream place???

Mais oui. When on vacay, it's okay to, uh, indulge! Unlike Scream, this place served real ice cream and not exclusively dairy free sorbet (although the did have sorbet). Poor Bert's GI tract. There are two locations of Tara's Organic Ice Cream - this is the one in Berkeley (the other is in Oakland next to Burma Superstar, which will be a few posts away).

Again, one of those bouji/"organic" (seen obviously in the name) places which scream "I'm so environmentally conscious" and "I am holier than thou because I only eat organic and no artificial blah blah and would never set foot in Baskin Robbins' where the peons eat normal ice cream" and  "let's see what wierd flavors we can come up with that people are willing to pay $3 a scoop" for!!!

Scream Sorbet

And we're back...

Just a few minutes from Piedmont was our next destination - Scream Sorbet in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland.

Yeah, this was one of those "artisanal/boujie" places...

Around Oakland again...

After our awesome lunch at Uncle Dougie's Italian Heroes downtown, we went back to the Piedmont area. This was the same neighborhood that had Fenton's and other cute shops. We wanted to get dessert but weren't sure what was around there...

We wanted ice cream...

No Worries, I mean Do the Dougie!

One of my former students (c/o 2000) with whom I still correspond, emailed me a few restaurant recommendations for our road trip.  Some of them included Zachary's Pizza (Chicago deep dish style; I'm not too crazy about deep dish though), Brown Sugar Kitchen (a modern soul food'ish place), and No Worries (recommended because she went to university with one of the main chefs). The last plce, No Worries caught my attention because it was a "Filipino Vegan" restaurant.

Wut?

As one yelp reviewer noted, Filipino and Vegan together is like saying "healthy cigarette".  We just had to check this place out. Being quite anal organized, I already researched their menu and was intrigued. Bert wasn't so sure about this place. The menu items had the usual suspects - kare kare, afritada, menudo, pancit, adobo and so on but instead of meat, it was tofu (or some other soy based protein).  It sounded okay on paper but we wanted to at least try one dish before jumping in completely.

Unfkgfortunately, their website was NOT updated. They were closed on Mondays although the website indicated their M-F hours. Okayyyyy....

Day 3 - Lake Merritt

Well, it's been one month since our vacation and I'm still slogging through the posts...To recap, this was our third day in the Bay Area. We were originally going to go back to the Marin side and perhaps go to Mount Tam (Tamalpais) and/or the Muir Woods but I didn't really want to go back. We wanted to stay local so we remembered TC's request to go back to the Lake...

Lake Merritt is a large manmade lake in the middle of downtown Oakland. It was the U.S.'s first wildlife refuge in 1870. The pedestrian/biking path is 3.1 miles around. We got there around 9:30 am when it was still cool and overcast. There were lots of people walking their dogs, strolling their babies, jogging, etc. This is the Southeastern view of the Lake.

More iPod Roulette!

Let's see what this round brings us:

International Lover - Prince
Another not so subtle song by the master of sexual innuendo himself. This is Prince as your flight captain speaking...
The Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
I used to use this song as "filler" for my mix tapes because it was so short! My daughter recognizes this song because it was used in "School of Rock"
Bombs Away - The Police
One of my favorite songs from my fave Police album, "Zenyatta Mondatta"...

Cream Pan

So after the bread fest that was 85C Bakery, we went to another place for more of the same...
More of...you got it....bread!

85C Bakery and Cafe

Although we were originally going to do room service for breakfast, our less than stellar dinner the night before crushed that possibility. No, we wanted to GTFO and go somewhere else! Since we were in the area, it was about time we visit this bakery that I'd been hearing about and reading about, 85C Bakery Cafe in Irvine.  It was already getting hot and it wasn't even 9:30 am yet. The line was also long (you can't see it here) but moved quickly. We spent about 20 minutes from standing in line to getting our breads and leaving.

Jayakarta

After such a long day, we relaxed for a bit before heading out to dinner. I'd always seen this restaurant everytime we'd go to Berkeley. Jayakarta is right next to Eastwind Books on University Avenue (the store specializes in Asian and Asian American studies)...

Indonesian food was also a cuisine that we hardly ever see in San Diego. 

Random cars...

Wow, a Prince video that isn't blocked!
One of his best songs from "1999". But, I don't think he's uh, singing about cars!

As seen in Little Saigon...

We interrupt the Road Trip posts with these photos snapped in Garden Grove (part of Little Saigon). These were taken yesterday on our way to lunch at Brodard Chateau (post will be forthcoming).

Here's an interestingly named business on the corner of Beach Blvd and Bolsa Ave.

How do they answer the phone? I wonder if they get crank callers?

IScream and Solano Avenue

Now last time we were in Berkeley (Fall 2010), we took a wrong turn trying to go up Marin, which is this steep ass street that leads into Tilden Park. Our wrong turn led us to Solano drive which had a lot of cute shops and restaurants. Like our last trip, we went to several ice cream places. We'd already gone to PollyAnn's. This was our 2nd ice cream stop this trip - this time to iScream!

Mission San Rafael

Before heading back to Berkeley, we thought we'd fit in a quick visit to the Mission San Rafael. A few years ago, when TC was in 4th grade, we visited several missions during our road trips (Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo)...Learning about the missions is part of the th grade curriculum. Early last year, we visited the Mission de Alcala (but I still haven't posted it yet) in Mission Valley.

Pretty freeway underpass!

The Bay Model Visitor Center

We got lost trying to find this place but obviously, we found it after spying some signs along one of the main roads. During our meandering through the hills and narrow streets of Sausalito, we saw some fantastic views of this cute town (but not seen here, sorry!)...

The Bay Model was also listed in that same book I referred to in my previous post. We were curious about this place because it was a huge hydraulic model of the Bay and was built by research scientists in the 1950's to learn about how water affects the region...

The Marine Mammal Center

Well, here we are! TC was so excited. She is really into animals whether they are land or marine mammals. We figured we'd use this trip to foster her interests and hopefully she would enjoy this little excursion...

Day 2 - On our way to the MMC

Our second day in the Bay Area took us out of Berkeley and into the area known as the Marin Headlands. But first, we picked up some snacks at another location of Andronico's (this is the one on University Ave). This store was not as big as the one on Shattuck. I was disappointed because their deli section was much smaller and they didn't have what I was looking for but no worries since we found other items for lunch...

We loaded up on bread, fruit, deli meat and cheese before heading off...

Marche Moderne

As seen in my previous post, Bert and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary.

We were married at 10 in the morning and had a lunch reception at a bayside venue in Mission Beach with the reception ending at 5 pm. In our haste and excitement, we didn't think of packing other kinds of clothes. Now don't get the wrong idea! I seriously did not want to go out to dinner wearing my wedding dress nor did Bert want to wear his tuxedo. Plus our clothes for the next day were just jeans and fugly t-shirt and I did not pack regular shoes. I only had my white high heels, so we decided to order in.

Our nuptial feast for that night (and breakfast the next day)?

Pizza Hut Supreme Pizza...

(image courtesy of Food in Real Life)

16 Years...

Happy Anniversary to my dear husband! Although we've been married 16 years, we've been together more than half our lives - sounds like a mighty long time!)...