Birthday dinner @ Chamorro Grill w/Astroboi

Astroboi hadn't been here before...

and it was ages since I'd last been here as well...

located in the strip mall across from Kaiser Hospital (Zion) in Grantville, I noticed that Mr. Chick was now gone. The Taqueria next door was now an H&R Block.

Another change I noticed was the extremely plain and downright sterile interior. This is the left side of the wall as you walk into Chamorro Grill.

Compare it to four years ago when it was light green and had knick knack shelves, maps and posters of Guam as well as assorted sports memorabilia. They even had the infamous barrel man! What happened? It seemed much more inviting and "down home"-like with all of the islander decor. Now, it was devoid of any type of personality except for the big mirror with the restaurant logo  on it.

(photo from my "Chamorro Grill" post, Marcn 21, 2011)

These walls still has vestiges of the old paint color and some islander decor. The bench, however, had a sign on it that read, "Do Not Sit"; the rattan was pretty worn down actually.

The guy here was super nice and honored my buy one get one free coupon. Although it stipulated that the amount was up for $9.99, the guy said, "No, it's buy one get one free" and said the combos were the best deal ($11.95). You choose two meats and one side.

Astroboi chose chicken teriyaki with kelaguen and macaroni salad. I went with the pork ribs and the beef ribs (short ribs) with green salad. Yeah, double ribs man. The other meat choice that I could have chosen but didn't were the "beef slices" (chopped up beef, the guy told me).  Both of our entrees came with red rice. There were two types of finadene, the regular and the spicy (in the red bottle, cut off in the photo below). The spicy one wasn't as spicy as I'd feared it to be but I used more of the regular one on my rice.

As you can see, the portions were huge and the birthday deal I got was pretty $%#@ good! There were two meaty pork ribs and two slabs of shortribs beneath it.

I hadn't had ribs like this in ages. I could only manage one pork rib and 1/3 of the shortrib. It was so good but just too much to finish in one sitting. Everything else was saved for Bert.

Astroboi's chicken 'n chicken entree which he enjoyed...

The guys working here were really cool and checked on us a few times. The young cook came out after he saw me taking photos and asked if they were worthy of facebook or Instagram (neither of which I use or have), which I thought was funny.

Previous visit to Chamorro Grill:
May 2011

I'm glad I was able to revisit Chamorro Grill with my dearest childhood friend. We were able to get up to speed with our lives and just basically "be ourselves" and be free. I liked that our dinner was casual and with food that we both enjoyed. Dessert, of course, would be elsewhere. Since he hadn't yet been to 85C, that would be our next destination (I still had Plan B and C just in case)...