(photo from my "Return to the Purple Mint" post, July 2015)
which was only a few doors down from Donut Panic...
None of the ladies have had vegetarian Vietnamese before so I thought it would be a fun stop...
My passion fruit mango iced tea (complete with basil seeds) and TORC's chrysanthemum tea. We didn't expect the tea to have the actual flowers in it but it did!
The red floating things turned out to be medlar berries; our server showed us what it was on his smartphone. He said they like to put it in there because it has medicinal properties. The berry is also similar to the "goji" berry, which I remember seeing in a prepared salad from Trader Joe's.
Our first appetizer - the Summer rolls (with tofu and egg; our server asked us if we wanted egg in addition to the tofu) with peanut sauce:
This was the perfect precursor to our epic lunch (in which we did have tons of leftovers):
Lemongrass "chicken" with vermicelli noodles (you get a choice of either brown or white rice or vermicelli noodles; I selected the noodles):
"Fish" with shallots and tomatoes:
Unfortunately this restaurant has a track records of not including some ingredients that are clearly described on their menus. The shallots were lacking in this dish. We could see and taste the onions but the shallots were MIA. Fail on that.
Papaya salad with "beef jerky":
And a dish I hadn't tried before, Black Rice pasta with coconut milk and tofu:
I personally didn't like the last dish. It needed some more FLAVOR, like MEAT. It was a bit on the bland side and despite it's striking looks, didn't offer anything exciting for my taste buds. Overall, the Educator GF's enjoyed their dishes selected here. The most popular item was the Lemongrass chicken. I think it was because the fake meat actually looked like chicken. TORC especially liked the black rice pasta. I thought it was a clever take on what looked like 'squid ink' pasta, but this being a vegetarian place, used Forbidden Rice instead which has a lovely purplish blackish hue. The fish dish could have used shallots but we all liked the tomato/onion sauce. It was almost like Filipino sarsiado.
Previous visit to Purple Mint:
July 2015
This was quite THE lunch! There were quite a bit of leftovers which were promptly kept in my cooler. We thought we would walk off our calories and windowshop over in the Kearny Mesa area...
Did you know that Marukai Daiso is now named Tokyo Central & Main? The new name has been in effect for about three weeks now according to an employee I spoke with. It seems to be more food centric. The majority of their $1.50 items are now over in the Marukai Living store. This store is all about snacks, snacks and more snacks, along with other items that cover beauty, stationery, and assorted household/bento making supplies.
Ummm. I know these are supposed to be used for counting money but they kind of look like something else...
Nice finger demonstration!
TORC and KD found this amusing. It's a gel pack for your boobs. Yes. They make crap like this. And people buy it too (not us).
Look at those instructions.
OMG, cute overload here. This was the aisle for the overachieving moms who want to make the BEST BENTO LUNCHES EVER. All the shit hyou want is here from rice shapes. sauce containers, decorations and egg molders and even hole punches for sea weed (smiley faces, hearts, etc).
These brightly colored candies looked attractive.
I didn't take too many photos in there. It was total visual overload in there. When I was last here, I noticed they had much more food items and got rid of many of the $1.50 items. Those were moved over to the other store, Marukai Living. They have so many types of candies, snacks, drinks and even ice cream.
And of course, since "we were in the area", dessert was at a new Korean dessert cafe...
2 comments:
We still have to stop in at Purple Mint. The Mister is venturing more into vegetarianism, and the variety here may be good...although mock meat is sad in that it reminds you how different it is. I hadn't realized you went inside Tokyo Central...another place where we haven't stopped...and now must!
Ah yes, give it at least one try. I still feel that their sauces are a bit on the too salty side and the lack of fish sauce is sorely missed. Some of the dishes lack 'umami' because of that omission. One could still order the food here without the mock meats and just do tofu as well.
I was surprised to see the new signage on the old Marukai Daiso. I just heard from a friend at the gym that there is a new Daiso on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. She said it's in the same lot as, uh, Cheetah's. Imagine the clienteles in the parking lot. Must be interesting. Maybe that is why they got rid of the Daiso connection so that new store is exclusive? Who knows.
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