Stop one of my pre-birthday food crawl was at...
the newest Better Buzz in Hillcrest (visited previously with D, 1/4 of the Educator GF's)...Only KD hadn't been here yet and we were there bright and early (8:40'ish). We had to do metered parking but at least there wasn't a line out the door when we arrived.
D had on some cute Hello Kitty sneakers! I had on my olive green suede pumas which have a purple stripe!
Yes, yes, and yes.
Two of the drinks are repeats. I wanted the other gals to try the rose latte and the orange infused matcha. The other drink was TORC's mint latte. D and KD got house coffees (same mug and not as exciting to look at).
Everyone preferred the orange infused matcha over the rose latte (but points for it being a pretty looking drink, which also tasted good).
Here's the spread. Five items. Four women. Two are repeats.
One of the repeats was the Adulting cheese sandwich. Hands down, everyone's favorite.
Something new was the avocado toast with cucumber, watermelon radish, three seed mixture and microgreens. Looked pretty but I wasn't a fan. Avocado toast isn't really my thing to be honest but I figured, it added visual interest and I know that my friends like it more than me.
The other repeat (filling only) was the Better breakfast sandwich which has egg, cheese, bacon and arugula. The only change was the bread. Instead of that horrible overly hard and chewy and difficult to cut pretzel bun, we asked for it to be on a croissant, which they couldn't do. So, we settled for the sourdough bread which was actually better. My second favorite.
The Caprese was like an afterthought. We liked this the least. Bert was the lucky recipient of the remnants (a full half).
New on their menu was the lemon ricotta toast with strawberries, honey and pistachios. I thought I would really like this, but it was so bland. It looks pretty with the green pistachios and the red strawberry slices but...bland.
Lighting was great where we sat by the way, a bar height table. All of the other tables near the windows were occupied and we didn't want to sit upstairs (plus, occupied as well, poo).
Since we were in the area, we made a pit stop at Patisserie Melanie. KD works with someone who knows the chef, a former teacher. D knows someone who also worked with the chef. Small world in education. The chef wasn't there that day but her husband (still a school teacher) was so D and KD were chatting with him about school.
So cute!
The only new thing here were the chocolate pistachio cookies. The other gals had the other pastries to take home and enjoy for later. I told KD and TORC to let us know what they thought of their pastries later. I didn't want to tell them I kind of thought they weren't that great (not entirely sucky but not awesome either). See, I was nice. I wasn't negative right away.
The sable cookies were pretty damn good. There were only four in the bag, but they were a generous size, bigger than a card and also quite thick. They were so buttery but crisp and looked so striking with the contrast of the pistachios against the chocolate buttery cookie.
The interlude of this day was shopping in Fashion Valley. I utilized two of my birthday freebies at Sephora (free makeup gift), Ann Taylor ($15 off purchase). New army green jeans, yay! We also saw the new Le Parfait Paris kiosk near the food court. We didn't get anything because we wanted to save room for dessert on Convoy.
In this tiny parking lot...
is the newly renamed Sul & Beans and Somi Somi. Both are two different establishments which share the same space. If the store front looks familiar, that is because it used to be Caffe Bene. Sul & Beans serves bingsoo like Caffe Bene.
Drinks from Sul & Beans - Pomegranate, blueberry mint and ginger.
All of the drinks had some tiny jelly like cubes, which I didn't expect. My drink was the blueberry mint and it was really refreshing. KD ordered the ginger drink and found it too strong (it burned and hurt my throat actually) so D finished it for her, ha ha.
We were still full from our brunch earlier so we only shared two desserts. I know. But realistically, there was no way we could do four separate desserts after this morning.
Behold, the strawberry bingsoo bowl. I really liked this. The ice was so soft and fluffy. KD was not a fan because she did not like how plain the ice was. I guess the Korean style shaved ice is plainer (not like the shaved Taiwanese snow ice she likes better); the flavors really come from the toppings, in this case, sliced strawberries and condensed milk. The cube things on top were rice cakes which were chewy according to KD. I didn't try them (or the fruit, I'm wierd like that)...I just wanted the ice.
As for the Somi Somi side, we chose to have ube and milk swirl soft serve. No upright cone for us. We chose to have the fish cone plopped into the cup. There were toppings galore but I just chose crushed oreo cookies because of the contrast. As cute and colorful as sprinkles and Fruity Pebbles are, none of us cared for those.
The damage:
Of the two, I liked the strawberry bingsoo better. I didn't try the fish cone. My friends ate it all before I could try a taste (whaaat!). Everyone really liked the ube and milk soft serve swirl. It wasn't as heavy tasted as I had feared it to be. Next time, we'll have to try the matcha and black sesame swirl soft serve.
My birthday crawl was a little more lowkey than in past years. Only five places (four if you combine Sul & Beans with Somi Somi) One of our pals had to leave early for another engagement, plus Bert and I had an art show to attend later that afternoon. Because of that, I kept it short but we still enjoyed everything we did that day.
Who also went to Sul & Beans?
Kirbie visited recently March 2018. She also went to Somi Somi November 2017. Check out her fun dessert picks!
Previous visit to Better Buzz, Hillcrest (with D):
March 2018
Previous visit to Patisserie Melanie (also with D):
March 2018
Sul & Beans + Somi Somi (took over the old Caffe Bene space)
4620 Convoy St., Suite J
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 278-2204 /(858) 939-0388
www.sulandbeans.com / www.somisomi.com
So it has begun...my birthday month. It will be a challenge trying to utilize the many freebies that will be coming down the pipe. But what is more important is the valuable time spent with my friends and family during those future outings (they're already planned yo').
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