Two Brothers Cafe & Grill

During our Portland trip earlier this spring, we ended up spending a lot of time in KDB's hood, the SE. He used to live in the Woodstock area (but is now in NoPo). This happened to be in the Belmont neighborhood...

We'd passed by this restaurant many times and I was automatically attracted to the word "Balkan"...

Djerdan Burek, Do Hwa

I'm posting this and the other posts below on Saturday 9/20. The food for this post was last Monday 9/15, the day before I returned to San Diego. For lunch, I wanted to try this place that served Balkan cuisine. I had to look up Balkan. It refers to Southeastern Europe but is considered a bit of an outdated term. Anyways, it's across the street from the Brazilian bakery, the Chocolate Spoon. I wanted to try the Burek which I've had before at the International Food Festival from Balboa Park (courtesy of the House of Turkey, but they called it 'borek').

This was a pretty big slice of burek. I chose the meat version, which is ground beef with spices.

Really loved the flakiness of the pastry. I should have bought another one! It was that good! Actually, two pieces would be too much for me. This was quite a large piece.

Here are some other items on their menu. Unfortunately I don't know the exact country of origin of these dishes but it all sounds delicious to me!

I spent most of the day inside because it was so damn hot! I ended up watching "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (yes, it's not out on DVD yet, but my friend's husband had it on his DVR). Oh my God - British comedian Russell Brand is HILARIOUS! He is so vulgar and funny! Even though the movie kind of dragged, it was funny to see all of the Judd Apatow regulars, including the star, Jason Segel, make appearances in this movie (Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Bill Hader, Carla Gallo). Russell Brand is the reason to see this movie folks, as Aldous Snow, lead singer of the band Infant Sorrow!!! He steals every scene that he's in.

I also ended up watching "Penelope" on the DVR. Why? Two words - James. McAvoy.

The movie itself was kind of lame. It was like a fairy tale, but I couldn't really get into it. Oh yeah, and Russell Brand is also in this movie, as the jazz club owner. And if I didn't already watch a lot of TV, I watched the second half of the cinematic masterpiece and Oscar worthy contender that is known as "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay". Yes, folks I watched that flick! Put it this way, Neil Patrick Harris rules!

And lastly, back to food. For dinner, they had reservations at this Korean place near my friend's work. Her building by the way, houses this hair salon (below). Who is that? It's Nick Arrojo's salon, the guy who does the hair makeovers on TLC's "What Not to Wear". I peeked through the windows, he wasn't there. It probably costs about $300 for a cut there! Yikes!

Dinner was at Do Hwa, a Korean restaurant which seemed fairly new.

This is what we had:

I didn't use my flash here - kind of dark.

Watercress salad with sesame soy dressing. I didn't take a photo of the Chap Chae noodles.

This was really good - the seasfood scallion pepper pancake. It was crispy and light!

The soup - not so much. It was a salty miso based soup with mushrooms, tofu and zucchini.

The greens for our meat - Shiso (or Perilla) leaves and red leaf lettuce:

Their version of Bibimbop. No raw egg. The waitress mixed up the greens and sashimi pieces with some sort of chili sauce.

The braised yellow snapper, which I liked, but I only had a little bit because I really wanted to eat the meat. My friend doesn't eat beef or pork so the fish was mostly for her.

The panchan (cut off) was standard. I prefer the variety at Buga a lot better.

The meat was pork (left) and rib eye. There were no leftovers that night!

Dessert was an artfully sliced orange. By that time, I was too full to even eat the orange. In all, a great meal. It was fun to be out of San Diego for just a few days, although it was a bit lonely at times because I'm so used to having Bert and TC around. I got to hang out with my friends, check out some cool neighborhoods and eat some really fantastic food.