Beef Goulash

The trifecta of recreating the Hungarian dishes from Hanna's is now complete. I've attempted the mushroom soup, then the Chicken Paprikash...

A few days ago, it was all about the Goulash baby...

Chicken Paprikash

Since I've been on a Hungarian food kick, here's a classic cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny playing Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (a very difficult song to play!)...

In the full cartoon episode, there was a cougher in the audience and Bug Bunny pulls out a gun and shoots him!!! Wait, I found the clip:

In today's sanitized PC-world, you aren't going to see THAT in the kiddie cartoons anymore!

This was my second dish that I tried to recreate from our lunch at Hanna's a few days ago...

Return to Hanna's Gourmet

My Ninang (godmother) was in town this past week and we had the pleasure of having lunch with her yesteray. Off we went to pick her up at my godbrother's house in La Mesa...

(heading North on the 125 towards the 54)

This unusual sight greeted us when we got off Lemon Grove Way onto High Street.

Hmmmm, I could say something nastay but I won't...

Anyhow, I wanted to take her out someplace very nice and with good food. Hanna's Gourmet fit the bill perfectly. I loved it when we took KD there for her birthday lunch a few weeks ago.

Another big reason we wanted to go here was because of the featured cuisine of the week...

Lunch at Country Style Hungarian

Before I get into this next post...just want to say that I'm glad we took this trip. We were supposed to go two years ago but the clusterfuck that happened to me kind of prevented that. Loyal readers, you know what that was. Luckily we were able to postpone the trip. We were finally able to meet a blog friend that I "met" back in late 2006. C from Life in Manitoulin had commented on one of Lotus' posts, "How did you husband propose to you" was the subject. As I perused the comments, I clicked on C's response, thought her story was charming and clicked on her wedding blog. I ended up emailing her and we became cyber friends. It's hard to explain for those who don't blog but since most people who read my blog actually blog themselves (or at least read blogs), it's not so strange.

Back to our trip...

So after all that driving around in shiteous traffic and intermittent showers, we came upon our destination on Bloor St. W.

Country Style Hungarian specializes in Hungarian comfort foods. After the recent Ethnic Food Fair at Balboa Park, our appetite for Hungarian food was not only whetted (is that even a word) and grew into an intensely full blown craving. For me, a SoCal 2nd gen Filipina chick, Hungarian food is pretty far removed from my normal mainstays of Filipino, Mexican and American food. Bert and I vowed not to eat anything Asian during this trip and wanted to try other cuisines we normally don't see in San Diego.

 A few words to future visitors - it's CASH ONLY.   We got to use our cool Canadian monopoly money. And oh hohh, check out their giant wooden spoon hanging on the wall!!! I felt at home already!

The spoon looked so lonely separated from its counterpart, the giant wooden fork hanging a few yards away on another column. If this was a Filipino restaurant, those two utensils would be side by side trying to make out. I was still happy to see a touch of kitschy Filipino decor in this place. The tables are covered with red gingham checked cloths. It was pretty empty when we got there that afternoon.

We were excited to see what this place offered...(click to make larger)

We started off with the Goulash Soup (Gulyas) - this was a richly flavored broth with chunks of tender beef and vegetables (potatoes, celery, carrots). At our server's suggestion, we got the large size to share between the three of us. Good call. It was a cold rainy day so soup sounded really good! I could have eaten this with just bread and called it a day!

We also ordered Chicken Paprikash with small dumplings (Csirkepaprikás with Nokedli). The sauce/gravy was creamy and I wanted to smother the whole plate with it. It wasn't too spicy though; in fact it was mild but we enjoyed it that way. The dumplings, on the other hand, were not my cup of tea. It was too "doughey" and kind had a heavy feeling so I didn't eat too much of that. The thought of the dumplings sitting in a nice lump in my innards wasn't too exciting.

The entree came with a side of my choice, so I got the beet salad. I didn't grow up eating beets and only come across them at Soup Plantation.  This looked like it was straight out of a can, but then again, what do I know? Maybe it was fresh? The beets had a slight pickled flavor.

We also ordered Hungarian sausage with pierogies and fried onions. The sides were sour cream and sauerkraut.  The sausage with slice and curled up. The pierogies were also kind of heavy - very doughey again. They were filled with cheese. They taste good hot. Later on that evening, the cold pierogies were not very appetizing. As you can see, this was a lot of food!

The meal was pretty filling and a bit more heavy than we were used to. Unfortunately, they did not serve Langos here (deep fried bread topped with sour cream) and that was what I regretted not tasting at the Ethnic Food Fair last month.

When I emailed C last month, I bombarded her with questions about what quintessential Canadian foods items and/or food chains we should eat/visit and try.  Lucky for us, in that same neighborhood were two Canadian mainstays for coffee and donuts...