Return to Himalayan House - lunch specials with the co-workers

Earlier this summer the co-workers and I were in the area...

the school year had just started for us counselors...

Himalayan House, Chula Vista

On the southeast corner of Broadway and E is a new restaurant,

which is next to a check cashing/notary establishment. I was excited that South San Diego  now has an Indian/Himalayan/Nepalese eatery.

Curry 'n Kabab

Vacation is almost over for me.  Tomorrow I return to work, ugh...

but I at least had a few good lunches spent with friends...

Indian Food Crawl - Surati Farsan Mart, Akshar Cash & Carry, Bawarchi Dosa, Miramar Cash & Carry + even more flavors @ Kwality Ice Cream

It's been awhile since we tried Indian food...

This time TC and I were joined by a friend, his wife and daughter along with two other friends (a couple) for their first Indian food crawl...

Miramar Cash & Carry + Kwality Ice Cream

My last stop for the day was on the way out, so why not check this place out..

a place that came highly recommended by Cathy...

Surati Farsan Mart, the Little India Mall & return to Namaste Plaza

Before Christmas time, TC and I went out with MN and her daughters to the Little India Mall in Mira Mesa....

They wanted to try some Indian food and also check out some of the stores there. There was also another ulterior motive for their cultural plunge...

Wholesome Choice

After our breakfast bites at Bon Epi, I thought we could check out a nearby donut place located in this stripmall on Culver Drive...

In retrospect, I didn't even notice that it had "Wholesome Choice" an international grocery store I'd been meaning to check out....

We actually had to go to Rite Aid first for some dramamine so that TC wouldn't get car sick...

Canada Day 5 - Ottawa, Part 1

We'd arrived in Ottawa in the wee early hours of the morning and were fortunate enough to stay at the lovely home of C's best friend from high school. The next morning we were up and raring to go...

Here we were in Ottawa, the capitol city of Canada, the second largest city in Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the world...

Armed with several tips on where to go, we headed out in search of food and adventure...

Indian Snacks

All right, enough about purple hair. On with the food! After our two part lunch at Surati Farsan and Bawarchi Dosa, we stopped by this vendor table near D's car...

They were selling snacks and sweets for the Diwali event in the Little India shopping plaza. As we were quite curious about the snacks, we opted to get a few "for the road"...

Bday lunch for TORC - Part 2: Bawarchi Dosa

Does anyone remember when this space was Gateway to India and Ker Market?

Well, that was a longass time ago (2006'ish)...Bawarchi Dosa is now in this space...

Bday lunch for TORC: Part 1 @ Surati Farsan Mart

Yesterday the Educator GF's and I were out and about in Mira Mesa to celebrate TORC's birthday.

As we approached the parking lot of the Little India Center,  we saw that it was blocked off and that many empty vendor tables lined the perimeter of the lots, along with chairs and tables for dining.

Turns out that all of this was for Diwali, the Festival of Lights, which is the Indian New Year, according to a gentleman that we spoke to. Well, it was still early and things weren't quite ready yet. We managed to find a spot on the outer edges of the center. Lucky us!

TORC's first choice for lunch today was in this shopping center...

San Diego Public Market

With our interest piqued by Darlene's recent post on the newly opened San Diego Public Market,

we decided to pay a quick "look see" visit this past Sunday...

Dessert @ Surati Farsan Mart

Continuing on with the bday lunch adventures of the Educator GF's.

Luckily, they are all willing and open minded enough to trust me with today's choices. First, E & Drink, and then here at Surati Farsan Mart, a very non-Western dessert place...

Surati Farsan Market

Located in the Little India Center strip mall in Mira Mesa...

is a fantastic Indian place serving snacks and sweets...

Dinner and a movie (OMFG, "TS: BD Part 1) with Astroboi

Earlier this evening Astroboi and I made it 4 for 4:

I guess you could say it's our little "tradition" to have a standing date to watch the Twilight Saga flicks (1st movie in '08, 2nd in '09, 3rd in '10)...

Masala

After walking past a lot of different restaurants, we decided on Indian. Monsoon or Masala? They're practically the same. Masala it was. Plus, I could have sworn I had a coupon. Couldn't find it in my bag. IN any case, we were still going to go there since we liked their buffet in the past.

It was dark in here but I managed to take a few photos. Love their decor which is like their other places, Bombay and Monsoon. There's always a water feature too and beautiful mood lighting.

I didn't want to take photos of the actual buffet line. There were a few people there already and yeah, you know how it can be sometimes. I actually had "shame" for once. Ha ha.

Here's one of our plates. I accidentally erased my food photo but am too lazy to post it back. This one Bert's. He got salad with yogurt dressing, pakooras, one samosa, rice and some carrot and cauliflower dish.

More of the interior. You can kind of see some lamps in the background...those were really pretty. Same thing with the blingy chandelier. The chairs were kind of huge. They reminded me of the chairs at the German restaurant in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". This is where nerdy Mark Ratner take Stacy Hamilton out on a date and realizes he forgot his wallet. 

Our garlic naan - which was delicious by the way. It had a nice "stretch" when you pulled off a piece. Parts of it were also crisp. Loved the bits of garlic on this too.

This was my other plate. I mixed the three sauces together in the tin bowl - mint chutney, tamarind and the yogurt sauce. Had some salad and a little bit of everything at the buffet. I didn't get any tandoor chicken. I normally don't. I like trying the vegetarian stuff mostly. Wish I could tell you what these dishes were but I didn't take notes. Some of the sauces had a kick to them but for the most part, they were mild enough to be enjoyable.

This was Bert's plate - I also had one of those samosa - filled with spiced potatoes and peas. Yum. They were quite large too and you could tell they were fried. Yes, not baked like at this Himalayan place TC and I went to back in October. The baked ones tasted dry and gross. Fried = nice and crispy!  Bert is more of meat kind of guy so he got some of the chicken dishes (with sauce).

I wish this post was more exciting and that we could have gone to the wine bar. We'd never been to one before so I was kind of looking forward to that. We'll have to plan that again another time. I would rather go there during lunch than at night because the Gaslamp at night, even though this is the East Village, scares me.

Pictured above is the Caltrans building. We took a roundabout way to get back to the freeway and drove through some shady neighborhoods too!

Return to Banana Leaf South Indian Kitchen

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This past weekend, Bert and I went to Prom! Yes, you heard that right! The Prom! Well, since we work at a local high school, it's part of the "end of the year" type activities . Plus we've been doing this for nearly 10 years as an excuse to dress up and go out to dinner. Past dinners (a few prior to my foodblog which debuted in 2006) were at Kemo Sabe, Vagabond, Cafe Japengo, Napa Grill (now defunct), Kensington Grill and Lei Lounge.

We were joking about the administrators having to use a "breathalyzer" on us! Nowadays, the breathalyzer is a common place tool used for school functions to determine who's drunk! On another note, this was also Bert's first time going out to the "Prom" with me because in the past, it was just me and my colleagues and we never brought our significant others.

I wore a black dress with a sequinned neckline with blingy silvery strappy heels while Bert looked ultra cool and very Reservoir Dogs in his slim white shirt, black pinstripe pants and vintage skinny black tie (straight outta our high school dayz, I shit you not!)!!! Quick, cue the cool bass line which begins, "Little Green Bag" (the opening song of aforementioned movie)!

Most of the restaurants that had a nice view of SD Bay were booked up. I took it upon myself to check out other places where parking wouldn't be an issue or booking a large party. Since I'd been to this place recently, I took my chances and found that Banana Leaf was available for our large party (See original post here). Woo hoo! Plus free parking at the structure!

I didn' use my flash here - last time I went, I was sitting near those Moroccan'ish lamps near this really cool water feature.   A note on this type of Indian food (courtesy of wikipedia):

 "South Indian Cuisine is a term used to refer to the cuisines found in the four southern states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu...The similarities in the four states' cuisines are the presence of rice as a staple food, the use of lentils and spices, use of dried red chillies and fresh green chillies, coconut and native fruits and vegetables like tamarind, plantain, snake gourd, garlic, ginger, etc."

There were eight of us there that night, which in my food blogger's mind meant, "Cool! More variety means more pix for the blog!"  Heh heh! Here's someone's cocktail which I don't remember the name of, but it had salt on the rims. It was something fruity.

Another drink...they all had these pseudo-Indianesque names. I just realized they don't have their drinks menu online so I couldn't even tell you what this was.

Bert's Indian beer - Kingfisher)...the same beer RPattz (that's Robert Pattinson for you non Robsessed people)  orders while in Ghandi Restaurant in his recent movie,  "Remember Me" (because I remember things like that!)! But of course, that's not why Bert ordered this beer since it's a pretty standard Indian brand offered at most Indian places. My mind is just swimming with RPattz related shit right now...

Here's that movie clip I was referring to! Check out their NY accents. The girl is played by Emily de Ravin (Claire from "Lost"; she's Australian!).

My vaguely nasty sounding drink, "Mango Pleasure". It was non-alcoholic and was basically mango juice garnished with a (nonripe) mango slice. They could have doctored this up with grenadine syrup, club soda or something else to make it less boring. I felt like I could have just bought a Kern's nectar from Ralph's for .89 , and poured it in a stemmed glass myself!

I don't remember who ordered what, but this was the Mogo - Which was wedges of Cassava with spicy garlic sauce and cilantro. Cassava is a root vegetable which has a starchy mouthfeel, and kind of looks like a potato but has a different taste. I actually liked this but thought there was too many different kinds of sauce colors going on.

One of my co-workers ordered this, the Idli. Because the description said "rice dumplings with tomato broth and chutneys" she thought it would kind of be like the Asian style of dumplings. This was more of a light rice cake patty. It reminded me of a Filipino Puto on steroids. And by puto, I mean "steamed white rice cake", not the Mexican word "puto" which is a "not so nice" word ('puto is short for prostitute or used in a pejorative way towards male gays).   I called these "Pinche Putos"! Ha ha! Ask your Mexican friends what that means!

I don't remember the name of this appetizer but the menu description (not online but only in-house) actually said, "Caution - this is hot" or something. This was basically Samosas with a sauce that was meant to be "spicy" but it really wasn't at all.

The samosas were filled with spiced potatoes...you can see the whole spices in there (cardamom):

Another co-worker ordered the Masala fries. Now, while these were pretty decent, it was kind of a let down because the only thing vaguely tasting like Masala was the very light, almost imperceptible dusting of masala powder on the fries themselves.I think it was on the menu to appease Americanized palates.

I ordered the Masala Uthappam- which is a rice-based flour pancake filled with onions, tomato, green onions and peppers which are cooked right into the batter. I'd never tried an Uthappam before and was curious to try it! The chutneys were pretty mild - the green one was mint with yogurt and the other one was more 'vegetably' (is that even a word?) in nature.

Bert ordered the Mysore Dosa (named after the Mysore region)- A dosa is a rice flour crepe filled with spicy potatoes, beets, onion chutney and spinach. The dosa itself looked pretty impressive because it was long. Those extraneous edges don't have filling though, so keep that in mind. This dosa was not as spicy as Masala Dosa TORC and I had last month!

I'm not sure what this was called - it was on the other end of the table, but it was a rice dish with shrimp in it and it was really good! There were also a lot of slivered peppers on there! Okay, I don't know if this is just me, but don't those spouted sauce containers kind of look like mini urinals? Sorry, but it looks like something you would pee in if you were in a hospital!

I couldn't find this on the online menu, but I found it on my camera - it's the Moongfali Tofu which has a peanut based sauce. That looked pretty tasty...

Someone else ordered the Goan Curry with Chicken (named after the Goan region). The sauce consisted of coconut, tamarind, cumin and red chilies...It wasn't as spicy as the next dish which was...

the Kerala Curry with Lamb (named after the Kerala region). The sauce for this included red chilies, ginger, coconut water and spices. I had a bit of my friend's sauce and it was pretty hot.

Those two who ordered the curries also ordered the fragrant basmati rice with black sesame seeds. There's that cool slanted bowl that I admired last time...

A few of us ordered Bread as well. The Breads were Chapati and Poori. The Chapati is a thin, whole wheat pancake cooked on a flat skillet while the Paratha was a puffed whole wheat bread that was deep fried. They don't serve naan here, so keep that in mind. The Chapati is a little thicker than naan and more "wheaty" in flavor. Unfortunately, it was kind of dry. I guess it would have tasted better if I had more "saucy" food rather than the uttapam and the dosa. The puffed bread was better. The poori wasn't crispy like a tortilla chip, but texturally, I found it more interesting. Plus, it was fried. So yeah, fried = yummy! Don't you love my co-worker's brillian aqua blue nail polish?

So, the downside to this South Indian feast was that the restaurant seemed short of staff. The waiters were super nice but the service was also super slow. Like two hours and a half slow. After our dinner, we all headed downtown to check out Prom...

Here's the view near Petco Park as we neared the hotel. The kids looked super nice in their suits/tuxes/dresses and there were no major incidents either! The ballroom where the kids were dancing was easily 30 degrees hotter than the hallways. It was crazy in there! We chatted with some of our students, a few of the faculty, made a quick appearance, took our photos and headed back home...

Banana Leaf South Indian Kitchen

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Sometime during Spring Break, TORC and I went out to watch "The Runaways" at the Hillcrest Cinemas (more about movie here). Being avid rocker chicks, we wanted to see this film depiction of the first girl rock bands in the 70's, which spawned ultra badass rocker chicks Joan Jett (one of my idols) and Lita Ford. The movie was based on former lead singer, Cherie Currie's autobiographical book, "Neon Angel - A Memoir of a Runaway" which, like the trivia freak that I am, read ahead of time. Both of us also previously watched the documentary "Edgeplay" directed by former Runaways bassist, Vicky Tischler Blue. "Edgeplay" was not endorsed by Joan Jett who was noticably absent in the film except in archival footage. However, this new film, directed by Flora Sigismondi, was fully supported by Joan Jett. The main differences were that Lita Ford and former bassist Jackie Fox did not give consent for this new film and therefore, their characters are not named directly after them.  A mini write up of this movie will be a forthcoming post...

We made it a lunch date and to make things easier, had lunch at Banana Leaf on 5th Ave in Hillcrest, which was the former site of Bombay (its sister restaurant which moved across the street). Parking would be free here since we'd be watching a movie and having lunch in the same complet.  I'd read about this place  awhile ago and we wanted to try it out...

They had a menu posted outside...Check it out online here.

I hadn't been here since it was Bombay. The interior was still as beautiful as it was before. Loved the hanging lanterns. There was also a very nice water feature (not pictured).  There was a table nearby that was being prepped for a large party.

It wasn't too busy when we got there which was kind of nice (at least for me).

We were curious to try South Indian food...

TORC and I were up for trying different stuff today...

I chose the Sev Puri for our appetizer. These were thin, crisp rounds topped with spiced potatoes and crunchy bits of what looked like fried noodles (but was probably something else). The sauce was yogurt based and had a nice flavor to it. I could have eaten a bigger portion of this if it were an entree.

 

TORC chose the aromatic basmati rice which was sprinkled with black sesame seeds...Loved the slanted bowl it was in, but it looked too big for our portion of rice.

TORC wanted some naan...(this was plain, I liked Bombay's version - it was thinner and had garlic on it).

We chose the Hyderabadi curry with chicken. The curry is made with almonds, mint, yogurt and masala spice. The portion was just right for the both of us. The flavor was unusual, unlike any other curry we've tried before. I really loved the sauce and if I go back here with Bert, I'd totally order this again!

TORC chose the Masala Dosa, which is a rice based crepe filled with spicy potatoes and served with a chutney (metal dish) and a tomato based sauce (white dish). The filling actually was pretty spicy but we loved it.

Here's a moneyshot of the Dosa. See the red stuff? Hotness!

Service was very attentive at Banana Leaf and the waiters were happy to suggest recommendations, especially about the curries. After our awesome lunch, we walked up the steps to get our tickets. The movie didn't start until 2 pm and we had 20 minutes to kill.

We hauled ass over to Chocolat Cremerie to pick up some desserts to go. On our way there, we saw this
painted utility box. This was just one side of it (the north)...

This is the side that faces 5th Ave...

This was another utility box on 5th...

And this side faces West...(this is the first utility box)

And lastly, this is the side that faces East which also sports graffiti...I liked how each side of the box was painted with totally different themes. I liked the monkey the best.

On to Chocolat Cremerie!