Tender Greens, Mission Valley

After watching "Solo" we decided to have lunch at the mall.

Tender Greens is located where Loehmann's used to be...

Brothers Fail...so Village Cafe

It was a rare morning, having TC with us on a Saturday..

Due to morning delays, we didn't get to our original breakfast destination until 10...

The Waffle Spot

Does this sign look familiar?

It's on the south side of the 8 in Mission Valley near Hotel Circle..

The King's Craft Coffee Co., Mission Valley

Having a four day weekend was nice because...

traffic wasn't too bad heading to Mission Valley yesterday.  Bert had the day off as well and while TC was still sleeping...

Sandwiches from Santos Coffee House, Subterranean, Corner Bakery Cafe and Caffe Italia

It's been awhile...

Bert and I had time to kill while TC was volunteering...

Milano Coffee Company

Last Friday, after our lunch at TJ Oyster Bar, TC and I went over to the Mission Valley mall so she could use some of her gift cards.  Afterwards, we stopped by a nearby coffee place in an condo complex...

which across the street from the old K-Mart (or did they call it "Big K" to sound more hip) which is now some sort of home decor place. So much has changed since Bert and I used to live in Mission Valley. This whole shopping center wasn't even built yet, much less this place across the street...

Chillin' with our Fizzios...

Traveling up Laurel Street  via Harbor Drive...

Cathy is the queen of side streets. It's always fun taking the "scenic route" with her....

De Mi Cafe Cafe

After dropping off my car at the Mission Valley mall parking lot, we headed over to a coffee place that Cathy recommended...

I hadn't driven by this place in awhile and there were lots of new buildings going up.  I was also glad that my car wouldn't be out in the hot sun! It was supposed to be in the high 80's that day...

To my delight, the coffee place De Mi Cafe Cafe, was next to the funnily named "Rocking Tanuki". In fact, TC and I tried going there a few years ago, but it was closed so we went to Smashburger instead.

This little area is at the bottom of Via las Cumbres and Friar's Road, near Fashion Valley...

Better Buzz kiosk @ Fashion Valley

Yesterday we were in Fashion Valley for some errands. This big mall isn't kind of place for a "relaxing Sunday afternoon" but by necessity, we were here (sigh of dejection)...

 While waiting for TC near Urban Outfitters, where she bumped into a childhood friend, the Sexy Nurse's son, Bert and I saw the Better Buzz Coffee kiosk...

Corner Bakery Cafe - The bday freebies begin...

With today being the first day of April, I thought I would utilize a few of my birthday month freebies...

This place, the Corner Bakery Cafe (next to Chipotle in the Mission Valley Mall parking lot) is new to me...

Five for five with Astroboi

Today was it with my GBFF Astroboi...

As I braved the shitty morning traffic to get to the movie theater early, I thought, "It's been four years...

Return to Smashburger

This past week, TC and her cousin (who is one day older) both "promoted" from 6th grade.

Since when did they stop using the term "graduation"? I remember "graduating" from 6th and 9th grade as well, but it is considered more "correct" to say "promotion".  Well, screw that, they GRADUATED! The kids were given a choice where to eat so what better place to go for lunch than Smashburger in Mission Valley's Hazard Center!

Nothing Bundt Cakes

Immediately after our lunch at Smashburger, TC and I headed down Friar's Road to check out the new Nothing Bundt Cakes grand opening...

So what was it like, you ask?

Late to the party...Smashburger

Because the place we originally wanted to go to for lunch was CLOSED until 2 pm on Mondays (The Rocking Tanuki; the tanuki by the way is a Japanese racoon dog with a huge nutsac), I wanted to go someplace relatively close by. My good old Garmin listed Sab-e-Lee (the original one) and Smashburger as the closest places...

Smashburger it was...

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)...

Return to Stacked

After enduring our non-yawn inducing and eyelid drooping experience four hours of financial aid  fun at the workshop, the co-workers and I headed over to Fashion Valley. One of them wanted to check out the Nordstrop half-yearly sale so I figured, let's go here instead.

The original plan was to have lunch at Bali Thai down the street from the workshop venue. Well, shopping and Stacked won out!

That Burger's Stacked...ain't holding nothing back!

A few weeks ago we went to the new burger place in Fashion Valley. It's right next to a store I will never set foot in, Burberry. Their clothes and bags are ugly and they are fucking expensive.

TC and I were still on vacation and we had lunch with our neighbors and their two daughters (the neighbor girls)...

The name is just ripe with innuendoes.

Benihana's

Back to the birthday food posts, but before we do, let's take a look at this sexy new pair of heels I bought as a bday present to myself. Thank you Macy's giftcard, heh.

These are 3 3/4" leopard peep toes with a ruffle at the toe. The brand is Style & Co by Macy's. I didn't think I would ever buy leopard print anything. Wait, scratch that. I have a purple leopard print scarf. But these are probably the "loudest" pair of heels I have.  Nice look against our dashboard. Ha ha.

I like 'em!

As mentioned in a previous post, I hadn't been to Benihana's since 1993. Two words...

Free. Meal. 

I just realized my finger is in the upper left hand corner of this photo but I'm too lazy to delete it and recrop it. But here is where we sat. The table seats eight. A party of two (from Santa Rosa) and a separate party of three (which was split off from the table next to us) joined us shortly. The couple were enjoying San Diego so far. They were surprised but happy that we'd been to Santa Rosa before (two summers ago when we visited the Charles M. Schulz Museum). They were on a weekend getaway from Santa Rosa and the guy had the same birthday as me!

If you sign up on Benihana's site for the Chef's Table, you can get a free birthday meal anytime during your birth month, but only M-Th only. The meal can be worth up to $30 or if it costs more, then you pay the difference.

Bert got the Steak and Shrimp while I got the Steak and Scallops...

TC had the Steak and Shrimp. 

Bert got a Sapporo that evening...

All of our meals came with salad which had a ginger dressing...

Mushroom and onion soup was also part of the meal...

Here's our chef. Okay, I guess since I hadn't been here in nearly 20 years, I was expecting a Japanese dude to be rythmically chopping up shit with his cleavers and knives. It was a Hispanic dude. He did a good job, but I had in my mind that we'd have a Japanese guy.

This cart belonged to the table next to us. Someone was celebrating a birthday there as well. I was fascinated with the layers of trays which held all the ingredients like rice, zucchini, shrimp, steak, chicken, and so on...

TC's chicken fried rice...Only four people at our table had this.

One thing I noticed is that they put a lot of fkg butter and seasoning here. Like, a hell of a lot. The chef put a big pat of butter for a tiny bit of corn (for TC's meal). He also put waay too much soy sauce (in my opinion) for the fried rice.

This was TC's plate...I felt there was a lot of dead time between waiting for the different components of the meal. I don't like eating my food piece by piece. The vegetables (zucchini, mushrooms, and onions) came first. Then came the shrimp. It was fascinating watching the chef cut them so precisely and portion them for each person.

Bert's plate - looks kind of lonely without rice, huh. His shrimp was really good too. They were bigger and juicier than the shrimp appetizers...

Here' mine - Steak and Scallops. There were originally six but I ate two while waiting for the food. I like eating my food all at once and instead of waiting for it to be doled out.

Despite being sung a very corny "Happy Birthday"-ish song with lots of clapping by the staff, I kept a straight face and enjoyed the night with Bert and TC. The chef was entertaining; he made a "smoking volcano" out of stacked onion rings. He also made a Mickey Mouse shaped rice thing (with un-PC "slits for eyes....uh, nice) and made the mouth move with his spatula. He did a few other tricky things with his knives and was very adept in cutting and slicing all the different meats. If I tried to do what he did, I would probably slice off a finger or two.

Dessert was also included in the meal - TC chose Rainbow Sherbert while I had the Haagen Daas Chocolate. I didn't even attempt to finish this. Just a few spoons were all I had..

Until next year!

Who else ate at Benihana's?
Mary went here in October 2009
and Kirbie went here back in July 2010

Xooro

[Closed  as of this year, 2012, and newly reopened as another dessert place]

After our lunch at Eddie's, we headed over to Mission Valley mall, taking the surface streets so I could avoid the freeway. This is the corner of Utah and University. See that pink sign? It's that POLE FITNESS place I mentioned last month. Strippers have to be fit too you know.

Corner of Texas and University. We hung a right on Texas to get to Mission Valley.

After doing a few errands at the Mission Valley mall, I spied this new store, Xooro Spanish Delights Cafe. Xooro ispronounced "shoo-roh" and uses an "X' so it looks like a Northern Spanish word but probably isn't. This place is across from Icing (the accessories store) and in the same wing of the mall near Sports Chalet. I made a mental note to check it out after our foray into Target.

It was very sterile, sparse, and hip. Seems like every place now has a plasma screen with the menu.

The main reason we went here was curiosity and also because I wanted to blog it.

The risk with that was not knowing their prices but I figured, why not for today.

We looked at the different choices in the display case (not shown) and picked one that we knew Bert would like, the Peanut Butter Xooro (which hereafter will be referred to as a "churro"). This plain churro is $3.40. The frosted and flavored ones are $4.40 like this one.

The churros are not as long as the box. Oh yeah, I'm sure the box is included in the price. I didn't expect a box, cool though it was. I thought it was a massive waste of material. (Note: Mini Union Jack purse is TC's, purchased at the Shakespeare's Corner Shoppe several years ago as a gift for her)

The churro was thick and drizzled with peanut butter frosting and chocolate glaze. The filling was obviously peanut butter. There was a bit of heft to this churro as well.

Who else ate at Churro's?

Cathy Tran of Oh So Yummy went here back in June 2010

CC household Verdict:
Me - I don't want to sound like a cheapass, but I thought it was overpriced and overly sweet. And like the reviewer above, was kind of disappointed that these weren't made "fresh" to order. You get what's in the display case and who knows how long that shit has been laying in there. Plus if you like your churros warm/hot, your churro won't get that treatment here. You get 'em cold. I actually like my desserts cold so that wasn't an issue with me.

TC - "It was good. There was lots of frosting on it. (she's easy to please) But it was kind of brittle and didn't taste like a nice, hot churro."

Bert - He liked the filling the best. He's just a "peanut butter" kind of guy. Perhaps they could have crisped this up some way. He said, "When they're cold they taste more stale and heavier".

There are two locations of Xooro as I found out when checking this place online, Mission Valley Mall and Plaza Bonita. Not sure that I'll be returning but I wanted to try this at least once.

Update - This place is now CLOSED as of 7/2012. It may have been closed earlier but that's when I noticed it was gone.

Bali Thai

Last week, I was at an exciting Financial Aid Workshop in Mission Valley. Also at the workshop was Mi Firme Heina (MFH) and one of my co-workers; we decided to have lunch nearby at Bali Thai. It's right before you hit TGIF's.

Even though I really like their Beef Rendang here, it would take too long so I ended up getting a lunch special.

The other two also got the lunch specials...

which included a soup (had bits of tofu, cabbage and carrots; it was a thin chicken based broth), salad with peanut dressing, and two fried appetizers (1 eggroll and 1 dumpling - which came with the sweet and sour sauce).

I got the spicy noodles (a '3' out of 10 so I would be able to enjoy it) - I got it vegetarian. I really like the thick rice noodles in this dish. My co-worker got the same thing but with chicken (not pictured) and it was a '6' (but she can handle it).

MFH got the Pad Thai with chicken - she thought it would come with thick noodles as well, but pad thai is usually made with the thinner rice noodles.

My previous outings at Bali Thai:

Last November, after watching "New Moon" with a bunch of GF's (one of which was MFH!)
and also when Bert and TC took me out on Mother's Day last year.

It was so strange for me being out and about on a work day. Normally, we're all holed up in our offices and snarfing our lunches. This was nice to be out for a change.

Song last heard on my iPod: This really sultry cover version of "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" by Muse:

I also found a closer place for the McRib...(upcoming post)!