Ladies who lunch...at Que Huong

Last week I had the pleasure of having lunch with a great group of gals...

We met up at one of my favorite restaurants in San Diego...

which is of course, Que Huong, located in City Heights. It's the first stoplight after you exit University Ave from the 15. Look for this sign...

I hate parking inside because the spaces are tight, so I ended up parking on the street, where miraculously the parking gods were smiling upon me. Found a good space and was just a few cars down from Cathy who arrived before me. (New to the stripmall is Cali Baguette)

It was nice that the first lunch meetup of the year amongst us gal bloggers was at Que Huong. Of our group, four of us had been here.

The interior was festively decorated in preparation of the Lunar New Year. The owner Jay was also there on hand to greet us along with his staff (I believe it was the guy who does all of the cool intricately folded dollar bill decorations).

Because we were a large group (seven), we got to sit at the round table with the lazy Susan, so yay for that! We love the lazy Susan contraption!

The lunch bunch included Kirbie of Kirbie's Cravings (the organizer), myself, Cathy of mmm-Yoso, C of CAB Cooks, Darlene of My Burning Kitchen, Jinxi from Jinxi Eats and Mary of This Tasty Life.

Cathy, Carol and I took the liberty of ordering a few dishes to start off with. This was the Pork and Shrimp Jackfruit salad with sesame rice cracker.

This dish ended up being one of the favorites that day. It has a great variety of flavors and textures with the two proteins plus peanuts, herbs,and the crunchy cracker. I noticed that the fried sesame rice cracker was different than the one I was used to getting a few years ago. This was a bit more "fried" while the other one was bigger, white in color and dotted with black sesame seeds. The rice cracker was also harder to break apart and harder in texture. I didn't like that as much but the salad itself was a knockout.

Another item we ordered that the Wild Boar with  Lemongrass...

The wild boar had a mild gamey flavor to it but it was also enjoyed by everyone at the table. I wasn't sure of the name of the herb on top, but it had a nice fragrance (mental note to self- find out name of herb!).

This was only the beginning too! Below from 9 o'clock, the wild boar (hidden underneath the cracker), the salt and pepper fried frog legs (I thought we would be getting the chopped, breaded and fried version) the pork, shrimp and jackfruit salad, and the Banh Xeo (Vietnamese crepe with herbs).

The frog legs were a bit on the sinewy side, heh heh. I remember asking if it would be chopped, battered and fried but this is what we got instead, where you could see the actual frog leg (much to Mary's dismay but she was a trooper and tried one anyways). I thought the version I originally requested would be easier to look at and eat but I didn't feel like taking it back. Everyone tried a piece anyways.

The herbs, pickled vegetables, rice cracker chips and peanuts were for the next dish...

The sizzling Cha Ca Thang Long (turmeric fish with dill), a specialty of Hanoi...

You are supposed to eat this with a little bit of everything in a small bowl - vermicelli noodles, pickled vegetables, peanuts, cracker pieces and nuoc mam (fish sauce). Personally, I skipped out on that particular fish sauce (it's too strong for me) but ate everything else in the fish dish.

Here's another shot of our lunch...which now included the salt and garlic fried shrimp (yay, the heads were attached!), the Fish Sauce wings (which are a must try at Que Huong) and for contrast, the sweeter Tamarind wings. Of the two wing flavors, we liked the fish sauce more. The taste was more assertive and not as sweet as the tamarind.

The "damage" which equaled about $18 between us seven (including tax and tip).

I thought we had a good variety of dishes represented, but man, that was a lot of food! The folks who hadn't tried these dishes before were the lucky ones who took home the leftovers.   It was so nice seeing everyone again as well as seeing others meet for the first time. We all also exchanged food gifts/treats (to be seen in a later post) which was cool.

Update on 2/12 -
The other bloggers' posts!
Kirbie, Jinxi and Mary....

Previous visits to QH:
April 2013 - my late bday lunch with MFH
September 2012 - MFH's bday lunch where we had the Cha Ca Thang Long, pork/shrimp & jellyfish salad, Bo Luc Lac and wings)
Mother's Day Lunch 2012 (which also links my 2011 post for Mother's Day, where we had quail, spicy squid ginger salad, fish sauce wings and frog legs)

What's a great meal without dessert, eh? Our next stop would be over in Normal Heights at a place I'd been to before, but not for dessert...