Dinner & drinks @ Caffe Calabria

It was another Friday night...

TC was out with the boyfriend and Bert had a craving for pizza...

Return to Dolci Cafe Italiano

Sometime last month I met up with MFH and our former co-worker and his wife...

I hadn't been to Dolci in nearly two years...

Facchini's

Another super hot day for the books...

Today, I was solo when I met up with Mary of This Tasty Life up in her 'hood...

Risibisi + a glimpse of downtown Petaluma

Our French inspired hotel was quite cute and we were fortunate enough to have a spacious second floor room.  The weather by this time, had become quite gray and overcast with a bit of a chill and even some light sprinkles.

We drove to downtown Petaluma, recognizing the clock tower, the Lan Mart store as well as their other historic buildings (thanks to rewatching "American Graffiti" a week prior)...


Dinner would be downtown at an Italian place...

Cucina Verona

I wish we had seen Fort Bragg in a "sunnier" light.  It was pretty much gray the entire day...

As mentioned in my previous post, dinner was on the "fly" with Bert making the last minute decision for us to try this Italian place.

It would end up being next to the coffee place we'd visit the following morning before seeing the giant redwoods...

Filippi's Pizza Grotto, Mira Mesa

Bert, Scregman, Tatonka and Superman had just finished watching the new Depp flick, "Black Mass"...

TC and I had just finished our Indian food crawl when we got a text from Bert...

Pan Bon

Fueled up by our excellent drinks from Bird Rock Coffee Roasters on Kettner, we headed over to our next stop southwards...

I loved seeing all of the jacarandas in bloom...

At a highrise called the Ariel Suites, home of the soon to open Javier Plascencia project Bracero, is a relatively new food Italian hall called Pan Bon...

Pomodoro Ristorante Italiano & dessert @ Supanee

This past Friday, Bert and I had a lovely dinner spent in the company of two friends whom we hadn't seen in more than four years...

Our original spot was, Supannee Thai (yes, I'm trying to eat my way through their menu, ha ha), but since my friend is allergic to peanuts, we didn't want to chance anything.

Both she and her husband were staying in Shelter Island for the 14th FANHS National Biennial Conference (which I will post some highlights later). We didn't want to stray too far from their hotel or aggravate her allergy, so we went to Pomodoro across the street from Supannee...

$4 lunch at Mamma Lina's

Last week TC and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Mary of This Tasty Life during her lunch break...

She recently posted on a lunch spot favorite of hers...

Dessert at Cafe Zucchero

My sis wanted me to try the macs at Cafe Zucchero...

which is conveniently located near the Little Italy sign (the eastern side of India St.).

Nephew #2 is is now obsessed with them and I was curious to try CZ's version...

Cafe di Roma

If you haven't noticed, summer has been a fun but busy time for me. I can finally go out and enjoy lunch with friends and not be stuck in an office eating leftovers! Gawd, I felt so repressed! Until now!

TORC was finally on vacation as well. That's the good thing about being an educator, we know will get a summer vacation, although hers is longer than mine. No more grading papers! We had a lot of catching up to do...

Cortina's

Blogger sux today.

Okay, here goes, for the THIRD TIME. I'll put in my hyperlinks later. Dammit.

After getting picked up at the airport by C and her family (husband FJ and daughter LO), we headed over to this mall...

C needed to pick up her new phone. Plus it was a welcome relief to be off the road. We'd endured hours of driving (and we'd do a few more before settling in that night)...

Easy dinner...

Since our Valentine's dinner with the lobster ravioli was such a success, I repeated it with two other items also from Costco...

We'd never tried the Roasted Chicken and Mozzarella ravioli or that jarred pesto sauce before (OMG, pasta sauce for days)...

Boil up the pasta. Heat up the sauce. Spoon it on top, or if you want, plate the ravioli on top of the sauce. Whatever you want. Serve with salad and another small side if you wish. Instant dinner. Well, not instant like snap your fingers and it's done, but with minimal effort (boiling water, draining the pasta and heating up the sauce in a small saucepan), it's pretty simple.

The pasta was a hit with both TC and Bert. TC liked it better with the leftover tomato based Vodka cream sauce so she had that instead of the pesto. The pesto had a lot of flavor going on (garlic! basil!) but I didn't really like how oily it was. We liked the shape of the ravioli and the filling was quite tasty. Lots of chicken in there - substantial pieces, not ground up chicken.

Since we have a lot of leftover sauce, I plan to get more ravioli at good ole' Costco this weekend! More of both - the ravioli and the chicken!

Return to Apertivo

[Closed - The space is now taken b the West African restaurant that used to be a few doors down]

The next day, we wanted to go out to lunch...

Apertivo in North Park fit the bill (because I had a coupon) and they now offered lunch...

Florencia's

Yay! Both TC and I are on Fall Break. That means two weeks of trying new places! In this case, using coupons from the Entertainment Value book fundraiser. I really like using those for the discounts for museums as well as restaurants (fast food as well as casual and fine dining). I'm a tightass, yeah I'm frugal like that.  So during our vacation, we will try to go to places using these savings passes...

It looks like it says "Forencia's" but there is a barely noticeable "l" after the "F". Well, we'd never been here before so hopefully this wouldn't be a bust. You know how going to a new place can sometimes be a crapshoot.,

Return to Villa Capri

I'm on a roll aren't I? Weekends are my only free time. Come this week, my posting will come to a standstill...

Sometime earlier this summer we went out to dinner at Villa Capri, a local Italian restaurant located at the Albertson's strip mal on the corner of East H and San Miguel Road.

I'd been here before for lunch but never for dinner...

No Worries, I mean Do the Dougie!

One of my former students (c/o 2000) with whom I still correspond, emailed me a few restaurant recommendations for our road trip.  Some of them included Zachary's Pizza (Chicago deep dish style; I'm not too crazy about deep dish though), Brown Sugar Kitchen (a modern soul food'ish place), and No Worries (recommended because she went to university with one of the main chefs). The last plce, No Worries caught my attention because it was a "Filipino Vegan" restaurant.

Wut?

As one yelp reviewer noted, Filipino and Vegan together is like saying "healthy cigarette".  We just had to check this place out. Being quite anal organized, I already researched their menu and was intrigued. Bert wasn't so sure about this place. The menu items had the usual suspects - kare kare, afritada, menudo, pancit, adobo and so on but instead of meat, it was tofu (or some other soy based protein).  It sounded okay on paper but we wanted to at least try one dish before jumping in completely.

Unfkgfortunately, their website was NOT updated. They were closed on Mondays although the website indicated their M-F hours. Okayyyyy....

Apertivo

[Update - Closed as mid 2012]

A few weeks ago, I met up again (thrice) with KD, D and TORC. After my birthday party at my house, plus dinner at Alchemy, we all met up with TORC's sister to plan an upcoming special event...

I scoped out some places we hadn't been to before - choosing the new location of Apertivo (the old one was on 30th and University), which used to house Dao Son. This is right next to Pomegranate/Petrushka (Russian and Georgian cuisine) and Flavors of East Africa. Plus, I noticed online that they had a "happy hour" menu, so score!

It's pretty wide and spacious in here...I liked the color scheme and checkered floors.

It was only 4:45'ish so hardly anyone was there yet...

Check out their menu online here:

We chatted a bit with the owner. Nice guy. Very accomodating.

We were given complimentary breadsticks as we looked over the menu...

This was TORC's spinach salad...

This was mine - the regular garden salad. I asked for no horrid salad dressing but noticed he put it on the side, not knowing I wasn't going to touch it.

This was KD's salad - Aurugula with Gorgonzola cheese, sweet onions, and candied pecans.

We all shared the fried calamari...no one seemed to want the tentacles, so I ate it! Fried seafood = good!

KD got Broccoli with Mizithra cheese. When we saw Mizithra cheese on the menu, we got excited in a Spaghetti Factory kind of way.

TORC's sis got the Angelhair pasta with Mizithra cheese...

while TORC got the Pesto pasta which tasted nice and fresh. I don't remember if she ordered it with meat or not. Maybe it was covered.

D got the Spaghetti Bolognese which was nice and meaty!

In addition to my salad, I got one turkey meatball...

Yes, just one - it was a big meatball. Here's a cross section. Loved it! I should have ordered another!

I also got a side of roasted vegetables which I couldn't finish. The guy was supposed to box it up but I don't think he ever gave me (or TORC) back our boxed food. I don't remember taking it home.

View from our window. You can see the McD's on the corner of El Cajon Blvd and Texas St. That's the same McD's where I got my first McRib last year.

All in all, we liked the happy hour price points. Very affordable. Their regular prices pasta dishes were reasonable as well (even though I did not get one). I will have to try that Mizithra cheese pasta next time. The food quality was also good. Hey, it doesn't take much to make me happy. Everything was fresh and flavorful. My only gripe was the heavyhandedness with the whipped cream for the desserts...

For dessert, we ordered two. The first was the Bread Pudding (of course, D wanted to try this) with port sauce. When the guy brought it to our table, the first thing I saw was the damn whipped cream. I was instantly reminded of the shittiness of the desserts at Cheesecake Factory. You know, they pile whipped cream on everything there. You can't even tell what's underneath this thing. I don't like bread pudding and the port sauce was kind of strong.

The second dessert was also hidden under a load of whipped cream. This was the House Special, which was a brownie topped with ice cream and whipped cream and chocolate sauce. We liked this better than the bread pudding. It was a fun get together for us gals. The last time I saw TORC's sister was November 2009 when we all watched "The Twilight Saga - New Moon" and had lunch at Bali Thai. She's funny as fk! Like me and TORC, she has cusses like a sailor! She cracks me up too! Plus she has similar taste in music.

We were talking about the upcoming Lita Ford concert in May at 4th and B (or is it House of Blues?). She said that "Kiss Me Deadly" video had the lamest lyrics ever so we "sang" the first few lines:

"I went to the party last Saturday night
I couldn't get laid,
I got in a fight
Uh huh
It ain't no big thing!"

Lyrical genius, that Lita Ford.

Uninentionally funny lyrics or not, that chick can play the guitar! She was one of the original Runaways. And as you can see in the video below, she can also "hump" her guitar! Ha ha! Cheesy 80's videos rule!!! I didn't really like this song because it had "keyboards" in it. It didn't rock hard enough for me, but I respected her musical skillz. Loved the shape of her red guitar too - it was the BC Rich Warlock model (a classic guitar favored back in the 80's, also seen as Nikki Sixx's bass).

As we were driving home, we noticed this Spanish Revival building as we approached the corner of El Cajon and the 805 south exit. Turns out that this is a historic building, the SDG and E Substation...

Looks like it should be in Balboa Park doesn't it?

Up next, another Epic Food Crawl! This time with Bert!

Sal's Italian Restaurant

 And yet even more of Bert's food foray into good ole Texas.
As always, any snarky comments in yellow are mine....

Italian food for Thursday lunch.

Interior:

No one at the baby grand. Bummer.

Bread sticks. One classmate didn't care for them. (Well, no wonder, they look really crappy like the kind you get when you buy pre-made dough. It looks like a preschooler or one of those inbred lobster clawed people shaped these)

Pink Lemonade.

Menu:



My classmate is going to do something with this picture. His artistic eye saw something here with a little composition.

Here's a wider view of those windows:

A view of the entrance (from the inside).

Fried Calamari. Eh, nothing special to me, but one my classmate's FIRST time having calamari. Frog legs a few nights ago, now calamari. She's tried a couple of new foods this trip!

My salad with a tomato dressing on the side. Not bad. Pretty crisp. At least I "felt" I was eating healthy for CC. (Wait, was this IT?  A few pieces of iceberg really does balance out all that bowel clogging meat, eh!)

Shrimp Fettuccini Alfredo. The shrimp was good!

I think this was the Chicken Philly Cheesesteak. My classmate ate the filling and left the bread (as usual). She liked the filling although I think she would have liked the mushrooms to be tastier.

The Shrimp Scampi. I don't think my classmate finished this. There was a point where she slowly leaned up against the wall next to her because she was getting too full.

My Fettuccini Carbonara. Pretty good. The ham and onions worked well together. Maybe just a little less sauce would have made this better for me.

One last look:

Just a few more posts...and then we're done!