Asia Cafe, Eclipse & Candy Shop

A few weeks ago, my lunch partner (she made me that mix CD)and I went to Asia Cafe. She's never had Laotian food so we went to Asia Cafe in the hood. It as pretty damn hot that day from what I remember. Luckily it wasn't so busy when we got there so we got a good table and felt the breeze from the open door, which unfortunately let in flies. She picked the dish above---I dont' remember what it was called but it was a mixture of seafood (fish, fish cake, squid, shrimp, scallop and fake Krab---points off for the fake Krab)with flat rice noodles and vegetables. I know it kind of looks like a mess, but trust me, it tasted pretty good. So good that nothing was left over.

The greens were for the Nem Khao (Laotian fried rice) which is NOT pictured below. Oops. It's just a close up of the dish I forgot the name of. I liked the scored squid. Fk that "calamari" title - it's squid to me!

In addition to the unknown noodle dish, I ordered See Nam Toke, a marinated beef dish served with a citrusy fish sauce. The cut of meat is kind of tough, but it's not so tough that you're chewing twenty minutes. Just ten. Just kidding. But seriously, it's pretty good, especially with Nem Khao or sticky rice.

My friend really liked the Nem Khao (which isn't on the menu) which is an explosion of flavors and textures. I like crispy - so it's represented by the crunchy bits of fried rice clumps and peanuts. There is also sour pork sausage with long tentacles of whatever (I wonder if it's fat or something else? It's pretty stringy), hot chili peppers, green onions, and cilantro. So much flavor and so much crunch! I wonder how the cook does it - I can never get my fried rice clumps to stay that crunchy without burning it. By the way, the word "clump" doesn't sound really appetizing, but I can't think of any other words to describe it.

And because we just finished lunch, we wanted to make a trip up to Eclipse Chocolat located on

street walker territory. Yes, El Cajon Blvd. But the kind of better part of the Blvd. Last time we went to Eclipse, we bought their paninis for lunch and candy bars to go. This time, we splurged on cupcakes. This was mine - and dammit, I can't remember the offical name or description of this, but it was basically a super rich chocolate cupcake with a rosemary mint filling. The cupcake is covered in dark chocolate ganache and sprinkled with cocoa nibs.

My friend got the Lavender Sea Salt cup cake with the caramel filling.

Here's the cross section for mine. This was very rich and decadent. I didn't really taste the rosemary in the filling, which is kind of good, because I'm not much of a rosemary fan. It was an interesting combination though, mint and rosemary. The mint flavor was much more pronounced. The cocoa nibs were a nice touch - bitter and crunchy!

Here's the other cupcake - the filling was caramel - The topping was sea salt with lavender. I didn't really take the topping for hers, but the filling was pretty good! Very moist. Just like a Prince song from his Dirty Mind era. Ewwww. Sorry! Had to throw that in.

A few steps down from Eclipse was this shop:

It's pretty small inside. But there is an actual theatre in the back. I imagine they make good candy sales before and after patrons watch the shows here. We wanted to check it out because even after eating those cupcakes, we wanted yet more sugar. But really, we were curious. We saw the owner (I think that's who she was) fixing the mannequin in front of the store. We also took some funny photos with it, but those aren't posted! The owner was super nice and seemed to like the color purple. She was wearing it in several different shades! Purple is also one of my fave colors. Very Prince. I bought a few things. I've never seen this brand so I bought one London Mint. Unfortunately, it tasted terribly like chalky toothpaste. But brown.

The not so good tasting chocolate mint. I only had one bit and threw the rest away. What a waste of 35 cents.

I bought a packet of Strawberry flavored Pop Rocks for TC. I remember when this stuff first came out - 1977. I was in 3rd grade. Star Wars was in full force and so was Saturday Night Fever. Chinese jacks were also a big craze on the playground. There was a rumor (now known as an urban myth) that if you drank soda and combined it with pop rocks you would die. I think I also had a friend that tried to feed this to a seagull, or was it Tums? Yeah, that's pretty fkd up eh.

Oops, I messed up with the spacing between those photos above...The candy above was pretty good. It's actually very tiny and it tastes just like Neapolitan ice cream. Yeah, you know, the ice cream with three flavors that everyone would only eat the chocolate parts and leave the vanilla because it was the most boring flavor. At least that's how it was in our household...Interesting candy store...She had a lot of old time candy in there plus a lot of unfamiliar ones.

Playlist test

(9/5/08 edit - I moved the playlist to the bottom of this page)

This playlist is based from a CD made by my very good GBF (gay boyfriend). He made me this CD mix to cheer me up several weeks ago. I tried to recreate it on Playlists.com, but couldn't find the exact same version of "Electric Dreams" (his was by Outta Control and yes, it's the title song of that 80's movie), plus he had a special Tom Jones Mix. The other song I couldn't find was "We Close Our Eyes" by Go West. It was pretty fun listening to this because a few months ago, we were at Pure Yogurt (now renamed as NuYo) and watching old school videos, like Freeez's "AEIOU", Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" (remember the robotic boots?) and the classic Grand Master Flash's "Scorpio". We couldn't stop cracking up at the videos. So....he made this for me with a few surprises thrown in...Like Rick Astley! Not that I like that song! I don't!!! But we loved to make fun of that video! Skinny dorky white British guy with a black sounding voice! Priceless! I have to give my friend props for resurrecting Nolan Thomas's one and only hit (that I know of), "Yo Little Brother"! Bad memories of dancing in high school to "Diamond Girl" too! Ha ha.

Otay Ranch Farmer's Market

There is a new Farmer's Market at the Otay Ranch Town Center every Tuesday. It's been going on for about maybe 2 or 3 months now. I"m actually writing this post on Saturday, September 6th. Yeah, I've been behind with my posting.

This was a booth serving Ghanian food. Sorry for the poor picture quality. Although their food looked interesting, we wanted to see the other booths before making a decision.

Their offerings...

There was another African foodbooth, this time from Kenya. Oh wait, it says "Kenyan Inspired". WTF? Turns out they only had sambussas. There's another booth, which wasn't there the day we went, that used to specialize in sambussas. They are called 'Red' African and the folks hail from Ethiopa.

We bought a few sambussas - the beef, chicken and potato. This is the beef - you can see the red flecks of chili pepper in there. Good stuff that.

I was looking for this British food booth I saw a few months back. When I first saw it, I was curious because they had Scotch eggs, which are hard boiled eggs that are wrapped in sausage and deep fried. Yeah...fried. But alas, the British food booth wasn't there. They also sold meat pies and such, but it was the Scotch eggs I was looking for. The picture below (Argentinean empanadas) was just to show the variety of international foods at the market. We didn't buy this because the last time we did, we werent' impressed with the pastry dough. It tasted flat and flavorless and wasn't crisp at all.

The empanadas we didn't buy:

"It's Beef Jerky Time!" (Eddie Murphy masquerading as an African man in the classic "Trading Places" - the train scene near the end). Bert ended up buying this pack of beef jerky...Kicks ass on those crappy Slim Jims. It was more like Steak jerky and the pieces were thick, with FAT and flavor and Spice!

I got yer beef jerky right here...(that's TC's hand):

Before we left, there was a booth selling French pastries. Turns out they were from Opera, which used to be located downtown on 5th and Ash (L'Opera Pattisserie<----shit that's probably spelled wrong, but I'm too lazy to fix it). I haven't had macarons since they closed down last year. I bought a box for old times sake, ha ha. It lasted less than 12 hours. There were a dozen macarons in there, 2 of each flavor - dulce de leche, raspberry, passionfruit/coconut, chocolate, and a few others I don't remember.

Photo of macaron before going down the hatch...

Besides the food booths, the Farmer's Mrket also had vegetable and flower stalls as well as folks trying to sell home made soaps, salsa, jewelry and such. It's kind of small now but I hope that the Farmer's Market survives. Several years ago, they used to have one in the Southwestern College parking lot. That didn't last. Then they had one in the Wal-Mart Parking lot in Eastlake. That, too, also got deep sixed so hopefully, this one at the Otay Ranch mall (I know it's not a mall but wtf) will last.

Yokoz?!

[Closed as of early 2012 and to be a new restaurant called "iSushi"]

Here's yet another restaurant entry. I'm on a roll here...I went to the newly renamed Yokoz (formerly known as Yokozuna's) last week with my GBF. This is located in the strip mall across from Southwestern College. I hadn't been there in more than three months. They not only changed their name, but also revamped their menu. Well, the menus are new and their bento format has also been changed.

See? New Menu...More colorful I see. When we got there around 12 noon, it was kind of dead. I was expecting it to have more than 10 patrons or at least packed. Hmmm. When we left about a little more than an hour later, it was still kind of dead. That was strange. It's usually packed at Yokozuna's, oops, I mean Yokoz.

Below is the sushi bar...

Their bentos used to be $6.95. Then over the years, they raised the prices to $8.95. Now, since they changed things around, bentos are either $5.95 of $6.95. You used to be able to pick out 2 entrees and have it with either red or white rice, green salad, cucumber salad or macaroni salad and it all came with a few pieces of pineapple and 4 pieces of sushi. No longer. Now, there is a fixed $5.95 menu (you pick the protein) and a fixed $6.95 menu. Gone are the pineapple pieces which is replaced with miso soup. : ( This was my friend's order. He had the teriyaki salmon bento.

Close up of Teriyaki salmon - looks like the sauce was just brushed on it. Don't know if the salmon was actually marinated in it, not that it has to be...

This was my Bento - the Sesame Chicken. The server must not have been taking good notes because I ended up with white rice when I wanted red (it's red because of the achiote or annatto coloring). She ended up serving it on the side for me.

I liked my Sesame chicken - nice and crunchy, although I really shouldn't be eating a lot of fried foods. I'm not a big fan of miso soup. I miss having the choice of cucumber salad and macaroni salad. They made their mac salad island style, with fruit bits, just like how my mom makes it. Served also on the side was the finadene sauce, which is soy sauce, lemon and/or vinegar with green onions and chili. This was spooned on top of my rice. I also dipped my chicken in it. That was my salt quota for the whole week. In all, I was surprised with this visit. Maybe we caught the restaurant on a really dead day, but it's usually crowded during lunch. I was also disappointed because they didn't have any Spam. I ordered their Spam musubi (4 pieces for an appetizer) but they were out! How could an Islander place be out of Spam???

Asmara

After an appointment last week, Bert and I wanted to try this relatively new Eritrean restaurant on University. I had read about this post from Kirk's MMM-YOSO blog (again, I'm too lazy to do the hyperlinks...sorry!). If you are diligent enough to check it out and search it, you will see that Asmara was once Cay Nhan, a Vietnamese place. The address sounded familiar to me. Turns out that several weeks ago, my friend (Thai BBQ chicken post) wanted to go here, but we opted for the Thai chicken place instead. Well, if we did go, we would NOT have found Cay Nhan, since it's now Asmara. Anyways, I've been to Red Sea and Harar before, but never Asmara...

The restaurant in on University Avenue, just a few blocks from the 15 exit (head east).

It's pretty nice inside - real tablecloths on the tables (along with glass tops), cloth napkins...The lighting above the bar area is a holdover from the old restaurant (see pics in aforementioned foodblog), and the decor has been changed out from Chinese/Vietnamese to African themed paintings and curios.

There were many nice paintings in the restaurnt, this one was near our table...Asmara, named after the capitol of Eritrea, is a little more "upscale" (but not yuppyish upscale) than the other African (actually Ethiopian) restaurants. This is reflected not only in the nicer decor but in their prices, which are about $2 more for their combos.

Their imported beers were $3 each. Bert was going to get the Hakin, which was a dark beer, but he asked the server what beer he preferred. He said it was the Meta, which was a light beer, so Bert chose that instead.

For starters, we ordered two types of sambussas: lentil and beef ($2.25 for 2 pieces):

The lentil sambussas were a little dry and mealy. I didn't really like them.

The beef sambussas were more to our liking. There were little red flecks of pepper in there. What we really liked (but I kind of refrained from using a lot because I feared its inevitable spicy exit) was the hot sauce it was served with.

Bert ordered the Beef Combo, which are #'s 11- Regular Tibsi (cubed beef fried with onion, I wanted to say Rosemary, but I can't read my own notes! - and jalapeno pepper, #12 -

It's another kind of Tibsi, but the difference is that it's cooked with tomatoes and a berbere (a type of chili) sauce, and lastly #14 - another type of beef dish which was quite flavorful and spicy...The Regular Tibsi is on the right hand side. There wasn't a lot of flavor in it. It was quite plain and kind of boring. We liked the first two that you see on the left the best. The meat combo came with a salad and of course, was served on injera, the edible flat bread made of teff. This meat combo was $10.95. Now at Harar or Red Sea, it would have been $8.95 and they would have given you a choice of beef, chicken and/or lamb. Here you could choose beef or lamb.

Oops, when trying to delete spaces underneath this photo, I deleted one space too many and I am afraid of messing it up, therefore the text will go ABOVE this photo. This was my entree, the Vegetarian combo ($10.95 also), which, according to the menu, comes with four types of vegetables served with salad and injera. The vegetable combo consists of #'s 4, 5, 6, & 7. The #4 is Collard with spinach cooked with garlic, onion and chile. The #5 is Timtimo (at least that's what my notes say) - lentils with onion, #6 - Timtim Alicho - Lentils with Curry, and #7 - Alicha - Cabbage with carrots and potatoes, onions, garlic and turmeric. As you can see, there are 5 items, so I'm not sure what the extra item is called. In any case, it's all good! We ended up saving some of our meal for our daughter, who ended up really liking the "eating with your hands" experience.

Here's the injera, served on a square plate. Kind of looks sparse. But maybe they were going for a different type of presentation, rather than the injera shoved into a serving basket. We ate the injera from our plates, since it had the meat and vegetable juices soaked in it.

I thought the combo plates were pretty good. A good value (although higher than the other African places) because you get to try at least 3 meat or 4-5 vegetable items. I'm a sampler kind of person, so this worked out really well for me. The service was kind of slow. There was only one server, plus one cook in the back. There were about 4 men sitting in the bar area speaking in their native language, but English was interspered in their conversation as well. Our server was very nice and helpful whenever we asked questions about the menu. I would go here again to try a few other items on the menu...

Ono's

(Actually posting this on 8/12) A couple of weeks ago, I went out to lunch with one of my friends (her son is TC's good friend in school). This is my 3 or 4th post for Ono's. I'm too lazy right now to make links of my previous visits.

For starters, we had the Caterpillar roll, which was all right. Service, by the way, was pretty good. It wasn't too busy but it wasn't dead either. Our waitress was attentive but not overbearing.

Sorry for the quality of the photos. I had the mixed Tempura plate which had a few shrimp and vegetable pieces, along with a mixed spring green salad with ginger dressing and mandarin oranges, plus a scoop of rice. I noticed that the plates on which our food was served were nice and square, as opposed to narrow and rectangular. That was one of my pet peeves the last few times I had been here. Sure the food looks "pretty" on narrow plates, but it's a fkn bitch to eat food neatly on a narrow surface. The nice square format was much much better...especially with my friend's entree, which was...

----kalbi ribs with (what they call) "kimchi" salad and rice. I remember I got this back in December with Bert. The salad isn't really kimchi, from what I recall, but rather, the flavoring in the salad, but even though, it shouldn't truly be called a kimchee salad at all. I think they gave her about 3 short ribs. They were pretty meaty and kind of a lot for one plate. She couldn't finish it and I ended up having a small piece myself.

Thai BBQ Chicken & Gelato Vero Cafe

*Please bear with me...Normally I write my text ABOVE the photos, but something is messed up whenever I try to add a space above the photo in Edit mode. It erases the photos, but yet when I return to the post, all the photos are there again. Also, something pops us saying that I can't change screens with unsaved changes. Gah! I'll figure it out later, but in the meantime, get used to this...

My good friend (the one with whom I went to Eclipse back in May) met up for lunch in late July. I was so happy to be out of the house and eating at a restaurant for the first time in weeks. We decided to go to the Thai BBQ chicken place (next to Saffron) on India Street. Here is the menu (above).

I got the two Thigh combo, with Jasmine rice, Cambodian salad (it was just coleslaw with peanuts) and peanut sauce.My friend got the wing (plus part of the back) and breast combo.

Closeup of the salad with nuts.

Closeup of the juicy chicken skin...Oh yeahhh! We pretty much demolished our plates. Well, we did have some leftover rice,but the chicken was done for! I really liked the spices they use to season the chicken skin. The chicken parts were tender, but fully cooked through (no Salmonella here folks) and delicious! This was way better than regular rotisserie chicken! The peanut sauce was also great with the chicken!

By the way, the Thai Chicken BBQ place is not a sit down place. It's strictly a take out joint, but right next door is Saffron Chicken (same owner). I snagged a table in the patio for Saffron while my friend ordered our meals. For dessert, we walked a few steps down to Gelato Vera Caffe. I had a buy one get one free coupon burning a hole in my pocket (Woo hoo! I'm a cheapass!)

She had the coffee with the dark chocolate (I think that's what it was!)...This was a medium sized gelato by the way.

I chose the gianduja (hazelnut), which tasted awesome! For our next gelato outing, we plan to return to Pappalecco in Little Italy.