El Salvadoreno & Mille Feuille revisited

[Update - Mille Feuille closed and is now Chocolat Cremerie as of 2011]


[I'm finally posting this about a week later on 1/22]

Last weekend, we went back to El Salvadoreno but this time with two other families (these are the same friends we did holiday party rotations with). This time we'd be able to sample more dishes - that's the advantage of having more people when you go out to eat - more variety.

One of the husband's ordered the "Ensalada" drink which is pineapple juice with chopped fruit. The large size is $4 and the kid size is $2. The kid size was pretty big already.
Bert got the El Salvadorean soda which was super sweet:

We ordered 6 of the Pupusas Revueltas (the mixed one with pork, cheese, loroco, jalapeno, and squash) and a bunch of other stuff. However, before anything came, we were given the pickled cabbage/slaw called "curtido" along with two types of salsas. The lighter red one on the left was really weak and watery. Don't even bother - well, you could try it but it's fnot that great. The one of the right - now that shit had some kick to it. This is what you want to try!

Our pupusas - the regular ones are $2 but these were $2.25 because it had everything in it - still pretty reasonable, I say.

I really liked the crunchiness of the curtido and the spice of the sauce whiled melded quite well with the crispy, chewy pupusa which oozed cheese and pork and other ingredient...

One of the husband's got the Bistek Ranchero which came with rice, beans and a slice of avocado:

Bert got the Bistek Encebollada (Steak with onions):

One of the wives got an item from the breakfast menu - the Casamiento, which was black beans and rice mixed, chorizo and eggs, and plantains with crema. That was a huge plate of food.

She also ordered more sweet plantains with crema. I wasn't too fond of these because I don't like the soft mush texture of banana...but the kids liked them.

The other husband got the Salpicon de Res which came with rice beans, and avocado. The salpicon wasn't cold (which I thought it was supposed to be), the meat had chopped cilantro, radishes and lime juice in it.

Instead of getting an entree, I got a bunch of smaller items with the intent to share them (I did!). These are Pasteles de Res (ground beef with peas and potatoes). I liked the pastry shell, nice, crispy and fried.

The two kids who were with us both got this item from the childrens' menu. This was an overly fried ass piece of chicken with soggy ass fries. These sucked. I tried one of the fries. Awful. Our daughter TC ate a little bit of of everything - she mostly shared with Bert.

This was another item I got - the Baleada with Chorizo and Quesillas (El Salvadorean style cheese). I thought it would be small since there wasn't a sense of scale in the menu photo. I thought it would be like a small taco. WTF!I really liked the flour tortilla because it was handmade on the premises. This nearly covered the whole plate. Hmmm, I just realized I didn't post the picture of the other wife's food but it was what Bert had the first time we went here, the Carne Guisado (the beef stew!). I'm too lazy to post it, cut and paste and blah blah blah.

Here's the interior of that baleada:

After all that food we caravanned over to Hillcrest for dessert at Mille Feuille. Here it is - the site of the old old Gap on the corner of 5th and University in gay mecca, Hillcrest.

I love how clean and modern it looks inside, although you can'tg really tell from this picture. I'm so anal, I always have to get a photo of the menu!

Bert and one of the children got the Black Forest Truffle (Chocolate Sponge cake , Cabernet Panna Cotta, red velvet sponge, brandied cherries, bittersweet dark chocolate mousse, dark chocolate glaze). Note the descriptions are taken straight from the website.

The dessert of one of the husband's - The Jack O'Lantern (Dark chocolate and Grand Marnier sponge cake, layered with pumpkin mousse, with a dark chocolate glaze):

Two of the kids got the Dark Knight (Chocolate sponge cake, mousse, spray and glaze). This is what Bert got the last time (see older post):

The shop's namesake dessert, Mille Feuille (Flaky puff pastry layered with vanilla rum custard topped with chocolate & white fondant icing). I didn't try this because it seemed really pedestrian to me - puff pastry with custard. I'm sure it was good but I wanted something different.

My dessert - the Paradox (An almond dacquoise and hazelnut-praline feuilletine cookie layered with dark chocolate mousse & topped with a white chocolate vanilla bean glaze). I really loved this - hazelnut and dark chocolate is such a good combination, plus the bottom layer of the dessert was crunchy! It was like eating an upscale candy bar.

My friend's macarons - Hazelnut Praline and Tiramisu (I think):

French Press Coffee (my friend's husband holding the press and my other friend's husband in the background):

Bert's Coffee:

My iced Apple Pear Green Tea. You can see my macaron trio there - the Pistachio-Raspberry, the Chocolate, and the Hazelnut Praline!

My friend's hot tea (same flavor as mine):

What was fun was we had the kids sit in a separate table, away from us. Initially when we arrived, there wasn't enough space to seat all nine of us in the same area, but I had the idea of having the kids have their own private table. They loved it - they got to have fancy desserts, drink water from stemmed glasses and use a cloth napkin (instead of paper, ha ha). Can't wait to eat at both of these places again!

Ole Ole

[Update - Closed]

Before we went to the New Children's Museum downtown, we went to check out a new Spanish market that opened last month. It's a small place on Bonita Road in a tiny little strip mall. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any exterior shots of the place because the sun was in the way.I was curious to check it out to see if it compared with Pata Negra, the Spanish market that's right next to Costa Brava in PB. It's pretty small in there. There are a few shelves on the left side, a display table in the middle, more shelves on the right and a small cold case of meats and cheeses in the back.

There's that cold case, plus some pre-packaged paella and tortilla mixes. There were also canned items like octopus, squid, and tuna.
These were the shelves on the left (when you enter). There's olive oil, pickled olives, peppers, spices, and other canned items. Sorry for the crappy photos - I was trying to take them on the sly. I didn't see any cameras though.

One thing I liked was a wall at the back with explanations of the different food items they carry (sausages, cheeses, meats and signature dishes of Spain).

More of the shelves on the left. Look on the bottom - they had different sizes of cazuelas there. I bought two small ones and a medium sized one.

Here's a few items I picked up. We've never tried these sausages before.

Here's some Jamon Serrano:

T his was only $2.49 - you add four eggs and pour the canned stuff over the eggs, mix it and pour it into a skillet. I can make a Spanish tortilla without a mix, but I just wanted to try it.

This was a can of Spanish almonds that the guy gave us on the house. Those were his words. Maybe he was happy because I dropped a load there, having bought meat, cheese, mixes, and cazuelas.

Well, whatever the reason, that was pretty nice of him.I was running out of my smoked paprika, so I bought more. It's $2.49 at Pata Negra and $3.80 here, so it was more expensive. I bought the hot kind too - can't wait to use it. The smoked paprika tastes really good in my Gambas al Ajillo recipe.

The man who helped us turned out to be the owner's husband. His wife wasn't working that day. He was Mexican and said that they hope to carry more food items based on the community's deman and itnerest. They wanted to have a Spanish food store in the South Bay because there wasn't one and also because Spanish food is different than Mexican food. You can get Mexican food anywhere in Chula Vista (and San Diego for that matter), but there aren't a lot of places that specialize in Spanish food. They wanted to fill that niche. They're just starting out and hopefully their shop will be arranged in a more appealing way.

El Salvadoreno

Earlier this year we finally went to El Salvadoreno. I'd read so much about it on Kirk's blog, MMM-Yosoand the Food Ho's blog, The Pork Porn Pages, as well as reviews from yelp. I admit, this is not an area of town we really frequent, but I think that's about to change... We made the mistake of not Mapquesting the directions. I just though we'd get to it easily from the 805 and Imperial exit. Turns out that El Salvadoreno is closer to the 5 than the 805. We ended up having to cut past the cemeteries near 40th and 36th before finally ending up at our destination. It's actually faster to get there (from where we are) from the 94 to 28th.

Turns out this was the new location of the restaurant. It was originally quite small and located down the street. This restaurant was very clean and quite nice inside - wooden interiors, nice paintings and decor. The bathrooms were also nice and clean. Not like some places where you feel the need to roll up your pant legs so they don't touch the grime encrusted floors when you're sitting on the toilette. Oh wait, am I the only one who does that? Ha. Well, I didn't do that here. Roll my pant legs that is.

There are two seating areas. We sat on the right side of the restaurant which has a dividing wall. The left side of the restaurant ihas a bview of the kitchen where you can see the cooks (among them, little old ladies) make all the food.

My drink is on the left - it's the Passion Fruit drink ($2); the one on the right was TC's - the Ensalada, which is pineapple juice with chopped fruit (also $2). The waitress told us that it was a very popular drink so we ordered that.

The curtido- this is pickled cabbage and carrots and you eat it with your pupusas:

The salsas with the curtido:

We ordered two Pupusas. One with cheese and Loroco ($2) and one that was mixed ("Revuelta") - which had cheese, beans, jalapeno, pork, and loroco for $2.25! Wow, what a deal!

The tortillas which came with the meal. These were pretty thick, thicker than the Mexican style tortillas. I liked the texture - slightly crispy and chewy and warm!

The Carne Guisado which we all shared - This is basically beef stew with rice, beans and an avocado. The sauce was so good! I would order this again! The meat was so tender - it just fell apart when you touched it with your fork.

The Tajadas with Chicharrones - The tajadas, I assume, were the thick cut fried plantain chips that the nice juicy pork pieces were resting on. Loved the pork! Just look at it! Not eat it with your eyes!!! Ha Ha! Seriously, that was really delicious...

Service was pretty good - the waitress was attentive but not "hovery". I liked the music they played as well. By the time we left the restaurant, it was pretty packed with people. We are definitely coming back here!

In-n-Out Urge

Hey now! Get your minds out of the gutter! There's a new In-n-Out in town and it's in the Otay Ranch area. It's just a tad bit east of the Otay Ranch Town Center off of Winding Walk. There's a Vons there, an eyeglass place, an Oggi's, a bank and a few other small businesses. We went with one of our friends to check it out.
It's fairly new - having opened maybe within the past month I believe. I'd only eaten at two other In-n-Out's (La Mesa and Mission Valley). Eons ago in high school, this burger chain was popular but only because they had these bumper stickers "In-n-Out Burger" with the word "burger" on the second line of the sticker. A lot of guys would get the stickers in L.A. because at the time, there weren't any In-n-Out's in San Diego (not until the early 90's). It was "cool" to have one of those back then. One thing they would do to the sticker was to strategically cut off the "B" and the "r" in "burger". Yes. Hence the title of my post. Here's a photo of one of these infamous stickers (circa 1986) here. Horny teenager humor there. Cough. So, I'd never been inside an In-n-Out since we only did drive through. This one seemed pretty big. It was also packed! We were lucky to get a table while our kids got a two top table to themselves, which they really liked since they were separate from us grownups. This kind of reminded me of a 50's hamburger place, but not as awesome like Arnold's drive-in (where's Pat Morita? or Al del Vecchio? Yep Yep Yep Yep).

The menu was pretty basic too, which was good. You had burgers, fries and drinks. Not too much variation. Keeps the decisions down to a minimum, I say. My friend ordered two fries "animal style" which is with dressing, onions, and cheese. This was the first time I had "animal style" fries. I had some and thought it was good, but I don't think I could eat a whole basket of this. Not very healthy, eh. Plus, think of the lovely stuff it does to your digestive system. Don't forget the fat coating your arteries.

For the four adults, we ordered four burgers. The one in the top right corner is a "double double", which was for Bert. The other three are the regular hamburgers which come with lettuce, onion, tomato, and dressing. Wait, I made a mistake, The bottom two are cheeseburgers. The top left, which was mine was the regular burger with no cheese.

I thought my burger was pretty good, but I still think the Shake Shack in NYC kicks ass over these. The patty was nice and juicy and the lettuce and tomato were nice and cool, not wilted and unappetizing like at some other fast food places. The onion was a little too strong though. I didn't like having onion breath later on that day.

I'm not so big on fast food, but we just had to give it a try since it was new and in the area.

Happy New Year

Cheers! I hope everyone had a good holiday season and a fun New Year's Day. I have a backlog of posts but haven't had the time or energy to post them yet...Lots of food pix from holiday parties and various restaurant visits, which include Sab-e-Lee, Romesco's revisited, Harar and Eclipse. My time off really went by fast. Too fast. I have one more week until I start work again. It's been 9 months since I've been off work. Although I could have returned a lot earlier, I chose to take extra time off to de-stress, recover and spend more time with my family especially my daughter.

During the majority of this year, I've experienced A LOT of life changes. For those who don't know, due to my breast cancer diagnosis in late March, I took time off to get a mastectomy, endured four cycles of chemo, plus the ensuing after-effects (like whacked out tastebuds, losing my hair, & experiencing major fatigue) and the process of regaining my strength. Things are looking up. My energy level is pretty much back to normal. I'm going to miss going to the gym everyday in the morning. With going back to work, I'll be cutting back to about three times a week instead of everyday. Other good news is that my hair is growing back pretty thick. I ditched my wigs two months ago because I got sick of them. While I'm rocking the pixie cut and having fun with hair gel and pomade, I'm looking forward to growing my hair back out to my former rocker chick haircut and using my flat iron again.

During this time off, I re-evaluated my friendships and priorities in life. I resolve not to associate with people who talk out of their ass/make false promises. I hate it when people say things then never follow up on what they've said they'd do. Having experienced one of the lowest points of my life last year showed me the hard way just who really gives a shit about me. Sorry to sound petty, but that's how I felt. On a brighter note, I resolve to be more positive and to do things that make me happy like being with my daughter, my nephews, making jewelry and soaking up as much pop culture trivia than humanly possible.

I'm going to miss my "free time". I had so much of it too. During this nine month stretch of time, I read a lot of books and watched a bunch of cool movies. Some of the stuff I watched included the TV Britcom "Spaced", the Japanese movie and TV series "Trainman", Season 1 of "Gokusen", "The Tudors- Season 1", to name a few, along with MTV's "The Young Ones", and Seasons 1 & 2 of "The Tick". I got hooked on Stephenie Meyer's cracklicious "Twilight Series"(insert fangirl scream here, but not too much for "Breaking Dawn"), and the "Southern Vampire Mysteries" (Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series, upon which the HBO series "True Blood" is based), and read a lot of graphic novels courtesy of Superman. I also experimented with various recipes and ate at a lot of different restaurants with my friends. My new favorites are Latin Chef, Pho Hiep Grill and Sab-e-Lee.

I feel like I need to make the most out of this dwindling week, but I don't want to cram too much in....

P.S.
Aaaagh! Season 2 of the Tudors was just released! Here's my reason to watch "The Tudors"...I only have two words...

Henry

Cavill

(see photo below)

Huminah huminah!

Harar & Eclipse

Earlier today, Bert, TC and I were out and about. After doing an errand in the Mission Valley area, we debated where to eat lunch. Sab e Lee again? No, it was closed on Mondays. How about Asia Cafe? Love their Nem Khao...Nah, had it before. What about Ethiopian food? We'd had it before, but we'd never brought our daughter to have it in person. She's only had leftovers but always enjoyed the aspect of eating with her hands. So it was settled. We went to Harar on El Cajon Blvd. I almost passed it by. They repainted the exterior a light shade of sage green. Here's my old posts on Harar here .

Looks like they are either currently remodeling, or this is the final product. Hadn't been here since earlier this summer. Lots of the original wall scrolls were gone and replaced with bigger painting.

The door to the kitchen, plus the beer fridge and empty wine rack:

The seating area in the back patio. I'm sure it would be nice to eat out there in warmer weather.

We started off with the beef (but instead were served lentil) Sambussas ($1.50 each).

The hot sauce was served upon my request and yes, it was really hot, which we liked. Unfortunately, we would feel its aftereffects later. Ha. Sambussa innards:

Our plan was to order two combos and just share them between us three. The meat combo and the vegetarian combo was served "Family Style" on one huge platter lined with Injera, the unleavened bread made of teff that is served with every meal in Ethiopia. Clockwise starting from the top yellowish portion (sorry I don't have the names of the dishes in Ethiopian) - that is Cabbage and Potatoes, Chicken in spicy sauce, Lamb, Beef (this was so good - I could have just eaten that alone), Yellow Split Peas, Lentils, Spinach, and Carrots and String Beans. In the middle was a ho hum green salad.

We were given a basket of injera. TC really enjoyed tearing up her injera and using it to scoop up the meat and vegetables. She actually liked the lamb too. I wasn't into the lamb, but really liked the spinach, chicken sauce and the cabbage and potato mixtures. I really liked the sauce for the chicken - hot hot hot!

We didn't have any leftovers to take home this time, yet we were still able to save some room for dessert. We drove a few blocks up the same street and headed to Eclipse Chocolat. Here's a more recent post here and an older post here. I hadn't been here since the summer with one of my friends. I also had to buy a late Christmas gift for another friend of mine (the one I visited in NYC this past summer)...Here's their display case of handmade chocolate bars, chocolate drink mixes, candy, and truffles:

The front counter. The owner was there too, but he was off to the side working on a laptop.We chose two cupcakes and as I type this, I realize that they're the same exact cupcakes my friend and I had earlier this year. The one on the left is the Salted Caramel with Lavender Sea Salt. The one on the right is the Rosemary Mint with Cocoa Nibs.

I really liked the Rosemary Mint cupcakes. It was so rich and thick! The cocoa nib added a touch of bitterness which I liked. Mint and Rosemary is also an unusual combination but it works.

Here's a better picture (I used flash that time) of that Rosemary Mint cupcake. Just look at that thick layer of ganache! I'm getting cavities just looking at it!I think the cupcakes were a little too rich for TC. For Bert and I though, we digging it. He really liked the Salted Caramel cupcakes. I would probably like it more if there weren't lavender, but again, the flavor combination works. It's a bit floral (duh) and pairs well with the salt and caramel filling...

Mmmm, caramel filling. After the photo was taken, this was devoured in record time! Kidding, we tried to savor it but it didn't last.

Next time we go, we'll try their Seasonal Dessert Platters ($12 for 4 desserts - what a deal!).