Dave & Buster's

One of my friends (who's completely ROBSESSED) wanted to celebrate her birthday a little early. She chose Dave & Busters, which is like a Chuck E. Cheese for adults; it's located under the freeway (805 & 8) in Mission Valley. By the way, if you click that D & B's link, you will hear some annoying music, so maybe you shouldn't click on it after all. I think she chose it because it had games and stuff for the kids. Let me tell you, it was a long ass wait for a Saturday night - we waited more than one hour to get seated. Plus, it was crowded and noisy as hell in there. I hate crowds and I can't stand the types that frequent this sort of establishment. Sorry folks, but it's not my thing. Click here for the reviews from Yelp.
The menu:

Burgers:

The appetizer was nachos with hot cheese dip and two mini sides of guacamole and red salsa. The salsa was pretty bad - it tasted like Pace Picante sauce, which it probably was, or some sort of horrid facsimile. I avoided the red salsa. Everyone was ravenous, so we attacked the chips. Okay, I attacked the chips.

My friend (one of the other mom's) ordered the steak with peppercorns (you can't see it in this photo) with a birds nest looking thing of thinly sliced and fried onions. It was also served with mashed potatoes with herbs.

My friend (the birthday girl) ordered the Chicken cavatappi with pesto. I think that's what this was but I don't remember. I'm posting this nearly one week later so my memory's gone plus I didn't take notes. I figured, "Hell, it's Dave & Buster's. It can't be that complicated that I need to take notes on their food!".

I ordered two things. This was the first item - Green salad with candied pecans, apple slices. raspberry vinaigrette (not shown - it was one the side in a little ramekin) and blue cheese. I actually ordered this without the offending blue cheese, so this salad was replaced after taking the photo and realizing the damn cheese was in there. I wanted to eat something healthy tonight.

TC and one of the other kids ordered this - Fettucine alfredo with breaded chicken. Of course, it was way too much for a small kid to eat. We took more than 2/3's of it home. There's no way a kid can polish that off, unless that kid is a sumo wrestler in training.

This entree belongs to one of the other husbands. These are buffalo sliders. Buffalo style chicken with fries...

I don't remember whose food this was but this is perhaps breaded chicken? Or Fish? Wait, maybe this belonged to the birthday girl's husband.

Bert's entree - I think this is some sort of mashed potatoes with blackened salmon and green (and yellow) string beans:

One of the kids' food - These look like Chicken strips with fries:

These were my California Bar Burgers - Four mini sliders (cooked medium - too pink for me actually) with fries:

My friend's "birthday" dessert - some sort of chocolate cake covered with whipped cream:

As you can see, the food was basic bar type/American food. Nothing spectacular or ground breaking. Luckily, we were seated in a separate room with a big movie screen. It was much quieter since we were not in the main dining areas where the noise level was high. There was a baseball game on the movie screen but no one seemed to be paying attention. I was just happy we were not seated outside. We would have been shouting to hear ourselves speak. Despite the food being mediocre, I still had a good time chatting with the moms; the kids had a blast playing games and spending their "tickets" on trinkets that totally weren't worth the cost. I don't think I would ever go here again. Ever. I enjoyed the company but not the atmosphere or food.

1st Guest Post...

This is the first guest post to my blog, supplied by my bro, who has bestowed upon himself the illustrious moniker of "Dee Schnuts". A couple of weekends ago, DN met Bert and TC for lunch at Pho Anh, the new Vietnamese place in the Southland Plaza strip mall in south San Diego. For photos of the place, check my previous posts here and here :

My bro only sent me a short blurb for this first post. He'll be adding more North County posts to this blog for me. He works in the Rancho Bernardo area so he goes out to eat a lot with his co-workers.

At Pho Anh, DN ordered the Beef Stew with French bread:

"Other places make it better. This was tasteless and bland. The meat is supposed to be soft, high pressure cooked, then marinated and stewed. It was hard. At least the french bread was fresh. A small portion for $5.95. Definitely not their specialty."

Yeah, it's kind of short but he knows the next time to take a photo of the menu, the exterior, the interior of the place, and if possible, cross sections of the food (if it can be sliced).

La Finca d'Adobe

(this post is being written nearly one week later)...After doing pre-reg at the middle school, the co-workers decided to go to this Mexican restaurant, La Finca D'Adobe on Bonita Road. This is by the 7-11, on Bonita and Frisbie. It used to be an Italian place, Palumbo's, which closed about a year or year and a half ago. Prior to being Palumbo's for about a decade or so, it was Brendory's, a Cajun place that I never had the chance to eat at (bad grammar, I know).
This was their lunch special menu. As you can see by the prices, it's kind of high (or is it because I'm cheap?)...

The ambience is rustic Mexican furniture and decoration:

Blurry menu photo:

More menu items. Click photo for larger view:

Last time I was here last year, they had just added a new room addition. The waitress gave us chips, red salsa (which wasn't really hot or anything) and pickled carrots.

I really like their plates here - handpainted Mexican style. It was nice NOT to see a logo on it, like Frida's at the Otay Ranch mall. Since there were 7 of us, I took a lot of photos. One of my co-workers got the Finca Quesadilla with Chicken (below):

Another one got the Shrimp Ceviche with tostada and crema:

Here's the lunch special fish taco plate with rice and beans:

Here's one of the items I ordered, the Tacos Gobernador (Shrimp with Cheese):

Interior view of that tasty taco ("I'm hungry...let's go get a taco" - Harvey Keitel in "Reservoir Dogs"). This was pretty damn good - You can't go wrong with seafood and cheese and peppers!

One co-worker (along with an intern) got the carne asada burrito. Man, this burrito was $7.99. You could get the same thing at Roberto's for less than half the price - and it probably tastes better too.

Cross section of the carne asada burrito:

Oops - just realized this is another photo of the shrimp and cheese taco. Oh well, here it is again for your enjoyment:

The other item I ordered was the Ceviche Mixto - This was shrimp, fish and octopus ceviche with avocado slices on top of a tostada. I couldn't finish this - it was really good, but the portion was a lot. Plus, I had the taco earlier and the chips. Gotta lay off those chips. I never really ordered ceviche before and now I think to myself, "What have I been missing?". It tasted light and fresh and I liked the tiny octopus pieces. Nice and chewy but not rubbery.

I don't know about the men's bathrooms, but wow! Check this out - this is the women's bathroom. The rustic Mexican decor extends into this room as well. The mirrors are tin with embossed designs and brightly painted enamel flowers. The tile inlays were also quite pretty. And look at those sinks:

Each sink had a different painted design...It's little touches like these that I like in a restaurant. Would I go here again? Maybe not. I'd rather eat at a hole in the wall Mexican place. But for the ambience, decor, friendly service, and decent food, yes - I would go here again.

Gotta hand it to my co-workers...they were good sports and put up with me taking pics of their food. They already think I'm wierd and this adds fuel to the fire! Ha ha.

Ba Ren Revisited

[Update - Closed in early 2012]

Last night, me and my EGF's (educator GF's) went to Ba Ren. I had been there last week with Kirk and Jack. I wanted to go there again! I didn't think it would be that soon. Our first choice of dinner outing was Masarap, which was an upscale Filipino restaurant located in the Gaslamp. Unfortunately, within one month of it's opening at the advent of this year, Masarap has already fallen victim to hard times. We were bummed because we wanted to try this new place.

So...that gave me an excuse to pick Ba Ren, if only to eat those Hot Pepper Prawns again! My GF's were teasing me, saying they wanted nicknames. Well, here goes...These are temporary. If they don't like it, they can let me know and I can rechristen them something else. I'm so unoriginal with names. Far left - K (the Knitter), D (the Diva), the ORC (no, I'm not calling her that creature from Lord of the Rings. ORC means "Other Rocker Chick"), and then there's me, CC. Ber put these lovely ovals on our mugs. Don't you just love them? We've been doing these dinners (and occasionally lunches) on and off for the past decade. It's been that long!!! #156 - Crispy rice crust with fresh calamari. There were these rectangular rice krispy looking cakes lining the bottom of the dish. There's scored squid, a leafy green veg (don't know, maybe it was spinach?), jack straw mushrooms, and another type of mushroom. I was about to take a picture of the dish, then the waiter poured the broth quicker than a dress comes off on prom night. The resulting sound was the same. Sizzle. Ssssss....Okay, that's a really bad analogy. So this is the dish after the broth was poured. Now the krispy rice cakes are soggy. The soup, by the way, was delicious. I liked the calamari (chewy) and the bamboo shoots...

The return of #221 - Hot Pepper Prawns. See my previous post so I don' have to describe this again. Just scroll down if you wish. Anyways, I ordered another one of these just for Bert. There weren't leftover last week. I just ate a cold piece earlier this morning and even though it had no chili pieces on it, that still numbed my lips and tongue! Good stuff going in. But it got me on the way out too. TMI? Just warning you, but it's really really addicting, I'm telling you!

And the return of #121 - Double Cooked Fish with Chili Sauce. Diva really liked this alot. She kept coming back to this. So did I. We finished off this plate before the end of the night.

And yes, another familiar entree -#122 -Boiled Fish Fillet in Hot Sauce. You know, by itself, the name alone sounds rather unappetizing to me. I wouldn't have ordered this if I saw it on the menu. But since MMM-Yoso ordered this for everyone last week, I was pleasantly surprised by how good the fish tasted. Despite the scary redness, this dish wasn't as hot as, say, the Prawns dish. This was also a winner with the GF's. By the way, there are vegetables at the bottom (cabbage). The sauce tastes good the next day on rice.

Close up of the "Boiled Fish Fillet":

We ordered a vegetable dish - Baby Bok Choy. Not sure how much it was. It wasn't on the menu. I was afraid my GF's wouldn't like this place since the food was spicy and unfamiliar. Luckily, they are all open minded and adventurous. These next few dishes were kind of on the safe side. So yeah, baby bok choy which is pretty tasty and harmless:

#183 - Fried Spare Ribs with Roasted Salt Pepper Corn (peppercorn is spelled separately in their menu, by the way). Diva ordered this. The pieces were bitesize which was nice. Some pieces had bone in them; some more fatty than others. The flavor was unique (to me at least). It had a dry, roasted but sweet quality to them.

Our 6 course meal came out to about $20 per person. Not bad, eh?

Okay, I just remembered some differences between this meal and last week's. Maybe because we weren't Chinese (we were one of the few non Chinese there that night), we weren't given that beans dessert. You know what they gave us? Fortune cookies! I didn't realize it until later because something seemed missing. In fact before we had our dinner, K mentioned that she was interested in the beans dessert, but not sure about it. Well, we were never even given the chance to try it. That kind of sucked.

Also, in my first Ba Ren post, Kirk had some cold dishes picked out from this little metal cart near the front of the restaurant. Remember, the bamboo shoots, peanuts, thin sliced beef? There's other choices too...Anyway, no one told us if we could get any so I assumed maybe it was just a lunch item. No....I saw other Chinese folks going up there and getting plates full of stuff. I don't know if it cost extra or not. They seemed to know what they were doing. I need some tips Mmm-yoso! Here were are messing around after dinner.

We'll be going here again!!!! Bert needs to go with me next time too. I saw an item on the menu, #214 - Fried Fresh Scallops with Hot Peppers. That's what I want!

After this incendiary mouth and face melting meal, we headed over to Michael's so the K could pick up yarn for her projects. While on our way there, we were playing "Name that Tune" on D's ipod. This is our new game now. Wow, D had a lot of ballads, pop songs, and Philippine singers. It was fun trying to guess who was who. I was stumped for a lot of them since those aren't my genres. One thing I gotta say, she had some interesting song choices. I liked her Bee Gees "Nights on Broadway" because that is the "theme song" for the SNL skit starring Jimmy Fallon for "The Barry Gibb Talk Show"! "I'm Barry Gibb! Do you know what that me-he-heans?"

After Michaels, our plan was to head over to Hillcrest for dessert and coffee/tea at Mille Feuille.

Heaven Sent Desserts

I'm kinda posting this "backwards", so that the flow from Ba Ren to Heaven Sent Desserts is chronological. Here's the yelp reviews here: Well, we were originally going to go to Mille Feuille, but let's face it...Hillcrest on a Saturday night? Nada parking! Nein! So, we headed east to the corner of University and 30th for Heaven Sent Desserts instead. Here are a few offerings from the dessert showcase. This looked interesting, but I didn't want to order it because I don't like orangey flavored desserts. Well, maybe if it had Grand Marnier in it.

This is what I ended up ordering. The souffle was kind of heavy. Not what I expected. The pink heart was fondant, I believe.

Mmmm...Bailey's...

No flash, hence the bad quality of this photo. There was an old Charlie Chaplin silent playing on the wall:

We sat by this wall - we were lucky to find a table. There was a long line and the other side was filled to capacity.

Your order number was a makeshift bookmark which was placed in a real book. This was the one they gave me, one by Beatrix Potter with the unfortunately titled "The Tale of Mrs. TITtlemouse":

Ooh, are those ghost orbs?

I found this written in my book, "I Love Twilight the Book! Go Twilight 2008!".

This was in ORC's book. Poor Judy C.
My dessert - the Fallen in Love Chocolate Souffle. Maybe I had a different idea of a souffle, but I thought it would taste light and airy. Instead, this was dense and heavy. There were three blackberries adoring one side and a pink fondant heart perched atop some buttercream frosting. There was also a chocolate and fruit center. I ended up eating only half since I was a bit full from Ba Ren.

Closeup of my dessert. Look closer. Do you see my "contribution" to the Tittlemouse book? Yes, that is a deformed hand doing the devil's horn sign. I refrained from drawing Eddie, Iron Maiden's corpse mascot. Heavy Metal bands have the best fonts for their logos. Just look at AC/DC, Judas Priest, Dokken (okay, they're not really metal), Def Leppard (all right, and neither are these guys, but you get the picture! Cool band logos!), and so on...

My lovely friend, who I shall call the ORC (other rocker chick) got the Strawberry Fraise:

Our drinks - I had the passionfruit iced tea and the other two drinks are coffee (not sure what kind) and tea. The tea bag (ha ha) was tied onto a stick which rested on top of the cup so it could steep. Nifty. Edit - One was called "Queen's Dream" which was Earl Grey tea steeped in milk, accenty by vanilla and crowned by lemon (this was copied from chalkboard, I didn't make this up). The coffee was a decaf.My other friend, who I shall name the Knitter, order the Red Velvet Vixen. Rawwwrrr. That is some red frosting there. Red Dye #5 action. This is the pointy side:

Here's the other side with coconut on the edges. I tasted both ORC and K's cakes and liked them both. The strawberry one tasted more fresh and light to me. The red frosting blob on top of the Vixen cake was a bit of overkill in my opinion.

There was another companion here who did not order dessert. She'd given up all carbs for Lent. Man, what did I give up? Nothing. Bad me. Ha ha. But good on her since she stuck to her plan. No dessert for her. Saw this on our table...A dessert ode to U2. How about one from Slayer? Megadeth? Anyone? Anyone?

Walking back to the car. We parked in the new parking structure - $5 - it beat having to search for a most likely nonexistent street parking space. So, on our way back to me place (to look at my etchings), we listened to ORC's ipod for another round of "Name that Tune". This was so much fun. Well, for me it was. Maybe my carmates got sick of my voice shouting out song titles and other trivial blather.

Some songs I got a lot just by hearing the first note(s)/chord(s), like "In the Dark" by Billy Squier, "Freezeframe" by the J. Geils Band (but that's easy because they shout "Freezeframe!"), and "Hey Nineteen" by Steely Dan. ORC if you're reading this, I made a mistake (gasp)- I said the album was "AJA" but it's actually "Gaucho". How could I have missed that? By the way, rock geek/snob that I am, mentioned the song titles, album of origination, and if know, the year of release as well as any other versions by other groups who did the song. Example, the brilliant cover of Love's "Alone Again, Or" by the Chris Perez Band (he was the widower of slain Tejano singer, Selena) was a remake of Love's original song, which was also remade later by punk greats, the Damned. See, all that shit floats in my head with nowhere to go, except in games like these. Even my own daughter knows that Rush is a power trio from Canada. She's familiar with their classic rock instrumental "YYZ" because of "Guitar Hero". Thank you Guitar Hero!!! She also knows that YYZ is the airport code for Toronto. While D's ipod selection leaned more towards ballads and pop, ORC's had mambo, Rock en Espanol, a good mix of 80's new wave and rock.

I don't have an ipod (yet--maybe I'll cross over to the Dark Side!) - I would go nutz trying to put all my music in there. We learned about each others' tastes in music. Tom Jones. Scrambled Eggs (that's a Philippine band). Barry Manilow. Gary V. Kelly Clarkson. Madonna. Regine Velasquez. ABC. The Romantics. Lone Justice. Missing Persons. Lea Salonga. The Eagles. Alicia Bridges. The Manhattan Transfer. and so on. Man, that makes my future ipod playlist sound boring - AC/DC, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Queen, Boston, Van Halen.

Next month, I turn the big FKG 4-0. I gotta do it up big with these girls. Any of you readers have suggestions where we should go for dinner?