Parsian Market

[Update - Closed as of 2011]

This was one fun summer for me - trying all these places with Bert. This is Parsian Market which we love. We'd been here before in the past (see my original post here). This time we brought TC. If you haven't eaten here before, do it now! Parsian Market is on Convoy and it's a former McD's (you can tell by the shape of the restaurant). The shot below was taken while sitting at their outside patio facing Convoy. Bert got the Chicken Wrap. His gripe was that the lavash was kind of crumbly so when he took bites out of it, it would crack and the filling would spill out...If it wasn't so crumbly, he would have enjoyed it more. It seemed eating a salad wrap...It was chock full of vegetables (which is a good thing).
TC and I shared a combo - this was the beef Kebabs with rice and a chargrilled tomato. They put a wrapped pat of butter on the rice, which was already melted when we got it. That basmati rice is so good, but there's so much! They should have put two pats of butter!!!! The combo was also served with a small side salad of Persian cucumbers with lettuce and tomato.
I know I've eaten this before but I love it so much that I can't help but order it again! I never order chicken whenever I go out to eat...The beef kebabs had so much flavor. TC and I had a lot of fun wrapping bits of the lavash over small pieces of the kebab mixed with rice!!! Next time we go here (and there will definitely be a next time), I'll try something different like the walnut/vegetable stew or something. That sounded intriguing to me. Oh, all right! Who the fk am I kidding? I'm going to order the beef kebab combo!!!

Sang Dao revisited

As I sorted through my photos last night, I realized, "Damn, I sure went out to eat a lot in July!" So these next few posts are a product of that frenzy to try new places during vacation. I already posted on the new Sang Dao earlier this month. Well, I just had to go again.

This time, I broughtDivalicious, my husband Bert and our daughter TC with us. More people = more food = more pix to drool over. This is a Divalicious' Lao iced tea. If you've never had it this way before, you will either love it or hate it. It's iced tea with half and half, but the kicker is this....lemon syrup! And they put a lot! Like a whole fkg lot! I swear, she must have dumped 1/4th of that sugar in her glass! I only had a little sip and it was super sour!!!For her second iced tea, she asked the server to go easy on the lemon. I guess he thought he did, but it was still super tart!
We were lucky to find a space in that crammed and tiny parking lot. Good luck trying to find parking here! We were also lucky to get a table because that place was packed during the dinner hour! I liked the vibe here. Everyone looked so happy, enjoying their food!
Our drinks - TC's coconut juice with young coconut meat, Diva's (sour) iced tea, and Bert's regular iced coffee (that's half and half on the top, ready to be mixed)...I just had water. Any tea or coffee for me after 12 noon would keep me wired...
Our rice in the very formal looking vessel (they have these in the Lao/Thai market next to Asia Cafe)- the sticky rice was in the bamboo basket.
We ordered a hell of a lot of food that night! The first thing we ordered and received were the fried spring rolls. These were not so good. Pretty boring. Just fried egg roll stuff with sauce.
It was filled with glass noodles, wood ear mushroom and what I remember as pork...
All the dishes were shared family style. This was pad thai....
This was the marinated beef, served with lettuce, herbs and a dark fish sauce.
Here's another shot of that meat - loved this!
Because TC had just gotten her "expanders" (phase 1 of getting braces involves these expanders that are put in the mouth to gently move the teeth and make room for the incoming permanent teeth), her mouth, teeth and gums were sore. We ordered what we thought was a soup (thinking it would be "soupy" and therefore liquidy (gosh, that sounds gross - "liquidy" - reminds me of diarrhea)...well, this was ground beef soup with flat wide rice noodles. There was hardly any liquid...The server told us it was supposed to be this way. We ended up ordering another soup item for TC. Poor kid - she couldn't bite or chew the meat...she ate mostly rice that night.
This was the spicy catfish. I didn't really eat this since I'm not a big catfish fan. I think I only had a tiny piece. I wanted to eat that beef instead! Bert thought it was pretty spicy too.
And because TORC and I loved our fried tilapia (the pla tod) the first time we went there, I ordered it again! This time, it came nekkid (no unnecessary cilantro fluff here!). Once again, I attacked the fish and got some of that nice fatty belly! Everyone at the table really liked the fish too! So, I'm glad I ordered it again! Head on!
Here is soup #2 (not the number on the menu, but referring to the 2nd soup that we got for TC) which was recommended by the waiter. It was a ground pork soup with thick rice noodles and garnished with green onions, cilantro and fried garlic. This was kind of better than the first (soupier), but it was still bland. TC spooned this over her rice to soften it up.
Lastly, we got dessert here - the mango with sticky rice. It was covered with toasted sesame seed...Normally I don't even get dessert at Asian places...but this time, we got it. And although you can hardly see it, the mangos, which were covered with coconut cream, are sitting on top of the sweet sticky rice. Two good things together! Mmmm!
Leftovers were boxed and taken home! We plan to go here again!!! With the exception of the Not Soup dish and the fried spring rolls, we loved almost everything we ordered! Sang Dao rules!

Pizzicato & Extraordinary Desserts (Hillcrest location)

Recently, I received a belated bday gift from the very generous HotFudge. She sent me a bunch of nice things and a few were these magazines with a bunch of buy one get one free-type coupons. Some of my upcoming posts will include all the places that we went to using coupons.

This place was one of them...Actually, The Other Rock Chick (TORC) and I wanted to go to Papa Nanou (a new restaurant by Philip Beltran of Vagabond, La Vache, etc), but the damn place wasn't even open yet. That kind of sucked because there was a coupon which made it seem like it was open. According to their website, Papa Nanou is set to open in Fall 2009. Fall? It's still summer....maybe the coupon was printed ahead of time and they thought it would already be open...Anyways, earlier last month, TORC and I had a dinner date; she chose Pizzicato Gourmet Pizza on Fifth Ave in Banker's Hill. It's across the street from where Laurel used to be, but it's now Cucina Urbana (which we'll have to check out another time). Check out yelp reviews here. Our drinks - her orange flavored Pelligrino and my apple juice (cute bottle!). Pretty fucking exciting, ain't it? I thought so. The decor was sparse and modern...Hardly anyone there when we went. The ladies next to our booth had a dog with them. I guess you can bring dogs in here. It wasn't a service dog either.
We hemmed and hawwed at their overhead menu so we just took a laminated menu to our booth. Turns out that our original choice, the seafood pizza was going to be a no go. They were out of shrimp. The chef came out to apologize to us. The waiter gave us a 25% coupon good for our next visit as well! Wow, all that because they ran out of shrimp. But come to think of it, yeah, man, that kind of sucked because we had our stomachs set for that! But...we picked a couple of things..
The first was a salad with candied walnuts and pears. The balsamic dressing and bleu cheese crumbles were on the side (per my request). The lettuce was butter lettuce I believe! We both liked this salad a lot! There's something about combing fruit and nuts in salad that's very appealing.
So, instead of the seafood pizza, we got the roasted peppers with mushrooms; it was sprinkled with a chiffonade of basil and the cheese, I believe was goat cheese. The server checked up on us periodically. He was apologetic about the lack of the shrimp. Because we wanted dessert, we traveled just a short distance to the original location of Extraordinary Desserts (yelp reviews here), which is also on Fifth, but just up the hill. Unfortunately a few years ago, a crazed gunman shot and killed a customer here. The murderer fled and evaded police but was caught later that year somewhere in Northern California because he had a wierd looking camper shell on this truck that someone recognized. Meanwhile, I'd kind of avoided going here. My former co-worker's intern was actually there the night that the shooting happened. It just seemed unbelievable that such a tragedy could occur in broad daylight. Anyhow, this was my first time back here after several years. This used to be the place to go to to celebrate major occasions (Valentine's Day, anniversary, my friends took me here back in '94 when I found out that I got hired by the district)...
It was so empty! This was a first, but then again, we were there before the dinner rush. It was probably around 6 pm'ish...We ended up eating outside...
Here's TORC and her dessert...
It was called (and this is totally lifted from the placard in the display case), "The Caribe - Chocolate mousse infused with mangos and bananas, layered between dark chocolate cakes, bathed in passion fruit juice". Well, that sounded pretty damn good! Look how thick that ganache is! And how rich the cake looks! And of course, the beautiful fruit purees....gorgeous!
And here is proof that there was fruit filling....see it oozing out like pus from a gangrenous sore! Well, that's not exactly the nicest description isn't it...But hey, this was quite decadent! Of course, she didn't finish her dessert (and neither did I). A few bites of this stuff is sugar overkill!
My favorite dessert from here, the Passionfruit Ricotta Torte was M.I.A., so here I am with this other offering instead... (and because I'm too lazy to describe it myself, I'm just copying it from the placard again!) - Here it is folks, "The Gianduia - Myers Rum laced chocolate cake layers are married with hazelnut buttercream, chocolate mousse and boysenberry preserves. Crushed pralines cover this most popular dessert". Wow, it sounds like this dessert is the prom queen of desserts or something. And "married"???? (Long Duk Dong - "She got married?") Ha ha!
So, we each had a few bites of our desserts and had them boxed up to take home so our significant others could devour our leftovers! The only thing that kind of sucked about eating outside was that this guy sat next to us (well, fairly close by) when he could have chosen other seats! He was by himself too and worked on his damn laptop. It was fkg deserted and he chose a table next to us! Well, that didn't stop us from talking shit about anything and everything! I hope he enjoyed our conversation! Unfortunately, it apparently didn't bother him enough to get up and leave.

The new Sang Dao & Extraordinary Desserts (Little Italy location)

[original outing was Thursday, July 2nd]

After finding out from Kirk's blog that Sang Dao had relocated, I just had to check it out... (Kirk's post here , Ed from Yuma's post here, and another one Citybeat's Candice Woo's here):

The new Sang Dao is on 54th and El Cajon...the parking here sucks. You'd be lucky to find a space here!
The interior at the new place is a big improvement from the old location which was in the hood (Logan & National Ave). The tables are now topped with glass and have beautiful plaid textiles serving as tablecloths underneath.
The restaurant isn't huge, but it's big enough to hold large parties. They also sell ready made snacks off to the side and also near the cash register. They have bags of fried taro chips, thinly sliced and fried pig ears, Lao sausage, assorted rice crackers, and some other stuff I only saw briefly. I'll have to buy some of those items next time. The service here was pretty good. Very attentive.
TORC (The Other Rock Chick) had the Chrysanthemum Tea (canned---you can get this flavor as well as tons of others like lychee, dragonfruit, pineapple, etc, at any Asian market BTW)...
We ordered some sticky rice ($2) - this was a huge portion, more than we expected. I was remembering Sab e Lee's "individually" portioned sizes of sticky rice.
We ordered the Pad Lao. It was basically like Pad Thai, except without peanuts and the sauce was different. Sorry for the crappy explanation. There were the thick flat rice noodles, bean sprouts, green onions, chicken, and egg in there. It really wasn't anything special other than we wanted something specifically Lao and something we haven't had before. The elderly man who helped us with the menu was so charming, by the way. He seemed amused that we couldn't decide what we wanted.
This was the Pla Tod - the fried fish. According to the guy (the older man), we could get it as either cat fish or tilapia, so we chose tilapia. Here it is in all of its fried glory and garnished with cilantro. I love eating the fried fish skin, especially the fatty pieces under the belly! Down to the lower left of the photo is the accompanying sauce for the fish...
I also love the fact that the head comes on!!! Just like home! My parents would love this dish!
After our awesome lunch at Sang Dao, we headed downtown to the outskirts of Little Italy on Union Street. This is the second location of Extraordinary Desserts (the first is in uptown on 5th, near Hillcrest). See Yelp reviews here. After circling the block several times trying to find this place, we finally spotted it but had to go around the block again to try to find parking. It was a weekday before 5 pm so the meters and parking Nazis were in full force. That's what I hate about going downtown, parking in metered spaces and feeling pressured because I'm on "the clock".
This was much more expansive, brighter, and slicker than the uptown location, which is crammed into a tiny cottage. This was a huge warehouse with a gorgeous display case of the dessert offerings. Beyond the display cases was the seating area...
More of the counter...
Some sort of rustic tart (forgot what type of fruit fillingthis was):
The bar area...
Some of the seating area was "bar height":
Click to enlarge menu (hopefully it's clear enough). Not only are there desserts here, there are also appetizers and light lunch entrees (sandwiches and such):
TORC had a cappuccino...(cool square coffee pot!):
Here she is again with her dessert, the Lemon Creme Brulee:
More of that dessert - so pretty!
Here's sweaty old me with my dessert - the Passion Fruit Tort.
Man, what a work of art - love what they did with the fruit purees on the plate! It looked too nice to mess up, but yeah, I mangled this! The tart shell was nice and firm. It didn't crumble with the passion fruit filling which was topped with a variety of berries...I ended up eating about half of this.
No spray paint this time. Back to my old censor boxes! This is one of my fave new shirts. It was only $10 at H & M and features the album cover of AC/DC's1979 classic, "Highway to Hell"! Yes, to have Angus Young's scowling visage whilst holding his devil's tail (actually the tail is cut off but you can see the whole image on the real album cover) on a t-shirt is a dream come true!

Love that cheesehole patteron that exterior wall! It's so very Morris Lapidus! We'll have to go here again for lunch...