Mochilato

[Marathon posting session - 3 new ones]

Having seen Kirbie's post last week on Mochilato in Irvine, I was excited since we were going to be in the area. I told my husband, we HAVE to check this place out! Mochi and Gelato together! The same kind by Mikawaya in Little Tokyo too!

Too bad we didn't get this, the Mochilato Shaved Ice. Looks so good but we already had the mung bean ice dessert at Warung Pojok. We wanted to just get a few pieces of Mochilato and call it a night. We saw other people at nearby tables sharing big ass square bowls of these. It's worth it if you come in  large group, but if you're just a couple, like we were, it would have been overkill. Plus we didn't want to look like gluttonous pigs!

It's pretty clean inside. Very modern with romantic touches. Love the dark wooden tables and chairs. Seems like it would be more fun if you came here in large groups. There was a group of 6 six women next to us, all sharing a big bowl of the mochilato shaved ice with fresh fruits. It looked so pretty but they were going at it like moths to a flame!

This corner had all kinds of bridal gift ideas with bags, boxes and little Japanese treats (like French style cookies but with Japanese writing on the boxes). Kind of expensive though! The Asians here must make bank if they can swing these giveaways for a whole wedding reception.

Gelato!!!!

Mochilatos - mochis filled with gelato! A winning combination!

More mochi...if you look closely, you can see the names of the flavors. Blind yet?

Different sizes of containers on display on their counter. They should rename that "family" size one the "trough" instead. That's insane!

Our dessert for the night....

Bert's coffee drink. Aww, there's a heart on top of the foam!

We got pistachio and chocolate mint (the green one), as well as peach and chocolate hazelnut mochilatos:

The innards of our chocolate mint Mochilato. Eat these fast since they melt pretty quickly! My favorite was the chocolate hazelnut while Bert's was the pistachio.

Here's one half of their cute window display...there were artificial flowers nestled in these thin handblown glass globes dripping on branches...

Here's the other  half of their cute window display, fake birds in cages...

Hey! Someone carved a heart on our table:

Cute wallpaper

Other bloggers who posted on Mochilato include: Elmo, and Kirbie! Tomorrow, we go to the city of Snoop Dogg!!!

Warung Pojok

Last week, Bert and I  had a rare weekend together without TC, who was spending time with her cousins in the OC.  Our goal was to try a different cuisine each and every time we ate during out mini road trip. Last Friday night was a 'no meat' night (Lent). Not familiar with the area, I emailed Elmomonster from the blog Monster Munching for his seafood rec's a few days before. He was kind enough to reply and gave a few good ones but we ended up going here, Warung Pojok:

Check out these past posts on Warung Pojok here and article in the OC Weekly and Yelp reviews. It's in a strip mall in Garden Grove. The name "Warung" in Indonesian means "casual eatery"; "pojok" means "corner". Basically this was a "hole in the wall" but what a great hole in the wall it was!

When we got in there, the place was nearly packed. We were lucky to even get a table. There was a table of customers talking over our heads about their lives (travels to Indonesia, what they did in the service, etc). There were little kids running around. There was a lot of shouting going on. But it was cool.  We loved it. I'd rather have this than a deathly quiet place that will put me to sleep. Their online menu (quite helpful) can be found here; it changes daily!

More of their menu board:

Daily specials:

This photo was taken during a lull. It was actually crowded most of the time during our dinner there.

There was still food left in their steam trays...

Too bad we couldn't eat meat that night...Their beef rendang look really good!

Bert held down our table while I looked over the items and chatted with the lady behind the counter. She was happy to let me know which dishes were vegetarian and/or meatless. This was the two item combo ($5.50) with fried rice with egg. The two items were Ikan Asin (fried salted fish) in the front with Gule Ikan (catfish in curry sauce) in the back. This was for me, but Bert and I shared of course.

Plate 2 was Bert's. At 3 o'clock was the  some sort of Tofu dish with peppers and shrimp. The other item was Tempeh Goreng Cabe Ijo - which is stir fried tempeh in jalapeno chili.  I didn't particularly care for the tofu, but the tempeh wasn't too bad. The sauce, while spicy, had a sweet heat to it.

Close up 1 of the strir fried tempeh:

Close up of  the tofu with peppers and shrimp.

Close up of the catfish - gotta warn you, there are bones in here!!!! But it tasted pretty good and not muddy at all! You know how catfish can taste sometimes....

Close up of the salted dried fish. The woman couldn't name the type of fish this was. All I know was, there were a lot of bones and it was very dry, kind of like a fish jerky. And yes, it was very salty as hell!

I liked how the tables had colorful batik prints on them (underneath the plastic covering):

Oh yeah...fish bones!

They also sold chips in plastic ziplocks. This was the same kind I got at Indo Kitchen in Alhambra. I later found out that this was called "Emping" and made out of melinjo nuts. The man in Indo Kitchen last month didn't know the name of this in English. The woman here warned me that it was bitter, but I told her that I liked bitter!!!

This was the other type of chip we bought. By the way, each bag of chips was$1.00. This was your basic shrimp chip...Kind of like biting and munching on air. I liked the other one better - it was more thin and brittle and had that bitter taste that I love.

We ate the chips with this trio of sauces. From the top was the Indonesian version of bagoong (it was a fermented shrimp paste sauce), down at 5 o'clock was a bland tomato based sauce and at 7 o'clock was our favorite, Sambel Bajak (a sweet and spicy sauce). That last sauce was delicious. I could eat that with anything!

And even though we were planning to have dessert at this place in Irvine, we wanted to try an Indonesian dessert. THis was the Es Kacang Ijo - a mung bean drink on ice with coconut milk and palm sugar. It was kind of wierd for me to eat mung beans in a dessert since I normally think of monggo beans cooked with spinach, shrimp and pork. These mung beans were soft and sweetened by the palm sugar and the creamy coconut milk. The ice was a very nice touch and I can see why people like a lot of shaved ice desserts in the tropics.

Towards the end of our dinner, the woman who helped me earlier was sitting down at a table with some friends. Seems like everyone knew each other here. She asked us how we liked our food. She and I had a nice chat about how similarities with Indonesian and Filipino words. She mentioned that the ice desserts were like 'halo halo'.  I noted that one of their menu items had the word 'bihon' on it (it was a noodle dish), like our 'pancit bihon'.

Another woman said, "Sorry we Indonesians are so loud!" but we felt it was an unnecessary apology because we didn't think it was loud at all. I told her that Filipinos were the same way! Everyone there was pretty nice and friendly. I think we were one of the few non Indonesians there that night.

It was a pretty filling meal with a good price! You can't beat $5.50 for a two item combo. I don't think we could have polished off a three item combo! On to dessert!

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "V" is for Val Kilmer (as "Nick Rivers" in "Top Secret!")

Now who doesn't love YOUNG Val Kilmer back when he was a young 20-something? Here he is in his debut film role as teen idol Nick Rivers in the 1984 cult classic, "Top Secret!" (a mashup parody of Elvis and WWII films). Incidentally, Val Kilmer really sings all the songs in "Top Secret!", foreshadowing his role as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's, "The Doors":


From the Wikipedia entry on "Top Secret!"

"The film tells the story of Nick Rivers (Kilmer), an American pop singer (whose songs sound suspiciously like those of Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys and Little Richard), who goes to East Germany (but the film also parodies films set in Nazi Germany) to perform at a cultural festival. While there, he becomes involved in a resistance movement and helps the beautiful Hillary Flammond (Gutteridge) rescue her father (Gough), a brilliant scientist being held by the Germans and forced to build the deadly Polaris mine.



The film also features short performances by Omar Sharif as Agent Cedric, and Peter Cushing as a Swedish bookstore proprietor, in a scene filmed completely in reverse."

This movie was all kinds of hilarious! There was a funny scene with Hammer Horror films regular, the great British actor Peter Cushing (better known as the Grand Moff Tarkin for you Star Wars geeks) holding a magnifying glass to his eye. When he removes it, his eye really IS huge!!! Ha ha! I also loved how  everytime Nick Rivers and his love interest would make out, fire places would show up. It's the silly kind of movie you'd expect from the creators of "Airplane!" another cult classic.

Val Kilmer, what happened to you?

From the Ultrahot Iceman...to modern day Sasquatch!!!

And as a palate cleanser...

OMFG, here he is as Jim Morrison..."I am the Lizard King!!!"...."Mother!!!!! I want to......"

Only four more letters left..

Heaven Sent Desserts

So, after Asia Cafe, we headed over to North Park's Heaven Sent Desserts.

It was around 5'ish and pretty dead. I had the Passion Fruit iced tea while she had the Tahitian Citron tea.

Some of the desserts in the display case...

More desserts...

This is what I had, the Heaven Sent Chocolate Lux:

The Lux  has a chocolate almond orange cookie base with with layers of milk chocolate and dark chocolate mousse with a cherry in the center! Loved it, especially the dark chocolate shell and the cookie base! My dessert looked so lonely on a giant plate. On one of the corners, they sprinkled cocoa powder. It looked pretty sparse. Normally in the past, this was plated on a smaller rectangular or smaller square plate with two different sauces swirled into marbelized heart designs. Fail for the presentation.

My friend's Tiramisu (so pretty!):

Tiramisu cross section:

We ended up taking home our leftovers since we were all sugared out!

Asia Cafe for the umpteenth time!

A few days ago, I went to one of my favorite places on our "rotation", Asia Cafe. Actually, my friend and I were supposed to go to Sab e Lee 2 in Santee, but it was closed on Mondays. For some reason I thought it was only the Linda Vista location was that closed on Mondays. Kicking myself for not having called, we headed back down south to Chollas View.  Here's our iced coffees...exciting, eh!

This was the lettuce/herbs plate for the Nem Khao...

I'm sure almost all of my Asia Cafe posts have Nem Khao in them. I love it so much - it's crunchy from the fried rice and peanuts, sour from the pork sausage, and spicy with the herbs and lettuce...My friend ended liking this as well her dad who ate our leftovers later that night!

Since it was only two of us, we didn't order too many dishes. We were also saving room for dessert later...This was the Yum Asia, a "salad" with shrimp, squid, fish cake, thinly sliced cucumber, carrots and who knows what else. The dressing had lime juice and fish sauce and the whole thing was topped with crushed peanuts....

This next item was something I hadn't ordered in a while, the Seen Nam Toke, which is a cheap cut of beef marinated in lemon juice and fish sauce, then grilled until caramelized. The dipping sauce (infused with cilantro) was also quite good with the meat and the Nem Khao.

It was pretty dead at Asia Cafe when we went, just us two  and another table with two other girls. My dinner companion was a former student of mine (we are 10 years apart) and we hadn't seen each other in nearly two years. She recently moved back to San Diego after having lived and worked on the East Coast for nearly a decade. She is an awesome as a public speaker (spoken word/poetry, keynote speeches) and is truly someone who I feel will change the Filipino American community through her efforts at organizing and mobilizing youth.  I've known her for roughly 16 years and over this span of time and am proud to see how she's grown into this confident young lady.

So, the young guys working there, Johnny and Scotty (sons of the owners/cook) seemed amused (or maybe irritated) by our foul mouthed shit talking! We were pretty loud exchanging gossip and all!  But, hey, I like how it's really chill over here...No pretentiousness at all. I'll be back again really soon!