BURGERMEISTER

Burgermeister is a small local chain of burger shops in SF, that's actually pretty popular. And I have eaten here before. However, it was last year right after we'd completed that AIDS walk, and I was so tired that I was in no mood to take pictures of food and write about them later.

However, on a rare visit to SF, we were in the Haight and decided to head to the Burgermeister in Cole Valley since Tom had never been there before. The thing with Burgermeister is that they give you a lot of options to customize your own burger. The bad thing is that they're pretty expensive - the most basic burger starts at $9. You can expect to spend around $12-$15 for a burger.

So on this visit, I went with a California burger- turkey patty with cheddar and avocados. I also like putting BBQ sauce on it. And it came with a side of very delicious curly fries.

Meanwhile, Tom went all out and got his burger topped with chili and cheddar. He got a side of their sweet potato fries, which I also like. And he did enjoy his burger (though he didn't think it was the best burger he'd ever had).

I admit that I do like going to Burgermeister for all the customization and options. And they do use great, fresh ingredients, and the make the fries fresh, so they're always super hot and crispy. However, the price is a deterrant for me. A meal here always costs around slightly under $20, and we're talking about burgers, fries and a soda. So really, it's more of a yearly thing for me - good thing it's located in SF.

CUGINIS, SOLANO AVE.

We're not exactly new residents to the Bay Area - we have lived here for almost 2 years now. We have our favorite places that we like to eat at, but what I like is that there are still a lot of restaurants for us to explore. So on one random evening when I totally didn't feel like cooking, we decided to check out Cugini on Solano Ave. Now, we'd driven or walked by this place a number of times (it's down the street from Kitty's vet) and what appealed to me is that they had a wood burning oven.

So to start off with, I had a salad - just a simple mixed green salad. I thought it was fresh and pretty tasty. Plus it wasn't too expensive.

Meanwhile, I think I got a pasta for my entree, but now I don't remember what it was and apparently I didn't take photos of it. So given that I've forgotten it, I can conclude that it was fine, but not memorable.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered a pizza.

I did try a slice of his pizza. But again, it was fine, and not that memorable.

I can see why people would eat here. It's moderately price, the food is fine and if you live nearby it's really convenient to just walk here. I don't think we'd go out of our way to eat here again - there are plenty of other options that we enjoy more on Solano Ave., but I truly have no strong opinions about this place - it's just fine.

TARA'S ORGANIC ICE CREAM

Wow. This is shocking, but it looks like I may actually be finishing up the posts that I had uploaded in April. And, I still have a ton of photos to upload and post about, especially from our recent trip to Seattle. It'll just have to wait until after we move into our new house this weekend. But onto the post.

A few months ago (actually, right after we got engaged as I recall), we had brunch and ice cream with a big group of our friends. We started off with brunch at the Thai Temple, and afterwards we headed down to Tara's Organic Ice Cream. I had heard about Tara's before, but none of us had ever tried it. Turns out it's just a few blocks from Wood Tavern.

So when we walked in, the place was totally empty, with only one employee to help us. I think she was pretty surprised when the giant group of us all walked in together and started staring at the case:

The case was set up like a gelato case (but of course, they were serving ice cream).

There were some interesting flavors, but I'm a traditionalist when it comes to dessert, especially if I'm trying a new place. I went with chocolate, in a sesame seed waffle cone.

What I really liked was that sesame seed cone. The ice cream was pretty good, not as intensely chocolatey as I normally like, but tasty, but that cone was really the best part. It was almost like those waffle cookies that you can get at Japanese grocery stores.

Here's Tom's allspice ice cream. He liked it, though I was not a fan.

Overall we had a fun experience here. I wouldn't say it's worth going out there just for ice cream (it's not like Sketch), but if I'm in the neighborhood and don't want to pay for dessert at Wood Tavern, I certainly wouldn't mind stopping by here for a quick cone.

BOSTON: DAY 2

Part of the reason why you're not going to see a lot of food places on this recent trip to Boston is that we went to a lot of our old favorites that I blogged about when I lived in Boston - India Quality, Clear Flour Bakery, Shabu Zen, etc. But I did manage to try a couple of new places. First up, the Natural Bean Coffee Company.

As Leah and I wandered down Newbury Street in the pouring rain, we spotted this new coffee place and decided to check it out. (Uhm, did I mention the large sign outside offering free coffee? And did I mention the pouring rain?) We stepped into this basement space to find a very hip, modern coffee shop. And their whole thing is to have organic, natural coffee, and compostable cups, and stuff like that. We both ordered free coffees and took them to the tiny seating area in the back to enjoy it.

The seating area only holds 3 tables, but it's quiet and was a nice place to take a break from the rain. Of course, all the compostable utensils, the bins to separate compost, recycling and trash - they're all things we see on a routine basis in the Bay Area. But I guess it's new to Boston, and if it encourages other businesses to do the same thing, I think that'd be great.

My second new food experience took place later that night. It seems that a Bon Chon Chicken has opened in Boston. Or rather, they're selling Bon Chon chicken at a lounge in Brighton. For those of you who don't know, Bon Chon Chicken is a Korean fried chicken chain with locations in NY. I'd heard of their chicken before, but never tried it. Of course, my friends had already tried it and were raving about it. So despite having stuffed ourselves on shabu, they insisted on order a take out order to chicken just so we could try it.

We ended up taking the chicken over to the Super 88 food court, cause there was seating there. The packaging was quite fancy:

And here's the chicken. It really was pretty good. Crunchy, sweet, a littly spicy. I definitely saw the appeal. And I liked the little tub on pickled daikon that it came with. I think I ate more of that than the chicken.

So we had additional good eating experiences in Boston and I look forward to having more Bon Chon chicken in the future.

BOSTON: DAY 1

Ok, so you all know that I'm engaged. And this is the meal that I had prior to being proposed to. Now, this wasn't the meal that we were supposed to have. I was supposed to have flown into Boston on a red eye to land early Sunday morning. And I made reservations at Craigie on Main - it's a restaurant that I never made it to while living in Boston, and with it's relocation to Central Square, I really had no reason not to go. Except my flight got cancelled. So I didn't land until 8:30pm on Sunday, so we didn't have dinner at Craigie on Main. Instead, we went back to the hotel we were stay at (the Hotel Marlowe in Lechmere) and went to the hotel's restaurant, which happens to be Bambara.

When I was living in Boston, Bambara had just opened and it was a pretty popular spot. But I never went. On the evening we went in Boston, it was pretty late, and the restaurant was fairly empty. All I really wanted was a quick bite before going to bed, and this was more than I really wanted to spend on dinner, but oh well, I was tired and didn't care.

So first we got some rolls with butter:

Then, I got some mini lobster rolls (hey, I was in Boston. I had to eat lobster at least once!) Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of them, but there were 3 mini lobster rolls on a plate, served on toasted brioche buns. They were really good. So good that I ate all of them and forgot to share one with Tom.

For my entree I got a seafood risotto with aspargus and some nice big prawns on top.

It was very good, but kinda heavy and full of butter. I didn't end up finishing the whole thing. The other thing I thought was really good were the fries (they come with Tom's steak frites).

These were well cooked, crispy and they had a nice touch of fresh rosemary. I like them a lot.

Service was uneven, though. It was a big, empty restaurant with not a lot of staff, so when we brought the wrong bill, Tom had to get up and find someone to get the right one. (we would've gladly paid the wrong bill, it was 1/3 of what our bill was). Overall we had a nice dinner there. It was on the expensive side, but I wouldn't mind eating there again, as long as someone else is paying.

SHAN DONG RESTAURANT, OAKLAND

Tom and I still don't have Oakland Chinatown totally figured out. We haven't had the best meals there and aren't quite sure where to go. Plus, everyone speaks Cantonese, which means mu Mandarin is pretty useless there. Luckily, we decided to meet up with our friends who've spent plenty of time there, and they took us to one of their favorite spots, the Shan Dong Restaurant.

Now, this is one of the random restaurants off a main street in Oakland Chinatown that you'll never go into unless someone takes you. When we arrived, it was pretty full, but we were able to grab a table. So this place is known for it's noodles and dumplings, and that's exactly what we ordered. You can even get homemade noodles for $1 more, but my friend said it's pretty much the same, and not worth spend the extra $1.

So here's what we got. This is the sesame noodle.

It's made with really nice fresh noodles, a sesame sauce, chilis and sauteed veggies. It's actually quite tasty (I'm kinda craving it now). Plus, you can get it with pork if you want. We also got a scallion pancake:

Which was pretty good. And finally, I got a plate of dumplings:

It's really nice that they even offered an option for chicken dumplings. I don't know if I've actually seen that in another restaurant. And they were pretty good. The skins were kinda thick, but the filling was pretty tasty. Overall our lunch there was quite good, and I think we didn't spend too much money there. And the best thing is now I know a restaurant to eat at when I'm hungry and in Chinatown.

PORTLAND: DAY 3

Our third day in Portland was a casual day for us to just wander the city and check things out in the downtown area. We started off with breakfast at the edge of the Pearl district at a place called the Byways Cafe.

It's a pretty normal looking diner, but apparently, it's very popular with the locals on the weekends. Luckily, it was a Monday morning, so the restaurant was pretty empty when we arrived.

We grabbed a booth, looked over the menus and checked out the funny collectibles in the glass cases that lined the walls. Pretty soon our food arrived. Tom got the sunrise special: One egg, two strips of thick-cut bacon and three fluffy buttermilk pancakes served with pure maple syrup. (actually, he got blue corn pancakes instead of buttermilk, cause that's what they're known for). Here's a photo:

I must say the blue corn pancakes were pretty tasty. And the portion was huge. Pretty good for $8.75. Meanwhile, I got a much smaller breakfast, just a basic breakfast with two large farm fresh eggs served your way with home-fried red potatoes and toast and I got it with a chicken sausage.

The eggs were well cooked, the potatoes were tasty and for $8, it was a pretty good deal for breakfast.

After stuffing ourselves, we wandered about the city, made a second trip to Voodoo Donuts and finally headed home. It's really a cute town - I could imagine myself living there if I had to, and I would have plenty of places to eat. Now if only it didn't rain so much....

PORTLAND: DAY 2

Our second day in Portland was another rainy day. Luckily, it didn't rain as steadily as our previous day, and it did eventually let up. We started our day with a breakfast at Brail's a local favorite diner, run by a Korean family (funny that our favorite diner at home is also run by Koreans.)

This place has your pretty average breakfast foods, but some with a twist. For example, below my breakfast looks like a regular omlette, but it's actually filled with chicken teriyaki. And it was yummy (so were those hash browns, look how nice and golden they are). My friends ordered spicy pork omlettes (I don't remember what Tom got).

Breakfast also came with a biscuit on the side. Now normally, I love biscuits, but this one was just a bit too undercooked for my taste. Overall, I really liked this place. If I lived in Eugene, I'd totally be a regular.

After breakfast, we wandered around a park, and then my friend Jess insisted on taking me to Sweet Life - a dessert place in Eugene.

This place had cases full of pastries, and because it's Eugene, there were a lot of vegan, dairy free, egg free, flour free, etc etc type options.

I just got a slice of chocolate cake, which I shared with Tom.

It was fine. But more importantly, how can Eugene have a dessert bar, and there's still not one in the East Bay??

Afterwards, we headed back in to Portland and spent the afternoon walking around the Portland Zoo. After a few ours, we were finally hungry enough to head out to dinner and this time, we checked out the eastern part of Portland. At first I had wanted to visit a well regarded Thai restaurant, but when we went and figured out it was closed on Sunday, we headed to my backup restaurant called the Screen Door. Basically, they serve Southern cuisine using local, organic ingredients. Even though we showed up pretty early, the place was already packed when we arrived.

I really liked the setting, lots of light woods, and big windows. The menu itself is pretty small, but the portions are not. We started off with two appetizers. The first was okra:

Now, I'm not a huge fan of okra, (Tom ordered these) but doesn't frying make everything better? Plus, these had a born meal batter and came with a spicy mayo type sauce. They were pretty good.

More to my liking were the hushpuppies:

These were quite tasty, though kinda dense, and I knew I had a good amount of food coming, so I only had one. So for my dinner, I picked a meal composed of three sides. Here you see mac and cheese, coleslaw and a cauliflower gratin and it came with corn bread (hey, at least it was all vegetarian!)
Now, that mac and cheese was pretty amazing. Actually, I really enjoyed all my dishes. The only thing is that it was all so heavy. I barely made a dent in the mac and cheese before I was stuffed.

Meanwhile, Tom got Jess' fiancee both ordered brisket:

Tom said it was really good, since it just fell apart when he cut into it (just like good brisket is supposed to). At this point in the meal, we were all stuffed, but I just have to order dessert when I go to restaurants like this. So I got the peanut butter pie for us all to share:

As you can see, there's a chocolate cookie crust, peanut mousse stuff and unsweetened whipped cream. It was really rich and delicious. I just couldn't eat more than a few bites.

We really did have better meals on our second day in Oregon. I'm actually a big fan of the Swing Door and hope they open an outpost here in the East Bay.

PORTLAND DAY 1:

The beginning of our crazy month really started with our trip to Portland. (not that we had planned it that way) The trip was planned as a casual trip - neither of us had ever been to Oregon, and I wanted to visit my good friend, Jess, and meet her fiancee. And more importantly, tickets on Alaska Airlines were super cheap.

So we left on the first flight out from Oakland (aka the cheapest flight) and landed in Portland super early in the morning. Now, my friend Jess actually lives in Eugene, which is 2 hours from Portland, so she wasn't able to pick us up from the airport and since I knew we have a couple of hours to burn while we were waiting for her, I planned some places to visit while waiting to meet up with her.

It was raining when we arrived, so it was nice to duck into Pearl Bakery, a well known spot located in the Pearl District of Portland. The space is huge - probably a converted warehouse, like many things in the Pearl District, with 20 ft ceilings. Though most of the space was taken up by the production area, there was a small seating section in front, filled with locals. We were able to grab a table for two, and ordered a few pastries and coffee for breakfast. Here's the line of locals waiting to order:

Here are two of the things we ordered. Tom got the plain croissant, I got the apricot danish.

Then I got a chocolate croissant and Tom get a donut type pastry thingy.

Overall, the pastries were pretty good. The croissants were nice and flaky, though I like mine to be cooked darker, so they're even flakier and crunchy.

After our breakfast, we headed over to Powell's Books where we spent an hour hanging out and waiting for my friend to meet us. We she finally showed, we checked out some chocolate shops together and then visited the Portland Saturday Market - a mix of outdoor crafts and food booths. Though it was raining, there were still quite a few people out. Here's a row of food booths:

It took a while to decide on what to eat, and we all ended up ordering from the same Philly cheesesteak booth. (Maybe I was persuaded by their display food).

Here's my chicken cheesesteak with ketchup on top. It wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten. The chicken had been precooked, so the cheese was just added on and heated until the cheese melted. However, I was hungry, so I ate in anyway. (We later learned that the "good" food booths were in another section of the market.)

Allright, so of course, since we were in Portland (and we were close by) we made our first of two trips to Voodoo Donuts. Below is a combination of photos from the two trips that we made (I didn't want to write up two different posts). First, we start off with the line outside of the donut shop. And yes, it was raining at the time.

It took about half an hour to get through the line and up to the front counter, but we had fun being entertained by an aging Elvis, in full Elvis regalia, singing Heartbreak Hotel.

When you finally make it indoors, you find a tiny, cramped space. This photo is from our second visit, which was on a weekday afternoon, so there were a lot less people there:

You definitely feel the pressure to order fast, with everyone waiting behind you. I got Tom the maple bacon bar, while I got the No Name - a donut with chocolate, rice krispies, striped with peanut butter. Here's Tom's maple bacon bar:

He thought it was just ok. I think he thought the maple part was overly sweet. Meanwhile, I also had a lukewarm reaction to my No Name. I thought it'd be coming with cocoa krispies, not regular krispies and they were a little soggy, so it was just eh. (The Old Dirty Bastard, which I had a few days later was much much better, though).

And here's a photo of the half dozen donuts my friend, Jess, bought. Notice the pink one - it's bubblegum with a piece of bubble gum stuck to it.

After the donuts, we did the two hour drive to Eugene where my friend actually lives. There we were able to rest and play with her pets before eventually heading out for dinner.

We initially tried to go to a well known Southern restaurant, but it was packed and had a long wait. Instead we headed to a place called Beppe and Gianni's, a popular local Italian restaurant located in a converted Victorian house. This place was also filled with people, but we got a table within twenty minutes.

I would characterize this place as the average Italian American restaurant, except dressed up a little nicer. I apologize for the pictures in advance, the place was pretty dark, and I didn't want my flash going off. We started off with their famous appetizer of blue cheese with roasted garlic served with toast:

I thought the garlic was well roasted, and it wasn't too bad.

I then started with a Caesar salad, which was pretty average, and quite over dressed:

And for my entree I just got something simple - spaghetti with red sauce: The spaghetti ended up being pretty over cooked, so it was kinda mushy, and the sauce was fine. However, we were in Eugene, OR, I wasn't expecting spectacular food. And so our first bites were decent enough, just nothing stellar.

A TRIP TO THE MISSION

So like my businesses, the company I work for has seen a slow down due to the economy. This meant that for a few weeks, I was only working 4 days a week (and I had it good). However, I also sought to take advantage of my 3 day weekends, and on a very sunny Tuesday, I headed over to the Mission to join some friends for Mexican food.

Now, I have been to the Mission before, but not since we had moved to the Bay Area. It's kind of a funny thing, to go from our neighborhood in El Cerrito and take the BART 40 minutes to a part of San Francisco that is so different from where we live - it's almost like visiting another country.

Once I met up with my friends, we headed over to El Farolito for lunch. There are a lot of Mexican restaurants to choose from in the Mission - El Farolito just happened to be the one my friends liked. And there are several locations in the Mission. We ended up at one a little farther from the BART station, but it was much bigger. The inside wasn't anything special - we're talking picnic tables and plastic benches, but there were a lot of people inside.

Since I had never been here, I decided to order a couple of different things to try. What I didn't realize was that I'd end up waaaayyy over ordering. First we all got a basket of chips and we got to pick different types of salsa to go with it.

And here's my meal. So on the left there are two chicken tacos and on the right, there's a chicken tostada. See, I could've just ordered either the tacos or the tostadas and been totally fine ordering just one.

However, both were very tasty. I think I liked the tacos more than the tostada just because the tostada was loaded down with too many toppings. The tacos were packed with yummy grilled chicken, and were more simple, but equally messy. I'd imagine that if we had Mexican food like this anywhere near us, we'd be going once a week.

After we finished lunch, we checked ou a new ice cream place just a few doors down called Humphry Slocombe (yes, it's quite a name).

This place makes its ice cream from scratch in small batches, and they change the flavors pretty frequently. They're known for crazy flavors like fois gras, and my friend ordered a beet hibiscus sorbet (which she liked a lot)

However, when it comes to dessert and ice cream, I'm pretty traditional, so I went for their most conservative flavors - a cup with Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee and Chocolate.
I found the ice cream to be well made and tasty. However, it's not the best ice cream I've had since we've been out here - I still like Bi-Rite and Sketch more.

I had a great time in the Mission, and I just need to get my lazy butt to go out there more often. I definitely have to take Tom, though, to prove that there really is good Mexican food in the Bay Area.

BRUNCH AT THE THAI TEMPLE IN BERKELEY

There's a local brunch here in the East Bay that's well known - it's at the Thai Temple in Berkeley and it takes place every Sunday. I'd heard rumors of it, but had never been, so one Sunday, we finally went with our friend Brian. It's kinda confusing if you've never been before and haven't read up on it before hand, but luckily, I'd done so, and Brian had also been there before. Basically, there are food booths and tables set up on a concrete patio adjacent to the Thai temple. It's actually pretty busy and crowded, so it's a good idea to show up early. The day we went it was raining, so I think there were less people than usual.

The first thing you have to do when you arrive is get in line to trade cash for tokens. I think there might be some rule about ppl handling cash, so they use tokens instead. 1 token = $1 and all the food is priced in terms of tokens. Don't worry, if you get too many tokens you can trade them in and get your money back. Then you can look around and check out all the stations to decide what you wanna eat. After I did some scoping, I settled on getting a rice plate with 2 toppings - yellow chicken curry and a chicken leg. I think this cost 6 tokens. :

The food here is decent. It's not super cheap by any means, but it's pretty tasty. And the money goes to a good cause. The other nice thing is that there's a lot of variety, so you can try new things. Here's Tom's plate. He also got 2 choices with pork and pad thai.

I also got a box of veggie spring rolls and in this photo, you can see a box with mango sticky rice. I think both were 5 tokens. I liked the spring rolls and on a later trip I had the mango sticky rice, which was also really good:
And here's a plate of coconut desserts that Brian got. One's fried, the other's steamed. I liked the fried one more, but it's really only good if it's piping hot.

We've actually already been back once since our first visit. It's a great place to meet up with friends, just as long as you can find seat for everyone. And like I said, it's pretty decently priced and an opportunity to eat good food for a good cause.

TOM'S BIRTHDAY DINNER

Ok. I realize I haven't blogged in nearly 2 months. And the fact that I'm blogging about Tom's birthday dinner, which took place in early March, just goes to prove how long it's been. However, let's recap what's happened in the last 2 months : visited Portland, visited Boston, got engaged, bought a house and are currently in escrow. (Did I mention that getting engaged and buying a house happened in the same two week span?) So to say that we've gone through some big, life changing events would be accurate.

However, I'm spending a lot of time at work these days (until I can hire a new employee) so I've got a bit more time to blog. So back to the post. For Tom's birthday, I took him to a surprise birthday dinner at a shabu restaurant in Berkeley called Zabu Zabu. It's sort of in this hidden location on University, but turns out it's actually pretty popular, especially among the university crowd.

We haven't been to a shabu restaurant since moving to this coast, so I didn't really know what to expect. But now I know that it's pretty much like shabu in Boston, except that it costs way more. So Zabu Zabu is actually known for it's all you can eat shabu, and they have all these different options. The only problem is, if one person orders all you can eat, everyone else has to, which is kinda crappy since I'm the most useless person when it come to all you can eat. But we decided to go with the all you can eat appetizers and all you can eat shabu (you can also get all you can sushi).

First, you get your usual set of sauces:

With the all you can eat, you can pretty much order any variety of meats - pork, chicken, beef or lamb. Of course, I went with chicken and here's the little bowl of veggies that it comes with:

Then there were the appetizers. You actually get a choice of like 12 appetizers, and again, it's unlimited. Here's the fried chicken (it was ok)

And here's an order of seaweed salad. We also got mussels, calamari and I don't remember what else. They were all pretty good.

And our all you can eat meal also came with dessert - my favorite - green tea ice cream. Overall, the food here was pretty good. I still still think the price is pretty high - the cheapest all you can eat is $25 for shabu only, and if you don't want all you can eat, it's like $18, compared with $12 in Boston. However, I'd go back for a special occasion. Otherwise, I'll just make shabu at home, like my mommy does.

QUITO, DAY 11, THE LAST DAY

Ok everyone. It's the one you've all been waiting for... the cuy post! But first, it was our last day in Ecuador. Our flight wasn't until the afternoon, so we were able to squeeze in some shopping, and more importantly, some dining, before our flight departed. Now one thing that I haven't blogged about yet is breakfast. Breakfast in Ecuador is pretty much like breakfast in the U.S. - you know, eggs, omlettes, fruit, toast, cheese - that kind of stuff. So I didn't really document any of it since it wasn't too exciting.

However, one thing I did enjoy was the lavish spread that we had every morning at our hotel in Quito. (which was twice). At the Hilton Colon, they have a lot of business travelers and airline personnel staying with them. And every morning for breakfast, they put out this huge buffet in the cafe. It has lots of stations. For example, here's the cereal/yogurt bar.

Here you can pick cereal or yogurt and top it with lots of different things like fruit, yogurt, etc. And there were a ton of fresh juices. By the way, all the fresh juices we had in Ecuador were amazing - it was just fruit, blended with water, so it was never too sweet and just tasted great.

Then there's the fruit area:

It's filled with lots of fresh, locally grown fruit. Including that granadilla that I got on the first day.

And there's the pastry/bread area with baskets filled with all different types of fresh pastries. I liked the mini croissants the most.

I've left out photos of the make your own omlette bar and the hot food stations, but here's a photo of my plate on the last day. As you can see, I was pretty moderate.

We had a little time before our flight in the afternoon, so we spent it shopping and squeezing in our last meal at Mama Clorinda in La Mariscal. I chose Mama Clorinda because it specializes in the foods of the Ecuadorian highlands, and more importantly, it served cuy. So for those of you who don't know, cuy (aka guinea pig) is eaten as a delicacy in Ecuador. It's not all that common, and much more prominent in the highlands. And it's not like everyone eats it - one of our tour guides went on and on about how much she loved it, while the other mentioned how much she dislike it. But it was something that both Tom and Cathy wanted to try. We had ordered our cuy ahead of time because our tour guide had told us that it took an hour to prepare, and we were on a pretty tight schedule.

Here's the dining room at Mama Clorinda. We were having an early lunch, so it was pretty much empty inside, but as you can see, it's very brightly colored and sunny:Since we had ordered the cuy in advance, they had it ready for us when we arrived. Ben and I ordered some more normal foods for our lunch, while Cathy and Tom shared the cuy. They're actually kinda expensive - each one costs $18.
This is what it looks like when it comes out - still pretty much intact. And it turns out that they actually fried the thing (rather than roasting it, which is what I had expected). Tom and Cathy both dug in. Here's Tom eating a leg:And here's another of him eating the head (you can make out the ears and eyes):
Overall, they thought it was pretty good. To be honest, it didn't have much meat on it - mainly skin and bones. And Cathy thought that some of the meat tasted fishy (though I personally think it was the feed that they give it). Ben also tried it and they all agreed that it was something that they'd eat again.

Meanwhile, I had ordered a roast chicken lunch plate:This wasn't so great, because the chicken ended up being fried, rather than roasted. And it was pretty dry and tough. Plus the French fries just weren't very good. But we were here for the cuy, not for the other foods.

We had a really great trip to the Galapagos - I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for an adventure filled vacation and to finish off this last post about our trip, I'll leave you with a photo of the Galapagos mascot, the land tortoise:

GALAPAGOS AND QUITO , DAY 10

Our last day in the Galapagos was spent doing the reverse of what we'd done on the first day - taking the flight from Baltra back to Quito. We took the first flight out of the day, so when we landed in Quito, it was the middle of the afternoon. We hadn't really eaten lunch, so after doing a visit to the local craftsmarket (just a couple of blocks from our hotel), Tom and I decided to leave early, head back to the hotel and eat local junk food.

Well ok, I wouldn't count my bag of Ruffles as local junk food. But Tom had a bag of chincharrones:

He deemed these much better than the ones that we have in the U.S., stating that they literally melt in the mouth. He'd also gotten himself of chips made from plantians:

I'm not a big plantain fan, and these were covered in a sweet coating, so I'd say it was just ok. (Yes, I liked my sour cream and onion Ruffles more).

After our little break, we headed out for a brief city tour of old town, where the colonial Spaniards had settled. There are lots of churches, plazas and colonial buildings in the area and after walking around for a bit, we had our last dinner for the trip at Cafe Plaza Grande in the Hotel Plaza Grande.

The restuarant is located in an old historic building that was bought and renovated by Swissotel and now houses several restaurants. The cool thing is that it overlooks the main square in Old Town - the Plaza Independencia:The restaurant serves local Ecuadorian delicacies, but it's in a very formal setting - by far the most formal place that we had visited the whole trip. But it was a nice change from flip flops, mosquitoes and sand.

The first thing that that give you is bowls of crisply fried plantains in like a flower arrangement:
along with three dipping sauces:There was peanut, sesame and something spicy that I don't remember. But I liked the spicy one.

As for the menu, it's basically a prix fixe menu, and you get several choices for appetizer, entree and dessert. For my appetizer, I got this potato cheese soup served along with local avocado:Ok. To be honest, my tummy wasn't feeling so great the last couple of days in Ecuador (I blame that chicken stick I ate on the beach in Isabella), so I didn't really have much of an appetite. The soup was pretty good, but I didn't eat most of it.

For Tom's appetizer, he got a really pretty ceviche:served with the ubiquitos popcorn and toasted corn:
Even though it was quite pretty, he thought it was just pretty good. He like the ceviche we had at Las Redes more.

For my entree, I ordered fish:It was locally caught, well prepared and very pretty. But again, my stomach just wasn't into it - I mainly ate the veggies.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered chicken:And it was fine. I tried some of it. Well cooked and well seasoned, but nothing extraordinary.

And lastly, dessert. Apparently they like dramatic things at this restaurant, because the ice cream was served over a bowl of dry ice:I'll admit, it was pretty cool, and you could make it continue misting just by adding more water to the dry ice.

Overall, we had a really pleasant dinner. I mean, the place certainly is one of those places where you'd see foreign tourists dining with wealtheir Ecuadorians. And for me and Tom, we'd certainly prefer eating this type of food in a local joint. But it was still fun to be a bit pampered and surrounded by that type of elegance. I just wish my stomach had been feeling better so I could've enjoyed the meal more. (But that should teach me about eating street food on a beach).

GALAPAGOS, DAY 9

On our 8th day in the Galapagos, we left Floreana and headed back to Santa Cruz - it was our last night on the islands. They'd planned a pretty packed day for us. In the morning, we visited the Floreana highlands and the turtle reserve there. Then it was a boat ride back to Santa Cruz where we immediately went kayaking. Right when we got back to Santa Cruz, it started to rain. We're not talking about little rain, we're talking about torrential tropical down pour, which lasted for three hours. During this time, we went kayaking, and for a not so easy hike over wet, mud covered lava rocks to see Las Grietas.

Suffice it to say that by the time it'd stopped raining, I was soaked, and in no mood to go snorkeling (which was the activity planned for the afternoon). Tom and I decided that we'd be much happier heading back to the hotel, taking hot showers, drying off and relaxing. (though we did end up missing snorkeling with sea turtles that afternoon - oh well).

When we headed back to the hotel, we were offered lunch, since it was included in our package (even though the hotel kitchen had been shut down for at least half an hour). My dad, Tom and I ended up ordering 3 of the same sandwich, and then waited 20 minutes before they came. I was kinda annoyed, given how wet I was. I had really just wanted to take a shower and grab pizza in town, but my father had wanted to eat lunch. But when the sandwiches arrived, I realized why they had taken so long:

As you can see, it's basically like a club sandwich, but they had to cook all the components before it could be assembled. This included cooking the bacon (which I removed and gave to Tom), the chicken breast (sliced thinly), warming the cheese with the ham (which I also removed and gave to Tom) and then there were those french fries. They had probably already turned off the fryer by the time we arrived, so they had to turn it back on and heat the oil.

Overall though, I enjoyed my sandwich, because it was warm and I was cold, damp and starving. That evening, we returned to the Red Mangrove Lodge for dinner at their restaurant, but it just wasn't as good after the food we'd had in Isabela. Also, they served us things that we'd had at previous dinners, so it was nothing new.

Still, we'd had an amazing trip to the Galapagos, and I was pleasantly surprised to have such great food the entire trip - I truly wasn't expecting it.

GALAPAGOS, DAY 8

For the morning of the 8th day of our vacation, we went snorkeling at a little cove on Isabela. It was cool, since the cove was so protected, and we got to see and swim with some sea lions. Then it was off to Floreana, one of the least populated island in the Galapagos chain, with only 200 year round inhabitants. It took a two hour boat ride to get to Floreana, which wasn't too bad. And we encountered a pod of very friendly dolphins.It was pouring rain when we arrived, but we were able to settle into our cabins at the Red Mangrove cabins in Floreana. They were pretty rustic and minimalist. My sister thought it was like camping. I was thinking this is a close as I'll get to camping (I DO NOT CAMP). Then we headed off for a hike to the sea lion breeding grounds. It was actually pretty cool seeing a ton of sea lions hanging out in the family group. Plus we got to see some rays and sea turtles in the water.

After the hike, we all went back to get ready for dinner. We had to shower early, because the island of Floreana is run completely on solar energy. That's pretty awesome, but it also means there's not hot water after 7pm, and the shut off the power in the evenings. Then, it was off for a 10 minute hike to the restaurant. Now as I've said, Floreana has a tiny population, so they don't exactly have restaurants or shops. We had dinner at a local restaurant, which was attached to a woman's home. It was anything super fancy like we'd had previously, but we finally got to have a local meal and it was actually Tom's favorite meal of the whole trip.

We started off with these fried yucca fritters, served with a mild aji sauce.

I've learned that Ecuadorians are totally not into spicy things, so though the aji sauce was supposed to be kinda spicy, it was really pretty mild. Those yucca fritters, though, were delicious. I'm normally not a fan of yucca, but I've never had it served like this. I just gotta say, frying makes everything taste better. And my dad really liked these, too.

Meanwhile, we were also served a bunch of sides. On my plate below, you'll see veggies, potatoes and a salad involving onions and cucumbers. As always, it was served with rice and it was all really delicious.

The main entree had been cooking on a grill right next to our table:

There was locally raised beef and the foil packets contain locally caught fish. I could tell the beef had been cooked until very well done. This isn't how most Americans like to eat their beef, but apparently, that's pretty much how they serve it. (At least that's true according to that No Reservations episode they filmed in Uruguay). Though my father didn't like the fact that it was so well done, Tom didn't mind. I think he liked the flavor of the locally raised, grass fed beef.

As for the fish. I thought it was allright. It was a seasoned white fish, but we'd had locally caught fish many times during our trip, and I just preferred some of the other ones that we had eaten.

Lastly, there was dessert:

We were served a slice of an incredible dense, sweet cake along with a scoop of super dense ice cream (which was supposed to be chocolate ice cream). I ended giving mine to Tom.

Overall, I was glad to finally have a meal involving local foods. I found it all to be delicious, and the experienced could only had been improved had it been moved indoors and away from all the mosquitoes.

GALAPAGOS, DAY 7
Day 7 in the Galapagos involved a hike to Sierra Negra, the second (or is it third) largest caldera in the world. Basically, this meant that we didn't spend a whole lot of time eating that day, so I figured I'd give you some nice pictures of the scenery. Here's a shot of the caldera itself.
And here's a shot of a lava tube:I'll admit, I didn't make it to the part with the lava tubes. I only did about half the hike, and then my parents and I headed back to the hotel where I read and took a nap. So here's a picture of our hotel rooms on the beach:The rest of the party continued on and did a full day's hike, but I just wasn't up to it. I'm really not much of an outdoorsy person, I prefer the urban jungle. By the time everyone had gotten back, it was too late for lunch, and too early for dinner, so we just got a light snack of tuna ceviche (which I didn't photograph).

To be honest, by this point in Isabela, our meals were getting kinda repetitive. I mean, they served us excellent three course meals for lunch and dinner, but I just got tired of documenting it. So I stopped taking pictures. That's basically why I don't remember what we even had for dinner that evening.

What I do remember is that it was the first day of Carnival. Even though Isabela isn't a big island (it only has around 2,000 inhabitants), they had still setup speakers and some stands farther down the beach in the middle of town. I got a tip from my sister that they were serving chicken wings at one of the stands, so after dinner, we headed over to check it out (and my other sister requested that I returned with an ice cream sandwich for her.)

What we found on the beach were people mainly hanging around and drinking beers. We found the place with the chicken wings pretty quickly. There were two ladies grilling the chicken over a make shift bbq. There was a tub full of chicken parts next to them, unrefrigerated and I totally knew I was going to get food poisoning from this (which I kinda did - but it was a mild case). I didn't mind though, it was worth it. I ordered one chicken wing skewer (which cost me $2), and it was totally yummy - grilled food just is. It was juicy and tasty. I don't know how well cooked it was, since it was so dark I couldn't tell what color the meat was, but I enjoyed it anyway. Plus, it was a rare taste of local food.

It was our last nice on Isabela, and we'd really had a great time on the island. I would miss it a lot.

GALAPAGOS, DAY 6

Day 2 on Isabela involved more exploring of the island. In the morning, we took a boat ride to the southern part of the island where we got to see really cool lava formations. We also got to spend time snorkeling there. We had a rough ride back to town, because it'd gotten windy and the water had become quite choppy. I basically wasn't a very happy camper for a good hour during that entire ride back.

However, by the time we got back, lunch was ready for us. I gotta say that having three courses for every meal took some getting used to - I really never eat this much food. But having it all ready for you and not having to think about it made it a lot easier. Plus the food was really quite good. For lunch we started off with grilled veggie skewers.

I liked this since it was nice and light. And I didn't feel that I was getting as many veggies as I usually eat. For the main course, we had shrimp fried rice.

This really wasn't Asian in anyway, but it was packed with shrimp. I found it a bit salty, so I didn't eat most of the rice, and just picked out the shrimp instead. And lastly, dessert. They had an Oreo cheesecake for us, and yes, they used real Oreos.

Allright, I don't eat cheesecake, but I love Oreos. I ended up deconstructing this thing - eating just the cookie crust at the bottom and and Oreo cooked on top.

As for the afternoon, we finally got to have some time off to lounge and do whatever we wanted. After spending some time reading, napping and hanging on the beach chairs outside, Tom and I decided that we wanted to wander into "town" and explore. (it was a 5 minute walk) Now the town of Puerto Villamil isn't very big - it's basically a strip about 5 blocks long with a few restaurants, hotels and shops on either side.

Since we hadn't had much of a chance to try local food, Tom and I found a like snack stand that sold various items. He ended up ordering a hot dog, while I got a cheese empanada. Here's Tom's hot dog:It was a pretty impressive variation on the hot dog. The dog itself wasn't vary big, only about a quarter of the size of the bun. But the topped it with a bunch of stuff - ketchup, mustard, mayo and a sprinkling of crushed Ruffles. Kinda unique, and Tom thought it was pretty good.

Meanwhile, here's my cheese empanada:
I really enjoy the salty crispiness of the shell and the gooey cheese on the inside. I found it to be the perfect little snack.

After hanging out in town a bit more (and paying over $12 for a bottle of sunblock) we eventually made our way back to the hotel for dinner. I have forgotten to point out how much Ecuadorians seem to love popcorn - since they always serve it with ceviche and soup.
We always got a few freshly popped bowls if we were having soup for lunch or dinner. Personally, I was pretty happy with it, because popcorn is one of my favorite snacks.

So the popcorn was served with soup, this time we had a bowl of veggie soup.
I couldn't tell you what type of veggies were used (though I'll assume carrots due to the orange color) but I'll once again say that I found it very well made and flavorful. I enjoyed the soup a lot.

For our entree we had spaghetti and red sauce:
Ok, it was supposed to be meat sauce (which is what everyone else had) but as you know, I don't eat red meat, so mine came with mushrooms. And though it was loaded with mushrooms, the sauce was just too salty (I think almost everyone felt that salt factor was very high with this dish), so I mainly ate the pasta, with a little sauce.

I think I once again skipped dessert, but once again, we had great meals on the island of Isabela. Too bad we only had one more night left here.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, DAY 4

On our third day in the Galapagos (4th day in Ecuador), we headed off Santa Cruz and over to Isabela. It the largest of the Galapagos islands, but only the 3rd most inhabitated island, so it's a pretty quite place. After a 2 hour boat right over to Isabela, we started by visiting the turtle reserve and breeding center on the island. After looking at a bunch of different turtles (and tons of little ones - they're so cute!), I got a little hungry and decided to buy an ice cream bar at the gift shop.
Ok, the photo is kinda dark (and Tom claims he takes better pictures than me), but in the photo, I'm eating a Magnum. Now many of you who have traveled outside of the U.S. have probably enountered a Mangum, but those of you who haven't, it's basically like an ice cream bar that comes in lots of different flavors - like a cheaper version of the Haagen Dazs ice cream bars. It's sold a lot in Europe and South America, but for some reason, not in the U.S. (I have no idea why), so I decided to take advantage of the fact that they're sold in Ecuador. It was very yummy, and nice to have on a hot day on Isabela.

After some hiking and a visit to the Wall of Tears, we headed over to our next hotel, the Red Mangrove Isabela. The place isn't like a traditional hotel. The "lobby" is a two storied house on one side of the road and has a desk, lounge area and the dining room. Across the street are where the rooms are. We had a great room right on the beach, with a deck to lounge in. It was definitely a great place.

But my favorite thing about Isabela turned out to be the chef. I think we had our best meals on this island. For every meal, we'd head over to the dining room to eat. And though we weren't given a choice in for every course like we'd had in Santa Cruz, we still had really great food prepared just for us. For lunch, we started off with this nice salad:It was very refreshing and you can see the pieces of hearts of palm. For our entree, we had fried fish. You can see this is pretty similar to the meal we'd had for lunch when we went to North Seymore - a deep fried piece of tuna, along with mixed veggies and rice. I found it to be super tasty, especially since they were again using locally caught tuna.

For the afternoon, it was more hiking - in search of a colony of marine iguanas. We also saw penguins and sea lions, and there was also snorkeling. After our very active day, we were given some time off to settle in and unpack. For dinner, we headed back to the dining room.

Apparently soup is very big in Ecuador, so while on Isabela, we had lots of different types of soup. The first one we had was this celery soup:

It was very very good. I actually wish I could figure out how to make a celery soup like this (though Tom would never eat it since he doesn't like celery - he still had some of the soup, though). For the entree, we had grilled chicken with veggies.

Again, it was very well cooked and tasty. I enjoyed it a lot. Lastly, there was dessert. The desserts weren't my favorite during this trip, so I didn't always order it. In this case, we had vanilla ice cream with cherry sauce.

Ok, I admit it. I ordered this mainly for the cherry on top - I'm not a huge fan of vanilla ice cream unless it somehow involves chocolate (like hot fudge or chocolate sprinkles). All in all, we had a wonderful first day on Isabela, and I certainly was enjoying the food.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, DAY 3

Day 3 of our trip involved an all day adventure to North Seymore (a small island north of Santa Cruz). It started off with a boat ride to the island, a full on nature walk (where we saw a ton of birds, sea lions and marine iguanas), and snorkeling. This was the day that I got so severely sunburned that I hurt the rest of the trip (and I'm still peeling- despite the ton of sunblock I put on). Our lunch was aboard the ship, right before we spent the afternoon visiting an empty beach and snorekling. The quarters were a little right, but the totally set the table for us and cooked a full meal:

Here's my plate. We were each served a plate of veggies and locally caught tuna that had been breaded and fried. We were also given the ubiquitos serving of rice. It was surprisingly good, considering it'd been prepared in this little galley aboard the ship. I totally wasn't expecting to have a full meal. The one thing with the Galapagos (which I think chefs in the U.S. would freak out about) is that they have access to this wonderful yellowfin tuna, which they always cook to well done (this happened more than once). You wouldn't really see that happening in the U.S. - the tuna would be served seared, and still pretty rare. I liked the fish, though I did find it a bit overcooked. And for dessert, we got nice big refreshing pieces of watermelon.

After swimming and snorkeling on a deserted beach (where I spent most of my time trying to get the perfect picture of the Sally Lightfoot crabs), we returned to our hotel and we able to rest a little bit before dinner.

For dinner, it was back to the dining room at the Red Mangrove, but they had another set menu for us to choose from this time. (When we were at the Aventura Lodge, you got two choices with each course). For my first course, I had a crab/shrimp "ravioli".

As you can see, it's not really a ravioli. They would've been more correct in calling this a crepe (since that's what the pastry was made of). But it was a very generous portion and quite tasty.

For my main course, this time I had a shrimp dish:

It was a little heavy with the cream sauce, but they are very generous with the shrimp, and I really liked all the veggies that they used

And for dessert, I had a chocolate "mousse":
Ok, this was the one part of the meal that I didn't like. This wasn't a mousse, or if it was, someone had put waaaaaayyyy too much gelatin in, and it was really more firm than creamy. It kinda had a strange texture, and I didn't end up eating much of it. (I have issues with texture). However, we had another great day of dining and traveling and we were moving onto another island the following day.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, DAY 2

On day 2, we headed to the Galapagos Islands. But first we had a quick breakfast at our hotel, the Hilton Colon in Quito. They had quite a spread for the breakfast buffet (I'll have pictures in a later post), but one thing I found really interesting was in the fruit section where I found this unusual looking fruit called a granadilla:

I had a very thick rind on the outside, and none of knew what it was. When we cracked it open, this is what it looked like inside:

It kinds looks like a passion fruit, (a fruit that I love), but it actually tastes pretty funky. I didn't like it at all. I later learned that this fruit is called a sweet passion fruit, but really, if you like passion fruit, it's a totally different thing.

After about a 3 hour flight, we ended up in Baltra Island in the Galapagos (that's where the airport is located) and our first stop was the island of Santa Cruz, the most populated island in the Galapagos. We arrived in the morning and hit the ground running, start off with some hiking, visiting a private farm that had giant turtles and also walking in the national reserve where we saw a ton of giant turtles.

The also had passion fruits growing in the reserve (which the turtles like to eat) and our guide gave me one of the to snack on:
It was pretty tart, but so much better than what I had eaten in the morning. We also fed on to a turtle. After our long walk and hike through some lava tunnels, we were finally able to eat a well deserve lunch. As you can imagine, it's pretty hot on the Galapagos, but that made it pretty appropriate to have a dining room open to the outdoors:

First, we were given a bowl of chicken soup. It was pretty damn tasty, and nice to know that they used local chickens (like the ones that freely roamed around us).

With lunch, the also served a juice of a fruit that I'd never tried before - the tree tomato.

I must say, it tastes nothing like a tomato. Actually, it's kinda hard to place what it tastes like, but it was cool and refreshing and fairly mild and inoffensive, so I drank it.

For lunch we were served two types of meat (chicken and beef) along with salad and veggies.

Though the food was really simple (and maybe cause I was starving from not having eaten in like 8 hours) I found our meal to be delicious. The view was also pretty damn great, looking out over the farmland, you could see all the way to the ocean.

After lunch we headed off to our hotel, the Red Mangrove Aventura Lodge in Puerto Ayora and after dropping off our bags, we finished our day with a stroll to the Charles Darwin Research Center and the viewing of some more giant turtles.

It had been a very very long day for us, that started early in the morning, and we had just begun our Galapagos adventure. One thing to know if you're every considering a trip there - it's an active vacation, with not much time for relaxing or sitting on the beach. After our long day, we were certainly ready for a nice meal. The great thing about our trip was that we had an all inclusive vacation booked for us (when you're traveling with 9 people, it makes life a lot easier), which meant that all our meals were taken care of. It's actually so nice not to have to think about which hotel you're staying at, checking in, meals, logistics - it was totally worth the money to have that taken care of for us.

But this also meant that we had most of our meals at the hotel. The only downside was that every evening, we had a preset menu, so we were never able to take advantage of the sushi bar at our hotel (it was known for having the best sushi in the Galagpagos, though I don't really think there's much sushi being served there anyway).

The dining room at the hotel was open to a small harbor that belonged to the hotel, so you could always see wildlife outside (like the great blue heron drinking from the jacuzzi that we saw on the first night). sealions and crabs, but which meant we also had constant dining companions -

Yes, they're geckos. But they were totally harmless and just hung out on the walls during our meal. The mosquitoes were a lot more annoying. Every meal that we had at the hotel involved 3 courses. On the first night, I started off with a shrimp salad. I think it was supposed to contain avocado, but didn't have any. However, the salad was very good. They were very generous with their shrimp and use a lot of local ingredients. For my entree, I had fish, served with mashed potatoes and green beans:

Again, the food was really well prepared and flavorful. The fish was locally caught. Tom loved the potatoes (actually, the potatoes in Ecuador were one of the highlights of the trip for him).

And I finished off my meal with a fruit plate:
Unfortunately, they served a bunch of tropical fruits that I don't eat (bananas, papaya, etc. ), though if you look at the bottom there was one piece I did eat, which was a local pineapple. Apparently the pineapples in Ecuador are white fleshed, but they're equally tasty and I enjoyed having it frequently.

I was really plesantly surprised at the quality of the food that we were having. It was obviously well made, well flavored and utilizing local ingredients when possible. Though it was really authentic in any way, I still enjoyed my meal, and would continue to enjoy all the meals we had.

QUITO: DAY 1

So here they are, the posts that you've all been waiting for.... our trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. As many of you know, we recently got back from a trip with my family to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. We spent most of the time on the Galapagos, and for reasons that will be explained later, we didn't really get much of a chance to sample local cuisine. However, on the first day that we landed in Quito (the capital of Ecuador) we were able to go out for our first dinner at Las Redes, a seafood restaurant that's located in La Mariscal, a neighborhood about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

Since we had arrived earlier in the day and hadn't really eaten, and we had to get up really early the next morning for our flight out to the islands, we ended up having a very early dinner, so when we arrived at the restaurant, it was completely empty. This ended up being a good thing since our large party of 8 ended up taking up a large table on a platform that overlooked the rest of the small restaurant.

This place wasn't particularly fancy, but I knew it wouldn't be, after finding about it in a guide book. However, I was looking forward to the food. We ended up ordering several things to share, and while we waited for our dishes to arrive, we took lots of pictures of the funky marine themed decor that filled the place.

After waiting a bit, our dishes finally arrived. My sister and her boyfriend ended up sharing one seafood platter (meant for two, but it could've fed 3 or more) which was served with a butter garlic sauce.

Uhm, the thing was enormous, piled high with various types of seafood including shellfish, shrimps, fish, conch and lots of other stuff. Can you believe that we actually ordered two of these? (the second one was shared by my mom and her two sisters). I definitely helped out. The sauce was actually quite yummy, and I ate quite a few of the shrimp. However, cooking so much of different at the same temp means some stuff gets really overcooked, which was certainly the case.

Meanwhile, for my self, I had ordered a seafood rice:

As you can see, the portion was much more reasonable. The rice was very good, but all the seafood in it was overcooked and pretty dry. I ended up just eating the rice, while picking seafood off my sister's massive seafood plate. Tom shared the seafood rice with me, but he also got a sampler platter of ceviche, which is one of the things that this place is really known for:

I think more than anything, he liked the plate that it was served in, but his favorite part of the ceviche was the conch. At this meal, we also learned of two accompaniements that always appear with ceviche at Ecuador - you can see the popcorn in the right claw of the crab plate, and in the left claw is this puffed corn stuff. It's pretty tasty. The ceviche plate was meant for sharing, but everyone was so distracted trying to eat the massive mixed seafood platters that Tom ended up finishing most of it off.

Meanwhile, we worked hard on finishing the mixed seafood platters, and my sister Cathy was pretty proud with the result:

Oh, I forgot to mention one of Tom's favorite parts - the bread and butter, or really, just the butter. Unlike the U.S., Ecuador hasn't fully developed factory farming techniques. This meant that the butter they served actually came from cows that ate grass (rather than corn, which is what most cows eat in the U.S.). Because of that, the butter had a very distinct flavor, almost like that of cheese, and Tom was eating like it was cheese (until I told him to stop).

Overall, I'd say that our dinner at Las Redes was pretty good. The service was very friendly and they definitely spoke English (despite my efforts to speak Spanish to them, people in Ecuador would generally respond in English). Though it wasn't the best food in the world, it certainly wasn't a bad start to the trip, and I looked forward to our future meals.

SMALL BITES

Here's a collection of small bites that I didn't feel needed their own individual posts.

The first was a visit to a new cafe that's opened near our home called Cafe St. Honore. We had walked and driven by it several times, and I noticed that it served breakfast, so one morning we decided to go check it out. Armed with a newspaper, we were hoping to find a cute French style cafe, hopefully serving some nice homemade pastries and baguettes.

We did find a cute cafe, though the very white interior feels a bit sterile. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything homemade. I don't think the place has a kitchen, and it was very clear to me that they had purchased all their pastries (basically croissants and chocolate croissants) premade by someone else. The "breakfast menu" was quite short - it was basically a selection of the aforementioned pastries and a few baguette selections. Tom ended up getting a baguette with butter and coffee. Since I'm currently off the coffee, I got a baguette with poached eggs. Here it is below:

Yeah, I know. It's not pretty. I confirmed that they didn't have a kitchen when I saw our server cooking the poacked eggs in a pot on a hot plate behind the counter. It ended up being pretty overcooked. The baguette was really the worst part - it was leaden, so dense, not airy at all and none of the crunchy outside. I had Tom finish it off for me. And it made me sad knowing that Cafe Fanny was just a few blocks down the street. (We also wondered why they didn't just buy their baguettes from Acme Breads since it's located next door to Cafe Fanny.)

I'm not saying this place was horrible. The service was very friendly. It's open late and they offer free wi-fi. However, it isn't the place for breakfast, nor for baguettes.

Next up was our visit to the Asian Pearl Restaurant located inside the Pacific East Mall. We have visited most of the restaurants at the Pacific East Mall, but this is one of the largest one that we had not yet visted. One of the reasons we hadn't visited was because this place is really more well known for its dim sum, but since they start later in the morning, (I think around 10:30) we've eaten breakfast by then.

So one evening we couldn't decide where we wanted to have dinner at the Pacific East Mall and decided to give Asian Peal a try. It's a much larger, nicer restaurant than the rest of the places at the mall. (it actually had tablecloths). Because it's a large restaurant, it looked pretty empty when we entered, though there were other people eating there.

We ended up ordering three dishes (though only 2 are pictured). Tom got his usual salt and pepper shrimp and we got a cold tofu salad.

I liked the tofu salad, and the salt and pepper shrimp were pretty good. The dish that I ordered that isn't pictured is a clay pot with chicken and tofu. It was actually pretty awful. The sauce was really gloopy and not too flavorful. I ended up eating the tofu in the pot and left the rest there.

However, the food wasn't our issue here. It was really the service. They took forever to allow us to order and after they delivered the food, they basically ignored us. Though we asked for our check, they never brought it, and Tom finally went up to the front to pay (which he also had to wait to do.) Tom ended up leaving a tiny tip, which is really unusual for him, but that just shows how bad we thought this place was.

The funny thing is that Tom ended up going back there the next day for dim sum with his friends. But I don't think we'll be returning there again.

Bite #3, Superbowl Sunday. For Superbowl, we spent the afternoon at my friend, Kim's, house. We all made stuff and kind did a weird combination of foods for Superbowl. Starting in back, you'll see a bowl of hummus with veggies. Next is homemade nacho cheese with tortilla chips, I made my own homemade chicken pate (so much easier and cheaper than you could ever imagine, and totally tasty) with cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, Tom insisted on getting KFC, Kim also made some small snacks, including Totino's pizza rolls, and these chicken patties with cheese that were fried. Not surprisingly, we all stuffed ourselves. And we even watched a bit of the actual game.

And the very last bite - pizza at Cheeseboard. I actually have had Cheeseboard pizza before, but I've never actually had it at Cheeseboard - they have some pretty weird hours, so I've never really made it there while they're open (or I refuse to wait in the long line). Lately though, I've had Tuesdays off from work, and since we were able to snag a parking space right in front, we decided to drop in to get a couple slices and visited next door to get some cheese.

I will admit that the pizza is much better out of a pizza oven than a regular over. I still don't think that Cheeseboard pizza is as amazing as people claim, but I will say, the experience it having it there is much better than having it elsewhere. I'm sure we'll be back again soon.

VIETNAMESE IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

We haven't found a truly great Vietnamese restaurant around us. There are some pretty good ones - we sometimes visit the one in the Pacific East Mall for pho, but nothing that has been truly amazing. While driving over to kickboxing a couple of times, I had noticed a pho restaurant called Pho Hoa in a strip mall in Richmond - the neighborhood north of us. It's not really the safest neighborhood, nor one that we visit often, but the restaurant we saw always seemed like it was packed with Asians. So one evening we finally decided to check it out.

We decided to go to dinner early, since I was being a little paranoid and wanted to eat while it was still light out. This meant that we were basically the first people to show up at the restaurant (though we were quickly followed by a few other people). Since this was our first time visiting the restaurant, I decided to get a few simple things.

The first thing we started off with were fish cakes.
There were okay. They weren't my favorite fishcakes that I'd ever had, since they weren't crispy and had a more oily flavor. Maybe because we arrived there early, the oil still hadn't heated up fully. (when you fry at a lower temperature, whatever you're frying will absorb more oil and end up soggy rather than crispy).

Then a order my usual - a bowl of chicken pho.
It was actually a very good bowl of pho. And the side additions it came with were very fresh and tasty. I must say, that's it was probably the best bowl of pho that I've had in the East Bay. However, I must warn that the service here is high lacking, and they aren't exactly nice. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to visit this restaurant again. Though it was good, it wasn't truly amazing enough for me to go there rather than the Pacific East Mall. So I'll continue looking for some really great Vietnamese here in the East Bay.

ZAKI KABOB HOUSE

Ok, as stated in my previous post, I have a bit of a backlog of restaurants to work through, so the Ecuador posts will have to wait a bit. I've learned that some of the best restaurant recommendations come from friends, and this has certainly been true of our friends Paul and Armando. They've lived in the East Bay for quite sometime, and have been very helpful in introducing us to some of our favorite restaurants like Sabuy Sabuy and Vanessa's. This was also true of Zaki Kabob House, a restaurant located just 3 blocks from their home, and one that I had never even noticed.

The first time we went to Zaki, we had tried to go on a Monday, but the restaurant ended up being closed. So we went back a different night. Our friends had given us some suggested dishes to order. First I started off with an order of the hummus.I gotta say, their hummus is pretty damn awesome. It's really smooth and I think they put a ton of tahini in it, but it's also really tasty.

I ended up getting the half chicken for dinner.And it was delicious. It's covered in spices and roasted until it falls off the bone. The rice it comes with is also very tasty. It's obviously a large portion, and I didn't end up finishing the whole thing. Best of all, it's a great deal - I think it's around $8.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered a lamb burger, which our friends had also suggested. It was contained lots of different herbs, and I think he liked it quite a bit. The only problem was that it was so juicy, it kinda fell apart, and was impossible to set down.One of the best things that Tom discovered was this mint lemonade. It's like a whole lemon pureed with a ton of mint and ice and it's soooooo tasty. We totally loved it.

Since this post is a bit delayed, I've actually been to Zaki quite a few times. Like 5 times in a span of 3 weeks - which is when I stoppped going, I kinda OD-ed on it. I've learned that the rotisserie chicken is much better when you have it there. By the time you get it home, it's less juicy (though still yummy). Also, I've learned that you should order the chicken kabobs - I found them quite dry the time I ordered them. As for the service, it's super friendly since it's run by a family, but it can also be kinda slow and sometimes spotty. They make up for it with the super friendliness, though. Also, though the offer a few vegan and veggie options, I think the meat dishes tend to be the more outstanding items on the menu. I took my vegetarian cousin, and she liked it a lot, but I'm not sure my other vegetarian friends liked it as much.

At any rate, I think it's a great place, and it's definitely become one of our regular eat out spots. I hope the restaurant does well. I always like to see small family owned business succeed - especially when they're serving great food.

I'M BACK!

Ok loyal blog readers, I know it's been a long time since I've written anything here (it's not like the rest of you have run a chocolate shop during Valentine's Day), but I just want you to all know that I survived Vday and am back from vacation and will soon be updating the blog. First I have some old posts to catch up on, but then you can look forward to some more recent posts about our trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands last week. So stay tuned! (hopefully my sunburns will have healed by then.)