Dinner at Vicki C's and Farewell to Little Ed


Ok, I admit that i've neglected my blog for a good week. but i'm making up for it by posting a lot this weekend. and look! with tons of pics. that should make you all happy. plus, i think i've finally figure out how to put the pics between text, so i'm not just sticking all the pictures at the beginning of the post.

So last night, the whole crew (all 13 of us) headed out to Victoria Seafood on Comm Ave for dinner to say goodbye to our good friend, little ed, who's moving down to florida tomorrow. victoria's (or vicki c's as leah likes to call it) is well known for it's excellent chinese food, fresh seafood and super low prices. i've never made it there for lunch, but one day, i'm totally gonna take advantage of their super cheap lunch menu. but dinner is also very well priced. where also can you get twin lobsters cooked with scallion and ginger or $9.95? Here's the one warning though, Victoria's does authentic chinese food very very well. it does not do americanized chinese food well. so if you're looking to order general gao's chicken or something ridiculous like that, don't go here. you'll be sorely disappointed. so the next tip. make reservations. especially if you're showing up with a large party and plan on arriving around 7. otherwise, plan on waiting. when we arrived yesterday, there were at least 20 ppl waiting to get into the place. luckily, i had already made reservations, so we breezed past all of them and arrived at our table, where our friends were waiting.

so on to the food. i promised lots of pics and here they are. we ordered a ton of food. at least 10 courses (and i didn't take pics of all of them) that's one great thing about going with lots of ppl, you get to order anything you want cause you'll actually eat all of it.


this is the fried shrimp with salt and pepper. yes. those are the heads that you see. and yes, you eat the whole thing. (katie is freaking out right now) totally tasty and very crunchy. leah had never eaten the shrimp with the head on and she totally loved it. see, the head is where all the flavor is (or so my parents always told me) so go ahead and gobble down the whole thing.

ok, here are the twin lobster. we actually ended up getting 3 orders (so that's 6 lobsters who sacrificed their lives for our dinner). we normally get it with scallions and ginger, but you can also get it steamed or with the spicy salt and pepper. yummy.


here's the soft shelled crab. again, fried with spicy salt and pepper. i had actually ordered rock crab, but i think that was lost in translation. and this was tasty anyway. the only reason i don't order the soft shelled crab is cause i always feel like the portion is small. much more lettuce on the plate than crab. but oh well. are you noticing a pattern here? victoria's seafood isn't called that for nothing.

ok, here's some meat for you. that's a fried porkchop.

and the last pic of the day. many of you will recognize me as the girl on the far left. and i agree with you, my hair does look better now that it's shorter. but really, the reason why this pic is up is cause you can see a few more dishes. there's the fried race with fish and chicken in the middle, the fried tofu with shrimp right below and some sauteed pea shoots to the left.

and what else could we have ordered? a beef hot pot, another order of veggies, pan fried house noodles and i actually did order a steamed sea bass, but luckily that didn't show up cause we were all stuffed by that point. dinner is concluded with a healthy helping of dole pineapples straight from the can and fortune cookies. don't expect dessert here, you won't get any. but you'll be so full that you won't really care.

and what was the grand total for this dinner of seafood excess?? $15 per person, including tip. (oh crap, i just remebered i owe leah money) that's right ppl. 6 lobsters, 10 courses and that's all it cost. amazing. that's why we love vicki c's. so whenever you're in the mood for excellent chinese food and don't want to fork over a ton of money, check out victoria's, you thank me later.

The Brazilian Place
so i think i've mentioned the brazilian place across the street before in this blog, so i'm finally gonna review it today (having actually taken pics this time). it's not actually called the brazilian place. that's just what leah and i call it. it's actually called restaurant sol. but it's often mixed up with cafe belo which is this other brazilian restaurant chain that has locations all around boston and used to be in the same location as where restaurant sol is now. and we sometimes also call it cafe belo, just to confuse you even more.


so now that i've thoroughly cleared up the name, i'll actually review the place. the setting is a little weird. the place obviously went through a phase when it was a nightclub. which explains the bar up front, the leopard print booths and the strange blue lighting in some areas. but that just makes the place a little quirkier and more endearing. we're really here for the food. the brazilian place serves american breakfast in the mornings. they do an excellent job of making eggs, omlettes, french toast and all your typical breakfast stuff and all at cheap prices. we often go here for breakfast rather than any of our neighboring restaurants in kenmore square cause the food is better and it costs a third of the price. oh also, the ownership is very friendly here.


for lunch and dinner, the brazilian place specializes in buffet and brazilian bbq items. i mainly go for the buffet food (which happens 1-2 times a week). as you can see in my take out pic, for lunch today i grabbed chicken legs, some fruit, a bunch of different vegetables and salsa. some of the items in the buffet change everyday, especially the entrees. but you'll always find fresh fruit and veggies. some of my favorites are the collard greens and stewed chicken. leah likes the plantains. it's best to get there earlier in the day if you can, when the food is fresher and hasn't been sitting out too long. if you got in the late afternoon like i often have, you may find some of the food too dried out, so you want to avoid those items.

after you've hit the buffet, there's a counter at the end where you can also get different bbq items. leah always gets the beef, very rare. i once got some chicken thighs, but it was late in the day, so they were totally dried out. i haven't tried anything else since. then you get your plate or take out box weighed. take out costs $6/pound, which turns out to be a good deal. also at the back, you'll find a varied selection of cakes and flan. i've never tried any of these, but i leah's had the flan and i think she likes it. after the weigh in, you're given a little check which you take back up to the bar area where you pay for your meal and off you go. i like this place cause it's never crowded and i can grab my food quickly (now knowing what i like and where it's located). i was in and out of there under 5 minutes with my lunch today, and it beats waiting 15 minutes for someone at brugger's or ankara to make you a freaking sandwich. so if you're ever in kenmore square for lunch and in a hurry, avoid the obvious places like mcdonald's or burrito max and have a yummy and healthy lunch at restaurant sol.

Dinner in Paris? Not really. A trip to Petit Robert Bistro.

Yesterday, my sister and I decided to have a cousins dinner. So we chose to go to the Petit Robert Bistro. This place has gotten rave reviews for its reasonable prices and food. It's opened by the former chef of Maison Robert which closed last year. And I felt that I should give it another try after my first disastrous lunch there. Especially after Leah gave a praising of the place having taken her father and friend to dinner there last weekend. So off we all went to Petit Robert.


Well first, I'm going to recap my disastrous lunch at Petit Robert a few months ago. Maybe disastrous is harsh. I think disappointing bordering on crappy would fit better. So I had gone there for lunch and all the entress there are very reasonably priced. On the express lunch menu, everything's under $10. And i picked the Avocado California Crab Roll, listed under the sandwich menu. I imagined that this would be a crab cake sandwich, with slices of avocado. Why they chose to call it California? I don't know. Maybe they describe everything with avocado on it as California. So i looked foward to my sandwich, and was very disappointed to see the arrival of 4 slices of very poorly made California roll sushi, with a pile of greens in the middle. At first I was confused, thinking they had brought me the wrong item, but then someone else at the table had ordered the exact same thing and they also had the 4 pieces of sushi. Well, that turned me off from the whole Petit Robert thing. Here was a restaurant that claimed to be the purveyor of the authentic french bistro experience in boston (look it up, it's on their website) and what do they serve me for lunch, but sushi. really really poorly made sushi. so i said, never again would i go to petit robert.

But Leah had a very positive experience there. and since i was too lazy to be creative and think of somewhere to take my cousins. i decided to give petit robert another shot. when we arrived, there were ppl waiting outside for a table, so i was relieved that i had made reservations. and we were promptly seated in a very full dining room. the first thing i noticed was how noisy the entire restaurant is. so be prepared not to have quiet conversation. what also annoyed me was that they played music ontop of the already noisy atmopshere. my sister was sitting right below one of the speakers and she thought the someone's cell phone was ringing. anyway, we all perused the menu. the thing with petit robert is that they are totally into having reasonable prices. so all the entrees are under $20. (except for one, the duck margret, which is what i ordered) and since i was already on my way to having a heart attack, i also ordered the lobster bisque to start. Our menus were taken away and we were served some nice warm baguettes. well, not really baguettes, but at least bread shaped like baguettes. those were tasty. and then the waiting began. so another problem with petit robert is that service is incredibly slow. the meal isn't served in a timely manner and you're often left waiting, for your appetizer, entree or even waiter to show up. However, i've found this to be pretty common among many restaurants in boston, so maybe it's just a boston thing.

back to my review. my lobster bisque arrived and it was totally tasty. not overly salty like many of the bisques i've had before. and i was happy to find a nice chunk of lobster floating in it. unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures before i had polished it off (my cousins suggested that i take a pic of the empty bowl, but i thought that was silly) but i have pictures of the next two courses. and so the waiting began again. eventually our entrees showed up. the duck margret i ordered was a duck breast, cooked to medium rare and sliced thingly and it was served with chantrelle mushrooms and a light sauce. it was also served with a very tasty side of fresh mixed veggies and mashed potatoes. I think my entree was pretty good. i was in the mood for duck and that satisfied my craving. however, i don't think i would characterize it as the best duck i've ever had. and i found it a little pricy for the size of the portion. (i don't think the portion should've been bigger, but the price should've been lower) and that's the thing with petit robert. by having lower costs, they also serve smaller portions. this is actually something i like. cause i think serving smaller portion sizes is healthier, especially for americans who tend to overeat. however, it's just nice to know before hand that you should definetly think about getting an appetizer in addition to your entree since the entree might not be enough.

ok. and lastly, we had to finish off our dinner with dessert. luckily petit robert had quite an extensive dessert menu. and they're all under $5. for those who just want to go for dessert, they have a dessert bar in the basement. I ordered my all time favorite dessert, apple tarte tatin, which i shared with my sister. now i love tarte tatin. the puffy pastry, the caramlized apples, everything about it. so i'm gonna be pretty picky about it. plus, as a former pastry cook, i tend to be ultra critical when it comes to dessert. and so as you can imagine, i wasn't totally thrilled with the apple tarte tatin that i was served. the apples were just way too sweet. and kinda chewy and the crust was a disaster. totally chewy and not flaky and puff like it should've been. i had two bites and let my sister finish it off. she seems to enjoy it though, and it was definetly a generous portion since it was enough for the two of us to share. so in conclusions, i'd say that petit robert is worth trying, but i definetly wouldn't make it one of my regular places. The prices and food are totally reasonable, but i'd prefer some better, quicker service.

A Tasty Sandwich from Flour (ok, i can't come up with witty titles. sorry.)

Leah and i both got into work early today. so we decided to go for a quick breakfast. normally we go across the street to the brazilian place, but i had my car, so we decided to go somewhere we typically don't go. unfortunately, we didn't know where we should try, not normally having the option of a) eating breakfast, b) cooked by someone else, and c) outside of kenmore square. i said we should try flour bakery in the south end. i had read a review of them serving dinner, so why not breakfast? when we got there it was packed. but after a quick survey, leah pointed out that there were no eggs. everyone was eating pastries. so we decided to try somewhere else. luckily a woman overheard our dilemma and suggested mike's diner, just two blocks down. now, this is a not a review of mike's. cause i have no photo to accompany a review. but suffice it to say, it was definetly tasty, cheap and well worth a visit for breakfast. who knew there was a diner where the waitresses calls you honey and gives free coffee refills located on washington st, just two blocks from mass ave.

anyway, i digress. back to my sandwich. after mike's, leah suggested we go back to flour and buy sandwiches for lunch. excellent idea. she got a lamb sandwich (which hopefully she'll find the time to review) and i got a chicken sandwich with avocado and jicama. while we were at flour, we saw joanne chang, the owner. i gotta say, it's always nice to see a successful business owner with a huge staff still working away at their store. i hope i can do that some day. anyway, when we got our sandwiches, we noticed that they were kinda small for $8 sandwiches. but i suggested that they could be the greatest sandwiches ever. so off we went back to work.

ok, so now i'm on lunch break. and leah was right. the sandwich is damn small for $8. mine's pretty tasty though. the jicama adds a nice crunch and sweetness to the sandwich and the avocados (which i adore) adds moisture and another texture to the sandwich. plus the chicken is well seasoned. often when you don't add condiments ie. mustard, mayo, etc. to a sandwich, it just feels too dry and lonely. but this one doesn't need any. however the bread is a little dry along the edge. overall pretty yummy. but for $8? i think i'll save that for a breakfast at mike's.

crap!!!!!!!!!! i forgot about $1 cone day yesterday. i guess with the whole shoplifting thing, i just wanted to go home, eat ravioli and watch house. ah well. next week then. i'll make it up to myself by going to mcdonald's and getting a sundae for $1....

The Shoplifting Consolation Chocolate Cake

So as you all know, i own a little chocolate shop. and due to the size of my store (tiny) and the fact that i'm selling a perishable product, i never ever thought i'd be shoplifted from. after all, this is an item that has no resale value. it's not like you can go and sell it on the street or the blackmarket. and of course teenagers and children often steal candy from stores, but not a boutique chocolate shop that sells gourmet chocolate. so i was shocked when i experienced my first shoplifting incident today, by a middle aged woman who stole chocolate from me. can you believe that? so i'm feeling a little down. not so much over the value of the chocolate, but because of the actual act of shoplifting. so to make myself feel better, and this being a food blog after all, i am eating some chocolate cake with whipped chocolate frosting, courtesy of betty crocker. yup. a little ugly, but still tasty. i've also spoken of my sheer capacity to eat lots of chocolate in an earlier post, but even for me, it's a consolation food. i spent last night making 6 dozen mini cupcakes for third thursday, this special event that we do at the hotel once a month. but at the end of it all, i still had all this cake mix left. so i decided to pour it all into a pan and make myself a chocolate cake. this morning, i found some left over whipped chocolate frosting (so maybe it's a few months old, frosting never really goes bad does it?) and spread that all over the slice of cake which i brought to work today in my little tupperware container. and thank goodness i did, cause now it's making me feel better. so what's the lesson here? take a slice of chocolate cake to work with you every day. it'll make you feel better, whether it's to make up for a bad day, or to make your good day even better.

Dinner at Big Ed's

I've discovered that this food blogging thing is harder than one might think. mainly cause i always eat my food before i can take a pic of it. and then i can't blog about the meal i just had cause everyone demands a pic. so it's great when someone else cooks and then takes the photos for me. all i gotta do is show up, eat and write my blog. which is what happened last night. my friend big ed had a dinner party at his place and convinced arti (in green shirt) to cook. well it turns out that that was a good plan (big ed, you're smarter than we give you credit for) cause arti turned out to be an excellent cook. in the pic you can see two of the dishes she made. one was this chicken curry with a cashew base. and that was fantastic. creamy, spicy and totally yum. it was so good that i would take little breaks between bites, let my mouth cool down, and resume eating. i'm a weakling and can't take much heat, but that chicken cashew curry was worth it. the other dish arti made was a chicken and potato dish. i didn't try it cause i was warned by others that it was super spicy, and i was already sniffling from the chicken cashew curry, but heard that was tasty too. little ed was there too (that's him in the photo doing the blowfish imitation) and made a yummy potato and pea curry. and harin (in the white shirt) finished off the night by bruleeing some fruit, and serving that with ice cream and cherries. you can see it in the second group pic, he just loves his brulee torch. it's not one of those tiny pathetic ones you getting at cooking store, but one that would be used in a pro kitchen. a plumber's torch. you can get one at home depot with the nozzle for less than $20. leah and i were lucky enough to show up and start eating, a lovely treat after you've been working all day. so thanks to all my friends for cooking dinner, we'll have to do it again sometime. how's next friday for you?

The Manager's special.

hey everyone. look! i've got two. two! pictures for you today. ( i hope this makes up for my lack of pics on early postings and apparently, the graphic i used yesterday, which my friend big ed claimed really wasn't a pic since i didn't take it). the first pic is one of my store mascot, choco cat. my buddy big ed gave it to me when my shop first opened. as you can see, he's sporting a red sox cap, cause he's a big sox fan, just like me. apart from other names not being available, this blog was also named in part for my store mascot, cause leah said the choco in minty choco chip was for choco cat. the second pic is of the manager's special. as i mentioned in an earlier post, leah is nice enough to bring me a donut a few times a week. if i'm especially lucky, she picks me up a manager's special from dunky d's. it's a chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles. yummy! i had to stop myself from wolfing it down before i took a pic, but i'm happily munching on it now as i type this post. i realize that i own a chocolate shop, but my capacity for chocolate consumption is astonishing, even to myself. in this case, i think there's something special about the sprinkles. they add texture. one time the dunky d's next door had run out of my regular donut, so leah had them improvise and make one for me. they took chocolate jimmies from the ice cream station (this being one of those dunky d/ baskin robbins combos) and sprinkled them on a regular frosted donut. it was extra special just for the effort. ahh, it's the simple things in a life that make me happy.

ok. i clearly have more time on my hands than leah. she has actual customers. and really, you can rearrange a 28 sq. foot space only so many times. so this posting will be a gripe posting. (no new food today. i would review the brazilian buffet place where i picked up my lunch, but again, no cam, and i love that place, so i'll wait until i can give it a proper write up.) so last tuesday, leah, my friend, jayna, and i were excited to go over to baskin robbins for $1 cone tuesday. check it out here. http://www.baskinrobbins.com/. leah and i had been planning on going for a week, after i received an email from b.r. alerting me to this very special day. i was gonna print out the email and take it with us, just for extra insurance. but then i checked the b.r. homepage and there it was! and i made sure the closest b.r. was participating. plus, i heard an announcement on the radio about the offer, so they couldn't possibly not know about it. so the three of us showed up at the strangely empty b.r./dunkin' donuts next door. (it was 7, right before the sox game, so i know we made it at the right time) we told the two teenagers standing behind the i.c. display that we were there for $1 cone tuesday, and they were like what are you talking about? so we went into a full description of the offer. they still didn't know what we were talking about. at first, we all thought that they were just being teenage boys, messing with three older (and wiser) ladies, and that they'd eventually give us our damn i.c. cones. but to no avail. they genuinely had no idea what we were talking about. so we walked away from b.r., coneless and sad (ok, i wasn't that sad, i was about to go to a sox game, but disappointed), but determined to return. this time with a copy of the stupid email. we'll update you this coming tuesday on whether or not we actual got our $1 cones.

hmmm. i was gonna title this posting MOOS! but since i'm new to this whole blogging thing, i can't figure out how to title my post, and i'm too lazy to figure it out, so oh well. so i haven't eaten much today (it happens sometimes when you're running around) but I did receive a long anticipated product for my store called moos. so i sampled those and took a pic with my camera phone (the digital is still out of batteries and i promised a pic, so crappy as it is, at least it's a pic). anyway, the blurrgy image that you're looking at can be described as a chocolate pocket. it contains homemade marshmallows, caramel and cookies. all covered with dark chocolate and decorated with white chocolate. (see in the pic, the white chocolate makes up the spots and looks vaguely cowlike (though in reverse now that i think about it.) this moo was quite tasty. i liked the fluffiness of the homemade marshmallow and i'm always a fan of caramel. however, it was a little too sweet for my taste. i'm ok with a little wedge, but i'd never finish that whole thing off. ah well. maybe the rest of you will enjoy it. so i promise not to blog too much about stuff from my store. i just didn't want to disappoint my one reader, leah, by not posting today. ah well, at least now she can come visit and try out the moo.

Hallo all (meaning Leah, the only one reading this). Welcome to our new food blog! How did this blog come into being you might ask? and why is it called minty choco chip? well first, i was commenting to Leah after reading several of my favorite food blogs on how those people who write food blogs seem so cool. and i wish i could meet them. and leah suggested that we start our own food blog. i found this quite fitting since she introduced me to food blogs in the first place and because i have vast amounts of time to burn between serving customers at my shop. so here we are. and why minty choco chip? cause mint chip and mint chocolate chip were already taken. but really, because leah and i love mint chocolate chip ice cream from baskin robbins. no other ice cream maker makes as perfect an ice cream as the mint chocolate chip from baskin robbins. the chips from other ice cream makers are always too big and chunky. the ones in the baskin robbins ice cream melt just so perfectly. i love it! i apologize that there's no pic on today's blog. i was gonna put a pic. i swear. it was gonna be of my chocolate frosted cake donut that leah bought me for breakfast. (isn't she sweet, she does it several mornings a week) . but then my camera died. and i had to eat my donut (can't let the donut wait until tomorrow when it'll be stale). plus i'm hungry. and i wanted to eat my donut. so pic will come next time. promise.