THE WYNN BUFFET

Going to Vegas with my parents is often fun, cause they sometime know employees of the hotel (they're often called hosts) who can get you show tickets, or let you check in in the VIP room. The fun thing about getting to use the VIP room is the free stuff you get from coffee, teas and sodas to alcohol and even a Continental breakfast. We were only spend one night in Vegas, so we planned on having our big buffet meal for lunch, and decided to make a light breakfast out of the offerings of fruit, pastries and coffee in the VIP room.

It was pretty good. Afterwards, Tom and I took some time walking down the Strip. We played video games at NY NY, did some window shopping at Caesars and the Venetian and I also did some chocolate shopping at the Bellagio. Afterwards, we played some slots, which I must admit, are kinda fun. It's like playing video games except when you win, you get to win actual money. After playing around for a while, we went looking for my parents, and pretty soon, it was lunch time.

Now, I'd heard that the Wynn has a pretty decent buffet, with lots of different stations and diverse foods. (I'd also heard there'd be snow crab legs, but apparently, that's just for dinner. sigh). And in fact, there really was a ton of stuff to eat. Disappointed that there wouldn't be crab legs, I told Tom that I was gonna eat shrimp cocktail until I turned orange (but actually, I got sick of them after a while). So here's my first plate of food

You can see the shrimp of the left, but there was actually a ceviche section, and a section that offered fried chicken (it was ok).

I also took a pic of my mom's plate to show you the diversity of foods offered. Vegas is a big gambling destination for newly rich Asians. And we were there a week before Chinese New Year (and all the hotels were decked out for the celebration), so there were lots of foods that appealed to an Asian palate like sushi, and noodle soups.

Here's a pic of Tom's plate, where you can really see the diversity of food offerings since there's a slice of pizza sitting atop sushi. And here's a look at what one of the hot stations looked like:

Overall, I'd say that the food wasn't bad, though it certainly wasn't the most spectacular buffet I'd ever visited. For all my dad's griping about the buffet not being great prior to us getting there, I gotta admit, he was right (See, this is where my eating pickiness really started, from my parents).

But my favorite station overall was the dessert station, where I could have all the ice cream I wanted, pick my tops AND, the ice cream was actually quite excellent. Certainly better than many of the ice creams I buy from stores. To finish off, take a look at Tom's trip to the dessert bar. Yes, he picked up all these desserts for himself.
Luckily, though, he didn't actually finish eating all of them. See that's the great thing about going to a buffet- you can sample a little bit of everything.

DINNER IN VEGAS

Ok all, I realize that it's been over a month since Tom and I went to Vegas, but better late than never on these posts. So why were we in Vegas in the first place? Well, it started off with my little sister. She works for Fox (or will for one more day) and every year, they have a conference in Vegas. This year, she got to have a room all to herself, so she invited us to stay. Then Virigin America launched it's flights from SFO to Las Vegas, and when it launched, they had a deal to buy one get one free on airplane tickets. Ok, so there was really no reason not to go. Then my parents heard that we were going, so they decided that they wanted to go, too. And rather than us crashing with Cathy, they booked us a hotel room with them at the Wynn.

I hadn't been to Vegas in over 7 years- 4 days before I turned 21 and Tom had never been there at all, so for this trip, I vowed to show him around and eat myself silly. (especially since my parents were paying for the whole thing. ) We landed in the afternoon, and my parents had made dinner reservations at the Corsa Cucina, a more casual Italian restaurant inside the Wynn that they had been to before and enjoyed.

When we arrived for our reservations a bit early, before 7, the place was already pretty packed. The restaurant is also kinda open, and adjacent to the casino and theatres, so it was pretty loud inside, but I did like the modern decor of the place. I wasn't super hungry (having snagged a bunch of cookies and chocolates in the VIP lounge when we checked in)l, but I still ordered a bunch.

To start off with, my parents ordered two appetizers. One was their version of a mushroom pizza (on the left) and the other was grilled shrimp on white beans.

The "pizza" was actually not bad. It was basically like a mushroom pate spread on a very very thin crust and covered with cheese, and that was put in the oven. I kinda enjoyed it. And the shrimp were also pretty good.

For my own appetizer, I had this deconstructed version of a Caesar salad, which was pretty good. I was having this weird Caesar salad craving that whole week.

And for my entree, I ordered an agnolotti with guinea hen and mushrooms. The words agnolotti on the menu just made me dream of the amazing chesnut agnolotti that I had at Per Se over a year ago, and though I knew I would never get anything like that, I was hoping for something close. Unfortunately, my pasta turned out to be WAAAAYYYY over cooked and totally mushy, the sauce was far too salty and the guinea hen was a bit tough. I didn't each much of it, but was pretty full by that point, anyway.

But you guys know me. I always have to order dessert, so I got some fresh apple donuts that were filled with this cooked apple mixture and served on a caramel sauce and topped with ice cream. The donuts themselves were actually pretty good. I'm totally a sucker for freshly fried donuts, but overall for dinner, I think in the future, I'd stick with a selection of the appetizers and generally avoid the entrees.

A VISIT FROM AN OLD FRIEND

So Jayna was in town visiting last week. I didn't get to spend much time with her since I was working (though she did get to spend time with Tom exploring Berkeley), but we did get to have a nice dinner out. I decided to try a new restaurant, yet another place suggested by my co-worker, called Nizza la Bella. It's a small French bistro type place located in between my house and my work, so it's pretty convenient.

Of course, I'd checked out the menu and reviews before we went, so I already had an idea of what I wanted to order. It was a pretty cold night, so it was really nice entering this cozy space and sitting in one of their booths. I started off with what the called an anchovy salad, but it was really a Caesar salad with like extra extra anchovies.

It was all right. Nothing super special, though almost too many anchovies for me, so I gave Tom the really fishy parts (he just loves anchovies).

Then I had the grilled chicken breast with herb butter, but I really got it just to have the frites. They're supposed to be famous for their frites, and we had seen a platter of frites exit the kitchen, so they looked pretty good.

Unfortunately, the frites were served under the chicken (next time I'll ask for them on the side) which meant they came out pretty soggy. And the chicken breast wasn't anything special.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered one of their famous pizzas, which are supposed to be in the style of Lombardi's pizza in NY (one of my favorite pizzas). The one Tom got was a white pizza with lots of cheese, anchovies and fresh basil.

It looks pretty good with decent bubbling and char, but when I actually had a slice, the crust was too chewy- like it was too thick and hadn't been cooked completely. In my opinion, Gioia's is still a lot better.

Overall, this was a pleasant restaurant, but it really didn't serve anything super extraordinary or exciting. And the prices were on the higher end of things. Maybe if we have a craving for French food we would return, but I have a feeling that'll be happening any time soon.

A QUICK TRIP HOME

One of the great things about living in the Bay Area is being able to take quick trips back home to LA. This is especially easy when Virgin America is running two for one deals on tickets. So to take advantage of the deal, we went down to LA last week so I could see my dentist. (I'm not joking. It was a long overdue appointment and my mommy paid for it).

The other nice thing is that I can get together with my family for a big family dinner every time I go down. (I think we had a total of 9 people this time). I wanted to have something that we normally don't have much of up here, which would be Japanese food and sushi, but I didn't want to take Tom back to Sushi King, since he'd already been there once before. So we chose to go to Yabu, a place famous for its house made soba and udon, but they also serve sushi and lots of other dishes.

Since we'd had a late lunch, I wasn't very hungry when we arrived at Yabu (we'd had lunch at the restaurant inside of Neiman Marcus, and then I did a little shopping at Barney's). So I just ordered a number of small plates. I started off with a an ordered of deep fried shisito peppers.

If you've ever had Spanish pimientos del padron, therse are very similar. But I didn't like the ones at Yabu. They were quite greasy and didn't have a clean, crispy flavor. Next my family ordered some dishes of oden- bascially a selection of fishcakes and veggies cooked in a fish broth.

It was actually pretty good, but I didn't fill up, because I was waiting for my chawan mushi to arrive.

A chawan mushi is basically an egg custard with flavored broth and different pieces of shrimp, fish and veggies in side. It warm and soft and one of my favorite things. I enjoyed it quite a lot. In the meantime, here's Tom's order of cold soba. He'd gotten a soba/sushi combination and I think he enjoyed both of them.

Overally, Yabu is just a really cute local Japanese restaurant with well prepared food. I really wish we had something like it up here- Tom and I would probably be visiting it all the time. But at least it's just a quick trip back home for great Japanese food.

I MISS INDIA QUALITY

I think I've written about this in a previous post, but I miss India Quality. I didn't expect to. It was just the local Indian restaurant where I'd get take out every once in a while. But who knew that I wouldn't find Indian food just as good in the East Bay. In our continuing quest to find good Indian food, Tom and I headed over to Indus Village, a place that my co-worker had suggested (I often find restaurants based on his suggestions). It's the place he goes to get Indian take out, though it's not exactly Indian- it's Pakistani. So I guess that could account for some of the difference.

When we entered, we found a true hole in the wall restaurant- minimal decor, florescent lighting and some very ornate and truly uncomfortable chairs. We took a seat and perused the menu, which was very reasonably priced. I started off with some of these fried thingies and I can't recall the name right now. They were pretty good, well seasoned and crispy, but just not as good as the ones at India Quality.

Then I ordered this combo plate of chicken tikka masala and saag paneer. It was pretty good, though there could have been more chicken. Oh, the warm naan it was served with was really good and I definitely finished that off.

Meanwhile, Tom also ordered a combo plate. And he had ordered lamb curry, but accidentally given him chicken curry. But when they noticed the mistake, that brought over a whole new portion of lamb curry for him.

Service here was pretty friendly, but often neglectful, but really, it's a take out joint. They're really not there to provide great, friendly table service. After dinner, we hopped next door to check out a Halal market. Even thought it was a bit later, it was packed with people, and we picked up some lentils, chickpeas and pita for cheap. I think we will be back here at some point, when the craving for Indian food strikes. It was certainly better than the places that I had visited on Solano Ave., but I'm starting to feel that I'll also be making a trip to India Quality on my next trip to Boston.

CRABS! (part 2)

Allright, I'm blogging right now cause I'm bored and procrastinating. Sure, I have a ton of projects to work on, but it's raining out and I just can't motivate. So let me tell you about our crab cooking adventure (part 2). Now as you may remember Tom and I tried to cook crabs last year. We had bought rock crabs from Super 88, but that fiasco didn't turn out too well. Our second attempt was much better, and a clear indicator that we'd learned some lessons from the first time.

So I hadn't actually planned on buying live crabs. It is Dungeness crab season up here in the Bay Area, so there have been lots of posters around the Berkeley Marina advertising live and cooked crabs. Since my little cousin was in town, I thought it'd be fun to head down there and buy some cooked crabs for dinner. Unfortunately, it was a really foggy day, so when we arrived at the Marina, you couldn't even see the water.

The place I had in mind to buy crabs was the Marina Sports fishing center, but we couldn't really locate it. In an attempt to find it, we went to the dock master's office, where I asked for the bait shop. (I had asked for the wrong thing and turns out the bait shop was closed). So I asked him where I could find crabs. So he opened the door behind him and shouted out to a boat that was docked there and found that one of the boats had just come in with crabs, so he told me to go out and buy some. That really wasn't what I was expecting, but he was standing there watching me, so I wasn't about to say I wanted cooked crabs. I hurried out the back door with Tom and my cousin in tow and approached the boat where two men were sorting crabs. He told me they were only $8 each!! so I said I'd buy 4 of them. He just stuck them in a big trash bag and when he handed them to me, I almost dropped the bag, cause they were so heavy.

So now we had 4 big crabs to cook. We made a little stop to buy some crab cracking gear and then headed home to cook them. I looked for some online guidance on how to cook and clean the crabs, but basically left the cooking up to Tom. I was a little scared of the crabs because they were quite large, lively and cause we'd gotten them fresh, they didn't have those little rubber bans on their claws, so they were all thrashing around. Here's a pic of the crabs in the fancy trash bag:

Just like last time, we decided to lull the crabs to sleep by putting them in the freezer. Here's Tom with one of the crabs in a bowl on the way to the freezer.

Next we boiled them two at a time in one big metal pot. Our whole entire house ended up smelling like crab and brine.

And here we are with our beautifully cooked crabs. You can really tell how huge they are in this pic.

We ended up taking two crabs over to my cousin's house for dinner and leaving two for ourselves. And really, they were so large that I'm completely crabbed out. I don't think I'll be eating crabs for quite some time. But for those of you who may want to visit, Oakland is having its annual crabfest on March 1st.

AND NOW BACK TO WORK...

Ok, we're back from our quick Vegas. And yes, we spent a lot of the time eating, but I will detail more of our trip in the later posts. You know, I'm still working on finding good places for take out. We have plenty of local restaurants where we like to go out and eat, but sometimes, I just want to pick up food on the way home. One local place that's well known for its take out is Gregoire's in Berkeley. Ok, it's honestly to far from my house to get take out on a regular week night, but on my day off, I headed over there with my cousins for a quick lunch.

This place is really well known for it's small menu and creative sandwiches (my boss likes it a lot). I'd heard that they had a couple of seats, but when we walked in, we found just three stools along a counter. This place really is designed for take out. But the three of us took a seat at the counter where we could look straight into the kitchen/prep area.

I had looked up the menu online before leaving the house. And because it was right after the new year, I was still in my "attempt to eat healthy mode" (which is really defunct after that Vegas trip). So I ordered this beet sandwich on lavash bread.

And it was actually quite good. I liked the creamy dressing it was served with, and I liked the fact that it was vegetarian. I could've made it at home for a lot less, though. My cousin ordered a lobster bisque, but she found it too salty. And I ordered a lunch out for Tom- a goat cheese and endive soup and chicken sandwich. Tom also found the soup so salty that he couldn't eat it, and he said the chicken sandwich was ok.

Overall, it's a cute place, but pretty pricey for kinda small portions. I don't know if I'll go back, but tonight I'm trying out a different take out place and hopefully, it'll turn out to be a better experience.

A TRIP TO VEGAS

Hey everybody! So here we are, sitting at McCarran airport waiting for our delayed flight to board. Wait, we're about to board. To be continued later.....

MY BIRTHDAY IN MONTEREY

Ok, I realize that I'm a bit behind on my posts. My birthday was 3 weeks ago, afterall. I actually had to work on my birthday. I normally don't work on Mondays, but my co-worker was off in Argentina, so we celebrated the day after my birthday with a day trip to Monterey. Our trip to Monterey was really so I could check out sea otters, and we saw a bunch- five in all. They're so cute and awesome. After a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we headed out for lunch at one of the restaurants on Cannery Row. It's a pretty touristy area, but we'd done some research and had picked out a restaurant called Fish Hopper.

It was pretty empty cause we were having an early lunch. But it had a great location on the beach and despite the light rain, we decided to sit outdoors on the heated deck. Here's a picture of the view:

So this place specializes in seafood, which is exactly what I wanted while we were visiting Monterey (see fish in aquarium, eat fish for lunch). Tom started off with an appetizer of crab cakes. Here they are below.

They look pretty good, but he wasn't such a huge fan of all the pink sauce that they had drizzled it with. Meanwhile, I started off with a bowl of their "famous" clam chowder.

I thought it was allright. It had large chunks of veggies and stuff, and it was a nice warming thing to have sitting outside. But it wasn't the best chowder I'd ever had. Next, I ordered an entree of half a Dungeness crab. It is currently crab season up in Northern California, so I was expecting really delicious, fresh crab. But it was clear that my crab had been cooked ahead of time and reheated, so it was kinda dry. It was also really really tasteless. I had to dip it into cocktail sauce to really give it flavor.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered a fried seafood platter.

He said it was ok. Overall, this place really is a bit of a tourist trap. I mean, it's got an amazing location, but the food was really eh and the prices were sky high. On the other had, we really did have a great trip to Monterey. I highly suggest it for anyone who wants to see some really cute otters.

A MESSAGE TO ALL FUTURE VISITORS TO OUR HOME

Ok, I know I haven't blogged in 2 weeks. And no, it's not because I haven't eaten out. I have, and I've taken pictures and yes, I will eventually write about it. It's just that I'm actually busy at work and it's hard to find time to blog. Except for when I'm waiting for people to arrive to the airport. So I'm now laying down some ground rules for you potential visitors from the East Coast. If you want to visit us and spend the night....

1. Don't take a night flight from the East Coast. They ALWAYS get delayed. Let's keep in mind the one time I had to pick up Tom at 2am, and the other time I picked him up at 4am, both delayed night flights. (And yes, I had to work the next day) Be smart, take an early morning flight. Sure, you might have to get up before the crack of dawn, but your flight will almost never be delayed. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here waiting for the arrival of a flight that's been delayed for 2 hours.

2. If you want me to pick you up, fly into OAK, not SFO.

3. If you are a student or you're unemployed, please remember that people who work get up early in the morning. We (Tom and I) go to bed by 10pm, so if you want to get in later than that on a week night, plan on not spending the night with us.

Ok, I know I'm being whiny and bitchy, but I'm tired, I'm getting over a cold and I want to go to bed, but I can't. So I'm gonna catch up on Project Runway rereuns and maybe I'll blog a bit more later. About actual food, too.

NEW YEAR'S DAY IN NAPA

There are many reasons why we moved from Boston to CA, but New Year's Day just reminded me even more of why we moved. While Boston was finishing the month getting the most snowfall it'd ever had in over 30 years in December, we were spending the day in Napa, where it was a sunny 60F, clear and beautiful. Ok, admittedly we'd gotten rather lucky. It'd been raining a few days before, and we currently have a downed tree in our back yard after a day of torrential rains yesterday. My little sis had come up to visit and she wanted to take her bf, Ben, to Napa. Tom had also never been, and I invited Kjell and Huong who are also in town (and they brought along a friend and Huong's mom). So all of us spent the day in Napa.

We started off by visiting V. Sattui. It's a winery, but it's more well known for its well stocked gourmet marketplace and picknicking area. After spending a while picking out the meats, cheeses and breads we wanted for lunch, we headed outside and I picked a sunny spot for us.

Here's my little lunch plate. I'd ordered a turkey and cranberry sandwich. Tom also got a curried prawn salad and we got two Acme baguettes to pair with the cheese.

Here's our spread of cheese- we'd picked a lot of them. I think 6. I enjoyed my cheddar with dill and herbs, but Tom had picked a mild blue which he stated was his favorite cheese that'd he ever had (and he loves cheese). We did pick a dud- a brie with walnuts which was too bitter to eat, but overall, we had a great meal, which was even better just due to the beautiful surroundings and excellent weather.

After lunch, we headed over to Domaine Chandon, just 10 minutes down the road, for a winery tour. Let me just say that I've been to a handful of wineries in Napa and Domaine Chandon was very impressive and beautiful. It's just built on a gorgeous piece of land and the architecture itself is just lovely. However, the tour was sort of a dud. When you pay someone $7 for a tour, during which they get to promote their brand, restaurant, etc., and have a captive audience, they should at least give people a sample of wine. Instead tastings were an extra $15. While some of our party opted for that choice, Tom and I headed outside and took pics of the lovely surroundings.

After the tour, we headed into downtown Napa to visit COPIA, a food and wine museum. We got there at exactly 3 and found out that they'd just closed since they were having a special event for New Year's eve. So we headed next door to the newly built Oxbow Marketplace. The thing with Oxbow is that it literally just opened. It's a huge building and you can tell it's going to be an amazing place that will showcase local food artisans, but for now, it only has like 6 vendors.

We checked out the olive oil store

and sampled some very good olive oil.

We also visited the organic ice cream shopwhere Tom got an organic root beer (he said it was pretty good) and we shared an ice cream.I actually enjoyed the coffee ice cream quite a bit. And it was served in this funky biodegradable cup with a biodegradable spoon.

We had a couple hours left to burn before dinner. (I had expected to spend that time at COPIA) but we took a trip to Walmart instead and then walked around downtown Napa a bit. Soon it was time to head to dinner. We had early reservations at Pilar, a small restaurant focusing on local ingredients.
Of course with such early reservations we were the first ones at the restaurant. The menu was pretty short and we had already decided what to order while we waited outside for the doors to open. I ordered a crab cake to start. It was pretty good and I especially liked how it was served with the side of fresh grapefruit.

For dinner, I had a chicken dish.Ok honestly, it's been nearly a month now, and I don't remember what was in this. But it was pretty good. Nothing amazing.

And lastly, I finished with some type of warm chocolate mousse, which was truly incorrectly named cause it was more like a warm chocolate cake, though not as good. I didn't finish it (it wasn't worth the calories).After dinner, we drove home, with the idea in our minds that we'd play Monopoly. But we ended up watching Shrek 2 on TV and going to bed by 10:30. Yeah, that's what you do when you're old. We couldn't even manage to stay up until midnight. Overall, we had a lovely New Year's day- a great way to start off the New Year's in our new CA home.

THE JUNKET

For those of you who have actually visited us, you'll know that we live right near this really big shopping center. It's got a ton of chain stores, but there are also a few little independent stores hidden in there. One we like to visit a lot if the Junket. It's this German deli, but they carry a bunch of imported English stuff as well, like Candbury's from England, etc. We like going in the mornings (actually we just went today) before we hit the farmer's market.

Whenever we go, there are always a bunch of old people hanging out there. Lots of regulars and we always seem to be the youngest one there. But I don't mind cause I love getting their chicken pies. For breakfast today, I had a continental breakfast. It's a great deal since it come with a pastry, cheese, meat, oj and coffee. All for under $6.

The last time we went, Tom ordered this English pastie. He also likes buying crumpets, though he's currently cutting back so he can hopefully lost some weight. (It's his resolution this year).

And finally, here's a blurry pic of the interior. See how it's got this kinda kitschy, cute German/European vibe going? (Or someone's interpretation of it).

At any rate, don't be surprised if I take you here when you visit. It's definitely become one of our regular breakfast spots.