SAN DIEGO DAY 2

Ok, I'm back. I am a little handicapped right now, after slicing half my nail off while chopping veggies this past weekend, and the band-aid gets in the way of my typing, but I'm limping along and continuing with my San Diego blog posts.

So reading this post, it may seem like we spent the entire day eating, but really we didn't. The best part of the day was visiting the San Diego Zoo and seeing pandas! And the baby panda was not just lying around sleeping, he was so active and playful with his mommy, I almost died. I wanted to get back in line to see him again, but everyone (especially Tom) voted me down. Sigh, guess I'll see him again next time.

But first, we started the day with brunch. Cathy and Ben took us to one of their favorite places, the Parkhouse Eatery, which according to their sign serves "American Ethnic Grub" or whatever that may be.

When we got there, the place was already packed and there were a slew of people in front of us, so we ended up waiting quite a while for a table. I think it took almost an hour before we were finally seated. But the weather was quite nice and it wasn't too bad just hanging out outside. They had lots of tables outside, but of course, that's where everyone wants to sit, so when we finally got a table inside, we were just happy to be sitting. The interior of the restaurant is actually much nicer than the exterior, and had lots of rooms, almost like a house. We were seated at a table in the back, close to the kitchen.

The menu wasn't huge, and they had some pretty enticing options, but I ended up going with the Bueno spicy homemade turkey chorizo & eggs scrambled w/roasted potato and fresh romas w/flour tortilla. Our server had warned us that the kitchen was backed up, so it did take a while for the food to arrive. Here's mine below.

I had actually expected the eggs to be cooked separately from the chorizo, but they were cooked together. It ended up being pretty tasty, but wouldn't have been half as good without that spicy sauce you see on the side. That really made the entire dish. The food there was pretty good, and in a very cute neighborhood. Even though it was kinda pricy the largish portions help to offset the high cost.

After brunch, it was off to the zoo, and after spending a number of hours walking around there, we were pretty hungry and ready from some dinner. Cathy suggested that we check out a yakitori place, Yakitori Yakyudori, one of the few in San Diego, and she had made a reservation for us. When we arrived, it was actually a few minutes before their opening time, but they let us sit. And it was a good thing we made reservations, because the place filled up very quickly.

One of the things I liked about this place where the picture menus they give you. Another fun thing was they had these two big signs on the wall. One listed the most popular items for Americans, and the other listed the most popular items for Japanese. I ordered stuff off the Japanese list.

We ordered a bunch of stuff like : chicken hearts (though I don't like it when places slice them apart like this- I prefer them pretty intact)

Chicken thigh meat:

chicken "meatballs"

chicken gizzards and Tom's order of takoyaki to the the right:

grilled smelt:
and fried chicken wings:

To be honest, we ordered more stuff than this, but I didn't have time to photograph everything. The food came out pretty quickly and it was all really good. This place isn't as refined as my favorite yakitori place in LA, Yakitoriya. And unlike many yakitori houses, I don't think they cared as much about the type of charcoal they were roasting over (if they were using charcoal, they could've been using gas). Some place are really particular about the charcoal, because it imparts flavors to the meat, and the stuff we had didn't really have character. However, I was happy to have pretty well priced yakitori and would be happy to have this place located near us.

We were all pretty full after dinner, but we had to make sure to save room for dessert. There's a pretty famous dessert place in SD called Extraordinary Desserts, which Cathy has been telling me about since she went to college. So finally, we had to take this opportunity to visit. We went to the original location, not too far from where we'd had dinner, and even though it was still fairly early (it was before 7pm) there was already a line of people out the door.

The setting was really cute. It looked like someone's home, warmly decorated inside with garden seating outside. There was lots of outdoor seating, which is not surprising considering it's SD. As we waited in line, Ben bumped into a friend, and I plotted out what to order. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line to place our orders. There were a ton of choices, from pastries, to cakes and they plate all the desserts. Here's a pic of their cake case:
I ended up choosing one a passion fruit chocolate bombe. And I made Tom order some ice cream so I could try it. After ordering, we took our seats at a table and waited for them to be plated and served. Unfortuantely, the place seem understaffed, and it took a while to get our desserts. The problem was that we could see them sitting on the counter behind us, and I was tempted to just walk up and grab them:

Finally, our plated desserts arrived, along with our drinks. Here's mine below:

As you can see, it's very pretty. However, it wasn't as amazing as it looks. It wasn't very passion fruity at all, and I got more fruit flavor from the sauces on the plate than the dessert itself. It wasn't bad, but I was hoping for better. Here's the ice cream that Tom had:

To be honest, I don't remember what flavor this was. I do remember that it had macadamia nuts, but the ice cream itself didn't have much flavor. The flavor came from the toppings that were mixed in.

And lastly, my sister got a cookie.

This was also pretty good and loaded with butter.

Overall, I can see why this place is so popular. It's an adorable setting, has great presentation and the desserts are pretty good. I'm not going to say that it seems to be more flash than substance. After all, I've only been once, and I'd like to try a few more desserts before making that call. However, I certainly enjoyed going there, and once again, I can only wish that we had something similar in our area.

We had a great time in SD and hope we can go back and visit soon, to fill out bellies with more food and check out more adorable animals.