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.

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.

OLIVETO, ROCKRIDGE

Since my little sister, Cathy, was in town with her boyfriend, Ben, we decided to head out to dinner at a place we hadn't tried before. We ended up in Rockridge, which is a really nice area in North Oakland, filled with shops, and on that day, a street festival that was winding down when we arrived. We headed over to a restaurant called Oliveto, which is a pretty famous restaurant in the East Bay. The upstairs area is the fancy party, but they also have a small cafe downstairs, specializing in small plates and pizzas.

The cafe is pretty cozy, but they had quite a few seats available and we were seated immediately. After perusing the menu, we decided to order a few small plates. Tom, Cathy and Ben ordered pizzas, while I ordered a chicken brochette.

Here's a photo of one of the small plate: a salad of octopus and beans. Normally Tom loves octopus, but he also hates celery, so he was so so on this.

And then there was my chicken. On the menu it was $15, so I was expecting something more substantial than a single skewer of chicken. Now, it was really tasty, with lemon zest and grilled bread sandwiched between the chicken pieces, but for $15, I should've gotten at least 3 of these.

Not surprisingly, I ended up being pretty hungry. I stole some pizza from Tom, but even then I was hungry. So post dinner, we check out Ici, a very famous ice cream place also in Rockridge. There was a line out the door, but I gotta say, it wasn't worth it. I just like gelato much more then ice cream. At least it filled me up, though.

So even though the food (what I had of it) at Oliveto was pretty good, the price are just too high for the portion sizes. I wouldn't mind going back if someone else were paying. Actually, Ben paid, but I mean more like my parents, but I'd just prefer to go somewhere where I don't walk out hungry.

A HODGE PODGE OF BITES

All of the things we ate below aren't worth their own posts (not that they weren't good, but most were snacks), so I've combined it all into a mini hodge podge post. The first one I'll start off with is pizza at Arizmendi. There are a lot of co-ops in Berkeley. We like going to this one co-op cheese store and bought our bikes at a co-op bike shop. It's a big thing here in the Bay Area. Another well known co-op is a bakery called Arizmendi. Much like Cheese Board Pizza, Arizmendi makes a single type of veggie pizza every day. They even have a pizza calendar on their website. The day we went, we go to try the Roasted Carrots, Arugula, Roasted Garlic, Three Cheese, Cherry-Balsamic Vinaigrette pizza.

I figured with so many ingredients that there'd be no way to tell the difference between each one. But this pizza proved me wrong. Here's a pic of the pizza:

It's kinda hard to see the carrots, which were shredded pretty thinly, but you could really taste the vinegar and cheeses. I thought the pizza was actually very nice. My only complaint was the fact that the crust was very very chewy. But I wouldn't mind going back to try a few other types of pizza.

Next up, the Solano Avenue Stroll. The Solano Ave Stroll is this neighborhood event that takes place once a year. There are tons of people who go and vendors setup their booths all along Solano Ave. Tom really didn't want to go. He hates crowds. But I love food booths. So I forced him to go along. As walked along the crowded streets, we soon realized that the food vendors weren't concentrated in one area - they'd been spread out between all the other vendors. This kinda sucked, because you can't check out all the booths at once and decide what you want. After seeing about 3 food booths, we ran into us with stuff that actually interested us AND the line was pretty short.

So below you'll see what we got:

Ok, at the bottom of the pic, you can see a corn dog. But the great thing about living in northern CA is that they offered turkey or veggie dogs. We both opted for the turkey. Since the batter was homemade, you could actually see the cornmeal in the batter and it was pretty tasty (too bad they were so busy they couldn't refill the ketchup.)

At the top of the pic is something less identifiable and rather strange - it's garlic fries topped with crab aioli (the white stuff) and crab (the pink stuff). Ok ok , it sounds strange, and I wasn't going to order it, but Tom wanted to try it. And to be honest, it wasn't that bad. Those garlic fries were really the best part - probably some of the best garlic fries we've had here. Tom felt that there was too much aioli (he was right) and really wasn't a fan of it period. But overall, I found this to be surprisingly good. Too bad we were so stuffed that we were too full to try stuff from the other stalls.

And finally, a cheap Thai restaurant on the Berkeley campus called Tuk Tuk Thai. We had dropped my car off at the repair shop and decided to stop here for lunch. They had pretty cheap lunch specials, which ended up not being all that bad. Here's my tom yum soup below:

And my chicken with basil and noodles. It came with a summer roll on the side. The food was decent enough, and the generous portion meant that I was able to take the left overs home. Overall, not a bad meal.

And that's my list of bites in the East Bay.

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.

IN SEARCH FOR A GREAT SLICE

I gotta say people, my current job is so similar to my old job that it's scary. Here I am, at work, just counting the minutes before I can finally go home. Of course, in my last job, I could've just closed and gone home, but I stayed around hoping for that extra sale that'd make my day better. Now what keeps me here is knowing that I'll actually get paid for it. But that also means that I have some time on my hand to blog.

Ok, let's start off with this adorable pic of our cat.

Awwwwww. Isn't she just the cutest? As you can see, she misses Boston and especially, the Red Sox. Which is why the Red Sox blanket that Tom bought me on his last trip to Boston has now become her favorite place to sleep.

Anyway, since arriving here, I've been trying to find Tom a great slice of pizza. Growing up in NY, he's actually quite particular about the type of pizza he does enjoy. And when we're in Brooklyn, you can actually witness him eating a whole large pizza by himself. A trip to Lanesplitter wasn't great. But I'd heard of another pizza place, Pizzaiolo, that my boss really enjoys, started by a former employee of Alice Waters. (ok ok, it seems like all restaurants in Berkeley were founded by people who once worked for Alice Waters), so we headed over there one evening with my friend, Nish.

Luckily, I had made reservations before we arrived. The restaurant quickly filled up, and it was quite noisy, but we got to sit at a little table up front in it's own little spot off the bar, so were set apart from all the noise. Of course, this place serves fancy pizza. I decided to get two appetizers, while having some of Tom's pizza.

I started off with some plain arancini served with gremolata and I must admit, it was quite good. With the side of gremolata, I didn't even miss the cheese that normally oozes out from certain arancini. Along with that, I had a little gems salad. I don't know what it is about little gem lettuces (I'd also had them at Chez Panisse), but they are so tasty and make for excellent salad.

Meanwhile, Tom got a pizza margherita.

It came out piping hot from the oven, but for some reason, the cheese was really funky. It was like fresh mozzarella, and had this texture of almost melted goat cheese. It didn't taste bad, but it wasn't what we were expecting and not exactly our favorite thing. The pizza my friend ordered with potatoes was much better.

Had I actually ordered a pizza, this is the one I would've picked, especially with its sprinkling of black truffles. Overall, our dinner at Pizzaiolo was pretty good. I think Tom put it well when he said that it's a place we'd take people from out of town, but not one we'd be regulars at.

MY LAST POST AS A RESIDENT OF BOSTON

My last post from Boston is dedicated to my favorite eating buddy, Leah. (Sorry Tom, Leah’s favorite food of the year so far was not Brooklyn pizza.) I’m actually typing this from the airport while waiting for my plane to depart. FYI- Logan does have wifi, but you gotta pay $7.95 for a day pass, which is why I’m typing this on Word.

Leah and I have had some great meals together over the past few years, whether it’s been an ice cream cake for four (which was consumed by the two of us- hey it was hot out!) or French fries and mac and cheese at ES. And though we’ll be having many meals again in the future, it’ll be a lot harder now that there’s a continent between us.

So before I left Boston, Leah insisted that I try Picco, the pizza place in the South End.

She loves the pizza there, and though I’d wanted to go for some time, somehow, I never made my way over there. (I’m much more likely to have brunch than dinner in the South End.) Finally, early on a summer evening, we headed over there. When we arrived, they had the outdoor seating set up, and since it was pretty early, we had our pick of seats. We peeked inside, and I was immediately captivated by a large black chalk board listing all the homemade ice creams that were available. We chose to sit outside, and looked over the menu, but as the sun started to set, it really started cooling down, and we retreated inside. (The waitress didn’t seem too thrilled, since she’d already taken our orders, but whatever).

And on the subject of service, when we arrived, it seemed rather confusing and lacksadiscal. The restaurant wasn’t busy, but it was hard to be sure who was going to seat us, who was going to take our order, etc., and not one of the staff members really stepped up- Leah had to ask someone if we could sit outside. Leah said this was basically normal for Picco, so don’t be too surprised if the staff members are inattentive.

Ok, but onto the fun stuff- the pizza. Leah always orders the veggie pizza here. She also got a Caesar salad because she loves that the lay white anchovies on top of the salad. The Caesar actually did look pretty good, but I wanted to save room for the ice cream, so I ordered a pizza margherita and I also ordered Tom a steak and cheese pizza to go. (He was working at home and couldn’t join us.)

We’d moved inside, and the restaurant was empty, but slowly starting to fill up (it’d be mostly full by the time we left). Here’s a shot of the interior- lots of red and polished wood.

It’s actually smaller than you’d expect, but that’s another reason why it gets so crowded later on. Another waiter had taken over indoors and we were served our pizzas. Here’s mine:

And here’s Leah’s:

And the verdict: It was actually quite excellent pizza. The crust was well charred and the interesting thing was that it was almost like eating bread. The crust was similar to a bread from Clear Flour- with its texture, crackle and the large bubbles inside. I really enjoyed my pizza, and I think it’s far better than anything else we’ve got in Boston.

I also tried a slice of Leah’s pizza and I was surprised by the fact that I really enjoyed that, also. I didn’t think I would since among other things, the veggie toppings included eggplant and fennel, neither or which I like, but it worked and I would actually order this pizza in the future. As we ate, the restaurant started to fill up, and the staff seemed to snap to attention and started being much more speedy than before.

After pizza, it was time for some ice cream. I had been staring at the big black board for quite some time, so I’d decided I’d be getting 3 scoops. I got chocolate, caramel and espresso. Meanwhile, Leah also got three scoops, but they were the polar opposites. She got peach, peanut butter fudge and I currently forget the other flavor. Oh, and the came with free sprinkles. I got chocolate, and Leah got rainbow.

The ice cream is all excellent, but it’s grown up ice cream. The flavors are so deep and intense that it’s hard to eat a lot of it. It’s like really good dark chocolate, you can eat a square and be happy, rather than eating the whole thing. The espresso was my favorite, and the chocolate had the lovely nuances of whatever chocolate they had used (as in, it didn’t just taste like chocolate, you could get other flavors from it). I managed to finish a few spoonfuls of each, but was done for the night.

Meanwhile, maybe because of the table switch, they had forgotten my pizza to go. The waiter rushed over and offered a discount, but we didn’t feel like waiting for it- I just gave Tom the slices I had left (which he quickly polished off when I got home). I was really glad I tried Picco, but I was even happier with the company. It’ll be hard to find another eating buddy like Leah, who will agree to eat McDonald’s chicken nuggets because there’s a buy one get one free deal or someone just as enthusiastic about fried chicken. I guess I’ll just have to scope out some places to take her out West- like Betsy’s Bakehouse, with its fried chicken sandwich and spicy coleslaw.

As for the rest of you, I’ll soon be adding posts about my dining adventures from the East Bay. I hope you’ll all come out and visit us, so we can have some more great meals in CA.

HARRY POTTER AND AN ORDER OF PIZZA

Sorry, I know I'm being goofy, but the last Harry Potter book comes out today at midnight. Anyhoo, last week we went and saw the fifth Harry Potter movie and after, we decided to grab dinner in the neighborhood. Leah had told me that Cambridge One had opened in her building (The Trilogy, right across the street from the movie theatre) just a week ago, so off we went to try it out.

I knew that the entrance was on the Boylston side of the building, so it wasn't hard to find, but for people who've never been there, is is a little hard to locate. You can only enter through one door on the far right of the restaurant. Here's a shot of the interior.

If the minimalist decor looks familiar to you, it's because Cambridge One is owned by the same guys who own Audubon, Middlesex and Miracle of Science. The large restaurant was virtually empty when we entered, a little surprising considering a Sox game was about to start. Clearly, the word isn't out yet that this place has opened, but I'm sure it'll fill up once people find out.

We were quickly seated at wooden booths with large slate tables, which oddly enough, are all set up on 6 inches of concrete. I don't know why it's necessary to do this. It doesn't making sitting any more comfortable, and it's pretty awkward when you're trying to sit or get up.

We were given menus and our drink orders were taken. What Cambridge One is known for is its grilled pizzas. As in, the pizzas are cooked on an open grill (I think Otto in NY does the same thing). While walking to the bathroom, you can see the grills in the open kitchen. There are 4 of them, each with their own little booth, and you can feel the heat radiating off. You could also see all the bored kitchen employees and servers, who had nothing to do.

You can order either a half or full pizza, but unlike most places, you really don't derive any benefit (cost-wise) of ordering a full pizza. The half pizzas are priced at 50% of the full sized pizza+$1. So we all decided to order our own half pizza, and share if we felt like it. There are also appetizers like salads on the menu, but we skipped those. So here's Tom's half lobster pizza. It was the most expensive one, coming in it $13. (not terrible for dinner).

I actually liked it more than the pizza I ordered. There was lobster, green onions and some cheese. The crust was pretty good when it was nice and crunchy (along the edges) but grilling the pizza means that the crust needs to be thin. Which means that they can't hold a lot of toppings, or wet toppings well. Towards the middle of the pizza, the crust got pretty soggy.

And here's my pizza.

It's got thin slices of potato and two types of cheese. It was pretty good, but Tom and I ended up trading. After eating the half pizza, I was still kinda hungry. Turns out the one half isn't really enough for dinner. So we opted to go to Star Market across the street to buy some ice cream. (The only dessert on the menu was Toscanini's Tiramisu ice cream, and at $5 a serving, it cost more than our 6 pack of Klondike bars). Overall, I welcome Cambridge One in the neighborhood. It's certainly a better alternative to any other pizza that we've got in the area (though that's not saying much). But I think Tom and I would still prefer a pie for Upper Crust (yes Leah, I know you hate it, but we do enjoy that place) or even better, a Brooklyn pizza.

NY, DAY 2

Ahhh, another trip to NY, another opportunity to stuff ourselves silly. We'd already had a Brooklyn pizza the night before, but we followed with another pizza meal the following evening. With friends working in downtown and us staying in Brooklyn, I thought a great place to go was Adrienne's Pizzabar, which was highly recommended on Ed Levine's blog. I thought it was a good place to go because it wouldn't require reservations on a Saturday night. (It's in the middle of financial district, which is empty on the weekends) So off we went, to meet some old friends and enjoy pizza.

After a crapy ride on the NY city subway (stupid weekend service changes) plus a brief ride in a cab, we finally arrived at Stone St., a tiny cobblestone lined alleyway that was setup like a biergarten. (Lots of outdoor tables and benches). We arrived at Adrienne's and found out there'd be a wait for outdoor seating. So we headed instead we were were seated immediately. It's a very modern feel, with a long bar. We got to sit at some tall tables in the back. My friend, Sug, and his gf arrived shortly after we did, so we decided to order a bunch of appetizers to share.
They were all really tasty. Tom and Sug shared a half order of mixed meats, and the rest of us shared a plate of mixed veggies and an arugula salad. I especially enjoyed the plate of mixed roasted veggies.

Soon, my friend Juliet arrived, as did our pizza. Adrienne's lets you order a traditional pizza with various toppings (which we got) or individual 10" pizzas. The traditional pizza is an enormous pizza on a half sheet pan. We got it with broccoli and sun dried tomatoes. The cheese and toppings were fresh and very tasty. I especially like the crust where it got super crunchy along the side. However, once you got to the middle, the pizza suffered from the same problem of any pizza baked on a sheet pan, namely, the bottom got soggy, rather than crispy and firm. This meant that it was almost impossible to eat the pizza by hand. A fork and knife were very necessary.

The good thing is that Adrienne's is a total steal. We had a ton of food for five, and it still came out to be $12 per person. (and it would've been less had Juliet not ordered a drink). Overall, I think this is a great place to visit on the weekend (I've heard that it's packed on the weekdays). I still prefer Lombardi's pizza, but I certainly wouldn't mind going back here.

After dinner, we walked down to the South Street Seaport to get ice creams. And following our subway fiasco, Tom and I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to get home. It was a lovely night, and lots of people were out doing the same thing, so it was a great way to work off the pizza. All in all, a great night in NY.

PIZZA PARTY!

As most of you know, Tom and kitty moved in about 2 months ago. So we thought it'd be good to have a house warming party with all our friends over. (and I wanted to try out Tom's under utilized pizza stone). Initially, I wanted to buy pizza dough from Clear Flour, but as our guest list grew, it made more sense to make our own pizza dough. I had found a very simple recipe for pizza dough in Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" cookbook, and after making it 10 times, I'll repeat it by memory for you right now:

3 cups flour (ap or bread flour- I used ap)
1 tsp dried yeast
2 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup water (plus a little extra)

So you chuck the dry ingredients in a food processor, and turn it on. Then using the feeding tube of the food processor, you dribble in the olive oil, and the water and let it go for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, turn it off and touch it. If it's slightly sticky, then it's ready. If not, add water a little at a time until it reaches the right consistency. Knead and from into a ball.

Then set it aside for 1-2 hours until it doubles in size. And that's it. When you're ready to use it, you can either use the whole ball or split it in half for 2 smaller pizzas.

I wanted to make enough dough so that everyone could have at least one pizza. And I added different things to the dough as I got bored making the same one over and over. If you want to add stuff, you do it with all the dry ingredients. I added roasted garlic to some, pepper to others and I substituted one cup of the AP for whole wheat flour in others.

I prepared the dough before everyone arrived, rolling it out onto sheet pans. We also had a ton of toppings for everyone: anchovies, roasted garlic, sun dried tomoatoes, anchovies, prosciutto, pepperoni, chicken sausage, and on and on. During this entire time, I was covered in flour, so I didn't take any pics. I'll be relying on Big Ed's pics instead. So here's his happy face pizza before cooking:

and after:His turned out to be one of the heaviest pizzas. Using the pizza stone and cooking for 6-7 minutes on the broil setting and I thought they turned out great, even though we could only cook one pizza at a time, and had a pizza queue for most of the night. They turned out to be much denser than I expected. And we had set out all our cheese from Vermont as an appetizer, so most people had one pizza or shared. I was left with a ton of dough that I guess we'll be using in the future for calzones, etc. Even at the end of the night when I made my own pizza, I could only finish half of it. (Though the other half was a great snack the following day.)

We finished the dinner with gelato from TJ's. I think everyone had a great time, so if you ever what to make pizza at home, follow the simple recipe above and I think it'll turn out great.

ON THE VERMONT CHEESE TRAIL (ALMOST): DAY 1

Two weeks ago (Patriot's Day/Marathon Monday in Boston) I had planned for us to go up to Vermont and explore the Vermont Cheese Trail. Artisanal cheese making is very popular in Vermont right now, and even though it's winter, you can still visit a number of the farms and cheese makers. Combined with a baking class at the King Arthur Baking School, this was to be a fun weekend of cooking and eating. But then in typical New England fashion, a spring noreaster rolled in. We had to cancel our plans, but the the innkeeper at the place we were staying at wouldn't cancel our reservation. He'd only let us postpone AND we had to show up by the end of the month. So we ended up going this weekend. This turned out to be a mixed blessing. It was great cause the weather was gorgeous. Sunny and 75F both days. But since I had originally planned on visiting all the cheese places on a Monday, I was disappointed to discover that most businesses in Vermont are closed on Sunday. I discovered this after arriving in Vermont. It took a bit of scrambling and replanning, but we were able to redraw our plans for Sunday. Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn't visit those artisanal cheesemakers and even the Cabot Factory was closed on Sundays!

We drove up Saturday afternoon, checked into our inn and explored the tiny town of Montpelier. It wasn't more then 10 blocks long and 5 blocks wide. After an ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry's (hey, it is Vermont after all). We had dinner at a local pizza joint called Girasole (after all the driving we weren't looking for anything fancy).The place was not fancy. The booths and tables looked like they were from a different era (the 80s), but they did have a brand new wood fire oven that looked pretty spiffy. It was staffed by teenagers who weren't too attentive, but that was ok. We ordered two "small" pizzas and an appetizer of friend calamari.

The calamari wasn't too bad. It was fried and rather tasteless. I just liked the fact it was crunchy.And here are our pizzas.They were much larger than we'd planned. Actually, we could've ordered one pizza between the two of us and been fine. I ordered a special pizza of the day, that had chicken, asparagus, onions, tomatoes, portabello mushrooms, pesto and asiago cheese. I thought it was quite yummy, especially where the asiago had melted onto the crust. Tom ordered a pizza with roasted vegetables, asiago cheese and a spicy roasted pepper spread. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but he enjoyed it, though he wished that the veggies had been roasted more before they were put ontop of the pizza. We took the rest to go, thinking we might snack on them later, but that never happened.

We had been up earlier, so retired for the night, looking foward to maple syrup and cheese the next day.

A DAY OF DINING IN LA LA LAND

Well I've returned to life in Boston...frigid temperatures and snow in April. (I'll admit, this is not an unusual occurrence.) And not like it was so warm and balmy out in LA. After three cloudy days at home, the sun finally came out on the day I left. This is the second time this has happened to me. So here I am, ready to recount to you my first day back in LA. It was a very busy day for me, and I started it off with breakfast with my little sis. She happened to have the day off since those neocons that she works for at Fox give Good Friday off. So my sister took me to a popular weekend brunch spot (since it was a weekday, there wasn't a line) called Doughboys. I had already looked at the menu online back in Boston and was pretty excited to go and try it out.

I could see why this place was popular. It was a super casual place that is comfortable. It's in a key location and it doesn't have many seats. Look at this pic I took of the ceiling. It's lined with egg cartons. Isn't that funny?The menu is really extensive. I had a tough time picking between sweet and savory, but ended up going for savory. I ordered a scramble with potato, turkey sausage, spinach, tomato, scallion and mushroom. I admit that I mainly ordered it cause it came with a side of cornbread, and I love cornbread. Here it is below.It comes in this gigantic bowl. (Actually, all their servings are gigantic). I wasn't in love with it, though. I think they could've cooked the sausage a bit before adding it in with everything. That would've brought the flavor out. And the cornbread was disappointing. It wasn't vary flavorful and had this dense, greasy quality to it. Meanwhile, Cathy ordered a frittata with cream cheese, onion and smoked salmon.It was another enormous portion. I really did like the walnut bread it came with, and I think that's where I made my mistake in ordering. This place if known as a bakery and in the future, I should order a baked item.

After a day of running around the city, I finally ended up at Mozza for dinner with my family and Katie. When we entered the space, it was already packed, with people waiting for tables. The restaurant was much smaller than I had expected, but I liked the high ceilings and sort of rustic feel to the place. We perused the menu for a bit, and decided that it'd be easier to order a bunch of appetizers and a number of pizzas to share. So let's start off with the appetizers:

Actually, I'm look at the menu right now and a lot of the appetizers we ordered aren't on there. At any rate, here are classic fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta.These were perfectly fried and salted. I thought they were delicious and wish there were more.

Next up, marinated beets. These don't look like the typical red beets, but after visiting the farmers markets, I found out that there are a larger variety of beets in CA, including these light colored variety. These were also very tasty.

My dad wanted the bruschette with chicken livers, capers, parsley & guanciale. I took a nibble, minus the guanciale and found it delicious, but too dense and rich for my taste. (it is liver after all.)
We finished with this side of polenta topped with some shredded chicken. The chicken ontop was amazing, but I found the texture of the polenta a little disconcerting. It's hard to tell cause the pic is blurry, but the polenta was a lighter color than the polenta I cook. And the texture was almost smooth and custardy. I wasn't a big fan of that. I like to feel some of the grains when I'm eating polenta.
The we waited for the pizzas to arrive. It was kinda hard for me to decide what pizza I wanted, because in typical Batali fashion, almost every pizza contained some ingredient I didn't eat. But there were also some very typical Batali ingredients all over the menu; anchovies, rapini, burratta, etc. As we waited for the pizzas to arrive, I noticed that working near the oven was Nancy Silverton herself. Ok, now here's a listing of the pizzas we ordered:

My pizza:Funghi misti, fontina, taleggio & thyme.Katie's pizza: Coach farm goat cheese, leeks, roasted garlic & bacon (minus bacon)

Fennel sausage, panna & red onion Littleneck clams, oregano, parmigiano & pecorino
And this pizzette (mini pizza). That involved green peas and bacon, but I can't find it on the menu and I don't remember what else was in it.So what was my opinion of all this pizza? It's hard for me to answer that question. Cause I don't really think you could call it pizza. Sure when you look at the pics it LOOKS like pizza, but for me, when I'm eating pizza, I have a certain idea in mind of what pizza should be like. Be it a thin crust or thick crust, it has a certain type of crust. It normally involves some sauce (even if it's not tomato) and it normally involves cheese. These weren't pizza-like to me. The crust was more like bread. Very few of the pizzas had cheese and almost none of the had sauces. This isn't what pizza in Italy is like, either. It was its own entity. I enjoyed it and my older sister loved it.

However, my favorite part of the meal was dessert. Because finally, after years of searching, I have found gelato that tastes exactly like what gelato tastes like in Italy. Il laboratorio del gelato came close, but this was exactly it. Here's my dish with chocolate, strawberry and nociolla. My little sis kept trying to get me to order the olive oil ice cream, but I was happy with the classics.My big sister and Katie shared this Meyer lemon gelato pie, but my dessert was my favorite. So was it worth it? Well, if I lived in LA, I'd wait until all the hoopla died down to visit, but since I'm there very rarely, I'm glad I go to try out Mozza and tell you guys all about it.