Kabob Palace, Arlington VA

Searched for food near my hotel near Washinton DC, Radisson. Near by was a kabob place and the reviews looked good. So I walked a block and a half down the way. Place is not fancy and the guy taking the orders is great multi-tasker.

I got the lamb kabob. Served with rice and nice soft garbanzo beans, and side salad (nothing special). Also served with bread. Very chewy, hardy and good. There is a really good dipping sauce that taste like yougurt and lemon and some other spices.

The meats are all cooked after you place the order. When you walk in you can see trays of meats


www.mykabobpalace.com

Daphne restaruant

Pretty Good. Food isn't gourmet but it taste good.

The pita bread is hot.

The lemon chicken is pretty good. The plate of food will fill you up and the salad is good. But only one olive? ;-(

Tamarine Restaurant - Palo Alto, CA

We had 2 apps, 2 entrees and 1 dessert. . . result Full and satisfied.

Had the Calamari and Hamachi-Tartar. Tartar was great with chopped up onions, and something slightly crunchy and sweet like jiacama, cilantro, lemongrass, tons of flavor. The Calamari was good but I think I like it better w/o the batter fried. The cilantro emulsion was a very tasty dipping sauce.


The dinner entrees said "small plate" but I thought it wasn't that small. We ate the lemongrass bass. Nice portion actually. I like the side of noodle since it had sliced mango on top. Nice touch as I like a little sweet. The 5 spice duck was cooked very well, but it was just Okay. We had two orders of jasmine rice. Rice comes in these cute baskets wrapped in a banana leaf.



I was full but since the waiter slipped the dessert menu to us ever so cleverly. . . we shared the tapioca w/ passion fruit and lemon grass sorbet. Sweet but not too sweet, ahh nice ending.


Pretty pricey place, but food was good.

http://www.tamarinerestaurant.com/

Cliff House, San Francisco, CA

We went out to dinner for my Birthday at the "Cliff House". The restaruant is located along the sunset district of San Francisco and the restaurant is situated along the cliff of the water. Over looking the water, there are large rock formations.



We go to the restaurant around 7pm and sunset was at around 8pm so we got to view the sunset. They asked if we wanted to wait for a window seat but it was okay the booth was comfortable and I was hungry and didn't want to wait.

The menu is largely sea food. I over heard that they change their menu every month so the selection was not vast. For appetizer, David got the salmon slivers (i.e. house smoked salmon arranged on the plate) and I got dollops of oysters. Was good.






For Dinner I got the scallops and David got the filet minion & lobster tail (surf and turf) with risotto and mushrooms. The Scallops were nicely cooked. There were 5 big plump ones. The salad was a fresh spinach salad with sautéed mushrooms and avocado slices.






The filet was also good but not great. But it's nice to have a piece of meat.

Since it was my birthday I got a free dessert. I picked the cream trio. A sampling of pistachio crème Brule, orange glazed flan, and butter scotch cream in a shooter glass. David's chocolate cake was uneventful and too dense. The chocolate gelato on the side was good however.





We left the restaurant stuffed. I think it was because I drank a whole bottle of iced tea.

Cafe Boronne - Menlo Park, CA

The cafe food is pretty good. That day we order the specials which were a chicken panini w/avocado and ham and asparagus sandwich. Both were really good. However, it's cafe food, even at it's best it's nothing that blows your socks off.

Minus a star because our bill was $30 for just cafe food (mind you it was a step above Panera), however we found a thick metal wire curved into a half moon and about 3 inches long on the plate while we were eating. Whoa, gotta watch it there.

Chaat Paradise - Mountain View, CA

I had the Spinach and chick peas dish, was good, but salty. The kofta curry. .yummy sauce but what were those hard t balls inside? The bateta vata (i think) which were deep fried balls of potato w/spices. That was pretty good!

However, the service guy is very pushy. I said I just wanted rice w/my meal and he suggested rice w/ vegetables. Okay, so I think about his suggestion and it's 6.99 vs. 2.00 for my plain rice. "I'll just have plain rice."

Then he suggested bread. I look at the menu, and again he pointed out the most expensive ones and said " very nice, taste very nice". Hey, man I just came in for lunch and I already ordered 3 dishes w/ drinks so stop it. But, we ordered the bread and he pushed for two but I said "one order is enough". It wasn't the nice fluffy naan that I like and we ended up leaving 1/2 of it behind.

Food is good. . . but not *that* good and not *that* cheap, so I probably won't return. I don't like to feel like a used car sales guy is selling me food.

Darn we haven't found a good Indian restaurant like the one in Berkely (Tandor Kitchen).

Todai - San Diego

I've never been to Todai before. I always wanted to go since I was curious what they had. I just thought was a sushi buffet, but I didn't know they had foods and dessert too.

I went my friend Lori and her family. Yummy yummy, stuff stuff face, ouch I'm full.
Yup that pretty much describes the whole ordeal.

They have a spread of sushi (as expected) but they also had hot Japanese foods, salads, and dessert spread. Picture is of my 1st round. I think one of the best things I like from the hot food was the beef sukiyaki. The best sushi they called it the snow cone, which was scallops and some kind of creamy sauce on top the roll.

Willow Restaurant - Honolulu Hawaii

I wanted to take David to a Hawaiian Buffet in Hawaii. We missed going to it last time. Willow restaurant has a nice setting and they have their Hawaiian buffet every day. We stuffed our stomachs to the point where it was sore to breathe. Okay, that probably wasn't a good thing and very gluttonous.

Here's my round 1 picture:
I stuffed myself eating the poi because Hawaii has a poi shortage and they don't sell it in the supermarkets anymore. Also they had this really yummy flan. I know I shouldn't be stuffing down the desserts but it was good.



Here's David for round 1 and round two.



Luckily we had dinner early so there was time to digest it all.

Aki Sushi - Piedmont, Oakland

Nicht so gut!

I think the cook has changed or something because this place wasn't as good as the last two times. I think the place is run by Koreans and this was a Japanese restaurant.

I had the Saba. It was too oily and wasn't done right the way the Japanese cook it.

David had two sushi rolls. Not so great. The rice wasn't perfect for sushi rolling.

David's mom had udon. That was pretty good but any noodle soup you can't really get great ones other than in Japan.

Cesar in Piedmont, Oakland

Too much sweet stuff!

We never get a chance to order the other dessert selections because we always go for the bread pudding. Bread pudding was yummy as always.

This time since we went to Cesar just for dessert we ordered 2 more, the sundae and the pan de chocolate. The sundae ice cream was really sweet with the Churio fried too much. Nice presentation, but that all. The pan de chocolate was okay. The hazelnut ice cream was nice but the chocolate was stuck to the roof of your mouth.

Elk and Oarsman Restaurant - Banff

We finally found some decent priced food when we were driving thru Banff on the way back to the airport. We had time to kill and it was lunch time so we stopped at a sports bar kind of restaurant with your average fair of burgers, pizza and fried food.

I ordered a coke. I don't think I've had a coke in 2007. Ahh it was sweet and refreshing. For lunch I got the fish and chips and David got the bison burger. The fish and Chips had too much batter on it but the cole slaw was really nice. David's burger was nice, and geeze one pound of meat I think. The sweet potato fries were a nice treat and the soup was a nice touch too.

Deer Lodge - Deer Lodge Lake Louise

Game animals heads stuck on the wall and log cabin atmosphere, I really never aspire to have a place like this. So to eat in a restaurant like this is not really quaint. Anyway, we went here because we wanted to eat away from the Hotel that night, so we took poor advice from the concierge and at the Deer lodge next door.
The prices were just as expensive as the Fairmont. We had pork yet again and lamb. The pork wasn't great and it was served with spatzel. The spatzel was too mushy, they didn't get the consistency right. The meat was okay. The lamb was pretty good. The portions are really small, but they give you bread and a huge chunk of butter if you want to make sure your not hungry afterwards.


For dessert we had the chocolate molten cake. It said soufflé, but it was a wet cake really. It was okay, it had a coffee flavored smear on the side which was nice. Also a few raspberries. . .wow where do they get fresh fruit out here?

I wouldn't go back to a place like this. Next time, when you step into a place and think "Whoa time warp to the 70's and people are staring at you". . .maybe best to turn around.

Wallister Stube - Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise

Our second night we ate at another one of the Hotel restaurants. Wallister Stube which I had a hard time pronouncing. We sat up stairs and there wasn't anyone else around. This was a much more relaxing atmosphere as we had a corner nook all to ourselves and it was perfect since we were tired from skiing all day. The waiter was nice too and laved back.
We only had two entrees. The pork tenderloin and truffle fondue. David really like the tenderloin. They put blueberries in the center. I thought it wasn't that special, but it was slightly better than the one the night before.


The fondue didn't taste like truffle, just a huge pot of cheese. We didn't' finish all the cheese, it was like 2 pounds of melted cheese. But it was kind of nice and relaxing to dip the bread and eat off the warm cheese.

We didn't have dessert although the chocolate fondue sounded like it would have been nice. David had a cappuccino which was served with this candy stick instead of sugar. We thought that was really novel.

Fairview Dining Room - Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise

So the first night we got into Lake Louise we stayed at the hotel restaurant. Okay, I know over priced, mediocre food, but there was no yelp so I didn't know any better. The food was decent, but nothing more than mediocre. Not to mention the restaurant wasn't even crowded but the service was very slow and I was getting tipsy on the wine because the food wasn't coming fast enough.

The little appetizer was a bite of chopped of salmon. Amuse buche they call it, but it was more like, okay I'm hungry now, I want my food. We ate up the whole basket of bread and butter before my soup came. I got a glass of prosecco (or something like it).
I ordered the tasting menu with 6 courses and David got the beef tenderloin.
The artichoke soup was really good. The best wine was served with it, very dry Riesling.


Next was a fish course. I can't remember which fish it was but it was a white fish over some kind of mash. Was good. . .still hungry more food!
Next we both got a little dollop of cranberry something sorbet, cute, but give me some food please!

Ah finally meat courses! My pork tenderloin was okay. David like his beef tenderloin. I can't think of anything more to say, but at least I wasn't hungry anymore. The only thing I remember was frozen beans on the beef tenderloin place. What! frozen vegetables, now for the price I'm paying that's just uncalled for.

The dessert was pretty good. Three little sweets. White chocolate shooter with raspberry. . . sweet and thick stuff. A cake, which was dry. But the best thing was the chocolate gnash. I could have just eaten 10 of those melt in your mouth little balls.

All an all yeah, the dished looked pretty like generic designer styles you see in a magazine but I would have rather had just a big steak cooked well. I guess we are very spoiled by the California cuisine and it's hard to eat sub-par food.

Bistro Luneta

Filipino food is the new yummy, at least for us. I mean, Chinese, Japanese and Thai even in the best of restaurant is the same flavors you expect, but Filipino food has a new flavor for our tastebuds. Growing up in Hawaii I only thought of Filipino food as Adobo and Lumpia so I didn’t try it out that much because those foods didn’t entice me. But now that David has gone to a few Filopino restaurants with his co-workers we have tried larger variety of foods.

We went to Bistro Luneta with an appetite since we only ate spam musubis for breakfast that day and ran errands the remainder of the day. The restaurant is in San Mateo in a not so posh neighborhood, meaning that jack in the box and Mexican taco place is right next door, but inside the restaurant is much more pleasant. The décor is quite nice. I noticed the glass for the candle holders was really clean . .nice detail.

Picture of Me below - I finally cut my hair since I was procrastinating too long.

For appetizer the tuna tartar and the milk-fish maki looked interesting. From the reviews everything on the menu was good so we picked the dishes that perked our interest. The tuna tartar was really excellent. I don’t know what all the flavors were but it was like having finely chopped pickled mango with cilantro and chili peper mixed up with tuna chunks. The bangus(milk fish) maki role was good. If I were to compare with Japanese sushi, it’s not as great because the rice wasn’t perfect. But rice aside, you could taste the bangus and citrus flavor, with tomato and onion. It was deep fried, which was a nice touch because it made it warm and topped with a sort of teriyaki sauce. I could imagine this little roll had the componets of a nice meal, rice and fish, so it was sort of comforting to eat.



We had the “Salpicao” described as the ribeye sautéed in olive oil and special sauce. What the hell was the special sauce? Who knows but it was good is all I can remember. On the side were neat little fried shoe string purple potatoes as a garnish.

For dinner we had the “pato sa gata” which was duck breast in coconut sauce. Now don’t think of the coconut sauce like a thai coconut sauce. . .think more like coconut gravy with pork fat (total guess) as the base. Okay, I know that sounds gross, but it’s really good. The duck breast was prepared perfectly.

We ordered garlic rice on the side for good measure since I like my rice with my meat dishes. That’s tasty stuff.

For dessert, the coffee crème brule was OO-SO-good. Perfect consistency, light and creamy, not too heavy, with the nice sugar coating on top. There was a touch of milk froth on top which was cute. You could definitely taste the coffee but it was not overpowering.


This is one of those restaurants you have to come again so you can try the other dishes you were thinking about but didn’t order this time around. We’re pretty happy with this find it’s been a while since we have found a good restaurant to get excited over, food, atmosphere and service were great.