Friday, April 30, 2010

Penguinos Gourmet Yogurt at the Metreon, SOMA, SF.

They mix the yogurt like a McFlurry so I got Butterfinger. Each comes with a strawberry slice and a mini ice cream cone! It was very good, but a little expensive after having LA frozen yogurt!

We took this in to see Kick-Ass, which was excellent! :)

Sad about Stone Korean, Financial District, SF.

Korean beer and soju (some Japanese, too) at Stone Korean! This brought back some Korea nostalgia. :) I bought the Groupon for Stone Korean last week and was SO excited to try it! I've heard a lot about it and have heard good things.. sadly, I was very disappointed. :(

Get this, I had to ask for some banchan! What kind of Korean restaurant do you have to ask for banchan at?! The banchan was good though and I think it was more that we had a bad server.. She didn't once check on us and we ended up just walking up and getting our own water refill, because she never came by.

We did the Ssam for Two (쌈밥) dinner and chose the spicy pork (above) and kalbi. Ssam is just a barbeque style meal where you make lettuce wraps. You get take a piece of lettuce, and maybe a little rice and meat with Korean hot bean paste. It's so yummy and you can really put anything you want inside of the wrap. It is the traditional way to eat Korean BBQ.

I thought the spicy pork was going to be spicy pork bulgogi, but it was actually samgyupsal (삼겹살), which is like Korean bacon. It was okay, but was sliced too thick and could have been spicier. The kalbi was too tough, and was cut too large to make ssam. Traditional Korean restaurants will give you scissors to cut the meat as you grill, but here they didn't even provide a fork and knife. We ended up asking for a set, but they should know these pieces are way too big for ssam.

With the Ssam for Two, you get to choose between soondooboo and kimchi jjiage (김치찌개). We chose the kimchi jjigae. Traditionally, when you get ssam you get the banchan, and then meat with ssam, then rice and soup. That way, you don't have too much going on and the soup doesn't get cold. They brought everything out at once though and it was just too much. Everything ended up going cold, too. The soup was pretty flat and awful cold.

I don't know if LA just upped my standards for Korean, or what, but I just don't buy the hip ambiance and location over good Korean good done right. I do want to try the happy hour menu and see how the small plates are, but I wouldn't go back for entrees. I do want to like this place though, so I hope the small plates are better!!


Simple breaky of eggs and bacon.

Fluffy scrambled eggs and bacon. Goooooood morning! :)

If you add a little milk to the eggs like you would for an omelette or French toast, the eggs are fluffier! Also, make sure you don't over cook them! :)

Midnight snack: Happy Donuts, Noe Valley, SF.

Mmmmmmm! I went for a glazed old fashioned. It was pretty awesome. Old fashioned doughnuts are definitely my all-time favorite. The crunchy outside and crumbly texture just make it so great.

Everything on this side was HUGE! The cinnamon rolls, apple fritters and doughnut holes were gigantic! And looked reaaaaally tasty. ;)


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Night bite at Haystack Pizza, Noe Valley, SF.

Photo by Brad C. on Yelp.

I didn't get to snap a photo, but I had the Caesar salad as a late dinner. It was really good and they give you a ton for $8! Love it. I hear their pastas are great and definitely want to try the pizza sometime.


Best kept secret brunch: Red Door Cafe, Lower Pacific Heights, SF.

A special half order of the French toast! The French toast is their most popular dish, so we had to try it! I don't normally loooove French toast from restaurants, but this was divine. It's cut into little strips, which is great and the bread they use is sooo amazing! The toasted banana and maple syrup really completed the yummy eggy bread! Haha.

The Cuban quesadilla! This was soo sooo yummy. Their pico de gallo is amazing and the tortillas are special--very green and delicious.

Open-faced croissant with brie, ham, tomatoes, basil, capers, yummy, yummy, and yummy. There was a really nice vinaigrette sauce with it, too. Lovely dish.

I can't believe I didn't know about this place until now! It's just up the street from me and it doesn't have a load of Yelp reviews (surprisingly enough!), but apparently the weekend wait can me up to 2 hours! This is definitely my new favorite brunch spot. The food is spectacular and I didn't walk out feeling like I was going to have a heart attack or slip into a food coma. I was just very happy! :)


Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Mother's Day gifts from Williams Sonoma.

The Ici Silicone Tools from Williams Sonoma are my favorite. They are awesome so I decided to get a set for my mom for Mother's Day!

I got the spoon and the spatula, which are the two I use the most. These images are from the Williams Sonoma website.

Williams Sonoma will do a free gift wrap, which is great! I didn't have time for it though so they sent me off with a box, wrapping paper, ribbon and this great, signature cookie cutter to tie into the ribbon!

I didn't even notice this was a cutter until I really thought about it.. Very cool! Momma doesn't bake cookies so I decided to keep this. :) I'm excited to use it for little biscuits!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Indian night at Darbar, Russian Hill, SF.

Bottom left: Okra dish that isn't on the menu. We just said we wanted something very yummy with okra and they brought us this, which is soo lovely! I'm going to get this all the time now.

Middle: Saag Gosht - Lamb meat cooked with saag (spinach), herbs and spices.

We got the onion naan, which is so flavorful and fluffy, and the basmati rice.

After a long weekend of Korean, I thought it would be good to get a taste of something else. I would have happily gone for a burger, being that I didn't get to Father's Office this time around, but Indian sounded good, too! And I heart Darbar! :) It's nice and cheap, the food is tasty and the service is great.


Pinkberry, LAX, LA.

I got pomegranate chocolate swirl with a bunch of random toppings. :) It was a nice pre-flight before heading back to SFO.

Pinkberry is fine, but Yogurtland is the hands-down winner when it comes to price and selection. I'm excited to see Yogurtland is in Berkeley--looks like I'll be making a little trip across the Bay..


짜장면 jjajang-myun and Korean style Chinese food at Young King, Koreatown, LA.

Traditional onion and black bean paste side dishes for (짜장면) jjajang-myun.

튀김만두. Everything fried is tasty and these were no exception. They were soo yummy. You don't find fried pot-stickers often in Korean restaurants, but, again, this was Korean style Chinese food! They were divine.

소고기 탕수욱. This is the Korean version of sweet and sour pork. We got it with beef and apparently this place is known for doing this dish well. The batter was amazingly light had a nice, soft chew to it. While the batter was impressive, the sauce wasn't very flavorful, which you really need to make the dish good! It was still nice though.

짜장면 / Jjajang-myun. This is a $2 dish in Korea, but it's hard to find a really good bowl of it anywhere else! It was really good here though (another dish they are known for) with lots of freshly diced veggies. I can never finish a whole bowl though!

What I mean by Korean style Chinese is that this is Korean food that Koreans like to think is Chinese food, or food they are making Chinese style. It's not really Chinese though. It's funny because, in Korea, a lot of people don't know what Chinese food really is. They don't even know what Americanized Chinese food is, so they really believe this is Chinese food. It doesn't help that when Koreans go on tours to China, they scout out Korean restaurants that serve them this! Haha. There are a few other dishes that are also Korean style Chinese, and are very good, but they are certainly not popular Chinese dishes. ;)


Saturday, April 24, 2010

Korean kalbi and kalbi taco BBQ at my brother's place, LA.

So many amazing plants in LA! It seems like every yard has fruit trees! So great.

Big, bright, beautiful flowers were everywhere, too. :) I don't think I could stand having that nice of weather all the time, but the flowers sure do make you smile.

My brother's awesome backyard, where we had a Korean BBQ with the wedding party.

Table setting. :)

Daddy, manning the grill. :) My mom and dad are too funny--they made the kalbi in Spokane, with my aunt, froze it and flew it down for this BBQ. My parents rock. :)

Korean taco set up: salad mixed with sesame-ginger dressing, cilantro, sesame salsa, sesame seeds. My brother put this together and it was excellent! I guess for the sesame salsa you just mix salsa with sesame oil--easy!

A light yummy salad one of the bridesmaids brought.

상추 traditional lettuce wrap for the kalbi, with red pepper paste sauce.

Yummy!

My taco was amazing. Although, I don't like tortillas.. Hahah. So the next one I had was sans-tortilla, but with some rice, more like a naked burrito. It was scrumptious. I'm definitely going to make these at home. :)

Oh, Yogurland, Mid-City West, LA.

OMG why have I never been here before?! Haha. Sorry the photos are all slanted--it was busy!

I love all of the different flavor options! I think they had something like 10 or 12 flavors of yogurt and then soooo many options for toppings! Love!

Ben doesn't like mixing flavors. He got one fruity flavor with lots of fruit. :) I got two fruity flavors and two sweet flavors. Then I got fruit toppings as well as Butterfinger and cookie dough bits! Haha. It was a hot mess of yummy. :)

I was glad I got to sneak away from the fam to meet with a friend for a bit, too. Thanks so much for the yogurt, Ben! :)


순두부 soon-doo-boo at So Kong Dong, Koreatown, LA.

There's my daddy, outside the restaurant. It's a bit tucked away, and I guess there are two locations, but this one is the better one! Ed and Jess only took us to the best places. :)

I loved the "water kimchi" 물김치 (bottom left). Their spicy crab (2nd up from the right) is a specialty ban-chan, but I just thought it was too much effort for too little reward to eat! I'm not so much a crab person, I guess. Haha. Oh, and the eggs aren't hard-boiled--they are for the soon-doo-boo!

Cracking the egg into the seafood soon-doo-boo (해물 순두부). Yum yum yum.

I don't like getting stews as my whole meal so I got the spicy pork bulgogi (돼지 불고기) which is my favorite kind of bulgogi. :) This one was really nice with lots of veggies, including flavorful mushrooms. I stole some of my mom's soon-doo-boo, of course. :) Both were very nice.

Gosh, LA has good Korean food.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Scoops, Wilshire Center, LA.

Scoops! Ed and Jess really wanted to take us here and I'm so glad they did! They are known for having unique flavors, but nothing was as unique tonight as Humphry Slocombe always is. I may be biased, but I think SF does ice cream best. LA definitely wins for frozen yogurt though!:)

This guy was soo friendly and gave us such wonderful service. It really does make a difference.

Pear blueberry pomegranate sorbet. The pear in it was soo lovely. I stole a few bites from my brother!

I got the chocolate peanut butter and the toffee cheesecake, on top. I should have gotten a sample of the toffee cheesecake--I thought it would be a sure win, but wasn't very flavorful. The chocolate peanut butter was yummy though. :)

Oh, and that was actually "one scoop", which is nuts. We ordered three "one scoops", and two half scoops(?), and the total came to $12. Ridiculous! Amazing! Ridiculously amazing! :)

Scoops is soo cute and unpretentious. We LOVE. It seems like a place you'd find in Portland, Austin or Pittsburgh. They have a neat installation of their ice cream spoons that I should have taken a photo of, too. Ooo, and the owner is this Korean guy! I get to have lots of Korean pride in LA. ;)


Great Souther Thai at Jitlada, Hollywood, LA.

We have a wonderful Jitlada Thai restaurant in SF (no affiliation), too, but this was cooler because of their special Souther Thai menu. :)

Morning glory salad. Fried morning glory flowers. Seriously yummy. They had a fried spinach salad on their menu, too. I wonder if it's anything like the amazing palak chaat from Rasika in DC!?

Their famous green mussels! They were on the Top 10 Dishes from LA Weekly.

They are the biggest mussels I've seen! They were very good too, with a delicious, fragrant lemongrass broth. There was a spicy sauce for the mussels, too--excellent!

Basil eggplant. Not the best I've had, but I always love a good, soft eggplant. :)

Phad see-ew. My father looooves the big flat noodles, so I knew he'd like this dish! It was very good.

Duck fried rice. I really wanted some duck. Whenever I get Thai I want eggplant and duck--they just do both so well! The duck is always hit or miss though and here it was a bit of a miss. The dish wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't necessary. I was too full to have much of it by the time it came out.

The entire dinner was really great and the restaurant is kitschy and cute. I love how LA is just one huge, never-ending suburb and these great restaurants are just parts of strip malls--that cracks me up. I guess the Simpsons guy comes here a lot so they have all of these little drawings from him of Homer eating and whatnot! That's pretty cool about LA. :)