As a child I loved to play soccer, in fact, it was my best sport. Now I am taking the time to teach my son the sport which I still yearn to play. Here is a Saturday in the park with a goal, ball, my son and my fiance taking the exciting shots! These are the days in which to live for!
On this food adventure in food decided to go to Plum's Cafe in Newport Beach. The food was ok but the service was worst. I do have to say the company was fantastic thanks to Nancy and Donovan!
Pizza is always a great comfort food for me. I can never get enough and can always go back for seconds. Well on this night I was in for a rude awakening. When you go into a pizzeria I do not expect any over the top service but I do expect to be acknowledged and helped if you are seating me at a table and have a server coming to serve us. Needless to say the service at Milano Pizza was not up to par and neither was food. The only saving grace of the evening were the meatballs Nancy and I ordered. They were delicious along with the meat sauce it came. The pizza was rubbery and had a funny after taste to it. The garlic bread was lacking garlic and was hard as rocks.
This restaurant was rated on Yelp and Google for 4 stars so that is the reason why we tried it but maybe this just wasn't there night. Try at your own risk.
On this night I decided to surprise Nancy and take her to this restaurant called Pomelo. I went to Yelp again for help with this selection. On Yelp this had a 4 star rating and it was in a neighborhood that I had yet to try the food in. When I saw the menu online I was quite intrigued and thought it had a fun and lively menu. This is the adventure of Nancy and Jason at Pomelo.
Upon entering Pomelo I could tell it was a local place to come and eat. You had groups of families and just friends sitting around talking and enjoying their meals. The location on the inside is a little small on the inside but it is just enough for a nice evening out. Nancy and I had the Cabo San Lucas and the Havana.
The Cabo San Lucas consists of two handmade soft corn tacos with grilled pacific snapper, shredded cabbage, mango salsa, chipotle aïoli and house pickled jalapeños. (Descriptions taken off Menu of Pomelo). This appetizer was AMAZING. Never had a taco with this mixture that was so tasty. The chipotle aïoli mixed in with the jalapeños made for the perfect mixture not to mention the snapper was cooked brilliantly. The unsung hero of the plate was also the mango salsa, it was refreshing mix that hit all the right notes.
The Havana cuban style fried rice with black beans, plantains, chipotles, ginger and cilantro, served with grilled skirt steak, sautéed onions and cuban avocado salad. (Description taken from Menu of Pomelo) Normally I am not an avocado person. I have had others make it for me before and had to immediately discard it from my mouth, and have had it other times when I have ate it and gone for seconds. This time is one of the going for second times. The combination of steak, black beans, PLANTAINS, and rest of the items on the plate were just heavenly.
If you are in SF this is a place to stop off and have a meal. It is intimate, food is great, along with personal attention. You can not ask for more than that.
So on my adventures in the Bay area I was told that there is one place that you should go for burgers. Everyone who comes to the Bay area must try them. NATIONS. Well needless to say I have been to Nations a few times and I thought I would let you know about the burgers and fries. I am from So Cal, Souther California for those who don't know that term, and we are known for our burgers. So I was a bit skeptical about how good these burgers were. Well after many conversations I thought I finally talk about Nations.
I got a Bacon Burger with chili cheese fries and Nancy got a Grilled Chicken Sandwich. The bacon burger had lettuce, tomato, mustard, ketchup, cheese, and of course bacon. A Nation's burger is a pretty juicy burger that will fill you up. The burger also is a little sloppy and you must be mindful because the lettuce may cause your burger to slide all over the place. My bun did have grease spots on it probably from the person handling patty or they had the bun to close to the meat while heating it up. It was a little sloppy but still tasty. We also got chili cheese fries, and on this day I was craving these bad, and they seemed a little off of the mark today. Normally when we or I get them to go there is much more of an abundance of chili cheese and fries. Upon receiving our chili cheese fries first it needed more fries and second our slice of cheese had yet to be melted on our chili cheese fries which was a little odd, but they still hit the spot. Even though things seem to be missing the mark when you combine everything together it flowed in harmony and all tasted good going down.
Overall Nation's is a great place to get a burger. Nations is 50's themed and works well with what you are eating. If you are in the Bay area stopping at Nation's may not be a bad idea.
Our Chili Cheese Fries and Burgers - Image by Nancy
This past weekend I took another trip to LA to go to my son's t-ball game and like always wanted to try a restaurant I had not been to before. I am a avid breakfast eater and LOVE French Toast. While driving around West LA, on Easter Sunday, I decided to Yelp from my Blackberry and look what popped up Bistro Laurent.
Bistro Laurent is located at 3936 Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City. I put in the address because when I was driving southbound on Sepulveda I actually drove right by the location without realizing it. Now I know you are saying it is a HUGE RED building how could you miss, but it isn't as large or bright red as you think.
Upon entering the restaurant we were greeted by the hostess who indicated to sit where ever we wanted, seeing that on Easter Morning at 9:15am not too many people were up and at it that early in the morning. Bistro Laurent had a cozy and modern feel to the space. On the sides of the restaurant there was bench seating, with individual silver chairs on the opposite side of the table. Going down the center of Bistro Laurent were two high brown tables with high seating silver chairs as seen in the picture below. There were individual portraits of people on the walls and a hand written menu near the register. They also had a fresh pastry case which was pretty empty but seeing that it was Easter morning it made sense.
My Fiance, Nancy, and I were really excited upon seeing the menu and whole ambiance of the restaurant. As we sat down and got familiar with the menu a couple next to us just happened to just fly in from France, and were telling us about their meal and what they thought were the delicious plates. They really sold us on the place and the food. So needless to say Nancy and I were thrilled to try the items on the menu. I decided to go with the French toast and Nancy decided to go with the Eggs Benedict with Canadian Bacon. The French toast is not your usual french toast, it was actually made up of three different breads combined into one. The French toast had, Traditional “Pains Perdus” or “Lost Breads”…chopped Croissants, raisins, cranberries in our sweet farm eggs batter(Description taking from their menu.) I was sitting at the table thinking this is going to be really really good or this is going to end up just awful. It was not the traditional way of having French toast and I LOVE French toast. But what the hell you only live once so I decided with the French toast and a side of turkey bacon. Nancy's Eggs Benedict with Canadian Bacon sounds like this A croissant, Canadian bacon or spinach, 2 poached eggs, our Hollandaise sauce (description from the menu.) The last peice of ordering were the drinks. Normally at breakfast I prefer a Mimosa while Nancy gets coffee or some type of juice. But on this journey down Mimosa lane I was told that they do serve Mimosa's but out of a premade bottle and for $10 dollars. I was pretty shocked that they were charging $10 bucks for a premade Mimosa so I passed and ordered a cranberry juice, while Nancy ordered coffee.
While we waited for our food to be cooked and served we received sourdough bread with butter. Normally I am against eating any free bread that is offered before your meal, unless its the cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster too tasty to past up on, because I believe bread is used to fill you up so you will not be able to finish your meal. Alas this bread was too soft and too delicious not to eat. It was nice and fluffy and just melted in your mouth. I ate close to four or five pieces before the food arrived. I found out all the bread is baked in house in there own bakery and the loaf was super fresh. I couldn't believe how good the bread was. Most times when you go to restaurant bread is offered and its not terrible but you can tell it was an after thought in the whole menu planning process and I appreciate when you start off my meal on the right foot.
Now that the bread love affair is over its time for the real meat and potatoes of the meal. The French toast and the Eggs Benedict. When our plates arrived I was a bit jealous of Nancy's dish, because it looked composed and well put together. The Eggs were flowing over the Canadian Bacon and Croissant with a small salad placed on the side. Once I looked at my french toast it looked like leftover bread that had just been heated up. Now I know looks can be deceiving so I decided to dive right into my french toast to let my taste buds be the judge of the dish. Upon the first bite I felt that the french toast was sweet enough where I didn't need to add any syrup. The outside edges of it were crisp and delicious. As I worked my self towards he center of the french toast it became too soggy to eat and started to fall apart and not taste like the initial first bites. The entire dish was still pipping hot from the outside edges all the way into the middle of the toast, so I did appreciate even heating. The Cranberries and raisins did add a sweetness to the french toast but the egg soaked batter took away from the french toast. I felt like it needed another 10 or 20 mins to soak up the amount of liquid it had stored in the all the breads made into one. But overall it wasn't a bad tasting french toast just it was one that would leaving me wanting it over and over again. The turkey bacon was the star of the dish. Normally when I have had turkey bacon it is either oven baked or pan fried. Either way it taste's amazing and I love to eat it, but on this day the turkey bacon was GRILLED! I didn't know what to do with it. It had the normally turkey bacon taste with hints of cedar that made all the flavors of the bacon stand out. By far best item on the table. Nancy's Egg's Benedict, was delicious from what she told me. Her only complaint would be to have the side salad on a different plate due to not wanting to mix her Eggs in with her salad.
Overall experience was a good one at the Bistro. I believe the couple next to us hyped us up a bit and had our expectations too high on this Easter Morning but I would be willing to go back and try more items on the menu. The price of all the food is moderately priced and worth your time effort and energy. So until our next food tasting Au revoir et en dégustant votre repas.
I stayed in Costa Mesa over the weekend and decided to play the wheel of fortune with Yelp and what to do for breakfast. Lucky for me I ran across a location called Eat Chow. When I initially saw the menu I was gitty about all of the items specially on the breakfast side. Yelp had some pretty high reviews for it, about 650 or so at 4 1/2 stars. On this journey of food and life I was able to have my son and nephew along for the ride.
Upon arriving to the location I was little lost to say the least. The address is 1801 Newport Beach Blvd, but when I walked up to 1801 Newport Beach Blvd. there was a retail clothing store at that location. So I walked up and the down the street a few times to make sure I was at the correct location. After walking up and down the street about three or four times I decided to try and peer around the corner to see maybe if the restaurant was on the side and maybe the address was a misprint. Just my luck I saw the same sign Eat Chow as pictured above on the side of the wall.
As you walk into the restaurant you see that same clothing store I walked pass multiple times, it was just gated off due to the fact that the store is closed, with sleek wooden chairs fitted with red cushions. We were seated and greeted immediately upon walking in the door. So far the rating is living up to hype. I then looked at the menu and decided immediately what I was getting, but the hard part was what to get the boys to eat. I went down the menu starting at the top and only listed the items in which I knew the boys would eat, Steel cut Oatmeal, Fresh Fruit, Fresh Berries, Pancakes, either Plain, Blueberries, or my son’s favorite Chocolate Chip. My nephew Andre yelled out "OATMEAL uncle," while my son said Chocolate Pancakes. Now with the boys settled I then turned to myself and decided to go with a breakfast burrito called “GRINGO.”
All of the food looked, smelled, and tasted delicious. Donovan’s Chocolate Chip Pancakes came first, and normally when I think of chocolate chip pancakes I think of someone folding chocolate chips into the pancake batter and then made on the griddle. Which sometimes causes the chocolate chips to melt or just become chocolate blobs in your pancake. Well at Eat Chow they actually make a plain pancake and slight heat up the chips and spread them across your plate of pancakes. I really appreciated that touch on the pancakes and made them tastier according to my son. The smell of freshly made pancakes and lightly warmed chocolate almost made me steal of bite of my son’s breakfast. Andre had the Steel Cut Oatmeal, now I am unsure what enhancement this has over regular oatmeal, but let me tell you that this oatmeal was HUGE. It came with a side of brown sugar and freshly steamed soy milk, upon my request. When I mixed it all of my nephews ingredients you wasted no time in diving right in and finishing half of the bowl of oatmeal. I decided to have the Gringo, which was filled with eggs, sausage, tomatoes, potatoes, and cheese, as well with a side of salsa. I am a pretty picky eater, specially when it comes to eggs. I normally only eat eggs my fiancé cooks and they must be loaded with cheese in order for me to actually enjoy them to mask the taste, but these eggs were not bad and didn’t need to be masked at all. The all star of the dish was the salsa. There was fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro packed into the salsa and it was just loaded with flavor that it was set my mouth on fire. I could not believe how tasty every was all together.
My overall experience here was great and would go back with my boys,just with my fiancé, friends or family. If you are looking for a great meal with a laid back environment this is the place to be. I strongly encourage you to go and try. Enjoy and EAT CHOW!
Gringo Burrito with Fresh Salsa - Image By Jason
Table Setting - Image By Jason
Andre Enjoying Steel Cut Oatmeal - Image By Jason
Donovan Enjoying His Chocolate Chip Pancakes - Image By Jason
Baseball hasn't always been my favorite sport and it still is not. Yet there is something about the start of the baseball season and Opening Day that gets my all gitty inside. I am not sure where this love of baseball has come from. I have always liked the sport, thanks to Grandma Uzzell and her love of the NY Mets, but never has it been a love affair. After last season I have come to appreciate this American national past time. From the bitter Red Sox and Yanks rivalry, to the Dodgers and Angels in the freeway series, damn those Angels for winning World Series rings recently, or the Battle of Bay. I believe the Giant fans are a big reason why I have started to really love baseball with a true passion again. The Giants fan never gave up on their team and just had a certain swag about them and the city that makes you just want to watch sport continuously. Remember Opening Day is fresh start, a new beginning for every player and team. If you team struggled last season, just missed the playoffs, lost in the first two rounds, or World Series, this is the time where none of that matters. Every team gets to start a new striving to achieve what seems illusive, World Series Championship. So I look forward to the fresh start, the hungry seeking a title and the hunted protecting their title. The past two years I have fallen deeper in love with the sport of baseball, along with the teams and players. I am a Dodger fan, I bleed blue, but I do enjoy just watching any team play just because it is baseball.
So on this Opening Day there are a slew of games on Major League Baseball Schedule. I plan on catching every game of the day. Two games are airing on ESPN3 and ESPN which I will watching via XBOX360, and the rest of the games I will be watching via MLB.TV on my PS3 and Apple TV devices respectively. (Make sure if you are using your PS3 to update to version 2.0 or if you are using your Apple TV update to iOS 4.3 in order to view the games)
This is quite a full line up of games and back to back, so pull up as many devices as you can and enjoy this lovely spring day. I plan on watching my Dodgers play host to my fiances World Series Champion Giants all while having some fun baseball food.
How do you plan on watching the first games of the season?
Internet browsers wars are starting to truly heat up. With browsers all touting that they have the fastest and best browser. Over my next few post I will be doing a basic review of the four biggest browsers right now, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. I use all four browsers believe it or not and I test out all of my browsing sites on them. It is a lot of work to sync up all of my browsers but after using all four there are certain advantages and disadvantages to each browser and I will be highlighting some of them in my post. Up first Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and Internet Explorer 9(IE9).
Internet Explorer 8 was released in March 2009. The main new features added to the program are:
Accelerators, Web Slice, Search Suggestions, New Tab Features, Tab Isolation, InPrivate Browsing, and SmartScreen Filter.
Accelerators allow for quick access to web servers, ie on a webiste, you can click within the page to get news, maps, information or share it on a social networking site. Web Slice allows you to keep with with changes made to your favorite websites. Search Suggestions allows for suggested context as you type it out. New Tab features allow you to reopen accidentally closed tabs, and group related tabs together. Tab isolation allows you to closed a crashed tab without closing the rest of your tabs. InPrivate browsing lets you browse the web without saving any data. SmartScreen Filters protects you against installation of malware. IE 8 has full support for CSS 2.1. This is important because not all sites look the same on all computers. Some sites have fonts that may not be installed on your computer so if the web author sets up a CSS sheet they set all the default fonts and colors and information for the site so you can view it properly.
If you are using Internet Explorer there are some limitations with the browser. Most people are using a Windows OS (operating system) on their personal computer(that is changing with Mac OS becoming popular) which means you less of a choice in choosing which IE browser you would like to use. Internet Explorer 9 is the newest version of IE but only works on machines with Windows Vista and Windows 7 installed on your computer. If you are running Windows XP and below it means that the newest IE will be IE 8 and that will be your only option for browsing the internet. IE 8 is not a bad browser. Most users are familiar with this option seeing that it comes embedded with your OS. IE8 will be the first browser you will use when connecting to the internet, unless you have some type of external memory with exe files to another browser. IE 8 has rather archaic look to when you are looking at modern browsers today. It doesn't process pages as fast as you would like it to but it does get the job done if all you are trying to do is just browse. It you are checking sports scores, looking up a recipe or just reading news this browser will work for the basic user. However when it comes to processing images and watching videos from Youtube or living streaming broadcast the browser may not perform as well but will still perform. It has large back and forward buttons, with large tabs, and with the menu bar attached to the browser. It is a great browser for those just looking to surf the web.
Screen Shot from My IE 8 Browser running Windows XP Pro
What saddens me as Windows XP user is that I will not have the option of running IE9. Although I own Windows Xp and can not use IE9 on my os I also picked up a copy of Windows 7. Here is the IE9 information.
Internet Explorer 9 was released in March 2011. IE9 new features include: Brand new Interface, allowing for just basic controls and leaves more space for viewing. Hardware acceleration, making website perform like native apps to your computer, and IE9 is the first browser to use video card to speed up browsing. Pinning websites to your Windows 7 Taskbar. Unified address bar for navigating the site or to start a search. New tab page management, letting you restore your last browsing session, reopen closed tabs, and provide quick access to the sites you visit more frequently while displaying stats, sites icon, and title. You can also tear a tab off and make it its own browsing window as well or combine it within another browsing window. Better add-on management, which adds an adviser letting you know which add-on's are slowing your browsing and allows you to remove it. New Privacy features, you can limit sites that can track your information. Full HTML5 support just means FULL HTML5 support.
IE9 loads pages almost instantly and has simplistic design. IE9 has a large back button and a small forward button. The search bar is about 1/3 of the screen while allows for a lot of tab space if you are browsing multiple sites at once. The browser also got rid of the menu bar and is available if you needed but not directly in your browsing view. Most of the screen is dedicated to your browsing experience. It reminds of you the browsers of now, Firefox and Google Chrome.
Screen shot of IE9 on Windows 7
This browser also has hardware acceleration built into the browser. Hardware acceleration is important for those who want their web pages to perform like apps. IE 9 adds this option to this this within the browser. Overall IE9 is great browser with great options and a great choice for your internet browsing needs. If I had to chose between the browsers I would suggest IE9. It has great functionally and streams video, music, loads images from sites with great pace. If you had a choice of IE browsers this is the one you want to use. If you really want to see what IE9 can do check out this video of Mike Tompkins.
Below are videos from YouTube about the announcement of IE9 to the world.
Basil Thai is a small sheik thai restaurant located in SOMA area. I had never eaten at Basil Thai before but after searching Yelp for an extended period of time I finally stumbled upon this restaurant. Yelp had some pretty good reviews for the place, with most saying that food and service was worth the visit. Now it was mine turn to really see if this was case.
Upon arriving I thought the ambiance of this location appropriate. It was dimly lit with candles on most of the tables. We were immediately greeted by the hostess upon walking in the door. So far the service was stellar. My fianace and I searched around the menu asking our waiter what were the house specialites and what was his favorite dishes. The waiter offered up his choices and we made ours. I cannot recall all that we order but I do know we ordered enough for a table of four to eat. Service throughout our visit was great. The waiter never left a dirty place sitting in front of us and only chimed in when he saw we weren't deep in our own conversation. If you wanted to go for some good thai or an intimate dinner with loved ones this is the place to go.
Here are some of my favorite items on the menu; gai satay(chicken skewers served with peanut sauce), hoi yang(scallop served with spicy sauce), and pad seew(fresh wide rice noodles stir-fried with pork, egg & Chinese broccoli), Thai fried rice.
Park Chow is local neighborhood restaurant in the Inner Sunset that has a unique menu but great food. Nancy and I have gone to Park Chow countless times and I normally get the same item on the menu while Nancy is the adventurer and tries a little of this and a little of that. On this trip to Park Chow both Nancy and I got Fusilli of Chicken & Sausage, mushrooms, tomato & cream. The sauce is white and very creamy and just taste delicious. The design on the walls is a little quirky but interesting and adds to the ambiance of the place. The service is about average but food is great and somewhere I would suggest all to go.
