Monday, June 23, 2008

Coral Tree Express

Worse than airline food. Never order the Mykonos Omelette. Made me sick.

Coral Tree Express
10250 Santa Monica Blvd. #FC12
Westfield-Century City 90067
(310) 553-8733
(310) 533-8737 fax

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Papa hassan's was in a very cute neighborhood on the edge of chapman university. We sat on a nice outdoor patio with a bubbling fountain. Sadly, the food was only mediocre. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled, but it paled compared to the terrific lebanese sandwich place in westwood I go to.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Monday, June 9, 2008

Quality Seafood- Redondo Beach

A uqick update before I lose the business card for this place. I had a dozen oysters and a sea urchin. good oysters, but sea urchins aren't in season, so I guess I shouldn't have expected much. To be expanded upon later.

Date of Visit: 6/1/08

Quality Seafood
130 S. International Boardwalk
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 274-2382
(310) 372-6408
(310) 374-6030 fax

Antonucci's-Mission Viejo

I don't usually venture this far south, but I was meeting a friend from undergrad who is living in Lake Forest. I had a seafood combination over pasta, which, while not extraordinary, was pretty yummy. My mojito was a solid standard version. I hope to come back next time I meet with friends in South County. Overall, a pretty good neighborhood Italian restaurant. More details to follow.

Date of Visit: 5/29/08

Antonucci's
24190 Alicia Parkway
Mission Viejo, CA 92691
(949) 472-4332
(949) 472-9568 fax
www.antonuccis.net

Monday, June 2, 2008

Yakitori Bincho- Redondo Beach

So it's been a while since I posted on here, but the arrival of summer has inspired me to start up again. Yesterday, my ex-boyfriend BruinEngineer and I caught up over some yakitori in Redondo Beach. He lives in Torrance, so I thought we'd go somewhere around there, but when I googled "Torrance" on Chowhound, this place popped up and looked so yummy I just ahd to try it. FInding it proved quite an adventure. First tip: Don't pay too much attention to those Mapquest directions. I used them to get in the vicinity, then relied on street signs to get to the Pier. I parked in the parking structure, but near some office park, then walked down to the most tacky tourist trap since Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Pretty mush the same deal. I wandered around trying in vain to find the place, til finally I decided to check out the International Boardwalk area. Yakitori Bincho turns out to be a few stores north of Quality Seafood, which came in handy when I turned up at 6:30 pm and was told there was an hour-long wait.
Undeterred, I put my name down on the list and wandered over to Quality Seafood, where I enjoyed a dozen yummy oysters and a sea urchin that was so fresh its spines continued to move even after I finished eating. The oysters were good, the urchin a little bitter. i know it's not sea urchin season, but it looked so yummy I couldn't resist. I should have gone for more oysters.
Anyway, we were seated roughly an hour later. One poblem with this place is that it's literally only the husband, who is the chef, and his wife, who waits. She's nice, but fairly slow at helping people who stop in front to see what this place is. Considering that there's no other signage than a large orange and black "Grand Opening" sign, youd think they'd want to appear more welcoming. I think I waited for like five minutes before she even acknowledged me. If I hadn't read such good reviews, I definitely would have wandered away. Even a brief acknowledgement would have been fine. Sigh.
Luckily, the food was very good. I was a bit full from the seafood, but that didn't stop me from ordering the 10-skewer omakase ($25).
First up was some very salty edamame, which were good, especially since there was a long delay between when we ordered and the food arriving. Good thing we weren't in a hurry.
My first skewer was tomato bacon maki, which were three cherry tomatoes wrapped in bacon and grilled. Yummy, but very hot. I'd order this again.
Next was the thigh with green onions which was good, but I found to be a bit too salty for my tastes.
Third was my favorite of the night, the chicken with perilla. I don't know what perilla is, but it's very flavorful.
Fourth, I got thigh with leek, which was good, but not as good as the perilla.
Second best of the night was the chicken meatball. I was sort of skeptical, since I'm not usually a big meatball fan, but this was yummy. BruinEngineer, who got a box set, also agreed that this was quite yummy.
The wings were good. I like Fukada's a litle better, but these were a nice version. Very fun to pick the meat off the bones, if you ask me.
The okra was surprisingly good, too. They were very moist and flavorful, but I'm not that knowledgeable about okra.
The green chiles were a bit too hot for me, but not a bad version. I don't think I'll order them on my own though. I was full by this point, and didn't finish them.
The cheese chicken was quite possibly one of the weirdest things I've ahd at a yakitori restaurant. Yucky American cheese on chicken. The chicken was good, but not the cheese. I like cheese, but not this cheese. I gave most of this to BruinEngineer.
Finally was the shitake mushroom with meat. Very yummy, but sadly I can't comment as accurately on these since by the time I got to them, they were a bit cold.
BruinEngineer apparently liked his meal, and there was none left, so I take it to mean it was good. However, he's not very picky, so who knows. In any case, I really liked this place. I'm worried it won't survive due to its inconvenient location amongst tourist hell, so be sure to check it out.

Date of Visit: 6/1/08

Yakitori Bincho
112 N. International Boardwalk
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 376-3887
Mon. -Thurs. 5-11 pm
Fr.-Sun. 4-midnight
Closed on Tuesday

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Oki Doki- Costa Mesa

This past Saturday, the OC Bruins went to Oki Doki after the Angels game. I wanted to go to Honda-Ya, which was clsoer, but everyone knew where Oki Doki was, so we went there. Unfortunately, it turns out Rooster doesn't eat seafood, and so I was stuck with the task of ordering for some of us without seafood. At Oki Doki, this was surprisingly hard to do, and we ended up with a lot of vegetarian offerings, which were only so-so. There was seaweed salad, which went over very well, but was just like the stuff you can buy in a supermarket. The same with the kim chee, which was also greeted with mysterious references to a Mr. Yu, whom Rooster apparently knows. There was also fried tofu, which was pretty good, but served very hot. The chicken wings were surprisingly fishy, which was gross. They were out of pork belly, which was sad because Zond liked it a lot, and thought Rooster would too. We also got a pitcher of beer, but it turned out not to really be a full pitcher, because there was a cylinder int he middle, taking up space- what a rip off! It was cheap, but not good. Their best stuff is still fish, I think, though Zond said something ridiculous about the eel nigiri (2 pieces) costing $4- way overpriced for the probable quality of fish. Sigh. Poor clueless Zond.

Date of Visit: 6/23/07

Oki Doki
Costa Mesa, CA

Sor Tino- Brentwood

BruinLawyer, GameBoy, and I went with two of my friends from high school- N. and M. (interesting moniker forthcoming) up to LA to go to the LA Film Festival. Short Program 2 had little interesting food-wise, and was pretty, well, crappy in general. The last short, about black lesbian teenagers, was a bit, um, graphic, but there was scene at the end where they're eating ice cream, and it made me hungry for some. Luckily, GameBoy felt the same way, and at the next film, which was at the brand-spanking-new Landmark theaters at the Westside Pavillion, he went to the concession stand and returned with some Pinkberry! Ok, it wasn't even ice cream, and, by some standards, not even really frozen yogurt, but it was my first Pinkberry, and it was good. Not so delicious that I would wait in line like some people, but good for movies, definitely. After "The Paper Will Be Blue," which, by the way, was a pretty good Romanian film about the end of the Cold War, we went to Sor Tino in Brentwood.

We parked on the rooftop parking lot, and made our way down to the restaurant, which was crowded with well-dressed middle aged types on the patio celebrating something. BruinLawyer was immediately intrigued by the women in their cleavage-baring outfits, but soon lost interest once he acertained their age. GameBoy spotted the burrata and carpaccio and immediately insisted we order them. BruinLawyer is allergic to cheese (I'm so glad I didn't inherit this Asian gene!), so we also ordered calamari as a final appetizer. Even better, it turned out that N. and M. weren't so hot on the burrata, so GameBoy and I got the lion's share of that. The burrata itself was creamy and yummy as usual. However, since it's not quite tomato season yet, it was atop some rather mediocre slices of tomato, which detracted from the experience. While it was much more buratta than Fraiche, GameBoy and I agreed that we preferred Fraiche's version, since they used better tomatoes and aged balsalmic vinegar, which really made the difference. The carpaccio was good, but GameBoy complained that it was less than he expected. I'm not sure if he gets that it's supposed to be very thinly sliced and that it's supposed to be a small amount. Sigh. I was so busy eating those two dishes that I didn't get a chance to eat any calamari, but judging from the empty plate, BruinLawyer, N., and M. really enjoyed it.

GameBoy got a spinach salad with chicken for dinner, but the rest of us went for the pastas, which are all homemade. M. got the risotto, which must have been good, because he ate it all rather quickly. N. got the penne with tomato sauce, which was okay, but it's really something hard to mess up. BruinLawyer and I got the wild boar ragu, which was yummy, as usual. However, I'm not sure if BruinLawyer liked his quite as much, and he said something about how he didn't see how wild boar tasted that much different than regular pork. GameBoys salad was only so-so, with the chicken all dry. So, in total, an okay meal, but not spectacular. Still, in LA, not a bad meal for $30 each or so.

The real bummer was that I had about half of my pasta left over, which I intended to take for lunch the next day. However, when I opened the container at work, I was sad to see only a tiny scoop of N.'s penne. Somehow the boxes must have gotten mixed up. So sad.

Date of Visit: 6/24/07

Sor Tino
Brentwood, CA