Alana's Cafe Visted 7/27/2013 4 Forks

Alana's Cafe 1020 Main St., Redwood City, CA 94063

I hadn't seen Bharat and Cindy since Aarti's wedding, so I was excited that I was able to have brunch with them before I left SF on Sunday.  Since they lived 10 minutes from Neera, it was even more convenient although I was a bit sad that for the 1st time I've been to SF, I've actually stayed in the suburbs the whole time!  But if all the places in the 'burbs were like Alana's Cafe, I totally wouldn't mind not going into the city.  Talk about the cutest brunch place on earth.  It was the quintessential adorable brunch restaurant situated in an old Victorian looking house with a lovely garden outside.  We got there "early" at 10AM (there was a debate as to what time brunch actually is - apparently it's an East Coast vs. West Coast thing) but it was totally packed already.  Luckily the wait was only 15 minutes and we got a seat in the garden outside.  

The menu is the perfect traditional brunch menu:  yogurts, oatmeals, egg scrambles, more eggs type dishes, benedicts, french toast, pancakes and sides of every breakfast dish you can think of from sausage to coffee cake to homefries to fruit.  Heaven.  I had a really hard time deciding what I wanted.  As most of you know, I love a good benedict and I was on the verge of sticking with it but since I was in California, I felt the need to be a bit healthier.  So I opted for the California scramble ($11.50) which was 3 eggs lightly scrambled with broccoli, mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes, provolone and cheddar cheese served with herbed homfries and a choice of bread, coffee cake or scones (I got the papaya scones).  Bharat and Cindy both got the Farmer's Garden ($10.95) which had almost the same ingredients I had except the veggies were topped with 2 poached eggs instead.  Although the dish is a pretty basic egg dish, I was just so enamored with the overall vibe of the place, that I thought it was amazing.  My one issue with an egg scramble with so many ingredients is the presentation but short of it being an omelette, there isn't a way to make scrambled eggs look that nice.  But the ingredients were all very fresh and the eggs were cooked well (not too dry).  They are famous for their scones which is why I got the papaya one (they also had some coconut version too) and it was good and definitely unique but I'm just not a huge scone person, so I only had a few bites of it.   The best part of the dish was actually the homefries - ok, they were really roasted potatoes.  But they were awesome.  The herb and seasonings they used on it were spot on and made the potatoes incredibly addictive.  I didn't get a chance to try the Farmer's Garden but it looked great and they mentioned that they get it every time they come here.  I kind of wish we got an order of pancakes for the table because they looked delicious as well but I didn't want to go too overboard. 

This was a fantastic brunch spot in the middle of the 'burbs that doesn't really make you miss the city.  The decor, menu and wait staff were all great and it made me wish that I knew of more places like this in NYC (the closest thing I can think of decor wise is Friend of a Farmer - but the food there isn't that great).  I guess living in the 'burbs of California does have its perks sometimes.  

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Sam's Chowder House Visited 7/27/2013 3.5 Forks

Sam's Chowder House  4210 Cabrillo Hwy N., Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

When Neera first told me about Sam's Chowder House, I was beyond excited.  It is the kind of restaurant that is totally up my alley:  super casual but not dumpy, gorgeous views of the water, and an endless menu of seafood.   Heaven.   When we drove up to the restaurant at 11AM on Saturday, there already was a line just to get in.  I would strongly suggest recommendations if you want to eat at a reasonably hour. 

As I mentioned, there were tons of amazing sounding seafood options.  It ranged from a raw bar, different kinds of chowders and soups, poke, shrimp cocktail, crab cakes, calamari, mussels, different kinds of seafood salad, fish sandwich, salmon burger, daily catch of fish, several fried platters as well as  some "land" options of burgers, chicken, and pasta.  Sorry vegetarians, besides some side dishes, you're out of luck.  I wish I could have ordered almost everything on the menu, but we settled on splitting the Captain's Platter ($34.95) which included 4 oysters, 4 clams, 4 chilled shrimp, ahi tuna poke and seafood ceviche - which was perfect because there was 4 of us.   For my main, Neera and I split the New England clam chowder ($6.95) and the lobster roll ($21.95) and I also ordered a side of Old Bay fries ($5) because I love anything with Old Bay.  Levi got the spicy popcorn shrimp as an entree ($11.50) and Kevin got the salmon burger ($14.95).  As soon as the Captain's Platter came out I was ready to dive right in.  I'll start with the good news.  The oysters and clams were amazing (although I really wish the waitress told us what kind of oysters they were) and the poke was some of the best I've had outside of Hawaii.  It kind of made me regret not actually ordering the appetizer size portion of the poke because it had the perfect blend of soy, ginger and fresh ahi tuna.  The bad news:  the ceviche was pretty disappointing.  Kevin had mentioned that he had never had ceviche, so Levi and I were excited for him to try it out.  Normally when I think of ceviche, I picture raw pieces of fish or scallop in an acid/citrus base.  This one had a bunch of cold small cooked shrimp and cooked scallop in a mango avocado base.  It wasn't very impressive and I've definitely had much better ceviche elsewhere.  

After our appetizer, we then had to wait a while for our main entrees to come out.  First they started to bring out the wrong dish but soon realized that we didn't order the seafood spaghetti.  I assumed that our order would come out soon after that.  Well, it didn't.  Finally when our food came, I was ready to demolish the soup and sandwich.  I started with the soup - it's made with littleneck clams, yukon potatoes, smoked bacon and cream.  The restaurant makes it clear on their menu that they don't thicken their chowder with flour but instead use the natural ingredients to bring out the flavor and texture.  I'll be honest, but I kind of wish they did use flour to thicken their chowder.  It just felt like it was more soup than chowder.  Maybe my perception is skewed based on my childhood obsession with Campbell's Chunky Chowder, but I expect my chowders to be thick and chunky - you almost need to eat it with a fork.  The soup here was fine but I wish it also had more clam to it as well.  After I finished my portion of the soup, I moved on to the lobster roll.  For those of you who've followed my blog for a while, you know my complete obsession with a good lobster roll.  It's probably one of my favorite food items ever.  I usually like the mayo based kind but the one here was more of the Connecticut style kind with no mayo but instead chunks of buttered lobster.  The actual lobster was fantastic.  Big, large chunks of fresh lobster tail and claw.  I wasn't, however, a huge fan of the roll it came on.  It was too toasted and on the dry side.  I could tell that there was a lot of butter on the roll but it wasn't very soft.  At some point, I just started picking out the lobster meat.  To me, this dish seemed less like a lobster roll and more like chunks of buttered lobster out of the shell. 

While our waitress was super sweet and nice, she was very flighty and had to come back to our table to figure out how to split the bill among the 3 credit card.  I really really wanted to give this place at least 4 forks or higher, but between the long wait, disappointing ceviche and dry lobster bun, I had to settle for 3.5 forks.  But it's sitting on a beautiful waterfront property, so if you do find yourself in the neighborhood, I would recommend coming in and at least have a few drinks and some oysters.  Total bill:  $40/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit: Yelp

Buffet at Aria Visited 7/26/2013 3 Forks

Buffet at Aria  3730 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, NV 89149 

So I was back in Vegas and determined to hit up another buffet after my last buffet debacle at Mandalay Bay.  The Aria has a better reputation overall and I even checked out the restaurant the night before to ensure that the menu seemed like it would be a better experience.   With my jetlag, I showed up at 8AM on a Friday and there was no line and the place was half empty.   My first impression was that it was leaps and bounds better than the buffet at The Mandalay Bay without even tasting the food.  The line-up was much more diverse and of better quality.  The different stations ranged from the seafood bar (New Zealand Mussels, shrimp cocktail, ceviche, and seafood chowder), the Asian station (dim sum, fried noodles, fried rice, and pork buns), the Mediterranean station (I didn't get a good look at this station but it looked like a grain bar), the Indian station (curries and tandoori chicken), carving station, omelette station, mini fried chicken and waffle station, standard salad bar, fresh fruit/yogurt station and American breakfast station of eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.  Even though it was really early in the morning, I went straight for the seafood and dim sum station because that's what seemed most unique and the best bang for your buck.  They had a super cute mini dim sum steamer with 3 kinds of dumplings inside.  It wasn't amazing but for buffet dim sum, not horrible either. It clearly didn't taste like it was freshly made but honestly I wasn't expecting it.  I did appreciate the fact that the dim sum came in these individual portions to try to mitigate the issue that most buffets have tons of food sitting out there.  I then headed to the raw bar and piled up on the mussels and shrimp cocktail.   Yes, it is kind of weird to be eating seafood at 8AM but for good seafood, I will eat it any time of the day.  Given that this was positioned as a raw bar, the mussels and shrimp cocktail were served cold - which was fine for the shrimp but I still don't love mussels cold.  I still prefer them slightly warm in some broth.  But for buffet seafood, the quality of the seafood was totally acceptable, to the point where I actually got seconds.

I then felt like I had to try some traditional breakfast food and I got the buffet scrambled eggs.  They were very wet, which is the way I actually like my eggs but I totally get that it's not everyone's cup of tea because it kind of has this undercooked quality to it but I was totally into it.  Since I had just came from the gym, I felt like I couldn't go too crazy, so I opted out of the bacon, sausage, the individual sized eggs benedict, and the super cute individual fried chicken and waffles - I exercised a LOT of self control.  I did try the steamed clams and honestly those were not as good as the mussels.  I usually like  steamed clams in a very clean broth but this one had almost this weird curry taste to it and the broth was very yellow, so that was kind of a turn off.  I had really wanted to end my meal with a fresh fruit plate and this is where the buffet disappointed me the most.  For a place that had so much variety and options, they had the lamest fruit line-up ever.  It was heavy on  honeydew, cantaloupe, and grapes.  I was hoping for watermelon or mangos to cleanse my palate.  Instead, I went for a bowl of cottage cheese which tasted like your basic cottage cheese you would get at the grocery store.  I did also get a bowl of pre-sliced grapefruit which was nice but they tried to fancy it up with thin shavings of mint which I wasn't really into.

All in all, this still wasn't the buffet of my dreams but it was way better than my previous buffet experience.  Also the fact that I was under a pretty tight timeline and had to be in and out of the buffet in an hour probably didn't really work in my favor either.  If I had more time to leisurely enjoy my meal and fully explore and indulge, then maybe I would have rated it higher, but given the quality of the food, probably not.  By the time I left breakfast there was a line out the door, so I would recommend getting there early if you don't want to wait in line for too long.  Total bill:  $23 with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Gobo Visited 7/23/2013 3 Forks

Gobo 401 Avenue of the Americas (between 8th St & Greenwich Ave), New York, NY 10014

Gobo is one of those places that I've walked past a million times because of its West Village location but never had enough of an interest to actually go inside.  It kind of always gave me that hippie dippie, too-cool-for school, organic feel to it and I'm not really been a huge fan of those kinds of places.  But since Vinyak had expressed interest in trying a vegan restaurant, Aarti figured that this could be a good option even though it's not 100% vegan but very veggie/health friendly.

The menu is pretty extensive and I will say that if you do have any sort of dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten, peanut, etc) they have a lot of options for you.  We all started with the wonton soup ($6) which was a very filling appetizer and probably my favorite dish of the night.  It was a clear broth with 5 very stuffed wontons and lots of fresh spinach piled on top.  The wontons were filled with chopped up veggies and some soy and while it was good, I still missed the real wontons stuffed with pork and cabbage.  Next came all our other dishes:  roti canai with malayasian curry ($8), the avocado tartare with wasbi lime sauce ($11), the seitan skewers ($9), the eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese ($12), the nori wrapped tofu in red curry sauce ($17), the butternut squash risotto with toasted almonds ($18), and the kale, seaweed, beet salad ($12).  Yes, we went a bit overboard and honestly could have done with 1-2 fewer dishes.  We all agreed that the roti canai with malaysian curry was our favorite dish of the entreees.  The roti was nice and soft but with a slight crisp on the outside to it and the curry tasted like a curry you would get at a mom and pop Thai place.  The avocado tartare was frankly just like a guacamole to me (which is not a bad thing at all!).  It was served with those weird fried noodle strips you get with a hot and sour soup but I actually liked that it was light on the salt so that you could really taste the avocado.  Sadly I didn't taste much in the way of wasabi which was kind of a bummer because that would have been a nice spice addition to it.  The eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese sounded like it would be a great dish and while it was fine, it didn't wow me very much.  The tofu cheese had no flavor to it and they essentially roasted the crap out of the eggplant to make it soft and edible.  The butternut squash had a lot of potential but it was way too sweet and for a place that has a real focus on health, it tasted like I was eating a cup of sugar.  I don't actually think they added any sugar to it, it was more that the sweetness of the butternut really overwhelmed the dish.  The nori wrapped tofu tasted exactly how it sounds - like tofu wrapped in dry seaweed.  Again, it wasn't a bad dish, I just felt like it was missing something to it that maybe a meat or fish would have brought out in the dish.  The kale, seaweed and beet salad also tasted exactly like how it's described.  It's chopped up and sauteed kale, thick dark green pieces of seaweed (not the bright thin seaweed they usually use in a seaweed salad but it's a long, flat version) and cut up pieces of cold beets.  I actually really love all of these ingredients individually so while it doesn't sound like a delicious dish, I enjoyed it more than a lot of the other dishes and felt super healthy eating it.  My least favorite dish of the night was the seitan skewers.  It just had no taste to it at all, even though it was served with two different dipping sauces.  The consistency of it was also dry and if we had to cut a few dishes, this would have been my first choice to cut.

At the end of the meal, I did feel incredibly full yet healthy at the same time.  You could definitely tell that the food here is not processed but I did kind of miss having the flavors of meat, fat and a bit of oil in my food.  One thing to note is that we explicitly told our waiter that Vinyak has a very strong sesame allergy and they seemed very amenable to it.  But apparently something we ate gave him that allergy feeling but we couldn't figure out what dish it came from.  Our waiter did try to help and brought out the ingredient cards to show us but in the end, it's just a bit unnerving to have a bunch of food on your plate, knowing that you're allergic to something but that you just don't know what it is.  It's a good vegetarian/gluten free option but if you are a meat lover, it may not satisfy your palate as much as some other veggie friendly places in town.  Total bill:  $190 for 4 people with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Meskerem Visited 7/18/2013 3.5 Forks

Meskerem  124 MacDougal St., New York, NY 10012

Every year for Aarti's b-day, we try to keep a tradition of getting Ethiopian food.  Even though NYC is one of the most diverse cities in the world, strangely enough, there aren't a ton of Ethiopian options in NYC.  I wanted to try a new place, but we ended up going back to one of our usual haunts, Meskerem in the West Village.  There's not much in the way of ambiance as it's in this beat up downstairs area on Bleecker Street (a street full of NYU haunts).  It's small inside with tables that seat no more than 4 people at one time, but it was cozy enough for Aarti and I.  The menu is pretty extensive with lots of both meat and vegetarian options.  Since it was Aarti's b-day, we opted for the vegetarian combo for two ($28) and the avocado appetizer ($6).  After looking at the menu, I would say that the combos (either the veggie or the meat/veggie one) are definitely the way to go because it lets you try tons of different kinds of dishes at a fairly reasonable price.  If you ordered individually, single entrees of one type of dish would run you $13-15 each.   

The avocado dish was served on injera bread with chopped avocado, tomatoes, green peppers and onions.  It was kind of like guacamole but not all mashed up.  The dish was great but honestly the ratio of injera and avocado mix was way off.  There was about 3-4 scoops of the avocado and by the time we were done with it we were left with tons of injera and nothing left to eat with it.   The veggie combo comes with miser alech (lentils with curry), miser wat (lentils with berbere sauce), shro wat (chickpeas with berbere cause), sautéed string beans with carrots and onions, a mixture of cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, collard greens, and chickpea balls.  And of course it comes on top of injera and then served with another side of injera.  So yeah - it was tons of food.  To be honest, it was really hard to tell what was what on the plate because they all kind of look the same except for the cabbage, the green beans and the collard greens.  The injera was nice and soft and spongy and I started sopping up a little bit of everything from the plate.  All the mixes were flavorful and one of them had an especially strong kick to it.  I used the cabbage mix to cool off my mouth and to re-set my palate.  Even though there wasn't any meat on the plate, the injera really fills you up very quickly.  We were both really full after an hour or so and Ethiopian food isn't really the kind of food you want to take home with you.  While I really enjoyed all the different mixtures on the plate, it would have been nice if there was a bit more differentiation in texture/consistency among them.  

All in all, I don't have any major complaints about this place and for the price and what you get for the combinations it is very reasonable.  It's a solid restaurant that could just use a bit of touch up to their decor.  I would warn that most Ethiopian wines are super super sweet, so I would probably stick with the beer.  There are a few other Ethiopian places that I haven't tried that are in Harlem, but if you're looking to stick to the downtown area, Meskerem is a good but low key choice.  Total bill:  $57 for 2 with tax and tip 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Figs Visited 7/12/2013 3 Forks

Figs   42 Charles St., (between Chestnut St & Mount Vernon St), Boston, MA 02114

For some reason, I've never really had any interest in going to any Todd English restaurants before but when Lav mentioned that this place had really good pizza, I was willing to give his restaurant a try.  While his restaurant in NYC, Olives, is in the swanky W Hotel, this one in Boston was a pretty low key, informal restaurant.  The restaurant is in this incredibly cute and charming part of Boston and while I would never actually move to Boston, this neighborhood did kind of capture my heart that morning.  I had just had a pretty filling breakfast, so I opted to go a bit lighter and get the spinach salad  ($11).  But of course my eyes started to linger and I saw that they had clam chowder ($9) on special.  Now since I was in Boston, I felt like I had to get the clam chowder, even though I wanted a "light" lunch.  Meanwhile, Lav and Eric split a pizza which was half Bianco and half Crispy Eggplant ($18.50).   

My spinach salad came with heirloom tomatoes, avocado, feta cheese and a vinaigrette dressing.  It was a good basic standard salad but I should have asked for the dressing on the side as it was a bit too heavy on the dressing.  I'm pretty sure it was probably one of those salads that seemed healthy at first but if you read the calorie count you would pass out.  But what really did me in was the soup.  My one pet peeve about the soup was that it was served in an enormous bowl.  I mean it almost took up the entire side of my table and when I put my spoon in the bowl I realized how shallow the actual bowl was.  It was just kind of annoying to have a giant soup bowl and a giant salad plate in front of me as it made it pretty difficult to maneuver around the table.  They would have been better off putting the bowl in a small deeper bowl to save space and it would have been presented better.   I had been hoping that since I was in New England that I would be blown away by the chow-da.  But it really wasn't that great.  It was very heavy on the bacon and I didn't really get a lot of clam or potato and it was actually a bit on the thin side.  It just didn't seem like what a good clam chowder should be: thick, chunky and full of big pieces of clam and potato.  I almost prefer the Campbell's Chunky Soup version to this one.  I didn't try the pizza in the restaurant but by the time we got to New Hampshire I was starving and warmed up a couple slices of the leftover pizza.  The Bianco side consisted of fresh mozzarella, sweet onions, tomatoes, arugula, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and the crispy eggplant side had tomato sauce, sliced eggplant, mozzarella, whipped ricotta and basil.  The pie and crust was of the thin square version and was still pretty nice and crunchy despite having lots of ingredients piled on top of it.  I actually didn't have a specific preference for either of the pizzas as they were both pretty good.  The ingredients were all very fresh and while it wasn't as good as the pizza at Roberta's, it totally hit the spot despite having been in our car for almost 3 hours.  If I were to end up at Figs again, I would skip the soup, opt for the pizza to share and if I did order a salad, ask for the dressing on the side.  Total bill:  $15/pp with tax and tip. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Oleana Visited 7/11/2013 4.5 Forks

Oleana - 134 Hampshire St, Cambridge, MA 02139

I had heard a lot about Oleana from Lav and Eric enroute to New Hampshire, so I was pretty excited to give it a try.  Even though it received tons of raves reviews, I wasn't going in with really high expectations since I had never heard of it before. But I was totally in love with our dinner there and it was worth the crazy drive up there.  I was pretty surprised at how completely packed it was given that it was 9pm on a Thursday night.  Even though we had a reservation, but still had to wait about 20 minutes, which in relation to a NYC wait was totally ok. 

The menu here is Mediterranean, vegetarian friend and heavy on the flavor and spices.  While I wasn't starving when I got there (I totally blame the gigantic Auntie Ann's pretzel I had at the rest stop), my eyes definitely got big from all the yummy sounding dishes they had.  They have a LOT of tapas style entries as well as large sized entrees.  For starters, we all split the whipped feta with sweet and hot peppers ($5), saganaki ($10), and the sultan's delight ($13) and for my entree I got the hanger steak with a feta and chickpea salad ($29).  The one thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't have a Greek salad on the menu because I was totally in the mood for a good solid salad.  But luckily the rest of the dishes were so delicious that it didn't make me miss that the salad wasn't on the menu.  The whipped feta was amazing.  It had the strong flavor of the feta but with a nice combination of the roasted peppers to give it a sweet flavor.  It was whipped so smoothly that it almost had a butter-like consistency.  The saganaki was also fabulous and served with ouzo, sesame and really delicious grilled figs.  But my favorite appetizer was the sultan's delight which was tamarind glazed beef served with a smokey eggplant puree.  The beef was melt in your mouth and almost like a short rib in texture and consistency.  The puree was also spot on and had a very subtle smokey flavor that wasn't overwhelming but add a great touch to the dish.  I was pretty full at this point but I had to leave room for the hanger steak.  I am always a sucker for really good steak and this one absolutely did not disappoint.  It was good perfectly medium rare, closer on the rare side with a beautiful juicy red center.  The "salad" that came with it was more of a sauteed of peppers, onions,  some feta and chickpeas.  I could have done without it or just less of it because by the time I got to the bottom of it, there was a puddle of oil in the bowl that made it a bit unappetizing.  I had a taste of Eric's trout spanakopita ($24) and it was a nice blend of fish, spinach, avocado and roe.  It was bit heavy on the phyllo dough but otherwise it was a pretty unique dish that I haven't seen anywhere.  I didn't try any of Lav's dishes but she raved about the spinach falafel ($12), the walnut muhammara ($11) but mentioned that the corn and kohlarbi ($8) was lacking in flavor and a bit bland and her least favorite dish of the night.  We really decided to make it an overly decadent meal and got 2 desserts.  I totally apologize but I can't really remember what we got but I just remembered that one of them was too heavy the basil flavor and didn't seem right for a dessert.  

All in all, the food here had fabulous and strong flavors and it was most likely due to all the spices used in the dishes.  Eric actually had the cookbook for the restaurant and we tried to make a few of the dishes the following night (fairly successfully but still not as good as the restaurant) and the key to all the dishes were all these unique spices.  I know my friends were nervous about taking me here for dinner but they didn't have anything to worry about at all.  I've always said that I think Greek/Mediterranean food is like a sleeper hit - very unassuming but always a winner - and Oleana is no exception.  I would be more than happy to see a branch in the NYC area soon.  Total bill: $75/pp with tax, tip and wine

Photo Credit: Yelp