Cha Ya Vegetarian Japanese

It was one of those it's too beautiful to stay indoors and let's go spend it outdoors day. So I decided to spent the afternoon in the Mission district, exploring the fun boutiques and quaint little shops. I walked passed this restaurant and was really intrigued by it, Cha Ya vegetarian Japanese? How wonderful, now vegetarian would not be deprived of Japanese food! After spending the afternoon in the strong wind, I'm dying for some hot soup so we ordered the sukiyaki, Cha Ya roll and stuffed eggplant. The flavor is really good but most of it are rather sweet and a lot of the items are deep fried. Nonetheless it's really good and I would love to go again to try other stuff, there are way too many options to choose from. Also, it's really packed, so if you plan to go, go earlier and bring cash (because it's cash only).

Twin Peaks

The view of SF from Twin Peaks. The wind nearly blew the car door away but hey, it was worth it.

The Painted Ladies

Ever watched Full House? Well this is where they shot one of the opening scenes. Finally after 2 years, I visited The Painted Ladies. Apparently there are many victorian houses refered as Painted Ladies in SF but this is the one made famous by Full House! Now, I can say I've been to the painted ladies! The weather was so clear I could even see the city's skyline!

Happy Birthday ML!

The weather finally turned better and what could be better than to sit outside, have brunch and to celebrate a friend's birthday? So for her birthday brunch, the birthday girl requested The Front Porch.

While waiting for the guests to arrive, we ordered some beignets to start with. What are beignets? They're kinda like donuts sprinkled with confectionary sugar, but I believe that the beignets we had had banana in it. My, it was really good, it wasn't too oily and not too sweet. I can pop 2 or 3 of these anytime with coffee! Only that I was saving space for the main course!

Our party ordered the chicken waffle, fried oysters po'boys, spicy shrimp and grits, and the ever mysterious vegan lunch. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of deep fried chicken, but when you eat creole food, you MUST try their deep fried chicken, it's their specialty. For a person who doesn't like fried chicken, I really liked it. I don't know what they marinate the chicken in but it's very flavorful, it'll be a sin to eat it with ketchup! Even the waffle tastes different. Either they served us red potato waffle if not they must've used some of the chicken marinate in the waffles *haha*.

Verdict? Thums up!! I would definitely bring you here if you want to! :)

Sam's Chowder House

Because it was a day to celebrate, we wanted it to be special. A month before the date we made reservations at Sam's Chowder House for a party of 12. What's so special about this place? The best place to view sunset while enjoying fresh and succulent seafood with your friends and family.

For starters, we had the fried artichoke and calamari, then for mains, we had the lobster sandwich (voted top five best sandwich in America), crab cake, grilled halibut and jumbo prawns stuffed with Dungeness crab and many others which was devoured before the camera was ready. Haha....

Verdict? I was a little disappointed. It was a foggy day so there was no sunset, there's nothing I can do about the weather but the service was bad. A party of 12 means 20% gratuity but do they deserve it? No. We never knew the reason why but I wouldn't go back again. Nonetheless, here's a picture to commemorate the great company and the people who made the day possible! *cheers!*

May 14, 2011

Graduation. A day to remember :)

Tahoe

Snow in the summer? How absurd! Well, it's not if you're in Tahoe! On a beautiful weekend we piled up the car and drove to Lake Tahoe. It was so beautiful, the weather was beautiful and the scenery was breath taking.

The water was emerald green and look at the snow covered mountain top!

For lunch, we went to Sprout Natural Food Cafe, we ordered the tempeh burito wrap, tofu bowl, tuna melt and a salad. Yumm......not only the ingredients were fresh and organic but they're also very healthy! It was indeed very satisfying to eat food that is healthy and tasty.

After such a stuffed lunch, we thought we'd have no space for dinner, but by 8pm, we were all hungry! So since we were staying right opposite of Lone Eagle Grille, we popped in for dinner for an early mother's day celebration. We ordered the french onion soup, beet salad, furikake crusted ahi with radish salad, spring lamb rack, sauteed chicken with mascarpone polenta and a vegetarian polenta.

We barely warmed our seats when the fire alarm suddenly rang, we had to evacuate the place for half an hour while it was drizzling outside! What an adventure...but the food was good and they gave us a discount because of all the trouble caused! Well, at least it was a memorable mother's day celebration! *chuckle*