City Eats Part II: Central Kitchen

This week, we tried Central Kitchen. 

OK, I have to admit, I've been slacking. Again, I had to rush out the door this morning without my camera so I used my phone. I figured, recording happy memories are more important than beautiful pictures :) 

Why a photo of the dessert to start of this post? Because we were there to celebrate my be-earlied birthday! I am very thankful for my wonderful friends and their family for having this small celebration with me. I realized that I've been focusing too much on work that I've completed neglected my love for spending time with good friends and enjoying a good meal together.  So this photo serves as a good reminder for the wonderful time that I had tonight.

It's chamomile oil cake with fennel and blackberry sorbet. For the first time I actually remembered what I ordered. The cake was very moist and yummy. The flavors were perfectly infused together and beautifully plated with flowers. I'm not so crazy about sorbet but the wafer looking thing was actually very yummy. The texture is between a wafer and a pavlova. It reminded me a lot of my childhood wafer snack but much better in terms of taste and texture. A tad chewy and lightly sweetened.

We started the dinner with liver mousse with summer truffle, mushroom and scallion. I love truffle but this time, I didn't pay attention at all to the truffle because I was too surprised with how tasty the liver pate is. I do eat liver pate occasionally but sometimes I find it way too gamey to my liking. This liver mousse was absolutely smooth and sweet. I just couldn't have enough of it, this is a good portion to split with the group. Less is more. Enough to awaken the taste buds but not too much to be sick of it.

This dish is also very interesting, it's melon, cucumber and avocado with fig yogurt and fresno chili. It looked so pretty and tasted very refreshing, like spring. The ingredient sounded simple but I wonder if I could actually replicate this at home? For sure not as pretty. :)

   

For my entree, I ordered the charred squid with tomato, peppercorn fregula & garum. What? Fregula? Garum? When I saw my plate, I thought they had served caviar with the squid. Sweet. I thought. Haha, no, it's fregula, a type of pasta. I don't know why it's black, they definitely don't taste like peppercorn, I wondered if they had used squid ink to cook the fregula to make it black. And garum? It's actually a type of fish sauce. I really love this dish because they had served the squid with different herbs. So when you're tasting the food, you get to savor the tender squid, a splash of sourness from the garum, sweetness from the cherry tomatoes, and the flavorful herbs. Although the dish looked much smaller than I had expected but by the time I finished my food, I was full and satisfied. In the end we split the dessert with the group. The ambience and food were really good, I really like this place, I'm so glad that my friend picked this place for dinner. We definitely wanted to go back for more!

So we thought being full, happy and satisfied, we have no more space for more dessert. Well no, I guess we do have a different stomach for dessert. Humphry Slocome was only 5 blocks away. I've always wanted to go to Humphry's and since we were so near, we had to go.

This place was so unpretentious, the sign was so small, I wouldn't have noticed it if I drove by. Only that I see people lining up for ice-cream. So what is so special about Humphry Slocombe? Because they have the wildest and craziest flavors out there. To name a few, kumquot poppy seed, flaiming rum and raisin, fume, guinness gingerbread.....etc. etc. etc.

They do it on a rotating basis. I was hoping to try out one of those crazy ones but today's selection was more typical and they were kind enough for you to actually taste all the flavors before deciding on which one you want. I only tried 2 - secret breakfast (vanilla ice-cream with bourbon) and brown sugar fennel. Which one did you think I choose? The latter one. I was very curious, I love fennel but in ice-cream? It was very refreshing. On the first bite, the ice-cream tasted like brown sugar but there's a hint of fennel taste after each bite, so that was very interesting. 

A scoop of Humphry Slocombe's ice-cream a day keeps the sorrow away?

I had such a beautiful day and all I can think of is how grateful I am for the people in my life.  I am a better person because of the wonderful people around me. I am so so so thankful....♥♥♥

City Eats Part 1: Mission Beach Cafe

I realized that I haven't been spending enough time in the city lately. So I've set a goal, that is to eat at at least 3 top rated restaurants in the city before the year ends. And who knew, suddenly I have 3 reservations within 1 month to eat in the city.  *How exciting*

Restaurant 1 : Mission Beach Cafe 

This cute little restaurant is highly reviewed and based on the photos we saw online the food looked absolutely delicious. I had a long day at work, and had completely forgotten about my camera before I left the house so I had to use my phone to capture this beautifully plated grilled summer squash and broccolini. They change the menu often and in a state of famished, I don't really remembered what I ordered exactly. All I know was I was eating amazingly sweet grilled vegetables with humus.

The menu was small, and what stood out for me was the pork chop so I had to try it. We ordered medium well and when it came out, it looked a tad well done. We were worried that the meat would be overcooked but no, it was so tender and juicy. It was so yummy and I had the urge to clean the bone but was too embarrassed to do so. Did you notice the strawberry/fig? How they sliced it and stacked it up alternately? The green was cream of kale with some sort of grains and caramelized onions. Yumm.. my favorite.

The food was indeed amazing. The plating was beautiful and what we noticed was not one plate was plated the same. Every plate was unique. I had a really great time and enjoyed the food tremendously. I can't wait to come again to try out their other dishes, since we also skipped dessert this time because we were very full.

What the reviewers hadn't said was parking is awful. I couldn't find a parking spot for almost an hour. How ridiculous is that? I was driving and I couldn't stop to Google for a nearby parking garage and every spot that I saw was not mine to take. Finally on the verge of giving up, there was this beautiful spot right next to me without me noticing it. I was so thankful that finally, I found a spot. I can't wait for my next restaurant next week!  Yippeee....