Grilled Cheese and Beer, a taste of paradise

05/29/2010 1 Comment

DISCLAIMER: I broke some rules here. I ate meat, and I’m not sorry for it – I wanted to taste the sandwiches the way Andrew intended them be enjoyed. I understand some of you won’t like this, but I honestly don’t give a shit. It was high quality stuff, not the corn fed farmed garbage Tyson will pawn off on you, so don’t grief me and I won’t send monkey’s to fling feces on your pristine suburban house.

Now then – this post is dedicated to Andrew over at Andrew’s Cheese Shop. Salutations, sir, and many thanks for an incredibly memorable evening.

For the poor saps out there unfortunate enough to be unable to attend, you are lessened by your absence. I’m serious about this, if you live in LA, fucking get over there ASAP.

Allow me to set the stage: Its 7:30 on a Friday night. Beautiful weather outside, just enough light to see by, you approach a relatively unassuming storefront. Inside its all candles and soft light, surrounded by high quality wine, beer, salts, craft soda and best of all, under the quiet luminescent glow, wonderful cheeses.  A long table with beautiful flat ware and 2o seats confronts you -  an intimate setting, to say the least. You settle in and make idle conversation with your friends as the rest of the group files in – an interesting assortment of folks, from all apparent walks of life, each beautiful in their own way, especially those close to you.

Once all have gathered, the door is locked and the evening begins with a small speech from Andrew, preparing you for the glory about to be thrust upon you, and you dig into the salad artfully set in front of you.

Wasabi vinaigrette? Fuck yea.

Tomatoes, cucumber, olives, red bell pepper, red onion, all topped with a pleasantly spicy Wasabi vinaigrette. The purpose here, as Andrew elucidates, is to prep your taste buds for some bold flavors, and to whet your thirst for some top notch beer.

The first course arrives, more of an amuse-bouche than anything else.

Beer soaked baguette topped with 1 year old Grafton sharp cheddar

Beer: Called ‘Blanche de Chambly’, this light and cidery Belgian white is brewed by the wonderful folks over at Unibroue, who have given us La Terrible, my current favorite beer. A great start, paired with the richness of the baguette, as the sunny citrus sweet really livens up your palate.

This is dangerous. I can see myself drinking several bottles and running into walls before I even noticed I was drunk.

Sandwich: Very simple baguette topped with sharp cheddar cheese – the kicker hits once you bite into the bread proper, whereupon you realize what Andrew meant when he said ‘Beer Soaked Baguette’… simply bursts with flavor. And then, once you’ve finished the whole thing, a small tingling at the back of your throat – horseradish! I’ve never had the stuff used subtly before, very interesting.

A few minutes to settle, and on comes course two….

Very reminiscent of a Caprese salad...on bread...

Unfortunately these pictures aren’t going to do much justice…so much of the magic happens just under the cheese.

Beer: Saison Rue, brewed by ‘The Bruery‘ (a clever play on words based on the families last name). Quite similar to the last beer actually, with more of a bite on the back end. Pleasantly fruity ‘peasant beer’.

Sandwich: Hands down the best damn thing I’ve put in my mouth in years (and don’t you dare take that out of context…). A few others, including my wonderfully ascerbic neighbor, were a little underwhelmed by this one, and that’s fine…and its your opinion…but your wrong Lucy (true name omitted in the interest of safety)! I’M LOOKING AT YOU.

This shits the bee’s knees, or whatever the kids say these days…Olive bread, basil butter, prosciutto de parma, Burrata (OMFGYESSS), tomato, basil, truffle salt. Yea, you read that right, fucking truffle salt. It wasn’t simply the composition of the sandwich, which was impressive given the quality of the ingredients, but the BREAD! Perfectly soaked through with each one of the above mentioned flavors, lightly browned basil butter…..heaven. Heaven on bread.

Paired well with the beer as well.

And as I’m coming down from this euphoric height, considering whether or not I need to change my pants, in comes Course the Third.

Not a personal favorite, delightful nonetheless

Beer: Arrogant Bastard. Bitter, angry, unapologetic – you’ve had it before, and if you haven’t, or you didn’t like it, the fine folks at Stone don’t give a shit and neither do I.

Sandwich: Harvest (carrot, walnut, raisin) wheat bread, Isle of Mull and Quicke’s oak smoked cheddar cheese, dijon mustard, black forest ham, raisins. A nice sandwich, this one was probably the low point of the evening for me. A little too salty, a little too heavy – delicious, nonetheless, but a little much for me. Although, I will say this – the dijon mustard really accented the smoked cheddar beautifully.

Course Four, or how I discovered my ‘Jolly Face’ and appeal to ‘Alternative Women’.

Simple. Spectacular.

I’m not going to explain the last comment, needless to say its an inside joke relating to the conversation at hand.

Beer: Malheur 12. The 12 refers to the percentage of alcohol present, and I must say I found this hard to believe – honestly – since most high alcohol beers end up tasting like ass. For reference, try out Brew Dog’s 18% Tokyo some time; relatively popular, it tastes like sickeningly sweet ass, and I’m convinced the hipsters who drink it all despise it. No, this beer was wonderful. Smooth, nutty coffe chocolate flavor, absolutely no bitterness on the back end, which is off putting considering its color, which is remarkably similar to Arrogant Bastard.

Brandon, my roommate, didn’t like it much…but that doesn’t say anything to the quality of the beer. Homie doesn’t like pickles and has to eat a Hostess Cosmic Brownie with every damn meal, so, yeah. He also hates watermelon. WHO HATES WATERMELON SERIOUSLY.

Sandwich: This was all about the cheese – Morbier, Beaufort de Savoie, varieties of Gruyere, on multigrain wheat. It was topped with some amazing Fleur de Sel, which completely changed the taste, in an ‘OMG I CAN SEE INTO THE FUTURE’ kind of way.

At this point we’d all sort of settled into a comfortable food coma, contentedly sipping our beers and making idle conversation about traveling and the inherent dangers of Italian dentistry, when the Final Course arrived.

Gorgonzola, honey, mana from god

Beer: Meantime London Porter. Another tasty one, made with no less than 7 malts – very intense flavor, also reminiscent of chocolate.

Sandwich: Saison bread, with hazelnuts, walnuts, and raisins soaked in LAMILL coffee. Not sure why that’s all caps. The cheeses were gorgonzola, Munster Gerome, topped with honey – a nice sweeter way to end what was all around a damn spectacular night.

Good friends, new and old, tasty food and eye opening beers…I’m marking this one a downright success.

Thanks again Andrew!

Various info on the Cheese Shop:

Site

Yelp

Facebook

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“Salad-eatin’ bitches”, Or how Coolio changed my life

05/24/2010 Leave a comment

Vegetarian? How bout ghetto-tarian? HAHAHAHAOMGIMSOFUNNY
The pictures blurry cuz I’m just so excited it arrived.

For those of you who don’t know (FOR SHAME) Coolio is not just a burnt out pothead who apparently rapped in the nineties, but also a chef!

Really, you say? How did this come to be? HOW, in the wide world that is the interwebs, did I miss this miracle?

I THOUGHT I WAS ‘HIP’, you are now thinking.

I THOUGHT I WAS COOL.

You. Were. Wrong.

I present to you, in its raw, untouched glory, COOKIN’ WITH COOLIO!!!!! (huzzah!)

Go ahead and let that clip play. Let it digest, while you understand that this, in fact, is actually happening right fucking now. I understand your initial confusion – why am I privy to this? Why o why am I watching this and why o why can I not stop?

I asked myself the same thing when the book arrived. Why did I buy it? Not sure, chapter titles seemed amusing. Why am I so excited about it? Not sure, there’s no way in hell I’m cooking any of his ‘ghetto-gourmet’ shite.

But…

My loving roommate Brandon will!

Poor bastard actually volunteered.

I’m going to let him pick the recipe (since all the ‘salads’ he offers sound as original as sin…wait does that even make sense? Whatever. you get the point.)

The ‘Book’ Itself

Remarkably enough, its well put together. Concise recipes that sound…not terrible…along with a bit of humor thrown in. The issue I had, from the start, was the simple fact it required a glossary. Not, mind you, of commonly used cooking vernacular, but rather to describe the terms he’s come up with to describe measurements.

I’m talking about ‘peench’, or ‘dyme bag’, or even ‘Shaka Zulu‘, his coined catchphrase. According to him this is a phrase for when something is ‘about to taste better than your momma’s nipples’. I am not lying, this is a direct quote. According to the internet, on the other hand, Shaka was king of the Zulu tribe, a remarkable man who revolutionized battle tactics to help advance his people.

When I think Coolio, I do not think revolutionary battle tactics. And I don’t think he does either.

Even more interesting is Coolio’s liberal abbreviation of words. I feel as though I’ve over dosed on apostrophe’s…givin’, livin’, lickin’, pimpin’, stickin’, FUCK YOU ‘. Honestly, I understand the approach here, but we get the point without you feeling the remarkable need to have your ghost writer jot down everything exactly the way you say it. As far as content goes, we’re only talking a few pages at best of actual writing – take the time, write the whole word out, and a little piece of me won’t die every time I see an apostrophe.

I R TALENT

This is me on my knees in front of Coolio's apostrophe monster

Still, I have to give him props for making cooking more accessible through his ‘Ghetto Gourmet’. Well done sir, if only the rest of us blackguards can achieve what you have.

I’ll update this some more once my all too adventurous roomie decides on a recipe.

The book itself, should you find yourself so moved.

And Coolio’s website. Wonderful research material…

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Moving Forward, Or the Journey so Far

05/22/2010 2 Comments

Started, I suppose, many years ago at El Coyote in downtown LA. Sitting at dinner, looking into her eyes, it was a pretty normal occurrence. Nothing out of the ordinary – once again, I was over analyzing my meal. Picking out ingredients that didn’t match the composition, discussing flavor profiles without the knowledge or language to articulately express myself, when she said it.

“You should cook.”

Often, when a significant other suggests something like that its “ok, sure honey, that sounds like a great idea”…and you blow the bitch off to return to the ‘real world’ where everything’s the same, comfortable.

Not so lucky this time.

A flippant statement changed my ever loving life! I still don’t truly think she knows the profound effect she had on me that odd evening in a kitschy Hollywood restaurant, with the dim lighting and jalapeno pepper Christmas lights.

Far from immediate, the change was gradual -

More TV, cooking at home, and then the leap into classes, headfirst into a previously unknown world.

That’s when things began to change.

Years passed and things changed. I  used to think that people didn’t change, who we were is who  we will be – and I proved myself wrong. Our lives separated and she went on to pursue her fresh dreams, and? good fucking riddance.

Onward, ever onward and forward but first down the light started to fade, and at the bottom of this self inflicted pit of despair I found light in a certain specific absence.

Started after a particularly vicious weekend in Vegas, the stories from which are still being told in hushed whispers, as if we speak of legend, I needed a detox, and a friend suggested not eating meat for a few days, to see how it felt. As you may have guessed, the results were immediate and incredible – I had found life anew! Something that had been so wrong with me was not corrected. FINALLY, I could say without doubt that I was who and where I was supposed to be.

Tough at first, going it alone in a carnivores world, but it was a challenge, something I enjoy. The experiments that followed helped prove me as a ‘chef’ – creating new and interesting dishes without meat of any sort, that were still delicious, filling, and best of all, not chock full of bizarre, nasty fake meats. My repertoire grew and grew, as did my limited expertise, until the proverbial levees broke, and the blog was born.

So here I am, in all my gritty glory, to share little pieces of me with the world.

I hope you’re strapped in – its going to be one helluva ride.

Filed under Randomness, Stories Tagged with , ,

Some Sort of Strudel, or “Sweet Jebaz I tried to Bake” (WIP)

05/18/2010 2 Comments

A little back story:

It was Sunday night and my close friends were having a BBQ. I was still at work, and needed something I could whip up in a pinch, with less than 20 bucks. I had some overripe bananas on the counter, and a weird desire to bake a pastry – something I haven’t done since I was in cooking class.

So I thought I’d fry up some banana and raisin ‘spring rolls’ using wonton wrappers, rather like Turron, the Filipino dessert. Plan in hand I ventured off to my nearby relatively price efficient Ralphs…only to be horribly disappointed. I suppose it was foolish to expect them to stock something as simple as wonton wrappers…so I went with puff pastry.

I’ve never used puff pastry.

Its inherent in the name – it puffs. I just didn’t realize how much.

Still, I like to think this came out pretty damn well for a fool stumbling in an unknown realm.

(pics to come)

The Pieces

Prep Time: 8 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes or so

  • 4 overripe bananas
  • 1 cup (or so) California Raisins
  • 1/4 cup cinnamon sugar (just combine cinnamon til it has an even color)
  • 1 tsp fresh nutmeg
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1 tbsp ghee (clarified butter)
  • egg wash (beat an egg with a bit of milk till its smooth)
  • 2 sheets puff pastry

the puzzle

0. Preheat your oven to 375

1. Slice your banana’s in half lengthwise, then cut into 1/4″ pieces

2. Mix with raisins and cinnamon sugar, and microplane a bit of nutmeg in as well

3. Thaw out your puff pastry sheets. I set them on top of the preheating oven with quick results.

4. The sheets should each be folded in thirds. I used this to my advantage to make 3 pastries by cutting on the folds, which yields 6 sheets. For each pastry:

5. Lay one out and top with a generous (1 inch high) mound of the banana mixture

6. Top with another pastry sheet. Use a fork to connect the two sheets, then take a knife and make regular slices on the bias in the top of the pastry itself.

7. Brush with egg wash for that golden brown goodness

8. Bake until all puffed up and golden – about 15 minutes

Topping:

You should have about a cup of the banana mixture remaining. I was inspired to turn this into a topping of sorts for the dish.

1. Put the remaining mixture into a small sauce pan with the butter and honey

2. On medium heat, begin stirring – you’ll notice the banana begins to dissolve immediately.

3. Continue until fully liquefied…

Once the ‘strudel’ is outta the oven and cooling, spread your topping over each piece.

Serve with light beer and good friends – although, to be honest, I really wasn’t terribly pleased with the outcome. It was received well, but then again, these are my friends and their opinions are a little biased.

I think the dish needs something more, something to ‘kick it up a notch’ as that fat Creole fuck likes to say.

I’m open to suggestions!

Filed under Dessert, Recipe Tagged with , , , ,

CHEESE, or Food Porn 101

05/12/2010 3 Comments

Obsession.

To quote the equally depraved John Waters:

“Without obsession, life is nothing.”

On the other hand, Norman Mailer:

“Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer”

Either way, its a word I use a lot, something I myself have often fought with describing. At first, when I decided to rant on the subject of my darkest, unhealthiest obsession I wasn’t sure quite where to begin.

After some though the obvious became more so – where better than the beginning?

obsession begins somewhere. For me it began (truly) at my first regional italian cooking course in Southern California. My previous exposure to cheese had been minimal, a condiment used, albeit liberally, in many dishes I’d had and cooked. Very rarely had I eaten the stuff on its own, so for me I didn’t see it in the same light.

Now here I was, 21 and attempting to turn my couch ridden most likely alcoholic ass into something presentable, cultured, maybe even…worldly? A foolish endeavor I realize now, yet at least it earned me a little more knowledge than i was previously possessed of, and gave me an opportunity to expand my mind.

At the start of each class the teacher would present us with an assortment of cheese, olives, and olive oil.

Thick mozzarella sack...creamy filling... so dirty, so delicious

What popped my cherry, opened my mind and blew down all previous inhibitions?

Burrata.

Sweet, savory, creamy, fucking orgasmically brilliant – a simple cheese at best. But still, it birthed my obsession with all things cheese. From there it was a downward spiral, filled with dark alleys and cheese filled trench coats, pushers hawking their villainous wares to the horribly depraved addicts, desperate for that next creamy fix.

Well…ok, perhaps not that severe.

I’d had Brie. I’d had Gouda. I’d had Cheddar. I thought I knew cheese.

Fuck me, was I ever wrong. As soon as the proverbial levees broke, I began reaching ever outwards, looking for stranger, more bizarre cheese, for those as like minded as me.

I began to learn more about cheese (wikipedia for starters) and the process behind making this soft gem. So many steps!

Shortly thereafter I was introduced to Andrew’s Cheese shop, and a like minded individual who’s obsession far exceeded my own.

What he showed me, I lack the words to describe. So let some pics highlight my favorite cheese, and help guide you down the rabbit hole, towards the dark side of cheese…

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Uber Veggie Quesadilla, or Love at first Bite

05/10/2010 Leave a comment

Another one for the books.

I often find myself, in the wee hours of the morning, or when the roomies aren’t around, watching my ‘guilty pleasures’ – Food Network shows like Guys Big Bite, or Tyler’s Ultimate. It was one such occasion that inspired this deviant work. He called it a ‘Coyote Quesadilla‘, but me being me I had to expand upon it.

I was planning the whole thing out when I met Chef Andi of the World Fare truck.

I’d gotten her to come to Treyarch and serve us on Saturday, and I knew a lot about her, but I never expected her to be so awesome. So, in the course of us chatting, she mentioned I should try ‘Soyrizo’, since she’d had it just the other day and couldn’t for the life of her tell the difference.

A deviant plan was born.

The Pieces

Prep Time: 20 minutes of chopping

Cook Time: 15 minutes in the oven (not including the 5 minutes for the soyrizo)

  • 1 package Soyrizo (they sell it cheap at Ralphs, and it tastes remarkably good)
  • 1 12 oz can Fat Free refried beans
  • 1 white onion, diced
  • 6-7 small sweet peppers, diced
  • 1 bunch green onions, sliced
  • 8 oz shredded mozzarella
  • 8 oz shredded cheddar
  • 8 oz shredded pepper jack
  • 12 oz can of sliced ‘nacho’ jalapenos
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • Cumin/Paprika/Fresh cracked black

Sauce

  • 1 8 oz tub of sour cream
  • 4 oz ranch dressing
  • 1 can Chipotles in Adobo sauce

The Puzzle

1. Preheat oven to 375

2. Heat the oil in a skillet on high. Once shimmering, add onions

3. As the onions saute, squeeze the soyrizo into the onions

4. Reduce heat to medium and allow to combine. Add your spices.

5. In a separate pan, brown 3 tortillas on high til just barely crispy

6. Once the soyrizo is rendered down (5 mins or so) take it off the heat

7. To put it all together: 1st layer, spread a thin layer of beans, followed by the soyrizo/onion mixture, followed by green onion and bell pepper, and topped by 1/3 of the cheese and jalapenos

8. Add the next tortilla, repeat the layering. Use the final tortilla as the cap, top with jalapenos and the rest of the cheese

9. this goes into the oven for approximately 10 minutes, or until golden brown and orgasmic

Sauce

1/2 the sour cream, the ranch dressing, 2 chipotle chili’s and some Adobo, pulse in your blender til creamy.

I served this rather like a cake (as you can see) with sour cream and the sauce on top.

Seriously amazingly tasty. Amazingly.

gooey and goddamn amazing. *DROOL* Now I want some more...

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Leaving Lorraine

05/07/2010 2 Comments

Quiche style.

Recently I’ve read on several blogs, including here at the simple stove, vegetarian varieties of quiche, a favored dish of mine…however, being the ‘rebel’ I am, I decided on a different take. I ditched the crust, used a variety of cheeses, and ended up with easily the best fucking quiche I have ever cooked let alone tasted. The closest one I can thing of is Urth Caffe‘s veggie tomato and smoked mozzarella.

My photographer/camera op room mate took a bunch of beautiful pics, which I’ll upload later when I find my memory card reader.

Lets get started.

The Pieces

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes…or so

  • 8 oz fresh Ricotta
  • 6 oz fresh grated pepper jack
  • 4 oz Minuet or something comparable
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup skim milk
  • 1/4 cup diced white onion
  • 1/2 cup sliced green onion
  • 4 cloves minced or pressed garlic
  • 1/4 cup diced celery
  • 1 tbsp Olive Oil
  • salt
  • fresh cracked black

Aww, ain't Brandon talented...

The Puzzle

0. Preheat oven to 375

1. Use 2 burners to heat up a 13″x9″ pyrex casserole on high

2. Saute your garlic and green onion until the white portion of the onion is transparent. Remove the onion/garlic from the pan, and turn off the burners

3. Layer your broccoli, white onion and celery in the bottom of the casserole dish

4. Combine milk, eggs, salt, pepper, green onion and garlic in a bowl. Begin whisking together, adding in the ricotta and 3 oz of the pepper jack slowly.

5. Once smoothly combined, pour evenly into the pyrex dish.

AWESOMEINORITE

Again, Brandon my photographer

6. Top with crumbled bits of minuet (I was just lucky enough to have this delicious shit on hand. Feta/gorgonzola could also do the trick) and remaining portion of Pepper Jack

Sometimes, my talents scares me

7. Stick it into the oven until golden brown on top, or when a knife stuck in the center comes out w/o egg on it

FUCK YEA

I know, right?

Filed under Breakfast, Recipe Tagged with , , , ,

Oddly enough

05/05/2010 Leave a comment

Watch me and read


There is something I haven’t shown you yet.

Given the opportunity, especially at the wee hours of the morning whilst sleep escapes me, there is something I haven’t shared.

A good person I am not. Simply spoken I am at best a pretender in the most pretentious skin – for that I am thankful. Everything I do, I do for me alone.

This, many would consider, is freedom.

Separate at best I see this as bondage. Freedom lies in the idea that we are different – yet I have no such illusions. I see my truths for the spit in a gods eye they truly are. What I am and/or could be is counter posed by the reality of a simplified existence. And this existence? Merely an illusion granted by delusion, something crafted as you sat in your parent’s ‘guest room’ quantifying reality in simple measures and scoops.

It seems easy, I know it must, but understand the small falsehoods we are lead to ingest, and glimpse a truth so often overlooked.

There are simpler realities, those we make our own, and these are things to which I myself stick – something ideal, a cute utopia in the face of so much adversity – perhaps, when all’s been said and done, we might have more of worth, something easily identifiable.


As I see it, this is false. This is to deny what we are and what we seek – doubt not what we have, but rather what we mean…

…in everything I am, with everything I was, I see doubt and destruction. Look closer and smell the chaos in those eggs/that chili/these potatoes…a line of questioning well founded. If there is an end, who am I to define it? Seems to me this simpler path walked makes sense, but i know your questions, for at the same moment they enter thought they are once again self same. Please, don’t doubt this small thing – when turtle eggs hatch on the shore, it isn’t the mother that finds them weak and willing.

Filed under Poetry Tagged with ,

Burrata, Berries, Badassery

05/04/2010 1 Comment

For the first time in a long time I found myself with a weekend all to myself. Roommates were either out of town or busy, and I actually didn’t have to work. Given my skimpy budget, I had to make do with minimal groceries – but I did have enough to treat myself to some severely sick ovo-lacto vegetarian decadence. Some of you may be unaware of this, but I generally don’t like sweet desserts. This, however, is something I can get behind.

On Friday I’d visited Andrew’s Cheese shop (review coming Friday, after a follow up visit) and picked up, among other items, a pound of fresh Burrata.

For those of you who don’t know:

Burrata cheese is more a variety of mozzarella than anything else – its a thin Mozzarella sack filled with cream and bits of, you guessed it, more mozzarella. It is quite hard to find, so should you be so lucky, run home with some crusty bread and some balsamic vinegar, for you are in for a treat.

So i’d already been eating my burrata on italian loaf with a balsamic glaze when it occurred to me to try this out. Very simple, and very delicious.

The Pieces

1/2 cup each of blueberries, raspberries, and sliced strawberries

1/2 pound Burrata cheese

High quality clover honey

The Puzzle

I’m not even putting steps here, its that simple -

Cheese, honey, berries, mix. Love me sexy.

For some intense variety I can also recommend a balsamic reduction be drizzled over the top, but thats really up to you

o fuck yea. iPhone camera FTW.

Filed under Breakfast, Dessert Tagged with , , ,

LA Vegan

05/03/2010 4 Comments

Shot stolen from Yelp of the front

I’ve been eating here for a considerable amount of time, and after today’s meal, I absolutely had to share my thoughts with teh interwebs.

To begin, its a small unassuming dime a dozen vegan thai restaurant. Next to a pet shop, its easy

The famous orange chicken, image also stolen from Yelp.

to miss – but once you’ve eaten here you’ll see why its become an obsession. There are a number of dishes I’d consider worth trying, but the most famous is the orange chicken.

Pictured on the right, the batter is just phenomenal. I shit you not – first time I tried this, I freaked out thinking I’d accidentally eaten regular chicken. Typical soy chicken texture is shite – and the same is true here, except in the orange chicken. It has to be the way they fry it, but its quite deceptive.

The lunch special comes with a salad, brown rice (FUCK YEA) and these awesome little dough pockets of potato and honey.

Other recommended items include the Green Curry, their corn pancake appetizer, dumplings, and, most recently, their PHO!

You heard (or…err…read. Since I’m not actually speaking to you…) me right – PHO!

I’d all but given up hope since going vegetarian that I’d ever taste the wonder of Pho, since it is, by nature, a dish consisting of meat broth and meat chunks. I didn’t truly believe it could be made vegetarian and still be considered Pho, but they fucking did it. And goddamn well.

Admittedly its a simple dish – a spicy broth with Soy Chicken, rice noodles and onion. You get your side dish of sprouts, chile’s, thai basil and lime, and some assorted sauces, usually Hoisin and Sriracha – all told, a mythical experience. Whether your hungover or just sick, this is the magic juice to burn out what ails you.

You can see just how good it is since I couldn’t wait to take the pic til I was nearly through the meal!

The staffs nice, the locations convenient, delivery is free, the food is good.

Pay attention to the daily specials – its quite evident they care about their food here.

Info:

Website

Yelp

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