mmm-yoso!!!

Observing Lent, Part One-Paczki Day

mmm-yoso is not on vacation.  Cathy is blogging about some silly stuff.  Kirk is not .

Hello Again.  This post is late, as my Friends in Detroit are keenly aware.  I was kind of busy and didn't get a chance to even start the post until it was too late.

This isn't a religious post, per se.  It is an introduction to an explanation of why you are seeing  $1 Filet o' Fish sandwichs at McDonald's, $1 fish tacos at Rubio's, a fish sandwich at Arby's, as well as at KFC and full page ads for seafood at Ralphs.  I have had a few friends remark to me about McDonald's having its Fillet-o Fish Fridays and how that 'seems to happen every so often'.

Lent is a Christian Observance.  It starts on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. That was on February 20 this year. As you know, if you have been reading the blog, I was born and raised in Detroit and was also raised Catholic.  I am not a Practicing Catholic now, but I do observe some of our rituals for a "just in case" scenario.  Christians perform some type of sacrifice for the 40 days of Lent. Usually the sacrifice involves giving up a favorite food, but I also have some friends who will give up watching television, or the Internet...something that involves a sacrifice.  The idea is that Christ died for our sins and He sacrificed and we should too.  Christians Believe that on Easter, Christ rose from the dead and basically the sacrificing stops then and we all go back to whatever we did without for the previous 40 days.

ANYHOW, you all know about Mardi Gras...debauchery and partying  in the Big Easy and all of that.  That's  a giant party ends on the day before Lent.  Its a major deal party in New Orleans...so, similarly...if you skew the definition of 'similar'... mostly in the South East/Detroit area of Michigan, there is Paczki Day (its pronounced poonch-key, sort of, there is a thingy under the letter "c"; oh, never mind).  One Paczek is a jelly donut, the plural is Paczki.   Fried donuts filled with jelly or jam and either glazed or covered in powdered sugar. I buy jelly donuts at Mary's Donuts, in Santee.

Detroiters, and others who are not as wild and crazy as revelers in New Orleans at Mardi Gras go all out and eat up as many Paczki as they can (whoo hoo!), because once Lent happens, there are no jelly donuts to be had in any bakeries, only lowly Hot Cross Buns.

Which are not bad, but are definitely not fried (they are baked), or filled with jelly (they do have some dried fruit or raisins in them) and are part of that "sacrificing" Christians (and Detroiters) do for the 40 days.

So, that's it.  You go crazy eating  jelly donuts, or partying, and then Lent begins and you begin sacrificing with lowly baked instead of fried sweets.

As a side note, this year was the first year that all the Starbucks in the Greater Detroit area had Paczek available in their stores.  Everyone really gets into Paczki just before Lent.  The day when the most are sold is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, though.  Dozens and dozens are bought and consumed at work, grocery stores give them out...its an interesting phenomenon.

Future Lent posts will explain, via short blogging, about 'not eating meat' as defined by Catholics (hint- fish/seafood does not count as 'meat').

Mary's Donuts 9031 Mission Gorge Road Santee 92071 (SE corner of Mission Gorge and 125) Open 24/7

Chon Ju Jip - Not for the faint of hearts!

"Hi! This is Vicky posting about her latest meal. She is extremely honored to be invited by Kirk to  blog on mmm-Yoso!"

H and I stopped in Chon Ju Jip on Convoy last night to finally try out this restaurant. It's owned by a lady named Yong Rivers, and we first met her when we ate at Golden Crown in Mira Mesa. She's this funny happy Korean lady that would always call H a camel because of all the water he'd drink while eating spicy Korean food and would proceed to give him a pitcher of water so he could pour his own water.  A couple weeks ago, we finally saw Yong at Golden Crown again and told her we missed her when we found out that she had left Golden Crown and was now venturing out and opening her own restaurant on Convoy. We promised her we'd visit and try it out and after some hugs, we went out seperate ways. While Golden Crown (for a later post) is a wonderful Korean restaurant for Korean food with a Chinese influence, Chon Ju Jip was strictly Korean food by itself. It was as Korean as it could get.

It's located in the same strip mall as Convoy Tofu House and Thai House. When we got there, there was a slight wait since all the tables were taken. I took that opportunity to survey everyone's dishes and the panchan. It looked pretty promising. We got seated and opened up the menu... Unfortunately half of the menu was in Korean with no translation so we had Yong briefly go over it. I ended up ordering the "Oh Jing Uh Bok Kum" and H ordered the "Kimchi Chige." Service was prompt and polite, cups of iced barley tea was brought out along with the assortment of panchan.   
They had a large assortment in these pretty little dishes. The napa kimchi was perfectly tangy - just sour enough to make my mouth water. My favorite was mushroom stirfry panchan (in the far left corner... or the one of two dishes that wasn't bright red!) The mushroom medley of oysters and shiitakes were well cooked and flavorful; full of woodsy earth tones. The rest of the panchan was very well done, I didn't care as much for the plain daikon half circles floating in the middle. Eater beware though, they are colored red for a reason. Like H said, this place isn't for the faint of hearts. The spicy panchan here really awakes the tastebuds.
After grazing through our first round of panchan, my dish arrived. It's a dish of squid/calamari stirfryed with some veggies and a few rice cakes in this spicy red sauce. Unfortunately, the picture didn't turn out as I just found out right now... Bummer! My hands shook as I took it and it's just a big red blob. The dish was flavored with ginger overtones along with the heat from the chili peppers. The calamari was tender and perfectly al dente - I've had many calamari dishes where the chefs cooked it too long and it was like eating a piece of rubber. The calamari here was perfect! The service here was excellent, the servers brough refills of panchan without even having to be asked. After a refill of mushrooms and the little sardine fish panchan, H's's Kimchi Chige arrived. It is a basic stable of pork and kimchi all stewed together with some vegetables.
It came while still boiling in this red hot bubbling broth flavorful goodness! The soup was tangy from the kimchi and the pork added some texture. It was topped with a bunch of enoki mushrooms that slowly cooked in. It was warm and satisfying, perfect for a cold night. The only downside is that the heat from the dishes was on the extreme side. H and I usually eat pretty spicy dishes, I'll much my way through a couple jalepenos while I eat my dumplings and the dishes tonight were a pretty close second in terms of spicyness. True to form, Yong gave H his personal pitcher of barley tea. After he finished off the restaurant pitcher sized, she brought him a mini pitcher. So cute!

From the looks how how packed the place was, I think Yong's doing well. The food was excellent, the service was great. We were the only non-Korean in there that night, so I'm guessing the restaurant caters to mostly the Korean crowd. I have pictures of the menu that I took so I could get my friend A to tell me the English translations. I'll post that up as soon as I get them so in the future, those who aren't proficient wouldn't do what I had to do; "can I have whatever she's having over there? where's that on the menu?"

Chun Ju Jip
4373 Convoy Street
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 368-0835

Another not great meal-Japanese in East County-Tokyo

mmm-yoso is not on vacation.  Cathy is blogging while Kirk is resting...or digesting...whatever.

Fortunately, Tokyo has closed.

Hi, I am back yet again, blogging about the good, the bad and the ugly. ..and yes, again, The Mister and I have had a lousy meal.  But, lets be positive and start with the good.  The hot tea is free. They have chopsticks on the table and don't ask you if you want a fork, even if you are Caucasian. Oh, and they have specials poster on the wall when you walk in, so you save $1 on some of the food.

There, that's over with. We used to come here a lot. Its in the same parking lot as the ATM of my Credit Union, and for being in San Diego's East County, well, its kind of 'exotic'. Its Japanese...sort of.  Maybe we could call it 'working man's Japanese', if we were being polite.

I have apparently become a Japanese food snob...and I swear I used to really *like* this place.

Here are photos of the menu, if you think you might want to venture in .

We decided to try the Vegetable tempura appetizer ($3.95). Seemed like a good,safe choice, and not expensive. Wrong. Look.  You can click and enlarge the photo.  I just stopped using flash...I somehow knew this would be yet another not great meal. More of a pancake batter, not too light...but a good variety of vegetables: sweet potato, mushrooms, carrot, broccoli. Not great, not overly greasy...the batter was kind of heavy tasting/thick.  It was cooked all the way through.

Then The Mister said we should try the Sushi Trio- a set of 18 rolls -9 for each of us ($7.95) three each of spicy tuna (no tuna flavor), cucumber (generic) and California rolls (made with the fake krab stuff). Pretty much a waste of calories.  I am glad they gave us a big ole pile of freshly re-hydrated wasabi, anyhow...and, the rice was good.

We got one of each of the specials listed on the front board.
The Teriyaki chicken box with a piece of fried fish and the hibachi chicken bento box with egg roll. ($6.25 each, usually $7.25)...um...well, the chicken was...dark meat, boneless...that was good. The teriyaki was not sweet, not salty. It was...um... dark in color. The sides of rice, salad, pickled veggies were OK. The fried fish was mackerel, which I liked primarily because it was fried and crispy. The fish itself was ..um...not a great grade of mackerel and would not have been good as sushi in any way, shape or form. I ate the fried tail.  I eat fried shrimp tails, too.

The hibachi grilled chicken was in a sort of maybe ginger garlic sauce...and, you know, just not good. The egg rolls however were more lumpia-ish and *quite* good, filled with chopped pork and crispy cabbage and veggies.

Oh, the food was not at all what I would call great...I do remember we got a curry here and liked it, last year or maybe the year before...and the soups and noodles used to be good. But basic chicken and rolls...they don't seem to be able to do very well. I don't know why they are still open. If you are in this area, just hop on the freeway and go up 125 and it'll turn into 52 to get to Convoy Street.

Tokyo Japanese 755 Arnele Avenue El Cajon 92021 M-F 11 a.m.-8p.m., Sat/Sun 4:30-8:00

The Buta Kakuni Experiment

*** I've had a few emails and several comments below asking about the origins of Buta Kakuni...best that I can tell is that Buta Kakuni is based on a Chinese Dish that the Japanese call Tonporo. Which to me means it's probably Dong Po Rou(Dong Po Pork), if you follow the link, you'll see that it looks very similar. Dong Po Rou is named after the poet Su Dong Po, you can see a translation of one of His poems here.

The other day, I was paging through a cookbook I had lying around titled The Japanese Kitchen, authored by Hiroko Shimbo. The recipe I just happened upon (lucky me!!!) was for Buta Kakuni, the Braised Pork dish that originated in Nagasaki Prefecture. Apparently, Buta Kakuni is based on a Chinese Pork dish, and Nagasaki was a busy port city where ships from all over the world docked. So somewhere between the sixteenth and eighteenth century Buta Kakuni arrived(lucky us!!!)........

There are two Buta Kakuni recipes that I have used in the past. In the first recipe, the pork belly is first fried, than simmered for several hours. In the second recipe, the pork belly is first boiled in Okara(tofu lees) for several hours before a short braise in a sake-soy sauce-mirin-sugar liquid. What caught my attention was that Hiroko Shimbo's recipe first steamed the pork belly, before cooking in the flavoring liquid. And what was even more interesting was that the pork belly was first covered with grated daikon! According to the book, Daikon contains two digestive enzymes, protease and diastase which help to remove excess fat and tenderize the pork belly.

What you see above is the result. I used the steaming technique in the book, but the flavoring is the one I've used before from other recipes. I've had some recipes from Hiroko Shimbo's book not turn out really well. Since this was an experiment, I only used a 12oz portion of pork belly, which waaay more than enough for us! Buta Kakuni is pretty rich anyway, and I can only eat maybe 3 pieces....before the extreme remorse starts.

The Buta Kakuni Experiment

2 1/2- 3 Cups Grated Daikon(liquid and all)
1 - 1 1/2 Lb Slab of Pork Belly
1/2 Tb (or more) Grated Ginger
1 1/2 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Sake
1/3 Cup Soy Sauce
1/3 Cup Sugar
4 Tb Mirin

1 - Set steamer over a pot of rapidly boiling water
2 - In a heatproof dish(make sure that it will fit the steamer) place 1/3 of the grated daikon and liquid over the bottom of the dish. Place the pork belly on top of grated daikon. Cover the pork with the remainder of grated daikon.
3 - Transfer dish to steamer and steam for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. I use a bamboo skewer after about 90 minutes to see how tender the pork belly is. Remember to keep replenishing the steaming liquid as necessary.

4 - Once the pork can be easily pierced with a bamboo skewer, remove the dish (carefully) from the steamer. Place the pork belly in a bowl of lukewarm water and gently rinse the pork.

5 - Dry the pork with paper towels, and cut it into 2 inch cubes.
6 - In a pot large enough to hold the pork in a single payer mix together the rest of the ingredients. Place pork in pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer.
7 - Simmer for 30 minutes, and check flavoring and texture. Make adjustments and simmer for at least 30 more minutes.
* On this day I added slices of daikon and boiled eggs before the last 30 minutes of simmering. Oh, and don't forget the Hot Mustard!

The Pork Belly was very tender, and the remaining fat was smooth and velvety. The Missus thought it a bit too sweet, but I could have done with something cooked a bit longer, but I think the pork would have started falling apart. Of course, I've heard of places simmering their Buta Kakuni for 12 hours or more, but I don't think I'll be doing that in the near future.

Lest you think I was living on pork belly alone.....

I made the Missus some Karei Karaage:

And some Chicken Karaage:

And to cut the fatty flavors, some Pickled Onions with Ogo:

And followed it all with a double shot of Lipitor(I'm kidding, of course)! I did have a bit  of one of my new favorite sakes, Yaegaki "Mu"...why they would name a sake "emptyness" is beyond me. This sake has a bit of a sweeter profile(not as sweet as Kurosawa), though I think it goes really well with food.

I did wish I still had another bottle of this on hand though!

Chopstix Too!

"Hi! This is Vicky posting about her latest meal. She is extremely honored to be invited by Kirk to  blog on mmm-Yoso!"

I'll do a quick short post since Kirk's done a more in depth post on Chopstix Too already. My friends and I have always loved the ramen and crunchy roll at Chopstix. Ever since our days of being poor college freshmen at UCSD, we'd make our weekly trek out there to get the ever so elusive crunchy roll. In fact, my best friend J who moved back up north after we graduated, made a trip to visit me just for a meal at Chopstix. Most weeks, you'd find a bunch of us grubbing here after the gym. I love their combos that are still on "Grand Opening Special." We stopped in earlier this week after running a couple miles at the gym.
I love the Crunch Roll/Salad/Edamame combo. I get to minimize my carbs and still get a really filling meal. H tried out their California/Crunch Rolls. In the past when we came with our friends A and H, they've ordered the Tonkotsu Ramen which is a bowl of ramen with the milky pork bone soup. That was also really good. The soup had depth and a lot of flavor.

Chopstix is out go to place for a bowl of ramen and Chopstix Too is where to go when you can't decide what you want! Where else can you get chicken katsu AND crunchy roll for under $6!

Burgers, continued-Islands, a ch-ch-chain, and it was good!

mmm-yoso is not on vacation.  Cathy decided to write something today, and Kirk didn't want to. Stay, read, enjoy!

So, I am always carrying the camera around with me and pretty much eat something every day, and sometimes it tastes good (that last part was not sarcasm, based on my last few posts). The Mister and I sometimes go to Islands, usually with a gift certificate.  So, here we are. Islands.

Burgers. Lots of choices.  I got the Big Wave, the basic one ($6.39). 1/2 lb of beef, cooked medium rare (I asked; the menu says medium only..be polite and they may take the burger off the grill before it hits medium in heat).  Comes with lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion and mustard... on a white or wheat bun.  Juicy, flavorful, excellent.  The bun was lightly toasted and fresh.

A side of fries? Sure.

Wow.  Enough to be able to take home and fry for breakfast the next morning...fresh potatoes, medium cut, with skin, very fresh, crispy, nice.  ($2.95)

The Mister got a Kaanapali Kobb salad ($9.39)(that whole New Years Resolution thing ).

Lots of lettuce, some cabbage, some chopped scallions, grilled chicken breast, chopped tomatoes, chopped bacon, chopped hard cooked egg, avocado, blue cheese chunks and tossed in a blue cheese dressing. Quite a lot also.

Good portion sizes. Fresh made for you.

As we were leaving, The Mister went to grab  "Take Out and Fax menu" and there were a few interesting items on it...the primary one category that caught my eye was the "High Protein Platters"..this was not on the menu in our booth.  2  hamburger patties with American cheese and bacon, served with sliced avocado, tomatoes and wedge salad with blue cheese dressing... for $10.25; also 2 chicken breasts with melted swiss and sauteed mushrooms and the same salad with avocados and tomatoes and the same with a 1/2 rotisserie chicken...all are $10.25.  Interesting.  Must pay more attention.

Surprisingly good food here.  I am now sort of happy to eat again, yet cautiously optimistic. Website. Islands, numerous locations in California, Arizona and one each in Colorado and Nevada.

Road Trip: Giang Nan - Monterey Park(LA)

**** Giang Nan has closed

*** A short update can be found here.

Since we had managed to make it to Monterey Park during the eve of Chinese New Year, we decided to forgo the food stands at the Floral Street Fair, and take our chances at Giang Nan.

I say take our chances, mainly because we've never been able to get a table at Giang Nan, on every attempted visit there has been a wait list. Giang Nan resides in one of the hundreds of strip malls in the area, this time on Garfield Avenue. The restaurant is tucked away from the road at the rear of the parking lot perpendicular to the street. The restaurant itself is clean and well lit, though not very large. You've got to watch your step...not only are the tables close together, there are several inconspicuous steps that can cause you to stumble if you're not aware.

Looking over the menu, we started with the Roast Duck in Supreme Sauce($4.95):

The photo makes the dish look larger than it was. This was a single, chopped duck leg, roasted with a marinade that tasted much like a "red-cooked" Roast Duck, with that ubiquitous sweet-soy sauce flavor. I did enjoy the sticky salty sweetness.

Because we wanted a very light lunch we ordered the House Special Pork Knuckle(Pork Pump - $12.95) he-he-he:

In this case, the football sized pork shank that arrived was much, much larger than the photo suggests. From what I understand this pork shank(it is called "House Special De-Greased and Braised Pork Knuckle"  on the menu) is first fried, than braised in a sauce of rock sugar and soy sauce. This shank was enough to feed six people! The meat was a bit on the tough side, though the fat was a heavenly melt in your mouth creamy, and the skin tasted great as well. We only had three slices before cholesterol remorse got the better of us.

While eating this, the Missus and I got into a interesting conversation:

"You know, you don't have an identity when it comes to New Year....."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you really don't celebrate the Western New Year, and even though you're Japanese, you mainly cook for me to celebrate the Japanese New Year, you go to the Tet Festival, and you have more fun celebrating Chinese New Year...you're obviously confused."
"Well....maybe I'm a man of all countries! Yeah, that's right, I'm a worldly person!"
"Yeah right....if you keep eating all that pork fat, you'll be worldly alright. Waaaay bigger at the equator than at the poles......"

You realize that we couldn't leave without some Xiao Long Bao, right? Here's the Pork and Crab Xiao Long Bao($4.95):

The wrappers were a bit thicker than those at Mei Long Village, and were very delicate in flavor. Unfortunately, a few of the XLB had lost their soup. I liked the ratio of soup to meat, though.

The Pork Xiao Long Bao($4.25):

These had an excellent ratio meat to soup, though I like the wrappers at Meilong Village better. Both the meat and the soup were perfect, and wonderful slightly sweet, rich, umami flavor. My favorite XLB so far. Well..... maybe now I'm not quite sure....perhaps I can talk Ed from Yuma into a XLB "crawl" this summer? Anyone game????

The prices at Giang Nan are very reasonable, the Pork XLB were only $4.25. We'll be back to try some other dishes like the Winded Chicken, The Lion's Head, Smoked Fish, and others.......

Giang Nan
306 N Garfield Avenue
Monterey Park, CA 91755

Topping out for Good Eats ~ Tip Top Meats!

"Hi! This is Vicky posting about her latest meal. She is extremely honored to be invited by Kirk to  blog on mmm-Yoso!"

So apparently I get super excited about my food, and totally forget about taking the pictures until after I'm done... Oh well, I'll have to wait until my next trip before taking pictures of the great munchies I had for........

So we celebrated Asian New Years and I did my best to feed the poor college student that was crashing with me for the weekend. He unfortunately didn't bring anything fancier than a t shirt so my steak loving cousin couldn't take advantage of my generosity since we couldn't go to Donavan's. And besides, where else can I feed a starving college student amazingly good quality steak at less than 10 bucks a plate?! I can't even say that about TGIFridays where you get a mediocre steak for around 20! So on my way up to dropping him off in Orange County, we swung by a North County secret. It's where I drop in when I want a good hunk of steak (before Kirk posted about Siesel's), and it's where I managed to feed my mini army of guy friends who helped me move... I have a ton of stuff, so I had to bribe them with a "steak dinner." *drumroll!* Tip Top Meats!! It's a meat market/restaurant/european specialty deli or market all rolled into one. Here's a picture of the outside, where they write all their specials for their restaurants on the whiteboard:

Wowsers! They even have their daily availability of wild game and goodies to satisfy the pickiest inner carnivore. If you look on the bottom right of the corner to see their "Big John" breakfast, its the craziest entree on their breakfast meal. Their menu describes it as: "Three eggs any style, home fried potatoes, toast, and ALL* of our own delicious smokehouse bacon, pork link sausage, or polish sausage, bratwurst, or ham you can eat." *~Sorry, ALL not valid on TOGO orders (two choices of meats). All that for $5.98! S got that one time when we went shopping at the outlets down the street. They weren't kidding about the all you can eat! It seriously was all you can eat meats!

Tip Top apparently is a wholesale meat market that some of the high end local restaurants use. They have their deli on the end of the market and apparently their mentality is to cut out the middleman/distributor so their meals stay unbelievably reasonable! AND they give you an amazing portion! AND it's amazingly tasty!

But before we get to the prime rib part, more pictures of the place:
A freezer full of random things... (yes if you look at the enlargement, they have "maui ribs..." I haven't quite figured out what Maui Ribs are though... )The scary part of the store is that they have everything fresh in the meat cases AND frozen so it will keep when it travels! How convenient!

Here's a look at the crazy meat case full of meat. They had nearly every imaginable cut and part of meat. The best part was that the prices were kept very reasonable. At the same time, the staff was very knowledgeable. They had everything from veal cutlets to bacon wrapped filets. The sausages are made in house and the bacon is also smoked in house! Unfortunately when we got there around 7, they had already started covering up and cleaning up so that was the only section of the meat case that wasn't covered up or stored away. In addition to being the ultimate meat market, Tip Top also makes a plethora of European pastries.... including.... STRUDEL! Here's a picture of their gargantuan strudel: avaliable in 4 flavors, which they bake in house. They also make a wide variety of German cakes and goodies.

Each strudel was about 7 inches wide and nearly 2 feet long!!! They also carry the strudel cut into manageable serving sizes in the eatery portion. Each strudel will set you back nearly 6 dollars. Goodness... Here are a couple more shots of the marketplace. 

When you have German sausages, you gotta have the German lagers and beers!

This picture is for Frankie and Sammy...  At first, I just took a picture of the bones in the case but realized how there was no way to really see the size of these suckers so I shall present you my very unflattering wrist and thumb! (And yes, there is probably a herd's worth of cow femurs.) Wow... that is ONE huge bone. I'm sure it would make some amazing stock though... Although I don't know anyone who would have a stock pot big enough to cook it in.

Also available here at Tip Top is a well dressed and re ady to cook Bugs Bunny along with goat. (I recall seeing some comments a co uple days ago from a reader asking about goat availability in San Diego. I'm kinda tempted to ask Tip Top what they DON'T carry.

Along with fresh meats and frozen game, the grocery/deli/market had an amazing selection of goodies.

Here's their "condiment" section, full of every single imagineable imported ketchups/horseradish/and mustards... to go with every single imagineable sausage/wurst/link they make! I was amazed at how much stuff they carried! They even had a caviar section of imported caviars from around the world. So after much perusing and browsing and "stealth" picture taking, I joined up with the guys who were patiently standing in line by the eatery. So the eatery pretty much works like this: you stand in line, you tell her what dish you want, choose your sides - one or two sides depending on the dish, salad or soup, and generally it comes with a roll. So the reason for this visit in the first place is that from 4:30 to 8pm every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they have prime rib. It's not the meager tough prime rib they serve at the neighborhood buffet place or even the cheap Nevada buffets. I'm talking about the GOOOOOD stuff. I actually prefer the texture of their prime rib over Donavan's! Granted they don't have the white linen tableclothes and it is pretty much a "they call your number" and you get your food and go chow type of place. So we ordered two prime rib plates, which came with 2 sides, soup or salad and a dinner roll. The choices for sides are: mashed potatoes and gravy, baked potato, french fries, sauerkraut, red cabbage, or steamed veggies. I had sauerkraut and mashed potatoes where Cousin H had the veggies and mashed potatoes. We each got a different soup; tonight they had beef barley and lentil. I don't think I enjoyed the soup that much. I'm still trying to get used to thick heavy soups, being that I was brought up on miso shiro and tofu vegetable soup. So we got our soups, and sat down. (H and I were sharing a prime rib plate... hence the two orders. I can never finish an entire plate and I hate dealing with leftovers.) So after a short while, our number was called and we picked up the immense amount of food.

So maybe presentation wasn't their forte.... And apologies for the empty soup dish. Also, I had cut a good hunk out of the top piece of prime rib before H reminded me to take pictures. Yes... it was TWO slices of prime rib on each plate! MMMMMMMmmmm! The prime rib was tender and tasty, perfectly medium, swimming in a pool of au jus served with fresh horseradish. (I'm not a fan of horseradish... maybe that's why I forgot to take a picture of it.) It was straight up European home style cooking, the gravy on the mashed potatoes was divine, same with the sauerkraut. It really helped cut whatever fat/grease was in the meal. All that food for 10 dollars and change!

Most of the entrees are under 10 dollars. The prime rib roast is probably one of my favorites to get there, they also carry a lot of German style foods including sauerbraten, rouladen, holsteiner schnitzel. They also offer veal cordon bleu for under 8! If none of the entrees tickle your fancy, you can go over to the meat counter, pick out your steak and for an extra 2.98 in addition to the market price of the raw steak, they will cook it to your liking and add in sides for a complete steak dinner.

According to their pamphlet, they will order any specialty meat and will cook anything for you provided you give them a three day notice for whole pigs and steamboat rounds.

Tip Top Meats
6118 Paseo Del Norte
Carlsbad, CA
(760) 438-2620

Open Daily from 6am to 8pm

Baby Back Jack's Old Fashioned Broiler

*** Baby Back Jack's has closed

A few months back Howie, who does A Foodie's-Eye View of San Diego's Best Restaurants mentioned "Jack's Broiler" to me in an email, about a month after, Candice, who posts in Oh-So Yummy mentioned Jack's Broiler as well. So during a recent weekend, we drove on up to Hillcrest and dropped by Baby Back Jack's Old Fashioned Broiler(whew, that's a mouthful) for lunch.

If I remember correctly, this used to be a Yogurt shop. The interior of Jack's goes for a mild "retro-old fashioned" look.

And tunes like Earth Angel and Venus in Bluejeans flow throughout the restaurant.

The menu is small, but covers very familiar territory, with everything from Hot Dogs and Burgers, to Baby Back Ribs.

On this visit, the Missus went for the 1/2 of Jack's "Famous Wild Chicken"($7.95). Check out the "wild chicken"......

Basically, a roasted half chicken that is slathered with BBQ sauce and heated on the grill. The chicken comes with Coleslaw and one "side", in this case the Missus chose fries.

The Missus told me the coleslaw wasn't really that great, a bit on the sweet side for Her...but She did scarf it up. I loved the fries, which were the skin-on natural style fries, with a chili-garlic-paprika seasoning. The Missus thought the fries were a bit on the salty side...but I finished them all up. Never got a chance to use the Ranch-style dipping sauce that was provided.

The chicken was quite large, and the Missus couldn't finish it.

On the good side, the chicken was large, and the meat moist through and through. On the bad side, the interior of the chicken was still slightly cold. And though the dark meat had some flavor, the white meat was bland. The BBQ sauce didn't do it for me either, it had a bit of a neutral BBQ flavor, but had a weird aftertaste, and left a strange coating on my tongue. Overall, this was quite a bit of food.

I had the "World Famous Beef Dip"($7.95):

Just by looking at it, you know right away...this ain't no "Philippe's". First off the "roll" was on very dry side, and the meat looked kinda, well, "grey", and was dry and tough. I enjoyed the "jus", it was beefy, and not overly salty...I used up all the jus and the Horseradish sauce. I think this is a bit over-priced for $7.95.

On a side note...guess how much the soda pictured on the side is? It's $2, for one of those plastic 12oz cups. Luckily, refills are free, but if you're doing take-out, forget about the drinks. The two sodas I ordered put us over the $20 mark for lunch.

But still....I really enjoyed those fries.....

So I returned for lunch when I was in the area recently. And since you just can't order fries...I ordered my fries($1.95) with a side order of a Cheeseburger($5.50).

Thought the fries were not as heavily seasoned as on my last visit, they were still pretty good.

After ordering, I struck up a short conversation with the "cook", who asked me how I'd like my burger, and though I'd usually ask for it "medium", I just told him to make the way he thought was best.

The burger was delivered dressed with lettuce, tomato, and slices of red onions, cooked  just a tad on the "well" side, but the meat was moist, juicy, and had a nice mildly beefy flavor. At first I thought there was too much bun for the burger, but the bread had a nice pillowy texture. I wish the cheese was melted a bit better. I'd forgotten to tell him to skip the "sauce", which was a Thousand Island style dressing, but at least it wasn't slathered on, and the sauce was very mild so it didn't interfere with the flavor of the burger. Still, I usually like my burger without dressing. Not a bad burger, it's not going to set the world on fire, but it's pretty good, not as good as some, but better than many. I'd have it again.

As I usually do for "What Howie Eats" posts, I emailed Howie for His input. Here's what he said; "My fries were my favorite thing about the meal. I had the ribs, and they were decent, esp for the price." So there you go....

Baby Back Jack's Old Fashioned Broiler
1290 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92105

Eat at Joe's-if you dare!

For very good reasons,  Joe's has closed.

Hi. I seem to have just been having some awful days lately, along with some really bad meals. Here is a post about another one...

The Mister had a coupon thrust upon him at work for this place called Joe's Pizza. and the wording on the coupon is "Because life is too short to eat lousy pizza"...well that sounds like well, maybe they know they have some *really* good pizza...or they are arrogant.

Its the latter.
The coupon was for a meal of a large, one topping pizza, a rosemary chicken, a large salad and a 2 liter soda for $20. OK. Let's begin.

Well, you can't particularly mess up a salad. It was good, plentiful had chopped mushrooms in it, tomato and shredded mozzarella. It came with a good Thousand Island dressing.

The chicken. Small (that is a salad plate, not a dinner plate-see the box of salad next to the chicken?). COLD (as in, it was refrigerated cold). Tasty with rosemary, and with the salad made a nice SUMMERTIME meal. Too bad it was another night of quite cold temperatures, and was not hot with crispy skin I could munch on.

Then there was the pizza.

Looks OK, eh?  Wrong.  The one topping The Mister chose was sausage.  It did not taste like sausage; it had no flavor, but it did have texture AND it was sliced sausage pieces, not crumbled like you usually get. The cheese was *sparse* and had no flavor. Oh and the crust...what can I say? Um...well, the texture was ...chewy,cardboardy, thin, in a bad way, like the pre-made crusts you get from pizza in airports...AND it had no flavor...the sauce was without herbs and spices...not salty, not tomato-y...more empty calories...

This, combined with the COLD chicken (The Mister said he heard one worker tell another worker to make sure the chicken was hot when he was getting ready to take it for delivery) which was not supposed to be cold...oh this was so not worth it. You can try it, if you'd like, but I am pretty sure we won't go back.

Joe's Pizza 5583 Clairmont Mesa Blvd 92117 (858)268-0093
website