Steamed dumplings filled with shrimp and scallops. $3.20
Grand Palace Restaurant, South San Francisco
I think these are called phoenix dumplings because it’s supposed to look like a phoenix’s eye when you look down at the dumpling from above. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I get it. I’m not sure that the stringy starchy stuff is that they put on top. Maybe some kind of then noodles? These were delicious though with large chunks of shrimp and scallops inside!
Wok sauteed clams with chopped onions, red and green bell peppers in a black been sauce. $5.85
Grand Palace Restaurant, South San Francisco
These weren’t all that good. I think they were overcooked or something. The clams were tough and chewy and the whole dish didn’t taste particularly special. It looks like a lot of food, but the clams they use have really thick shells which makes up most of the volume. Don’t think I’ll be ordering these again.
Project 365: Day 1
And so begins my attempt at daily self-discipline (or lunacy?)! My co-worker Alan mentioned Project 365 yesterday and I was intrigued. Project 365 requires you to take a photo every day for an entire year and post it online. Now that’s a challenge and there are many people who’ve apparently taken it on! My hat is now in the ring!
Starting today, I’m going to post a food pic of something that I’ve eaten the same day! I promise not to cheat and post something I’ve eaten on a previous day, and if I forget to post something I’ll considered this experiment a FAILURE!
I’m also going to write these Project 365 entries in style more of a daily journal – something more personal than my usual food posts. I’ll try to mention anything interesting (or boring or lame) going on in my day-to-day life. (I foresee a LOT of boring days, hehe!)
Tadich Grill, San Francisco
Pan fried sand dab filets served with steak fries and bok choy (vegetable of the day). $23.75
I’m kind of an obsessive person, so when random things like this (Project 365) come along, I’m not afraid to run with it. Some people think I’m crazy, but they still love me. I’ll probably get super anal and distracted by this and annoy everyone around me. Some people already think that I’m weird when I snap a pic of everything I eat, but I’m not bothered. I love food! And there are worse things to obsess about.
I’m actually home sick today, so that’s why I have enough time to take care of all my personal computer stuff. Sickness, however, can’t stop me from searching for food! After getting back home from this lunch, I was SO tired and feverish that I slept all afternoon and woke up feeling worse. I really don’t want to get the flu so I hope this is one of those short-lived colds.
I’ve never had sand dabs, but these were delicious. I didn’t even know that sand dabs were a flatfish. The name makes me think of a mollusk. These were simply prepared, just breaded and pan fried. There was a lot of butter underneath though, which I couldn’t have minded but I’m really trying to eat healthier before my Caribbean cruise this spring. I only ate one of the steak fries, but the bok choy was really good. They were a little over-cooked but I didn’t mind since that made them easier to chew. My jaw and mouth a tender from feeling under the weather.
Ramekin overflowing with homemade tartar sauce.
Speaking of that Caribbean cruise, it’s going to be challenging to keep this Project going during that trip but they MUST have internet on the ship, right?! Otherwise, this will be a short project. David and I have challenged ourselves to eat better and hit the gym more in preparation for the cruise. I think it’s good motivation to get in better shape. (Ok, I’m safe. I got distracted and check the Celebrity Cruise website to make sure that their ships have internet access – yes!)
Bread and butter.
As proof of my obsessive behavior, I’m sure you’ll notice that I have posts tagged for the 7×7 Big Eat SF 2011 list. I’ve actually had more food items checked off but I have a long backlog of posts and I’ve lost (or had stolen) 3 iPhones so some of my pics are gone (so sad!). It’s ok I guess because it’s now impossible to complete the list entirely. Some of the restaurant are now closed and others no longer serve the dishes on the list.
Iced tea. I love the San Francisco cable car stir stick! $2.95
Wow, I hope that these Project 365 entries don’t all take this much time, lol! There’s just a lot to say right now, but I’m sure I’ll run out of things after a few days.
7×7 Magazine’s The Big Eat San Francisco: 100 Things to Eat + Drink Before You Die – 2010, 2011, 2012
I think I’m undecided whether I truly like hand rolls or not. It’s just a lot of seawead to deal with and these were chewy and hard to chew through, making it hard to neatly eat the rolls. They do stuff quite a lot of filling in these hand rolls and you don’t have to use chopsticks, which is great for incompetent users like myself. The spicy tako temaki was my favorite!
Tenka Japanese Restaurant, San Mateo CA
Road runner – tuna, salmon, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour
Spicy tako – octopus with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour
Cajun – fried oyster, avocado and cucumber with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour
New York – shrimp, fish eggs, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour
This place is awesome for happy hour! The prices are great and the sushi doesn’t suck. You always have to be a little weary of super cheap sushi, but this place serves above decent sushi at rock bottom prices. That’s awesome in my book! You can get a nice large meal for only a few bucks. Of the sushi below, the scallop nigiri was my favorite!
Tenka Japanese Restaurant, San Mateo
Hotatagai nigiri (scallop). $1.25 happy hour
Unagi nigiri (fresh water eel). $1.25 happy hour
Hamachi nigiri (yellow tail). $1.25 happy hour
With uni butter and baby beets. $15
Nombe, San Francisco
Omg, this was such a rich dish! And perhaps, not in a good way. The uni butter, while delicious, was SO heavy. There’s not a lot of it on the plate, but it completely overpowered everything else. To be fair the beets were delicious and the scallops were cooked well.
This dinner was very disappointing. The service was horrendous and the timing between dishes was atrocious! The food was just ok overall and not really worth the price. I don’t think I’ll go back.
It was very dark in the restaurant and halfway through, they decided to turn the lights even lower. Therefore, I wasn’t able to photograph everything but here are the remaining pics I was able to snap before it the darkness made it impossible to take more.
Grilled Kurobuta pork belly, mizuna, jicama, yuzo kosho dressing. $10
This was the best dish of the night (although it’s very hard to see, lol). The meat was tender, flavorful and perfectly cooked. I also loved the mizuna salad on the side!
Persimmon cosmo shochu cocktail. $5 happy hour
This was ok. I’m glad it was discounted for happy hour otherwise I would have been more disappointed.
Nipponito – mint, lime, rice shochu. $8
Very sour!
8 pieces snow crab, avocado roll topped with tuna, salmon, ebi, hamachi, tai and avocado. $11.95
Kama Sushi, San Francisco
The rainbow roll is perfect for the indecisive person like me because you essentially get an assortment of sashimi on top of a California roll. Yay! The fish quality at Kama was great and the services was very friendly and attentive. Went there for happy hour and will definitely return!
Complimentary edamame.
6 pieces yellowtail and cucumber roll with toasted sesame. $4.50 happy hour
Kama Sushi, San Francisco
Wow, I loved these delicious bites! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spicy hamachi roll on a sushi menu, and while these weren’t at all spicy, they were very tasty. And you can’t beat the happy hour price! I enjoyed that the hamachi wasn’t chopped to a pulp – they still had a great solid texture. Noms!
Rainbow roll and spicy hamachi roll.
Happy Sushi Ro Ba Ta, Palm Springs
FAIL!!! This has possibly been my worst dining experience to date, no joke! We arrived a little after 5 on a Saturday and there were 3 tables taken outside and a few people at the sushi bar. Regardless, after getting our drinks and the extremely sad Dynamite Bites, it still took 45 minutes to finally get our sushi! Way too long!
Some food highlights:
The Dynamite Bites ($5) are billed as crabmeat baked with dynamite sauce. Sounds delicious, right? Wrong! In actuality, this abomination is a pile of imitation crabmeat on a scrap of aluminum foil with an indistinguishable sauce on top. They do provide some lemon wedges with it, no doubt to kill any lingering bacteria on this laughable heap!
The spicy tuna roll ($6 happy hour) is huge! Awesome, right? Wrong! No one wants to eat more of a crappy roll. There was enough rice on this thing to feed a small Japanese prefecture! And the tuna wasn’t spicy at all, but it was mutilated to the consistency of Whiskas cat food.
And how about some avian bird flu with your sushi?!!! The outside tables are conveniently situated under an eave where a menagerie of feathery locals hang out to take their dumps. Once we heard the rain of bird poop showering the hibiscus plant beside our table, and saw well-aimed poo bombs land on our table and splatter onto our food and my arm, we called it quits!
And no, our food was NOT comped! I wanna barf just recalling that catastrophic experience.
Note: Although they overtly display a happy hour checklist menu at the front, they sneakily hand you a normal checklist when you’re seated. So be sure to request a happy hour list.
Or save yourself some time and bird flu vaccination costs and don’t go there at all!
Other forgettable dishes:
Samurai Rock sake cocktail. $5
Albacore nigiri. Surprise, it comes seared! No doubt to kill anything on the outside of this not-so-fresh cut of fishy fish. $3.95 happy hour
Mackerel nigiri. I’ll admit that this wasn’t bad. $3.75 happy hour
Eel and avocado roll. Tasted ok until it was splattered with bird poo! $8 happy hour
Edamame. $3
Asahi beer. $4.50
Steamed and served with drawn butter and lemon wedge, seasonal vegetables, rice pilaf and homemade sweet cabbage. $21.95
The Lobster House, Palm Springs
I think that you can probably already see in this pic that the lobster is WAY overcooked. Why, why, why!? This was another sad plate at The Lobster House. I just checked on Yelp and this place only has 2 stars. I should have checked before we dined here! The sides were throw-away items that did nothing to save the butchered lobster tail.
The (cajun) shrimp is served with seasonal vegetables, rice pilaf and sweet cabbage. $19.95
The Lobster House, Palm Springs
Omg! These shrimp were SO overcooked! This plate made me more than a little sad. Everything on it was poorly cooked and/or drenched in butter to try and cover up the bad quality of the ingredients. I couldn’t taste much of the cajun flavor on the shrimp since the overcooked taste overpowered everything. Sadly, this was a meal I can’t take back. 😦
Deep fried fish fillet and bread calamari. Served with french fries, cocktail sauce, tartar sauce, and a lemon wedge. $14.50
The Ramp, San Francisco
This may look like a great plate of food, but it was the greasiest pile of crap I’ve ever had. The oil they used to fry this in had to have been super cold because the fish fillet (especially) and everything else was saturated and dripping with grease. I tried dabbing (then pressing and pummeling) napkins on it to try to soak up the grease, but all the napkins on the table were quickly used up and I was left with a sad, flaccid still-greasy pile of food in front of me. They could’ve served me a cold sponge saturated in grease, and I wouldn’t know the difference. Sad…
Vittle Monster 