Here’s looking at you kid…
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Monthly Archives: March 2009
My mom’s birthday dinner at Koi Garden
My mom’s birthday is this coming Tuesday but she decided to have her celebration a bit early on Sunday. Apparently you’re not supposed to celebrate your birthday after your actual birthdate, it’s bad luck.
My parents planned this dinner at Koi Garden in Dublin, now their favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. It was quite the extravagant dinner, we were all quite stuffed and had leftovers to bring home. We had one of the private rooms in the back so my parents and friends also sang karaoke using a gadget called Magic Sing. All the songs are stored on a memory chip and all you have to carry around is the microphone and cable to hook it up to your TV. The songs are not like music videos but just a photo slideshow with the words for the songs. At the end of each song, they give you a score. It’s pretty handy… so much has changed since they came out with the huge laser discs.
My parents singing together:
So on to the meal…
Fried salmon skin, very crispy, like pork rinds (so a bit oily) but fishy… omega 3s?
Squab with cha su and seaweed salad.
A 6.5 lb Australian lobster. Apparently these don’t have claws, so all the meat is in the tail and body. The lobster is stir fried with sugar snap peas and chives, served with some broccoli. Surrounding it is also geoduck and ham.
Here’s looking at you!
A shark fin soup cooked in a winter melon, good on this cold evening.
There was chicken and pork in the soup.
Rehydrated dried abalone with fish maw (stomach) and mustard greens.
Each person got their own serving… with enough left for seconds.
Fresh crab meat served with vegetables: white mushrooms, Napa cabbage, asparagus, and Chinese broccoli.
The white mushrooms looked so clean, like they weren’t even grown in the ground… very fresh and delicious.
Drunken chicken.
Lobster meat noodles with lots of vegetables (especially packed with many types of mushrooms). They used the lobster meat from the little legs of the 6.5 lb lobster we had earlier.
For dessert, sweet bird’s nest soup served in a steamed papaya. Piping hot! but very good, good for your skin and possibly good for my cough because my throat felt much better after eating it.
My mom cutting her favorite cake, a Sogo mango mousse cake (the same as our wedding cake), plus those cute little buns that look like peaches.
A very rich meal and very delicious. I learned to love to eat good food from my parents. I used to go out with them a lot to eat dinner with their friends. I probably was a bit bored because I’d usually be the only kid there but I didn’t mind it so much as long as we had a good meal and I could spend time with my parents rather than sit at home.
The service here was excellent as usual. I think my parents frequent Koi Garden enough so that all the managers know them and are always willing to accommodate them when they come in for dinner, and even more so for a special occasion like my mom’s birthday.
Happy Birthday Mom!
Godzilla Sushi
http://www.yelp.com/biz/g…i-san-francisco
We had dinner at Godzilla Sushi tonight, close to my work, unfortunately for me, only open for dinner. Ron met someone who recommended it as a cheap sushi joint in Pac Heights.
The restaurant has 5 tables and then a sushi bar.
We ordered three of their special rolls, from top to bottom:
1. Tinky Winky Roll with scallop, salmon, chopped crab, avocado, shiso leaf, sprouts and tobiko
2. Pink Dragon Roll, inside with shredded crab, avocado, cucumber and outside with fresh salmon and wasabi tobiko
3. Godzilla Roll, inside with tuna, hamachi, sake, BBQ eel, avocado and outside with tobiko
Here are their other special rolls:
After we got our order, we decided it wasn’t quite enough so ordered two other things, suzuki nigiri, which is Japanese sea bass:
and the spicy baked mayo mussels (the mussels were chopped up so very easy to eat, kind of tasted like it was seasoned with sriracha hot sauce, was yummy):
We shared their large size of hot sake and our meal came out to be around $38 + tip. Ron said he found the fish texture a bit mushy but I thought it was fine. I guess the real test would be to have sashimi or the chirashi (sashimi over rice). I wish they’d open for lunch then I could have sushi for lunch!
Godzilla Sushi
1800 Divisadero Street
Palomino and Chez Papa Friday Night Happy Hour
After a tough day at work, I embraced the idea of going to happy hour to enjoy half price drinks and some fattening bar food.
We met up with our friend Susan who lives in SOMA and who is familiar with some the places in the city to have happy hour. We started out at Palomino near the Embarcadero which has Happy Hour 4-6pm. They have a very nice outdoor patio and with the beautiful weather on Friday, it was packed! There is a bartender outside selling limited drinks for $5 (like a cranberry mojito, wine, tequila shots, etc). Unfortunately, there were no tables freeing up outside. But to note, apparently you can make a reservation for happy hour if you have enough people, maybe 10 to 15 in the party.
We ended up finding a spot inside as one of Susan’s former co-workers was there at a table so we squeezed ourselves right in so that we could order food before 6pm. They have a selection of appetizers that are half off and pizzas are $5. There were additional drinks like draft beers and green apple drop which were $5 as well.
Please excuse my poor pictures from my camera phone, my hands were shaky (maybe because I was hungry….)
This is the calamari served with a marinara and (we think) a garlic aioli. The batter was nice and crisp and the aioli was spicy with raw garlic, yum!
A personal sized rotisserie chicken pizza. If you like really thin crust pizza then you’ll like this. I wasn’t too much of a fan because I like more toppings and less cheese but it’s not bad for $5.
Potatoes gorgonzola…. man, these were heavenly. They have a really good fryer in their kitchen because these were so crisp and stayed really crisp even after they cooled down. The gorgonzola went well with the fries although not spread very evenly so some fries had none and some fries had a ton plus after a while, the cheese solidified so it was hard to scoop up more onto the fries that had none.
After chowing down and enjoying a few drinks, we went to meet up with some other people at Chez Papa Resto in Mint Plaza. The happy hour there is until 7pm. We just went to meet them for drinks while they were having dinner, so had them order us a lychee martini ($6). Chez Papa also has a Bistrot on 18th Street which we’ve eaten at with our families for a birthday many years back although nothing sticks in my mind if it was really good but it wasn’t really bad. One of the reasons why I’m glad that I have a way to keep track of where we’ve eaten and if it is worth returning to.
Well, back to happy hour. Here is the lychee martini. A bit strange and Susan said it was different than the first time she’d had it, the first time it was clear and sweeter. Today’s lychee martini tasted like it had star anise in it, was very cloudy, and it didn’t really taste like a lychee drink except for the two lychees in the glass…
Happy hour is fun, a needed stress relief from a chaotic day.
Palomino
345 Spear Street
Chez Papa Resto
4 Mint Plaza
Banana Muffins
http://www.marthastewart….ns&rsc=header_1
So my four ripe bananas got turned into this:
The recipe is from Martha Stewart’s website. I have to admit I was drawn to it because of the cute monkey.
I didn’t have enough bananas for garnish to ended up using banana chips I had from Trader Joe’s and also put some semisweet chocolate chips on some of them.
I’ll see how they will be received at work tomorrow.
It’s been a big baking week… and next week I’m going to try to make Parisian macaroons for a baby shower brunch, that will be fun!