Lighthouse Tofu - Vit Goel (2011.02.05)

I like simple menus. Light House Tofu definitely fits the bill for that! As pictured below, they only have 17 dishes, with a few varieties of Korean Pancake on the other side of the menu.

It was our (my siblings and I) first time eating here and we wanted to get a taste of their famous tofu hot pots. As with all Korean food, several plates of pickled veggies were served along with 2 raw eggs and 3 bowls of mysterious cold "soup" (bottom left corner). (Not really sure if we were supposed to drink that or mix it with food or what, they were left untouched for the most part
)

Korean Pickled Veggies

Seafood Pancake (small order)Seafood Beef Tofu Hot Pot and Steak Bulgolgi - 2011.02.05

(Beef & Pork Tofu Hot Pot was not pictured)

If you notice the top of the menu, there's a "Spicy" listing from "White" to "Spicy Spicy" - we chose "Spicy" for all our dishes but none of them even compared to the some of the Pickled Veggies in terms of spicy-ness. We decided we would get "Spicy Spicy Spicy" if we ever came back!

The Tofu Hot Pots are great for a cold rainy day and they warm you to your core. It was very good but I would never venture here on a sunny 90 degree day. The Bulgolgi was not very special and more watery than it should be. The hot plate made it look interesting but I wasn't impressed. I've had tofu hot pot at other places and there was nothing special about this one, except for the raw egg you put in and watched it cook itself. It's a fun touch for Americans but I wasn't too impressed.

The food was fresh and they replenished the Preserved Veggies as we ate (unlike most places that just give you one round) and their method of giving us rice was interesting. It came in a hot pot and the server scooped it out into 3 small bowls. Then she poured enough wheat tea into the hotpot to soak the remaining rice that was stuck on the hot pot. She didn't explain the point for doing so but we assumed it was so it would be easier to get the remaining rice. There wasn't a whole lot left but we ended up finishing it off so it wouldn't go to waste.

Total Price: $50 (includes tax and tip)

Lunar New Year - Hakka Dinner

As half-promised, here are the dishes from the New Year celebration with the Hakka Association. We gathered at the New Fortune Restaurant and sat in tables of 10. Each table was served the following dishes on the round table and we each got a serving of each. In the order of appearance/occurence:

Cold Appetizer (From Outside-In) - Sliced Cuttlefish, Pickled Cucumber, Beef, Pork, Jelly Fish, Pickled Cabbage and Carrots, Garnished with Chinese Parsley
Fried Shrimp Ball
Seafood Soup
Stir Fried Lobster
Roasted Crispy Chicken (not pictured because I wasn't there when it was served)

Roasted Pork over Chinese Broccoli
Sauteed Pork with Squid and Celery (aka Hakka Stir Fry)
Steamed Snow Fish (aka Cod)
Food art (aka I was bored in between dishes)
Sauteed Pork over Fried Egg Noodles
Sliced Oranges and Fried Nian Gao with Green Bean filling

Most dishes were authentic enough, some of the flavors could have been a bit better. This year most foods weren't too salty but rice still would've been a nice add-on. We have the same dishes each year just modified slightly. The dishes I wouldn't mind having again (and recommend) are the Cold Appetizer, Fried Shrimp Ball, Sauteed Lobster (without the shells!!), Roasted Pork over Chinese Broccoli and the Fried Nian Gao with Green Beans. At $25 a person, it's a pretty good deal to have such a wide variety of dishes!

Note: All pictures were taken on my Droid because I forgot to bring my camera!

Morgan's Food & Spirits (2010.01.22)

I swear we had another appetizer, but I have no clue what it was! Maybe we didn't and I'm imagining things...

Hummus Dip

Crab cake

Note: These were taken from my Motorola DROID!

TGI Friday's (2010.01.20)

They have a 3-course meal for $12.99 a person. I enjoyed the dessert the most! lol

Steak Quesadillas (maybe it was chicken? I forget. It was cold so i didn't really like it that much)


Sizzling Chicken Mexicali with coconut flavored rice

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Note: These were taken from my Motorola DROID! Nice quality =)

On the Border (2010.01.20 & 02.03)

On the Border has Happy Hour everyday starting at 3pm, hence having been there 3 times in less than a month! The appetizers are half off so each of these below were around $4 a plate!

Steak Quesadillas

Chicken Flautas

Firecracker Jalapeno Poppers stuffed with Chicken and Cheese

Note: These were taken from my Motorola DROID!

Praline Connection (2009.04.04)

Day three lunch at NO was at the Praline Connection located somewhere. It was highly recommended by the locals. Many of us hadn't had real LA food so it was decided to get a large appetizer platter rather than separate entrees. This was called the Connection Platter. It consisted of Fried Alligator Sausage, Spicy Chicken Wings, Fried Okra, Fried Pickles and Bite Size Catfish. As you can see the catfish were a bit short of "bitsize." Everything was pretty good (your regular fried stuff), except for the chicken which I didn't eat. E said it tasted like spicy chicken so I decided I wasn't missing out. There was 4 different sauces to dip in: Barbeque sauce (not like the one from Oceana Grille, but the normal kind!), tartar sauce, a tomato based sauce and a tartar-like sauce without the pickles.


E and I split another appetizer, BBQ Oysters with garlic toast. The oysters were very fresh, plump and tender. The sauce was, well, BBQ sauce. I'm not a fan of BBQ sauce, so it was all right.


Someone else's meal came with cornbread and I decided I wanted some too. It was your regular cornbread, nothing too special. I think I still liked the one at Vidalia's more. Ha.


Total Cost: $25 split amongst 6 people = $4 + $5 +tax + tip = $12.50

Oceana Grille (2009.04.02)

Day one in New Orleans. As soon as we got to the B&B we went out in search for Lunch/Dinner. We had a gift certificate for Oceana Grille (739 Conti St). The GC was worth $25 but we purchased it for $2. The stipulation? Had to eat over $50 for two people, excluded alcohol, not that we ordered any.

So we ordered two appetizers and two entrees. Yes, lots of food for two people, but we managed. This first one is Louisiana Crab Cakes in a crawfish cream sauce. E and I each ate one. It had a lot of breading and really wasn't that special. The sauce was very creamy and had a remoulade hint to it. I still like the crabcake at King's Contrivance or G&M's.


The other appetizer was Cajun Alligator Sausage "Atchafalaya." I never had alligator before, and no, I don't consider it "meat." It wasn't very special, acceptable. It tasted like a cross between pork and beef, texture-wise.


Next came the entrees, E ordered Redfish"Amer" which was sauteed redfish topped with crawfish and mushroom cream sauce, served with potatoes and vegetables. It wasn't really "sauteed" - there was breading on it and it seemed fried or grilled. I tried some, it was ok...


I ordered Barbequed Shrimp - New Orleans Style. The menu states that it is barbequed in a buttery pepper sauce cooked in their shells with cafun french bread for dipping. Well, no shells (and I assumed it to be large shrimps) and that yellow-orange stuff if grease...yuck... The tiny gritty stuff was probably garlic, but it tasted funny. I didn't like it. I ended up putting all my shrimp around the plate so the grease would drip off and picked the garlic off. My plate looked pretty funny as I was eating. No, not as tasteful as I wanted it to be.


Total Cost = 12.50 + 8 + 18 + 18 = 56.50 - 25GC = 31.50 + tax + tip (based on 56.50) = $45
LA tax is 9%, what fun...
With the GC it wasn't a bad deal for two people. Though, the taste, was... =/

Oh, and though it was 'alot of food' - I manged to finish off all the shrimps, the 3 alligators, 1 crab cake and 1/4 of the red fish and some potatoes. No, I wasn't really stuffed either! =P

King's Contrivance

Today was lunch with AJ, after almost 2 months since the last time. (I don't care that we've seen each other at least 4-5 times in between, it doesn't count unless it's lunch, right, haha).

I had pitched Applebee's since TKN sent me the link to the 2 for 20 deal (E did too earlier that same day but via IM). Anyhow, AJ always has other plan on her mind. She calls at 12:15 as she's leaving campus to tell me it's Howard County's R-wk. Of course. LOL. So I'm googling as she drives. Apparently I mumble (what a surprise). I chose King's Contrivance because I recognized it from a list of 20-30 restaurants that were participating in R-wk. It's located close to her house so I figured it should work for both of us. The address is: 10150 Shaker Drive, Columbia, MD 21046.

Well, as it turns out, they only serve R-wk items for dinner. Fun. AJ said I'm putting a hole in her wallet...yes, I know. You're telling the person who ate out several times over the course of a few days...ha.

Anyways, on to the food. We both got Maryland Crab Soup. I was halfway through mine before I remembered to take pictures. So this is my half-eaten Maryland Crab Soup. I never had it before (yes, I was born in MD...your point?) and it tasted pretty good. It actually reminds of me of Vegetable Soup with pieces of crab thrown in them. Yes, that's what it looked like too since the crabs were on the bottom and pearly white, not like it had been cooked with in the soup. It was good though. I bit salty, but I think I like my soups light, not American style salty... It has assorted veggies: carrots, corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, cabbage (I think, I forget)...and whatever you can decipher from the picture. =)


Then I ordered a Jumbo Lump Crabcake with remoulade sauce, coleslaw and roasted Yukon gold potatoes. Let's start one by one. The crabcake was excellent. Actually it's about as good as G&M's crabcake, a bit smaller, but they have bigger chunks and not as many shells. The downside is this didn't taste as fresh, like it had been frozen for awhile, unlike G&M's who make them fresh. The remoulade sauce tasted like tartar sauce to me...It goes with seafood so it wasn't bad. The potatoes could've used some seasoning or ketchup, but the "tartar sauce" worked for me. And finally the "coleslaw." I forgot that was part of the entree and I told AJ it was a mix between salsa and coleslaw. It had a strange taste that I couldn't figure out. I kep picking at it and trying it various times. I couldn't get over the strange taste. The fact that coleslaw has tomatoes, spring onions and white onions baffle me... Overall I enjoyed it alot.


This was AJ's entree: Chesapeake Caesar Salad with shrimp, scallops and crab meat sauteed with Old Bay over a layer of romaine lettuce and tomatoes. The two things sticking out on the sides are napa (my guess)...AJ didn't like those. I've never had them raw like that so I wouldn't know. It looked pretty good, a very good assortment of seafood and on romaine vs some other strange veggie. I can't remember the last time I had caesar sauce, I just remember it's made from anchovies or something random like that. I'd say it was a good entree, AJ cleared her plate. (Sidenote: She will clean her plate regardless, but I trust her opinion since we seem to try/eat similar things - except the cheese thing).


Total Price: Soup $6 + Entree $17 + tax + tip = $29
AJ's salad and soup came to be the same price as well.

Vidalia - DC Restaurant Week

So, another Restaurant week excursion, this time with E for lunch. Vidalia's is an American cuisine concentrate on Southern foods, in the up-scale version. It's located at 1990 M St, NW, Washington DC, just past the McD's is you're walking from the Dupont Circle stop. The service was excellent, no complaints there. The gentleman we had was very polite and was great! The food...well a bit od a different story...

I took pictures of E's 3-course as well, so I'll explain a bit of both...

We started with a "pre-appetizer" - Corn Bread and Onion Bread. It was strange to eat the onion bread after the corn bread, but it probably would've tasted better in a sandwich or something anyway. E ate her onion bread before I took a picture, that's why you see 2 corn breads and an onion bread...


On to my appetizer: Sunny Side Up Path Valley Hen Egg which composed of chicken liver fondue, yellow corn grits and julienne black truffle. Now that I think about is there even such a thing as a Rooster Egg? Well that explains the picture below... I think I should've chosen something else... I didn't like the sauce or grits...it had a strange flavor I couldn't swallow. And I really didn't eat much of it either, just some of the egg whites. The truffles didn't taste like anything, just texture...


E ordered Crispy Pig Tails which had pickled turnips, quail egg, pink lady apple sauce and rye jus. I guess that explains the white and red thing on the side, quail egg and pickled turnips. I don't see how this is "pig tails" plural... I didn't taste it, so no comment from me, but E ate the whole thing so I guess it was acceptable to some respect.


For my entree I got the thing I wrote about in my status all week: Southern Fried Frog Legs which had blue cornmeal polenta, cinnamon cap mushrooms and garlic emulsion. Well, it was rather interesting. I never had frog legs before, and they really do taste like chicken, just without the big bones in them. It only had a tiny toothpick like thing and the joints. The sauce, again was strange to me. I don't know why the mushroomc were called "cinnamon cap" since it didn't have anything cinnamon to it. It was like the oriental white mushroom I had before, only bigger.


E got the Shrimp and Grits which had yellow grits, andouille sausage, pearl onions and spicy shellfish cream. It's rather bubbly. Ther table next to us got this and it wasn't bubbly at all, how strange. I had a shrimp and it tasted like shrimp. I didn't try the rest of it, the bubbliness was a tad strange to me.


On to dessert! I got Vidalia's Lemon Chess Square which was a buttery crust layered with rich lemon custard, garnished with berry compote and sweet cream. I really though the 'sweet cream' was just a thick whip cream. Ha. And it has a tree, which I'm attempting to write a story about later... It was pretty good and I was looking forward to it since the pre-course was just ok... It's as it describes and was pretty tasty.


E got the Banana Napoleon which had caramelized bananas with salted caramel mousse, bitter sweet chocolate layers and salted caramel sauce. I had a piece of it, the choclate wasn't exactly 'bittersweet' but it tasted pretty good. I didn't try the caramel sauce, now that I know it was 'salted' that was probably a good idea not to try it! Though the salted caramel mousse didn't taste bad so the sauce probably wasn't too bad either.


It's a good thing the dessert was good otherwise I would've been rather disappointed. I still think I ordered the wrong appetizer which just kind of set me off a bit..

Total price: r-wk price $20.09 + tax + tip = $26/person

So here's my tree! Isn't it pretty?


And it got de-rooted...


And in an attempt to plant it back into the "Earth" (caramel sauce)...


The End. *applause*

Marrakesh - DC Restuarant Week

DC's restaurant week was this week (ends on Sunday the 22nd). I've never been to r-wk before, I actually only heard about it for the FIRST time last year (or the year before) from AJ when she raved about Baltimore's r-wk. I was very surprised to learn about this event and have wanted to participate since I heard about it. I'm glad to finally get a chance to be a part of it and try out some really fancy restaurants.

Marrakesh is a Moroccan restaurant at 2147 P St. NW, Washington DC. Just 2 blocks from the Dupont Circle metro stop (walk diagonal to the left towards the circle).

This was a group from work. Not really co-workers since I don't/won't work with them (they're on the Federal side), but I know a Fed guy (went to school with him) and he invited me. (But then he ended up not going, long story, not appropriate for this blog). We ordered our 3 courses all at once...when everyone arrived finally at 8pm or so...

So on to the 3 courses! I have my handy dandy menu as reference! Appetizer was a Seafood Bastilla, which was "Filo dough stuffed with mushrooms, scallops, shrimps and vermicelli." It was rather interesting...it was SOOOO dark there, I couldn't see that the top was a lemon rind, I thought they were onions....although you can see clearly from this picture, they're not! Ha. The Bastilla was crunchy, the dough wasn't as I imagined it to be filling, but rather thin, in layers. The insides were as mentioned above. A bit of salt and some boring spices...not a very thrilling appetizer...



The entree was Lamb Tagine, Braised lamb with prunes, sesame seeds and almonds. The dark stuff surrounding the middle are the prunes...I forgot the ingredients and really thought they were shitake mushrooms until I took a bite of it...I don't like prunes. The almonds were good. The lamb was interesting, very soft but not much flavor to it. There was a bit of drizzle, but it didn't have a strong taste.



And finally the dessert. A boring old cheesecake with strawberry drizzle on it. I originally ordered a creme Caramel a la Marocaine, but after we finished our entrees our server informed us they were out of that....very very disappointed, I was really looking forward to some good dessert!



Total Price: r-wk price $35.09 + tax + tip = $45

Red Lobster (2008.08.19)

I went to Red Lobster during the week I was off (or in limbo from school to work, otherwise known as free time transition). I ordered an appetizer since I didn't want anything huge for lunch. Of course Red Lobster doesn't have this on their menu, so here's to guessing...

This has to be some kind of Triple Seafood Sampler.


Fried Calamari Strips. Too much batter, not enough calamari. It tastes good with the tartar sauce since it tasted like fried fish...


Stuffed mushrooms with crab, layered with melted cheese...needless to say I wasn't enthused about the cheese. It was easy to pick off though.


Bacon wrapped scallops. Good stuff. ^_^


Total Price: $9.95 (est.) + tax + tip = $13

Miami Grille (2008.08.11)

I had this in San Diego the 2nd night I was there. I went to a place called Miami Grille (go figure, it IS San Diego...). I wasn't really hungry so I figured I'd just order 2 appetizers. The first was Camarones a la Eddie with Tostones which was shrimp sauteed with a spicy Brazilian sauce. I don't remember it being spicy, but it wasn't too bad. It was in a buttery sauce with spices. The tostones it came with were really good too. I never had them before.

The other appetizer was Stuffed Crabs with rice and Miami's famous Joe's Stone Crab mustard sauce. The sauce was really good. It evened out the spices in the stuffed crab. The rice was good too, hehe, the good sticky kind!


Here's looking at you!


I have no clue how much each actually cost, but according to their website...

Total Price: 10.50 + 10.95 + tax + tip = $28 (how much I actually paid...CC receipts are great)