eveleigh

los angeles, ca

website

the next morning, cindy c took us to brunch at eveleigh. beautiful outdoor patio with a nice large overhead fan to keep diners cool in the summer. menu includes comfort food breakfast favorites but with a unique twist (my eggs benedict came with soft scrambled eggs and hot smoked ocean trout). add a lengthy and varied list of refreshing brunch cocktails (i had the bitter admiral - gin, Campari, grapefruit juice, poured over ice with a lemon twist). an ideal combination for a relaxing and enjoyable weekend brunch. did i mention the truffled fries? perfection.

ink

los angeles, ca

website

i'm not a big top chef fan. first, it's too combative and stressful. second, i prefer not to watch people make food that i can't eat. but i do like eating at restaurants of successful top chef contestants. cindy c made reservations at top chef winner michael voltaggio's new restaurant on melrose in los angeles. the interior was very similar to thomas keller's ad hoc in napa valley: giant chalkboard menu hanging over the bar, loud music, casually dressed waitstaff, and courier font for everything. except - the food at ink is much more inventive and interesting. yeah, i said it.

good thing anthony joined us - gave us the freedom to select more dishes from the small-plates menu. we ended up ordering about a dozen plates, including three desserts. the highlights: oysters (pictured) simply dressed with a refreshing mignonette ice, brussel sprouts served with crispy pig's ears and lardo (best "vegetable" dish ever), egg yolk gnocchi - somehow voltaggio created fluffy pillows of pasta with a creamy yolky center, and finally, a deconstructed apple pie with burnt wood ice cream - tasted like an apple pie baked over a campfire but looked like ice cream with little gelees. amazing. remarkable. molecular gastronomy in a gastropub - wonderfully strange and delicious.

lavanda

palo alto, ca

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an extremely varied menu includes mediterranean, italian, and croatian dishes. i've never had croatian food, so i decided to try something from the croatian menu. "sarma" -- stuffed cabbage with minced beef, onions, rice, fresh herbs, served on mashed potatoes. basically - meatballs wrapped in cabbage and doused in tomato sauce. it tasted fine, but it wasn't anything special.

i love cake, so, for dessert i ordered the cake with passionfruit sauce. the cake itself was okay, but it was drenched in overly sweet sauce. the menu had other items that sounded appealing - pastas, steak, schnitzel, and fish. although i didn't have a lot of success with the two dishes that i ordered, lavanda is a nice spot to have a glass of wine with some bar snacks. probably won't be back for dinner, but maybe for wine.

liang's kitchen

cupertino, ca

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lots of great asian food in the south bay. derek managed to find another spot for taiwanese food. derek and i took his parents there for dinner. excellent beef noodle soup - ask for "ma la" if you want it spicy. but my favorite dish were the beef rolls - fried cong you bing (onion pancakes) flattened, filled with beef and cilantro, and formed into a roll. like a light flaky onion-y egg roll. there's other great stuff on the menu - hopefully we'll be back soon to try more.

torchy's tacos

austin, tx

website

forgot to mention, before we picked up y+a+n from the airport, jinny and i got a snack of guacamole and freshly fried chips from torchy's. (perhaps freshly fried is the theme of my austin trip?) the next day, we decided to get takeout from torchy's for the whole gang. torchy's is austin hipster mexican. colorful chalkboard menu? check. ironic hipster decorations? check (a red devil wearing a diaper is their logo). ironic hipster names for their menu items? check.

i ordered a "mr. pink" taco - guajillo seared ahi tuna, cabbage fresca, cilantro, and queso freco - and a "trailer park" taco - fried chicken, green chilies, lettuce, pico de gallo, and cheese on a flour tortilla. there's an option to make the "trailer park" taco "trashy" by replacing the lettuce with queso, but i passed. we also ordered, for the gang, a small bowl of queso and more freshly fried chips. tacos were pretty good - fresh, quality ingredients, but the queso was amazing. definitely my favorite part of the meal.

cypress grill

austin, tx

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y+a+n finally arrived in austin, so we all went out for dinner. after all of the doughnuts, we decided to move onto something with a little more substance. still deep-fried, though, it is texas after all. jinny and kurt are excellent tour guides - we simply select a cuisine and they find us a restaurant with great food and atmosphere. at cypress grill i ordered the fried oysters, served with fries. pretty solid food.

kc donuts

austin, tx

link to yelp

you might think that getting a freshly fried doughnut topped with bacon and maple syrup icing would satisfy our doughnut cravings for at least 24 hours. you would be wrong. the next morning, jinny and i headed to the very popular kc donuts for doughnuts and kolaches. completely unassuming, tucked away in a strip mall, no fancy chalkboard menu, and no hipster decorations (ironic owls, anyone?). it's just a mom-and-pop (sometimes mom-and-son) shop. i ordered two doughnuts to go with my coffee - one sugar and one with chocolate icing - both delicious. nothing fancy about these doughnuts - they are simple, but perfect. fresh, soft, and with just the right amount of sweetness. yum.

gourdough's

austin, tx

website

believe it or not, we went to get doughnuts after eating at the hula hut. and not just any doughnuts. we went to gourdough's - a famous austin gourmet doughnut truck. it's located in one of the food truck parking lots which dot the austin landscape. (can we start doing that here in palo alto, please?) i ordered the flying pig - a freshly fried doughnut topped with several strips of bacon and maple syrup icing. the doughnut itself is the highlight for me, it's fried perfectly - crispy shell on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. the toppings were a bit too intense for me, but still delicious.

hula hut

austin, tx

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this place will always hold a special place in my heart because it is where jinny and kurt introduced me to QUESO. sure, i've had chile con queso at chevy's, but that doesn't count at all. in austin, queso is a magical molten concoction - creamy, cheesy, spicy. and its always served with freshly fried crispy tortilla chips. so good. jinny and kurt are queso experts - they know where to find the best queso in austin and hula hut is one of them. so good. did i say that already?

there was other food on the table as well. pictured is the texas-sized roasted chicken pipeline enchilada. no, that's not a typo. they really call it an enchilada. it's coated in "queso blanco" sauce which tasted like gravy. it was pretty good, but very heavy. frankly, at this point i was so full of queso it's a wonder i managed to take a single bite out of this behemoth. thankfully, jinny and kurt took me on a short tour of beautiful lake austin after dinner to walk off the meal. although perhaps it was so i could be ready to consume even more food. just wait till you see the rest of my austin eating tour ...

hong kong flower lounge

millbrae, ca

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back to millbrae to drop stacey off at the airport. first, however, we stopped for dim sum. hong kong flower lounge was recommended to us by april and lennon - and they know good dim sum. this place gets very crowded very quickly - so its best to arrive shortly after they open - anytime between 10:00 am and 11:00 am is usually safe. otherwise you could end up waiting an hour for a table.

giant multi-level complex with carts, trays, and food stations. we don't bother with the food stations - we prefer the food to come to us. all the usual dim sum favorites are excellent here - shaomai, ham sui gok, congee, deep fried taro dumplings, turnip cakes, tofu skin rolls, and egg tarts. if you're a fan of ma la gou - malaysian yellow cake - be sure to special order it because it rarely shows up on the carts.