Hawaii: Mom's Soul Food and Crab Wings

Well a couple of peope have asked me now: why do I only write about stuff when I'm traveling...don't I go out and eat when I'm home? I thought about it and was like, gee, there really isn't a reason why I don't do it while I'm at home so here goes...

Mom's Soul Food and Crab Wings (their menu shows crabwings.com as their Web site, but it wasn't working as of the writing of this post) just opened a second site in Pearl City, Hawaii and my friends and I decided to check them out last night.

We arrived rather late (7:20pm) and the parking lot was full and so was the dining area. I was surprised to find that they actually had a dining area. When I was growing up, that spot was a KCF, and it was just a walk up counter so I was surprised to see that they could actually fit sit down dining space inside the building. Inside there were actually six four-seater tables, and while it was a bit tight, it didn't seem overly crowded, even though all the tables were full.

I know this might sound racist, but one of ways that we judge a good Chinese restaurant is when you see a lot of actual Chinese in the restaurant. Paralleling that to Mom's Soul Food, we had high hopes for it since the clientele and the servers were predominantly black.

We were seated pretty quickly and the servers were all very friendly (throughout the entire night). The menu was pretty simple: fish, chicken wings, garlic roasted crab, prawns (fried or garlic), oysters, meat loaf, pork chops, smothered steak, spaghetti, and garlic noodles.

My friends decided on the fish and chicken combo ($11 for 1 piece fish and 3 wings, or $11.75 for 2 pieces fish and 2 wings) which included one side and corn bread. They both chose the snapper (you could also choose catfish or whiting) and one chose fried okra as his side and the other chose french fries. I decided on a two-choice Combo Plate ($14.99) of chicken wings and pork chops. My plate included two sides and corn bread, so I chose mac and cheese and green beans. I was sad to see that they had crossed off the option of "upgrading" to collard greens or candied yams, and these were only available as ala carte side dishes ($4/small, $7/medium, $9/large).

It took quite a while to get our food, but the servers were really nice about it. They kept apologizing for it taking a long time and assuring us that it was coming. When it finally did come, it didn't all come out at once--each dish came out separately with about a 5 minute delay between each.

Once we got the plates, we knew what was taking so long...the chicken wings. There were scalding hot, definitely fresh from the oil. We couldn't even bite into them. The rest of the food unfortunately wasn't as hot. My friends reported that the fish appeared to have been sitting under a heat lamp, and it was really dry and didn't have much taste. Adding the hot sauce (which looked really watery) from the table didn't really help with the fish.

Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same about my pork chops. It looked really good, smothered in gravy as promised. But when I actually bit into it, it found that was barely room temperature. I would have been more happy if it had been sitting under a heat lamp, it appeared that my pork chops (and the rest of my plate) had been cooked early and just set on the side to wait until the chicken was ready. Thus the mac and cheese, white rice, pork chops and gravy were all cold--I considered sending it back, but since it had taken so long to get to us (and since we were eating late, I was already hungry when we sat down) I decided against it.

Even cold, the pork chops still had a really good taste (I'm sure it would taste really good if it was hot) and once the chicken wings cooled enough to eat, I was able to confim that they too had a really good taste--definitely tasted like what I think of as southern fried chicken, perhaps a pinch heavy on the salt. When I think about it, both the pork chops and the chicken had a very similar taste, I wonder if they used the same seasoning for both...

The mac and cheese was disappointing, the cheese had already started to clump, and the green beans were even more disappointing. The green beas were basically canned green beans, with what looked like just some pepper added to them. It wasn't until I got the bottom of the beans that I found that they had been cooked in what some kind of butter sauce, but they hadn't been cooked long enough for the taste to be pervasive.

Both my friend's sides were good though, the french fries were medium cut and freshly cooked, and the fried okra was probably the best thing that night. They were breaded (not battered) and tasted fresh and crisp.

While there were some issues with the food, given the price and quantity, I still feel that it was it was a good deal. By the end of the meal I was definitely stuffed and didn't have any room for dessert.

Since they just opened earlier this week, perhaps they need some time to get their act together and adjust to the new kitchen. But when I searched for them, I did find a review on Yelp where the writer experienced the same slow service and cold food issue at Mom's Soul Food Waipahu location--so maybe there isn't hope for them. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

Chicago Customer Service, Coffee, Millenium Park, and Hot Dogs

Sadly, I missed my flight this morning back home, and let me tell you US Airways SUCKS in customer service. Because I purchased my trip through Orbitz, US Airways would only put me on the same flight (i.e. I had to wait an entire day) and the next flight only had first class available, so they wanted to charge me $1000 to put me on it. At this point, I am definitely not flying these guys ever again unless I have to.

Good thing my flight was a code-share with United so I went to United and they were able to rebook me on a flight through LA tomorrow morning for just $150. Granted I had to go to the airport and stand in line for an hour, but at least I got a confirmed flight home and they were willing to actually help me.

But I have to say that United's O'hare counter is one of the worst organized I have ever been to. They only had one agent actually helping people. They did have a lot of people that helped to tag your baggage after you did the kiosk check-in, but they were defintely low end hired help that moved like slugs and weren't very helpful.

Thinking on that more, I have to say that Chicago as a whole just had generally average to bad customer service everywhere that I went except for their train stations. The guys in the booth at the train stations were actually helpful in explaining how their transit system worked and also explained the value of getting the multi-day passes. Wait, the Aloft O`Hare actually had a friendly staff and their shuttle drivers were friendly and were a great help in finding places to eat and explaining the train system.

At the Westin O'Hare, service was ok, not friendly, but at least corporate cordial. At the Four Points by Sheraton O`Hare, the front desk was almost rude and their shuttle drivers were rather brash. I found the same average courtesy (if you can even call it courtesy) at most of the restaurants, coffee shops, and stores that I went to--like many of them were just there to do their job and having to help you was just part of their job description. This really makes me appreciate the true customer orientation that I've experienced on most of the West Coast and especially in Hawaii.

Ok enough of my complaining and let's get back to a more fun topic--FOOD! I think I found my new favorite coffee drink, the Lite White Berry at Caribou Coffee. They describe it as espresso, steamed skim milk, white cocoa (is there such a thing?), and the berry flavor of your choice. I chose cherry (which I don't believe is actually a berry), but in any case it tastes yummy to me--better than Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf's Black Forrest Latte. So this is where I'm at now, writing this entry, sipping my drink...

On Friday, I caught the train into the city with one of the girls from the AICPA Leadership Academy and stopped off at Cafe Descartes, a small coffee shop on Michigan Ave. The Mexican Mocha was what caught my eye here--basically a mocha with some cinnamon. I was expecting something with a little more of a rich and spicy chocolate taste, as you normally get with Mexican chocolate, but I was terribly disappointed. The coffee has a weak chocolate taste, hints of cinnamon, and a fairly bland coffee flavor--think Folgers or Yuban with old Hershey's syrup and a dash or two of cinnamon. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed--add to that the fact that the cinnamon scone I got from them was hard, dry, and overly crumbly, and I felt like I had dumped $9 down the tube.

At least I got some caffine into my system and I spent the next couple of hours wandering around Millennium Park. It was a slightly overcast day, with occasional drizzles, but overall a good summer day to be walking around, not too hot and not too humid. The Lurie Garden was pretty expansive, but not manicured very well, so really felt more like I was looking at a bunch of weeds. I think part of that is their choice of flowers to feature--definitely different that the "usuals", but because of that also not as appealing to the eye.

What I really did enjoy though was getting to catch a rehearsal of the Pirates of Penzance by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion--part of the Grant Park Music Festival. I had previously seen this opera, but listening to it again reminded me how great of an opera this is to introduce children (and non-typical opera attendees) to opera. Everything is in English and the story line is fun and easy to follow. The Pavilion itself is also a very exciting structure to behold and has a nice lawn that has an overhead sound system to enable a lot of people to enjoy the performance.

I also have some good pictures of the key features that the Millenium Park is known for, like the gigantic metallic jelly bean-like sculpture on Chase Promenade, the water play area with the electronic image "spitting wall" (my name for it, not theirs), and the great monument and fountain at Wrigley Square. There was also a Family Fun Festival that appeared to be a regular summer event that had some fun activities (like a whole area of hula hoops!) for young kids, as well as a stage where they were singing songs and interacting with the kids.

The last part of the park that I enjoyed was a sampling of sculptures from the Art Institute of Chicago's exhibit: "A Conversation with Chicago: Contemporary Sculptures from China". Normally I'm not a modern art kind of guy, but these sculptures actually made me want to go and see the rest of the exhibit since they had so much personality--and could actually be understood without putting yourself into an altered state of mind. =P

On the way back to the hotel, I caught Matthew at the train station heading over to Hot Doug's, a gourmet hot dog shop (or as they call themselves, a "sausage superstore and encased meat emporium") so decided to join him for an afternoon snack. We caught the train to the Belmont stop and walked about a quarter-mile (at least--it looked closer on the map). As we approached the corner shop, we could see a line out the door and said, gee this must be a good place for it to still have a line at 2:15pm. Turning the corner on the shop, we found out that the line actually snaked back along the other side of the shop for over a block! Man these must be some good hot dogs.

We asked the person in front of us, if these were really that good, and they said it was definitely worth the wait. They said that the line is pretty much always like this, and that they thought it would take us about 45 minutes to get to the front. Well, an hour later, we were still in line and we had only moved halfway down the block. Unfortunately Matthew had a plane to catch and I needed to switch hotels, so at that point we had to get out of line and go back to the hotel unfed. But man, if that may people are willing to wait in line for that long just to have some hot dogs, I guess I will have to make some time on my next trip to go there.

The whole gourmet hot dog thing, reminded me of Hank Haute Dogs in Hawaii. These guys just made the Top Ten New Hot Dog Places in Bon Appetit Magazine and I did get to try their hot dogs and foie gras fries (french fries fried in duck fat). Ok I know the duck fat doesn't sound appetizing, but if you've ever had good foie gras, you'll know why a foodie like Matthew and well-seasoned eater like myself would be willing to wait over an hour to try to get some. If we didn't have the flight and hotel to worry about, I'm sure we would have stayed in that line until we actually got to taste the food.

Ok now I've made myself hungry again, so I guess it's time to wrap up this entry and go and find my afternoon snack. Definitely not hot dogs, but maybe a good salad...trying to eat a little more healthy since it is summer and gotta watch the waistline so that I can enjoy the beach and summer picnics, without having to hold my stomach in the whole time. LOL

ciao for chow...

Chicago: Wow Bao and Gino's East

Man, what a busy week this has been. I last wrote at the end of my first night in Chicago, and here I am a week later on my last full day in Chicago. Monday was a somewhat leisurely day for me. I caught the train into the city for a meeting with the Executive Director and Operation Manager of AITP, the IT association that I'm also involved in. I didn't know how the train would be on a work day, so I headed out early to make sure that I had time for lunch before the meeting.

On the way to the office, a little restaurant called Wow Bao caught my attention, first by their bright orange sign, then by their name (I love "manapua" as we call it in Hawaii or "bao"--essentially a meat or other food filled, slightly sweet usually steamed bread bun), and last but not least, but by their slogan "hot Asian buns". LOL So since I had time and needed to find some lunch, I decided to check it out.

Just walking into the restaurant, I already could feel my doubt starting--another Americanized (bastardized) Asian food. As I walked in and all the workers were either white or hispanic, my doubt continued to grow. But I figured at this point, I really need to be good and give it a chance.

They had a pretty good selection of flavors, mostly typical-American Chinese food choices like Kung Pao Chicken and Mongolian Beef (the two that I actually ordered), but they also had Thai yellow curry, and other "safe" flavors. But when you think about it, when you're in a city that doesn't have a large Asian population, you would need to appeal to more generalized palate to be able to make it. So from a marketing standpoint, their strategy made sense to me.

Another aspect of their restaurant that appealed to me was their modern design and presentation of steamers (for cooking the bao) as well as steam baskets (for keeping the bao hot and moist). After the cash register you continued along the line past both of these, and the server at the end actually took the bao you ordered out of the steam baskets (much as they do in the Chinese dim sum restaurants) so there was nothing to hide in their operations.

As I sat down to pull out the bao I had ordered, I was pleasantly surprised by how soft and moist they felt--just like the ones at the Chinese restaurants. Of course my skepticism still kept questioning whether the flavor would be good or not. After all this build up, I half-trepidly took a bit of the first one...all bread in my first bite (I think bit a little too small of a piece since I wasn't sure what to expect). The bread was exactly as expected, very moist, a little sweet, and a firm but still very soft texture.

Feeling a little better about it, I took a bigger bite and felt the tangy spiciness of the kung pao chicken gush onto my taste buds. My first reaction was to be repelled a little, I wasn't expecting something that wet. The taste was a little overwhelming, and I had been expecting more chunks of chicken and veggies, and what I got instead was kind of a chunky stew-like (very wet, but not liquidy) consistency. I know that sounds strange, but once I reconciled my expectations with the delivered product, I realized that this actually wasn't that bad. I definitely think it would be better if it was more chunky and less wet (like the standard char siu bao), but they did a good job of capturing the distinct flavor of kung pao chicken, including the peanuts and water chestnuts.

My assessment of the mongolian beef bao was the same, a little too wet and mushy, but definitely capturing the taste and overall not a bad experience. I would definitely go back and try some of their other bao when the opportunity arises. In particular the thai curry bao and the custard bao (another asian favorite) definitely sounded good.

That reminds me, in case you are more of a rice person than a bun person, they also had "rice bowls" with the same entree offerings. I only hope that they don't just take their fillings and put them over rice. Wet and mushy in a bun is acceptable, but wet and mushy over rice definitely sounds gross.

With lunch out of the way, I continued my trek to the office to make sure that I knew where I needed to be for my meeting. It turned out to be pretty easy to find (I didn't even have to use my GPS) and lucky me, it turned out to be right at the start of the Magnificant Mile...Chicago's major shopping district! I could not have planned that better if well...I had planned it! LOL

The last time I was in Chicago was almost two years ago, and we had stayed in this area, so I immediately knew that there was definitely a bunch of stores that I wanted to hit. The good thing is that I had only 1.5 hours until my meeting, so there's only so much damage that I could do in that time! Shoppers luck was with me again. Just three weeks ago in San Fran, I had hit a bunch of sales in Union Square with a lot of stuff 50% off. It was the case again here in Chicago, with stores like Kenneth Cole having an additional 50% off already marked down merchandise. I managed to keep myself from buying new shoes (but the temptation was VERY strong!!) but did end up with just one shopping bag of purchases from various stores. Well I did only have 1.5 hours...and there's only so much browsing you can do with a laptop bag on your shoulder trudging around in the Chicago summer heat (which really wasn't that bad, but I was wearing business casual attire not shorts).

After my meeting, I decided to head back to the hotel since we were going to have a get-to-know-each-other dinner before the AICPA Leadership Academy started. Jumping back on the "El", short for elevated train, which is what I was told is the "local" way of referring to the train by the people I was meeting with. I always love to be able to sound like I'm more familiar with a city, so definitely liked that tip.

Dinner that night was at Gino's East of Chicago, one of the original Chicago deep-dish pizza places. The last time I had REAL Chicago pizza was quite a while ago, and I don't think it was the real thing because it was nowhere near as deep and full of stuff as the Gino's pizza was. There were nine of us and we ordered three large pizzas and maybe four appetizers to share. Little did we know how filling the pizzas would be since they are deep-dish. By the time we were done, we had finished the apps, but only barely half the pizzas. Of the three pizzas we tried: vegetarian, meat lover's, and supreme, the meat lover's was definitely the best by far. The tomato sauce for the vegetarian overwhelmed any of the flavors of the vegetable chunks, but the flavors of all the meats on the meat lovers definitely went well together and made for a delicious treat. We were all so stuffed, dessert was definitely out of the question.

Well this is getting long, so I think I'll end this here. More stories to tell about my wanderings through Millennium Park on Friday, and then I'm heading to see Jersey Boys tonight so you can be sure you'll hear more from me soon.

Chicago: flight and Home Bistro

Well it seems like this is going to be another one of those years of travel for me. Three weeks ago I was in Las Vegas for the AICPA TECH+ Conference, a national IT conference for CPAs. This is my second year on the steering committee for that conference and it has been a fun conference to work on because we are really able to help drive the direction of IT in the CPA profession. Needless to say, that also makes the conference a very busy three days for me, especially since this year I was coordinating five session and speaking for two of them. One of the great things about this conference is also that it's at Bellagio, so a great location with a huge bathtub that I can submerge my entire self in...and I did several times on that trip.

After the conference ended, I flew over to the Bay Area to attend a Microsoft partner training at the Microsoft Mountain View office (about a 45 minute drive from San Fran, heading toward San Jose). The training was a good one and I was able to meet some of the Microsoft resource people that help support Hawaii. The training was over by lunch, and then I stayed in San Fran for the rest of the weekend for some much needed R&R.

Then I was home for almost two weeks (12.5 days to be exact), and now I'm here in Chicago getting ready to attend the inaugural AICPA Leadership Academy. I was one of 28 "young" (<35 years old) CPAs chosen from 130+ applicants throughout the nation to attend this prestigious leadership training, that AICPA Chairman Ernie Almonte says will fundamentally change our lives. I had originally though it was going to be a kind of indoctrination into AICPA propaganda and identity (which is not necessarily a bad thing to me), but now that I've talked to Ernie and read the agenda, I can see that we are in a really powerful, paradigm-changing three days.

However, that doesn't begin until Tuesday. Last night (Saturday), I caught the red eye out of Honolulu to Phoenix, and from there jumped up to Chicago. This was my first time flying US Airways and I must say it was quite different from flying American Airlines or United Airlines (my two usual carriers). And having flown Hawaiian Airlines to Vegas, it was way different. I have to say that Hawaiian Airlines actually does a really good job on their flights. I was never really a fan of theirs before (due to some allegations of unfair business dealings by some of my travel industry friends), but I really have to say that I enjoyed the Hawaiian flight and would definitely considering flying them more. Their aircraft was clean, they had pillows and blankets, and they served food!

Anyway back to US Airways, the aircraft was clean but old. Their flight attendants weren't very welcoming and they didn't offer to help you find your seat, they didn't even greet you as you boarded the plane. However, they were nice during the drink service and the cups that they used to serve the drinks were twice the size of the cocktail cups that the other air lines used. No pillows or blankets, but you could purchase a set that included pillow, blanket, eye mask, and ear plugs for $7, which I thought was pretty reasonable. Overall the flights were pretty uneventful, except that for both landings we had some rocky turbulence.

Since I was arriving early, I decided to look for a hotel for tonight different from the Leadership Academy hotel and found an Aloft that was near O'Hare airport for a great deal. I stayed at the Aloft in Phoenix this past April, so I was curious to see if they were all the same--and YES they are, almost exactly. The lobby, hallways, and rooms look like almost exact replicas.

They gave me a handicap accessible room for the night since they had a bunch of very late checkouts and none of the regular rooms were available. The room was pretty much the same as the Phoenix except for the shower, which was just a big open space. From an accessibility standpoint, I could see how this would be really helpful to just have soooo much room to maneuver in, the only flaw I saw is that they didn't have a bench or anything to sit on, so I'm not sure if they expect a wheelchair bound person to take a shower in their own wheelchair. (I'm sure they must bring you something if you call them, but there wasn't any instructions or information provided to indicate so.)

Side Note: More Aloft O'Hare pictures in my Picasa Web Album.

Well traveling all day made me really hungry, so I decided to find some dinner. Searching on yelp.com, the first suggestion was HB Home Bistro), I read the reviews and it sounded really good, so I jumped on the subway and headed into the city. I didn't realize how far outside of the city I was...it took me about 45 min to get to the loop (the center of the transit system where all the trains go into a "loop" and you can transfer to various lines). Then it took another 20 minutes to get to the stop. Then it was about a 10 minute walk to Home Bistro.

A couple of the posts on yelp.com indicated that it may be hard to get a table and when I walked in, I could see why. It was a very small space, myabe 15 tables. Luckily my timing was good and I only had to wait 10 minutes for a table. And lucky me, also got a table facing the street, so I was able to watch all the people walking by in between courses. I love people watching, especially in cities that I'm relatively new to.

Home Bistro has a great menu, there were so many things that I wanted to try. I decided to start with the Oven Roasted Red Beets salad. The salad looked good, a combination of mixed greens, thinly sliced beets, and crumbled feta, complimented with some mandarin oranges and candied walnuts (the menu said pecans, but it really tasted like walnuts to me). The sesame truffle vinaigrette was nicely balanced and the rich beet taste was evident throughout the salad. The feta chunks were a little big for me (and I like feta!), they overwhelmed the salad when I ate them with the other ingredients, so I ended up breaking them d own smaller myself. The mandarin oranges added a nice sweetness, but there were only a few wedges, and the candies walnuts were stale. My pickiness aside, the salad was very good, in fact, I'd actually say that it was one of the better beet salads that I've had since everything was so well balanced and the wonder taste of beets was definitely dominant.

For my entree, I decided on the Compart Family Farms Loin of Pork. This was served over a bed of braised collard greens over scalloped potatoes, and topped with sauteed apples. The pork had a nice taste, but was over-salted and slightly over-cooked so a bit dry. The scalloped potatoes were also over-salted, almost to where I couldn't eat it, but I could tell that some of that came from the cheese that was used (I couldn't tell what kind of cheese it was). The collard greens could have been a little softer, but had a good taste, not too bitter and flavorful of the sausage they were cooked with. The favors were all very intense so even though it was over-salted I still enjoyed the meal--I just had to drink two glasses of water to get through it. =)

The taste of the potatoes actually lingered in my mouth so much, I ended up eating some of their herbed foccacia to cleanse my palate. It was served with a garlic balsamic vinegar that also had some herbs in it. The balsamic was actually REALLY good. The foccacia was cold and a little hard (I think on purpose) so I didn't really care for it, but I kept eating it because the balsamic was so yummy.

They actually had two desserts that sounded really yummy, a strawberry tart and a butterscotch chocolate tart (I think that's what he said), but I was so full from the salad and pork that I decided to pass on dessert and go walk around a bit instead.

Well that was the highlights from today. I actually do have pictures of the food this time, so I'll eventually get those posted as well. I hope everyone had a safe 4th of July! More stories to come...

Lola in Seattle, WA

Yup, looks like I'm back to being the roaming consultant with a trip pretty much every month this year through August. This month takes me to Seattle, and wow I can't believe it's been like two years since the last time I was here! The freeway exiting the airport has really changed a lot and there is so much construction going on all over the place, the city really feels quite different.

The great thing about this trip is that I have an old college friend here so it's always nice coming to Seattle because we get to catch up and wile away the night "talking story" (pidgin for spending time talking about old times and random events/people). Plus I always stay with her when I'm here, so it's a very comfortable trip for me having a familiar face to hang out with and familiar room/house to stay in.

Tonight we got to have dinner at Lola (www.tomdouglas.com/restaurants/lola), a Tom Douglas restaurant, in downtown Seattle. Finding parking was a bit of a challenge since there was lot of street work being done so a lot of the normal street parking wasn't available, but after going around a couple of times, we managed to find a parking only a couple of blocks away.

I don't think there's ever been a restaurant that I've said was a MUST EAT if you visit a city, but Lola is definitely going to be the one that makes me start this list for Seattle. Everything we had was outstanding--and as many of you know, I'm a very hard eater to totally please.

Michelle (my college bud), her husband Ray, and I pretty much shared the entire meal. We started off with the Lola Sampler ($21): prawn kebabs (3 medium sized ones), marinated olives (a handfull), deep fried chick peas, dolmades (2 cut in halves), tzatziki, red pepper spread, in-house made pita. Dolmades are definitely one of my favorite Greek appetizers and these dolmades were really good--nicely balanced (not sour, but enough lemon that you could taste it), the rice wasn't over-cooked, and this one also had pine nuts in it, which added a nice airy crunch that was a nice textural touch.

The prawn kebabs weren't anything special, but the deep fried chick peas were surprisingly yummy (very similiar in taste to roasted soy nuts) for something so simple. Both spreads had a slight bite (in a good way) to them, but the pita bread was a little heavy to me, but still very good and lightly toasted was a nice compliment to both the tzatziki and the red pepper spread. We asked for more pita to be able to finish all of the spreads--a half order of pita was $1.75.

Michelle and Ray ordered the "I Heart Lamb" family style dinner ($30 per person) which had lamb served four different ways.

The first was the leg, which was served carpaccio style with olives, mint, and graviera cheese. This was actually the only dish that I wasn't impressed by: the carpaccio was extremely thin, so thin that we couldn't actually taste the lamb, especially when it was competing with the marinated olives, mint, and graviera cheese--all very strong flavorful tastes.

The second dish was lamb shoulder, served as Turkish kofte (meatballs), covered with toasted pine nuts, yogurt, aleppo, and accented with slivers of toasted pita. The meatballs were tasty with a light lamb taste (I think even non-lamb lovers could have eaten this). The richness of the lamb and sauce was contrasted with the cool taste of the yogurt and the crisp toasty pine nuts, a great medley of tastes and textures. We all agreed that this was one of our favorite dishes of the night.

Ray also added a dish from the "I REALLY heart lamb" selections ($5): lamb heart, skewered and grilled and flavored with ouzo and fennel pollen. Ray and I loved this, but Michelle wouldn't touch it. It was definitely the best heart I ever had. I know the thought of organ meat turns a lot of people off (Michelle included), but the way this was prepared, you wouldn't have even known it was heart. It had a nice texture, not too chewy, without any of the "organ taste". The fennel pollen and ouzo was surprising delicious and not overwhelming (and I don't even like fennel or licorace). At first I had only took a couple of pieces, but it was so good, I ended up taking an entire skewer!

For our entrees, Michelle and Ray had the lamb shank, which was stewed with a whole artichoke, and baby carrots. It was served with fried (not deep) dill garlic smashed potatoes (think small half potatoes scored and crushed slightly) and Swiss Chard--I'm not sure how this was prepared but it was really really tasty and soft. I was expecting something along the lines of the sides of bok choy that every other chef seems to be serving, but the Swiss chard was really soft (but not soggy) and very flavorful (I couldn't place the flavor).

I had the coffee braised young goat tagine (stew) that was cooked with ouzo, fennel, cocoa nib, and dates. Our server described the dish as half way between pot roast and lamb shank, but once I tasted it, I would instead describe it as a very rich tasting braised short rib. It was very tender, and while I could tell it wasn't beef, there wasn't a strong gamey taste or anything else that would have told me that it wasn't beef. The dates made the stew gravy nicely sweet, and at the same time it was very rich from the goat, by the time I finished with it I was so satisfied, I didn't even want dessert.

The last lamb dish in Michelle and Ray's "I Heart Lamb" coursing was "Milk": a manouri rhubarb phyllo pie, served with three different sauces: rhubarb, yogurt, and tangerine marmalade. The pie filling was also pretty rich--I kind of assume that the "milk" means that part of the filling was lamb's milk cheese (there was some white stuff that tasted somewhat like goat cheese) which was contrasted with the tanginess of the rhubarb. The yogurt and marmalade sauces weren't anything special, and Ray and I both thought the rhubarb sauce matched the pie the best. Lastly, the pastry chef is probably going to hate me for saying this, but when the pie was served it looked like a McDonald's apple pie and the crust actually tasted like the McDonald's pie crust to me too. That isn't necessarily a bad thing in my book, but Michelle and I both thought it was an appropriate analogy to describe the appearance and taste of the crust. I defnitely think this dessert would have been better served as small bite size mini-pies that you could just take the pie and dip it in the sauce and eat.

By this time, we were all totally stuffed, but I wish I could have eaten more of the desserts since they all sounded really good. You can check out their entire menu here: www.tomdouglas.com/restaurants/lola/menu--everything sounded good and I definitely want to find time to try everything on the menu!

Well that was a lot of food and definitely a lot of writing, so I'll end it here. Hope you're all eating well too!

4th Avenue Street Fair - Tuscon, AZ

Before I forget, I thought I better mention the great artists' street fair that we walked through in Tucson, AZ. Apparently this is a regular fair occurring in March and December sponsored by the 4th Avenue Merchants Association. You can find the fair schedule here.

I was very impressed by the creativity and variety of vendors at the fair. Some of the ones that stood out for me (and that I was able to get business cards for their Web sites) were:

Woodeye Studios @ http://www.woodeye-glassware.com/
This guy had some really awesome glassware I particularly like his "flaming" shot glasses, which used some vibrant colors combined with etching. He has a variety of designs that are carried through to all different types of glassware and you can custom order them through his Web site.

Kevin Eslinger @ http://www.kevineslinger.com/
Like life with a little dark humor? I loved this guy's portraits. While I wouldn't necessarily hang this type of art in my house, they are definitely worth a good laugh and creative. My favorites were a set consisting of a Japanese Geisha and a Samurai. He has a picture of the Geisha on his flickr site.

Artward Bound @ http://coolwallclocks.com/
Like the URL says, very cool wall clocks--modern, fun, and full of visual appeal. If I could have carried them home easily I definitely would have bought a couple.

Duly Mitchell - Crystalline Porcelain @ http://www.dulyaz.com/
Beautiful pottery "glazed" using willemite crystals that generate bright, vibrant colors that were a wonder to the eye. Check out the images on his Web site, but they really don't communicate the same feeling of life and brilliance that seeing them in-person in the sunshine provided at the fair.

A Taste of Eden @ http://www.atasteofeden.com/
And of course you know I had to find some good food there, and the one actually ended up buying to bring home was from A Taste of Eden. They have a variety of bakery goods and related items (e.g. jams) on their Web site, but it was their White Chocolate Raspberry Bread that I got to taste that sold me on their products. It was moist and not overly sweet, and according to the directions, I could make it by just adding some eggs, vegetable oil, and water to their pre-packaged mix. Definitely much better stuff than the boxed stuff they sell in the supermarket. You can order their mixes online, or even order the already baked breads, delivered fresh to your door!

And many many more...
There were actually quite a bit more vendors that I was very impressed with. I guess it's actually a good thing that I live in Hawaii, otherwise I probably would have spent a lot of money at the fair! LOL

Phoenix/Tucson Hotels

Just wanted to get these out there since I had time to upload and caption the pics. I stayed at four different hotels on this trip:

1. Arizona Grand Resort (http://www.arizonagrandresort.com)
It was definitely grand in that it was big, but definitely not grand in service or dining. Highlight of the resort was probably the "water park" with a very tall slide. Dining all around was just average, as was the room (ok it was a very nice average). :-P The gym thought was AWESOME and this was definitely grand. Big room of machines (weights and cardio), separate yoga studio, separate free weights room, several separate racquet ball courts, and not to mention a large outdoor pool. See my pictures of the Arizona Grand Resort on Picasa, shucks, now that I think about it I should have taken pictures of the gym!

2. Four Points by Sheraton Phoenix North (Go to hotel's Web site)
I chose this primarily because its Web site said it was located near a mall. The mall was in walking distance and there was a variety of restaurants all around. The room itself was pretty old, but clean and comfortable. Bonus was that the room came with a free breakfast buffet, which turned out to be pretty decent food (even if not much variety). See my pictures of the Four Points by Sheraton Phoenix North on Picasa.

3. Four Points by Sheraton Tuscon University Plaza (go to hotel's Web site)
This was definitely conveniently located. It was close to the University, but also to 4th Avenue, where I definitely would be hanging out if I came to this city more often. The room wasn't the nicest, but it was clean and comfortable. The pool here was pretty good, gym was weak but passable. Sorry forgot to take pictures of this one, but it really wasn't much to see, very old property.

4. Aloft Tempe (go to hotel's Web site)
I don't normally like modern-ish design, but this one was really well done and still felt warm and pleasant even though it was very modern. I actually hung out in the lobby to do one of my trip updates, and if I had more time, I probably would have hung out by the pool. Gym was very nice, not super extensive but enough to get my workout done. See my pictures of the Aloft Tempe on Picasa.

Read more of the trip updates for details on the hotels...enjoy!