foodies: a southern california food blog

I have been to Mandarin Chinese Restaurant quite a few times in the last two years. My boyfriend took me here when we first started dating and I thought the food was excellent. I’ve finally gathered a few photos together to share my experiences here.

One thing we always order is the Mandarin Chicken. It’s battered chicken in a sweet mandarin flavored sauce with broccoli all around. I believe this normally comes as a spicy dish, but we get it mild so that I can eat some of it as well. The sauce isn’t too overpowering or sickly sweet – it’s got a nice balance of sweetness with spices that rounds out the crispness of the chicken.

I don’t remember what this one is called exactly, I think it’s like the “House Special Noodles” – it’s lo mein noodles with chicken, beef, and shrimp. Luckily, my boyfriend doesn’t like shrimp, so I get to have all of the big, juicy shrimp pieces. It’s got good flavor and lots of meaty parts. There isn’t a lot of “filler vegetables” and you get a lot of it – plenty for leftovers to take home.

This is a take-out photo of their Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings – obviously I couldn’t wait to eat them, so there are some chicken bones in the photos. The Salt and Pepper Wings are one of my favorite items here – when they’re hot, they’re to die for. They’ve got garlic, green onions and red pepper slathered all over them making them smell and taste delicious. I will even eat these if they are room temperature, but I prefer them piping hot.

The other thing I love here are the egg rolls. They’re really crispy, have a good balance of meat and vegetables (not a lot of filler vegetables). A lot of Chinese take out places seem to try to pass off their egg rolls with only filler vegetables, but Mandarin puts meat in theirs – yay!

We have of course been here when the food wasn’t great, but just passable, but more often than not the food is excellent. It’s pretty much more “Americanized Chinese” but that doesn’t bother me one little bit, as long as it’s tasty.

Mandarin Chinese Restaurant
945-A Otay Lakes Road
Chula Vista, CA 91913
(619) 656-8080

When it’s that time of year for the San Diego County Fair, you know it’s time for you to go and pig out. You eat things you wouldn’t normally eat. You see foods that you see no where else. You think about trying the foods and wonder if you can really stomach it or not. Here’s some of the things I ate at the fair this year. If Alyssa had gone with me, I bet she would have tried some of the things I faltered on (like the chocolate covered bacon and the oatmeal cookie chicken sandwich – WTF).

Roxy Restaurant is usually one of the first places I hit at the fair. I can’t pass up the Garlic Battered Mushrooms with Ranch sauce… if you’re a mushroom lover like me, this are divine. I didn’t even realize until this year that Roxy Restaurant is in San Diego County – in Encinitas even! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS? Sorry for the shouting, but my surprise was truly great in knowing that I could have been having garlic battered mushrooms all year long! Trust me when I say you’ll see a review of the restaurant on this blog some time this year!

Oh, looking at this photo makes me long for another mushroom. I did notice that compared to my photo from last year, they put one less mushroom on the stick. Arrrgh. I will console myself with the knowledge that I don’t have to wait until next June to get these again.

Next up! Potatoes. There are so many ways to have a potato at the fair – fried, Australian battered, chips, covered in stuff, or baked with other kinds of stuff! I must also mention that the day we went to the fair was a Tuesday. Tuesdays you can get a $2 taste of items at every food booth in the fair. I got the $2 baked potato from the California Pita Co., which was 1/3 of a baked potato with butter and chives.

Uh, I’m pretty sure I could not have eaten a full sized potato if this was 1/3. It was so good, I ate every buttery bit, including the skin. This filled me up though and I started wondering how much more I could eat. Not everyone has a bottomless stomach like our dear friend, Alyssa.

Chicken Charlie’s is where you can get some of the crazy food. Like the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich (which Alyssa has had), Deep Fried Avocados, Deep Fried Frog Legs, Deep Fried Smores, the Oatmeal Cookie Chicken Sandwich (the Kookie Cookie) and the Zucchini Weeni. Let’s guess what I got from here!

If you guessed Zucchini Weeni then you win an imaginary prize! Congrats! This is a hot dog stuffed inside of a zucchini, which is then battered and deep fried. It was pretty good, the only lame part was that it fell apart before I finished it. Also, there was no mustard or anything besides ketchup available. I don’t like ketchup! Damn it. Oh well. Still tasty.

At this point I was starting to wind down. Not too much room left in the stomach and I felt I was getting close to being borderline sick so I didn’t want to eat too many more fried things. Onto dessert it was at this point!

Mmm, cinnamon rolls.

I adore cinnamon. I would marry it if I could. This cinnamon roll was packed with lots and lots of cinnamon. I only wish there was more frosting. The cinnamon roll seemed to absorb the frosting and by the time we finished it, there was no frosting left, just little cinnamon bites.

My last item of the day? I can’t ever go without this, even though the last few years it wasn’t quite up to par. But my last item of the day was a Date Shake.

I’m very happy to report that this year’s Date Shake is much, much improved. With date bits in every sip, I was chewing through my shake and enjoying the milkshakey goodness. The past few years the Date Shake was seriously lacking in dates, but they have more than made up for it this year. So happy!

Are you planning on visiting the San Diego County Fair this year? Don’t forget that you can get tickets at Albertson’s for $11. Or, you can do like I did and enter a One Day Contest for free admission to the fair. Go and pig out and enjoy summer at the fair.

I saw this over at mother may i? this morning, and thought I’d post it here, too. Pinkberry is introducing new flavors to their lineup today. From 5-9PM you can visit Pinkberry and get a free small yogurt in one of the new flavors. New flavors are: coconut and passionfruit.

I have never been to Pinkberry myself, so I have nothing to say on the topic except that I love free things. Woo! Check it out here to find a Pinkberry near you.

My Del Mar Fair San Diego County Fair post will be two parts – one about my foray into the food contest world and one about the delicious things I ate. Today’s post will be about contests!

I have never entered a food contest before. I thought briefly about entering something for the San Diego Cake Club’s show but I don’t think my skills are quite up to par for that (looking at past entries is intimidating!). While looking at the website for the County Fair this year, I started looking at the Home & Hobby Contests. If you enter one of the One Day Contests, you get free admission to the fair, and you could win a prize! They had a “Cupcakes & Muffins” contest that sounded like something I wanted to enter with.

My entry? Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream. I found this recipe at Patent & the Pantry and reworked it a little to my liking. I did a test run the week before to try my hand at piping techniques:

["Stars"]

["Swirls"]

[Innards of the cupcake - see the specks of tea?]

I ended up going with the “Stars” piping technique and using a combination of two colors, orange and yellow, for the top. The end result:

I thought they turned out rather pretty, myself. I convinced my friend, Julia, to also enter. She made “Sean’s Cherry Chocolate Surprise” cupcakes – chocolate cupcakes with bits of maraschino cherries and chocolate inside. They looked totally cute, but sorry, I don’t have a photo of them!

We just made it in time to get through the gate at 12:30P to enter our cupcakes. We were also the last ones to get there, but luckily we got there in time to submit our entries.

[Chocolate Cupcakes]

There were 4 classes to compete in: Dessert Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes, Savory Muffins and Sweet Muffins. Sweet Muffins seemed to be the largest class and the Savory Muffins were the smallest. All in all, there were 65 entries. They awarded ribbons through 5th place for each category.

[Dessert Cupcakes - mine are the ones in the pink box]

Neither of us won a ribbon. The winner of my category (dessert cupcakes) was also the winner overall of the “Best in Show” – it’s the one above with the pineapple and coconuts on a tray with little umbrellas in each cupcake. I honestly didn’t even think too much about presentation – and it wasn’t much of a surprise that the most elaborate looking cupcakes won overall. But it was a learning experience to see all of the entries and it was totally fun to enter!

Here’s my recipe for my cupcakes:

Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes (makes 12 cupcakes)

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 teabags Earl Grey tea (I used Stash brand tea) – about 1 tablespoon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat the butter until soft. Add sugar to butter until it is light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, making sure it’s thoroughly combined before adding the next egg. Sift together the dry ingredients in another bowl, including the tea. Combine buttermilk and vanilla in a measuring cup. Beat in half of the dry mixture with the wet, then add the buttermilk/vanilla and the rest of the dry mixture, stirring it all until just combined. Line the cupcake pan with 12 cups and fill them about two-thirds full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cool thoroughly before frosting.

Lemon Buttercream

• 1/4 cup salted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 3 1/2 – 4 cups powdered sugar
• zest of one lemon
• 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice

Place butters and shortening together in a large mixing bowl and beat until combined. Add one cup of sugar at a time, mixing well after each cup. I like it when it’s at 3 1/2 cups of sugar – but if you want it a bit sweeter, add 4 cups (or one 1lb. box of powdered sugar). Add lemon zest and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Mix. Add until it’s the right consistency for you – I like it at about 2 1/2 tablespoons. This makes more than enough to frost 12 cupcakes – you will have leftovers. It’s probably enough to frost 24 if you double the recipe above. Store at room temperature.

Ciao Bella is blessing us with free gelato and sorbet this summer. They have a little Discover-Savor-Share 2009 sampling tour which is aimed at handing out one million free samples of their gelatos and sorbets across the country. Who are we to say no to free stuff?

The Ciao Bella truck will be touring around San Diego until June 30th. You can visit the Ciao Bella truck for your free 3.5 ounce serving. The trucks will be serving up their most popular gelato and sorbet flavors including: Blood Orange sorbet, Lemon sorbet, Tahitian Vanilla gelato and Chocolate Hazelnut gelato.

I visited the truck in Mira Mesa today (it was from 11A-2P) and got a sample of the Chocolate and Hazelnut gelato. It came in a cute little single serving with a spoon attached underneath the lid. The gelato was smooth and creamy and little bits of hazelnut throughout the chocolate. My only complaint is that there should have been more hazelnuts! Otherwise, this was a very good treat for a nice summer day. Included with my sample was a coupon for $1 off two pints of gelato.

Want to get your free sample of gelato or sorbet? Here’s where they will be giving out free samples:

They’ll also be heading up to the LA area soon, some of their listings for that area are:

Visit the Ciao Bella website for more information about their one million free samples tour and to keep tabs on where they’ll be heading next this summer.

Bud’s Louisiana Cafe is a Cajun/Creole restaurant nestled into a little spot in Tierrasanta. From the outside it looks like a hole in the wall joint, but stepping inside you notice how nice the restaurant is on the inside. Well furnished and cozy with the kitchen in plain view and Cajun music playing softly in the background, you feel right at home once you step inside. I received a friendly greeting and was allowed to choose my own seat in the small cafe. I picked a little table by the window while I read my latest book and waited for my food to arrive.

I ordered a cup of the Seafood Gumbo ($4.95) to start. The gumbo at Bud’s features shrimp, crab, crawfish, Andouille pork sausage, and okra, topped off with some rice. The Andouille sausage is peeking up right at me in the photo above so I knew that first bite would be delicious – and it was. I didn’t find too many big pieces of “stuff” except for another piece of shrimp and hints at other seafood, but I was all right with that. It was a small cup but enough to get me started. It was spicy, but not so spicy  that it wasn’t edible to me. Me, I tend to like things on the milder side but I’ve found a small appreciation for a little spice in my life, and this gumbo hit the mark. Well flavored and rich and I also dropped a whole bunch of it all over my front shirt. Ahh, wonderful.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to order for lunch. Shrimp or catfish? Well, shrimp won the day yet again. I wished there was some sort of combo that let you get catfish and a few pieces of shrimp, but it was not to be. I was a little amused that the Po Boy Shrimp ($8.95) sandwich cost the same as the Fried Shrimp Plate ($8.95) I got, since traditionally a Po Boy is supposed to be cheaper… but whatever works.

The shrimp is coated in a cornmeal batter which I loved – it wasn’t too thick and you still got to really taste the shrimp. Love, love, love. I also got red beans and rice (which from the photo looks a lot like my gumbo, but it’s not!) – I’m not a bean lover but I liked the red beans and rice combo. I only ate about half of it though, since I just simply don’t love beans. But they were good. It also came with a small Caesar salad which I gobbled right up, with thin slices of Parmesan cheese on top, a little crawfish peeking at me from the side. The crawfish was a little hard to eat – as most shellfish seems to be – but the meat I got out of the little tail was divine. If you’re into cracking and fighting to eat your food, they have boiled crawfish for you to try and eat.

Cute little place – I will definitely want to take a few of my friends here who like seafood and cajun food. It’s nice finding little places around town to go to!

Bud’s Louisiana Cafe
10425 Tierrasanta Blvd, #105
(near the Round Table Pizza)
San Diego, CA 92124
858-573-BUDS (858-573-2837)

Lunch
Tuesday through Saturday
11:00 – 2:30

Dinner
Tuesday – Thursday
4:30 – 8:30

Friday & Saturday
4:30 – 9:00

Congrats to our five winners of the spicy chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-A! The winners, chosen by random numbers from Random.org, are:

#7:
derrol – I live in Talmadge and I love Blue Cheese!!!

#17:
Julie – I live in El Monte (San Gabriel Valley, CA)
Honey Roasted BBQ is my favorite!

Our Chick-fil-A contest ends tonight at midnight PST. If you want to sink your teeth into a free spicy chicken sandwich, then head over to our Chick-fil-A post and make a comment! Good luck!

I live in San Diego and yet there are certain parts of town that I don’t visit very often and Little Italy is one of them. Going during the week isn’t so bad, parking is easier and it’s not as crowded, which makes it more comfortable for me to go. If I can’t easily park somewhere, then I don’t want to go. I’m weird like that.

On this visit my friend Laura and I went to Zagarella Italian Restaurant. They were slightly busy for a Wednesday evening but we didn’t wait long for a table. We opted to sit outside on the patio. It was a little chilly with our June Gloom weather, but not too bad. We had heat lamps to keep us company (which we had to ask to have them turn it down because it got too warm) and it was nearing sunset and still a bit light outside. I thought the opportunity to sit outdoors was great since it’s probably hard to get a seat out there on the weekends.

One of the first things we were given was a basket of bread with olives. I don’t like olives so I didn’t touch those – but the bread was awesome! It was grilled garlic Italian bread, with that nice little charry taste on it from the grill. This made me want to grill my own bread in this manner, which I will do some time in the future. A nice twist on a classic.

My friend and I also ordered the same thing – Veal Parmesan (it’s listed on the menu as Vitello in Bella Vista – $17.95) – for dinner. We had a buy one get one free (and buy 2 drinks) coupon and ordering the same thing helped us get our money’s worth, so to speak. I was thinking of getting Chicken Parmesan but changed to the Veal when my friend said she was thinking of getting that. It came with a side of pasta marinara and some steamed veggies (cauliflower and zucchini). The veal was tender and flavorful and cooked just right. The steamed veggies were also good eaten with bites of my pasta. I ate every little bit, and felt way too full afterward. Luckily we went for a little walk which helped us both digest a bit before calling it a night. Yum!

Zagarella Italian Restaurant
1655 India Street
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 236-8764