6ix Park Grill, located in the Hyatt Regency Irvine,  is celebrating its sixth year in business with a “6ix Birthday Mixer” party.

6ix Park Grill invites diners and revelers to join in the birthday bash, which will feature a dessert gallery of tasty treats paired with one glass of complimentary Foley Chardonnay or exclusive Goodnight Cabernet Sauvignon. The all-night Happy Hour will consist of $5 wine, $6 appetizers, $6 custom signature cocktails including a red velvet cake concoction created for the occasion, and several birthday surprises with drawings and prizes. The birthday festivities will be held on Friday, August 20, 2010 beginning at 6pm.

In addition to the birthday mixer, 6ix Park Grill will celebrate its birthday the entire month of August. Those who dine at the restaurant for lunch or dinner and say to their server, “We hear you’re turning six and want to celebrate with you,” will receive a complimentary piece of cake.

Attendees of the event will also enjoy complimentary valet parking and a lushly landscaped outdoor patio equipped with a fire pit to enjoy Southern California’s beautiful climate.

All I have to say about this event is: Red Velvet Cake cocktail concoction? Say what? I wish I was going just to try  that! Hope someone can take advantage of this and visit!

Manny’s TJ Tacos used to be a little taco cart hanging out in Normal Heights, catering to the bar crowd. I first read about this former taco cart on Dennis’s blog and I thought… man, those look mighty tasty! After a pub night at the Ould Sod last week, we took our out-of-town friend, Chris, for the ultimate San Diego experience: eating tasty tacos at 1AM after a night of drinking.

It worked out quite well for us that Manny’s TJ Tacos was set up at the Corner Liquor Store, right next door to the Ould Sod. We didn’t have to go far to get our taco fix. As I said, they used to be a cart but they made a deal with the liquor store to set up shop indoors. You place your order with the gentleman at the window who relays your order to the cooks inside and within minutes you have some tasty looking tacos in your hands.

There’s a whole array of toppings and condiments for you to choose from to top off your tacos (they come plain with nothing on them).

The tacos are $1.25 a piece. They also have burritos for $4.75 a piece and TJ style (aka bacon wrapped) hot dogs for $3.50 each.

I ended up eating three of these little taco gems. Above we have a Carne Asada and a Carnitas taco. I topped both off with the guacamole looking sauce, onions and cilantro. The carne asada was excellent – and stuffed to the brim. They don’t skimp on the meat! It had a nice crispy, almost charred outside – very flavorful. The carnitas was tender and rich and almost melted in my mouth. I opted for another carne asada after I finished these two off. They were so good. An excellent after midnight snack!

Manny’s TJ Taco’s set up shop Wednesday through Saturday nights after 8PM 7PM (according to Yelp) and they aren’t there the last Wednesday of the month. We were told they have another place set up in Chula Vista somewhere (forgot where) and that they’re working on getting another mobile truck again for a third location. Sweet!

Manny’s TJ Tacos
3350 Adams Ave
(between Felton St & 34th St)
San Diego, CA 92116

I read about the Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop awhile ago but we never went. It wasn’t until we saw the taco shop on the San Diego episode of Man v. Food that we decided we should go. Jake and I loved the idea of the Champion’s Booth and wanted to take our out-of-town friend, Chris, out for a real treat. Jake made a reservation for the Champion’s Booth and off we went to taste the glory that is Lucha Libre.

Lucha Libre Taco Shop is themed around Mexican Wrestling (if you couldn’t tell from the name). There are luchadores stuff all over the place – wrestling masks on the walls, painting of famous people in masks in the bathroom and other fun items. The place just has a really rockin’ vibe – and a line out the door to boot. You know it’s good when the line is always way out the door! Jake and I wanted to go visit before Chris got here but when we saw the line snaking around the building we figured we could wait.

When we arrived at Lucha Libre and told the folks at the register we had a registration, we noticed there was already someone in the Champion’s Booth. After a few minutes of waiting, we were told there was no record of our reservation and the people currently in the booth hadn’t gotten their food yet so no booth for us. They accommodated us though by still serving us and giving us the royal treatment. We were called “The #1 Contenders” and our server told us we should give the people in the booth angry stares. They didn’t have to serve us or accommodate us, they could have just said, “Oh well, try again next time.” But they were really cool about it and made our experience really awesome.

The first thing our server did was bring us some chips and one of every kind of salsa they have. Mind you, there’s a salsa bar there and we could have gotten these ourselves, but since we were the #1 Contenders, he brought them to us, explained all of the sauces and their heat factors to us. You can click the photo up there for a close up if the text is hard to read. I personally really like the Cilantro based sauce – it was creamy and fresh. I also like the peach salsa for it’s sweetness and the dragon sauce for a little heat. The dragon was the hottest and the Peach was the mildest. I didn’t think any of them were really spicy though.

One thing I spotted on the menu so long ago was the TJ Hot Dog ($1.50) which I knew I wanted to try. It’s a bacon wrapped hot dog with all the fixings – grilled peppers, onions, mustard, ketchup, and mayo. It was really tasty – I even didn’t mind the ketchup (probably because I couldn’t really taste it, the mustard smacked it down). It might seem like too much stuff, but the combination of it all is quite good. A nice starter!

I got the Surf n’ Turf Taco ($3.49) as my main taco item for dinner. When Adam from Man v. Food went here, he had the Surf n’ Turf Burrito – and I knew there was no way in hell I would be able to eat that much food. I settled for the smaller version of that. It’s got carne asada, grilled shrimp, sliced avocados and a special chipolte sauce all over it, on corn tortillas. Really, really tasty. I loved the shrimp on there – good sized pieces you could really taste. The carne asada was cooked well and seasoned well – a really excellent taco! The sauce isn’t too spicy or anything and gives the taco a unique flavor. I liked it better than regular old tomato salsa.

We also got a couple of orders of the Champion Fries ($6.99) – you can also get these as nachos instead. We got it with the Adobada – a marinated pork. Our server dude told us that the Adobada is one of his favorites and we trusted his good judgement – and how good it was! The pork was really tender and really flavorful – I haven’t had anything like this anywhere else – really excellent stuff! My only complaint was that the fries were kind of soggy and I don’t like soggy stuff, so I’d probably rather have this with chips instead of fries, but that’s just me. It came with a bunch of sour cream and a good amount of gucamole. Really fresh and delicious. Yum, yum, yum!

After we were done with our meal, our server asked us if we wanted to get photos taken in the Champion’s Booth and we of course said yes. He brought out a box and said, “You guys want to wear masks, too?” Uhhh, yeah, totally!

And thus ended an awesome meal at the really delicious Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop. The end.

Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop
1810 W Washington St
(between Andrews St & India St)
San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 296-8226

Hours:

Mon-Thu, Sun 11 am – 11 pm
Fri-Sat 11 am – 2:30 am

The fine folks at Garofalo Pasta saw fit to send me another bag of pasta to try out. I used my bag of pasta to create a lovely 5 cheese pasta bake.

Yeah, it’s totally a picture of an empty bag. I forgot to photograph it before I dropped the pasta in the water. D’oh!

In any case, I kept this pretty simple. I did a tomato-cream sauce and added mozzarella, ricotta, and a 3 cheese blend of cheese shavings (Parmesan, Romano and Asiago) giving us 5 cheeses. I also added hot Italian sausage, garlic and fresh basil leaves to the mixture.

I got my cheese from Trader Joe’s (minus the ricotta) – they have a 16oz fresh mozzarella log for about $5.29 which is really tasty. The 3 cheese blend is also less than $3 bucks (I think it’s like $2.29) and is also really fresh and tasty. I get the hot Italian sausage because I like that extra kick of flavor (and it’s never really that hot anyway).

I usually make my own sauce from scratch, but I was feeling lazy this day. I pretty much just put some olive oil in a pot, added the garlic, sausage and some leftover ground beef we had from another night and cooked those all together. Then I put in a can of Hunt’s Garlic & Basil tomato sauce and about a half a cup of half and half (until the sauce blushed to a pinkish color).

I put this together almost like I would a lasagna – except that I had par-boiled Garofalo penne instead of lasagna noodles. Easier to handle anyway.

After I finished layering that ricotta, I topped it off with the rest of the pasta and dumped the rest of my cheese shavings all over the top. Then this went off into the oven for about 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. For the last few minutes I turned the broiler on to make the top a little bubbly.

All done! The cheeses melted really nicely around the pasta and the sauce clung pretty well to the pasta. It was oogey googey and cheesey delicious. Jake and son totally loved it and helped themselves to seconds; actually, I did, too. It was pretty darn tasty. Jake liked it so much he suggested I make it again for our friend, Chris, who came into town for a visit. We had this meal twice within the span of a few days. Booyah.

5 Cheese Pasta Bake

Ingredients:

Garofalo Penne Pasta (or other similar tube shaped pasta)
Mozzarella cheese, cut into cubes
Ricotta cheese
3 cheese blend (Parmesan, Romano, Asiago)
Fresh basil leaves
Few cloves of garlic, chopped
Can of Hunt’s Garlic & Basil tomato sauce
1/2 to 1 cup of half & half
Hot Italian sausage links
Ground beef

Add ingredients and measurements to your liking! Assemble like a lasagna! Be sure to undercook the pasta since it’ll be going into the oven for a bit. I took the pasta out of the water after about 9 minutes (it’s supposed to cook for 11 minutes).

Basic Steps:

Boil pasta – be sure to take it out early (see notes above). Cook sausage, beef and garlic together until sausage is almost all of the way cooked. It can finish off in the oven. Add half & half until sauce it blushed a nice pink color (1/2 to 1 cup, use to your liking). Also add your fresh chopped basil in and then add pasta to sauce pasta and stir together. Add mozzarella cubes to pasta & sauce. Put about half of the mixture into a baking pan. Top with ricotta cheese and half of the 3 cheese blend mixture. Top off with the remainder of the pasta and the rest of the cheese. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden and bubbly.

The OC Foodie Fest is rolling into Anaheim, CA in late August, featuring and bringing together 50 gourmet food trucks into one location so you can chow down and try out some yummy treats from various gourmet food trucks from around Southern California. It will also be featuring local entertainment, offering support for local charities, and of course, lots of food!

I haven’t really visited any gourmet food trucks myself. I spotted a sweets/desserts one when I was visiting Alyssa awhile ago and sadly we had already eaten and were stuffed, otherwise we would have visited. I know there are a few down in San Diego, but I’ve never seen any (though I have read about them). I’m totally excited about this OC Foodie Fest since it seems so unique and will be offering a pretty good variety of different foods from the SoCa gourmet food trucks. I’m not 100% sure I am going yet but I’m going to make the effort to go!

Click on the image above to view this larger and get a coupon if you plan on heading out to the OC Foodie Fest!