Elegant Buffet

Elegant buffet? Huh? That can't exist. Right? Well, turns out it's possible, in Las Vegas of all places.

Buffets have been a part of Vegas history from its initial days. People who went to Vegas didn't care what they ate as long as it was enough to get them through a night of gambling. Thankfully, all of this has changed. Together with the sophistication of the city, the buffet has been revamped. A perfect example of this is the opulence of the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar's Palace.

How many times have you had to wait for 2 hours to get into a buffet? Well, you better be prepared to do that at peak times at Bacchanal. But once you get in, you forget about the wait. The chic modern decor, the subdues lighting, the delicious food scents wafting through the air - they all make you want to dig into some food. But hey, slow down! [Record scratch noise.] You need to wait in another line for seafood! Yes, that's right. That's why my boyfriend (Rusty) and I started with the Asian section that was less busy and got some sushi and dumplings. There was nothing too special about the sushi, but it did fill our starving stomachs a little bit. Then we were ready for the seafood!

Rusty and I were at Bacchanal at a particularly busy time, so the seafood line was winding all the way to the back of the buffet, past most of the other sections. While waiting, we were often tempted with Mexican (Rusty said the tacos were delicious), carved meats, breads, deep-fried baskets, etc. Well, we made it to the seafood without too much damage to our hunger, so we loaded up on seafood. There were all types of clams, mussels, shrimp, fish, steamed and cold oysters and crabs, ceviches, shooters, etc! And yes, we got a little of everything :) The appearance was often deceiving, and the things I thought I would love were a little bland. Overall, the food was liking spice, but I do tend to like more spice than the general population. Still, there was a lot of amazing food to make up for the blander one.

The next stop was the "potatoes and meat" section. I call it that because it had many types of meat and all the typical sides they would go with. Rusty and I tried the lamb chop, ribs and chicken wings. The sides we had were mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, corn on the cob, and cornbread. I absolutely loved the chicken wings! They were spicy and herby (because of added cilantro). The cornbread was also really good. The rib and lamb chop were cooked perfectly, but were a little on the bland side again. The mashed potatoes were really really creamy :) However, the mac and cheese had a weird, grainy texture despite having a ton of cheese in it. I don't like buttery corn on a cob, but I think other people would have enjoyed it. Oh, we also got wagyu beef sliders. They were sooo moist and well-flavored! I wish I wasn't that stuffed because I wanted to eat several of them.

Finally, even though we could barely walk, we had to try the dessert. There must have been about 100 options just on the dessert display. There were soo many things that we wanted to try! We had to settle for a key lime tart, pecan tart, tiramisu, red velvet cheesecake, chocolate peanut butter cupcake, chocolate creme brulee, and vanilla and espresso ice cream. I LOVED the key lime tart. It was tart and just enough sweet :) Also loved both types of ice cream, especially the vanilla one. The vanilla flavor was so rich, but not overwhelming. All the other desserts were also good, but not as amazing. And it says a lot if I enjoyed them after all the savory food before that ;)

There were definitely hits and misses at the buffet, but the overall experience was very good. Most of the time I forgot it was a buffet. Vegas is going in the right direction with its food scene. Another development are the many elegant restaurants, many of them run by celebrity or award-winning chefs. But those will have to wait until my next visit to Vegas :)

Wolfgang Puck Cafe

Wolfgang Puck. I always twist my tongue when I try to say his name, but I've wanted to eat in one of his restaurants for a long time. This opportunity finally came up to us when my family and I went to Downtown Disney during our annual Christmas vacation. To keep it on the cheap side, we had lunch at the cafe.

After several large meals around Christmas, I kept my lunch light with the Big Kahuna sushi. My sister (Pumpkin) had the same idea with a Greek Shrimp salad. My mother ordered the Chicken Aioli sandwich, and my dad got Chicken tenders.

My sushi was really great, with fresh seafood and a nice spicy sauce on top.

Pumpkin's salad looked delicious, too. The feta was moist and creamy, resembling a little Bulgarian-style feta. It was definitely not the dry crumbly thing they sell in grocery stores and call feta.






I also really liked the chicken aioli sandwich. The chicken was very tender and moist, and the aioli wasn't overpowering. The fact that the chips were sprinkled with Parmesan on top was a nice touch to transform them to something more special.





I'm not a big fan of chicken tenders, but the side Ceasar salad that my dad good looked really good. It even had bruschetta on top.


This was a satisfying lunch, but I didn't think there was anything special that could have been made by a famous chef. I sure hope the full restaurant is better than this.

Bad Dog Tacos

I love cooking, so I bring my own lunch pretty much every day. I do save a lot of money and eat nutritious meals, but I also miss out on eating at some of the good lunch spots around town. There are several places around Emory that are pretty good. And I didn't even notice that a new one had opened: Bad Dog Taqueria. As with pretty much every new place in Atlanta now, they use local ingredients and claim to prepare everything fresh. Hey, this fad is fine by me.

I went to Bad Dog with a couple of my labmates, and we started by sharing the chips and salsas. This is probably one of the best deals I've seen around. The chips are a mixture of corn tortilla chips, plantain chips, and yucca chips (I love yucca!). And to increase the variety even more, there are three different salsas: salsa fresca, plantain pineapple serrano, and fire-roasted tomato. Oh, and a generous portion of this goodness is only $4!

For lunch, I ordered the We've Got Seoul and Skinny Bitch tacos. By the way, I love restaurants with character like that. The Seoul taco had Korean BBQ pork and kimchee slaw. And the Skinny Bitch was made with grilled mahi mahi. When they arrives, I couldn't wait to dig in. The grilled flour tortillas (corn tortillas available upon request) and overflowing filling made them look very appetizing. Unfortunately, they both tasted ok, but I was expecting a bigger punch of flavor, especially from the Korean BBQ. Instead, I could feel the texture of the slaw and mayo, but not much else.

Still, I like the idea behind these tacos. The quality of the ingredients was obvious. I want to give Bad Dog tacos another chance. Maybe some of the other tacos will live up to the character/flavor that their names suggest.

San Francisco: La Boulange

When I first went to San Francisco a couple of years ago, a stumbled upon a bakery in the Cole Valley area called La Boulange. I was mesmerized by the desserts on display: croissants, macarons, quiches, tarts, breads... Then I tried the Fantastic French Toast and I knew I'd be eating at La Boulange again!

Skip to the present, and I have been to San Francisco two more times and I have eaten at La Boulange several more times. It turns out La Boulange is a local chain with stores all over the city. This past month I was staying only a block away from a location on Sutter Street in downtown. It was hard to resist its pull, so I went there several times over three weeks. The first time I had the French toast that I love so much. It's not a simple French toast! It somehow has a layer of custard on the bottom, and then the custard-soaked toast. It tastes like eating creme brulee in a cake form. How can you not love that? :) The toast itself is fluffy inside, but crispy on the outside. And it's served with fresh fruit. If I was ever on that show "Best Thing I Ever Ate," I would talk about this French toast :)

This year I decided to branch out and try some of the non-dessert things at La Boulange. They also make sandwiches using bread made in-house. I've had the hummus sandwich and the smoked salmon sandwich, both with a side of quinoa salad. Both of them were delicious. The hummus sandwich was topped with avocados and cucumbers, so overall it had a very refreshing taste. It would have been perfect for a warm summer day, but it tasted just as great on a cool fall morning :) The sprouts were too bitter for my taste, but I pushed them off the sandwich and ate them with the quinoa to cancel out the bitterness. As to the quinoa salad, it was too salty both times I had it :( Well, at least I got a good amount of fiber and protein from it...

The salmon sandwich came with cucumbers, creme fraiche and capers. The capers were well-washed and weren't too briny. I need to wash my capers when I cook with them that well, haha ;) Other than that, it was a solid sandwich with nothing too special about it, but I enjoyed every single bite.

My last time at La Boulange I ordered half of the goat cheese sandwich and a cup of French onion soup. The sandwich was very disappointing. It barely had any cheese on it. And it was toasted to the point where the bread was burned and the cheese was completely dried out. I hope this mispreparation is not the norm for this sandwich. Even the portobello and the roasted red peppers couldn't rescue the sandwich. The soup, on the other hand, saved the meal. This was actually my very first time having French onion soup, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I liked the one at La Boulange. The onions were caramelized well and sweet. And there was a crouton in the cup that nicely mopped up all the flavors.

I've had so many good experiences at La Boulange that I'm willing to overlook this last negative one. At the end I want to mention that all of the prepackaged desserts are also amazing. I've tried pretty much all types of shortbread cookies. Surprisingly, I'm not a huge fan of the chocolate ones, but love all the others. La Boulange is also known for their French-style macarons. They are always fresh and have the perfect texture. Now they even have a delicious pumpkin macaron :) They also sell so-call San Francisco-style macarons, which are single cookies of almond-hazelnut flour; these might be my favorites so far. Finally, the almond-chocolate croissants are a must-have. Honestly, I wish I could have every single meal at La Boulange, I love it that much!

San Francisco: Cafe Tiramisu

I'm in San Francisco again, for yet another extended stay. This time I'm staying right in between Union Square and Chinatown. Even though I can't afford to buy anything right now, this is a great location :) Hey, window shopping is free :) But the other reason I like this area is the many dining options. There are several restaurants on every single street for the few blocks around me. Honestly, it's quite overwhelming! I wish I could try them all...

One place that I did try is Cafe Tiramisu. It's an Italian restaurant that specializes in seafood, which combines two things I love. I went there with several people from IBM who are here for training. Some of them are staying at the same hotel as me and invited me to go with them :) So we ended up being a big group. This worked out great because the menu looked amazing and there were sooo many things I wanted to try. But being in a big group, we ordered everything family-style :)

We started by sharing the grilled calamari and the mussels in spicy chile sauce for appetizers. The mussels were pretty similar to what you can get at any good restaurant. Don't get me wrong, though, they were delicious, just nothing too special. However, I loooved the calamari. I have to admit that this was the first time I had grilled calamari; I've always had them battered and fried or poached in soups/stews. The grilling preserved their real taste and softened the texture just a little bit. Plus, they looked so pretty with their tentacles still on :) I think that was my favorite thing abut the dish...

For entrees we ordered the pumpkin and ricotta gnocchi, Dungenese crab tortellini, pappardelle with Bolognese sauce, and the oricciette with pork ragout. Again, all the dishes were delicious. All the pastas were hand-made and fresh. The tortellini contained huge chunks of crabmeat and came in a nice creamy sauce. I'm usually not a fan of Bolognese-style meat sauces, but I loved the one here. The pork ragout was also amazing. But my favorite dish were the pumpkin gnocchi. Honestly, I didn't expect to detect much pumpkin flavor, but I was very pleasantly surprised. And even better, the gnocchi were still savory and not sweet. I guess the addition of ricotta was able to cancel out the sweetness of the pumpkin. I definitely had several helpings from that plate :)

And we couldn't go to a place called Cafe Tiramisu without ordering tiramisu! It was delicious, but again similar to most other tiramisus I've had. We also got the bomboloni, Tuscan-style donuts. I can't believe I spent a whole week in Tuscany and never heard about them! They were really delicious. They were filled with cream inside and came with a chocolate sauce for dipping. They reminded me of beignets in terms of texture, of Boston Creme donuts because of the sauce, and of churros because of the chocolate sauce. Well, combine all of these goodies and you have a great finish to a great meal :)

Taste test: Flavored yogurt

As promised, I did a taste test with flavored yogurt as well. Oh, the sacrifices I have to make for this blog... And this in not fully sarcastic. I do not like purchased flavored yogurt because it tends to have too much sugar and be too sweet. I eat plain yogurt with jam, but I add just a little bit of jams I like.

So, I found a way to cheat in this flavored yogurt test :P Instead of buying the popular Chobani, I tried the flavors of Fage. The Fage 0% plain yogurt is my favorite anyway. And what's really amazing is that the "flavored" varieties come in special divided containers that keep the flavoring and the yogurt separated. This way you can mix in as much as you want. What confuses me, though, is why the container says not to mix them... Are we supposed to take a bit of jam and then a bit of yogurt with each spoonful? Anyway, I mixed them because that's how I like it :)

I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of flavors available, probably around ten in total. I picked only six of them for this taste test. I think the flavors I picked are representative of what Fage offers. And many of the flavors I didn't try are single-ingredient jams that I have in one of the combination below. In order of preference, here are the reviews:

Honey: surprisingly, this was my least favorite. After all, honey and (Greek) yogurt is such a classic combination! Well, it all depends on the quality on the honey, and the one in the Fage yogurt didn't cut it. It was so think that I couldn't mix it at all into the yogurt. At least it tasted ok.

Blueberry/acai: classic example of what I consider "too sweet." I probably added only half of the jam, but it was still sweet. Plus, there were only a few whole berries in the sugary blueberry syrup.

Cherry/pomegranate: not as sweet as the blueberry/acai, but just as syrupy. Again, I wish there was more whole fruit. Plus, it had a little bit of an artificial cherry flavor (think, cough syrup) even though Fage doesn't use any artificial ingredients. I couldn't detect any pomegranate taste.

Raspberry: the jam has the right sweetness and consistency, but no chunks of fruit. I actually like the seeds in raspberries, so I missed them. But I'm sure the majority of the people would prefer the seedless version that Fage used.

Peach: I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Peaches can be very bland if not ripe enough or too sweet in some desserts. I didn't know which one I would get. But the jam in this case was perfect. It wasn't too sweet, but with intense peach flavor and lots of peach pieces.

Strawberry/goji: Goji? What's that? According to Wikipedia, it's a type of berry common in Asia. The strawberry/goji jam did have a pronounced strawberry flavor, but also hints of something new and unique that I haven't tried before. I can't even explain what it tastes like. The reason I loved this flavor the most is because it made me want to try goji berries. Does anyone know where I can find them?

IP restaurant week pt 4: Parish

Parish is one of those restaurants that elevates comfort food to make it fancy without sacrificing the taste. Ever since Ems and I went there a long time ago, I had wanted to go back to try that mushroom cheesecake. Unlike the spring edition of Inman Park restaurant week, the menu at Parish looked amazing this time. Well, the cheesecake wasn't on the restaurant week menu, but I still wanted to try everything!

All three appetizers sounded interesting: parsnip soup, chicken hearts, and octopus and sausage. I was even considering getting two appetizers instead of an appetizer and an entree. Snooki got the parsnip soup, which was creamy and delicious. I finally decided to get the sauteed chicken hearts because I know that it's very easy to overcook octopus and make it chewy. My biggest surprise about the meal was the portion size! It was bigger than many entrees and included three huge half-slices of brioche bread. Well, at least the bread was toasted, coated in a creamy sauce, and tasted well. However, I couldn't eat more than a couple of bites knowing that I had two more meals coming up. The hearts themselves were perfect. I even liked how they were cut in bite-size pieces. Plus, they were sauteed in butter, and you can't go wrong with that ;) Unfortunately, the carrot puree was a huge disappointment. The texture was somehow gritty and it didn't even taste like carrots...

I wish I could try all entrees as well: fried chicken, fried mussels, and Israeli couscous. I settled on the mussels. Honestly, I've had much better mussels before, even at gastro pubs. The ones at Parish were sauteed in a butter sauce, but the butter just didn't seem to go well with the mussels. I wish they were cooked in a wine sauce with some fresh herbs and citrus. On the bright side, the fries were really great :) I probably ate more fries than mussels. Anyway, the entree made me wish I had finished all of my chicken hearts and skipped the second course.

At least the dinner ended well. I ordered the banana bread pudding for dessert, and Snooki got the chocolate tart. Both of them came with ice cream on the side. The crust on the tart was a little hard, but it was still delicious. And my banana bread pudding was AMAZING. The banana flavor was very prominent, the pudding was soft without being soggy, and the caramel sauce on the bottom of the plate went great with it. Plus, it was a pretty big potion, too :) Just what I needed after the light entree.

I thought Parish was supposed to serve a mixture of Southern, Louisiana-style food with emphasis on seafood. However, this meal didn't really fit into any of these categories well. There was a lot of seafood, but it didn't seem to be the strength of the restaurant. The chef is definitely creative, but it's hard to attract customers if you can't even describe what kind of food you serve. But if you're looking for a charming place with a unique menu, it's definitely worth a try.