Tag: bread pudding

Restaurants

A Taste of Taste on Melrose

dishfulthinking5 Comments

Another great groupon.com find: Taste on Melrose.  This past weekend, Cher (a.k.a. my most frequent commenter!) and I had our taste of Taste for dinner.  The restaurant is adorable with a trendy twist, and a lovely patio outside facing Melrose.  We were greeted with a friendly waitress who knew the menu inside and out.

For drinks, we ordered mocktails:)  I can’t recall the fancy names, but the red one on the left had mint, raspberries, soda water and possibly something else.  It tasted just like a raspberry mojito.  I went with the orange mocktail on the right, which had mango puree, orange juice and soda water, essentially a fancy schmancy smoothie:

To start, we ordered the ahi tuna tartare–ahi tuna, avocado, mint, dill and jicama, served with spicy aioli and crostini:

I could’ve eaten 5 of these.  The tuna was fresh, the crostini was buttery and the aioli complimented everything with just the right amount of spicy kick.

We both ordered the prix fixe menu, and started with the white truffle oil and mushroom mac and cheese:

There are few things in the world better than piping hot crispy baked cheese.  And when you break through this crispy layer, what you find after the truffle oil-infused steam dissipates is ooey, gooey cheesy amazingness, coating macaroni shells with a few mushrooms thrown into the mix.  Both of us were scraping the bottoms of the ramekins they were served in.  I couldn’t get enough of this.

We also ordered the same thing for our main dish, kobe beef meatballs with pine nuts, golden raisins and caramelized onions, served atop linguine with white truffle cheese fondue.  The meatballs were good, but not spectacular, especially following the ahi tuna tartare and mac and cheese.  I’m usually not a big fan of creamy pasta sauces, but this white truffle cheese fondue made plain linguine incredible.  It wasn’t heavy like an alfredo sauce, and was jam-packed full of cheesy truffley flavors.

And for the sweet finales, a chocolate brioche bread pudding:

and creme brulee:

The creme brulee wasn’t mind-blowing, but a solid dessert, better than some but not all.  The chocolate brioche bread pudding was divine.  Cher isn’t much of a sweets or chocolate person, but thought this was incredible.  It’s this wonderfully sweet brioche with streaks of melted chocolate woven throughout, topped with vanilla ice cream…mmm…

The wait staff was pleasant and knew their food.  The kitchen moved a little faster than we could eat (we had 2 courses on our table throughout dinner), but it wasn’t much of a bother.  Overall, I give Taste a B/B+.  Minus the meatballs and awkward serving timing, it was a delicious, filling and at times inventive meal.  Kudos to Taste for a tasty dinner:)

Restaurants

A Tasty Trip to Puerto Rico

dishfulthinking1 Comment

Ok, so I didn’t actually get on a plane and fly to Puerto Rico, but I did get a small taste of what it might be like to enjoy a meal there.  A coworker of mine and a fellow foodie (Cher, a.k.a. the frequent commenter on my blog!) researched the Puerto Rican dish called “mofongo” after seeing it on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  A successful google search brought us to Mofongo’s in North Hollywood.   The restaurant is one of those out-of-the-way, hole-in-the-wall gems.  The entire restaurant consisted of four tables, one chef and one waitress.  The menu is limited, but sifts through the fluff and gets right down to business, offering up delicious and authentic dishes.

We started with an appetizer plate, De todo un poco, or “a little bit of everything.”  Starting at the top right, working clockwise, we have: Pasteles (a Puerto Rican tamale), Pastelillos (I think one was chicken and one was beef, similar to an empanada), Relleno de Papa (potato balls, similar to the ones at Portos) and Alcapurrias (fried tamales).

Next up was the main dish, and THE reason (and namesake) for visiting Mofongo’s–the mofongo.  We were told the best way to savor the dish is to get the “soup” on the side and only pour it on the mofongo a little bit at a time.  The description (thanks to Wikipedia) sounds bizarre, but it all works wonderfully together: “Mofongo is generally made from friend green plantains…which is mashed together with broth, garlic, olive oil and pork cracklings or bits of bacon.  It is often filled with vegetables, chicken, crab, shrimp or beef and is often served with fried meat and chicken broth soup.”  This particular version also had bits of pork rinds, which added a nice crunch to everything!  I love a healthy amount of garlic, and this dish definitely does not fail to deliver.  You can essentially feel the garlic seeping out of every pore on your face…in a good way of course:)

The exclamation point to this Puerto Rican culinary sentence was the bread pudding.  Not too dense and not too fluffy, not overly sweet.  I would go back just to eat this:

What the restaurant lacks in size definitely makes up for in authenticity, heart and soul.  The service was fantastic (the chef even came out to chat us up), the food was tasty…all in all a meal that was muy delicioso!