Veggie Bites

This was our first weekend back in Canberra after arriving home from our trip, so we decided to celebrate by going out for dinner! Since I was kind of craving good Indian food, we decided to go to our favourite place! I think that I must have gotten a little too used to the restaurant service in the US – it is always quick and efficient and I love the way that you always have iced water and that it is regularly topped up… But I digress… The food was good as always, we had the mixed veggie entree (I think we will have to try a single entree next time as this tends to be a little on the expensive side!). For mains, we opted for palak paneer and a veggie korma, along with a mixed raita and some breads. Add in a few glasses of wine and the bill was a lot more than I expected! The service was a little slow – but I am not sure whether it was really slow or if I was just used to the US style service and it seemed slow. But as I said, the food was good – and that is what it is all about, right?

Having checked out all the other places in Downtown Disney, and getting poisoned by the place we ate at last night, we were pretty sure that this was the only other place with any sort of decent veggie options. I thought there were 3 or 4 options on the menu outside, however when we finally got our table, there was really only a cheese pizza or a veggie burger… Martin and I both had the veggie burger, while our friend opted for the cheese pizza. The burgers were pretty good. They appeared to come with potato chips (from a packet) but you could substitute fries for an extra charge – which we both did. We also both got the salad. We also both ordered a strawberry and banana smoothie which was pretty good, but very sweet. Jumba Juice it was not. Anyway, overall, the meal was pretty good – one of the better options in Downtown Disney!

Yet again, we were desperate for breakfast that wasn’t room service… it is hard to find any info about breakfast places in San Diego and when your hotel is a bit of a hike from downtown then you don’t feel like just heading out and seeing what there is. The Lonely Planet guide said there was plenty of cafés around Mission Beach, so we decided to head there. We drove past this place and it looked like they were still doing breakfast, so we stopped and went in. We both ordered omelettes with breakfast potatoes (not really hash browns, but potatoes none the less) and toast. The potatoes were ok, and the omelettes were pretty good. If I was staying at Mission Beach, then I would probably eat here again, however, if not, it isn’t really worth going out of your way!

The food here was pretty good. However, it made us both sick – very sick. Do not eat here. That is all…

Well, we were kind of desperate not to eat room service for breakfast again, and this place seemed to be one of the only places that we could find any information about that would still be serving breakfast at about 11:00 in the morning. It was a bit out of our way, but we went there anyway. Let me say this right now – it wasn’t worth it! When we got there, the place was packed – which I mistakenly thought was a good sign. We ordered a couple of orange juices to start instead of coffee, however, only I got one. The waitress tried to spill ice water all over me as she was trying to take our order, and didn’t even realise that she was spilling it (despite the fact that I was looking at the water pouring out of the jug and moving my bag). I ordered eggs florentine with hash browns and a side of toast, while Martin went for a Mom omelette and tried again for that orange juice! My eggs florentine came slopped all over the plate, and the hollandaise sauce was disgusting! I managed to scrape some of it off, however I decided just to leave half of it because it was so smothered in it. The hash browns were ok – a bit too salty for my tastes. Martin said his omelette filling was not hot at all, and by the time he was three quarters of the way through it, he was sick of the sprouts (yuck – sprouts!). As we were leaving, the waitress apologised again for almost spilling water on me, and promised that next time we came it would be a better experience! Needless to say – there won’t be a next time. Even if we do return to San Diego at some point in the future, I certainly won’t be going there!

We wandered around the ‘Gaslamp Quarter’ for a while looking for somewhere to eat. We checked many menus, kind of looking for Italian food that wasn’t too expensive! We checked this menu twice before actually decided to go in and eat. I am glad we did eat here, because we both agreed that this is probably the best Italian food we have ever eaten… it started out a little weird. We began by ordering a couple of glasses of Il Giardino Merlot (an excellent choice as it turned out – the wine was beautiful!). Following that, the waitress brought over a plate of meat to show us the lovely cuts that they had today. I jumped in pretty quickly and told her that we don’t eat meat, mainly so that she wouldn’t waste our time, but also because I didn’t really feel like looking at raw meat before eating my dinner… and not only because I don’t eat the stuff, even if I ate it, I don’t think I would want to see it raw before it was cooked and put on my plate! After this, she seemed to avoid us for a little while, but after she finished bringing out the meals for the table of about 15, she returned to us and ended up being fairly chatty. Anyway – food! We started by sharing the insalata di pomodoro – sliced tomatoes, red onion, basil and avocado. Since we were sharing, they actually brought it out, then divided it onto 2 plates and gave us each our own plate of it. Kind of a nice touch. It was delicious. For mains, I ordered my favourite meal – penne arrabbiatta and Martin ordered spaghetti al pomodoro. When they came out, I thought that they would taste much the same as the sauces looked very similar, however upon tasting Martin’s dish, the flavours were incredibly different. The arrabbiatta was amazing, the sauce was so obviously freshly made with lovely chunks of fresh tomato and just the right amount of chilli! Martin’s spaghetti also had chunks of fresh tomato, but it also had a lovely nutty flavour to it. We figured we were on a bit of a roll with the good food and decided to order some dessert as well. We had overheard the options being presented to the table next to us and I had thought that I might try the cannoli. However, they don’t just tell you what desserts there are – they show you – there is one of each set up on a plate and they bring them to your table to make your mouth water… So, upon seeing them, there was no way I could go past the profiteroles, but Martin decided he would have the cannoli. And both were great… As I said at the beginning, we think that this is the best Italian food we have ever eaten… if you are in San Diego, don’t miss it!

We were on our way to a concert and had started to run out of time for dinner, so we were looking for somewhere fairly quick. La Salsa is a fast food chain-type thing, that does Mexican food. They also serve frozen tequila margaritas!! Your order also comes with corn chips and you can pick your own salsa to dip them in from the salsa bar – which has a variety of different salsa’s to choose from, ranging from mild to very hot! Well, I tried the very hot and it wasn’t really very hot… but the warnings about not putting your fingers in your eyes if you get the salsa on your fingers might still be valid! Martin went for the California burrito with black beans, while I went for the classic Quessadilla. Mine was basically a tortilla filled with cheeses and grilled, but it came with some sour cream, guacamole, lettuce and chopped tomatoes so that jazzed it up a bit. Martin said his burrito was pretty good. We both had the tequila margarita’s which were so cold that we couldn’t finish them in the small amount of time we had… This place is not bad for fast food – certainly a far better option than some of the other fast food places! And I think there is one at the international departures area of LAX – so if you are waiting for a flight and are hungry – check it out!

Mama Stella’s Pizza Kitchen is at Sea World, I wouldn’t normally review a place like this, however, you are not allowed to take outside food or drinks (including bottled water) into Sea World and this was pretty much the only place where we could get a ‘decent’ meal to eat! By the sound of it, Mama Stella’s was a place where you could get a nice-ish pizza, however, they were all pre-made and the only veggie option was cheese. They also had some salads, and when I asked if they had a pasta sauce without meat, I was able to get some pasta with a plain tomato sauce on it – I think it was the dipping sauce for the bread sticks – and I had to ask her to put an extra spoon of sauce on so that it was actually covering the pasta! I expected there to be little variety, and for it to be expensive, but it is incredibly disappointing that they tell you that you cannot bring in outside food and then offer you such a small choice. They are obviously catering to the masses and don’t care about people with specific dietary requirements.

We came across this place after deciding we didn’t want to wait for a table at the Hard Rock Cafe! I think we have only eaten Persian food once before, and we thought it was pretty good. This place had quite a few vegetarian options, although they mostly contained eggplant, but a couple didn’t. We started with a combination entree – we got to pick any 3 entree of the menu and they came out on a single plate – it worked out cheaper to do this. We picked an eggplant dip, a spinach dip and a brie dish (I am not going to attempt to put in the actual names of the dishes because I didn’t write them down and there is no way I would get them right!). However, as the waiter/owner (?) was pouring our wine, he told us he really didn’t want to serve us the brie dish because it wasn’t fresh. I was really disappointed, however, we decided on the grilled mushrooms instead. It was all really good, while eggplant is not my favourite thing in the whole world, the eggplant dip was pretty good. Both it and the spinach dip came with a dollop of yoghurt on top and to be honest, the eggplant dip was a little strong when the yoghurt ran out. The grilled mushroom were great – nicely spiced and perfectly grilled… For mains, Martin chose a tomato based stew with lentils and eggplant, which was pretty tasty (except for the large chunks of eggplant at the bottom of it!). I chose vegetable skewers, preferring to skip more eggplant, and was a little disappointed when it arrived as it only contained onion, capsicum and tomato – I expected a little more variety. Both dishes came with rice and a spicy onion mix. I left quite a bit of onion on my plate – no point having onion breath for the rest of the trip! Martin also chose a bottle of local chardonnay, which was a little on the expensive side, but very nice – better when it had been sitting in the glass for a while instead of chilled in the ice. Without the wine, it would have been a reasonably priced meal, and the food was pretty good – one to check out if you have time!

Breakfast! This was one of the places recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide and it was also on the Calgary map that we picked up. There are actually 4 or 5 different Nellie’s places now – I don’t know if they have the same menu’s or not though… First impressions were that this was a pretty funky little place – there were some cool paintings on the wall – one of a cow looking through a window and the furniture and mugs etc were a mishmash of different stuff, and the overall atmosphere was comfy and eclectic! The menu was varied with a good selection of veggie options. I was trying to decide between the cheese omelette or the breakfast tostada. Finally I decided that I can have an omelette any time and went with the tostada. It was huge! And it was great… it came with fruit, but I substituted that for hash browns, and when it came down to it, I had to decide between finishing the tostada or eating the hash browns… a big decision if you know me – I love potatoes! I finally decided to finish the tostada, as the hash browns were not the best that I have ever eaten… it was a good thing that this breakfast was doubling as lunch as well – I was completely full when I finished… Martin also went the ‘Mexican’ breakfast option and had the breakfast burrito which he said was really good. He also ordered the oatmeal as he usually does… Nellie’s food is great – try it if you are in Calgary!