Extraordinary Desserts

Extraordinary Desserts

1430 Union Street,

San Diego, CA 92101

Extraordinary Desserts has two locations in San Diego, we went to the bigger one in Little Italy. That stylishly designed store also won an awards for its beautiful architecture.  This place is kind of pricey, but you can't find their fantastic desserts anywhere else. It is a restaurant you should try when you are in San Diego.

We like their dessert better than the dishes. The decoration of desserts is so beautiful. The flowers, the sauce and the desserts make the best presentation. However, they don't have a dessert menu because they are always changing. What a surprise! Just go to the dessert display window to see what they have for your visit.

Green Tea Latte, Pink Hot Chocolate

Besides their beautiful desserts, their drinks are also pretty and special.

Passion Fruit Presse, Kiwi Lemonade

Passion fruit juice with sparkling water;

kiwi, lemonade, and sparkling water.

Cobb Salad

Their Cobb Salad is kind of expensive, but the portion is good for two, good to share. There are organic greens, organic turkey, Serrano ham, avocado, tomato, and blue cheese pieces in a big bowl.

Turkey Breast Panini
Cranberry mayonnaise and turkey breast... very delicious combination!

Truffe Famboibe

Chocolate truffe cake with raspberry layer.  The slightly bitten chocolate with sour raspberry make the cake not that sweet, so even if it is a big slide, we can still finish it! Just too delicious.

 

 

Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding

They change the presentation and flavor of their bread pudding all the time. ZhuBaoBao likes the crispy croissant skin, but ZhuXiaoBao likes the soft part. They will never fight for food. (:

   

Our Best Recommendation: Bread Pudding, Kiwi Lemonade, Cobb Salad.

Gatten Sushi -- Revolving Sushi Bar

 

Gatten Sushi

4517 Campus Dr

Irvine, CA 92612

We love sushi, and we love to be surrounded by food! Revolving sushi bar is the best combination for us. That is what we discover today--Gatten Sushi revolving sushi bar. We love this place because their service is really nice, way better than Kula where we used to go, they have some creative sushi and rolls,  and their price is reasonable with good quantity (most plates are just $2.00), much more delicious than Sushilicious which is also a revolving sushi bar.

Texas Roll

ZhuXiaoBao's favorite at Gatten. It is a beef roll. Texas Roll is the perfect combination of all her favorites: Beef, Rice, and Sushi.

 

Nishin

Nishin is a herring fish. This taste really good.

Otoro Salmon

ZhuXiaoBao's favorite No.2. She loves the combination of salmon and lemon, just perfect!

Ikura and Salmon

This is a famous Japanese "Chicken or the Egg question", "which come first? The salmon or the ikura" Don't worry I "solve" the dilemma at once :).....ZhuXiaoBao doesn't think this statement is funny. She is absolutely GERMAN!!

Eggplant Roll

Eggplant is good but ZhuBaoBao dislike onion. Gatten Sushi does have more vegetarian sushi than others have.

Seared white Tuna (with fried onion)

Lemon and fried onion taste good. Eat them together.

Jelly Fish

Jelly fish is ZhuBaoBao's favorite, and they do make the Jelly fish good. It is kind of sweet but still with jelly fish's flavor.

Tamago Sushi

Their  home-made tamago taste really good! It is not from Japanese supermarket. The tamago I got in other sushi places is always bought from somewhere else not the restaurant. It has no taste, no flavor, but the food color. ZhuBaoBao is never a Tamago fan, but I am addicted to their tamago sushi. Fresh home-made tamago,taste sweet.

Revolving Sushi Bars in Irvine Comparison

Our Recommendation: Texas Roll, Otoro Salmon, Tamago, Jelly Fish....almost everything is worth to try!


Arigatou!

Savoy Kitchen 夏蕙廚房

Savoy Kitchen

138 E Valley Blvd.

Alhambra, CA 91801

One day ZhuXiaoBao watched a "how to make Hainan Chicken" video on YouTube, the video made her curious about Hainan Chicken. After ZhuBaoBao's search, they decided to go to Savoy Kitchen whose Hainan Chicken is recommended by every one who has been there. That's how we found this place!

  

Savoy Kitchen is a small restaurant at the corner of the street. However, you won't miss it if you come during the lunch time, because there is always a line waiting for their famous Hainan Chicken, which you can see every one orders it at the tables.

Hainan Chicken

They offer Hainan chicken with all white meat, all dark meat (extra charge), and regular. ZhuXiaoBao likes whole white meat, but ZhuBaoBao prefers regular one. Their white meat is perfect, not too dry, but dark meat is kind of oily sometimes. Hainan chicken comes with three dipping sauces: soy sauce, ginger sauce, and garlic chilli sauce. You eat the chicken with all these three sauces.

Shrimp and Ham Pasta

Besides Hainan Chicken, they also have pasta, pizza, curry, and some other dishes. Shrimp and Ham pasta is good, better than we expected since we have read that one blogger said their other dishes is not that good.

Pizza Bread

It is a side dish you can order like an appitizer, they serve it with my Shrimp & Ham pasta. Dipping bread with pasta sauce tastes good.

Our Recommendation: Hainan Chicken (must try!)

This is a place where we keep coming back. See you there:)

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot 小肥羊蒙古火鍋

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot

1655 South Azusa Ave, Suite E

Hacienda Heights, CA 91745

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot  is a very busy hot pot restaurant. They have every tuesday "All You Can Eat" for $19.95. Their dinner starts at 5:30, usually people start to wait in line befor 5:00. Why they are so popular?  It is because they offer good quality and quantity of food:  variety of vegetables and fresh meat. Their service is pretty slow, so you have better order everything you want at the first time, otherwise you will wait forever for next order. According to our experience, you are lucky if you get your second order, they just forget what you add most of the time.

Their special flavorful broth is very different from the normal hot pot broth. They simmer the soup base with 36 spices and ingredients to bring out the unique taste. We like half & half soup base pot (yun-yang pot): spicy and original. 

They say it tastes better to put lamb or beef first then put other meat or vegetable, as we always do, ZhuXiaoBao and ZhuBaoBao are big fans of lamb and beef briskets!

   

Don't forget the vegetables, ZhuXiaoBao likes corn, and ZhuBaoBao likes Tong-Ho Leaves. We also ordered other stuff such as mushrooms and shrimp.

We always like having Beijing Yogurt after hot pot (extra charge, not included all you can eat menu). 

Our Recommendation:  Crazy Tuesday All you can eat, Fatty Beef, Fatty Lamb, Sweet Corn, Tong-Ho Leaves (Best Hot Pot Veggie match), Beijing Yogurt.

Be Early!

Pho Garden

Pho Garden

2109 Clement St

San Francisco, CA 94121

Pho Garden is famous for their Mission Impossible: Pho Challenge.

2 pounds of noodle, 2 pounds of combination beef in a massive bowl, and finish it in 60 minutes. Whoever win the challenge can have this big meal for free, get the bowl as a trophy, and they will hang your picture on the wall. If you loose ( that's normal), you will also get their T-shirt as a souvenir. The challenge costs $22. Not challenge but sharing the big meal costs extra.

  

ZhuXiaoBao discovered this through a food channel on TV. It sounds like a good challenge for her.  She bravely took the challenge,  but unfortunately she failed. 

At the second time she got smarter, she brought ZhuBaoBao with two other friends with her...
We shared one bowl, and it still looked like no one ever touch it after almost one hour eating. We  just gave up! 

Has anybody won it?

...Yes, it is possible! There are some made it to the wall of fame.

Spring Roll and Beef Salad. How do they taste? I doubt who really taste the food while taking the challenge?

Our Recommendation: Just Bring SIX friends with you and share one bowl!

Let's take the challenge!