Going Banana

Hello wonderful people of random blogging~

I know it has been a while since there has been any post, but what better way to start off the holidays with another food blast!

Once again, the restaurant I am highlighting today is located up in Northern California at Milpitas, CA. This restaurant has always caught my eye when I went up north and I finally had the privilege to try it.

The restaurant's name is called Banana Leaf... It looks pretty cozy and it is :]

This dish is called Roti Murtabak, which is a multi-layered bread with beef, egg, and onion dipped in curry sauce... yum~

This was the curry sauce and it was delicious!

This is how it looked with all the goodness spread on it

This was one of the poultry dishes and it was great, but hard to eat alone so you need some sort of rice to help you through this course

This is where the Pineapple Fried Rice comes in and this plate is delicious as it is inviting. It is made up of pineapple bits (obviously), cashews, shrimps, chicken and peas

This dish is called the Malay Sizzling Beef, and yes it is sizzling hot~ this was also a great addition to the combination we had


Yea, it was a lot to get through, but it was sooo good!

There was of course room for dessert! This was deep-fried mango ice cream and deep-fried banana

Overall, this was a great experience and I hope that there will be more opportunities to try more exotic food. Never be afraid to try new foods and culture because you'll be surprised how much you are missing out if you are afraid to be open minded and hearted.


"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food"

-Erma Bombeck

Saigon

I went to dine in the dim sum restaurant that Bear went to while visiting Nor Cal. The place is called 'Hong Kong Saigon Seafood Harbor' and is in the city of Sunnyvale.

Anyways, it is usually packed with people and the wait can be as long as an hour. I suggest arriving a bit early for the lunch to decrease the wait time outside the door.


When you are first seated, you will order drinks. I personally always get jasmine tea. It warms you up before the big meal and the sweet fragrant of the tea is just refreshing.

As Bear have described in the previous blog, waitresses walk around with their carts full of dim sum and other dishes. I tried to take several pictures, but since I just grab whatever seems delicious, the actual name of each dishes are a mystery for me.

The last picture is the chewy sesame-seed-red-bean-paste ball, so I call it. Awesome desert after a perfect meal.


If you love Asian food, this is a lovely place to visit. If you have not tried, my suggestion is to go for seafood dim sum, because the spice used in other types can be a bit overwhelming for "beginners." :]

The Life of San Jose

Hey everyone~

It's been a while since I've written a post and so I would like to apologize for my inconsistency. I'll try harder to be more intune with my posts so that you guys know what's up. However, I would like to give props to Bunny for keeping up with the posts with a lot of interesting movies and books. As you all may have seen, we have decided to change our pseudonym from Mellon to Bunny and from Rawr to Bear after long consideration and administrative discussions.

So today's post is going to be very interesting because I had the pleasure of visiting Nor Cal around the San Jose area.

This was one of the views I had as I was coming up north from Los Angeles. It was really amazing and just serene.

Soon after, I was able to enjoy the nice environment of a park called the Memorial Park in Cupertino. This park apparently hold a lot of festivals and a Diwali Festival of Lights was happening while I was there. It was actually pretty cool and this park was definitely the best parks I've ever been to. Then shortly I was able to eat Hawaiian BBQ nearby, but I couldn't get any pictures of it sadly. However, all I can say is that the macaroni salad was bomb! It is one of the places I really want to revisit again and eat some BBQ.

Afterwards, I was able to enjoy the Festival and got a dessert called Fallooda (I think that's how it is spelled), which was a rose flavored ice cream drink. The taste was really good but inside the drink there were some sort of noodle strings in the drink, which honestly I could've done without. Then after we were able to go to Honeyberry and try some buns. Let me tell you if heaven was made out of buns they would use these to make heaven.

This is what it's called and it's a very humble store. Apparently, there are two or maybe even more stores that are open for business. However, this store is part of the original Honeyberry chain and it was just so, so delicious.

This was roti bun and it was just so good. I love the insides because it's just so soft like clouds.

This one was the butter bun and even though it's a little bit more expensive, I feel as though it was worth the money. It's so good there is a buttery coating inside and it's just mouth-watering

After we came here, we were able to go get a toffee flavored coffee, which was very refreshing. Soon after, I checked in my hotel and relaxed. Then it was time for dinner and we went to a Vietnamese restaurant to try something than Pho. I forget the name of the dish but let me tell you that not only is this dish tasty but way filling. It's pretty much only vegetables but after a few bites in, you magically become full.

This was the restaurant we went to

This was the mountain of vegetables, filled with lettuce, basil, cilantro, and other good stuff

We separated the vegetables, and as you can see we also get fish sauce

This is what it looks like~ The outside is some sort of crispy, fried substance

Inside, there are a lot of meat and bean sprouts

This was the aftermath of the dinner... so, filling!

After such a dinner, I slept and the next morning I was in for a surprise because I was taken to a great dim sum place near Milpitas. Honestly, if you never had dim sum... you are leading a very sad life... GO GET SOME! For people who do not know how dim sum works, you sit down on a table and instead of ordering from a menu, you have waiters/waitresses walking around with carts and you pick the ones you want to eat from the cart. They then tabulate what you get onto a card, which you turn in at the end of you meal to determine your check.

This was probably the shrimp dim sum

This one was definitely one of my favorites. It was so good that I ordered extras to take home!

This was probably the scallop dim sum


This one is like a sesame bum with beans inside and also some sticky rice to the side~


This one was my favorite of all the dishes I had and it's just so good and tasty. Don't worry the sauce around the dim sum isn't soy sauce and yes you do eat it like that. The texture is so soft and it just melts in your mouth! Sooo GOOD!!

Other dim sum items

In the end, my trip up north was one of the best vacations I've ever been on. I couldn't have asked for more and it was just blessing experience to try so many new things with all of them turning out great. I hope to visit again soon because I just had a great time here~ Go visit if you have the time!

Tofu also came with me to keep me company, and as you can see he also had a great time relaxing :]

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

- George Bernard Shaw

Peggy Sue Restaurant

For some random lunch in San Jose, I went to Peggy Sue.

It is kind of casual, 1950s-inspired restaurant that serves burgers, shakes, and many other wide range of good eats. If you are a San Jose Sharks fan, this place is for you.

The people are very friendly and the food is great.

This is the Peggy Sue's Hamburger. Tomatoes, lettuce and a patty.

This is the "Blue Hawaiian" Pineapple Bacon Burger. The name pretty much says it all. I made mine a meal combo with a side of sweet potato fries and a soda.

Currently, Peggy Sue Restaurant is having a promotion that you can get the burger combo meal with a price of a burger every Wednesday. I am not sure how long this would last, but regardless, the burger is pretty big and filling.

It seems like they have two locations in San Jose. Visit their website if you are interested.


http://www.peggysues.com/index.html

"You can find your way across this country using burger joints,

the way a navigator uses stars."

Charles Kuralt

Panera Bread

I see Panera Bread quite often around the Bay Area. But weirdly enough, I hardly visited this place. I love pastries and good quality bread. Well, maybe because I've been trying to avoid anything that would make me feel guilty in the midst of my pathetic effort to lose weight. It is true that losing weight should be more about working out and exercising than starving my appetite, but being conscious and controlling the diet can show you some fast results.

Enough of irrelevant stories.

I only ordered what I could finish, so it is not much.



This is an iced latte. I got it for FREE cuz I signed up for the myPanera program on my last visit.

This is Pecan Roll and Bear Claw. The Peacan roll is great and all, but the hardened sugar/syrup can stick to your teeth pretty badly. The bear claw, the one on the back that I cut into impatiently, is good as well.

Anyways, they do serve salads, soups and more varieties of bread. You can check out their website for the locations near you.

http://www.panerabread.com/




Now, I shall try this thing RAWR is always doing at the end of his posts.

"I like reality. It tastes like bread."

- Jean Anouilh

Crepevine (II)

So, I went to Berkeley again. And went to Crepevine again.

Yea, I know. It's that good.

Anyways, I took more pictures of their delicious food :]



Lime Italian Soda.

Philly Crepe (Savory).

Greek Omelette with English Muffins.

California Crepe (Savory).

El Paso Benediction with English Muffins and Poached eggs.

San Francisco Crepe (Savory).

I got a Santorini Crepe (Sweet) and forgot to take a picture of it. :[
Well, if you visit Crepevine, try it because Santorini was super delicious~!!!




    

Crepevine

I thought I should start contributing to the blog as well. So here is a small piece of my day.

I went up to Berkeley with my family in the morning. Busy day doing this and that, but what would life be without some food :]

This place is called "Crepevine" and serves various types of crepes from savory to sweet in addition to pasta, sandwiches, and salads, the usual boring stuff.

We went for lunch a bit before noon. My brother tried to order pasta, but found out that they only serve pasta after 5pm.

I always just get water for my beverage, but today I wanted something different. So I ordered the mango iced tea.

It wasn't sweetened, so I added some splenda.

Anyways, the people were very nice at getting you what you need. They asked if we needed plates, got us more ketchup and coffee swiftly and did not bother us all that much.

When our food came out, I was yelling, "Don't Eat!! Don't Eat!!!" Here are those pictures I took before the food disappeared into our stomach :]

Denver Omelette. You can choose the bread and this one is with English Muffin.

Bombay Crepe (Savory). Crepe with Curry sauce. You have a option of chicken or shrimp. This one is with shrimp and it was delicious :]

California Crepe (Savory).

Tri-Berry Crepe (Sweet). Comes with Vanilla Ice-cream. Nutella, berries and creamy ice-cream... It was perfect..... yum...

If you want to know more about them, here is their website:

Crepevine

It seems like they do have other locations besides Berkeley. If you been to any of these locations, please leave comment and tell us about your opinion!!