The Cheesecake Factory - Bella Terra Center, 7871 Edinger Ave, Huntington Beach, CA 92647
Pricing - $$$ | Dining - Casual | Cuisine - American | Reservations - Unavailable
http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com 

I'm a little hesitant to do reviews for a large chain of restaurants merely because people generally know about the places and have been there. Also, it doesn't really change much by location because the dishes are standardized. Nevertheless, I might as well talk a little bit about Cheesecake Factory.

I enjoy going to these restaurants because they are casual enough to attend with friends but nice enough to be considered a slight indulgence. The past few times that I've gone to Cheesecake Factory, I've stuck to just getting their small plates or appetizers because the entrees are always enormous. I end up taking half or more home if I get the large dishes. However, when I went this time, I thought I should go back to getting a big plate to see how big it was (I had forgotten). I was pretty much done after a short while, hah. Anyhow, the real purpose of going to Cheesecake Factory this time around was because I had gotten an email that they had Peppermint Bark Cheesecake in season. How could I resist? I love peppermint bark!


The bread here is always great. I am a sucker for sourdough but have also been won over by the honey wheat they have as well. Their complimentary slices are warm and have great crustiness. The sourdough is not too sour either. If you're a lover of sweeter breads, try the honey wheat. Well actually, since they bring out however much you want, try both! The only problem is that you might get full eating the bread since it's so good - save yourself for all of the food that will come though!


To feel fancy, I decided that I'd have myself a cocktail. Now, I'm not a big fan of vodka only because it's pretty much in everything. I mean, I don't hate it - I just don't prefer it, especially if I'm going to pay handsomely for a drink. This cut down my choices on the menu considerably but I did eventually find something to quench my thirst: the Blackjack Martini. It even sounds cool! It was basically a Manhattan with blackberry and Jack Daniel's. I found it quite tasty and hardly noticeable in terms of alcohol taste. My only quibble with this drink was that it was much too expensive. Generally restaurants don't put the prices on the menu for drinks, but from what I've seen, they range from $6-$8 or so at casual-type restaurants. That was my guess. You can imagine my surprise when $11.50 appeared on the bill. I was disappointed in the price and now know not to have a cocktail at Cheesecake Factory again. My friend's Red Raspberry Martini was the same price for a smaller quantity I believe.


After much scrutiny of the menu (so many choices), I finally opted for the Bistro Shrimp Pasta dish, which has battered shrimp, mushrooms, tomato, and arugula mixed with spaghettini in a basil-garlic-lemon cream sauce. It came in at $16.95 for the dish, a bit hefty but in the general price range for the pasta dishes. If you ordered this and expected crispy shrimp, you'd be disappointed because the shrimp was a bit soft. I didn't' mind though and actually preferred it; it was more fitting for the dish. I loved the inclusion of the fresh vegetables, especially the arugula. The spaghettini was prepared to just the right texture for pasta - cooked thoroughly but with enough hardness left in it to give you something to chew on; I guess it's what you would call "al dente," or "to the teeth" in Italian. I'm a spaghettini and angel hair lover when it comes to noodle-y pastas, so this was a great choice for me. As for the sauce, it definitely made the whole entree worthwhile. I was wary of its advertisement as a cream sauce but the lemon made it light and delicious. I felt like the arugula was complemented well by the garlicky sauce. The portion was too much for me to have but I didn't mind taking it home for some more eating later.


My friend got the Chicken Bellagio; the ingredients were similar to my dish actually. I asked him to write about it so I'll post his thoughts below:

"After perusing through the Cheesecake Factory menu for a good ten minutes, I finally settled on the chicken Bellagio. Pasta, chicken, prosciutto, basil, and arugula for $13? It felt like a good decision. When the waitress brought the dish to my table, I was glad to see the generous pile of green arugula on top of the pasta. I've never had arugula with pasta before, but I thought it nicely complemented the rich sauce and crispy chicken, which was very tender and well-seasoned. Overall, the dish had a good balance in taste and texture. I would've liked more than one slice of prosciutto, however, and the thin spaghetti broke apart into small one-inch pieces, although I'm sure I could've requested linguine pasta. Toward the end of the meal, the arugula made the sauce turn green, which made the dish look unappetizing but didn't affect the taste. Final thoughts: great dish, would order again if I had very little to eat earlier in the day. (Google says the dish is 1980 calories and 105% of the daily recommended amount of sodium.)"


Apologies for using flash when I took this picture, turning the whole thing very bright and white. Anyhow, here was the whole reason for going - the Peppermint Bark Cheesecake (a white chocolate cheesecake swirled with chunks of chocolate peppermint bark and topped with white chocolate mousse and finished with chopped peppermint). I have to say that though we were nearly popping our pants' buttons from the abundance of deliciousness we had, there was room to finish this off. Of course, my two friends and I shared this because we were afraid we wouldn't be able to handle individual slices. It was FANTASTIC. Unlike some of their cheesecakes there (I sure have tried a lot), this one was not too heavy. It's possible that that was an illusion caused by the inclusion of peppermint but either way, it did not make us stop after the first bite. The creaminess of the body was light enough to suggest that it had been whipped up a few times. The chocolate crust had been softened by the slice itself, and I could hardly taste it with all of the mint. I think the topping of the cheesecake with bits of peppermint was great, giving something to break with one's teeth and also to highlight the peppermint swirls in the cheese part itself. My only complaint is that they don't have this cheesecake year-round - I would surely buy it many times!

Los Cotijas Taco Shop - 11951 Euclid St, Garden Grove, CA 92840
Pricing - $ |  Dining - Casual, To-Go | Cuisine - Mexican | Reservations - Unnecessary

My friends and I had gone to a friend's to discover that he wasn't home yet, so we opted for some food seeing as I hadn't had dinner yet. My poor experience with horchata at Torero's made me miss the delicious horchata I was used to at home, so it was inevitable that I would head over to my favored fish burrito place to get some good stuff.


The fish burrito here is the best that I've ever had. I didn't even need to read any reviews on it to know that it was fantastic (though I did look up reviews about an hour ago and saw that it's ranked quite high on the OC list of foods). The fish is battered and fried to perfection, with a that-hits-the-spot crunch and flaky goodness. Some places skimp on the thickness of the fish so that all you eat is the batter but Los Cotijas does it well by giving you a sizable portion. The burrito itself is under $5 and with a large horchata for under $3, you can have a filling meal for little. The fresh vegetables inside definitely add a good crispness to the burrito - the lettuce and tomato make it all taste fresh and healthy (who knows if it really is?). I also enjoy the texture of the tortilla used, how much they stuff the burrito, and the sauce put inside. I must reiterate, best fish burrito around; check it out!

Ten Ren Tea - 727 N. Broadway Ste 136, Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Pricing - $ | Dining - Casual, To-Go | Cuisine - Teas, Drinks
http://www.tenren.com/

I had visited this shop quite frequently whenever I went to Chinatown with my parents, but I never actually looked at the name of the place, hah. I always thought that it was the best boba place in the area and looking back, it's odd that I never paid attention to what it was. I always assumed that it was a small one-location-only type of underground place I discovered that was awesome. This time around, however, I checked out the name and found out it was a Ten Ren place! Well no wonder it was good! Ten Ren never disappoints with great teas because it's what they do...and they do it best. I discovered Ten Ren officially (as in, knew it by name) when I went to the one in Anaheim and had the greatest milk tea I had ever had...so you can guess how happy I was to find out that this was the same company.


I had the honeydew milk tea because it's basically my favorite of milk teas. It was quite delicious with the perfect blend of milkiness and green tea. The honeydew did not overpower the strength of the tea, and I would attribute that to the potency of Ten Ren's tea in general. My younger brother got the honey milk tea, and both flavors were equally strong, leading to a great mixture of sweet, natural honey and comforting green tea. The boba balls in the drinks were spot on as well, neither too soft or too hard. They were chewy with a perfect consistency and slightly sweet. As always, thumbs up to Ten Ren!

NBC Seafood Restaurant - 404 S Atlantic Blvd, Monterey Park, CA 91754
Pricing - $$ | Dining - Casual | Cuisine - Chinese | Reservations - Unnecessary

Keep in mind that this review is based off of the dim sum service at the restaurant. I'm sure they serve other wonderful things during the evenings, but I went during dim sum hours. I feel like it's hard to go wrong with the dim sum at this restaurant or anywhere in Los Angeles county where there is a good population of old-fashioned Chinese people! I definitely crave having some good dim sum whenever I come home so was glad that I got to go with my family as a pre-Christmas treat. We have frequented this place many times before and because I rarely get to have some, it was my choice to go here. As always, it didn't disappoint. We had 6 people there, and we all got full for $85 after tip - awesome.

It was quite busy, as always, and full. We waited for about 15 minutes before we could be seated and the waiters were very hurried as they set everything up. I can't say much else about the service because dim sum style dining is based on people walking around with carts full of food that you ask for...so no direct table service from one person. This totally explains the running around of the waiters because they aren't assigned to a particular table but sort of have to service all that ask...so don't expect them to be personable!

I will speak to each dish as I noted them while I ate but I don't really know their Chinese names so I will refer to them by what they look like to me. You should also be able to infer from the pictures I believe, haha. I tried everything we got except for the duck, which was eaten up quickly.


Pork blood & tripe dish (bottom middle) - I'm a fan of tripe but this one did not have enough seasoning and was definitely too soft. I couldn't enjoy the full texture of the tripe because it was too squishy. As for the pork blood, I've never been a fan and hadn't had some in years. For the sake of the blog, I tried some and it...still sucked in my opinion. There was hardly any external flavor (blood was the main thing) but it had a good, firm feel to it.

Seaweed (bottom left) - I hadn't had this before but it was EXCELLENT! It was pickled and crunchy with just the right amounts of both. I would definitely have asked for more had there not been so much food.

"Phoenix feet"/chicken feet (bottom right) - It had been a long while since I had chicken feet, mainly because it always tastes fatty to me. This one had that texture going on with it but in a good sense. The flavor was not too spicy or strong which was fine by me since I enjoy sparse seasoning. It was soft and easily separable at the joints.

Roasted duck (middle right) - I didn't get a chance to have any of this.

Taro bun (middle left) - My mom's friend ordered this, and I really liked it. The taro was so vividly purple inside; I wish I had taken a picture of how it looked. It was sweet with a shortbread-like outside and slightly fried bottom. The dough part was soft and chewy, and the inside was a good consistency.


Dan ta/egg tarts - This place easily had the best dan ta I've ever had. It was my favorite part of dim sum growing up and became my younger brother's as well; he agreed that it was heavenly. Even my dad said that he had never had dan ta as good as the ones we had this time. The restaurant bakes them there instead of outsourcing from another bakery, and we must have gotten a batch that had JUST been baked. The pastry was perfectly golden, crispy, and flaky. It was rich but did not taste fattening or overly buttery. The egg filling was very sweet and melted in one's mouth, having a slightly firm outside texture like flan. There was a thin layer of liquid (melted sugars?) on top that helped with the sweetness.

Little Saigon Restaurant - 7016 North 57th Ave, Glendale, AZ 85301
Pricing - $$ | Dining - Casual | Cuisine - Vietnamese | Reservations - Unnecessary
http://www.littlesaigonaz.com/

This post is a tad anachronistic in that I had gone to Arizona before I made the pizza. Whoops! My mistake. Oh well. Anyhow, I was in the area over two weekends ago because my gaming community was having its first ever LAN party, so I felt obliged to drive over to Phoenix for it. It was great that I had some Circle K friends in the area too though because I managed to get a place to stay with one of them and then Saturday evening, another friend took me out to this restaurant!

We got there close to closing time but still made it. It was quite busy, probably from the holiday visitors who were around the area to check out Glendale Glitters. The decor was very Vietnamese, haha, and the host quite welcoming. The service was a little off as they screwed up our drink orders a tad but it wasn't too bad; I'll blame how busy it was.

One of the things that I have always wanted to try making was my own pizza. Luckily one day, my friend decided that she wanted a cooking adventure with me and picked pizza as our experimental dish. After some shopping, we snagged everything to prepare ourselves for a great time. Because our toppings ended up being too much, we made two pizzas instead of one. The following recipe is only enough dough, butter, and sauce for one pizza but the toppings (chicken, tomato, and spinach) are for two so if you want to skimp anywhere, skimp on the toppings.

Because we made two pizzas, we were able to learn a bit from the first and fix some things we saw when making it. Both times, however, the pizza dough was quite bready, almost making the thing an elaborate breadstick. The crust turned out very well but if the pizza sits for too long, the sauce soaks into the bready crust and makes it a big soggy. However, if you like bread-heavy pizza, this is great!

Step 1: Ingredients (serving size: 12-inch pizza)

      Sauce

• ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup Romano cheese, grated
• 1 cup milk
• 4 tbsps butter
• 4 tbsps all-purpose flour

      Garlic Butter Sauce

• garlic salt (to taste)
• parsley, dried (to taste)
• 2 tbsps butter, softened

      Dough

• spicy Italian seasoning (to taste)
• 1/4 oz instant yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tbsps vegetable oil
• 3 cups all-purpose flour

      Toppings

• 1 bunch spinach, sliced
• 2 boneless chicken breasts, rotisserie roasted & cubed
• 8 roma tomatoes, diced

Step 2: Making the dough
Mix your warm water with the yeast until it has dissolved. Let this sit for 5 minutes until the yeast foams. You can cut up your chicken, tomatoes, and/or spinach while you wait. Mix everything else in the dough ingredients list aside from the flour, and then add this to the yeast. After a little stirring, start to gradually pour the flour in, kneading the dough as you pour. You will end up with a small ball as seen above. Let that sit for half an hour, covered. Finish preparing the topping while you wait.

Step 3: Making the butter sauce
This garlic butter sauce is for the brushing of your crust. Simply mix the ingredients together. You can then spread out the dough on a pizza pan and brush this butter sauce along the edges, making sure to get the sides as well so that the buttery goodness can be tasted along the whole crust.


Step 4: Making the sauce
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahreinheit now. I saved the explanation of the sauce for last because it thickens quite rapidly if you do it too far in advance. Melt your butter in a saucepan on low heat, not quite letting it brown. Before it completely melts, add in your salt, pepper, and flour. Quickly add your milk and stir for a bit before adding in your cheese. Let the sauce simmer a bit and then turn off the heat. It will thicken. Once it has cooled a bit but is still spreadable, put it on your pizza but keep away from the crust where the butter sauce is.

Step 5: Topping your pizza
What we learned from our first go around was that spinach as the very top topping will dry out and burn a bit. Here's how we topped our first pizza - chicken, tomato, and spinach.


After learning from our mistake, we put some of the spinach underneath the sauce for the second pizza and also underneath the tomatoes. Of course, the small inconvenience here was that tomatoes fall off easily but oh well!


Step 6: Baking and completion
We baked our pizzas for approximately 40 minutes, give or take. The crust turned out beautifully on both, and other than the breadiness, the pizzas were successful! Here are the two pizzas:

Torero's Mexican Restaurant - 800 W Main St, Durham, NC 27707
Pricing - $$ | Dining - Casual | Cuisine - Mexican | Reservations - Unnecessary
http://www.torerosmexicanrestaurants.com/

My friend from Las Vegas visited Duke during Finals Week, so our mutual friends and I had to do some sort of hangout. We decided to head over to Torero's for some good and filling eating. The 25% student discount also helped a lot in picking this as the place to be. I had been there once before and knew that I would certainly be getting full for cheap. I wish I could've tried more so that this post would have more substance but alas, the food was too much. I only managed to finish half my plate before I boxed the rest for home. The free chips and salsa for the table did not help me when it came time to eat the main dish...


Anyhow, my dinner was a plate of their Fajitas Quesadillas with shrimp. I opted not to have beans, so I got two servings of their rice (I LOVE MEXICAN RICE). The dish also came with some shredded lettuce, guacamole, and sour cream. The quesadilla was filled with cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses but with just the right amount so that it wasn't overpowering in quantity of the shrimp inside; however, they were quite salty and forced me to drink from my glass of watery horchata often (I love horchata and had been missing it but it was not good here). The shrimp, though, was superb. I mean, really. They were grilled to perfection, and I could definitely taste the smokiness in them. I approved of the shrimp. The saltiness...not so much but because the shrimp was the majority of the quesadilla, I liked my order.

Fairview Dining Room - Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club, 3001 Cameron Blvd, Durham, NC 27705
Pricing - $$$$$ | Dining - Fancy, Dressy | Cuisine - American | Reservations - Recommended
http://www.washingtondukeinn.com/Dining/fairview.asp

This restaurant is definitely famed among Duke students as a place to go to splurge a little and spend a lot of foodpoints (our dining currency) because it is one of the few places off of campus that accepts this form of payment. It's great for us at the end of the semester when we realize that we have more than we need. My friends and I were in this boat before Finals Week, so we planned a nice Friday evening of dressing up for some delightful dinner. Of course, we also had to block off approximately 3 hours in our schedules for this because the dining experience is long and relaxing. The ambiance was splendid, and the waiters were polite and expedient; I had been to Fairview Dining Room before, and once again they did not disappoint with the atmosphere and service.


We started off with bread of course. There were slices of French baguettes and an olive loaf. The biscuits were cheddar herb ones. The butter was fairly light but I only used it on the French baguette, which didn't really need it because it was great on its own, crispy and light. The olives in the loaf were green and complemented the thickness of the bread itself. As for the biscuits, I'm not a fan of biscuits in general because they're too buttery for me and alas, these ones were too rich for my liking.


This place was, of course, fancy enough to serve an amuse-bouche, which is a bite-sized starter from the chef. The one for this night was roasted pork loin with an apricot-mango chutney. Now, I'm a sucker for chutneys, and this one's sweet coldness definitely stole the show. I'm not a fan of pork, as aforementioned, and I wasn't blown away by this morsel but it will still a good start to a great meal.


I began my meal with their classic Caesar salad. Freshly shaved Parmesan cheese was impressive as well as the inclusion of an actual slice of Spanish anchovy, which I gave away to one of my friends because it was quite salty and I don't particularly like fish. The greens were great though there were a lot of stems. I had the waiter add a lot of pepper to the salad which definitely enhanced the dressing's flavor. The foccacia croutons sort of stayed around until the very end because they were large chunks unlike the cubed store-bought kind - thumbs up for actually making their own croutons. Oh and yes, there was a cheddar crisp that I happily broke into the salad.


We opted to go with two appetizers. The first was their artisan cheese plate. I forgot the name of one of the cheeses unfortunately and because they vary per night/week, I could not find it on the online menu. However, the two that I did remember were the Manchego cheese and Bleu cheese; I'm sure the yellow one was a type of cheddar. All of them were of Spanish origin so the waiter told us. The Manchego seemed almost tasteless to me at first but perhaps it was because I had it with the seasoned flatbread cracker. When I had it alone, I liked its subtle flavor. It was a semi-soft cheese. The cheddar was actually quite pleasing because it wasn't too sharp. I wasn't in the mood for a sharp cheddar, and this one still had a kick to it but only mildly so. The one I liked best, however, was the Bleu cheese. My friends agreed as well. It was nice and creamy, spreadable on the crackers and rich in taste. We finished it first. Other parts to the plate were the fresh honey and Tamari roasted almonds. The honey was fantastic and dipping the almonds in it only made it all the better. I'm not sure, however, that the almonds should've been matched with those cheeses.


The second appetizer was a plate of pan-seared scallops. They were complemented with braised endive, roasted mushrooms, and a sweet potato-black truffle vinaigrette. I thought that the scallops themselves were a tad too soft and bland on the inside. That was probably attributed to how thick each of them were; dipping them into the sauce helped a bit. The endive and mushrooms were great in the vinaigrette as well as on their own since they had some sort of seasoning.


The special entree of the day was a pan-roasted Mahi Mahi on a bed of coconut milk rice and mango salsa. My friend got this, and I didn't try a piece but she ate it up very quickly so I'm going to assume that it was wonderful.


My dinner was poached Maine lobster tail with roasted mirepoix, lobster and potato ravioli, and leek fondue. I was excited to try out lobster tail in an American restaurant as I had always had lobster from Asian places back home. However, I'd have to say I was mildly disappointed with my expensive dish. The lobster was soft and flavorful in itself but the rest of the dish did not measure up to my expectations. The mirepoix was too hard, the lobster and potato ravioli too dry (the plus was how stuffed it was with lobster rather than cheaper ingredients), and the leek fondue much too salty. I still enjoyed my main dish for its main feature of the lobster tail but everything else left me with criticisms.


I didn't snag a picture of the wine bottle, but I ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio Stella (Umbria, Italy) for the table because we had decided before we got to the restaurant that we were all having seafood of some sort. A white wine definitely complements that choice, and I decided on a Pinot Grigio because 1) I like them and 2) I am not well-versed in many other wines. It turned out to be an excellent choice that everyone at the table liked; it was light and almost without the sometimes-unpleasant (to some) taste of alcohol. I felt like it still had a good body to it and quenched our thirst for fancifulness.


Dessert time! Who could pass up on splurging on desserts as well? We had a molten chocolate cake duo w/Tahitian Vanilla ice cream and Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout chocolate gelato, a grapefruit sorbet with seasonal berries, and a caramel apple tart with Apple Jack ice cream. After so much food, I think the most fitting to finish the night was the light, refreshing grapefruit sorbet. All of them were fantastic though. The chocolate cake was quite condensed even with its small size but it was balanced out with the vanilla ice cream. The chocolate gelato part was great on its own but as you can read, there was some Duck-Rabbit in it which was definitely noticeable. Good thing I like the taste of beer or else the gelato would've been ruined for me! The apple tart was a good in-between because it was rich in itself but still light enough because of the fruitiness and ice cream that it wasn't unbearable on a full stomach.