ROC - Cousin Time at Owl House

I swear I keep coming back here and it's great. Owl House is still one of my favorite places to eat in Rochester, its such a cute hole in the wall, healthy choice with some great flavors.

LOCATION: 75 MARSHALL ST., ROCHESTER, NY., 14607

This time around I went with my cousin Sheen who suggested trying the place since he's newly returned to Rochester from California. I'm not back in Rochester often since I'm in school and it's getting harder and harder to coordinate family meals but I was pretty excited we had time to meet up and catch each other up on big events in life. 

Thankfully, Sheen is a great cousin to share food with because he's up for new foods and isn't picky but willing to go family style so we get to try more dishes. 

Owl House has an ever changing menu and I swear I never can eat the same thing twice (not that I go often enough). We decided to share buffalo cauli wings, and a beet salad. I voted on the buffalo cauli wings thanks to yelp reviews which are crispy fried cauliflower with classic frank's red hot sauce and a side of vegan blu cheese & celery slaw. Sheen voted on the beet salad which came with watercress, wine braised baby beets, pickled fennel, chevre, and grapefruit segments drizzled with a white balsamic vinaigrette. Honestly, we both new that he made the better choice and that beet salad blew the cauli wings out of the water. I'm a fan of beets and so is Sheen, so it must run in the family so salads with beets are always an automatic win.

I ordered a steak sammy for lunch because I was just in the mood for steak that day, which had pickled  onions and fennel, mayo, feta and arugula on a hoagie. It also came with house chips on the side but I seriously didn't need more food after our two starters. The steak was a little heavy and chewy so it was a little difficult to eat but I was content with the steak and it fulfilled my craving so thats what I was looking for. 

It was a great time with Sheen and I love getting food with him and sitting down to talk and bond more. Of course Owl House is one of my favorite places to revisit so it all added up to a good time ending in full bellies.  

ROC - Brookyln Ramen

I love being home and I love when home has new places to eat and try. But the key to new places to eat are to have someone to eat with and luckily my friend Nicole came through. 

LOCATION: 215 ALEXANDER ST, ROCHESTER, NY., 14607

Nicole and I are both back in town for the holidays and boy am I glad. I love seeing old friends and eating new foods. She mentioned that she wanted some ramen or pho when she got back to Rochester and I was her ticket to it so we headed out for a day of Ramen and Rock climbing. 

Brooklyn Ramen is a new place that opened this past fall. I've never been to a traditional ramen place in Rochester and apparently this owner trained in Brooklyn and brought it back and I'm pretty hyped about it. When you first walk in you can tell it's family owned. There's a dad taking orders and calling them out, a young son that you can tell was kinda forced here and would rather be chilling with his friends, an young grandma boiling noodles and steaming dumplings, and the one hired American that already has a passion for asian food. The banter between them is a little awkward and forced and I'm not trading my family for theirs but boy would I love working in a family place. Restaurants run in my dad's blood and I wish my mom was less practical and would let us open a place. Hard work but I think I'd love it. 

Of course we order a bowl of ramen, I go with my favorite Tonkotsu and add and soft boiled egg for good measure. We decide to split an order of goyza for good measure and you can hear the communication in the kitchen loud and clear; a little awkward but authentic family. The food comes out quick and we sit down at the table. Little sturdy plastic bowls and throwaway silverware but its all fun and fast.  

This is pretty good ramen. It came out quick and was perfectly cooked. I've had ramen in New York and I wouldn't say this bowl was as good; thin, soft noodles and a super casual Rochester atmosphere come into play but its still a good bowl of ramen if thats what you're craving.   

FL - Bento Cafe

I'm here in Florida for Christmas break visiting family which means Orlando visit! My main family doesn't life in Orlando but it's close enough that we do trips for a couple of days and head to some theme parks to check out the new additions and changes. We've been going for years so I'm familiar enough with them that we get through parks pretty quickly and know exactly what we wanna see. 

This left us with some time to go out for dinner a little and my cousin Michael had the perfect spot that he and his friends loved going to back in college when they had time. 

LOCATION: 7335 W SAND LAKE, ORLANDO, FL., 32819
                  : 2260 S UNIVERSITY, DAVIE, FL., 33317

That's right, we went twice. Michael really loves this place and only knew about it back when it only had one location in Orlando, but we went after a day of Disney and he learned that they have a location closer to home in Davie too. He's gonna go back often, I'm sure. Bento has sushi and bento box style meals and I wanted to try both (among other things) so when Michael suggested a second trip, I was all over it even though we went 3 days prior.

That first night I went bento style and ordered a bento box which comes with lo mein, ginger salad, string beans, and my choice of white rice. For mine I picked yellow (thai) curry with chicken. He and I were so hungry we also went with edamame to share and miso soup each to start. Everything was great. I spent the whole meal wishing we had one of these in Rochester (of course we don't) and inhaling everything in front of me. My cousin Vi commented that she hasn't seen me eat like this before and that's probably because she's so picky that whenever I go out to eat with her it's never anything special and non-american like this (i.e. all the classic chains).

Clearly, this place was so good that Michael and I had to go again but this time around I was ready for sushi. Now, this place is still a chain so this wasn't supposed to be ground breaking sushi, but for the price of a cheap chain, this place is still awesome. Again, Michael and I go for the miso soup and edamame to share but he orders the same thing as last time and I go for the sushi combo box. This box comes with an 8pc cali roll and two 4pc rolls of my choice - Mt. Fuji (krab, tempura shrimp, topped with krab, eel sauce, scallions), and a Mexican roll (tempura shrimp, cream cheese, avocado, eel sauce). This is great; cheap sushi, decent quality, I wish I could get it any time I'm craving sushi. 

CHI - Chicago Pizza and Grinder Oven Co

I'm very easily influenced by food clips on social media and thankfully I now have Christel who will come with me to try snacks and food no matter what it is because our tastes are similar enough and somehow amid crazy schedules and mountains of school work we find time to be free (or maybe lazy?) to pursue new food ventures. 

LOCATION: 2121 N CLARK ST., CHICAGO, IL 60614

Just in case you're unaware, this video has been circulating not too long ago of an upside down pizza pot pie sort of dish. Chicago Pizza and Grinder Oven Co. has a pizza basically that they bake in a dish and flip out onto a plate table side. I get pretty excited about this kinda stuff and believe me, it's been on my list of places to eat since I moved to Chicago so I was pretty excited to go. One of my grad classmates has even mentioned this place before saying it's his wife's favorite spot for 'pizza' (if that's what people in Chicago wanna call it, I'm not totally convinced.) but it seemed like enough of a confirmation that this was a must visit. 

So off we go up north to this place and of course theres still a lot of hype so theres a line out the door even though its freezing and we manage to squeeze inside in order to put our name down. The estimated wait time is 4 hours long but I'm starving now so thankfully theres a diner across the street and we duck in for some french fries to tie me over. Originally we planned to walk to the Lincoln Park Zoo to see the holiday Zoo Lights but its still freezing and we cross the street and go sit in Chicago Pizza and Grinder Oven Co again. We thought we would just check to see if we might get seated early but somehow the place got fuller and we still had a few hours to go until it was our turn. 

Seeing as we're chickens in the cold and found a nice little spot to sit in the waiting area where it was warm we just set up camp. Christel brainstormed for finals and I crocheted while we people watched and commiserated with all the other people in line. We knew there would be a way but boy did we not expect this. It was still somehow fun to talk with strangers in the waiting area and compare when everyone arrived and how long they waited. Some people were regulars, visiting this place on special occasions for years while others were more tourists drawn in by social media. 

Five hours later, we were seated and let me tell you, we ordered like the wind; super excited for food. So during our wait we could see waiters rushing around and had a pretty clear view of a table and we kept seeing people order a Mediterranean Bread which is a super flat cheesy herb-y wonderful super thin bread, so we had to order it. We also shared a small country french salad (our waiter knew us so well from the start he suggested we share a small), and we each got our own half-pounder pizza pot pie (instead of sharing one one-pounder between us - another suggestion from our waiter that we decided to follow).

All in all, everything was great. The salad was a great choice seeing as we needed something a little light and fresh with all the bread and cheese and dough. I think we both agreed that the Mediterranean bread was our favorite part of the meal and over shined the pizza pot pie. A little overly hyped, and while the presentation was cool to see them flipped onto a plate in front of us it was a little underwhelming. Christel and I had such Non-American tastes sometimes too that the amount of cheese on them was a little much and we ended scraping some off it off. I'm sure other people would disagree with us and call us crazy but that's just how it goes!        

In terms of waiting, I'm not sure it was worth 5 hours but it's always fun to be able to say that we went and now we'll have a sort of 'dedicated to food we waited 5 hours in line to eat' kind of story. It's also fun to be able to talk to people in line and hear their stories and experiences with this place as well. 

Somehow, we miraculously found room in our stomachs to order dessert as well. We had left over salad and bread to take home but there's always room for ice cream so we decided to order a tortoni to share. Tortoni is their only listed dessert and is an Italian frozen cream desert that's flavored with rum and macaroons and topped with graham cracker crumbs. As far as ice cream goes I've never had one that tastes like this and I loved it. As full as I felt, it was so cool and melty to eat and tasted great and I'm so happy we got it to share.  

I think I would go back but maybe only if the wait was shorter than five hours and I planned it into my schedule a little more but that mediterranean bread made it kind of worth it.

Spam Masubi and Tamago

Holiday time is here, which means ugly sweater parties and potlucks galore. Of course as a studio we planned a holiday party to take place as a reward for making it through fall semester. I pressured everyone into making it an ugly sweater party and because we're all broke graduate students this is a perfect time to bring food together and share. 

I personally made some Vietnamese pork eggrolls  and it turns out I like making spring rolls because the thiner wrapper is much easier to fry but these are just learning curves I find by trying to make traditional foods away from home and just far enough away from asian grocery stores to find the exact ingredients I recognize. 

I also used this opportunity to use Christel's kitchen because her apartment is much more accessible from school after work, class, and climbing and just more conveniently placed to go to the party. This meant, however, that I was designated helper to make her dishes - spam masubi and tomago!!!

I've never made either before but I'm pretty handy in the kitchen and learn fast so our process went smoothly. Christel already made the egg part of the tomago before I arrived and had the rice ready to be balled up. While I fried/baked my eggrolls she cooked her spam, made her sauce, and we were ready to roll.

We went assembly line style which is pretty typical for us with Christel portioning off rice and me rolling. We made quite a bunch of stuff and were a big hit at the potluck and I'm pretty proud of us and I've never had spam masubi or homemade tomago before but I'm ready to eat this again.