Dinner in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter – Monsoon and Yogotango

A few weeks ago I flew to San Diego for the weekend to celebrate my law school BFF’s 30th birthday.  Boy, this is the year for 30th birthday celebrations, eh?  Anyway, my flight got in right on time at 6pm at the San Diego airport, BFF and her husband picked me up, and we headed right downtown to the Gaslamp Quarter.  We all love Indian food, so we’d chosen Monsoon for our dinner spot.

The place was cute and surprisingly slow for a Friday night.  It turned out that we didn’t really need reservations after all.  We decided to share everything so we could get a taste of several things.  We started out with kabuli kulcha.  What the heck is that?  Yeah, that’s what I wanted to know too.  Have you had naan?  It’s like that except that it has bits of cherries, coconut, and raisins stuffed in it.  I wasn’t too sure about it, but it turned out to be delicious.  We then enjoyed three mains – chicken tikka masala, chicken vindaloo, and chicken biryani.  All three were very good.  Vindaloo has never been my favorite, but it was pretty good.  I’d never had biryani before, and that was a real treat.  I couldn’t believe how flavorful it was.  The tikka masala was, as expected, my favorite.  Though I usually order my Indian “very hot”, we asked for everything to be mild.  It still had plenty of flavor; I didn’t even miss the burn.  The made-to-order naan was very good as well.  Accordingly, I would definitely recommend this restaurant, though I’m not sure I would go without a coupon from Restaurant.com (purchased with a coupon code of course) since the portions are a bit small for the price.  The only additional thing to note is that the service was very spotty; getting more rice took much longer than it should have and, frankly, the server should’ve brought more than one teeny dish to start.  That said, I’d still return.

We walked around a bit and then tucked into some fro yo from Yogotango, which is just down the street from Monsoon.  They have several flavors, more than the famous Pinkberry (which I will surely visit while in the LA area later this month on my JetBlue AYCJ Pass!), and plenty of toppings.  I had strawberry and vanilla with Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries, and it was a perfect combo.  They have a cute gimmick too – if you can guess the weight of your yogurt with toppings (and they’ll even tell you the weight of your yogurt before toppings), your yogurt is free.  Cute!  I’d definitely go here again.

Triangle: Taste of Durham

Check out the fifth annual Taste of Durham at the Imperial Center tomorrow. 

What is it?  A food, wine, and beer tasting event with live entertainment.

When is it?  Tomorrow! Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11a-7p

How much is it? That’s a little more complex – it’s $4 in advance or $6 at the door to get in to the area.  Then you buy coins to pay for whatever tastings you want to do.  A coin is $1.  1 coin will buy a soda or water; restaurant samplings will be 1-5 coins; each beer or wine tasting table will be 1-2 coins; and beer/wine concessions will be 4-6 coins.

It sounds like a great thing to do tomorrow.  Have you been to one of the past events?  I wish they had more info on the website.  While they do have information about the food sampling,  they don’t have much info on the wine and beer side of things.  Frankly, those are the things that would get me to attend.  If you attend, let me know!  Hopefully I’ll find out some more info about this and attend next year.

Restaurant Week Review: Savoy

Last night I had dinner at Savoy (Raleigh, NC) with my husband and 5 of our friends.  Savoy is one of the participating restaurants in Triangle Restaurant Week, so it was 3 courses for $25.  We were all looking forward to trying a new restaurant, and we were even pretty excited about the menu.  The overall consensus was that the food was pretty good, the atmosphere was nice, and the service was pretty bad.

Dinner at The Big Easy

My husband, two friends, and I went to dinner at The Big Easy in downtown Raleigh on Friday night.  It’s been a while since I’ve written about a Raleigh restaurant, so here ya go.

Doing good for NOLA and surrounding areas

Mardi Gras is coming soon – it’s February 24 this year.  What does that have to do with helping to revitalize New Orleans and surrounding areas?  One Tripso writer suggests that those who can’t help out by visiting should order a king cake!

TTT: MenuPages

Next time you’re planning a trip to NYC, San Fran, LA, Philly, Boston, Chicago, or South Florida and have some time to plan where you’ll be eating, you might like to check out MenuPages.  MenuPages not only helps you find the type of restaurant in the area you’re visiting, but it also provides menus and reviews as well. 

Triangle: Red Bowl

We enjoyed dinner here (just now). Jason liked the General Tso chicken. My Spicy Thai Basil chicken was good, and we both liked the potstickers. Ah, if only it were cheaper!

P.S. It’s in Cary.

A taste of Spain in North Carolina

I had a brilliant idea for an activity on Saturday night – a wine tasting.  My original plan was to check out some of the wines that will be available on my cruise this summer to see if I should buy a Wine & Dine Package.  At Total Wine, a helpful employee showed me the error of my ways.  He said that the proper way to do a wine tasting is to offer several selections that have been chosen to compliment each other.  He offered to pick out 5 bottles, each under $15, for my group of 11 tasters.  I agreed, and he picked out 5 bottles of Spanish reds, numbered them, and printed out some information about them for me.

Beers of the World

Can’t get out of the country?  Bring other countries to your fridge!  Last week I was shopping at a nearby Super Target and found a variety of beers available by the bottle ($1.50 each).  They had boxes to carry 4, so I chose 4 I hadn’t had before from 4 different countries.

To give you some background, my fav beer is Stella Artois.  I also like most Caribbean beers (unfortunately, I can only find Carib here in the mainland), Dos Equis, Corona, and Yuengling.  My cheap go-to beer is (don’t laugh) Rolling Rock.  Oh, I like some other beers too – I’m just mentioning ones that I regularly buy.  I don’t know how to describe flavors/scents or even types of beers, but I’m learning.

Sicily: Wine and Chocolate

I am neither a foodie nor a wine connoisseur.  This blog is about traveling (and eating while traveling), and I haven’t been to Sicily.  That’s not going to stop me from sharing this with you though.  lol  If you’ve been reading my blog, you might remember my trip to A Southern Season a couple weeks ago.  My friend and I saw a neat wine and chocolate recommendation while we were there.  I’d been thinking about it during the week, and I decided I needed to know what they were like.  On our way back from South Carolina, I made poor Jason stop in Chapel Hill to get a bottle of wine and some chocolate.  Don’t worry – I let him pick out some for himself too!

The wine was Montalto Nero d’Avola 2004, a varietal (yes, I know some fancy wine words from my friend’s blog) from Sicily.  It was $10.99 and had a screw cap closure (apparently the type of closure matters?).  One of the SS staff members recommended it and suggested pairing it with the famous Sicilian bar, Bonajuto.  The lady in charge of the chocolate at SS was sure to explain to my friend and I that Bonajuto is not your traditional chocolate – it’s not shiny and it’s not smooth in texture.  I was intrigued, so I wanted to try both.

I had some of the wine with dinner and was surprised.  It was sweet, but sweet as in sweet-for-an-Italian-red not too-sweet-like-CH’s-Christmas-red.  It was very smooth – no tannin to speak of.  Maybe it is “ponderous” or maybe even “ripe“?  heehee  Anyway, I think it is a perfect beginner wine!  Or a good red for those who normally prefer white.  (Or me, since I’m not a big fan of the smoky/oaky reds.)

And the chocolate – I handed Jason a square, and he popped the whole thing in his mouth.  “Oh man, this is awful!”  “Now, I told you it’s not like regular chocolate!  And I can’t believe you just ate $1.00 worth of chocolate that fast.”  Determined to fully appreciate the chocolate, I slowly nibbled it.  As promised, it wasn’t like any chocolate I’d had before.  It was unmistakably chocolate, but it didn’t have the smooth, creamy texture.  Instead, it was a little dry and very grainy – almost the texture of sugar.  It was very flavorful.  I really liked it, and I would absolutely eat it (or similar) again – if I don’t have to pay $8 for one little bar!  And I definitely won’t waste expensive chocolate on my husband again.  Sheesh.  I’ll just buy him some Hershey’s wax.

Your traveling link:  Next time you’re in Sicily, you can take a tour of the famous Antica Dolceria Bonajuto.

P.S. This has nothing to do with Sicily but everything to do with wine: don’t forget that the new Beaujolais Nouveau was released yesterday!  Grab some and drink it as fast as you can.