Japanese

Cream Pan

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Located in Tustin, Cream Pan is a Japanese bakery that offers a wide range of small eats, from savory things such as futomaki and steamed buns to pastries like croissants. Their most popular item is the strawberry croissant! There is an ample amount of custard and it’s just sweet enough to complement the fresh strawberries. The croissants remain flaky even if you leave them sitting on the counter for a majority of the day. They’re worth venturing out to get if you’re not in the area!


Cream Pan
602 El Camino Real
Tustin, CA 92780

 

Usagi

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Omurice w/ Menchi Katsu and Hayashi Sauce

Usagi is a Japanese comfort food restaurant. This type of Japanese cuisine (yoshuku) is Western-influenced, so it features dishes like steak and spaghetti.

Some dishes that may peak your interest are their uni (sea urchin) risotto, mentaiko (spicy cod roe) pasta, and hamburger steak.

My absolute favorite dish to get here is omurice with menchi katsu and hayashi sauce. The omurice is an omelette filled with chicken rice, and menchi katsu is a breaded and deep-fried beef cutlet. Omelettes and deep-fried foods, as you may already know, come from Western cuisine. You can choose what sauce to top off the dish with, but I always go with hayashi. Hayashi is made up of beef, onions, and mushrooms in a thick demi-glace that contains red wine and tomato sauce. Demi-glace is a brown sauce popular in French cooking.

I recommend getting their green tea parfait to finish off your meal! Green tea ice cream is layered with red bean, corn flakes, whipped cream, and then topped off with a cookie to form a nice dessert that you’ll want whether or not it’s hot outside 🙂


Usagi
505 2nd Ave
San Mateo, CA 94401

Takuma

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Katsuni

Katsuni is tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) lightly simmered in soy sauce and sweet mirin with onion, topped with half cooked egg.

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Sukiyaki

Sukiyaki is a stew that consists of beef, noodles, and vegetables served hot pot style.

The interior of the restaurant has a modern feel and the bathroom is very clean (sorry, don’t have any pictures). The food is good, but the portions are small because it is tapas style. The only thing odd is that they play Spanish music in this otherwise very Japanese restaurant! Perhaps to emphasize the tapas-styleness? No se ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Takuma
2627 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90403

Dash Japanese Tapas and Sushi

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Baked Baby Scallop

This appetizer had baby scallop baked with their house sauce, uni, and ikura.

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10 pc Omakase

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Unagi

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Uni

*insert heart eyed emoji here*


DASH Japanese Tapas & Sushi
220 Main St
San Mateo, CA 94401

Tatsu Ramen

One of the unique things about this place is their ordering system: you order and pay when you first walk in using one of the three iPads they have set up! You then seat yourselves and somehow they know what your order is (we didn’t have to show the waitress our receipt/number). A con about this system is that to tip with card, the choices for the amount are preset ($2, $4, or $6). To tip using card, there is a separate iPad by the door on your way out. They also have vegan-friendly ramen and sell merchandise such as shirts.

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Soul Ramen

This place has appeared in the press, like LA Weekly, but despite the rave reviews, this place was just okaayyy. (more…)

Yakitori Kokko

I love this place so much I try to come here every time I’m in the bay.

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Everything is good, but here are some must-gets!!

  • fried garlic
  • grilled okra
  • grilled leeks
  • bacon wrapped tomatoes
  • croquettes
  • takowasa
  • tori soboro don

(more…)

Farmer’s Market – Ferry Building

Remember how I mentioned that we went to the Farmer’s Market last month? Today, I’m finally going to walk you through what we had there that day!

We started our day with some ice cream for breakfast.

Humphry Slocombe

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Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee & Secret Breakfast

Their Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee is the best coffee ice cream evaaar. It’s bitter but has the sweetness you expect from ice cream (whereas others tend to taste a lot more like sugar than coffee).

If you like cereal and bourbon, then you’ll absolutely love their Secret Breakfast because it’s a happy marriage of the two ingredients! It may sound like an odd combination, but they make it work and it’s their most popular flavor. They make cookies using Kellogg’s corn flakes and bake them until they become so crispy that they won’t become soggy when mixed into the ice cream. The bourbon adds a slight warmth while the crunchy corn flakes add a nice texture.

Humphry’s is one of my favorite ice cream places not only because they offer unique flavors (that they execute flawlessly), but also for their wonderful customer service. So much better than Bi-Rite!

For lunch, we had food from one of the vendors outside of the building.

4505 Meats

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“Zilla Hot Dog”

My boyfriend got their Zilla Dog, which was topped with kimchi, chicharonnes, scallions, and their “money” sauce. Except for rare occasions, I avoid hot dogs because they’re too salty for me. 4505’s hot dog was salty (as expected) but flavorful. Their chicharonnes were airy and crispy like Asian shrimp crackers. My boyfriend thought the hot dog overall was good, but not amazing.

Burger

“Best Damn Cheeseburger”

I, on the other hand, got one of their burgers. This was also good, but not the best. The grass fed beef patty was tender and a nice medium rare, but it needed more seasoning. However, the gruyere cheese was beautifully melted, and the toasted handmade sesame brioche bun (wow, that’s a mouthful) complimented the burger as a whole. It got messy to eat later on though because the bun soaked up the juices of the meat so well. This small burger costs $9, making it a little pricey. Is it worth trying? Ehh, that’s hard to say.

Not pictured from 4505 is their Lime Mint Iced Tea, which is basically a non-alcoholic earl grey mojito! It was refreshing, not too sweet, and perfect to have in the hot weather that day.

We then headed back into the ferry building to have a post-meal snack.

Delica

Chicken Dumpking and Crab Croquette

Chicken Dumpling and Crab Croquette

The chicken dumpling is more like a meatball instead of the normal wrapped dumpling you would expect. It’s $3 for this sweet and savory thing that’s smaller than a sauce container, but it’s ohhhh so good. Personally, I’d rather buy a bunch of these instead of spending the same amount on macarons!

The crab croquette, similarly priced, was so rich and creamy that it seemed to mold everything we had eaten so far that day together in our stomachs. It made us quite full.. But that didn’t stop us from continuing our food adventure!

Boccalone

MEEEAAAAAAT COOOONE

Here, you could customize a cone with three high quality pig parts of your choice for only ~$7!! My boyfriend got prosciutto, headcheese, and lardo. I don’t like headcheese, but I’ll admit that theirs is pretty amazing. And think eating a piece of pure pork fat is gross? Have their Lardo Iberico de Bellota and try thinking that again. As it melts in your mouth, you’ll be converted to a fat lover if you’re not one already!

I love roses but I honestly wouldn’t mind getting a bouquet of these instead. *coughcoughnudgenudge

Afterwards, we walked around and enjoyed the nice weather with happy food babies in our stomachs.

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Then we headed out to start our bar hopping journey.. Stay tuned!


Humphry Slocombe
1 Ferry Bldg Ste 8
San Francisco, CA 94110

4505 Meats
1 Ferry Bldg
San Francisco, CA 94111

Delica
1 Ferry Bldg Ste 45
San Francisco, CA 94111

Boccalone
1 Ferry Bldg Ste 21
San Francisco, CA 94111