Posts Tagged ‘dinner’
I’m back! I finally have a chance to post since coming back from spring break. For the first few days of spring break, I was at home in Portland, Oregon. I didn’t end up going to the Great Wolf Lodge as planned, but I went out to eat a few times with my family and friends in Portland. It was a chill time. The best part of break was when I visited beautiful Vancouver, B.C. at the end of break. I ate so much amazing food there and had such a great time! I wish I could just move there. My best friend has cousins and friends in Vancouver around our age, who are all super cool. We’re so lucky to have them to show us around town. Another awesome thing about Canada is that I am of legal age there so I can order drinks with my dinner!
Martini's Restaurant
The first night in Vancouver, our Canadian friends took us to a little restaurant called Martini’s Restaurant (151 West Broadway V5Y 1P4). Overall Restaurant Rating – 3/5 – I liked the vibes and the coziness of the restaurant, but the food needed a little work. The drinks were decent priced if you come in on the right night! The first thing I did when I walked into the restaurant was walk up to the bar and ask the bartender to give me the two most popular martinis. She gave me a sour apple and a grape martini. After two martinis, I, being extremely lightweight, was already warm and giggly at the table.
What my table ordered:
Appetizers:
Honey Garlic Wings
Honey Garlic Wings – Rating: 4.5/5 – Who knew honey and garlic went so well together? I really like how crispy and sweet the wings were, but they were also very sticky. Although, that is inevitable when it comes to honey. I couldn’t figure out what the dip was though, but it tasted like sweetened mayonnaise and went well with the wings. The wings weren’t on the regular menu, but were on the March Specials menu.
Side Salad
Salad – Rating: 4.5/5 – The entrees were all served with salads. I really like the fresh vegetables and the subtly spicy dressing on the salad.
Entrees:
Seafood Jambalaya
Seafood Jambalaya – Rating: 3/5 – The jambalaya tasted like mashed up tomatoes with rice. It wasn’t spicy like how I like my jambalaya, but more tart. I think the dish would’ve been better as a pasta dish than a rice dish. I did like the seafood in it though.
Spanish Tortellini
Spanish Tortellini – Rating: 2/5 – The flavors, or lack of flavors in the dish just didn’t go too well together. The description of the sauce on the menu was supposed to be a spicy cream tomato sauce, but the sauce wasn’t very spicy or flavorful at all. I’m not sure if the cheese inside the tortellini went well with the rest of the dish either.
Chicken Penne
Chicken penne – Rating: 2/5 – So I’m not sure what this dish is called because it was on the March Specials menu and since it’s April now, the March menu is not available online. Overall, every pasta dish I tried there was really bland. This dish had a tomato cream sauce with penne pasta, chicken and spinach. The sauce needed more flavor (or to Canadians, flavour!).
Calamari Dinner
Calamari Dinner – Rating: 4.5/5 – I tried a bunch of people’s dishes at the table and I’m sure the Calamari Dinner is the best item on the menu. Who knew tzatziki dip would go so well with calamari!
Overall, Martini’s is a good place for late night food when nothing else is open. We got into Vancouver, B.C. at 10pm on Thursday and Martini’s was open until 1am. So if you ever are in Vancouver late night on a weekday, here’s a place to check out.
Check out their menus and specials on the website: http://www.martinis.ca/
Here are UrbanSpoons’ reviews:
Happy traveling and eating my fellow foodies!
- In: Eugene
- 3 Comments
Japan: Please don’t crumble on me now. I want to visit Japan one day and try some real, authentic Japanese food. I’m sending my love and best wishes that way. This is only the beginning: First an earthquake, then a tsunami, aftershocks, fires, and then another earthquake, followed by more aftershocks. Even when all these natural disasters end, many people will be left without family members, homes, warmth and food. I cannot imagine how scary it would be to try to outrun gigantic waves, while watching it swallow up your house.
We should do what we can to help people in Japan – Huffingtonpost posted an article on How to Help Japan: Earthquake Relief Options (click to see options). Please do help if you can- this could be us. $10 might not be much to us, but could really help out over there.
March 11, 2011: Widespread destruction in Japan from 8.9 earthquake and tsunami
Picture from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/how-to-help-japan-earthquake-relief_n_834484.html
Although, I may not be able to try authentic Japanese food right now, there is a decent Japanese restaurant near the University of Oregon’s campus that suits my Japanese food craving.
Overall Restaurant Rating – Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 – Miso (686 E 13th Ave, 97401) is definitely not some high-quality sushi place and it’s sushi selection is somewhat limited, but it is a good bang for the buck. The portion sizes are very generous. I can never finish my meals there, and always have leftovers.
What we ordered:
Miso's Teriyaki Bowl: Teriyaki chicken and rice - only $3.95
Teriyaki bowl – Rating: 4/5 – White rice and teriyaki chicken. The rice was very good and moist, and so was the chicken. There is a lot of food in that little bowl they serve! The best part is it’s only $3.95! So if you ever have $4 and you want some food that will fill you up, this is what you need to order.
Teriyaki beef combo: Teriyaki beef, two scoops of white rice and a salad.
Teriyaki beef combo – Rating: 4/5 – The beef is cooked well and drenched in teriyaki sauce. It comes with two scoops of rice and a fresh salad. I loved the salad; the lettuce was so crispy! I’m not sure what the dressing was though; it might have been some sort of sweeten vinegar. All of this was only $6.50.
Shrimp Tempura Roll (left), California Crunch Roll (right)
Shrimp Tempura Roll – Rating 3/5 – Tempura shrimp, imitation crab, cucumber and avocado – $5.95. This was okay, nothing too special. They covered the sushi with teriyaki sauce, so if you don’t eat it right away, the roll will become less crunchy. I would actually ask them to hold the sauce because they have the sauce bottle available, so you can add some if you wanted later.
Crunch California Roll – Rating: 3/5 – Imitation crab, cucumber, avocado and tempura crunch bits – $3.50. It was the basic California roll, but there wasn’t really a crunch because they drenched the roll in teriyaki sauce so the crunch turned soggy.
Spicy Crunch Roll (Not pictured)– Rating: 2/5 – Spicy tuna, cucumber, and tempura crunch bits – $6.50. The roll had a good spice to it, but the raw tuna was a bit too rich.
Conclusions: Miso loves their teriyaki sauce and likes to drench everything they serve in it. So my advice is to tell them to hold the sauce, then you can add your own. If you like pickled ginger, they have self-serve pickled ginger as well. Like many places on camps, you order at the counter, grab your own utensils and bus your own table. They bring your food to you. One thing that should be improved about the restaurant is that you can’t customize your order. I would love it if I could switch my teriyaki chicken bowl with chicken Katsu instead, but they said no. I’m not sure why they would say no to a paying customer, but okay.
I couldn’t find a copy of Miso’s menu online, but there are other reviews of Miso’s dishes on Urbanspoon:
Happy eating my fellow foodies and keep praying for Japan!
- In: Eugene
- 6 Comments
Overall Restaurant – Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 – Success! Finally found a bomb hot wings joint in Eugene. Check out their Facebook: Hot Mama’s Wings’ Facebook.
Hot Mama’s Wings (420 West 13th Avenue, 97401) just opened yesterday and you can already find a ton of information about the hot, new restaurant on the Internet. Big ups to them for using social media as a marketing tool! Instead of going into details about the whole restaurant, I’ll just recommend to you what to order from there. If you’re interested in learning more about the restaurant, you can check out Oregon Daily Emerald’s article or Eugene Weekly’s article on the joint. I’ll just eat there and tell you what’s good.
So first off, I got to tell you: Their wings are meaty. This is a good thing. I had wings at the other hot wings joint near campus last weekend and those were literally just bones. Those tasted like frozen wings you buy at the grocery store and reheat them in the microwave.
The wings at Hot Mama’s however, are real, meaty chicken wings.
Here’s what my friends and I tried today:
Starters:
Crispy, brown French fries
French fries – Rating: 5/5 – They were brown, but crispy. The color of the French fries threw me off at first, but dang, they were good. They crunch in your mouth.
Jalapeno Poppers - Jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon
Jalapeno poppers – Rating: 3/5 – Hollowed out peppers, stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped with bacon. The pepper-filled cream cheese was a bit rich for my taste. I ended up just eating the bacon wrap.
Tater tots – Rating: 4/5 – Crispy tater tots, good, but could have used more seasoning.
Main course:
Wings – Rating: 5/5 – Meaty & crispy. The best part: Not messy. It’s like they cooked the sauce into the wings. It’s not your usual deep-fried wings smothered in sauce. You get the flavors when you bite into the wings without having your face and hands covered in sauce. They offered tempeh, grilled and fried wings. We all went with the fried.
Upper left: Chipotle Bourbon, Upper right: Jalapeno Poppers, Middle: Hot
Flavors of wings we tried (I don’t have the exact flavor names. I made the mistake of not taking a picture of the menu):
Hot – Rating: 3/5 – Not too flavorful, but spicy. Have some fun, order something that’s spicy and flavorful.
Medium – Rating: 4/5 – Not too flavorful, but a good amount of spicy for those who cannot handle hot.
BBQ – Rating: 4/5 – Plain, standard BBQ flavor, as expect. Maybe they should offer Honey BBQ also so it’s not as standard.
Cilantro Lime – Rating: 3/5 – The flavor of the cilantro did not come out, neither did the lime. It just tasted like a piece of fried chicken.
Root-beer Glazed – Rating: 5/5 – The table’s first favorite. A tad bit sweet, a tad bit spicy and a tad bit salty, perfecto. You can taste that spicy, sweet root beer flavor. Awesome! *Must try!
Pineapple – Ratings: 3/5 – More like limey than pineapple-y? A little bit too tangy of a flavor for wings.
Chipotle Bourbon – Rating 5/5 – My table’s second favorite. Extremely spicy and flavorful at the same time. *Must try!
All of us ordered 9 wings for $8.50 and chose three different flavors. Appetizers were about $4 and drinks were $2. They had many other choices of food besides wings, but we went for the wings. I’ll post a copy of the menu for prices and choices as soon as I get my hands on one. Post comments if you tried anything else from the restaurant that I should review! I’ll definitely be back there soon.
Check out urbanspoon’s rating of Hot Mama’s Wings:
Happy eating!
What's good here? 