meandering eats

I need to bring my bloody camera with me! I've been to several places this past week and could not take pictures. We made hors d'oeuvres over the weekend and I forgot to photograph them before taking them to a party. Oy vay. I'm totally slacking.

Last week, I went to:

• Ono Sushi
• Extraordinary Desserts
• Dumpling Inn (still no pictures)
• Tofu House (still no pictures)
• Dao Son

Ono Sushi's one of those seen-and-be-seen hipster joints in Hillcrest. As sushi bars are all of the rage, this one's filled with people dining on fusion-style rolls. Very little raw fish seen in the rolls. The rolls are quite good. K. and I enjoyed the Baja roll, which had seared ahi and avocado, and the soft-shell crab roll, which had soft-shell crab tempura and was wrapped in soy paper instead of seaweed. The service is excellent, but it probably is better to arrive before the rush. It's expensive, so be prepared for sticker shock.

Extraordinary Desserts used to be one of my favorite hangouts. Emphasis on the past tense. K. and I left Ono Sushi and stopped there for dessert and some more gab. The service, for once, was excellent. The cashier was friendly and the woman who brought our desserts was very kind. However, I'm so over Karen Krasne and her desserts. I still love her pavlova, but everything else is incredibly meh. I had the Moroccan, which I once loved, but now can't handle. It was very, very, very sweet. Shockingly so. It's supposed to be chocolate and pistachios, but the sweetness was overwhelming. There wasn't any sign of the depth of flavor that good chocolate has. The pistachios whimpered because they were stamped out by the mindblowing sweetness. Did she forgo sugar in favor of corn syrup? Krasne also subscribes to the "overpower the senses, so they think it's fabulous but they didn't really taste anything" philosophy.

This place is only worth it for the pavlova. And maybe the tea.

I've heard a lot about Dao Son, most of it favorable, but D. and I weren't overly impressed by it. I ordered the miso noodle soup. I was vaguely intrigued by it, but it was egg noodles with a bouillon-ed broth. And it wasn't soy paste that was doing the flavoring. It was literally water and chicken bouillion. Not terrible, by any means, but not great. Did I order the wrong thing? D.'s chow fun looked like soy sauce, noodles, and chilies on top. He wasn't thrilled with it and he mentioned that the chilies were overpowering. He can handle spicy, but you can't just let the capsaicin speak for the dish.

I'd try it again, because it's cheap and it's hard to judge by only one visit. I'll order something different next time.

Tofu House is a favorite lunch spot. It's not fabulous food, but it's serviceable. I get the ridiculously overpriced grilled unagi (eel). They serve it on a red-hot cast iron plate (think the type of plate fajitas are served in) with onions. YUM. The banchan (Korean side dishes) are limited to kim-chi, kim-chi cucumbers (my favorite), pickled daikon, and slices of pollock cake. I should have taken a picture because it is quite pretty, but whatever... I'll try to remember for next time.

Dumpling Inn... fabulous as always and we had our usual potstickers, eggplant, and xiao long bao.

Wow, this entry seems like a bit of a bitch-fest. Sorry about that, folks!