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High end salts & herb mixes at Grocery Outlet

August 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I just came back from Grocery Outlet with a beautiful glass bottle of Himalaya Pink Salt. According to the bottle, Himalaya Pink salt, a product of Pakistan, was originally “formed from marine fossil deposits over 250 million years ago”. The rock salt tastes like salt to me, but I’m not a salt connoisseur. Still, for $3, I thought it was worth it. If nothing else, the bottle is nice.

The salt is distributed by La Collina Toscana, an Italian company. It doesn’t expire until 2015 (though, really, if it’s 250 million years old I’m sure it’ll hold for a few more years).  In addition to this salt, the GO in San Leandro had gray salt from Brittany, and three herb mixes: Herbes de Provence (though this mix didn’t contain lavender and other typical ingredients), a Tuscan herb mix and another Italian herb mix.  All are $3.

Rainforest Cafe – Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Mika (my 9-yo daughter) had been asking me to take her to the Rainforest Cafe for months.  We’ve been to the one in San Francisco a couple of times, and she loves it.  However, the Rainforest Cafe is not just out of the way, all the way in SF, but it’s also ridiculously expensive – and the food isn’t even very good.  However, I knew she was going to find out that there was a Rainforest Cafe in Vegas (as it was at one of the hotels we were staying at), and she’d demand we go there, so I made plans to do so.  My plans basically consisted on going elsewhere for dinner, and just having dessert at RC.  They sort of worked – Mike, Camila and I had burgers at In-n-out and then a dessert at RC, but Mika insisted in having dinner there as well.

The Rainforest Cafe in Vegas is located at the MGM Grand hotel.  It’s a pretty small affair, in particularly in comparison to the one in San Francisco, and, IMHO, not nearly as cool.  The fact that you can see the people walking in and out of the hotel from your table (or at least, from the table we were seated at), really detracts from the experience.  There are relatively few animatronic animals, and they are static most of the time, but they’re pretty cool when they move.  I did like the rain effect behind me.  Mika liked it well enough.

Food at the Rainforest Cafe in Las Vegas is even more outrageously expensive than at other RCs.  Most entrees are in the high 20’s, and even children’s meals are $10, and all they include is a drink (not dessert).  You can get a coupon for a free appetizer with the purchase of one entree in several of the coupon books you find in Las Vegas, and when we went the first time there was a man downstairs (by the entrance from the self parking lot) handing out coupons for one free child’s meal with the purchase of an adult entree.  Still, the food is super overpriced.  On the plus side, the adult portions seem to be quite large and may be large enough to share.

Mika had the fettucini alfredo, and she was happy enough with her dish. No complains there, but really, she’s happy with the Budget Gourmet’s version of this dish, so she’s not picky.

We all shared the “volcano” ($15), a dessert consisting of three long brownie balls, surrounding two scoops of vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate fudge.  There is a glitter stick on top to suggest an explosion.  I’ve had it before, but I had forgotten just how bad this very expensive dessert is.  The brownies are way too dry, the fudge is way too sweet, and there isn’t enough vanilla ice cream for the amount of brownies available.  There were four of us eating this dessert, but we couldn’t finish it.  Actually, we didn’t want to either.  I know I’ll have to return to the Rainforest Cafe (though hopefully not to the Las Vegas one), I hope to remember to order something other than the Volcano.

On the plus side, service was very good by our very cordial and cheerful waitress.  She didn’t seem to mind at all that we were ordering so little food, and was very pleasant to us and the kids.

Rainforest Cafe
MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 891-8580
http://www.mgmgrand.com/restaurants/rainforest-cafe.aspx

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Marga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews

Final thoughts about food in Vegas

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

These are a few places we went to that don’t merit a post of their own.

–McDonalds. Pathetic, I know, but pretty much every hotel has one in their food court, and they charge regular McDonalds prices (including their dollar menu). Most other food court choices are overpriced and don’t seem much better.  Some McDonalds have free refills on sodas – which is great when they’re otherwise $3-4 at the hotel.

–New York Pizza, on the mezzanine level (the one connecting you to the Excalibur and MGM) of the New York New York hotel.  Pizza slices start at $5 for plain cheese.  The slices are pretty large, though thin (like NY pizza).  They are reheated in the oven, so they’re not particularly fresh.  My daughter thought they tasted like Costco pizza. I thought they were OK.

-Gelato at Trevi, near the “fountain of the Gods” at the Caesars Palace.  Mika had a cone of the chocolate mousse ($5.75) and it was absolutely delicious, easily the best gelato I’ve had in the States. It’s expensive, but it’s a generous scoop.

–Cafe Belle Madeleine, at the Paris hotel.  The girls and I shared a chocolate mousse pastry ($5.50).  It was very good, very chocolaty and very rich.  It was more of an adult pastry, though.  Other pastries looked just as sinful.

–Frozen strawberry daiquiris by the MGM Grand pool.  Ridiculously expensive at $22 for a daiquiri in one of those souvenir yard cups ($11 for refills).  It was a lot of fun drinking it while traveling through the Lazy River, however.  I shared it with Mike and didn’t get in the least buzzed, which makes me suspect it had little if any alcohol.  It tasted quite good, though.  A virgin refill for the girls cost just as much, and tasted the same.

–Water & sodas. They were $2 on the hotel machines at the Luxor and $3 at the MGM grand.  They’re more in the shops, but you can get them on the strip for just $1-$1.50.

–Cheap breakfast.  We brought cereal and had it with milk we kept in the cooler.  Neither the Luxor nor the MGM had fridges in their standard rooms, but they both had ice machines.

Spice Market Buffet – Planet Hollywood Resort, Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

(Updated with 8/14 visit)

Las Vegas used to be the land of buffets.  Every casino used to offer them as a way to draw in customers, who would then spend lots of money gambling.  They used to be terribly cheap. That’s no longer the case.  Every casino still has a buffet, but the majority of them are extremely expensive.  Even a cheap buffet like the Luxor’s is $20 for dinner, with most of the better ones averaging around $30.  I think the only reason why they can get away with those prices is that most of the restaurants on the strip are grossly overpriced, going off the strip requires a car, an expensive taxi drive or an uncomfortable bus ride.  They have you.

All that said, I sort of wanted to go to a buffet during our 2011 trip to Vegas.  I had gotten a 2-for-1 buffet offer with my MGM Grand room, but the MGM buffet gets such terrible reviews that I didn’t want to try it even at the reduced priced.  I decided upon trying the Spice Market Buffet mostly because it was at the Planet Hollywood hotel, where I wanted to go to check the “rainstorm” attraction, and because at $23 after a $5 off coupon I found online, it wasn’t terribly priced.  Plus it got decent reviews.  In all, it wasn’t a bad choice.  The food ranged from OK to good and given the prices in Las Vegas it wasn’t a bad value.

We returned to the buffet for dinner in August 2014, using the “buffet of buffets” pass (which gives you entry into 5 participating buffets for $50/$65 weekdays/weekends). The food then felt even more tired and less exciting than the first time around.  I don’t think any of us were able to find anything that really excited us.  The items I had liked during my first visit (Italian short ribs, American BBQ ribs and Chinese pork buns) were either missing or inedible this time around.   As in other buffets, your best bet may be with the roasts – if you watch to make sure that the piece you get is from the center of a fresh roast.

The Spice Market Buffet portrays itself as an international buffet, and while the food stations are arranged by cuisine (“seafood”, “American”, “Italian”, “Asian”, “Mexican”, “Middle Eastern”, “bread & salads” and “desserts”), in reality all the “ethnic” food are American favorites from other cuisines.  For example, Mexican food included fajitas, tortilla chips and guacamole – not a mole poblano or a pollo al pibil.  Similarly, there was no chance you’d encounter a Persian stew or Syrian kibbeh at the Middle Eastern station: hummus, pita bread and a chicken curry was more like it.  Still, there was a lot of food, much more than anyone could possibly sample on just one visit.

Among the things we sampled and failed in our visits were a linguini with a garlic butter sauce lacked flavor, though my 9-yo liked it. The meatballs were too dry and not worth the calories.  The sauce on the chicken marsala was nice enough, but the chicken was so dry as to make it inedible.  The beef on both an Asian stir fry and Mexican beef fajitas was also dry and tough, though the flavors were OK. The guacamole had been clearly mixed with some extender. The crab legs were very, very dry.  A crab-stuffed-sole had been left for too long under the heat lamps and had become too tough.

Desserts were weak during our first visit, but had improved for our second -perhaps in comparison to the rest of the meal.  We were able to get seated relatively quickly, but our service, which had been good the first time, was so-so the second time.

I’m definitely not looking forward to returning.

Spice Market Buffet
Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino
3667 Las Vegas Boulevard. South
Las Vegas, NV
702-785-5555
http://www.planethollywoodresort.com/casinos/planet-hollywood/restaurants-dining/spice-market-buffet-detail.html

Breakfast $20/13, Weekday lunch $23/$15, Sa/Su Brunch $28/$20, Dinner $31/$20 (second prices are for kids 10 & under, Total Rewards members save $1)

$5 off coupon often available, Groupon deal often available, part of Buffet of Buffets pass

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Marga’s Las Vegas

Omelet House – Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Mika, my 9 yo, really wanted to go out for breakfast on our last day in Las Vegas.  I thought about doing the breakfast buffet at the MGM Grand, but the buffet gets terrible review in Yelp plus it’s quite expensive.  So I decided to stop at a run-of-the-mill family restaurant on our way out of Las Vegas.  As it turned out, after packing, putting the stuff in the car and finding a bank, it was 11:30 AM before we were ready for breakfast.  The Omelet House on West Charleston was the first restaurant that we came across so stopped there.

The Omelet House is yet another old-style all-American restaurant, with the type of ambiance and menu you can expect from that type of restaurant, albeit this one seemed a bit more crowded and run down than most.  It has great atmosphere, however.  They serve breakfast all day, the standard fare you can expect from this sort of restaurant.  I ordered the “stuffed french toast” ($8.40), which consisted of two slices of French toast with some blueberry compote between them. It came with two slices of bacon and two eggs.  The French Toast was pretty good, nothing out of this world but it was tasty enough.  The bacon was your average kind, again not particularly special, as were the eggs.  A satisfying meal, all in all, and one that kept me until we had dinner, well past 8 PM.

Both kids had pancakes with chocolate chips. Camila had a single one ($3.70) and Mika the “flap special” ($8.50) which consisted of two pancakes, two pieces of bacon and two eggs.  They both liked the very large pancakes. The chocolate chips came on the side, but they melted on the very hot pancakes.  The accompanying butter was salted, which I personally don’t like on sweet foods.

Mike didn’t get anything, thinking that the girls were going to leave a lot of food, but it turned out that the girls were hungrier than we thought.

In all, the Omelet House was a fine, though not particularly outstanding, choice for breakfast.  I’d go again, but would not seek it out.

Omelet House
2160 West Charleston
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 384-6868
http://www.omelethouse.net/

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Pyramid Cafe – Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Last weekend, I stayed at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas with my family while my husband attended a conference.  Saturday evening, Mika, my 9 year-old, got a craving for pasta.  I searched for an Italian restaurant within walking distance to the Luxor, but all the ones I could find were higher end restaurants with more “adult” pasta dishes.  Mika just wanted some spaghetti with meatballs, and really the only place we could find it was at the Pyramid Cafe in the hotel, so that’s where we headed.

The Pyramid Cafe is your basic all-American restaurant serving burgers, sandwiches, pizzas and the sort of entree you can find at coffee shops and diners all over this country.  The prices are moderate (for Vegas) and the portions generous.  We were seated right away (we were there around 7:30 PM) and service by our waiter was very good.  The restaurant follows the understated Ancient Egyptian theme of the hotel, and was pleasant enough in a chain-restaurant sort of way.

The Pyramid Cafe does not have a children’s menu, so I ordered dishes for the girls and figured I’d eat the leftovers.  Mika got the spaghetti and meatballs ($14) an Camila, my 6 year old, got the five cheese pizza ($12).   The spaghetti came with a light tomato sauce, a little bit too acidic for my taste.  Mika thought it was OK, but Camila didn’t really like it.  The two meat balls were medium sized and they were pretty good.  Indeed, Mika pronounced them “the best meatballs ever (sorry, mom)”.  She would have been happy to eat just the meatballs without the spaghetti.  The dish came with some unremarkable garlic bread.

Camila, unfortunately, did not like the pizza.  The cheese blend was a little sharp, I think there might have been some smoke gouda there, and I guess it was too adult for her.  I thought it was OK, better than I expected.  The pizza was 10″ and almost deep-dish, so it was large enough to feed two adults.

In all, it was an OK dining experience.  I wouldn’t rush back to the Pyramid Cafe if I had other choices, but it’s not a bad place to go in a pinch.

Pyramid Cafe
Luxor Hotel and Casino
3900 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV
702-262-4852
http://www.luxor.com/restaurants/pyramid_cafe.aspx

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Indian Oven Restaurant – Chatsworth – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Indian Oven opened up in the space that Raaga used to occupy.  They still have the same phone number, but the space has been modified (part of the dining room is gone) and I think they are under new ownership.  I went to the restaurant for dinner there last week with my sister Kathy, who was having a hankering for Indian food, and left mostly satisfied.

Looks wise, Indian Oven doesn’t have much to recommend it for. It’s your typical Indian restaurant, without much in the way of ambiance, but nice enough. You go here for the food, not anything else.  The service was quite good, however, and the waiters very young and very affable.

Kathy and I were planning on taking food back home for Mike and Mika, who were at the pool, so we ordered tons of things.  We started with the chicken pakora ($4), which was disappointing.  The very small chicken pieces has been overly battered and were quite flavorless.  To add insult to injury, they were very tough and dry.  I got the impression they had been cooked earlier in old, almost stale oil, and then reheated.  I would definitely not order this dish again.

Indeed, you may want to avoid all chicken dishes at Indian Oven.  Our chicken tikka masala ($10) was equally disappointing.  The chicken once again was very, very dry.  While I suspect that chicken tikka masala was invented in the first place to use up left over chicken tikka, most restaurants manage to make it with pieces that retain some moisture and flavor.  The sauce itself was quite good, a pretty standard masala, and I’d order the dish again, albeit with lamb.

Indeed, both of the lamb dishes we ordered were quite good.  Lamb korma ($11) is one of my all time favorite dishes and Indian Oven’s version was pretty good.  The lamb was moist and not overly fatty, and the curry was mild but flavorful.  Kathy was disappointed by the lack of coconut flavor in the curry (per the description of the dish), but IMHO kormas never taste much of coconut. In all, I was satisfied though I’ve tasted better kormas elsewhere.

The mint lamb ($11) was equally satisfying.  Once again the lamb was tender, and the mild mint flavor of the curry was quite alluring. Kathy enjoyed it as well.

Finally, we shared a kashmiri (aka kabuli) naan ($4). It was good enough, though once again not the best version of kashmiri/kabuli naan I’ve ever had.  It was s bit expensive for the quality.

In all, our meal was quite good.  What we ordered ended up being enough for 4 adults and one child, and the total bill came to $54 including tax and tip.  I’d go back there again, though I might give other nearby Indian restaurants a try first.

Indian Oven
10110 Topanga Canyon Blvd.
Chatsworth, CA
818-407-8898
Daily 11 AM – 3 PM & 5 PM – 10 PM.

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Erick Schat’s Bakkerÿ – Bishop – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We chanced upon the Erick Schat’s Bakkerÿ after we missed the turn for our hotel in Bishop.  The building, full of knick knacks and coin-operated vibrating rides outside, intrigued us and we decided to check the bakery for breakfast the next day.  We got there around 7:30 AM and the place was already swinging, mostly with locals.  The large, but crowded, bakery offers a whole array of products: from breads, to pastries, to doughnuts, to beautifully decorated cookies to candies and even gelatto.  They have coffee drinks, sandwiches (for lunch), homemade jerky and a few tables.  In addition to their local business they also do mail order.  It’s a busy place.

We all got to chose a pastry for our breakfast.  I had a cream cheese croissant and while it wasn’t extraordinary, it was pretty good – better than the ones I get at Safeway, at least :-).  I thought Mika’s cinnamon roll was a bit dry, but it did taste like cinnamon.  Camila’s maple doughnut bar was extra-large but otherwise tasted just like your average doughnut.  Finally, Mike did enjoy his ham-egg-and-cheese croissant, the ingredients were good as was the croissant.  I had a very good mocha ($4) and the rest of them had milk.  In all, it was a good place to stop for a pastry but I wouldn’t get out of my way to come here.

On a different note, while the staff was very friendly and helpful, not all of them speak English well.  Our server couldn’t understand my husband’s request to warm up our pastries until I asked her to do so in Spanish.  Not a big deal, of course, but I thought I’d mention it.

Erick Schat’s Bakkerÿ
763 N. Main St.
Bishop, CA
(866) 323-5854
http://www.erickschatsbakery.com/

 

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Bar-B-Q Bills Restaurant – Bishop – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We stopped in Bishop for the night during out trip from Las Vegas and Death Valley to Mono Lake and saw Bar-B-Q Bills when we drove into town.  We love BBQ so we decided to have dinner there.  We got there around 8:15 PM on a Sunday evening, and as they close at 8:30 PM we decided to get our meal to go (our hotel room had a small kitchen we could eat at).  There were still people in the restaurant and coming into the restaurant at this time, so I think we could have eaten there as well.  The restaurant itself is your run-of-the mill American restaurant. It looks more like a pizzeria than a restaurant and sports a poorly lit dining room, a counter where you order your meal and a small salad bar (almost depleted by closing time).

We all ordered the ribs, so that’s pretty much all I can talk about food-wise.   The girls had the “Little Wrangler Rib Dinner” ($4.75) consisting of 2 spare ribs, baked bans or French fries, garlic bread and a soft drink.  Mike and I had the rib dinner ($15), which was basically the same except for more ribs (I’d say about 6).  It also included a bowl for the salad bar.  In addition we got the onion rings ($2.60) and a side order of mashed potatoes (~$2.50), as Mika has been in a mashed potato kick.

The ribs themselves were OK. They were very tender, but too dry for our taste.  The BBQ sauce they came with was too vinegary for my taste, and I thought the ribs were better without it (even though they definitely needed the moisture).  The onion rings were quite good, it was a nice size portion for the price.  The french fries were your standard battered type, tasted OK if you like that kind of French fries.  The garlic bread, on the other hand, was pretty inedible. It was very soft (microwaved?) and tasted nothing of garlic.  Nobody touched it.  The mashed potatoes were also just OK.

The salad bar, even though depleted, was OK for our purpose. Mike got some potato salad (don’t know if it was any good), and I stocked up on hard boiled egg bits, chick peas and mini corn for Mika. She was happy.

I have to say that while the kids portions were fine, Mike and I should have shared a meal rather than have each of us get our own.  As it was we only ate one portion of ribs, couldn’t finish the onion rings and left one portion of French fries untouched.  We had the ribs the next day for a mid-day snack, but the other food was wasted.  So if you go, order less food than you think you’ll want.

I don’t know if we’ll find ourselves in Bishop again, but if we do I’ll probably skip Bar-B-Q Bills.  Those ribs were just too dry.

Bar-B-Q Bills
187 S Main St
Bishop, CA
(760) 872-5535

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Nicely’s Restaurant – Lee Vining – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We just came back from a short “vacation” to Las Vegas.  We made our way back to the Bay Area through Death Valley and the eastern sierra.  Yesterday, after a visit to Bodie, we had a late lunch at Nicely’s in Lee Vining.  Nicely’s is your typical coffee shop sort of restaurant, serving all-American coffee shop food at reasonable but standard prices.  What we had was fine, not great, but then again, we didn’t expect it to be so.

The restaurant itself looks like your all-American coffee shop: tables, booths, outdated decor, the sort of thing you’d have encountered 50 years ago and can still encounter at countless little towns in this country.  They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they have both a dining room inside and outside seating under umbrellas. Even after 2 PM it was quite crowded.  Service by our veteran waitress was efficient, though not terribly friendly.

Both kids had the Kraft mac & cheese kid meal ($4, including french fries, 2 oreo cookies and a small drink).  They were quite happy because they love Kraft mac & cheese. Mika substituted her french fries with mashed potatoes ($1 extra), but she didn’t like them very much. She was unhappy about the pool of melted “butter” on top of the potatoes.  Mike and I shared a NY steak sandwich (~$10) and onion rings ($1 extra as a substitute for fries).  The steak was on the thin side, but tasted good enough.  The onion rings were also quite good.  I ordered a slice of bread pudding ($4), but I was less happy with that. The pudding was pretty dry and tasted overwhelmingly of cinnamon. I wouldn’t order it again.  Mike and Mika shared a slice of banana cream pie, which was pretty good. It came directly out of the fridge so it was a bit cool. Our sodas tasted fine, the glasses were refilled appropriately. The kids ordered lemonade and it tasted home made with real lemons. Mika liked it, Camila did not (she prefers the fake kind).

In all, it was a very typical coffees shop meal experience, nothing to write home about (unless you are a foreign tourist and want to experience the “real thing”).

Nicely’s Restaurant
Highway 395 at Fourth Street
Lee Vining, CA
(760) 647-6477

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

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