Percy Street Barbecue

Y'all know I'm not known for going to brand new restaurants right away. I like others to experience them early on while they're still working out the kinks, so I can enjoy them later, once they've got their act together. But in an effort to enjoy a nice Christopher Columbus outing, we dared visit Percy Street Barbecue during their first week of business. I was intrigued by this place due to the central texas style bbq that they promise. I went to grad school in Austin, so I ate my fair share of bbq while I was there. I don't claim to be an expert on bbq, or let alone food, but I do have plenty of experience in this field. And the bbq options in philly aren't all that great. There certainly aren't texas style bbq places around here. So I was hooked. Plus, I had watched this video of their trip to bbq mecca and I was optimistic that they would really be able to pull this off.
The space is pretty gorgeous and big. The menu is simple, and you can even see it written on these giant chalkboards by the kitchen. But this is a nice restaurant. Unlike the genuine bbq joints in texas, you won't see brown paper strewn across tables. But you will get rolls of paper towels to use as napkins. So it's a mix of modern design aesthetic and down home grubbing.
Bottles of water in vinegar bottles are set on each table and you can even get 1/2 gallons or gallons of beer. These come in big brown glass jugs. It's a lot of beer people, a lot. Please be warned. Meats are sold by the 1/2 lb and sides come small or large.
The waitress recommended that for each person, 1/2 lb of meat and two small sides should suffice. We got large mashed potatoes, large german potato salad, two large mac and cheeses, small green beans, and small collard greens. Ok, so the number one gripe with this place is the paltry portions of the side dishes. Mac and cheese only comes in large, and this large is perhaps an elf's definition of large. These are way too small, and the mac and cheese is way too good to be served this small. Please, this needs to be fixed.

The mashed potatoes seemed whipped, but were not completely smooth, so you know it was made from genuine potatoes. I liked them. The large portion was a genuine large portion. The potato salad was good too, but the large wasn't quite large. The green beans were good, and the small portion seemed right. The collard greens were ok, and like the green beans, its small portion sizing seemed spot on. The collard greens could have been cooked down more and probably should be cut up into smaller pieces. It was a bit hard to maneuver the big hunks of green.
Ok, onto the meats! We got everything but the sausage. Everything comes out in a tray and is served with white bread, pickles, and sliced raw onion. The accompaniments are pure central texas through and through, so I was impressed. There were 10 people in our party. We got 8 slices of bread. I'm pretty good at math but that simply does not add up. Are we supposed to cut this bread into pieces and share? Each person should get at least two pieces of bread(or more) on their own. This is how it should be done. There should be no sharing of bread. It's white bread. I think you guys can swing it!

The ribs were ok. As you can see they are pretty big, but ribs are ribs. These are not baby back ribs where the meat falls of the bone. These require work, and it was just a bit too much work for me. But they tasted fine. Now the pork belly on the other hand, the pork belly was AMAZING. Yes, so amazing that I capitalized it all. This pork belly was some of the best bbq I've ever had in my life, but also some of the best food I've ever had in my life. No joke. I could eat this day and night, despite what my arteries may have to say about it. This is the best thing on the menu here. Heed my word. Forget everything else, it's all about the pork belly here!
The brisket was ok. There are three options - moist, lean, and extra lean. We opted for the lean, but even the lean had a bit thick hunk of fat on top. The brisket was good, but it was too charred on the outside. The char is definitely not adding to the flavor. My favorite bbq in general is brisket (or at least it was until I had the pork belly here!) and whenever I've had it in texas, it never had char on the outside. It's supposed to have a nice red ring around the edges due to the smoke, but there should be no char.

Everyone was disappointed with the chicken. R wanted the chicken to taste like oven roasted chicken or rotisserie chicken. She also felt the chicken was dry. No one else thought the chicken was dry. In fact, we found it quite moist and juicy, but it was bland. It was so, so, so boring and bland. It had absolutely no flavor at all. We told the manager none of us liked the chicken and he was shocked. He said the chicken was his favorite thing on the menu. Egads. If plain, flavorless, bland chicken is your thing, then go for the chicken here. If not, then avoid it at all costs. But if you do get it, be sure to bring some kind of sauce for it.< src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI1YAluhXevCGOqZn_y0DBDgH-AbMazdoZLen5yuz846u-1shEtqy1OppZE-keSbDP90gBLglI07WA79UpGy8QhUUYjTftcilf6bKwuPSU39Q7__KTJ6rZNmJeuvHbAHA9HpPvIbSYjsw7/s400/percycake.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 354px; " alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407709549668727890" border="0">No one wanted any dessert, except for R. She wanted the chocolate layer cake. Man, was this thing disappointing. We thought the chicken couldn't be topped, but this sure beat it. This cake was dry, dry like the freakin Sahara, and it tasted like yellow cake mix from the grocery store. And not even Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker, I'm thinking generic no-frills yellow cake mix. We passed this around and after everyone took a bite, everyone had to drink. Cakes should be moist. What a cake fail!
But we did end the evening on a high note. We didn't order the pecan pie, but it showed up. I think it helped that we spent a whole crapload of money in their first week in business and that we gave them some honest constructive feedback. This pie was awesome! It wasn't freakishly sweet like some pecan pies I've had before, this was just sweet enough. I wholeheartedly recommend this pie.

So the service needs some work. The amount of time it took for our drinks to come out was not really acceptable. We were just sitting there wondering where our drinks were, for a very long time. This desperately needs to be improved. But the food came out pretty quick, so we were impressed with that. And the servers are nice and friendly. So basically, there were definitely hits and misses with the food here. The pork belly and the brisket are hits, as are the sides, and the pecan pie, but the portions of the sides, the chicken, and the chocolate layer cake are severe misses. But would I eat here again? Hell yeah, as I've been dreaming about the pork belly ever since!

FoodBuzz Fest Street Food Fare

The kind people at FoodBuzz (--> I am a featured publisher!) held the inaugural FoodBuzz Food Blogger Festival in san francisco this year. That was my other reason for going out there for this trip. On the first night, they had a street food fare at the Ferry Building. Street food... Ferry Building... put them together and it's like a dream! There were tons of local vendors who let us grub on their fine grub. It was a nice variety as well, and everyone was super friendly. Even though we only ate little plates, I was beyond stuffed by the end of it. And yes, all this food was prepared on the site!
What's a trip to sf without tacos? Beef, of course!
The food above is not only completely vegan, but also completely raw. Scary sounding, I know, but surprisingly tasty. The cheesecake was good, even though there was a slightly funny this isn't real cheese taste. I still liked it!
The star of the evening... the porchetta sandwich from roli roti. What is it? Pork belly rolled into pork loin with crispy skin rotisseried the crack up, with fresh herbs, onion marmalade, and curly cress stuffed in between bread. Oh. My. Word. Yes, it is that delicious.
Delicious thin crust pizzas. Yes, the oven was there!
Freshly shucked oysters from Hog Island Oyster!
Mini meat pies! These ones were steak & gruyere. This was my second favorite of the evening!
Adorable little mini cupcakes of various flavors from Mission Minis. So cute and so tasty! You can even find these at whole foods in the sf area! Schmancy!
Freshly fried chicharrones. Ok, obviously, this wasn't an event for the health conscious.
Ok, here's one thing that was slightly healthy... vegetables! I had the beet salad which I loved. You heard it here people, I love beets! I love street food. I especially love it when it's within one confined area so I don't have to walk far between gourd stuffings.

Sushi Roku

For our next dinner, we headed over to Caesar's for some sushi at Sushi Roku. This place is fancy. And the view we had was amazing. We could see down the whole strip. The view is nearly worth the visit alone.
I wanted some veggie, so I ordered the kimchi cucumber sunomono. I imagined this would be like normal sunomono. Boy, was I wrong. It was hunks of kirby cucumbers, that had been sliced, but not sliced off of the cucumber, so they were still seemingly somewhat whole. Instead of a regular sour sunomono taste, it was like a spicy pickle. I really liked this a lot, in fact, I ended up nearly eating the whole thing myself, but it was definitely not what I expected. But I was quite happy with my choice.
The assorted sushi combination. It was really surprising how fresh this fish was. It was definitely high quality and melt in your mouth. They were a bit overeager on the wasabi!
After the initial combo, we just started ordering a whole bunch of stuff. Rainbow roll, baked lobster roll, shrimp tempura with asparagus, etc. All good.
More sushi! This time, some king crab, salmon, and toro. Look at that first piece of salmon. Look at all the wasabi! Yeah, one of those salmon pieces cleaned out my sinuses!
Totally forget what this is, but this may have been an apple type thing. Whatever it was, it came with a giant long cookie.
The volcano cake, a chocolate tort type of thing with liquid chocolate in the middle. C ordered this, but he's allergic to nuts (there was a nut on top), so we all ended up picking at it. Incredibly rich!
I got a banana type of thing, I think. It was sitting in a fried pastry type of thing, which was good, but a bit too thick and crunchy. It was ok.
The sushi here was excellent. While it was incredibly expensive, the quality of the fish here is insanely good. Is it worth it? I'm not sure, but it sure was tasty. The service was great too.

Burger Bar

Everyone I was with watches Top Chef (I do not) so they all know who Hubert Keller is and all wanted to go to the Burger Bar. This is the burger restaurant that he has in Vegas, along with a few other places. They have chef's burgers which have been pre-designed and you can also make your own burger with whatever normal and crazy toppings you want. They have a $60 rossini burger with kobe, foie gras, and truffles. There's also a crazy surf and turf burger topped with half a grilled lobster.
I got the sliders, which gave me three different little burgers. I also got to substitute sweet potato fries for regular fries. One of these was a buffalo burger, another was angus, and the third was corn fed beef. These little puppies were quite tasty. It was a little bit too much beef for me, but it was ok, I didn't eat all three of them.
M ended up getting one of these sweet dessert burgers after ordering a crazy design your own burger. This was the creamy cheese cake burger. The buns are donuts. The "burger" is cheesecake, and the "cheese" is caramelized pineapple. This thing is wrong in every single way, but I'm not gonna lie to you, this thing was good. If you're really into burgers and willing to drop a buck or two, definitely try this out. And leave room for dessert!

Grandmom's 88th!

We visited my grandma to celebrate her 88th birthday. Whoa man, 88 is pretty damn old! A variety of korean foods in fancy aluminum pans. I forget where my mom picked this food up from, but it was actually pretty damn good. Later that night, we trekked to my aunt's house for some more food. She had these freakishly ginormous shrimp. She didn't realize that she didn't have any normal tempura batter, so she ended up having to use this spicy chicken batter. These were so big she could only fry up a few at a time. There's my hand for scale. They really were pretty much as big as my hand. I don't have the biggest hands, but they're quite normal sized. These shrimp were huge. The chicken batter ended up being fine. It's hard to screw up fat giant shrimp being fried in a hot vat of grease. We would be terrible koreans if we didn't bbq some meat. We would have grilled outside but it was storming something terrible, so we had to resort to using an indoor grill. In addition to meat and shrimp, we also had some spicy fish soup.

French Fine Dining At Pearl Brasserie

After my fine dining experience the night before, I decided to treat myself for the rest of the trip and continue with the fine dining streak. So for my next adventure, I dined at Pearl Brasserie. It is a French brasserie located in a basement. But don't worry, it's a very nice restaurant, despite its underground location. From my first moment in, it was an extraordinary experience. And that's exactly what it was, an experience. It wasn't just a regular meal, it was an event. The place is very nice, but not snooty at all. There are light fixtures that look like pearl onions. I assume that's where the pearl in Pearl Brasserie came from.
Complimentary whole wheat baguette with pesto and butter. This butter was incredibly rich and amazing. And while I'm not normally a pesto person, I enjoyed it on the baguettes.
While waiting for my entree, we were all treated to a complimentary appetizer. It was pork with cumin with a horseradish sauce. Man, was this thing good. With a start like this, I knew my entree was going to kick ass.
And kick ass it did. I got the seared queen scallops and dublin bay prawns. It was served with curried gnocchi, and fresh garden peas, in a prawn bisque. Everything about this dish was amazing. The scallops and prawns were perfectly cooked, the gnocchi was tender, the peas had just enough crunch, and the bisque had an amazing flavor. I could have licked this plate. And if I wasn't surrounded by so many high class people, I totally would have.
I couldn't stop eating. Since it was french brasserie portions, I still had room, and a need to keep eating. So I got the creme brulee, and my server said it was a good choice. I love me some creme brulee, and if it's on a menu, and I'm feeling dessert, there's a good chance I'm going to pick it. This one was particularly great. It was made with organic free range eggs, and you know what, you really could tell. It had good texture, a lovely strong vanilla flavor, and a nice and crispy burnt crunch on top.

And let me tell you about the service. This place is run like a machine. But not in a cold and robotic way. Just in an incredibly precise and well-oiled machine kind of a way. Everyone worked as a team, and they were immaculate professionals. Everyone was nice, friendly, and great at their jobs. And you could tell they deeply cared about what they were doing. This was one of the most memorable meals I've ever had in my life. It was the type of meal where they spoil you a bit, and well, I enjoyed it. I wholeheartedly recommend anyone in Dublin to try this place out. You'll remember it for the ages!

Breakfast At The Basel Marktplatz

Basel is so freakin cute. Like seriously cute. As far as Europe goes, I haven't seen much of it, but it's definitely up there on the cute scale. Like postcard cute. And it's quite a manageable little city. Quite walkable, trams take you everywhere, and it's nice to look at.
Every morning at the Marktplatz, there is an open air market where locals hawk their food wares. Like these beautiful veggies.
More veggies. I think.
Olives, my nemesis, and some cured meats.
More of my little enemies.
Fresh stuffed pastas!
Laugenbread. Looks just like challah, huh?
Fruits and nuts.
Strange berries. There are blackberries and blueberries, but there are some blue and red ones that I am not familiar with.
Who wouldn't want to buy fresh foods at a place this picturesque?
On this morning I got a delicious little latte from that adorable cart and a special crepe made with grapes. I had to wait awhile for this crepe, as the lone crepemaker had taken a break, but unfortunately, it was kind of awful. It was just super sweet and mushy. But that's ok, I forgive for the surroundings.

La Croissanterie - French Fast Food

I literally roamed around for 6 hours waiting for my hotel... there's only so much walking you can do in Dublin before you run out of things to do. But if you roam around enough, you get hungry. There's a big indoor shopping area at the beginning of Grafton Street. There isn't too much to eat here and it's pretty touristy, but I was tired and just decided to eat at La Croissanterie. Turns out to be a french chain. They sell sandwiches (baguette types, paninis, etc) and some sweets. I got a special which comes with a sandwich, dessert, and drink. I forget what this sandwich was called, but it had country turkey (don't know what makes it country, except it has an orange-ish ring around the edges) and cole slaw. The sandwich wasn't terrible, but it was freezing cold (everything is kept in refrigerated display cases). If they had maybe heated it up or put it in a press or something, it would have been a thousand times better. The pastry was an apple puff and it was stupendous. So I'd have to say oui to the pastry and peut-etre to the sandwich.