Nom Burger

Happy New Year :D!

Since I’ve moved to the Bay Area, I realized that I’ve never actually posted anything about any restaurants nearby.  Well, we’re about to change that!  Sunnyvale has been doing a lot of revamp for their downtown area, and a lot of local restaurants have recently (recently, is within the lifetime of 2016) opened.

 

Upon entering Nom Burger, I wasn’t sure what kind of expectations to have.  The decor was really nice, and everything was really modern.  Prior to coming here, I read about how the buns are all handmade – but y’know, you don’t believe until you see it.  Right where we were seated, there was someone working on glazing the buns with egg.

He noticed we were taking photos of him, hehe.  Glowing buns being glazed *yummeh*

I would classify this restaurant as one that served gourmet burgers.  Prices were all within the range of $15, which is kinda expensive in my opinion given that you have to pay additional for sides…that is, until the burger came.

Every month they have a special burger.  This month they have the Hella Dank Burger ($15).  This is a banh mi inspired burger

California Love ($14)

Do you see how huge these burgers are?  They really were a mouthful to eat.  And as much as they were delicious, I would definitely not recommend on your first date.  You will be a mess!  Our waiter knew this ahead of time and presented us with a ton of extra napkins xD.
Of the two burgers, N and I both ended up agreeing that the California Love was the better of the two.  Its freshness of local ingredients, balance of sweet and salty, and of course, avocado, definitely won my love.  That doesn’t put the Hella Dank out of competition, though.  If you’re up for a challenge and want to try different, I would definitely go with this burger.  The compilation of the pickled radish and pate brought out its own type of umami.

Nom Fries ($5)

We ordered one side for the two of us, and wait a minute, did you guys hear what I said – SIDE?  This is huge!  We order Nom Fries, which is essentially garlic fries.  So apparently, this photo is taken when the food arrived, which a waiter dropped by telling us that we have been lied to, and splat on some sort of sour cream, which went really well with the fries (such great service, right?!).  The fries are chopped finely, and really good…*drool*.  The aioli sauce on it was a tad spicy, but totally tolerable.

I honestly feel like this place is not here to jip you.  The food is good, service is wonderful (shoutout to our waiter, he really enhanced the experience), and atmosphere is great.  It’s nice to know that more of these kind of restaurants are opening up around the Bay Area.  I would definitely come here again.

-ksdn.

F3 | Fast Food Francais

After moving to California, I’ve always been amazed by how great the weather is (despite being in a drought), and sunny weather really is great because it motivates me to get off my butt and go somewhere more “adventurous”…which leads to the purpose of today’s post.

A couple of friends and I decided to be a little more active and we spent the train in the city to bike across the staple icon of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge.  In fact, if you are a tourist or live in NorCal, I highly recommend it!  The weather is always extremely co-operative and the agenda for biking works so well for an entire day activity, with lots of photo spots, stopping by to capture the beautiful weather and scenery, and of course, hitting up the good food spots.

Upon biking across the bridge into the city of Sausilito in the blazing afternoon, the workout was really calling for some refueling of food.  The bike between after the bridge and into the city was the most tiring..my legs felt like they were jello!  I decided I wanted me some good food as a reward, which brought us to Fast Food Francais.

I guess one thing that hinders people from finding this place is that most people are here for the view rather than the food, so they hit up spots with a great view of the water.  Not to say that the vibe at Fast Food Francais wasn’t good though, it was really nice to just sit outside, relax in the quiet chill neighbourhood with some good food.

To start things off, we ordered some appetizers, which really set the bar quite high, specifically those potato totes (or pommes dauphines if we’re being french..haha).  I wish I had a picture of them after they’re split in half, but the crunchy outer appearance really fools you…GOOD!  The insides are filled with creamy mashed goodness that makes you wonder how they got the outside so crunchy and light to begin with.  The combination of light slightly bitter brussel sprout chips with the fries/potato totes really kicked it off to a good start.

Pommes Dauphines/ Fries/ Brussels Sprout Chips ($8)

French Charcuterie Plate/ Pâté de Campagne/ Chorizo/ Saucisson Sec/Cornichons ($12)

The charcuterie platter was pretty good too!  I would say it’s a pretty good portion size for it’s money’s worth and although pate isn’t really my thing, I managed to appreciate it balanced as a spread on the bread.  The other sausage (which is out of focus ._.), which I’m guessing is the chorizo was a bit spicy, so not for my palette, but I really enjoyed the other sausage slices.

Not sure if it was only me, but I found it a bit funky that this place served burgers.  My friends and I all agreed that we weren’t really in the mood for burgers but at the end of our meal, we all changed men – we loved them!  We ordered different burgers, each of which we said were all good.  Juicy (and I mean JUICY), soft, cooked to order, and high in quality, these burgers were some gourmet!  The most “french” resembling burger that I would say is the French Onion burger, which was also my favourite.  The beef patty was made to perfection, medium rare in our case, and all burgers were not overwhelmed in sauce but managed to ‘sauced’ to perfection.

Although I didn’t really try this burger, T said that he really felt that this burger really brought out the bacon flavour in the burger, which isn’t common.  There was a good balance of flavour between all the different ingredients.

BOS: Organic Grass Fed Beef/ Smoked Bacon/ St. Nectaire/ Béarnaise/ Lettuce ($13)

I had the quack burger.  The duck confit was really soft and tender, which I enjoyed a lot, seeing that it’s not conventional to have a duck confit burger.  One thing I would have wished wasn’t so overpowering was the goat cheese, I think it was, which I found overpowered the flavour of duck.

Quack: Duck Confit/ Black Pepper Chèvre/ Red Onion Marmalade/ Lettuce ($14)

My personal favourite was the french onion burger, which I also found was a good representation of France and their french onion soup.  I looooved the gooey cheese that accompanied every bite of the burger, saucy burgers are always a plus for me.

French Onion: Organic Grass Fed Beef/Onion Soup/ Emmental/ Cheddar Fondue/ Onions Rings/Lettuce ($13)

All in all, we were all stuffed at the end of the meal, and satisfied.  It was a delightful surprise and hidden behind the tourist area, in a quiet but hip street.  I would definitely recommend if food > view if you’re ever in Sausilito!

-ksdn

Mission Beach Cafe

Where do I begin with brunches in the city?  During our weekend in the city, I just craved some warm and wakening food to make up for the cloudy chilly morning.  And being in Mission really doesn’t make it hard to find a good place that hits the spot.

Not too far from where we were staying we found an awesome brunch location, Mission Beach Cafe! It’s not in a busy intersection, more within the suburbs of the city (if that counts…), and this place is really popping with a huge line and a fun atmosphere of friends and families, if ya know what I mean.

A cute corner location of a not so busy intersection (14th St and Guerrero St).

We probably waited around 30 minutes for a table of two, but I wouldn’t mind doing it again (that’s how worth it it was 😀).  Although the seating arrangement is quite tight, I wouldn’t blame them – they just want to keep customers happy and service as many as they could.   I wouldn’t say you are in the most spacious place when you’re seated, and everyone is chittery chattery, which I myself didn’t mind, but if you’re looking for a calm quiet place then you may want to pay this place a visit when you’re more accepting haha.

We started off with a very necessary cup of coffee, hot and toasty, followed with our two entrees, eggs benedicts and huevos with tortilla chips.

Wild mushroom benedict with spinach, caramelized onions, truffle mornay sauce over english muffin, potatoes

mbc huevos with yellow-indian-women beans, salsa rojo, cojita cheese, tomatillo pico-de-gallo, tortilla chips

I loooove runny eggs, so obviously those egg benedict were mine.  The truffle sauce was so flavourful yet not overpowering, and it was really a good combination with the egg yolk. Mmm, just thinking about makes me want to go back already.  A mouthful of that along with the mushroom and spinach was really the cherry on top.  And, honestly, how could I leave out the potatoes.  These home-cut potatoes were seasoned so well and baked so well it was almost as good as the main item on the plate.  N definitely enjoyed those a lot…he kept stealing them off my place…haha.

To be honest though, N’s dish was just neutral to me.  I think I just thought it was strange to be eating tortilla for brunch.  I may be completely wrong though, tell me otherwise if you guys have had tortilla chips for brunch!  This dish was a lot more bold than the dish I had ordered, with very vibrant flavours, and I really loved the salsa and guac.  I guess this wasn’t as attractive to me as my own because the egg in this dish was cooked quite thoroughly and my poor tolerance in spiciness made me quite biased.  Regardless, if you are a bold flavour type-a-person I’m sure you’ll dig this ;).

I really enjoyed being here, and I really felt like I was in the whole San Francisco laid back afternoon grabbing a brunch type of mood, which was really nice!  Haha, not sure if that really meant anything…but what I’m trying to say is that I enjoyed my experience here and I would definitely recommend you all to try it if you have a chance!!

-ksdn

Craftsman & Wolves

Hey my foodos!

It has been an awful long time since the last time I’ve posted on this…and too many things in my life have changed.  I’m currently no longer a student, I’m graduated and now working – and the biggest catch of this, is that I don’t live in Canada anymore :(.  I moved down for work, and now I live in NorCal, the home of fresh food and amazing food talent.  I’m hoping to revive this food blog and am planning to post more often (when I have time and when I can remember..).  Now that I have a job this also allows for me to explore with less guilt and go eat recklessly more often.

Okay, well enough about me, and now I will talk about my foodventure that me and N had during our weekend in the beautiful city of San Francisco.  We spent the weekend in Mission – food central.  We hadn’t realized this until we started exploring and we noticed all these restaurants with beautiful, hip interior and the creative items available on the menu.  At this point, we promised ourselves that we would make a stop at the next candidate that met the criteria.

And that is how we found ourselves inside a wakening ambience that we wanted to be in.  The interior was very simple, with an smartly perfectly unfinished ceiling and spider lights.  This little shop was filled with little baked goods both sweet and savoury.  Because N and I walked into Craftsman & Wolves as our first meal of the day, we decided to order a few savoury dishes.

We ordered a very delicious savoury muffin made with wheat, sausage and green onions that speaks for itself, really.  I mean, never judge a book by it’s cover ;).

A “simple” muffin

Craftsman & Wolves are geniuses by stuffing the muffin with a soft boiled egg that makes your eyes salivate just its looks, haha.  All the flavours were subtle yet worked in harmony, which made hard not to devour.

We also ordered a slice of their quiche, which was my personal favourite of the two.  Although I’m a sucker for soft boiled eggs and the muffin was amazing, I loved that the ingredients inside the quiche complemented one another so well.  The picked carrots had a nice and subtle kick to them which really worked my taste buds 🙂

Quiche (zucchini, baby kale, curry, asiago cheese) with pickled carrots

Our visit here was very pleasant.  It’s always nice to encounter a nice little shop that you enjoy by coincidence.  It just makes everything a better experience ;).  It’s good to be back, and hopefully being in this new space will motivate me to be more disciplined in blogging more often.  Until next time guys!!

-ksdn

Cora’s Breakfast & Lunch

Hey all! 🙂
If you’re hungry in the morning and feeling for a fresh but filling breakfast, Cora’s is the place to go!  Specializing in breakfast and lunch menu, Cora’s provides a selection of crepes, pancakes, sandwiches and much more!  They also have a featured fresh smoothie made with a mix of the freshest fruits they have.  M ordered one with pineapples, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.  It had lots of berry seeds and tasted very fresh with a hint of sourness (which I actually liked!).

Spinach and Cheese Omlette ($9.25 + tax)

For my meal, I decided to order the spinach & cheddar omlette.  In my opinion, I preferred the potato wedges more than the omlette itself. The wedges were lightly roasted and salted. The omlette on the other hand was a little too cooked for my liking. They overdosed on cheese and the spinach was not very noticeable in flavour.  The flavour ends up getting a little bland in the taste palette, and I ended up resorting to ketchup for help.  But in terms of filling level, I was EXTREMELY full!

The atmosphere of the restaurant is very home-y and friendly.  It’s definitely a casual place to have fun with family and friends!  Even though there will probably a wait time when you go, the wait time is relatively short and servers are friendly and respond quickly.

My overall ratings for Cora’s …– atmosphere: 8/10
– value: 7.5/10
– food: 6.5/10

Feel free to visit Cora’s at http://www.chezcora.com!

Until next time!

-ksdn