Hawaiian poke @ The Big Daddy Shack; and burrito @ The Flyin' Jalapeno, Venice Beach (LA, California)

I am back from California, and what a trip that was! It was a combination of exhilarating and exhausting, as it is never easy travelling across so many timezones with youngsters. Indeed, it was an experience I won't forget any time soon, and I have many photos to share in the weeks/months to come. Our first stop on the trip was Los Angeles, and we stayed in a rental house near Venice Beach. I tasked hubby with the job of doing up the itinerary of our two days in LA, and he did a fab job of it! We spent our first morning in LA at the beach, then we headed over to Big Daddy Shack for lunch. This was our first time eating Hawaiian poke, a raw fish salad heavily influenced by the Japanese cuisine. Big Daddy Shack is a small eatery mainly catering for take-away orders, though there were a handful of seats and some tables for the option to dine in. The girl serving at the counter was very sweet, friendly and helpful, and I loved her purple micro braids! The staff in general were lovely and amicable, so this place gets the thumbs ups for good service.

The Big Daddy Shack's shopfront:

The order counter and kitchen:

The front page of the take-out menu:

The menu was a pictorial instruction on how to build/design your poke bowl: choose a size (Lil Daddy for US$9 that comes with one topping of your choice, and Big Daddy for US$12 that includes two toppings), pick white or brown rice, decide between ahi tuna or salmon, and finally select one sauce. For those who don't fancy raw fish, there are a few seared and grilled options to choose from, and even a grilled chicken bowl for non-fish eaters. Also available were hand rolls, salads and fruit smoothies. Hubby and I are big fans of the poke bowls. The combination of flavours, textures aromas were excellent, and I liked how nutritious these poke bowls were.

Hubby's Big Daddy poke bowl of ahi tuna with brown rice, mango and macadamia nuts, drizzled with house shoyu sauce. Mango gave some sweetness, the nuts gave a crunchy texture, and they both combine well with the sashimi tuna:

My Lil Daddy-sized poke of salmon with white rice, seaweed and avocado, in sriracha aioli sauce. I loved this combination as it was spicy and had two of my favourite ingredients (seaweed and avocado):

We got our something sweet with the Acai Bowl (US$6) with mango juice base, acai pulp, blueberries, kiwi fruit, granola and honey. Eye-poppingly red and delicious too:

We enjoyed our poke bowls, appreciated the good and helpful service (especially after our baby girl tipped half our acai bowl on the floor), and highly recommend this casual eatery for a delicious and nutritious meal in Venice Beach.

The Big Daddy Shack
79 Windward Ave
Venice, CA 90291
United States
+1-310-804-5734



Almost everything on the Big Daddy Shack's menu contained sesame (except for the fruit smoothies and acai bowl, which aren't exactly lunch material for our sesame-allergic boy), so the chick at the counter suggested we headed next door to The Flyin Jalapeno. Hubby went with the 6-year-old to order the boy's lunch, and they came back to the table with a massive Chicken Burrito (US$10). It was hefty, packed with vegetables, beans, chicken and rice, which the boy happily ate. I cannot comment on the service of The Flyin Jalapeno, but I can certainly say that the burrito was delicious!

The Flyin Jalapeno was next door to Big Daddy Shack:

Chicken burrito (:

:

The Flyin' Jalapeno
83 Windward Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90291
United States
Tel. +1-310-392-8900



[The prices above do not include taxes and tips.]

Hawai'ian for Mother's Day @ Roy's Tokyo Bar & Grill

Last Sunday was Mother's Day for many, and I was spoilt for the day by my husband on my son's behalf. Although it was technically my second Mother's Day, it was the first one where I got to celebrate it in a proper sense, because this time last year we had to deal with a not-so-fantastic combination of flight exhaustion, settling into NYC for the month and our then 7 month-old's first teething problems. Needless to say, Mother's Day last year sort of went forgotten. The 19 month-old has yet to learn that a 4am wake up call is really not the best Mother's Day present, but hopefully it won't take too long before he learns what makes mummy happy. I'm a simple girl who is easy to please, and all I wanted for Mother's Day was to have a family meal at a nice restaurant. I got more than I requested: we had a lovely Hawaiian-style lunch at Roy's Tokyo Bar & Grill, and then hubby cooked a chicken roast dinner and washed the dishes so that I could chillax (something I found hard to do, which annoyed hubby to no end). He really wanted to make me breakfast in bed, which was a lovely thought, but it just wasn't practical given that I wake (or get woken up!) a good few hours before hubby does and it's almost impossible for me to get back to sleep once awake when daylight has broken.

We first ate at Roy's a few years ago, and we'd really enjoyed that experience. However, when we re-visited this restaurant again a few months later, we weren't as impressed with the food as we had been for our first experience, and I hadn't even bothered blogging about it. It's been a couple of years since, and I was curious to see if our not-so-great second experience was just a one-off occurrence. I also wanted to introduce Hawaiian cuisine to my sister because her impression of Hawaiian food was limited to spam and pineapple (I'd thought the same too before I ate at Roy's). The restaurant's service was great and accommodating to families with young children. It is a popular place to lunch on a weekend, and we were glad that hubby had called the night before to make a reservation when we saw the queue for a table got longer as we enjoyed our meal. We all got the brunch option, where for 3500yen we could choose each course from a decent selection, and includes a fruit juice, bread and a salad or soup. Even though we each had our own dishes, we had the meal semi-family-style and everyone had a taste of everyone else's food. There was a lot of food, so I hope you're prepared for the onslaught of food photos!

Appetisers

My sister chose Coconut Shrimp with Homemade-style Tartar Sauce:

Hubby got the Roy's Crab Cake with Spicy Sesame Sauce:

My appetiser was the Scallop Herb Sautee with Green Soybeans Puree:

The sauce in my scallop appetiser was pretty tasty, but it was a shame that the scallops were a little overdone so that it was on the chewy rubbery side. Hubby's crab cake was quite nice, but we all agreed that my sister got the nicest appetiser of the three of us. I guess you can't go wrong with crispy coconut batter and tartar sauce when it comes to prawns (or shrimps)!

Soup or Salad

Next we were served our choice of either the Minestrone Soup or Salad. My sister got the soup whereas Hubby and I got the salad. The soup was tasty and slightly sweet, containing chunky vegetables. I should have asked to have the salad dressing on the side, because the vinaigrette dressing was quite overpowering. Otherwise the salad would have been perfectly acceptable with its crisp fresh vegetables.

The soup and salad:

Main Course

Sis's Orange-marinated Smoked Salmon Sautee served with Poached Egg and Ratatouille:

Hubby ordered the Roy's Style Butterfish with Miso, served with Rice Ball, Wasabi and Ginger Sauce:

I got the Roy's Original Loco Moco Fish Lomi Lomi Tomato Vianigrette (don't you just love the name?):

I went with the Loco Moco because it sounds typically Hawaiian, and using fish instead of a hamburger patty made it more appealing to me. I loved eating the runny yolk with rice, but I must say that it was a pretty plain dish. The fish patty was nice with the "lomi lomi" ingredients, but it was overcooked and dry. My sister's orange salmon was delicious, but the only thing worth mentioning was the orange sauce. Hubby's butterfish dish was the best out of the three, and I really enjoyed the silky oily texture of the fish. Unfortunately, the miso was pretty strong and I couldn't taste any fish flavour, and the wasabi sauce was extremely overpowering. I loved the presentation of the butterfish dish, and the idea to serve it with an onigiri (rice ball) was creative.

Dessert

My sister's choice of Chocolate Banana Tiramisu:

Hubby's Cheesecake with Berry Sauce:

My Mandarin Parfait with Dark Chocolate Gelato:

I think out of all the courses, we were probably the most pleased with the dessert course. The tiramisu was quite nice with just a hint of banana flavour (real banana, not the fake flavour), and we all know that chocolate pairs really nicely with banana. The cheesecake was also delicious, not too heavy and sickeningly rich like cheesecakes can be, and it's no secret that fruits and cheese make a lovely combination. And the parfait was refreshingly light, with the star being the smooth dark chocolate gelato.

I have a lot of negative things to say about this experience at Roy's, but in spite of that, I really enjoyed this Mother's Day meal. It would appear that the quality of food at Roy's has indeed slipped in the last 2.5 years, but thinking about it, the food we had back then seemed to have more of a Japanese influence. It's still a nice place to go for a meal, with gorgeous views and wonderful service.

Hawai'ian @ Roy's, Tokyo

I must admit that when Rob suggested we try Roy Yamaguchi's Hawaiian-fusion restaurant located in Roppongi Hills, I wasn't exactly jumping at the chance. The first two things that came to mind about Hawaiian food were spam and pineapple pieces (y'know, pizza with "Hawaiian" toppings?) - not exactly gourmet ingredients right?). Rob previously had the opportunity to eat at one of Roy's restaurants in New York City for dinner with his collegues, and he raved about it. Naturally, he wanted me to try the food too. I knew of Roy Yamaguchi's fame and reputation, so I knew that the food would at least be pretty good. With that in mind, we walked into the restaurant for lunch on Sunday afternoon.

Roy's Tokyo Bar and Grill offers a brunch deal for 3500yen per person, and you could choose each course from a pretty good selection. I actually expected it to be more pricey, given the chef's celebrity fame and the restaurant's location in Roppongi Hills. We were seated by the window, and we had a lovely view of the Hills and Tokyo tower in he distance. Service was excellent and absolutely faultless. The waiter assigned to us was vey friendly and helpful, and he spoke great English. He was even gracious enough to print a copy of the menu for me! After dining in NYC for two months, we felt somewhat awkward not tipping, especially since service and food were very good (of a higher calibre than perhaps 80% of the restaurants we dined in NYC). However, we were also aware that tipping in Japan may be taken offensively (we heard stories) so we stayed on the cautious side. Let's just say that we would have been more than happy to tip for the service and food.

We were first served our respective juices (included in the price) and shortly after with bread and muffin. Rob selected a kabocha (sweet yummy Japanese pumpkin) muffin and it was good enough to warrant a mention and a photo!



For appetiser, I went with Roy's Style Ahi Poke with Fresh Mango and Avocado. The poke was similar to salsa, except it was made with cubed fish. It was quite tasty: minimally dressed, accompanied with mango and avocado and topped with a smattering of flying fish roe, and I could detect a hint of sesame oil - all of which went very nicely with the raw ahi cubes. Rob chose the Kahana Style Pork and Shrimp Spring Roll with Black Bean Mango Chilli Sauce. Compared to the mild-tasting ahi poke, the spring rolls gave a strong kick to the tastebuds, in a nice way. The spring roll was crispy and delicious and perfectly accompanied with the chilli sauce.

My ahi poke and Rob's spring roll:


Prior to the main course, we had some lovely fruit salad which doubled well as a palate cleanser. Fresh raspberries, blueberries, pineapple and melon with a whip of fresh cream - it was just delightful!



I chose the Catch of the Day Special Dish for my main course, which was mahi-mahi with black soy bean sauce. The fish was perfectly cooked, juicy and tender - ah, the Japanese sure know how to cook seafood! By the way, I've never had perfectly cooked fish or seafood at any restaurant outside of Japan. The black bean sauce was very bold and salty, which I felt was a bit too strong for fish. It would be perfect for something like steak. Thankfully the sauce wasn't drowning the fish, but rather was left around the rim of the plate to leave the diner the option to use the sauce as desired. Rob's choice was Grilled Black Tiger Shrimp and Scallops with Chorizo Clam Chowder Sauce. The prawns were crispy and delicious, and it was good to eat scallops that haven't been overcooked until dry and rubbery. The sauce was rich and creamy, which Rob happily sopped up.

Catch of the day (mahi mahi); and grilled prawns and scallops:


Then it was dessert time! We could choose from five types and I selected the Mango Pudding while Rob went with the Raspberry Mousse. Both were okay, somewhat on the too-sweet and rich side for my tastebuds.

Mango pudding and raspberry mousse:


It was a nice date, and we had a great time. It seems like it has been quite awhile since we had time to enjoy ourselves, being busy with moving and furnishing our new apartment and me starting a new job. Service at Roy's was impeccable, food was wonderful and it was a much-needed quality time with my hubby.