Tag: drinks

Halloween Treats

Halloween Treats

Happy almost Halloween everyone! Today we have some treats to eat for a spooky fun menu. With the help of our nieces, Maleeya and Amaya we are making a few fun Halloween-themed dishes and want to wish you all a safe and Happy Halloween! Jack-O-Lantern 

Mizumi Las Vegas, NV

Mizumi Las Vegas, NV

Las Vegas…. what a crazy, interesting, evocative, and mischievous place to visit. It’s one of my favorite places to people watch and remember why I am where I am now and not where I used to be. Brandon’s grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousin live in 

Sweets and Drinks in Vegas

Sweets and Drinks in Vegas

Sin City has its alluring qualities and flashy devilish charms, but hidden amongst the countless yards of alcohol and not so flattering clothing choices, are the sweet and deliciously decadent, which my boyfriend and I found on our trip around the strip. Brandon is the first person I went to Vegas with after I turned 21. We were freshly friends on a mission to seek out some delicious inspiration and new restaurant ideas for growing chefs in a new place. Since then, almost five years ago, one of my favorite pastimes in Vegas is restaurant menu searching and eating.

Our adventure to Vegas was filled with fun trips to different casinos to see menus with seasonal inspiration. On our way around, we decided to stop at a really amazing sweet shop at the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace called Vosges Haut-Chocolat.  Every time we go here, there’s always some new and interesting combination of flavors that I need to try and also, some that I always go back to. We looked around for a while, and finally decided on a box of truffles, white chocolate lavender hot coco mix, and chocolate toffee.  The truffles were fantastic, the toffee was eaten before I had any and I could pass on the lavender white chocolate because I’m not a fan of lavender, but it was still pretty delicious.

 

Later on in the evening, we met up with some of my friends (Thomas and Joanna) for a couple of drinks and another walk along the strip.  We walked from Excalibur down to the Cosmopolitan, where we had drinks at Bond . The Cosmopolitan is one of my favorite hotels in Vegas. If you’re lucky enough to go there, I’d say it’s something to behold— interesting, chic, modern, and beautiful—and this bar was all those things and more. Bond has an interesting combination of stylish modern cocktails or a standard stiff drink.   As we sipped wonderfully well-made drinks with good company, I couldn’t help but think how awesome my friends are.  I had a Berry Long Island and Brandon had a Lemongrass Ginger Kamikaze; both drinks were strong, but still light and flavorful, with fresh juices and high quality liquors.

The trip was one of the best I’ve ever had and I’m sure we’ll have more great adventures in Las Vegas to come.

Cheers

-Unrivaledkitch

Afternoon Lunch with a Sweet Friend; Happy Birthday Jo!

Afternoon Lunch with a Sweet Friend; Happy Birthday Jo!

Joanna is my Asian sister from another mother. We have high adventures including copious amounts of flowing mimosas or wonderful bottles of wine, delicious food, lots of life chats, and plenty of shit talking. We’ve grown and changed along with one another and made it 

Chicago Sprout by Chef Dale Levitsk and Sous Chef Sara Nguyen

Chicago Sprout by Chef Dale Levitsk and Sous Chef Sara Nguyen

Sprout is a beautiful restaurant situated on West Fullerton. The street is filled with small places to eat, convenience stores, and homes which if you blink twice you may miss the green banners for Sprout. I did the 1st day I was in town, I 

Real Food Daily Santa Monica

Real Food Daily Santa Monica

I love going out almost as much as I love eating in. It isn’t uncommon for me to spend a good chunk of money supporting my favorite local eateries or going to try somewhere new on the map or at least new to me. My lovely fashion blogger friend Stephanie was/is my partner in crime for local valley fun snacks and drinks to Santa Monica vegan cuisine at Real Food Daily.

I’ve been hearing lots of great things about Real Food Daily for a long time. Real Food daily has two locations one in Santa Monica California as well as another in West Hollywood California. They specialize in vegan cuisine and the whole restaurant is vegan friendly no meat products or animal anything is in this place and I have a great respect for that.

Of course when you head out to a distinguished area such as Santa Monica you’re in for a time finding a parking space but I know it comes with the area so finally after trolling around a couple of blocks three times I found a structure not too far for the restaurant for us to park. At the price of 7 bucks a car we started off the evening in the hole.

Walking up to the restaurant you’ll see a wide verity of people, hippies, scene-sters, athletic health freaks, as well as the more stylish side of Santa Monica and the like passing through the glass doors or ordering a latte or take out from the bakery portion of the restaurant. The host stand sits outside and once we walked through the doors the large white ceiling fixtures, yellow walls, the shinny espresso machine, and large vegan pastry case are the 1st focal points I noticed. We were sat in a small section upstairs in a back corner, I would say not the best seat in the house but without a reservation it would do. A bunch of tightly packed seats of wood and simple tables with utensils with paper napkins placed on the tables.

Real food Daily sells wine and beer so that’s always a nice added perk. Their wine list and beer list feature organic wines and organic breweries. I had really lovely dark ale called triple exultation by eel river brewing company located in Fortuna, ca. The ale had a deep rich sweetness with a nice dark aftertaste. I enjoyed it very much. Stephanie had pale ale from butte creek brewery located in Northern California.

As we enjoyed conversation and interesting girly gossip about new things we didn’t know about each other, we finally finished perusing the plethora of vegan options that Real Food Daily has to offer.

menu

Combining local organic ingredients and some of the best vegan options I’ve seen in a long time, it took me a while to really see what I wanted. But I decided on sharing a sundried tomato hummus and pita and for my entree i would have the BBQ Bello Salad.

The hummus to our surprise was under seasoned and underwhelming and honestly not very memorable, but not bad but not good. I would say the seasoning was lacking but maybe that’s the way of this place who knows. I thought the ratio of pita to hummus was a little strange as well. I knew that my beer was wonderful so I kept my expectations at a minimum for my salad as to not be disappointed either way.

Finally after we finished up a bit, I’d say the waitress was doing double the work she should be been and if I was a needy customer we would of felt avoided because we saw our waitress herself about 3 times during the meal. She was attentive and sweet but you could see that she was over stretched at the moment.

My salad arrived and the smell was just wonderful. It had a peppery sweetness to the whole dish and I couldn’t wait to try it but of course pictures first. The mango and avocado was divine it had all the textures that i look for in a good salad. The peppery ranch dressing is something that made the whole salad come together. The smooth creamy avocado with the sweet pungency of mangoes and red onions and the roasted BBQ flavor of portobello mushroom mixed with soft silky tofu was spot on. If this wasn’t a special for that month I’d say to order it straight away. I think I’ll definitely be making this salad myself sometime in my kitchen I’ll put a link to this post when i do. It’s definitely something memorable,different, and quite delicious.

Stephanie had a Caeser wrap that was filled with Blackened tempeh, avocado, capers, romaine hearts, caesar dressing, spinach tortilla she also added veggie bacon which she added was some of the best veggie bacon shes had since being vegetarian for almost a year now. Over all I’d say she was very happy with her wrap which was on side of a small mixed salad.

Sometimes expectations of things cloud the purity of the idea of a chef as well as some chefs just get side tracked, here just like anywhere we can find things that may turn us off but here there is the simple locality of wonderful vegan food and a restaurant that cares enough for it’s community to use local and organic ingredients and those things are what make Real Food Daily stand out.

Cheers
Unrivaledkitch
Twitter and Foodbuzz