Each empanada is carefully wrapped in its individual wrapper.

Looks all the same? No problem. They each have their own stickers too.

For savory ones, I got 2 each of Pizza, Carne Asada and Cheesesteak (yum!).  For sweet, I got one each of Mazana (apple), Banana Cream and Coconut Cream. The sweet ones were okay and we really didn’t care for the banana cream filling. Tasted a bit artificial.  I think the pastry for the empanadas is more suited for savory fillings.

Maye’s Desserts & Bistro
4240-A Bonita Rd.
Bonita, CA 91902

While in Chula Vista, one must visit Hogetsu, right? Here’s the standard box for a dozen.

This time I stocked up on the ones I like. I’m not sure why I got two of the mochi with the kinako (soybean flour) since that wasn’t a favorite but oh well. There are some lemons, oranges, standard pink and white. About half were white bean filling (my favorite), rest were red bean.

This time they had some new varieties that I tried. The bottom three are not like the other mochi but rather more like a red bean bun. They were cute but were just so-so.

And on the last quick trip down to CV, I had to stop by Mariscos El Pascador again because it was lunch time and I was starving! I got there before the lunch crowd hit so the wait was minimal. I had to get a gobernador, which I ate in the car (oo, hot hot hot!). I love this.

I also got a couple of fish tacos, which I didn’t eat until I got home. I really should have ate these in my car but I was in a bit of a rush. They were still good but I’m sure it would have been way better hot. Gives me a reason to go back, right?

Mariscos El Pescador
(In the parking lot of Toys R Us, across from the trolley tracks on Industrial Blvd and L Street)
1008 Industrial Blvd
Chula Vista, CA 91911

I’m so glad it’s Friday! Hope everyone has a terrific weekend. It’s going to be beautiful in SD!

For Chinese New Year (belated gong xi fa cai to everyone!), one of the dishes I made was CC’s Pancit Bihon. OMG! I did a test run a couple of days before just to be sure. What can I say except this was the best pancit I have ever had and it was pretty easy to put together. If you love pancit bihon like us, you’ve got to try CC’s recipe. It’s awesome (like her!). The great thing about this is that you can use just about any kind of protein you want in it.

If you recall, this has been on my to-make list for some time. And since she had already armed me with this:

I was pretty much all set since the other ingredients I already had ready. I decided to use some Chinese sausage, char siu I bought from Jasmine (bought especially for this dish), shredded thigh and leg meat from a rotisserie chicken (as CC would say, “Costco dude.”) which are hiding under all that char siu, and about 8 shrimp (16-20 size) as my protein. Since the shrimp was quite large, I cut them into pieces. I also had sweet onions and garlic, lots of garlic! I used about 4 large cloves and it was awesome! Use less if you don’t like it so garlicky. It actually wasn’t as garlicky as you might think.

Some finely shredded cabbage, thinly sliced celery, and not-so julienned carrots, they were more matchsticks.

CC’s recipe uses the entire bag (16 oz) of noodles but I ended up only making a half batch. But it turned out that I had waaaaay too much other ingredients, meat especially, for a half batch. So I saved half of ingredients and made it with the rest of the noodles a couple days later for Chinese New Year.

Soaked the noodles for 10 minutes in hot water. The noodles just needs to be soft. Woo, all that steam fogging up my camera lens! I really liked these noodles, thin and easy to work with.

Although oyster sauce is optional, I really love the flavor it added to the dish. So I highly recommend using fish sauce AND oyster sauce with the soy sauce. I’ve added the amounts I used in the half recipe below. Of course add or exclude what you want but I’m just telling you right now, you’ll want to add at least a bit of each.

I know this is a real shitty picture but I can’t take a picture and wok at the the same time. I mainly wanted to show how much a half batch was in a 14-inch wok. Most of the meat was under the noodles.

This was so damn good! The Mister even had 2 bowls of it for lunch that day. I couldn’t stop eating it. The half batch could feed 4-6 people as a side. Guess it all depends on how much they like pancit bihon.  I didn’t have any kalamansi to squeeze over the noodles but a bit of lemon will suffice in a pinch.

CC’s Pancit Bihon (half recipe)
adapted from Canine Cologne

The inside of the restaurant is pretty clean and dimly light, not really good for picture taking.

I’ve only been seated on the same side of the restaurant each time, the side that has the least amount of light. But I do get a view of this (which happens to be the way to the restrooms, too).

The owner of this Chef Chin also owns restaurants in Hawaii. There are several aerial shots of the Aloha Tower area on the wall (not pictured).

On this visit, I decided to try a dish from their “dim sum” menu. BTW, I thought better than to take pictures of the menus because there are actually 2 menus, a general menu and a Chinese menu. Way too many things to take pictures of but you can see the full menu on their website. The waiter call it a “dim sum” menu, but after looking at it, it’s really a mixture of dim sum dishes and breakfast items (e.g., soy milk, scallion pancakes). I decided to try the Shanghai dumplings, which I guessed was their xiao long bao. The Mister made a face when I ordered it because he doesn’t like to order anything that I can make at home. I told him I don’t make XLB at home but he said it doesn’t matter, a dumpling is a dumpling. Well, his reaction foretold what lied ahead.

I was surprised at how many XLB came in the steamer. They looked, well, not so fresh and tasted even less. There was a funky sour taste to it and we could barely swallow a single mouthful. At first I thought maybe they put some kind of vinegar in or whatever but after examination of the filling, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem right.

Even using the dipping didn’t make these palatable.

I forgot to mention that we also got soup with our meal. Today was Egg Flower Soup. Nothing too exciting but not bad.

I was in the mood for some spare ribs but I should know better than to order spare ribs out. Again, the Mister asked why I order dishes that I can make at home (here, here and here)? Yeah, well, since it’s been a while since we last dined in, I had forgotten I had previously tried their Wu Xin spareribs and remembered that it wasn’t very good.

I think they boil the ribs first because the meat was mushy. The sauce tasted okay but it’s that typical gloppy brown sauce often served in ABCDE places. The spinach was blanched and happened to be the best part of this dish.

The remaining dishes, thankfully, were pretty good. Here is the Hot Braised Sting Bean with Ground Pork (Chinese menu). We’ve had this several times before and one of the Mister’s favorite.

The next dish was the Tangerine Crispy Chicken (General “American” menu). I actually ordered the Tangerine Beef but we got chicken instead. The Mister likes this better than the beef version so it was a good mistake. The coating was crispy without being too thick. The sauce had a nice slight tang and wasn’t overly sweet.

I like the carrot flower that came with the dish.

The last dish was also a new dish, Shrimp with Honey Walnut (Chinese menu). This was really good. The shrimp was perfectly cooked, slightly crispy with a mild sweetness to the sauce.

Again, I liked the decoration that came with this dish. I think it was a rose made from a died radish.

Overall, Chef Chin has a few dishes for return visits for us. Their mu shu pork is standard but not bad since it has a lot of pork (General menu), the Sliced Pork with Spicy Garlic Sauce is good when it’s on (Chinese menu), the Fish Fillet in Spicy Bean Sauce (Chinese menu) has been decent most of the times. My MIL tried their Kung Pao Chicken and said it was not to her taste, not that I would ever order KPC (yuck). She said it had no flavor except heat. There are often 20% or 30% coupons to be found in local flyers so that makes it even nicer. The prices are a little high compared to other local Chinese restaurants but the coupons certainly helps.

Chef Chin
11828 Rancho Bernardo Rd.
San Diego, CA 92128

I’ve been drooling over CC’s Pancit Bihon since her post last year (and another here). We’ve talked about it a bit here and there and although I love pancit bihon, I’ve never made it at home before. Well, she’s giving me ammo to start. No, sorry, I haven’t made it yet but Chinese New Year is coming up (Jan. 23) so that’s my plan. Look how pretty the inside cover is.

There are so many recipes in this cookbook, many I’ve never had or heard of but my knowledge of Filipino food is pretty limited. But cookbook provides quite a bit of information.

I love the pictures!

And to make sure I start off correctly, CC even made sure I had the right kind of rice sticks to make my first pancit bihon.

Okay, no excuses now. I will make my first pancit bihon. Really, I will.

A sign in front of the store.

A shot of the baked goods.

And some more.

Here’s what I got. The chocolate mousse-y thingy on the left (very good), then a mango cake in the middle (just so-so), and a strawberry coconut cake on the right for the Mister (it was delicious!).

CC got this, Paris Wafflor, which we shared. So light and the filling was fluffy.

And these, coconut meringue for TC (she shared too and I thought it was good), and the Swedish Damsugar (also known as the Swedish vacuum cleaner), which is the chocolate/green thingy. I liked the wafflor the best out of these three.

We then finished up by going back to La Crepe Fraiche since CC had a coupon. TC and I went with frozen yogurt.

CC got a yummy strawberry cupcake. It’s so good!

We certainly had our fill of sweets that day! You can read CC’s post on our visits here and here.

Since Canine Cologne is always faster at posting our lunches than I am, I will let the picture do most of the talking for our visit to Fish Boutique. You can read her post here. Some pics from the outside.

Swanky!

And more swank.

Even the fish store side has swank.

As did our food. The fried calamari was really good. The “ragu” (I think that’s what the waiter called it) was different and pretty good.

Fish and chips done very well with three dipping options: ketchup (mostly for the fries), tartar sauce (I think it looks made in-house), and cocktail sauce.

Grilled tiger prawns with confetti rice (I can’t remember the exact name of this). Thank goodness CC and TC helped me finish this. Those prawns were huge and that’s a whole lotta rice.

We thought about getting dessert there but decided that we would save ourselves for our next stop.

Fish Boutique
9844 Hibert Street Ste G-10
San Diego California 92131

I did a couple of things different this time. I blanched the noodles a few hours ahead and them laid out two (very large) servings on a baking sheet to dry out the noodles. I thought this might help with the frying of the noodles and although the noodles didn’t fry any faster, it did make the noodles more crunchy throughout.  The previous method left some of the noodles in the middle softer. So depending on whether you like crunchy noodles like I do or a mixture of soft and crunchy, pick the method to your liking.. Here are the fried noodle cakes resting. BTW, the majority of the pictures in this post was taken by the Mister. I was kind of up to my ears in prep so I asked him to be my photographer and just take pictures as he saw fit.

I decided to use some shrimp and baby squid this time, about a pound of shrimp (shelled and deveined) and about half a pound of baby squid, already cleaned. I had both seafood marinading together but in hindsight I should have done these two separately since the shrimp was so large, it took longer for them to cook through. I removed the squid from the wok as it cooked but was kind of a pain in the ass. Would have been much easier if I had thought it through in the beginning.

I also bought a humungo lobster from 99 Ranch (that sucker was 4.5 lbs), which I steamed ahead of time, which took about 30 minutes to steam. That big boy was going to be 2 meals! Here’s the size of the lobster tail, about 1 lb of meat. I saved that for our meal the next night. The meat in the bowl was all claw meat.

For the fried noodles, I used only claw meat. Here’s an action shot of the chaos of removing lobster meat. Most of the lobster shell is in the freezer for when I need to make some lobster stock.

I doubled the sauce ingredients on this one since I was doing 2 noodle cakes. Since I was going through all the trouble of de-meating the lobster, I wanted to make sure I had leftovers. Other things I had in this version were bok choy and shiitake mushrooms. I had sliced sweet onions but completely forgot to add those but we didn’t miss them.  Here’s the only shot I took, my plate. Yum!

This would have easily fed 4 hungry people but the leftovers made 2 delicious lunches for me! Dang, now I want some more…

Before we went to Tijuana Seafood Bar, we stopped by Hogetsu to get some mochi and to give our bellies a bit of a rest. I waited to take pictures when I got home, showing some restraint from schoffing these down just long enough to take a couple of pictures.

It was my first time there but this place has been on my list for a very very long time. What I got were similar to what CC had gotten, which you can read about here. I got a white with red bean and a pink one with white bean filling (my favorite), an orange one with white bean (which was delicious), a pink flower with white bean (it was pretty but I preferred the more plain ones), and a sweet potato with cream, which I wasn’t a fan of. It was just a bit too mushy for my liking. I also got one that had a powder, which I can’t remember what it’s called, with red bean filling, I think. (CC mentioned that the yellow powder is called kinako, which is soybean flour.) Overall, the pink colored and orange flavored with white beans are my favorite. Wish I would have bought a dozen of those!

After our last taco stop at TJ Seafood Bar, we decided to walk off our meal a bit by visiting Seafood City. I’ve never been to Seafood City, not even the on in Mira Mesa (even when I lived in MM) so this was quite fun for me and I learned a lot about Filipino food from CC (not that I can remember it all). I only took a few pictures but check out CC’s post here since she always has fun and informative pictures.

As our last stop of the day, we popped down just a bit further south to Teresita’s Fruiteria. I’ve read about their chamangos from CC (read her post here) and was eager to try one. It almost sounded like a li hing mui mango slushy.

I really didn’t need to look at the menu to know what I was getting. Here’s our order. I think these were medium sized.

Can I just say that I’m addicted to these things now? The chamoy is kind of like li hing mui powder I suppose as far as flavoring stuff. But chamoy is a paste where li hing mui powder is not (duh, CAB!). I love the saltiness of the chamoy mixed in with the slushy-mango-y flavor. The chamoy is the dark red stuff. Look at those chunks of mango on top! GAW I love these!

Not only did we enjoy some delicious food, I also received some wonderful stuff. Here’s a picture of the lovely cardamom braided bread that Cathy made for us. So good toasted and with coffee. The bread is sitting on a cake plate that CC made for me. I loved the retro Christmas pattern.

Here’s a shot of the bottom. Pretty cool.

And that wasn’t all. CC also made a smaller, more contemporary platter for me. Very elegant and I loved the candlestick bottom.

 And let’s not forget the remainder of the food. Well, at least the ones I remembered to take pictures of before I inhaled them. CC’s gift goodie packaged treats (those prawn crackers were gone in minutes). I also received some home baked goodies from CC, lemon cheesecake bar (oh they were so good!) and I think Magic 7-Layer Bars, which the Mister called dibs on. But uh, yeah, we kind of eat those before I remembered to take a picture.

I also got some calamansis oranges (these are not oranges but a hybrid of citrus fruits, thanks for the correction, CC)! I’ve used some in a roasted chicken the other day.

Not a bad haul, huh? It was a great day of good eating with good friends. Can’t really ask for much more than that. Well, maybe just to do it again in the new year.

I’m going a little out of order since Tijuana Seafood Bar was actually the fourth stop. We joked about what the blue fishy thingy looked like that’s on the side of the wall. We thought it looked like a Morey eel. It was quite spacious inside with a full bar. After we placed our order, the accoutrement was brought to our table.

Here are the manta ray tacos. These were quite fishy and not sure if I’d get these again..

Here’s are the three fish tacos we shared. The fish was decent size, nicely fried and flaky. I really enjoyed these.

We also ordered fish ceviche tostadas. These were really good too and I loved the avocados on top.

Yum, fish taco!

And to end the meal, some Bubbaloo bubble gum. It’s been a long time since I’ve have bubble gum.

You can read more and see more pictures about our meal on CC’s post here. You can also read Cathy’s visit from mid-2011 here.

Tijuana Seafood Bar Mariscos La Cacho
3120 Main St
(between Fresno Ave & 3rd Ave)
Chula Vista, CA 91911

It was pretty crowded and we (Dennis) had to wait a bit in line before placing our order.

While we waited, Dennis got some of the complimentary consomme for us to enjoy. Boy this was good. There were bits of tender white fish on the bottom.

Here are the two Gobernador tacos we shared. Oh so good! I think these were my favorite tacos of the day.

Here’s the marlin tacos. I didn’t know until that day that the marlin was always smoked (and salted). This was a bit too salty for me but I did enjoy the nice smokey flavor.

One more shot of our food together.

It wasn’t eating on the hood of the car but rather one the trunk of the car! Look how prepared CC was, food trays, paper towels, wipes!

You can read more about this popular taco truck on CC’s post here.

Mariscos El Pescador
(In the parking lot of Toys R Us, across from the trolley tracks on Industrial Blvd and L Street)
1008 Industrial Blvd
Chula Vista, CA 91911