Tuesday 12 June 2012

3 days in LA - Day 2 (Warning : may inflict an increase of appetite)



What better way to start the day than with some good old breakfast food? And what better way to have good old breakfast food than have true American brunch at IHOP?! IHOP aka International House of Pancakes (which I beg to differ, is not really International at all, since we do not have it in Hong Kong!  ) is a place which I suppose serves all day breakfast! 



I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I am actually a pescatarian meaning that I do not eat any meat (chicken, beef, pork or lamb) but I still eat fish and seafood (partly because of my unhealthy addiction of sushi). Because of this, Cindy and her family ordered this vegetarian savoury crepe for me. The crepe was wrapped around cheese and spinach and was covered in melted cheese. It was truly delicious, and the fact that it was wrapped with a thin crepe (instead of an omelette) made it not as heavy as it looked.



They also ordered a beef and cheese omelette which also came with a stack of pancakes. One thing that I noticed when reading the menu was that the amount of calories in each dish was displayed next to the price. A very good feature of American restaurants as I generally like to know how much i'm consuming and whether I should eat something or not despite how delicious it looks.




Although this was a good feature, the fact that every dish had about 800-1200 calories really put me off the food. The crepes had about 800, the omelette had about 1100. The worst part was that I knew that if I wanted to at least maintain my weight, my body needed only about 1400 calories (and if i wanted to lose weight my body needed about 1200!) so I basically did not have to eat for the rest of the day! Normally if I ate a lot in Hong Kong and I couldn't go to the gym, I would walk an absurd distance halfway across town instead of taking the MTR (subway) just to burn some calories and explore the town a little, but being in California where it was impossible to go anywhere without a car, it simply was not possible. :(



Since we also ordered a plate of sausages, bacon, egg and hashbrowns (which I did not eat as there was meat touching everything ) that also came with ANOTHER stack of pancakes. What really excited me was how they had 4 different kinds of sauces to pour over the pancakes! "Old Fashioned", "Butter Pecan", Strawberry and Blueberry. So I had two pancakes and tried each sauce over each half of a pancake. I must say though, "Old Fashioned" and "Butter Pecan" tasted rather similar... I couldn't really taste the difference (maybe because they are both brown?) :P






After shopping my tits off at the nearest CVS pharamacy and then continuing at a nearby mall, Cindy decided to take me to "Boba" or what we in Hong Kong call Bubble tea! I was surprised that it was so popular in America! Though I have to admit that the area that Cindy lived in was mainly full of Asians.  The menu too was full of typical asian snacks that I have back in Hong Kong : Shaved ice, thick toast, not to mention "boba"/bubble tea (and you could choose to have aloe, sago, mochi etc.). This made me really feel at home!




Another thing I noticed is that in this area, not only were there a lot of asians, but there were a lot of Cantonese speakers!  So I really felt as if I was still in Hong Kong! With people in the cinema and in restaurants jabbering away. Mwahahah I understand what everyone is saying! Latinos speaking Spanish, I  understand you too.

The lighting in California is always amazing. Even in the "parking lot"

We then made our way to Old town pasadena. An outdoor shopping area full of shops and restaurants. Naturally we decided to sweep through all the classic places, Forever 21, H&M, Zara etc.


After a long day of just buying everything in sight, we decided it was time for more food. Being the incredibly indecisive people we are, we kept asking each other what we wanted to eat. I am a huge fan of Japanese food (particularly sushi!) while Cindy hated raw food but loved meat. So we narrowed it down to Cheesecake factory or this Japanese restaurant that we were standing in front of. Since Cindy didn't want to walk all the way to the Cheesecake factory  we decided to eat at the Japanese Restaurant called Kabuki.







I must say that it fully satisfied my sushi craving (but only for the day, since I get sushi cravings every day! Every meal even!).

The meal started off with some salad or miso soup. I chose the miso soup as I felt like it fit the mood much more. Sadly I must say that it was rather disappointing as the tofu bits were minuscule and looked really spongy and weird.




The sushi however was amazing!  It was really comparable to the delicious ones in Hong Kong. The salmon looked almost fake for some reason, but it was really good nonetheless. I didn't know what some of the fish was as I usually just order salmon (as it is my absolute favourite), but they were delicious. The rolls were average, but maybe thats because I prefer traditional nigiri sushi.





Cindy on the other hand ordered this roast scallop with fried onion and bacon. I tried a little bit and it sure tasted good! However one of the downers of this place was the service - which was very poor. The waiters were slow and tended to forget things. For example we dropped a fork on the floor and they took about 10 minutes to get us a new one. Cindy also wanted to ask after she ordered the scallops whether they would be fully cooked, again we got ignored for so long that the food arrived before we could get anyone's attention! So it was a shame that the service ruined the overall experience at this restaurant. (The man sitting on the table next to ours even recommended that we "throw a shoe" at the waiters! haha!)

2 comments:

  1. you do not know how much i love food posts on blogs so i can vicariously live through them and pretend i am enjoying all of that yummy food myself. i cannot wait to be back in the US this summer mainly cos of all the yummy food! anyway you are such a pretty girl. i love the last photo of you.

    <3 rae

    http://www.loveforschoolgirl.net/ stop by and say hi! and maybe we can follow each other <3

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    Replies
    1. awww im glad you love food! Don't worry I'll post so much food that you'll start licking your screen hehehe! Yeah! It's amazing! The only downside is the calories/gaining weight! But maybe its all worth it! :P Aww thank you very much :)
      I'm going to check out your blog now :D

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