Hayat's Kitchen

Ventured to this part of town for some Lebanese food at Hayat's Kitchen!  

Complimentary.  Not everyone was a fan.

I really liked this.  Everyone else was "eh."

This was a hit!  We ordered another round of this!

This was AWESOME.  That garlic paste (top right corner) was THE BOMB.  We ordered another round of this as well.

The 2 awesome dishes above made this dish not as stellar.  My dining companions let me hog all the veggies. :)

Tea was nice and fragrant.

This was sooo good.  Complimentary.  I would have gladly paid for this!  Fantastic way to end a meal.

It's a very homey vibe.  They seem to know all their customers!

Great food, fantastic dining companions, and lively conversations.  I love our reunions. :)

Westwood Eats

Every so often, I get together with some gal pals and we sound off about wedding stuff.  We're all getting married within a couple months of each other so there are definitely moments when we are all going through the same thing together and it just feels cathartic to use each other as sounding boards.  This time though I brought BM J with me so we all tried to keep the wedding whining down a notch or two.

The restaurant of choice for our outing was Soleil Restaurant back by my old stomping grounds of Westwood.  I can't believe I lived down the street from this place for 2 years and I never went.  Hmm, maybe b/c when I was in college French food wasn't really my thing...

But I'm developing a taste for it now!

Every Wednesday, there's an AYCE special of mussels and fries for $14.95.  Just remember to make a reservation 24 hours in advance and you're good to go!

For AYCE, these mussels were not as puny as I thought they might be.  Some were quite plump!  Between the 4 of us, we probably got around 8 bowls?  Jerry and I prepare mussels at home quite often so I wasn't really looking to create any eating record of the sort.  I just wanted to eat enough to feel satisfied.  We also got  bread to dip in the broth.  My only complaint was that the bread was a bit hard and cold.  Dipping it helped but otherwise they were lackluster when eaten plain.

We polished off 4 or 5 baskets of these.  Shoestring fries make it so much easier to eat more of!  I liked how these were barely salted.  The aoili was creamy and good, so it was most likely bad for us and our arteries. :P

I don't know why the waiter couldn't hold the camera straight...

As we left the restaurant we saw a sign across the street for Persian ice cream.  Though we were full, it's never too hard to make more room for ice cream!  I've have Persian ice cream before but I had never frequented that particular store despite my previous proximity. 

There were so many flavors!  The lady was generous and let us try a bunch.  Except after a while they all started tasting the same...

We got 4 scoops total- it was a bit hard to narrow it down!  I think J and C up above shared the ginger and watermelon?

While BM J and i shared pistachio saffron and passion fruit.

Persian ice cream is nice b/c it's not overly sweet nor saccharine.  The flavors aren't typical American flavors so it was nice to try something new.  But like BM J said...it's not exactly something you would crave either.  Just a nice light dessert after a semi heavy meal.  I'll be back whenever I happen to be walking down Westwood!

Turkey Weekend 2009 part 2

My wknd of gluttony and games continued Friday night after work:

I love having friends who like to cook!  We attended yet another potluck at Cams and Chris' place.  What I loved most about this potluck was that almost nothing was store bought.  (Except for the Kings Hawaiian rolls.)  I've been to so many potlucks where ppl bring store bought desserts from a place like Ralphs, icky.  The worse item I have ever seen at a potluck was cut up oranges.  Yeah, you read that right.  Who in their right mind brings up cut up oranges to a potluck?

We even had home made chili!

No dinner at Cams is complete without some MJ.  I love playing this game!! I really want to buy my own set hehe.  Can we register for it? Lol.


The next day, we had dim sum at Elite.  The wait wasn't as bad this time, maybe 25 min.  Better than 40 min last time.

Again so much food!  The person sitting in the background to the right?  Our dining companion from the previous night!  So random.  Cam and I gushed about Elite so she took her parents there the very next day. 
The only thing I was disappointed about was that they ran out of my favorite chicken pastry dish and the egg tarts. :(  Next time, gotta go earlier.


Okay, I'm not done eating yet. 

A mere few hours later, we went to ANOTHER potluck, this time hosted by one of my BMs Jenta & her bf Ainsley.



Played more taboo.  This taboo set was way more update- "wikipedia" was in there!

All in all, it was a great wknd of family, friends, food and fun.  But it really took a toll on my body and I haven't recovered since.  But it was worth it :)  I've got a couple weeks before the next rush of holiday festivities so time to rest now!

Turkey Weekend 2009 part 1

It was a long weekend of gluttony and games:

Thursday noon:  Turkey with the Asian works at my family's house (no cranberry sauce or green bean casserole but plenty of eggrolls, shrimp salad, kimbap, etc)


Afterward we played Monopoly.  I love family get togethers where the TV is off, video games are put away, and the only entertainment is a good old fashioned board game. 

Thursday evening:  Hot pot night for Anderson Biz school vagrants who didn't go home for Thanksgiving or who don't celebrate it 

My favorite are the fish and shrimp balls!

One of our groomsmen

That die is HUGE!!  (We played a version of BS using dice)  I called 12 threes and won!  For those who didn't drink, they had to do truth or dare.

Believe it or not, this was not a dare.  It was just boys being boys, riding a disproportionately sized bike down the hallway.

Then we busted out Taboo.  Guess who was into it the most? Lol.  My team spoke the least amount of English, but we still beat the other team!  One girl on our team was confused at first and kept reading the taboo words haha.  The person with the buzzer also was confused so she didnt buzz her either!  We had to stop and reexplain the rules in Chinese.  Another girl skipped Waikiki and ghetto b/c she didn't know those words!  The international girls had fun playing but later said, okay let's stop, this is becoming an English lesson haha.

Black Friday:  I had to work but it was a quiet and productive day so it went by quickly.

There was more turkey that night though...TBC