Food trip! (The buffet series)

-
The fourth week of May was peppered with special occasions, which called for several opportunities to dine out. Two times, I ended up in a buffet eat-all-you can restaurant. I'm not a big fan of the buffet format in restos because I prefer menu dégustation or a multi-course meal served à la russe when dining out; note that I prefer the more informal service à la française (of which, the buffet is a variant) at home. 

I'm also concerned that eating at eat-all-you-can buffets will definitely fatten me up so I rarely eat in these venues. When the occasion calls for it, I eat a lot!

Vegas Seafood Buffet

Matthew's graduation party was held in the Torrance branch of Vegas Seafood Buffet. There was a wide selection of plat principal, from Brazilian churrasco to Japanese teppanyaki but I skipped these, opting to begin my meal with hot and sour soup and salads. These were followed by a clam stew and a few pieces of mussels (chili and cheese variants). But a meal is not complete without rice; for my lunch, I opted to get my rice fix by eating different variants of sushi: tamago nigiri, shake nigiri, shake maki, and Philadelphia rolls. I rounded off my meal with chocolate/vanilla frozen yogurt and the puff pastry of the cream puff (I recommend skipping the whipped cream). Overall, the food was good. I particularly enjoyed sushi and the mussels. Ate Gigi said that the noodles were delicious but I didn't venture there anymore because I had no more space in my tummy.

I ate so much that I had to walk up and down the stairs of the hotel just to get my digestion going.

Golden Corral

Tita Vicky and Tito Boy were in the Bay Area so Mommy and I brought them to Golden Corral in Concord. Val kept telling me about the buffet and its long queues previously, but we've never ventured to eat there. His words rang true when Mommy, Tita Vicky, Tito Boy, and I stood in line waiting for our table. Inside, there were a lot of steaks and fried meats to choose from. Still reeling from the Vegas buffet, I opted to skip the meats and went straight (several times) to the soup and salad station. Afterwards, I worked my way through mushrooms, parboiled rice, and a few beef strips. I ended my meal with ice cream (again!). The food was also good. I enjoyed the soups and the beef strips. The others had space to explore the other dishes, which were probably better than what I tried.

I didn't eat another meal til 10 hours later because I was just so full. Good thing we were in for an afternoon of walking because Mommy and Tita Vicky were shopping in San Francisco Premium Outlets, Livermore.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more