Tucson Munchies: July 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

Something Sweet Dessert Lounge

The Good: Nice and Casual Atmosphere; Great selection of Desserts; Good Service

The Bad: Very small parking area.

Andy and I wanted to visit Something Sweet for a while. The dessert lounge has won best dessert place from Tucson Weekly. Many co-workers have really enjoyed it.

The lounge was pretty busy when we got there. We were quickly seated by the waitress. The menus had a large selection of beverages along with a extremely big selection of desserts including pies, cakes, and cheesecakes. It took us a long time to decide what we wanted and we settled on the raspberry swirl cheesecake and tiramisu. Along with the desserts, we ordered two teas.

The teas were first served to us. I really liked the fact that we got our hot water in little teapots. :) The desserts came pretty quickly afterwards.

The tiramisu was delicious! The biscuit layers were extremely nice and went very well with marscapone cheese layers. Nothing was too over-powering and everything went very well together. The presentation was great too!

The raspberry swirl cheesecake was delicious. Having made cheesecake a lot, I've gotten to be very picky with cheesecakes. The cheesecake had a nice texture to it and the crust was perfect. The raspberry swirl did not overpower the rest of the cheesecake either.

Overall had a great experience at Something Sweet Dessert Lounge. The service was great and the desserts were superb!

El Parador Tropical Garden Restaurant

The Good: Nice Decor, Chips and Salsa, Good Service

The Bad: Low Quality Food

We visited El Parador today for a dinner-get-together with people from work. I was excited for dinner after looking at their website that was nicely designed and the food sounded delicious.

The restaurant was nicely decorated with Christmas lights, shrubbery, and paper flowers. From the outside, the place definitely didn't look like a restaurant, it looked like an oasis.

We arrived a little late and had missed the waitress. The other people that arrived had chips and salsa served to them. While we waited, we tried out the chips, which were good, not too salty with a decent crunch. We got some salsa after all the drinks were served and the orders was taken. The salsa was nicely seasoned and it had a decent spiciness to it.

One of people at my table had ordered guacamole and it was fun watching it being made table side. I really enjoy making guacamole myself, and really liked watching it being made. The guacamole was nice and fresh, and salt was added by the customer. The overall tasted was fresh and healthy.

Food was served almost right after the appetizers were brought out. Everyone got their food at the same time, which was great because we all got to eat together.

For dinner, I ordered the Smoked Salmon Salad, while Andy ordered the Arizona Chicken. I was extremely glad I asked for the dressing on the side because it had a really bad metal after taste to it. The salad was served without the avocado and the jicama tasted old. The salmon and salad was ok and enough to fill me up for dinner.

Andy's Arizona Chicken was a little better than my salad, but not by a whole lot. The chicken was very bland and so was the side of buttered vegetables. The twice baked chile was the most interesting on the plate, which had a good taste to it.

Overall, we did not have a good experience at El Parador and we will not be visiting again.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Tutti Frutti at Park Place Mall

I've never been much of fans of food courts at mall. Most of the time I feel they are over-priced for the quality I get. I'm not saying that they are bad but they are not something I would rave about. Today might be the change of my view though.
We noticed a new place in the mall. It was called Tutti Frutti and it was a serve yourself frozen yogurt place. Lately I've really enjoyed frozen yogurt because they are good and low calorie sweet treat.
This place had lots of choices of flavors. They had the traditional like vanilla and chocolate, but they also had very different flavors like taro and pineapple. Since it was self serve, we got five different flavors. They were all sooo good! We will definitely be visiting again. :)

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Spectacular and Dandy San Diego!!

Andy and I went to San Diego this past weekend and we had a great time! Neither of us have been there before and it was quite an adventure.

Friday: Comic - Con

We were noobs at Comic-Con. There was so much to do and we didn't realize how many people were actually going to be there. We had printed off the itinerary and highlighted everything we wanted to hit, and we probably only did saw three panels while there on Friday.

We spent a lot of time at the exhibition where there was a lot from celebrity signings to lots of people in costume.

Andy and I with Pikachu


Adrianne Curry from America's Next Top Model

For lunch and dinner, we walked a little bit through downtown to find a place to sit and eat. There were so many options such as Thai, Chinese, Mexican, and American.

For lunch, we went to Hennessey's Tavern because they had a Comic-Con special - $10 dollars for a beer and a burger. Overall, the burger was pretty good. Andy and I had both added guacamole to the burgers and that really made it pretty tasty. The burgers were served with a side of potato chips and a pickle.

For dinner, we settled on Rockin Baja Coastal Cantina because they were one of the few restaurants that was still serving food at 10:30 P.M. Andy and I each ordered from the taco menu - Andy got the Mahi Mahi Tacos and I got the Surf and Turf Tacos. While we waited for the food, we chowed down on some chips and salsa. There were plenty of salsas to choose from and each had it's uniqueness to it. The food came out pretty fast and really good. The rice and beans in the bowl were delicious. Both tacos were nice and warm and the tortillas that went with them were great, not too chewy or hard.

Surf and Turf Tacos from Rockin Baja

Saturday - San Diego Exploration

It took us a while Saturday morning to decided what we wanted to do. Since we did not rent a car, we were limited on public transportation of San Diego. We wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo, however, the only way up there was to take several buses. We decided to save some money and go back downtown since Comic-Con was still going on and we still had the bus passes from yesterday.

We went near the San Diego Harbor and explored the area there. When you're from Arizona, the sight of the ocean, trees, and grass are really beautiful.

We had lunch at the Harbor Greek Cafe. Andy and I both order gyro sandwiches because the platters just looked huge on the menu! The gyro sandwiches were delicious! The sandwich had both lamb and beef and came with a side of cucumber yogurt sauce. It was so much better than anything I had in Tucson.


Gyro Sandwich from Harbor Greek Cafe

After lunch we spent a good deal of the day at the USS Midway Museum. It was such an interesting place.


USS Midway Museum

After the museum, Andy and I went to Coronado Island on a Ferry boat. We didn't spend a lot of time there because it was getting late and we were tired from all the walking we had already done, however, we did enjoy the great view of San Diego.

For the rest of the night, Andy and I went to the Gaslamp Quarters again. We had dinner at Taka (Fodor's Choice 2010). Although the prices were more than what we pay for in Tucson, it was worth it. We sat at the sushi bar and had the rainbow roll and the shrimp tempura roll.

Rainbow Roll at Taka

Shrimp Tempura Roll at Taka

We really enjoyed watching the skills of the sushi chefs and the various types of sushi that were being made.

After dinner we had some gelato from Chocolat. We got cantaloupe and lemon poppy seed. The flavors didn't go so well together, but both were very unique and delicious. Chocolat lets you try as many as you want and there was definitely a large selection.

As we were walking back to the buses, we bumped into a zombie parade. There were so many zombies! Some did a little better at acting and dressing up than others. These two were the ones that impressed me the most with their makeup and their acting skills.

Andy and I ended the night with a couple of drinks at the Doubletree Hotel Bar. We got a watermelon margarita and a tangerine mojito. The margarita was more tequilla than watermelon and the mojito was more sweet than anything else. Overall, it wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't anything worth raving about.

San Diego was definitely a great place to have a mini vacation. The weather was wonderful! The next time we're visiting will definitely be next year during Comic-Con or it may be even sooner!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Monkey Burger

After reading a great review in Tucson Weekly, Andy and I really wanted to try out Monkey Burger located on Speedway. We finally tried it out today and left really satisfied and full.

The restaurant was very unique. It had cool looking graffiti wall art. The space was really opened and modern with metal furniture. Although it was dinner time, it was not overly busy.

The menu was not super big but it had a good selection of burgers, salads, and sides. It took Andy and I a few minutes before we were able to pick what we wanted. Andy chose the madness burger with french fries and I chose the south shore burger with a house salad.

The food came out pretty quickly and nice and warm. I forgot to ask for no dressing on my salad but it wasn't too badly dressed. The french fries was very good too and there were a ton of it. Both burgers were great. The south shore had a great mix of spice in it and the pineapple salso on it was great. The madness burger had a great kick to it.

Overall the food was great. In its great location, we will probably visit it again.