vickichowder

GUISADOS, LA WEHO

There's this youtube channel I watch consistently (there are ones that I don't frequent because the content is not the most interesting --> really all channels except for this one I am going to disclose), called Munchies.

The series, Chef's Night Out, is the one I watch to decide where I want to eat next (Night and Market was one of them), and Guisado's is another. Basically a bunch of chefs plus their friends going out for drinks and food for a night, and Guisado's was one of the restaurants where the chefs went out.

I only started liking Mexican food ever since I worked in Bay Area for a bit (but to be honest, I don't think I've had any Mexican food besides a quesadilla at Taco Bell, which cannot even be deemed as Mexican food, I'm afraid). And so since the start of my love for Mexican food, I've been very open to saucy meats on soft corn tortillas:

I love the chili verde here, it's not too spicy and would be nice if it was spicier. It's heavy cause it's meat but fresh because, chili verde, and if anything, it's the verde part of the chili verde (I'm assuming verde = green here, correct me if I'm wrong. I could easily Google up the actual translation here as I'm typing this too, but I'm not) that makes it so fresh and pleasant to eat.

The seafood one here is grilled fish, and topped with dressed salad (cabbage, onions - too much and too raw. I should have had the seafood one first so that the meat could somehow overpower the raw onion taste in my mouth).

Cousin got the steak as well, and a chicken one I think. I added a beer to start my morning which I immediately regretted like 15 minutes into the meal and realized I should have just stuck with my routine morning coffee, which I ended up having later (I think).

We sat on the outside seats. A man came by during our meal and asked for a smoke. And to light it for him too

Then we went to Santa Monica Seafood, where cousin previously bought some really good candied salmon (I had a version of that from Waterloo, but it wasn't as good as this one, which is less hard/dry and jerky-like). I didn't end up taking a picture. We snacked on it at home in the morning or night or both times of the day.

From here we went to Santa Monica Beverley Centre, where I almost bought a rimowa luggage but cousin stopped me and I ended up buying two other suitcases at a price still much less than that light pink rimowa one I ~~slightly~~ do not regret not getting.

We went to santa monica beach that night:

, by vickichowder

DAISHO

MOMOFUKU DAISHO, TORONTO

It was nearing the end of winterlicious and I had only gone to one winterlicious dinner! So we opted for a lunch one, and it seems that among the few we places at which we wanted to dine, just Daisho had an open table for 1200.

We took the stairs up to the third floor, passing by the milk cold room (and making a note that we should make a stop there after we've had our meal). The bright bright room filled with natural light was a huge plus for making the dining area feel open and optimal for food pictures (actually, any pictures in general).

Pink lady apple wedges kimchi'd, arugula, maple labneh, pork jowl bacon

We both chose to start with an apple kimchi salad. The spicy kimchi was great with the sweet and crisp apple wedges. Argula kept it fresh, jowl was crisp and contrasted nicely. The smear of labneh was too thick for out liking - both of us used it sparingly. We spent a while debating what type of apple they used to make into kimchi. Was too sweet to be granny smith but was so crisp, maybe golden delicious? Turns out it was pink lady, a type of apple I've never had until that day. Good

Chicken + pork 'spam', coconut rice, fried egg, spicy sauce, shittake mushroom, napa water kimchi, cilantro, fried egg

Chicken & pork sausage rice bowl. The sausage is shaped like, might I even say, a crispy an fried spam, and had a 78% resemblance to a level-upped spam. Rice is not the Asian kind but the Western kind that doesn't stick together. Sauce is like a thick soup consistency. Very filling and moreish. Okay

Rice cake, mussel, yuzu, thai basil, sake, steamed bun

Mussels with a steamed bun. The bun though. It is not your typical asian steamed bun, and I feel that it is a western style dough that has been shaped and steamed, yielding a fine crumb which disintegrates very quickly upon dipping in the mussel's broth (but dipping it in the broth was the intended purpose of the bun, no?) Mussels were plump and fresh; the portion was on the large side. Lots of fried shallots, and lemon-grassy (fresh tasting) taste. Tastes like the kind of flavours my mom makes (south east asian). Would have been significantly better if they replaced the steam bun with any other bread, baguette would have been great. Okay

Chocolate ~~mousse~~ ganache, stout, deep fried banana, freeze dried banana, ice cream (maybe vanilla, or wait, was this cold thing supposed to be the mousse? I don't know and forgot to ask)

Chocolate mousse. But where is the goddamn mousse? Oh, its hiding in the form of a chocolate ganache. Then why has it been called a mousse? We felt quite fooled. Was the chef playing a joke on us? (Haha, I laugh in reply) There are deep fried bananas, freeze dried bananas, an ice cream whose flavour I do not recall, and some chocolate sauce. The ~~mousse~~ made the dessert moreish and decadent. Though I never liked chocolate desserts to begin with. So can't really judge this one.

Vanilla ~~custard~~ foam, honeycomb/brittle, orange, microgreen (basil? I'm kind of dying to know what it was now.)

Vanilla custard - is more of a vanilla foam (they siphoned the custard I'm guessing?). Topped with crushed brittle that doesn't taste like it's been infused with any flavours (ie it tasted like sugar). And was that micro basil leaves on top? Was a nice touch. Especially enjoyed the cooked saucy orange bits which refreshed the dessert bowl. Cake bits were almondy - was it a madeline? genoise? Would be nice if that was less sweet because the bits of honeycomb/brittle was sweet enough. Okay

Americano

Being only my second winterlicious meal for this year, I can't really make any solid assertion but both times I found the appetizer to be significantly better than the main and dessert.

Wow, haven't blabbed on this much about food in a while. All three courses were a hearty portion, and much larger than what I would expect for winterlicious, and any lunch for that matter. We had to take an americano and a walk afterwards to keep the itis from kicking in hard at work.