Kirbie's Cravings

Irvine trip Part 2

Part 1 of my last Irvine trip can be found here. Sorry it's taken me so long to finish blogging about my trip.

Bentoss
675 Paularino Ave, #3
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 444-3401

So one of our stops was technically not in Irvine. Last time I was shopping at the Mitsuwa in Costa Mesa, I saw this sign for "$4.99 bento box lunch special" in front of a store in the same plaza.  I was really curious, so this time around we stopped in during lunch. There were three bento boxes to choose from for the lunch special: teriyaki chicken, chicken karaage, and nori bento.  We chose the chicken karaage.

I thought the chicken was pretty oily. The food was just alright. There were quite a few other bentos offered, but were around $8-10. 

Since Mitsuwa and its giant food court is in the same plaza, I'd rather go there. rather than getting a cold premade bento.

85C Bakery Cafe
2700 Alton Pkwy, Ste 123
Irvine, CA 92606
(949) 553-8585
www.85cafe.us

On this trip, we also paid a visit to 85 C. I've done multiple posts on 85 C which can be found here, here, here. So I'll keep this one short. The last few times, I've noticed that 85 C is ridiculously crowded on the weekends and a lot of the breads I want run out by the time I get inside. On the weekdays, the line isn't so bad. But on weekends, it is out the door. And it seems to be like that all day. When we first arrived in the plaza, the line was out the door. A few hours later, it was still the same. I think part of the problem is that before, there was no one monitoring the line. Now, they have someone by the door restricting the number of people who can get in at a time.

There are two lines now. The front entrance has a line for people getting breads. Then there is a separate line on the side of the bakery, for people who are just ordering beverages. (You can order beverages from the bread line too; so you don't need to get in line again if you are buying bread and drinks).

When we finally got inside, a lot of the breads I wanted were not there. I asked about them, and they were making more but it would take about 30 minutes. I was then told I could preorder them at the register and come back later to pick them up. This was a nice option that wasn't previously offered. I ordered my breads at the register, and later on I came back to pick up my breads and was able to bypass the line since I was just picking up a preorder.

I didn't take many good pics of the breads since I've had them all before. Plus it was late, and I didn't want to wait for nice lighting. I wanted to eat my breads right away.

The pork sung cake roll was something I hadn't seen before. It is a typical sweet chinese cake roll, but covered with the savory dried shredded pork and green onions. It was an interesting combination.

This was a coconut cake, also something I hadn't had before. The coconut cake is more like a flan. Inside were little jellies shaped like stars. I wouldn't get this again.

The taro roll is one of my family's favorite breads. It's a super soft roll. The taro is swirled in. This bread is really popular and it tastes great piping hot and even cold the next day.

I usually don't get the savory bread options. For me, they taste a bit weird because the bread is still slightly sweet. However, they are also quite popular. BF was in the mood for some of the savory breads. He chose this pizza one.

I think this one had a hot dog inside.

In the same plaza, we visited Bon Epi, a Korean bakery. There were lots of yummy looking offerings.

Here's what I ended up choosing:

I also chose a brioche not pictured. I thought the breads were good, but not as good as the ones at 85C. Since it is in the same plaza, I'd prefer to go to 85C.

18040 Culver Dr
Irvine, CA 92612
(949) 551-4111
www.wholesomechoice.com

We ended the night at Wholesome Choice. This market had been recommended to me months ago by Darlene of My Burning Kitchen and her husband Paul of Cool Jerk. They mentioned that they thought I would enjoy the place, and Paul even gave me one of the Cool Jerk collectible cards and wrote down directions as well as a note to try the filet mignon kebabs.

We had planned to arrive earlier, but other places got in the way. Wholesome Choice is a large supermarket that seems to specialize in the Middle Eastern cuisine. They had a lot of cheap fruit on sale as well as a lot of tropical fruits that are hard to find like mangosteens.

One of the things I was most excited about is that the market carries my Mashti Malone ice cream.

I was also really happy with the baked goods aisle. So many different cookies, as well as Middle Eastern pastries were offered.

The food court is much talked about at Wholesome Choice. It apparently is quite large and full of different types of cuisine. Unfortunately, we were there so late that the majority of the food court was closed. What remained opened was a bakery, and a kebab station. I'm not sure if this is the kebab station that CoolJerk recommended, but they did have filet mignon kebabs, so I ordered a plate.

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I really enjoyed this market. It had so much variety and reasonable prices. The only one negative thing was that we encountered a not-so-nice lady working behind the food station. She saw me taking pictures of the empty food court, and yelled at me to stop taking pictures. So I stopped. But then she proceeded to glare at me for the next 20 minutes while we waited for our food. At one point, I left to wander around the market. BF told me that while I was gone, a caucasian couple tried to get some food from one the stations that was closed but still had the food on display. They refused to help the couple. Then a Middle Eastern couple came in and the lady secretly helped them. The caucasian couple were pretty mad and BF overheard the conversation. Apparently this was not the first time they had been given unfair treatment from this place.

We got our food to go since we were quite full from everywhere else we had stopped on our trip. The serving of beef was quite generous, as was the rice which I believe was flavored with saffron. The beef was tender and I loved the rice. It also came with some pita-like bread and onions, but I preferred to eat this on its own rather than in a wrap.

I definitely want to visit this market again and hopefully the mean lady won't be there.

Irvine trip Part 1 (Kula revolving sushi bar and The Balcony)

BF and I had some things to take care of in Orange County and decided to stick around for the day and revisit some old haunts. It's been a while since we've taken a trip to OC, as most of our road trips have taken us further: to downtown Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley, Rowland Heights, etc.

Kula Sushi Bar
2700 Alton Parkway, Suite 133
Irvine, CA 92606
(949) 553-0747

For dinner, we wanted to go to Kula again. Kula has a revolving conveyer belt running throughout the entire restaurant. It's open all day; no break between lunch and dinner. It always seems to be pretty busy. Every plate is $2. We previously visited Kula here. I noticed on this trip that were quite a few new items.  This is the list of sushi plates they serve:

The list itself looks kind of small, but it's a pretty big variety. It seems like every time I looked up, there was a different dish passing by me.  Every time I come here, I want to get everything passing by me. I love the $2 pricing per plate.  I like this place more than BF. He doesn't think the raw fish plates are that great. I like this place because it offers a lot of things I like: clams, octopus, shrimp, mochi.

Here is the plates we ended up getting:

Seared scallop:

Conch:

Langosteen:

Spicy crunchy tuna:

Spicy tuna roll:

Ebi (sweet shrimp with deep fried head)

Heart clam:

Tako (Octopus)

Crunchy Salmon roll

Some sort of spicy roll:

Chicken gyoza

Salmon roll:

Crispy rice topped with crab

Uni

Spicy tuna on top of crispy rice

The Balcony
2710 Alton Pkwy, Ste 215,
Irvine, CA 92606
(949) 387-0888

After dinner, we went to The Balcony for dessert. I've become obsessed with snowflake shaved ice, which is a very fine shaved ice that tastes like ice cream. Condensed milk is mixed with the ice before it is shaved, creating a fluffy sweet ice that also melts a lot slower than traditional shaved ice. I've been trying to find places closer than Class 302 and Pa Pa Walk that serve the shaved ice. I found out that The Balcony serves it as well. The Balcony is a taiwanese bar/restaurant. Their dinner menu consists mainly of shabu shabu, which I thought was weird since shabu shabu isn't Taiwanese. They also offer some Taiwanese snacks and of course the snowflake shaved ice.

Though they offer quite a few shaved ice toppings, the one I like the best, mango shaved ice, is not offered.

They have  strawberry and mango one, but it didn't taste the same. The strawberries tasted really sour when mixed with the mangoes, syrup and condensed milk. The shaved ice here is very much like the one at Class 302, coming out in sheets. It tasted good, but not as good as the one at Class 302. I also thought the quantity was a lot less.

Class 302 is still my favorite spot for snowflake ice. It's the cheapest spot I've been to and their mango shaved ice has sweet mango pieces and mango syrup in the actual ice. I was also surprised to see that the shaved ice here actually melted faster, whereas it really didn't melt at all when I went to Class 302 and Pa Pa Walk.

We also got some sweet potato fries:

These were just okay to me. I did like that they had sour plum powder sprinkled on it.

Fried stinky tofu:

The fermented taste was not strong enough. This dish was disappointing.

Finally, we got another shaved ice since we love the snowflake shaved ice so much. This was further proof that the quantities here are smaller than Class 302, since BF and I were able to polish off both shaved ices. This one we got with the more traditional toppings of mochi balls and red beans. While I normally love the traditional toppings, I've found that I don't enjoy it as much on the snowflake ice. Since the snowflake ice is already flavored with condensed milk, the toppings seem too sweet. The Taiwanese shaved ice I grew up with had no flavor in the ice, so it worked better that.

Here is the menu:

We went to quite a few other places in the area, but I'll have to cover that in another post.

Tous Les Jours bakery

Tous Les Jours Bakery (located inside H-Mart)
2600 Alton Pkwy
Irvine, CA 92606

Tous Les Jours is a Korean bakery located inside H-Mart. I've admired their bread display the last few times I found myself in H-Mart.  On this last visit, I decided to try some of the pretty breads I have been eyeing.

The one that caught my attention the most was this sunflower shaped bread called "Morning Bread."  I loved how pretty it looked. Who wouldn't want to wake up to a breakfast looking like this?

The bread is actually cut in half and inside there is a jam and cream spread.  I brought this home to my family and there were mixed reviews. My dad enjoyed it but my mom didn't like it at all. 

The bread I have been eyeing the last few times I was there was this pumpkin bread.  I loved the unique shape and look and I like korean pumpkin filled breads.

The bread had a lot of filling. It wasn't too sweet and didn't have any spices: just pumpkin, which I liked. I do wish there was more bread though as I don't like my pastries with too much filling.

I also bought this chestnut bread, which was a bit on the dry side.

Finally, I found tapioca bread, something I've become obsessed with lately ever since trying it out at Paris Baguette.

I'm going to do a separate post on the tapioca bread lately, but it's become my new obsession.  It's airy like a popover type bread or a cream puff.  The sesame seeds go really well with the bread. It's super chewy and has a similar appeal to me as mochi does.

In general, I think I liked the breads better at the other Korean bakery I tried recently, Paris Baguette. The breads here were pretty, but personally not what I prefer.