Dec 20, 2008

Not a restaurant review: Edam vs Gouda!

I am totally fascinated by Hy-Vee's gourmet cheese sections. The cheeses there can be pretty expensive though, so I find myself grabbing inexpensive versions of the same cheese to test them out. I grabbed some of the cheapest Edam I could find the other day. I realised I had had it before... it is pretty much the same as inside of the red babybels.
Then I was looking at the cheese again and began to wonder what the differences were between gouda and edam. They both come in wax and have a similar color. The cheap brand I had been buying sold them in nearly identical packaging. So I decided to have a taste test.

On the left, Edam: soft, smooth, nutty. A good snack cheese for me. On the right, Gouda: firm but smooth, sharp like cheddar or colby. Probably better in a recipe.
Turns out they are completely different flavors and textures! Both incredibly tasty sides of a red wax coin.

I also noticed they were carrying versions of swiss and cheddar made with goats milk. Normally all of the goat cheese is labeled as chevre. I got some of the cheddar, which was white and labeled medium. It doesn't taste much like cheddar, but it is only slightly goaty and very nice.

Nov 19, 2008

Gino's Restaurant - 11/19-08 - First Visit

We had trouble finding Gino's the last time we attempted to go because we had thought it was closer to downtown. Actually it is closer to Oak Park/Highland Park; just to the south. Fast forward to months later when we're all wearing winter coats and we drive up to a hugely packed parking lot around 6:30 pm. At first I was thinking we'd just have to go somewhere else, being as that I hadn't eaten more than some dorito's all day, but then we found the extra parking to the north.
We had read many reviews on Gino's that basically said to expect it to be old. I was suprised at how much it truly was indeed old. Everything is wood paneled, except the bathrooms which were teal, and it smelled a lot like my grandma's house which was last remodeled at the same time as this place. Gino himself was serving as the receptionist. It appeared that a daughter had taken over most of the management of the restaurant. Gino gave some preference to the two men who came in behind us and seated them first, but after a while it became obvious that we were suffering for our youth.
The crowd was generally made up of people who had obviously been coming to Gino's since it opened (circa 1966). They had a good 40+ years on us (for the record, I'm 25). It was nice to be at a restaurant with 0 children for once. Unfortunately, we got a waitress who seemed to have been working at Gino's since it opened :P
Most people would be irritated at the slow service, but in this instance, it turned out to be one of the best things because it gave us time to pack away the massive amount of food we were presented with.
We started out with four toasted raviolis which were among the top toasted raviolis I have ever had. With that we were brought some plain italian bread, butter, club crackers, and those little prepackaged italian breadsticks. Gino's sauce is extremely tomatoey, with less seasoning than most people expect in a red sauce, but we took what was left from the ravioli (like half a cup) and put it all over our italian bread.
Most of the meals at Gino's come with bread, salad, and potato or pasta. For our salads, we both chose the house dressing which was a creamy garlic. It came covered in a layer of sweet paprika, which was quite a suprise for me, but it did lend quite a bit to the salad. The only downside was that every piece of lettuce looked rusty which was a little unnerving early on.
I ordered the chicken roll which is chicken stuffed with proscuitto, romano, mozzerella, and italian spices. Not only that, it was breaded. It comes with spaghetti with red or alfredo sauce. I can't do alfredo so I had it with sauce. The chicken itself was amazing... Tim swore he could have ordered just the breading on it and been happy. The spaghetti was al dente but I just didn't have much room for it.
Tim had the cavatelli with meatballs. Gino's cavatelli is made on site, so it is fresh rather than dried pasta. The one thing we noticed was that the pasta was on the blander side... like they needed to kick up the salt in the pasta water. The meatballs were huge and flavorful and suprisingly moist and tender, but really not comparable to the chicken roll at all.
We were full so we ordered two pieces of their white chocolate rasberry cheesecake for the road. And really all I can say about that is: OMFG! The cheescake itself is a silky white chocolate with a faint rasberry stripe through it, but then they ladled a generous portion of sauce over the top. The sauce, which is black raspberry, is more like a thick reduction and is just insane. I would pour it over everything if they bottled it.

As Tim put it, "A+++++++, Would engorge again!"

Jan 17, 2008

HuHot - Jan 17, 2008

We have been hearing good things about HuHot for moooonths. Then last week, Tim had offered to bring me some food while I was working and I said I wanted to try HuHot but I didn't think they did take out. They don't. You can't even take home leftovers, but you can go back for as many servings as you like.
We went for lunch since we'd run late the night before and didn't want to cram down food in the 30 minutes they were still open. When you go for lunch, the salad/soup is optional. We didn't have salads so our meal was $7.99. I still didn't feel hungry enough to "get my money's worth" on it though, but its not bad for what is basically a buffet.
This was my first time doing a real mongolian grill style restaurant though I'd seen small ones at chinese buffets. If you don't know, basically you pick up a bowl and then choose your frozen meat. They had chicken, beef, pork, and two types of white fish. I chose beef. After that, you decide on your noodles. The types of noodles were chinese, yakisoba, and pad thai. I chose chinese noodles. After that came a huuuge table of vegetables, pineapple, mushrooms, tofu, etc I wanted to keep it simple so i picked shredded carrot, some diced onion, and baby corn. At last, you reach the sauce station. They have 12 premade sauces of varying heat and 12 'make your own sauce' ingredients. They suggest that you use 5 to 6 ladles of sauce per meal. I used two ladles of hoisin sauce, two of teriyaki, and a ladle of sesame oil.
Once you build your bowl, you are ready to queue for the fantastically awesome round grill. They have this team of about 5 cooks who constantly rotate around this grill top cooking your ingredients. The first guy takes the bowls and dumps them on the grill and does a cleanup of the next spot up. The next guy breaks up the meal into two piles, and makes sure the meat is getting cooked ok. Then there are a couple more guys all working on different meals and the final guy is scraping the mess into the center hole and doing more cleaning. And all the while their spatulas went *ching ching ching*
I think our only major issue with going to this place happened in the grill line. They had gotten backed up a little so the line went all the way around the grill and where we were standing, the sprinkler system was leaking enough to have us be misted slightly.
After your stuff gets grilled, there is a little station at the end of the grill line with chow mein, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and coconut to put on top. I put on both peanuts and sunflower seeds. And that brings me to the reason I think everyone loves this restaurant: Every meal you have there is exactly how you want it! Yeah, I do give kudos to that cooking team for their perfect timing, but if you choose your own ingredients, how can you not like the food it makes?
As for service and atmosphere.... I liked that for the most part the tables were pretty far apart and they'd sort of partitioned off the food bar and grill areas so that if your table was close to them, you wouldn't get bumped by people getting their food. It's a loud restaurant but not to the point where you have to yell at each other over the din. I think it helped that they didn't have any music playing, at least that I noticed.
Our waiter was pretty rehersed in the opening speech for people who haven't been there before, but almost to the point of sounding bored. Later on he got more friendly (ie. calling me sweetie, thanking us again as we left) and he was quick for refills and taking up plates.
I think I would like to go there again, but as far as I've seen, you don't want to try to go on the typical eat out nights. I would also like to be really hungry before going. I forgot to mention that they bring you a bowl of rice to have with your meal and I must remember not to add the rice to my meal if i want to build a second bowl.

Ratings:
Food: +1
Service: +1
Atmosphere: +1
Value: 0

Jan 5, 2008

Waterfront Seafood - Jan 4, 2008

I have to start off by saying that this was my 4th or 5th time eating at Waterfront. I don't really think it is possible for them to make anything bad by this point.

We had just gotten back from an afternoon of house hunting and Tim was headed to Village Inn when I suggested it. He was up for it, having just recieved a paycheck. We decided on going there at exactly 5PM and pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later. I have learned that this is about the perfect time to head to dinner on a friday night in Polk County if you're hungry.

We got seated immediately but the restaurant got packed shortly after that. We could hear some pretty vocal people at the tables around us talking politics. The caucuses were the previous night, and obviously no one had cooled off yet. One lady was talking anti-abortion, and that was almost annoying.

Tim started out ordering some tuna nigiri (sushi). I'm not a big fan of the uncooked varieties of sushi, even though Waterfront has the freshest, so I went to the bathroom while he ate his "fish jello".

They brought the standard sourdough loaf out and my cup of soup. I ordered lobster bisque which was the special of the night. It was just a straight lobster bisque made with cream, so it was rich but it kind of lacked lobster taste.

For the main course, Tim had a 1/2 portion of blackened mahi with pilaf and vegetables and I had the hurricane shrimp, which is a pasta dish. The shrimp was really interesting because it had a shrimp based honey/herb sauce. I got like an almost sickeningly sweet flavor followed by a kick of spice. According to the menu, the spices are worchestershire, garlic, cayenne, and thyme, but i think maybe there was some rosemary as well. I finished as much as I could before the cayenne built up too much in my mouth. I have gotten much more tolerant of cayenne but, as my mother likes to say, I'm white.

The waitress seemed slightly bored at first but I think she may have been trying to push us along so that others wouldn't have to wait. She was pretty good at refilling drinks before we were finished and getting me to take a box of what I hadn't finished.

All in all, it was another good meal at Waterfront. Total bill: $43.88+tip

Ratings: (+1 is good, 0 is average, and -1 is poor)
Food: +1
Service: +1
Atmosphere: 0
Value: +1

Jan 1, 2008

How this works

We're going to tell you about our experiences eating out at restaurants in the Des Moines area. We'll tell you what we got and how much it cost, how the service was, what the atmosphere was like, and whether or not it was a good value. Then, we'll give it a simple plus or minus rating just in case you're too impatient to read.