Napa Rose at Disney's California Adventure
Went to dinner with the some work people to Napa Rose at the Disney Grand Californian Hotel. The Grand Californian Hotel is terrible. It's going for the California Craftsman look, but it's all wrong. It's too big and open. I know that it's Disney and has to be larger than life, but that's not what the Arts and Crafts movement was about. It was about simplicity. You could order a house from the Sears catalog. How's that for simple. Anyway, it probably doesn't even matter. Most of the guests won't ever see a real Craftsman house. The restaurant was okay. I was not too satisfied with the menu and was hoping that there were some specials. Well, the waiter came over and told us about the menu and specifically said that there were no specials because zombies had taken over the kitchen. Too bad. I ordered the seared Ahi tuna. It was good. Coffee was average. For dessert I had Raspberry soup with Coconut "Ice". I was expecting a bowl of raspberry something with coconut shavings. What I got was melted raspberry sorbet and cubes of coconut ice somethings. I should have gotten the three scoops of sorbet instead. I really should have gotten nothing, $9 for melted sorbet or three scoops of sorbet is ridiculous. Also, the menu was poorly typset. They used inch marks instead of proper quotation marks many times.
Giamela's Submarine Sandwiches on Los Feliz Blvd.
This is a great restaurant. The pizza was delicious and the price was low, too low to print.
We were supposed to go to Real Food Daily, but I got stuck at work until late. I was helping somebody learn how to use some software (that I had never heard of) over the phone. I succeeded in that task, by the way, thank you very much. Anyway, Kristi was hungry. I was hungry. My lunch of half a soggy Blimpies sandwich was a bad move, but it was a free left-over from an office meeting so why am I complaining? Oh yeah, because it was terrible. I was lucky enough to be working the rest of the day away from my desk. Otherwise, I would have eaten the other half. I happily threw the remains away as I walked out of the building. Free at last! Daniel suggested Giamela's. He'd seen it advertised on a bus bench. I'm always up for a new place, and if it's advertised on a bus bench and in Atwater Village and sells pizza, that's even better. It's a small restaurant, Kristi noticed that the sign out front is almost as big as the restaurant itself. There was some tension in the ordering. My self-imposed dairy ban was to blame. We ended up getting a 16" pizza pie with pepperoni, mushrooms and half no cheese. I suggested 1/3 no cheese, but Daniel said that he'd have one of the cheeseless slices, that was nice. Since the pizza was going to take 20 minutes, we also got garlic bread with some meat sauce for dipping. The bowl of meat sauce was huge. More than enough for the garlic bread. We kept it to dip pizza crust in. That sounded like a good idea, but for some reason it didn't taste as good as it sounded. The pizza arrived and I think that they put extra pepperoni on the no cheese side, cool. Speaking of cool, it was cold that night and the zombies (who have no idea what the temperature is) that kept coming into the restaurant weren't shutting the door all the way. Kristi and I took turns getting up to close it. It was kind of tricky to close, you had to lift it a little.
After Giamela's, off to The Roost for drinks with Mark, Shannon, Lisa, Tall Chris, Damon and his girlfriend. Too bad this isn't a bar review blog. If it was, I'd give The Roost a good review. The drinks are strong, prices are low, atmosphere is nice and divey (like the old Hi-Brow Lounge) and it's empty until the Bigfoot Lodge gets too full. Did I mention the free popcorn? Nope. Well, there is free popcorn.
Sushi Delight in Upland
After going to Costco to stock the Clubhouse Tiki Bar for the party on Saturday, Tall Chris and I went to Sushi Delight. We'd never been there before and thought we should try it out. They closed at 9pm and we got there at 8:30pm. It looked like we were the only people in the place. There were loads of zombies, but they weren't at the sushi bar, so we sat at the sushi bar. A guy told us that the sushi making guy was in the bathroom. Not a good sign, but we got free edamame for waiting, so that was nice. The sushi was good. We got a rainbow roll, spicy tuna roll, sake (salmon) and a california roll. The california roll tasted funny to me. The sushi chef made me feel awkward. He was just standing by us while we were eating. Now that I think about it, he was probably a zombie. I should have realized that he wasn't human when he was coughing up dust while making our food. Yuck. While he was putting the fish away for the night, he was nice and gave us a lot of salmon and red snapper on the house. We got the bill. It was $30. I was confused as to how to tip. Since I was with Tall Chris, he was no help with tipping advice. There was a tip plate on the sushi bar, so I gave the whole tip to the sushi chef. We probably should have left some on the table for the lady that brought us soup and beer. Hopefully the chef shares his tips. I grabbed the receipt for further study. It turns out that we were not charged for the miso soup and one order of sushi. Most likely it was an oversight by the zombie sushi chef, or maybe they were just being nice to new customers. To wrap it up, I think it would have been more fun with more people at the restaurant. We might go there again, but Chris and I agreed that Nogi Sushi in Claremont is better.
