Filling Up at Off the Bone

Off the Bone

1734 South LamarSt.

Dallas, TX 75215

So Katie and I went on vacation to Dallas for five days in April. Our purpose for the trip was to see the sights, go to a hockey and baseball game, and of course find and sample the best food that big D has to offer. This is part seven of seven in our Dallas series. So stop roping those longhorns for a few moments, and enjoy this special edition of Eating My Way Through Dallas.


When I was doing my research on where the best barbeque was in Dallas, this place was mentioned more than any other, so we decided to eat here before heading off to the Ducks-Stars hockey game. Off the Bone is located in downtown Dallas, in an industrial area, right by the Dallas police station. This is a very small restaurant that only has two tables outside, and none inside. Lucky for us we got a table, so lets if this place is worthy of all the buzz.

We started with the Chopped BBQ Brisket Sandwich. The sauce was very good. It had a lot of vinegar in it, but it really worked. The meat was very tender, and had a great smoky taste. The rolls that this was served on was nothing special, but the meat is meant to be the star here, and it is.

The potato salad was not as good as the one that we had a Baker's earlier in the week. This potato salad was all right, but nothing to write home about. We should have tried the Baked Beans instead.
 

 
This is what I am talking about! These were as good as they look. We started with an order of the Smoked Pecan Baby Back Ribs, shown above. An order consists of five to six ribs. Do yourself a favor and just get a full rack, that is what we did, and I could not have been happier. These ribs were loaded with meat, and had a great char on the outside and very tender meat. These ribs also just fell off the bone when you picked them up. Very good indeed, and worth another picture.
 

 
This was our full rack that we ordered. We ate all but three of these, and I ate the rest in the hotel room after the hockey game. They were still good, even after sitting in the car for four hours.
 
Off the Bone is a no frills barbeque place that has awesome meats. Great big flavor and great sauce, make this a can not miss place in big D.
 
Out of five picked clean ribs, five being best to zero being worst, Off the Bone gets 4 picked clean ribs.
 
For more information about Off the Bone click here: http://offthebonebarbeque.com/
 

Family Cooking at Tio Chava's? - CLOSED

Tio Chava's

18452 Yorba Linda Blvd.

Yorba Linda, CA 92886

One of my favorite parts about writing this blog is watching how passionate people are about the places they like. They always want me to come and review their favorites and wonder how I will write them up. My great-friend Sandy wanted me to meet her and her family for dinner at Tio Chava's in Yorba Linda. Always looking for great Mexican food, we headed up to the "Land of Gracious Living" to taste what they offer.

Tio Chava's has been open in Yorba Linda since 1999, but they recently moved out of their previous location to their new digs at the corner of Yorba Linda Boulevard and Imperial Highway. I had never been to their other location before. The restaurant is plain-looking and decently sized. It is busy this Wednesday night, but they have a table that can fit our party of seven. So, let's see how this place measures up.

First, we have salsa. I was hoping for more from this. I thought it just tasted way too bland—kind of like mild Pace Picante. They did have a fire-roasted salsa that we had later during our meal that was much better, so definitely ask for that one if you come here. The chips were your standard restaurant-style tortilla chips.

Tio Chava's has a special on the front of their menu; you can get five soft tacos for five dollars every day of the week. I was really hungry, so I started with this. Above are the five tacos. I chose the carne asada, grilled chicken, carnitas, pastor, and shredded beef (other choices included lengua, ground beef, and chorizo). The meat was okay, and they all tasted the same. It was hard to distinguish between the different tacos. I still thought this was a good value because, on the menu, the tacos are listed at $2.25, so according to my math, we just saved ourselves $6.25, which is not too bad.  

Here is Katie's dish. She chose the Taco and Taco plate. I did not get a bite of the chicken taco, but there looked to be a lot of lettuce on it. The tamale tasted very good, not dry, and I really liked the sauce that it was drenched in. The rice and beans had a good, mellow flavor.

Clay picked the wet carnitas burrito served with rice and beans. For $6, this is a pretty good-sized burrito. The meat tasted great, and once again, the sauce really added to the burrito.

 Here is a picture of Sandy's Tostado. I am not sure what kind of meat she went with here because you can not see through the mound of lettuce they piled on it. I know that she did like it, though, because she finished her plate.

Sorry for the blurry picture. This is Rocio's Ceviche Tostado. This tostada was prepared with onion, cilantro, tomatoes, and shrimp. I did not try it, but it looked really good and was under $4.

Our big eater for the night was Erven. This was his Seafood Combo soup, which featured fish, shrimp, abalone scallops, and octopus. It cost $14, but it was big and would have been a meal for anyone but Erven. He ordered another plate, too. He really did like this, and it really had a great aroma to it.

Part two of Erven's food-a-palooza is the Pollo con Mole Poblano. This was the best dish of the night, in my opinion. The sweet mole sauce was awesome. I would totally get this the next time I visited Tio Chava's. It's a very good dish made with chocolate.

Lastly, my dish: one pork, one cheese, and one beef enchilada. These all tasted good but not spectacular. Again, probably because they had a lot of sauce poured over them, they all tasted the same. It was a good, solid dish, though.

This is a good, not great, Mexican restaurant. I really enjoyed the mole dish, and the prices were very reasonable. They will get me to come back to explore other items on their menu.

So, out of five uncles, five being the best and zero being the worst, Tio Chava gets three solid uncles.

For more information on Tio Chava's, click here: https://www.tiochavasyl.com/

Does Marie Callender's Stand the Test of Time? - CLOSED

Marie Callender's

31791 Del Obispo St

 San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675

Katie got two Christmas gift cards from her boss for Marie Callender's. Growing up, we often frequented the one in Placentia and Anaheim Hills. Living in Mission Viejo, there is not one close to me, so it has been a long while since I have been there. In my younger days, what I remember most about Marie's was the small side of spiced apples you got with your plate and the cornbread. Both were real treats when I was a kid. Let's see if time has worn on old Mrs. Callender.

We arrived at Marie Callender's at about five on a Sunday night. After waiting for about five minutes for a hostess to show up and greet us, we were immediately seated. I'm not sure what was going on with the hostess situation, but one thing is for sure: old people love Marie Callender's. Katie and I walked into the place, and we were pretty close to the youngest ones in the joint.

We both started with the all-you-can-eat salad bar. This was $2.99 with our entrees, such a deal. I remember the salad bar seeming huge when I was a kid, but now it does not seem that big. I liked that they had nice chilled plates for the salad. The lettuce seemed fresh, and there were plenty of items to add to the salad. The soup seemed really good. The potato cheese soup was very creamy and had big chunks of potato.

First up is Katie's sandwich. She got a Tuna Sandwich on a croissant with avocado added. This was not on the menu, but the waiter was very accommodating. The tuna was decent, and she really enjoyed the sandwich. I really saw nothing too special with this sandwich.

Here is what I got, the Works Frisco Burger. Bacon, lettuce, onion ring, Thousand Island dressing, and American cheese on parmesan sourdough. The bread was perfect, and the hamburger was very juicy. I am not usually a big fan of American cheese, but here it worked. I thought $11.99 for this sandwich was way too high, but I decided to splurge since Katie's boss was paying. The fries were okay, but they came out a little cold. One other note here that was strange. When I ordered this, I asked the waiter for a side of Ranch dressing. He said, "You can pick some of that up at the salad bar." I thought that was weird, and they only had soup bowls up there, so I wasted a lot of Ranch dressing, but at least I saved the guy a trip.

You can not leave Marie Callender's without a piece of pie, and here is their French Apple Pie with a scoop of ice cream. The pie was great and had lots of cinnamon and crumb topping. It was a perfect end to the meal.

So, no spiced apples with our sandwiches, and no cornbread either. The food was good, but the service needed to be improved in many areas. I would not make a special trip to Marie Callender's. It was overpriced for what you get. But if Katie's boss wants to get her a gift card again, I would not be against the idea of returning for another Frisco Burger.

Out of five pie plates, five being the best and zero being the worst, Marie Callender's gets 2.5 pie plates.

To find the nearest location or info on Marie Callender's, click here: http://www.mariecallenders.com/

Heaven at Haven Gastropub?

Haven Gastropub

190 S. Glassell St.

Orange, CA 92866

It seems like a rite of passage for Orange county food blogs to review Haven Gastropub. So you can now add Eating My Way Through OC to the long list of blogs that have reviewed Haven. For those of you that do not know, a gastropub is a British term, meaning a bar that specializes in serving high quality food, so I guess Friday's does not qualify as a gastropub then, just kidding TGI's! No, I am not really kidding!
 
Anyways, the reviews have been so good for this place that I just had to find out what all the fuss was about. We headed up to Orange on a Saturday night at eight. The place was busy, but we got seated right away. The place did have a cool vibe, lets see how the food stacks up.
 

First up were the appetizers. Everyone always talks about the potato chips at Haven, so that was a no brainer for us to try. These potato chips are soaked in beer and herbs and served with a killer garlic aioli sauce. They are good chips, and it is hard to eat just one, but I like chips with more of a crunch to them. These kind of melted in your mouth right away, like rice paper. The sauce really made these chips good.
 

Our second appetizer was the Buttermilk Fried Chicken. I liked the taste of this, but would have rather of had ranch served with it, rather than the orange-habanero BBQ sauce that came with it. The drummettes were a very good size and were not greasy at all.

Above is Chris's Pulled Pork Sliders. Chris actually gave me one of these off of his plate, and they were pretty good. The menu said that they were served with chipotle aioli, but there was not a lot of it from what I could taste. The buns on these were soft, and tasted great. The pork was tender, but the flavor was un-memorable.

Adrienne, our budding vegetarian in the group chose the Harvest Pear Salad. This salad included bosc pears, pecorino cheese, mesclun, and the best raisins I have ever had, (probably because they were rum soaked). I am not too big of a fan of entree salads, but she really did seem to enjoy this salad, so we will take her word for it.

Next we have Katie's Haven Burger. This burger features pickled onions, roasted red bell peppers, arugula and St. Agur cheese. The burgers itself was good, but I thought it was plain tasting. I think I expected more

because I had heard that the cheese was real flavorful, almost over powering. I did not get that sensation. The pommes fries, which are just the European way of saying fries were okay. Adrienne really enjoyed them. I thought they were too plain tasting, but they did taste like they were fresh cut. Also, they serve homemade ketchup here. I thought that it tasted like tomato puree with nothing added. I like a sweeter ketchup.

My dish was the real star of the night for me. I ordered the Crisp Braised Pork Belly. The pork belly was served with fennel, mache, dijon mustard microgreens and apple vinaigrette. Also on the plate was a celery root puree. This resembled a very thin mashed potato, but was very mild in flavor. The pork belly itself was cooked perfectly, with a little bit of char on the outside and cooked just right on the inside. I would definitely recommend this dish to anyone that enjoys pork entrees. 

The last of our main dishes was the Mac n' Cheese. Black truffles, gruyere, fontina and parmesan cheeses combine to make this dish. This entree came out piping hot, so we had to let it sit for a little bit. None of us really liked the taste of this, it kind of had a mushroom taste to it, and was not the right texture. It was runny and the taste was not what we had expected.

Now on to dessert. Above is the Candied Bacon Ice Cream with a brownie underneath. Yes I typed that right, bacon ice cream! So if you know me at all, you know what I picked for dessert. The bacon ice cream was okay, I could only detect a hint of bacon flavor, and believe me I was trying to. The brownie tasted great and really was light.

Our next dessert is the Tarte Tatin. In other words this is a Gala apple tart with, are you ready? Maytag bleu cheese ice cream. After trying our first bite of this, all of us made the same face. It was a look of, hmm. I for one did not know what to make of this. The tart and apple were good, but the bleu cheese ice cream was an odd pairing with this. It did not repulse me, but made me uneasy, and question my taste buds. I probably would not get this again.

The last dessert here was the standout of all of them, the Banana Bread Pudding. Not sure what kind of ice cream was served with this, it looked like the bacon ice cream from earlier, but I am not sure it was the same. The banana pudding was really good and had a nice mellow banana flavor. Really good, even though I am not a fan of bread puddings generally. I would get this again. 

A word about the beers offered at Haven. I am by no stretch a beer connoisseur. I probably have the worst taste in beer out of anyone. I do not mind a Coors Light, a Pabst or even a Lucky Lager. Haven Gastropub has none of these. They have a very long list of beers that I have never really heard of. I did try a Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout, and a Telegraph White Ale. They both tasted good , but I would not have ordered these if Coors Light was on the menu. I liked my choices, but not at $6 a bottle. I am not that big of a fan. Haven might be for someone that is way more into beer than myself.

So how to sum up my experience at Haven Gastropub? Some items on the menu are good. Some items on the menu are just plain scary, (really, we need an ice cream sandwich made with tobacco ice cream?). But the menu is not too inviting to the customer. They state at the bottom of the menu that, "Changes or modifications (to the menu) politely declined". This seems pretty high and mighty to me. I like having choices, if I do not like fennel, I would like to have the option of not getting it.

A friend of mine that recently went to Haven thought, "They are trying to hard.". I think this is a fair assessment, or maybe we are not the type of people this place is going after. The service was really good, but I still did not feel like this was the place for me. Maybe it is for the rest of the bloggers that gave glowing reviews, but that is how I felt. 

So out of five Tower of London's (because of the British influence here), five being best to zero being worst, Haven Gastropub gets 2 Tower of London's.

For more information on Haven Gastropub, click here: http://www.havengastropub.com/index.html

New York State of Mind at Gandolfo's - CLOSED

Gandolfo's New York Delicatessen

23981 Alicia Pkwy., Ste. 120

Mission Viejo, CA 92691

I drive past Gandolfo's just about every time I leave my house. It opened last year, and I just recently made it in to give it a try. Gandolfo's is a chain that was begun in Utah of all places. I know what you are thinking, "Deli sandwiches from Utah?". According to their web site, the founder of Gandolfo's was a New York native and lamented the fact that he could not find a good deli sandwich in Provo, so he decided to open up a shop. 45 shops later in 14 states, let's see if he has succeeded in his quest to provide quality New York sandwiches west of the Mississippi.

When we visited on a recent Wednesday night, we were one of a handful of people that came through the door. The place is decorated with the obligatory New York sports teams posters, and NY street signs. They do keep the place clean though, the workers were pretty busy wiping things down on our visit.

Here were our two sides that we tried. The pasta salad was pretty good as far as pasta salads go. It had a nice mild flavor, and I liked the whole pieces of broccoli in this salad. The red potato salad was good as well. It had a decent flavor with a hint of dill.

At Gandolfo's, they have over fifty sandwiches to choose from. Above is Katie's pick, the Rockefeller Rueben. She chose turkey to go along with the Swiss, sauerkraut, and spicy mustard. This sandwich comes on rye. I thought that this sandwich was good but boring, It would have been better if she would have gone with corned beef or pastrami. She liked it though and really thought the bread was great.

Next up was the Gandy's Coney Island Dog. Their hot dogs are made by Nathan's and served on a hero roll. The Coney Island dog comes with kraut, onions and spicy mustard. They definitely did not skimp on the toppings. There was a lot of kraut on this dog, and the taste was really good. A little steep at $3.69, but you pay that same price at the ballpark, for an inferior dog, so it really is a decent deal.

After much debate, I decided on the Carnegie Hall sandwich. Corned beef, turkey, swiss, coleslaw, and Russian dressing, all on rye. This sandwich was as good as it looks. With all of the stuff on it, I thought it was going to make the bread soggy, but the bread stood up. At $7.89, again you think that this might be too much for this sandwich, but now that Subway is done with their five dollar sub deal, and this is not a sandwich you can get from Subway, it makes this sandwich very worth the money.


So in review, I really liked Gandolfo's. I think that they succeeded in making a good New York sandwich. They will definitely make it into my sandwich cycle. With 50 different sandwiches to choose from, they have the variety to keep me coming back.

So out of five subways, five being best to zero being worst, Gandolfo's gets three solid subways.

For more information on Gandolfo's check them out here: http://www.gandolfosdeli.com/

Clucking It Up at the Rooster Cafe!

Rooster Cafe

750 Saint Clair Street

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Having Sundays off rocks! I have had a string of them off recently, and could not be happier. It gives me a chance to try some breakfast places that I have been hearing about. So I rounded up my girlfriend and parents and headed to Rooster Cafe in Costa Mesa.

This place is about as simple as their web site. We arrived at about 10:30 and the place had a steady stream of people coming in and out. So lets see if these people are coming for the food.

My Mom started with the Double Espresso above. She really enjoyed this. I, on the other hand am not a coffee drinker, so I abstained from trying this. I really liked the picture, so I wanted to include this though. 

 

We might as well talk about what my Mom ate first. She opted for the Early Riser. Fried egg, bacon, mayo and cheese on grilled sourdough bread. Simple, but delicious, and at $3.99 it was a steal. When a breakfast sandwich at McDonalds can cost $3.49, this is a bargain and better tasting also! This was definitely the right size portion for my Mom also.

This colorful plate belonged to my Dad. The Breakfast Tacos looked really good. I did not get a chance to try them though, because they were gone pretty quickly, and I was not offered any. They were served with egg, bacon, cheese, avocado and hot sauce. This would have been what I had ordered, but I wanted us to all get something different. Maybe next time I will get this.

In the mood for something sweet? Try Katie's order of Texas Toast. They gave her three slices of toast served with butter and syrup. This was not as heavy as regular egg battered French toast. It had a good taste and very good texture. This dish was a shade under $5, another good value.

Lastly, was my Hearty Scramble. This was scrambled eggs mixed with bacon, sausage, ham, cheese and onions. Also served with breakfast potatoes. The potatoes were very good and crispy. The eggs were good as well, but could of had more meat mixed in with them. For added flavor I used a good amount of hot sauce. 

Rooster Cafe was all that it was cracked up to be. Yes, I know that roosters do not lay eggs, but this is a solid breakfast place and we look forward to going back for lunch. They are only opened from 7-3 daily, so do not plan on any dinners here. The workers here were also very cool, and the place had a nice, although crowded, atmosphere. The value was also outstanding, all the food above plus three other drinks were $28 dollars total

Out of five hen houses, because what do roosters love more than hen houses?, five being best to zero being worst, Rooster Cafe receives three solid hen houses. 

To get some more information on Rooster Cafe, look them up here: http://www.eatatrooster.com/