Why is Bread Winners Raking in the Dough?

Bread Winners

3301 McKinney Ave.

Dallas, TX 75204

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 five of seven in our Dallas series. So sit back, cap that oil rig, and enjoy this special edition of Eating My Way Through Dallas.

When I was planning our trip to Dallas, I wanted a good sample of all that Dallas had to offer, and when I had read that Bread Winners was voted best breakfast in Dallas, it made it on our list of places to go. Bread Winners is located in the uptown district of Dallas and looks like it once used to be a house. If not, they have succeeded in making this place feel very homey. Let's see if the food is like homemade.

Above is the complimentary bread plate that came after we placed our order. Now, I not going to knock free food, but I think that this stuff was day old, which is fine because it was free. I think all of this would have tasted great the day before. The blueberry coffee cake was easily the best item on this plate. Lots of blueberries in this and a good sweet flavor.
 

 
Here is Katie's breakfast. She ordered the Nature Cakes, with a side of scrambled eggs. The Nature Cakes were buttermilk pancakes, with homemade granola in them. She really enjoyed these, saying this was the best thing she ate in Texas. I thought they were okay and needed a lot more syrup. They did have a good flavor. It is hard for pancakes to impress me though. Katie only took one bite of her eggs, she was too overwhelmed with the pancakes.
 

 
Here is my Leo's Favorite. This scramble included grilled chicken, ham, onion, tomatoes, hollandaise sauce, and jack cheese. This hearty dish was very good. All of the ingredients worked well together. I was afraid that with so many items the flavor would be over the top, but it was really mellow and tasted great. The only complaint I would have is that the ham was not cut up enough, but that would be it. I could see myself ordering this again.
 
This meal was a very nice start to a very busy day of sightseeing for us. I would agree that this is one of the best breakfast places in Dallas.
 
So out of five oil men, (because oil men are breadwinners and we are in Texas), five being best to zero being worst, Bread Winners gets 3 oil men.
 
For more information on Bread Winners, check them out here: https://www.breadwinnerscafe.com/

Feeling Irie at Jamaica Gates?

Jamaica Gates

1020 W. Arkansas Blvd.

Arlington, TX 76013

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 six of seven in our Dallas series. So sit out that line dance, and enjoy this special edition of Eating My Way Through Dallas.

When you think of Texas, you obviously think of Jamaican food right? Okay, maybe not, but after watching Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, this had to be added to mine and Katie's list of restaurants to try. We were going to Arlington to watch a Rangers game, so we made a point of stopping by to see if this could be two places in a row that Guy Fieri steered us in the right direction.

Jamaica Gates is in a large shopping center that has seen better days. It looks like this place used to be a fast food place converted into a sit-down restaurant. Jamaica Gates had about ten people eating there when we arrived on a Friday at about one o'clock. The overzealous/odd waiter really steered us towards the lunch buffet. The buffet was $8.92 and seeing as all the entrees were over $12.92, this seemed like a great deal. Let's get on to the food.

Before we hit the buffet, we ordered the Three Item Portland Sampler. This consisted of the following three items.

The first item is the Sticky Citrus Wings. These were really great. The wings had a decent amount of meat on them, but the reason this was so good was the citrus sauce. Really sweet and had an awesome flavor. I could have eaten about twenty of these.

Next was the Fried Plantain. I must admit that I am not that big of a fan of plantains. These were okay, but Katie liked these a lot more than I did. They were mildly sweet.

Lastly, we had the jerk shrimp. I liked this item also. The jerk sauce was good, and the shrimp were cooked right. I could have eaten a lot more of these also.

So this was my plate from the buffet. The highlights were the Gates Curry Chicken. This really had a distinct flavor that was not too over-powering. The only complaint I had about this was the tiny bones that were left in this dish. I had to be careful when eating this. The Rude Boy Jerk Chicken is on the left of the plate. Very good sauce once again and the chicken was not of the highest quality, (the piece I ate had a lot of fat), but it was really tasty. The two side items were just average. The rice was plain tasting, and the cabbage was all right, but both of these really heated up when I added the product below.

This pepper sauce was very good. It really made the rice and cabbage come alive. I will have to see if this is available in my area.

For dessert, we chose the Pineapple Upside Down Cake. This dish really helped put out the fire after having more than my fair share of the pepper sauce. Nice and sweet, this moist cake was very good.

I liked Jamaica Gates. It was nice having something different, something that you do not have every day. I do not think that their food is top of the line, but the sauces really make this place memorable. I also liked that this place is authentic. You can actually picture this meal being served in Kingston or any other city in Jamaica.

So out of five Doctor Birds, (the national bird of Jamaica, see you learn stuff on food blogs!), five being best to zero being worst, Jamaica Gates gets 3 Doctor Birds.

For more information on Jamaica Gates, click here: http://www.jamaicagates.com/

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