~ Bobby's Burger Palace in College Park ~

It's been a while, I know.  And I am sure you know why.  Work work work!  Well, I finally got a change to go out and play and eat!  On this special occasion, my friends and I headed to Bobby's Burger Palace in College Park.  Bobby aka Bobby Flay.  It's a new place with dorm-cafeteria-ish long tables and a sushi-bar-esque burger bar.  It's very casual and upbeat.  

Each table has a basket of sauces.  I love the chipotle ketchup!!!

This is the Miami burger... with Ham, Swiss Cheese mustard and mayo.  Nothing crazy, but very classically good.  Love the toasted bun!

I got the Dallas Burger.  It has coleslaw, bbq sauce and monterey jack cheese.  It's very flavorful.

I got it well done and it was still nice and moist inside.

I also got sweet potato fries.  I love these!  Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.  Yum!!  

This is the November special... crunchified!  What's cruncified?  It's chips added to the burger!  This november special is only here for another week, so go try it!  It has an egg and bacon!  I am going to go try it next week :)

As a bonus, I know you all miss Momo, so here are some pics of him!

He's such a prude!! hehe  I hope everyone is having a great time, getting ready for Thanksgiving.  I will try to post some good deals for you if I am not too busy shopping :)

~ Restaurant Week: Newton's Table ~

I had lunch yesterday at Newton's Table in Bethesda for restaurant week.  For $15, you get an appetizer and an entree.   I picked the shrimp for appetizer.  It's amazing!  The shrimp was huge!  The sauce was buttery and sweet.  I love it!!!

This was a melon something soup.  It was served cold and it's very refreshing.  But, kind of weird because it's sweet like a dessert.

 Then we had steak!  The presentation is very nice.  The steak was cooked just right.  Nothing spectacular, but it was good.

Guess what that white thing is.... it's potato!  Layers of potato with some cheese inside.  It was so good!!!!  I am hungry just think about this and the shrimps.

And then, we had dessert!  We saw it at the next table and just had to have it!  It's so cool looking.  The chocolate was awesome.  The cool looking candy thing?  It was ok.  

It's a pretty nice place.  Restaurant week ends on Sunday so try this place out if you have some time!

~ Unique Dining Experience at Makoto ~

It was our 1 year anniversary a couple weeks ago and we went down to Georgetown for a romantic little dinner.  Our friend recommended a special place called Makoto.  It's a tiny little place, but it sure is special. First of all, men are required to wear jackets.  And they require credit card information for reservations.  Fancy!  

When we walked in, we were greeted by a very nice Japanese lady who instructed us to take off our shoes and put on a pair of slippers.  The wooden chairs are ottomans that can store purses.  We got tea and water and even that was served with flair.  A strange thing is.... the coasters.  If you are Chinese, you may recognize these as money that is burnt for the dead.  What??  Why would they use these for coasters??  WEIRD!

But, the food was good.  We ordered the chef's special which is $60 for 8-10 courses. I was so shy and wasn't sure if we could take pictures so I missed the first few courses.  The first one was awesome looking soup served in a conch shell.  Definitely very interesting.  This is the main course... Chillean bass.

This was my husband's entree.  Very good steak.

Then, we had shabu shabu!  It was interesting.  I didn't like one of the sauces, but the rest was good.  The waitresses cooked the food for us at table side.  Look at this mushroom!  So cute!

This was another course... sushi!  Very fresh fish!

This is the dessert.  Some concord grape shaved ice thing.  I liked it.  Very refreshing.

Everything was good!  The service was just so thoughtful and excellent.  I like all the small dishes.  My husband thought he would still be hungry afterwards, but he wasn't.  Of course, I gave him some of my food 'cause it was too much for me.  There was some dishes that I didn't like but I am just very picky with raw seafood.  It was the first time I had raw scallop and it's just not my thing.  It's definitely interesting!!  We had a great time and I certainly felt special!  

~ Ren's Ramen Reopened ~

After long nine months, Ren's Ramen has reopened!!  Once again, I was able to eat this...

The new place is nice!  It's still tiny, and I think they can sit about 25 people.  It's still very simple with barely any decoration and ordinary wooden table and chairs.  It's a lot nicer than the last place though.

The menu looks the same... still the few style of ramen, its toppings and some appetizers.

I had the Sapparo style Tonshio ramen (#2) with corn, fatty pork and egg.  The fatty pork is pretty awesome.  But, I think I will skip it next time.  It's awesome, but it's so filling.  And.... I need to... eat healthier.

Everyone gets the egg.  It's a special soft boiled egg.  I sprinkled some seasoning on it.

My husband got the Sapparo style miso ramen.  Basically, it's the same as the tonshio one except for the soup.  I think I like the miso one more.  It's thicker and richer.  

The actual noodles are thick and yellow and has a firm texture.  Usually, if I finish the whole bowl, I am stuffed.  It's a lot of food!  Overall, Ren's Ramen is still an awesome Ramen place.  You know it's awesome when there's a line waiting for a table outside most of the time.  Parking kind of sucks though.  The best time to go would be right when they open.  Usually there aren't a lot of people at 11:30 and you can get seated right away.  Can't wait to go back!

~ Strawberry Picking at Butler's Orchard ~

Today was an awesome day!  The weather was just beautiful!  What better outdoor activities to do with kids than picking strawberries!  We headed to our neighborhood Butler's Orchard for some sweet and juicy strawberries.  I love these turquoise containers that they gave us!

These strawberry plants are very low to the ground.  You have to move the leaves away to find the ripe strawberries.

Sometimes, you may get lucky and find some nice strawberries just hanging out.  Unfortunately, I was to busy taking pictures of it and forgot to pick this one!

The strawberries are so juicy that the juices were just squirting out of my niece's mouth!  She couldn't stop eating them.

Some of them were super ripe and some of them are perfect in a couple of days.  Most of them are small, smaller than a standard meatball.  But the sweetness and juiciness makes up for the size!

We also stopped by the farmer's market and got some Strawberry Apple freeze.  It was too sweet for me though.  I rather have just the strawberries.  The strawberries are $2.29/lb, very reasonable price.  We will be going back again soon!

~ Hong Kong Style BBQ ~

In all honesty, I don't care for American style BBQ. Hot dogs and burgers don't appeal to me much. Perhaps it's because I grew up with Hong Kong style BBQ.  I think I just like the fact that everyone is supposed to gather around the grill to cook.  This is a lot more fun, except it was super hot yesterday!

After a little while, we got lazy and put the food on the grill, American style.  Except, we still have HK style food.  You can't have a bbq without chicken wings!

I guess hot dogs are good too.  But we also like fish balls, pork balls, and beef balls.  We like to glaze everything with honey too.

We also grill shrimps and mussels by wrapping them in foil and adding some black bean and garlic sauce in it.  Sometimes, we also do veggie packs.

Yummy pork chops!  Thinly sliced and marinated overnight.  Awesome!

This is fruit salad.  Basically, it's apples, pears, pineapple, potato and whatever else you want to put it.  Just not mushy stuff like banana.  Then, add mayonnaise or miracle whip and mix!  Some people likes to put some black pepper or egg or fruit cocktail too.  My sister-in-law put some dried cranberries this time.

This was the most awesome watermelon!  Very sweet and juicy!  We also made a dessert soup with mung beans and seaweed.  It's very good to drink mung bean soup and eat watermelon to counteract the "heat" of all the grilled food.  I had a great time this weekend and I hope everyone else did too!  Can't wait till the next long weekend!

~ Cute Turtle Bread from Jireh Bakery ~

The beautiful Elle from InsideOutElle blog kindly informed me that there's a nice little bakery by the spa I went to over the weekend.  So, I headed over there in search of the "turtle bread" she mentioned. 

The turtle bread is so cute!  This is how you are supposed to eat it...

There are 2 types of fillings:  cream cheese and blueberry cream cheese. I think the blueberry one is a little weird.  The bread itself is awesome, but I didn't care for the filling.

The regular cream cheese one is better.  I love cream cheese!!

After dinner, we went to check out the desserts and got this tiramisu cup.  It looks awesome!!!  It tastes nothing like tiramisu though.  And the chocolate cup is a little bit hard to eat.

There are plenty of other desserts though!  Probably will try the cheesecake next time.

 

I also got this loaf of corn and pumpkin bread.  It tastes like regular pound cake though.

I also got the chocolate (I think?) Mickey mouse bread and the strawberry cream cheese strawberry bread.  All very cute.  Really love the bread and the strawberry filling.  The chocolate is a little too sweet to me though.

All in all, it's a nice place.  They have binsoo too, but I didn't try that.  This place is easy to miss because it's kind of in its own building and there's a unit next to it that looks burnt out.  It has outdoor seating too, but I think it will look a lot nicer with some flowers.  It's a great place for desserts after dinner at Honey Pig :)  Thanks to Elle for introducing me to this place!