Happy Valentine’s Day!

We’re celebrating on Thursday night with The Book of Mormon and then a surprise dinner afterwards. Hope your day is filled with love and chocolate!

Miami: Miss Saigon

On Saturday, after a really long night of partying, we woke up and were in the mood for pho soup to rehydrate ourselves. We looked up pho places in Miami and really couldn’t find many choices – the only Vietnamese restaurant we found in Miami was actually the restaurant we ended up going to! We sat outside because it didn’t look like there was any seating indoors. The restaurant actually seemed like it was more of a take-out place than sit down restaurant, but we didn’t have any other choices for soup in the Miami/South Beach area. The restaurant:

I started with the Thai iced coffee to wake me up:

Cafe du Monde coffee mixed with condensed milk and poured over ice:

For an appetizer, we shared the spring rolls:

Everyone ordered pho and I ordered it with slices of rare beef because I find it a little more tender than the brisket:

The basil to add to the broth:

The soup was actually really goood but we were all too hungover to enjoy it (it was also really hot and drinking hot soup in the hot sun isn’t a great combination). The food ended up being really expensive – we spent over $80 for pho! We all thought it was a little expensive but we needed it to rehydrate and to recooperate from the epic night we had on Friday.

Salad in a Jar

I purchased some more Bell Jars, my favorite thing ever, at Fish’s Eddy so I could make salad in a jar for lunch. It’s basically the same idea as the overnight, no cook refrigerator oatmeal; quick and easy and you can make enough for the entire week in one sitting.

I had a great salad at Dos Caminos the last time I visited that included all kinds of interesting ingredients like green olives, green apples, cheese, shrimp, and tortilla chips. I tried recreating the salad at work by chopping everything the night before and combining the ingredients during lunch. That little project took way longer than expected because our office doesn’t have the right tools to actually chop anything (like lettuce). So, this is the new way to bring salads to work. You make everything on Sunday and you’ll have it for the entire week. I made the same salad each day for me and Ken, but you can switch up the ingredients if you’d like. The best part: you can include salad dressing in the Bell Jar instead of bringing a separate container and when you flip over the jar before serving, the dressing slowly makes its way onto the lettuce.

My salad includes (in order of appearance):

– Chopped tomatoes
– Pinto beans
– Sliced Cucumbers
– Chicken
– Salad dressing
– Spinach

You place all of the items that don’t mind dressing on the bottom and then the lettuce (or spinach) on top. That way, the lettuce stays fresh and is still crispy by the time you eat it! Ken was a big fan of it and his coworkers even asked what it was because it was so colorful. We’ve made variations of the original salad (with the addition of all types of veggies) and they’ve always been really interesting – try it for yourself and let me know the combination!

Miami: Mr. Chow

For dinner, Michelle made reservations at the Setai Hotel – we walked over from The Shore Club but noticed that both restaurants inside the hotel were completely empty. Since it wasn’t exactly a place to celebrate a bachelorette party, we cancelled our original reservation and I emailed my coworkers from Miami to see where we should eat dinner. He suggested The Dutch at the W Hotel, which happened to be down the street from the Setai. We walked over and ended up seeing Mr. Chow before we saw The Dutch and ended up making a reservation for Mr. Chow instead. We waited at the bar while they got our table ready – the atmosphere at Mr. Chow was the complete opposite of the Setai; very lively, lots of beautiful people and the restaurant seemed like it was at capacity.

I’ve never eaten at Mr. Chow’s in New York but I did used to live above Philippe Chow when I first moved to New York and I always swore to myself that I’d never eat there because I saw the food conditions in the back of the kitchen (mostly just the amount of mice that were running around their kitchen was pretty disgusting). Since there weren’t that many food options in the area, we decided to eat there anyway. The menu is set up so you almost have to get the pre-fixe menu, so that’s what we went with. Everyone ordered one appetizer and one main course, plus one side. The restaurant determines how much food to prepare based on the size of the group. As we were ordering, the waiter told us that we should be aware that we were ordering a lot of fried foods and carbs…1. as if we didn’t know and 2. who’s he to tell us what we should and shouldn’t get based on the way the food is prepared?! Only in Miami where it’s swimsuit season all year round, I suppose.

For our appetizers, we had fried squid:

Beef tongue:

Duck egg rolls:

And squid ink noodles:

The duck eggs rolls and the fried calamari were my two least favorites because there was too much batter and not enough meat. I wasn’t a huge fan of the squid ink noodles, either, because they didn’t have any flavor and the squid was too chewy. The beef tongue was well flavored and was on a bed of thinly sliced cucumbers.

For our main courses, we ordered shrimp with chilies:

Lobster with ginger sauce:

Egg custard with dungeness crab:

And fish, which came out much later! Three of the four dishes:

I had really high hopes for the dungeness crab but it tasted like an egg white dish with salt and pepper (and no dungeness crab!!) The lobster was good but had too much corn starch before the actual lobster and it wasn’t seasoned well, the shrimp was too sweet (it tasted like it was fast food Chinese from a freezer meal or something) and the fish was a little to plain, but probably the best dish of our main courses.

All of us right after dinner:

The atmosphere was really fun but I thought the meal was too pricey for the quality of food we received. After eating at Mr. Chow, we went to the Fountainbleau hotel bar and then went to the other bar in the hotel, Liv, where we stayed until 3 or 4 in the morning. Saturday was an interesting day, which I’ll post about next week!

Miami: Sushi Samba

A few weekends ago, I flew to Miami for Hana’s bachelorette party. It was a really fun weekend starting on Friday morning at JFK – here’s me with the maid of honor, Michelle:

We were really excited for the weekend in Miami (it was my first time there!) and we arrived around 2pm and immediately dropped off our bags at The Shore Club, where Hana’s fiance, Hughie, had booked us a suite. Right after we freshened up, we went for a walk around the area and walked onto Lincoln Road, which is a touristy area that has a lot of different restaurants and shops (it kind of reminded me of Atlantic City’s boardwalk). We were all hungry and couldn’t wait for our dinner reservation before eating again, so we decided to get a quick bite to eat at Sushi Samba.

We shared some appetizers – yellowtail sashimi:

Rock shrimp:

And a few rolls of sushi:

The food was mediocre but their drinks were really fruity and strong (just what we needed for a girls weekend!). All of the ladies:

The food wasn’t terrible but it’s definitely not a place I’d return to in New York (but it does the job if you’re looking for take out). After we finished our snack, we walked back to the hotel and got ready for dinner, which I’ll post about tomorrow!