tap my glass

Ok, so i’ve now been a few times. Went for breakfast there last weekend, and what can i say, it was much improved, so much in fact, that i almost want to remove all my previous reservations about the switch over.

To summarize, there were a ton of homies, the fruit was massive, juicy and better than ever, there were specials, one of which i had, and hot damn it, it was overflowing with what it promised. We were out on the balcony, and hot diggidy the service was almost too god in that my coffee never got below half… below HALF!!! I don’t even like drinking that much coffee!!! Ya, it was really good.

Partially by chance and partially because of that previously quite large breakfast, we hit it up for dinner last week as well. Again, not disappointed in the least, in fact quite delighted (i need to start using words like ‘delighted’ when i order bottles of white wine instead of bottles of beers). Non spicy curried cream farfalle!!! Giddeup!!! The mussels were rippin hot too (not like spicy hot, like sexy hot), with pancetta and portabellas in a red wine kickass broth, they were unlike any mussels i’ve eaten recently (including the ones i had at savanna last night, which you’ll likely hear about elsewheres). And the wine, i think we just had house wine, not even bottles, was super crisp and perfect.

So, since i’m just an individual who has little moral responsibility to the community at large and can bounce from one location, to the next, and then back again, i am in the business of second chances, as they often bear juicier fruit, and damn, this time it was falling from the trees. I can’t help but feel a little flushed or perhaps setup, as my original posting is on their cork board, but i’m going to pretend no link up was made and these were just natural changes and in no way directed at yours truly. Bye bye stoneface, hello jak. Thank goodness for second chances, proximity will no longer be the only thing bringing me back (again and again).

So it’s official, “Jaks Kitchen” has moved in down the street, replacing the iconic original location of “Stoneface Dolly’s” gourmet homestyle eatery. I am, tres triste. I’ve been going for brunch still, albeit not as often, regularily over the past few months during the long transition. I’ve got a few things to say about the changes, and what i like and dislike. I realize some of the things that have changed will improve over time given that it is technically a new restaurant, but i’m going to mention them anyways.

Good Changes
Fruit - the new fruit is good. Big chunks of cantelope and pineapple. The fruit has gone from a whole variety, big pieces to small, on the plate to a bowl, and then back again. I actually can’t remember how it was originally, but i remember the occasional blueberry. Now i’m not so sure this is a good change.
Renos - they did some renovations that gave the place a bit more space, which is definitely good.

Ambivalent Changes
Decor - i really liked the old art, then the transitional chunky art, and now i like the mirrors. The new paint is nice too.
Service - the old girls and guys served great, and so are the new. I miss the old cause they knew me of course, and i’m saddened the new may not get to know me as quickly, but i can’t hold that against them.
Coffee - perhaps it hasn’t changed, i’m not sure, but its still damn good.

Negative Changes
Service Times - No matter how busy it used to be, i used to be able to be in and out in 30 min or so. Last time, i was waiting at LEAST 30 min just for my food, and it wasn’t that busy.
Homies - they don’t even call them homies anymore!! They used to have chunks of onion and peppers in em, at least on occasion, and they just tasted better. The new ones are probably healthier tho, less butter, but the old ones definitely tasted better
Omlettes - um, hello?? Can i have cheese in my omellete. Both myself and my friend got omlettes, her the goat cheese, me the fruilano (now called peppers and spinach). Neither of us could taste the cheese, and my friend asked them to check that it was in there… they said it was. I’m skeptical. Mine was just not cooked right, the egg was too cooked, and i don’t think the spinach was saute’ed at all before going in. Thats just a no-no, especially when you can’t taste the cheese.
Portions - the portions are smaller, not by much, but by a little
Coffee Creamers - different company now, used to be organic creamers, now its just regular stuff.
Brunch Specials - there is a complete lack of these alltogether! The specials before were what i went for, only occasionally did i not get the semi-special eggs blackstone or mexican fritatta. Now, there are no specials, and thats just uninspired.

Let me now say this. Breakfast, was awesome, no doubt about it! One of the best breakfasts in ottawa, was and still is. But when you mess with a winning formula, even just a little, its liable to piss a few people (aka me) off. I will go back, i will grow to love it i’m sure, but i’m a little bitter that such an awesome place would every change, even a little bit.

Not much has changed, not much is new. Life has been very good lately. As evidence of this, i will present this image, my lunch on this march 16th 2007.
- de cecco tagliatelle, comes in spools, best dried pasta you can buy
- 3 large mushrooms, sliced
- 8 cherry tomatos, halved
- a bunch green onions, 1.5 inch pieces
- 3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
- half red pepper - unnecessary
- pinches of hot peppers
- tons of s & p
- large bunch parsley, chopped
- a tablespoon or 2 of olive oil
- a bit of wine, a bit of broth, optional, unnecessary

1 Start water on high, start fry pan on med-high
2 add shrooms n pepper, cook for a few min
3 add pasta to water when boiling
4 add oil and s n p n hot peppers to pan
5 a few min later add rest of stuff to fry pan
6 keep on kookin!
7 when pasta done, spoon directly into pan, add a bit more oil, combine

Eat!!! This may not be everyones cup of tea, but a refreshing pasta lunch like this revitalizes me like nothing else.

I’m working from home today, it rules. Things of note:
- Apparently my blog is worth a little over 500 bux:
- Its getting warmer! Soon to start running in prep for 10 million K!!!
- House stuff mostly on hold, trying to find people to build a deck for you can be hard work.

Last night myself and a whole bunch of friends went to hot peppers for a birthday celebration. We sat upstairs in the very delightful decor. I’m writing this post, because, well, i’m disgruntled at the service we recieved. It wasn’t necessarily bad, and my expectations are probably too high, but o well, i’m gonna mention it anyways cause its kinda funny.

Ordering drinks alone was a bit of an ordeal. Most of the beer selections we asked for weren’t available. Some people weren’t even told, their beers just didn’t show up. Someone ordered coconut water, and it took 10 minutes (or more) for the girl to to tell us, upon a remind, that they didn’t have any. I had hogardden, and it arrived pretty promptly. Some people ordered caesars thinking they had sake in them. But no, those are the special “hot peppers” caesars, and when finally ordered were pretty kickass. The regular ones were really good too.

I ordered the tom yum, and as i remembered, it was awesome. Everyone ordered something different, some shared, some not. The food was, really good. Not the best ever, but i’ve never had the best ever thai (as i think i’ve previously mentioned). Thai is normally pretty large, but never “blow you away”. Lots of flavour, lots of kick, lots of love, but i guess as a personal feeling is missing that savourness that i’ve found in other dishes that just make me die and go to heaven (fettucine carbonara comes to mind… mabye i’m just missing dairy ::))).

Anyways, it took a while to get our food, in general. Me and my gf ordered 2 dishes, and some rice. To start, we got one dish. 10 minutes later everyone else had (almost) everything, and we still had our only dish that we had been picking at, sans rice. We had to remind about the rice when our other dish arrived, and it showed up shortly thereafter. Anyways, the food was really good, as i said.

One of my friends ordered 2 dishes, and was going to share 1 of them with another. Only one of them ever showed up. When everyone was almost done he reminded her, she was apologetic, and offered to get it then. He declined, and then she offered to have it prepared to go free of charge. He declined that too, stubborn yes, but whatever, he was kind of annoyed and didn’t want to carry it around for the rest of the night (we were going elsewheres after).

She was very slow with the bills, but did bring out our custom cake as we asked. I only ended up getting 2 drinks over the 4 hours because it was just slow. In the end, everyone was dinged for a 15% gratuity on their food orders. Fair enough, it probably told us this on the menus. But the funniest thing was for my friends bill, the one that missed an order, she forgot to add the 15%. She had the gaul to approach him after, tell him that she forgot it, and informed him that he didn’t tip enough to cover it…. he was a little confused, and basically brushed it off, without paying. I think if lacked the competance to charge someone for gratuity who probably wouldn’t pay it, you shouldn’t approach them after to pay it. It was ballsy though, i’ll give her that!

Anyway… i just felt the need to rant about this. Again, food, awesome, service, less than so. I guess its hard to get good service for 12 people. The girl was just serving us and another relatively large table, but i guess it was a little too much. I should say she was very kind and very nice, but just a little less than prompt.

The dip in the pic is something i’m getting very much addicted to. Click the pic and follow the link for more details… i’m in love with its semi-bland refreshing and massive room to improve characteristics.

A korean-japanese restaurant opened up near my place recently, called “Miga”, its on bank and waverley. What can i say, i’m thrilled!!!

Had dinner there last friday. With massive expectations we went in, and with great thirst i found out their liquor license is still pending. I fretted not, got some water and their brown rice tea, it was kickass. Their menu is a lot like the only other korean place i’ve been to in town, that bbq place on rideau, but perhaps not as big. They’ve got traditionalish korean dishes, japanese noodle dishes, and all the regular sushi stuff (nigiri, rolls, etc..).

Their main korean dishes come with miso soup and korean salads, ie sesame greens, kimchi, and what seemed like incredibly canadian potato salad. The kimchi might’ve been from a jar, but it still rocked (if bad kimchi exists, i’ve never tried it). The miso soup was well, just warm and kinda tasteless… but it was the only low point of the meal, and i still gulped it all back. We also ordered a spicy tuna roll for an app which was kickass, but again, how can you go wrong??

So we both ordered main dishes with all the fixins i mentioned above, I ordered the dolsot bibimbap pictured here. It arrived pretty much first, ie with the apps, which they apologized for, but because of the uncooked egg and the rockin hot stone bowl in which it can be cooked by the consumer, they probably didn’t want to wait. It says on the menu its veggie, but it normally comes with beef, which was confusing, but i got them to omit the beef anyways. It was kickass. I liked cooking my own eggs, and with all the veggies and some funky red spicy sauce it rocked my world. But again, if you haven’t learned by now, i’m kinda easy to please with food.

After it all they gave us this iced dea that was douced with cinammon to refresh us, and holy crap did it ever. The next time i go (possibly for take out) i’ll try some of the japanese noodles. And yes, i will be back. It was reasonably priced (8-13 i think for a dish) and mostly filling, although for me i’d need an app and a dish to be fully satisfied. We were quite stuffed, but still went for gelato after, which didn’t jive too well, but meh, it tasted good.

Read the one review here if you like. These people are a lot harder to please than myself. Its true, the portions might be improvable, i’ll have to go check soeul house for sure, just to get a better frame of reference.

Starting to really dig the cantelope. Its probably now my 3rd favorite breakfast fruit, behind bananas and mango’s, but mango’s are falling given their difficulty in eating.

Notice the bowl in the pic - i got a compost!!! I had some trees come down (finally) recently, and so now i’ve a sunny backyard…

“First we make a compost, then we plant grass” (sung to the tune, “first we take manhattan…”)

But ya, the fruit is largo - i’m on massive vitimin c rush now. Half one day, the other half the next. For 2 bux you can’t get any bettter than that.

And my windows are getting replaced, starting today. Will let you know how that goeth.

I’ve been the worst blogger every lately. Can’t really clasify myself as one. Classification blows anyways.

I ate about 2/3 of:
- 1 cup organic white flour
- 1 cup vanilla soy milk
- 1 egg (1 yolk, then 1 folded egg white)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil (ya, its organic too)
- 2 tsp of baking powder (don’t know what this does)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- lots of grade a maple syrup
- some organic margerine
- banana

Banana waffles rule.

Checked out a new thai place last weekend, Sacred Garden. Its vegitarian, its on bank, ottawa south but before riverside. It was very tasty, as most ottawa thai is. The soup - the tom yum - not up to massive par, but tasty. The most striking part is everything had a frickin meat substitute “protein” in it!!! I think its ridiculous!!! Apparently there’s an art or something in coming up with things that look and taste like shrimp/beef/lamb/whatever that is made from plant, i’m not a buyer of it. Plus it all has wheat in it, and some people i know can’t eat that cause they’re celiac. So just substitute everything for tofu!!! Ok!!!! Which is good, but why not, i dunno, massively creative veggie/fruit dishes? Try some squash, eggplant, mangos, appples, hell roasted thai chillies!!! The food was good, the service was amazying, but holy crap, your special really isn’t “lamb protein” is it!!! Geez. Please correct me if you think i’m being unfair.

So i worked from home today. Lobsters were made last sunday, and the carcases have been sitting in a pot on the stove since then. I was home today, so i boiled the shit out of them, adding some other brothy items (onion, celery, carrot, salt). Eventually strained, and i had this kickass fishy broth… then i roasted a tomato, some garlic, and an onion, pureedished them, then added, and there you go. Some lobsteresque whatever soup. It’s pretty damn tasty. I had that round 4.

Stepping back a sec, i did have lunch too. I’m onto this silken tofu stuff for spread purposes. I had about half a block, mixed with minced pickle, tomato, shallot, and… was that it? O, and some kimchi, that stuff is awesome!!! Added a bit of rice vinager, s & p, mixed, and it works as a good filler. I had some tortilla shells, plopped it on top, rollled, consumed. Very good. Only prob is those tortilla shells are NOT good for you. 2 shells (and they were the small ones) had like 500 mg of sodium or something outragous. Hence, i took in a full days worth of sodium at lunch. And chances are, if you go to lone star, that fajita meal is enough for the day too.

This here is what i had for dinner. Of course i was hungry by 5 (little meat == little stay fulledness) so i went to that groc store on somerset near… shit i can’t remember, its the massive one whose name is a number i think? Its west of preston, just west of that city center bridge. Anyways, i got some tofu balls and veggies and stuff. And some vermicelli, the straight kind, its much better for saladish dishes. So i made that cut up some cuke, carrot, tomato, bok choyish, and got some sprouts. For the dressing i went vietai, into a little over 1/2 cup hot/warm watter dissolve 1 tbsp. sugar, add 1 tbsp. fish sauce, juice of about half a lime, and this up coming thai mixture - 4 chillis, 2 cloves garlic, a good tbsp of ginger, 2 inches of lemongrass, salt, all minced and mortle and pestles till you’re bored (which isn’t long enough, but who wants to work!!!). Mix it all together, and add a few tbsp. to the tofu balls, refrig the rest. Then fire up the q, and blacken the tofu balls for kicks. Once done, add vermicelli to a bowl, the tofu balls, then veggies of your choice, then drizzle with sauce. I like it, its got bite, and is very lite!!!!!

Yay for working from home!!!! But now i actually have to acomplish something… i think i’ll check the updates from the wsop.

I had nothing planned for dinner and 2 mangos in the fridge. So i used one of em to make this refreshing pasta salad:
- half a pack of farfalle (like 250g or something)
- 1 mango (and i still have one for bfast!!! coulda used both tho), cut however you can
- 1/3 green pepper, slimest chunks
- carrot, thinly sliced
- a leftover piece of corn on the cob, kernels knifed off
- a bit of tofu broken up
- 1/3 english cuke, super thin
- a bit of chopped cilantro
And the dressing:
- lemon juice +
- red wine vinager = about 1/4 or 1/3 cup, equalish portions
- bit of tamari
- s & p
- 1 tbl crushed coriander seed
- a bunch of that green tobasco (a real jalapeno woulda been better)

I mixed it all in a long shallow lasagna type dish, i figure the dressing would mix better. Then i set it in the fridge for a few minutes, had a smoke and openned a beer and sat in my hammoc. Then i couldn’t wait any longer and started eating it. It was pretty good. I’m still eating it.

And tomorrow is canada day. This is good. Plus its a long weekend. This is also good. Things are good. Have a super weekend!!!!!