Pizza for breakfast

Made some pizza last night and was hungry this morning, so what did I do? Cracked and egg on top of it, and suddenly I felt like I was back at Olivetto's in the east bay. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day right?

MIHO Gastrotruck

As I had mentioned a couple of weeks back, Kevin and I have been working on a project for the last 9 months and we are now ready to let it all out. We are launching MIHO Gastrotruck, offering farm-fresh hand-made street food inspired by local flavors. Sometime in May you will be seeing us offering you lunch during your break and at late night hot spots. Check out our website and follow us on facebook and twitter. Please send us feedback on where you would like to see us parked at and what you feel like eating. We appreciate all the love and support through La Mesita and we will join force for future events. Stay tuned for La Mesita's Beeeerrrrrruunch coming soon.

New Starbucks sizes, yay!

I have always wanted a bigger cup of coffee and now my dream has come true. Starting this fall Starbucks is going to offer a 128 oz size called the Plenta. I'm so excited about this. Now I only have to go once per day and have enough for the rest of it.

Beautiful day / Beautiful quesadilla

This morning mom noticed that we had some avocados, cheese, and tortillas that needed to be used. Five minutes later this beautiful multicolored salsa comes out on top of a quesadilla. My mom is very picky about her tortillas, so much that she has her friend bring them from Tijuana's "Tortilleria Boston" to her. That with a pour-over cup of Intelligentsia's Ikirezi Burundi starts me off right. Buen dia!

She-la-kills it with the Chilaquiles

The streak is on. I love it when stuff in your fridge gets used up before it goes to waste. My mom today started frying the tortillas for some chilaquiles and she was going to use some mole we have in there, but we are saving that for something else so I gave her some home made spicy harissa. She then threw in a tomato to cut the thickness of the harissa, fried some eggs, and breakfast was served. It went really well with my drip pour over cup of Starbucks organic Chiapas, Mexico (thanks Jason for the coffee).

Taco break

I'm keeping the streak going and I might set a record for 3 blog posts in a row, jajaja. Today Kevin and I had a craving for some street style Mexican fish tacos and thankfully we are in biking distance to Mariscos German, which I assume most of you already know about them. In case you don't, which you should, they are located on the corner of University Ave. & 35th. Growing up in TJ I took this food for granted because there were tons of options and at our disposal, but now I crave them and head straight there.



Today we stuck to the classic baja-style battered and fried fish tacos, and since we wanted to treat ourselves we ordered us an aguachile tostada de camaron. Aguachile literally translate to chile water and by the time you are done eating this spicy, limey, fresh shrimp tostada that's exactly whats left on the plate. Aguachile is similar to ceviche where the shrimp is cooked by the lime juice, but the addition of the chiltepines, the red ball chiles, give it a strong dry spice that makes you crave a nice cold chela or beer. The tostada is then topped with some pickled red onions and fresh sliced aguacate. Needless to say, as we were riding back to crank some more work hours we stopped by the store and picked up some tall boy Modelos, sat in the back patio with the beautiful San Diego sun and worked some more. Not a bad day. Gotta love food, good food that is!

Huevos Ahogados

I gotta say my mom keeps surprising me. This morning Kevin and I were working on our soon tba project, and my mom comes over and drops off a bowl of huevos ahogados, or drunken eggs. I love Mexican food for obvious reasons, but also because it can be so simple, flavorful, and the meal usually was created by the hard working laborers wives who just threw stuff together. These eggs were poached in home made tomato broth with sauteed onions and chipotle. Served with some fresh cut Haas avocados and some warm corn tortillas. Look out day, cos here we come.
Buen Provecho!

Caldo Tlalpeño for lunch

I was hard at work on my laptop blasting throught the many to do's of a current project, when my hunger I could not suppress anymore. I got up to start making myself a sandwich and I hear the best thing from my mom's mouth, "Oh I'm already making you lunch it will be ready shortly". That's right peeps, my mom made me Caldo Tlalpeño. Legend has it that back in the 1920's in the southern town of Tlalpan, right outside of Mexico City, there used to be an area where food vendors would gather around the center of town and sell there offerings to the local workers coming and going. There was a lady called "Pachita" that would offer this delicious chicken soup but with her own twist. She added chipotle, rice, avocado, and cheese, served with some warm tortillas. Gotta love the essence of street food.

Well today, Pachita was my mom. Gracias, ama!

North Walk to South Walk

Last Saturday Farra and I did something we never get to do, enjoy a beautiful walk on a gorgeous day down to South Park. We went on a little stroll down to Halcyon Tea to meet up with some friends. If you are a fan of high quality tea I highly recommend you going down to Halcyon Tea, and you must sit down for some tea tasting with the owner, Jason. I have never met anyone so knowledgeable and approachable about tea. He truly loves what he does and wants nothing more than to share it with you.

My beautiful Farra, on her phone, as always.

Halcyon Tea in South Park.

I liked the image of a modern design tea house with a touch of old.

High grade teas all waiting to be discovered.

James doing a tea tasting with some Yunnan Gold Silk green tea.

The streets of South Park.

picnic.2.pub

Last Saturday we had the extreme pleasure of playing in the rain, parading with sparklers and making an entire bar holla with some our favorite hosts!

The purpose: Tori and Austin's dual bachelor / bachelorette party.
The theme: picnic to pub.
The outcome: just view the pictures.

FYI: Tori and her friend Myka have 2 awesome wedding blogs:
sitting in a tree & tulle and feathers

Aside from their entire HOUSE being set up like a PICNIC, yes, I said picnic. The food details were amazing. From small white bags marked chips and small bowls of caramel corn near picnic basket to picnic food done right and drink that complimented its food counterpart (sweet tea lemonade!)

Endless amount of hors d'oeuvres.

The candelabra, as charming as Tori and her home. Ok, its also Austin's home.

After the house festivities we made our way over to the "pub" part of the night at Hamilton's Tavern. Certainly not without an activity, bust out the sparklers.

The coordination was essential, but instantly everyone was brought back to their childhood and like kids, lit the sparklers as soon as they got a chance.

Us.

Ms. Jackie a la Abbey Road.

Hooray, was an understatement.

Farra feeling the "La Folie" and short of fist pumping she got the whole Saturday night crowd to cheer the couple on.

Thanks to DJ Austin Hendrix for giving us some tunes at his own party.

Cant call a party a party without some girls getting low.

And the night ended "happily ever after".

Beer, Food, & Music! What else can you ask for?

With the new year its always great to shake things up a bit, and what better way to do it than with some of our favorite indulgences, beer, food, and music. The 7 course beer tasting party was a thrill and a pleasure to have all those of you who came over.

After getting ready all day our diet consisted of popcorn and whatever else we could get our spare hands on.

Waiting for the arrivals.

The setup this time was meant to be more interactive, casual, a party where you had home-cooked food with well-sourced high quality ingredients, diversity in beer styles, and great tunes that set the tone for the party from Dj Angel.

Kevin worked really hard on the menu design and it looked amazing!

1. Salt cod ravioli with a fish fumét paired with Telegraph White Ale
2. Chilpachol soup paired with Deschutes Winter Ale
3. Cochinita pibil tacos paired with Alpine Willy Ale
4. Vietnamese fried egg rolls paired with Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale
5. Shanghainese Berkshire pork belly paired with Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Brown Ale
6. Brillat Savarin, home-made biscotti, blood orange & pomegranate compote paired with Dogfish Head Midas Touch
7. Chocolate Earl Grey tartlets & lemon mascarpone paired with Stone Vertical Epic 9.9.9

A little Genmai Cha before the madness begins.

Jeff from Ballast Point whom always supports our events with beer. This time we had a 15g of Calico and the crowd pleaser, Sculpin IPA. I asked Farra at around 7 for a pint of it and she came back saying "its gone", of course!

Cochinita pibil's steam coming out. Cochinita pibil is usually cooked underground, but due to not wanting to dig a hole in my backyard I opted for the more conventional aproach, the oven.

Beer geeks in deep conversation. Hey did you try the Maracaibo brown ale? I know huh, its amazing. Rock on!

One of my favorite things of the night was seeing people with their forks & spoons in their shirt pockets or jean pockets. Its like the skull and bones of food.

Vietnamese fried egg roll wrapped around red leaf lettuce.

Shanghainese style Berkshire pork belly with home-made Napa cabbage kimchee.

Since we are sooooo sophisticated, why not implement the French cheese course before dessert?

Chocolate Earl Grey tartlets in their beauty.

Ethan, the certified master pourer.

Thanks to DJ Angel for complimenting the mood with his hand picked songs. We had everything from Sergio Mendes, to psychedlic Chilean music, to Santana, to Rick James, and a plethora of lounge music.

Our lovely ladies.

Dance party, well a mini mini one that is.

Obviously this is not a food pic, but gotta love the color scheme. Hmm, who could that be?

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support. It is a true honor and pleasure for us to be able to host you and create an intimate and unique La Mesita experience. Many thanks to Jeff from Ballast Point, DJ Angel, Ethan, Laurel our impromptu photographer, and to our La Mesita group. The next one will be a different one of its kind, brunch anyone?

Special thanks to Omar at "The Best Damned Beer Shop". For those of you who drive up to Holiday Wine Cellar in Escondido for those hard to find bottles, drive no more. Check these guys out in downtown and tell them we sent you.

Prepping; the labour of love.

The week leading up to the beer dinners is all about planning and prepping. This time around we had a 7 course beer tasting planned, but for some reason it was not as time consuming as we had imagined. We all did our parts and with strategic planning and the right sourcing things went very smoothly. There were still all those late nights and all day prepping involved, but that goes without saying. Here's a glimpse of it.

Beautiful organic plum tomatoes ready to be broiled for one of the many ingredients in the chilpachol soup.

Our beloved cazuela, which always comes in handy. Here is the base to the chilpachol, which includes roasted tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, chipotle, garlic, peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, and toasted tortillas.

Halibut for the fish fumét that would eventually end up bathing the top of the salt cod ravioli. Thanks to Tommy at Catalina Seafood whom happily let us go in and grab what we needed. We called so many restaurants and fish purveyors without luck. They either didn't have any fish bones or wanted to sell them to us at a crazy price.

Towels and silverware awaiting the moment they can savor the food.

Chopping away at the chocolate for the earl grey tartlets.

Eden farms organic Berkshire pork belly in cubes, or as Kevin called it "porkhenge"!

Jackie's station as she rolled up the Vietnamese egg rolls.

Handmade chocolate snap cookie crust. Needless to say much of the crust was being munched on as these pictures were being taken.

Let the kneading begin. The girls kneaded the pasta for the ravioli. Thank you!!!

Accurately hand-making ravioli and stuffing it with the salt cod.

Pasta for days. At this point we were all exhausted and a little after 1:30 am we ended up finishing the 120 raviolis and the rest of the prep. We had a little next day planning session and off to bed we went.