African Night

Meet our African friend, Jack.  He likes elephants.  He spent a lot of his life in South Africa while his parents were working at an international school.  Now living in California, right down the street from us, he hasn't been able to enjoy some of his favorite African meals.  It was his night to cook and with the help of a small South African shop down in Orange County he was able to recreate an African meal for the rest of us.  

Our African meal consisted of Mieliepap, Sheba, Boerwors, and Kebabs.  

The mieliepap is a corn meal dish that is very similar to polenta, but a bit thicker and was topped with Sheba, an onion, tomato, and garlic sauce.  I think this was my favorite part of the meal.  The Boerwors is a very lean beef sausage with lots of spices and flavor.  It is a bit strange because the flavor doesn't come from the fat like most sausage I know topped with sautéed mushrooms.  And finally a kebab with chicken, peppers, and pineapple.  With the African music on in the background we enjoyed this great meal with out silverware, Jack said that is had the locals eat it.  

I hope we can make mieliepap and sheba more often, not just African Nights.  They were sooo good!  

Another great photo by Jack. 

Modern, but what was I thinking!

Andrew and I recently traveled down to the Orange County area to see some friends and visit his family. Sunday before heading home we went to a restaurant, Stacked, with a new modern way to do service, the iPad waiter.

So the whole concept was derived around the idea, that the customer can order what they want, how they want it, and when they want it all from the touch of an iPad. The iPad drove the process, but there were still kind concierges greeting us, checking in, and delivering food so it wasn't all computers.

We started out, browsing the menu on the iPad and the visual image of each dish made it a hard decision everything looked so good. First we ordered drinks and then SENT TO KITCHEN by a simple button. Next we each selected and customized our dishes by passing around the iPad and selecting all the options, SENT TO KITCHEN.

So you are probably thinking what a cool new experience, but I decided to take this new experience to the next level and order the Turkey, Cranberry, and Brie pizza. Did you just puke in your mouth, I didn't I thought wow, it must work they have it in their menu. Never again will I make that assumption, it was really bad, like really BAD. Sorry, this is really my fault, what was I thinking!  Not only were the toppings funky, there was a strange taste in the pizza dough.

So I cleansed my pallet with a slice of pepperoni pizza (something normal, but still had a strange taste in the dough) and an ice cream cookie sandwich... Yes the pictures and the idea of creating my own special sandwich totally got me! Here it is, creamy vanilla ice cream between a peanut butter cookie and a chocolate chocolate chip cookie.  Now this was delicious, pretty hard to mess up.

While I love the idea of the techy and modern concept... I think Stacked needs to work on their food and I need to work on my ordering!