Saturday, October 08, 2011

Restaurant Review: Ta Chido

This new Mexican "snack bar" has been open for only 10 when I dropped by for dinner. The seating area is tiny like Kazu but the kitchen in the back is large. There is a large funky painting running on one side of the room.


I ordered a Milanesa Torta (breaded beef) and Tinga de Pollo Quesadilla (chicken, chipotle, onion) with Algua Fresca (watermelon) and Frijoles (black beans). It was a lot but I wanted to try everything.

The quesadilla uses a handmade tortilla which explains its thickness. The chicken preparation had little flavor. A little more salt or spice would be welcomed. The provided pickled jalapeƱo and hot sauce helped a bit.

The cooked beans was flavorless. It was prepared in a broth but it could have been water too.

The beef sandwich had flavor! It was my favorite item. I'm not crazy with the bread though.

Ta Chido
5611 avenue du Parc
http://tachido.squarespace.com/

Monday, October 03, 2011

Menu of the week - October 3 2011

Maple Leaf "natural selections" (no preservatives) chicken with Gadoua's Tendre Ble bread and Liberte cream cheese.

Lunch will have President Choice lasagna, Romados chicken and roasted peppers.

Ugh the organic farmed roasted peppers gave me food poisoning. Gonna pass on small farmers for a bit now.

Restaurant review: Azuma

Someone strongly recommended this Japanese restaurant on Chowhound, saying they go there weekly. It mentioned they serve traditional dishes as well as sushi so I had to try.

I started with agedashi tofu which was pretty standard except the sauce was too salty to slurp. The Chicken Kara-age however was not as pretty. Instead of marinated chicken chunks which were then deep fried, I received bland chicken nuggets with a coating that was soggy and not crispy.

If they put so much care into the decor to make the place look homey, please spend some extra dollars to give us something better than the freezer section of Provigo!

The next item was a fried maki roll with salmon, tuna, avocado, spicy mayo, and tobiko. I was happy to see this because when I lived in Northern California I enjoyed the fried California roll from the restaurant Satsuma. This version however was not as special. The fried roll was not piping hot and the coating had time to get soggy. the flavors inside was so muddled you couldn't care less what was inside. The sweet sauce that accompanied didn't help.

The unagi was chewy. The tamago was not fresh (you can buy premade tamago at the market). Only the fresh salmon was up there with the other restaurants I go to.

Overall I was disappointed with this place although it did serve traditional Japanese dishes, a rare thing in our city.