Eat. Travel. Eat!

Having enjoyed vegan/vegetarian focused restaurants in the past ( Cafe Gratitude , Real Food Daily ), we started off a visit to Santa Barbara by visiting Mesa Verde for lunch. It had been positively reviewed on multiple websites, and its own website showcased beautifully crafted vegetarian cuisine. Housed in its own quaint grey and green building, parking is a tight, only having a few dedicated spots in the parking lot.  Although we arrived relatively late for lunch (around 2pm), we still had to wait more than 10 minutes for a table. The restaurant was near capacity, and employees were busy in the kitchen and serving customers seated indoors and outdoors. The environment was still relaxed, with locals enjoying a wide number of items from the menu. The owner happened to serve us that day, and apologized for the wait. After ordering and asking for his input on recommended lunch items-- the Patatas Bravas Tacos and Picadillo Empanadas came highly recommended--he provided u...

A recent trip brought us to the St Regis Monarch Beach, where the room rate included a voucher for breakfast. After a night's rest, we went downstairs to check out the offerings. Reaching Motif requires a stroll down a flight of stairs. During our visit, the staircase, as well as the rest of the property, was adorned with decorations for the holiday seasons. Motif's interior likewise was adorned with the holiday decorations. Like the rest of the hotel, the decorations added a pleasant touch of color. I find the blue glasses a nice touch to the restaurant. Motif, being located in the center of the hotel, offers a great view of the pool, golf course, and ocean. This view is great to begin the day.

An introduction? What do I mean by an introduction? Well, this post is going to focus only on the interior and the layout of the restaurant- I mean cafe TOO. Typically I do postings with the interiors and the food critique together, but this time I am going to do cafe TOO's separately since I am hoping to do posts talking about each day's events on my past trip to Hong Kong.  I've been to cafe TOO probably more than 30 times throughout the years. The reason why? Complimentary breakfast for two people in our group thanks to Golden Circle's benefits in being a mid tier member (Jade) or above. No, it's never been completely free for all of us during our trips, but why miss out? Cafe TOO offers an awesome breakfast with a wide amount of selections, and so do all of Shangri-La's other buffets. After all these years, the interior of cafe TOO really has not changed much- maybe none at all! It was very modern looking to begin with ten years ago, and to this day lo...

Welcome to part 3 of the Hyatt Regency Irvine review. This part isn't much of a "review" of any sort but experiencing the breakfast buffet they had set up the next day for us. If you have not read Part 1 or 2 yet, they are here: Hyatt Regency Irvine 2009 Review Part 1: Check-In and Public Spaces Hyatt Regency Irvine 2009 Review Part 2: Rooms and Conclusion --- Anyway, after waking up, I left the room to go down for more of the conference activities. While waiting for the elevator again on my floor, I looked around and found this plant. Usually, these plants symbolize good things for the Chinese, so I was interested to find it here. Downstairs, although it was almost three hours until we would even have breakfast, the Hyatt crew was already busy setting up. Here you can see the tables. They brought in plenty of prepared items such as the fruit you see above as well as things like small glass jars of Hero jams, lots of plates, and lots of glasses. These were all on rolling ...

(Yay, the 105th photo taken with the Nikon :). Now 1060. Times fly!) At another outing at our local Azusa Costco we noticed the Kirkland Signature Acai Berry with Bluberry Juice, made by Bolthouse. Due to the fact we were buying the Naked Green Machine drink already plenty of times, we wanted to switch it around a bit and so we bought this juice to try it out. FYI, this was sold as a pack of two bottles, not one, for less than 10 dollars. I can not remember the original price... But would this end up on the cart? After all, Sambazon was coincidentally also offering samples of their drink. So, we tried that drink out. Weirdly, it felt really thick for some reason when drinking it. We also asked them between the difference between the two (not like they would know or not...). The lady said, "Our juice has Omega 3's. That one [this drink] does not." Which made the person who was paying for the bill think they added Omega 3's into the juice. Okay, no buy. In reality, bot...