January 31: BJs Restaurant and Brewhous

It was about time we ate here.  This has been one of our favorite and frequent hot-spots and I was honestly a little surprised that it took that long for us to decide to eat at BJs.
http://www.bjsrestaurants.com/
It is one of our favorite food joints and not for their famed deep-dish pizza.  We come here for the small plates and the burgers.  But most of all we come here for the dessert.

Ever since we ordered it on a whim once upon a time, we can’t come to BJs without Chris ordering their Corn Fritters with a spicy mayo and bacon crumbles.  It offers an interesting combination of salty, sweet, and warm bread-y goodness!

Bacon Corn Fritters

Since I’m on a minor health-kick I decided to order something light but healthy which led me to the Ahi Poke Stack appetizer.  I’m not going to lie, I don’t think very highly of BJs raw fish but I just really wanted some poke.  And it’s fairly decent for what it is…just quite a bit overpriced when I saw the receipt.  One of the best parts of this dish however, isn’t the fish or the marinade, it’s the chips they serve with it.

Ahi Tuna Poke

For my entree I stuck to a simple soup-salad combo.  I got Clam Chowder (yes, I KNOW it’s not healthy, get off my back) and a Ceasar Salad.  The chowder was okay.  I do like the size and amount of clam pieces they have but the soup was served barely hot at was reduced to lukewarm and tepid fairly quickly.  The good bites were good while they lasted…so not very long.

Clam Chowder

The salad was better.  Or rather standard. I don’t really expect drop-dead fabulous food when I come to BJs but I expect good food.  And that’s what I get–a consistent standard of better than normal food–if you pick the right items and not the disproportionately overpriced ones.  I thought the salad was yummy and the chicken was well-seasoned but I could be biased because I like my salads drenched in Ceasar dressing.

Ceasar Salad

Chris opted for a burger…I wasn’t paying attention again as to what kind so we get to play deconstruct the burger again!

Burger

Based on the picture it looks like your run-of-the-mill burger, which BJs does a good job of making.  I can see bacon, cheese, tomato, and lettuce which is how Chris likes it.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some A1 or other barbecue sauce in there as well.

Arguably the most important part of the meal was the one thing that I forgot to take a picture of…the COOKIES AND CREME PIZZOOKIE.  It was the best part of the meal considering the food was decent and the service was poor.  And since we hadn’t had pizzookies in a good long while it was a great dessert treat.  I want another one now but, not for a while, ’til next year, BJs!

January 4: CY’s California Kitchen

We didn’t go out to eat today.  Another benefit of this challenge is that on days when we just can’t figure out what to eat, our last resort is to make something ourselves.  So yesterday, we grilled up our own burgers in CY’s California Kitchen!

A quick yelp search took us to Luis Meat Market in Bellflower.  When we got there we quickly realized it was not the same kind of meat markets that we were familiar with in Colorado.  It was distinctly tailored to Mexican food and had a number of great food options–unfortunately burgers was not one of them.  But they did have the ground beef that we needed so we bought a pound and they graciously gave us 1.5 pounds for very cheap!

We stopped by a nearby grocery store for the rest of our ingredients and fixin’s.  We grabbed King’s Hawaiian Burger Buns and Heinz Ketchup (for some reason any other brand or even house ketchup tastes so weird to me), lettuce, tomatoes, and an avocado.

Things were going swell until we got home and the propane on the grill read ’empty’.  Thankfully, we figured out that we had just enough propane to grill us up two burgers.  We weren’t cooking for a party after all.  My boyfriend seasoned the burgers with fresh ground black peppers and a medley of Hepp’s Salt.  (Check them out at http://heppssalt.com/ )  He added some Cholula hot sauce to mine since I like a little bit of spice and took them out to grill.  While he was being a man outside I prepped the produce, washing and cutting the tomatoes, lettuce, and avocado and laying out the condiments.  We buttered up some buns and threw those on the grill for a bit.  By the time we were done, the finished product was a masterpiece.

Lettuce, Tomato, Avocado, Cheese and an Amazingly Seasoned Burger on a Perfectly Toasted Bun!!

The burgers came out FABULOUS!!  Even though the chef warned me the burgers may have been more well done than I’d have preferred, they tasted perfectly cooked to me!!  I do usually prefer medium rare but the way this burger was done was exactly what it should have been!  It was rich and juicy and flavorful!!!  I can’t stop talking about it with exclamations!!!  And my boyfriend said he knows how to make it better next time!!!  IT’S ALREADY SO GOOD!!  I don’t think I’m being biased when I say this either, because I tell him if his food is bad but this time around there’s really no need.

The only critique that I had was that the patty was a little too large for the buns we used.  He separated the 1.5 lb. of meat we had into our two burgers!  So that was a lot of meat!  And I just wish I had split my meat into two burgers so I could have had one for lunch and one for dinner.  The meat was very flavorful and tender and the King’s Hawaiian buns were the perfect sweet, buttery, toasted compliment to the burger.

This has been the best food I’ve had since Project Food 2015 started!  AND I can keep eating in CY’s California Kitchen as much as I’d like this year!!  He said he’s going to make Sunday grilling a regular thing so I can’t wait to see what he’ll whip up next!