California Dining

Well, not just California as we stopped off in New York for a few days before flying onto San Francisco. During our couple of weeks in the US we ate at some really nice places, some of which I'll mention below.

The House of Vegetarian - 68 Mott St, New York, USA
As the name suggests, this is a vegetarian restaurant in New York's Chinatown. The menu here reminded me of the Pink Giraffe in Oxford as it was mostly mock meat and fish. However, we decided to try their vegetable dishes rather than go for the veggie duck, fish, chicken etc. We had a few dishes, the best of which was braised broccoli in brown sauce. All the food was nice, but the broccoli stood out. Also, the portions were huge. A word of note - they only take cash, probably the only place that we went to in the US that did.


Katy's Place - Mission Street between 5th and 6th, Carmel USA
Katy's is well known for breakfast in Carmel and it's easy to see why. The menu is enormous and there are fifteen different versions of Eggs Benedict! So, obviously I had to try the veggie version. It was lovely. And huge. Three eggs, three muffins, mushrooms and home fries. Yumm!


Robin's Restaurant - 4095 Burton Drive, Cambria, USA
We visited Robin's last time we were here and I'm pleased to say it is still as good. I started with spring rolls and then had a tempeh laksa. Both were nice, but the tempeh wasn't needed in the laksa, it would've worked much better I think with shitake or oyster mushrooms.

For dessert I had a lemon creme brulee, which was really nice - a good 8.5 on the scale. It was good to see that Robin's was as good as we remembered.

CATAL 1580 Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, USA
It was a nice surprise to find a restaurant as good as this in Disneyland. It was quite popular, but we didn't have to wait too long after putting our name down until we were called. The waiting staff were very knowledgeable of the menu and the service was great. The food was pretty good too.

I started with artichokes (I had a bit of an artichoke frenzy while I was in the US...) and my wife had scallops, both very tasty and well presented. For mains, I had a wild mushroom risotto, which was very tasty and had several different kinds of mushrooms and some truffle as a bonus!

Dessert consisted of a trio of small desserts which included an unpotted creme brulee (6) and a panna cotta. It was all very nice and the whole experience made a very nice end to our holiday.