Oh the food we will eat…Porto’s

For hubby’s birthday one of his co-workers had very sweetly gifted him a gift card to Porto’s. Now, we love Porto’s and would have gone anyway, but having the gift card was definitely an added incentive 🙂

Porto’s is this amazing Cuban bakery that has delicious baked goods (duh), coffees/teas/beverages, and incredible food. The lines are always long, but go pretty quickly. Once you get to the front of the line you get called by an available person where you order all the baked goods your heart desires. You do have to be a bit loud because people all around you are ordering too.

Once you order your person tells you to wait right there while they run and grab all your treats. They then have you go to the cashier and order any other drinks or food you’d like and pay. After ordering our treats this time we decided to order food. We ordered and got a tracker so they could bring us the food to our table.

It’s quite the experience to say the least!

Now for what we got! We were hungry so we ordered the grilled citrus chicken breast with salsa verde. We wanted a sandwich as well and got the Porto’s Torta with grilled steak.

The chicken dish came with rice, black beans, and plantains. Every part of this dish was so good-my highlights were the chicken and plantain. The chicken was savory and the salsa verde added a good acidity. The plantains I saved for last because they were sweet and caramelized and the perfect little ending (except we also had cookies…more on that later).

The sandwich had guac, black bean spread, cotija cheese, lettuce and tomato. I loved that the grilled steak was chopped up so it was easy to bite through. It drives me a bit bonkers when there are grilled pieces of steak and when you bite into your sandwich that whole piece of steak comes out. The sandwich came with a side of plantain chips-y’all know I love my plantain chips!

On to the sweeter side of things…I had gone there with the intention of getting these soft, shortbread type cookies filled with dulce de leche. They are called besitos and they are one of the best things on the planet. We each had one after our meal and lordyyy…one of the best meals ever!

Other than the besitos we had gotten a few things to have throughout the next few days. The caramel flan which is absolutely delicious and not to sweet. If it’s your first time here I would recommend the individual size tres leches, the caramel flan, guava and cheese pastry (we didn’t get this time) and besitos.

I wanted to try the creme brulee this time but it ended up being a bit of a fail. The custard was a bit to runny and there wasn’t that satisfying crispy top. I wasn’t too devastated by this because they have way too many other delicious treats.

We also got the chocolate twist which was so flaky and mildly sweet with chocolate swirled throughout the pastry. I really liked the cinnamon roll, it had a super vanilla smell and flavor. We warmed it up and it was sweet and gooey!

The brownie was dense but cakey at the same time. It was not my favorite chocolatey treat, but the hubs really liked it. I think if you like dark chocolate then you would definitely enjoy this!

Now the piece de resistance was this tres leches cake roll. To be honest it wasn’t much of a cake roll, but I didn’t mind that one bit. Tres leches cakes are one of my favorite cakes and I can never turn one down. The frosting was thick and fluffy at the same time but not at all sweet. I like that they left the sweetness up to the milky cake. It was a great balance.

I was telling B that the only thing to make this even better would have been some fruit! I mentioned before you should try the individual tres leches, but after you’ve done that I highly recommend the tres leches “cake roll.”

I’ve had the opportunity to try their large sheet cake of tres leches with fruit and it is incredible and remains on my list of favorite cakes of all time, but there’s only 2 of us and we don’t need that large of a cake no matter how much my eyes and stomach say otherwise.

If you ever get the chance to visit Porto’s I highly recommend you to go and experience it for yourself! Have you ever been to a Cuban bakery? What are some of your favorite treats?

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next time!

 

New Food, New Places

There have been quite a few restaurants or foods we’ve wanted to try but the timing never seemed to work out or our tastebuds changed last minute and it seemed like something that would never happen until recently.

This first one may seem kinda silly, but since coming to California I have wanted to try California Pizza Kitchen. I know it’s not just in California, but it seemed fitting to try it in the place it’s named after. We took a leap of faith and ordered a margherita and a California veggie (subbing the corn for olives).

The margherita came on their thin and crispy crust while the California veggie was on their regular crust (I think). I definitely enjoyed the regular crust more than the thin crust. This is mostly because I feel like the thin crust here is like a cracker crust and I am not a fan of that! In terms of flavor I did not enjoy the eggplant in the veggie. I may be crazy, but I felt like it had a fishy flavor from it.

Overall, I don’t think we’ll be revisiting CPK, but maybe we didn’t get the right things? Let us know if that’s true and we may have to go back and check it out at some point 🙂

This next item isn’t something that was on my list to try until I spotted it and got it for B’s birthday. This guy LOVES Reese’s PB cups and he LOVES PB and LOVES PB/chocolate anything. His eyes light up anytime he sees that combination anywhere (ice-cream store, donut shop, etc). When I saw Jessie’s Nutty Cups online-it felt like a hallelujah moment. I got an assorted 8 pack.

I was excited about these, but not as excited as B was and they sadly fell a little flat. They didn’t hold together when you bit into it and although it was fun to try out all the flavors it’s not something I would recommend to a true PB cup enthusiast.

The Nutty Cups were a total win compared to this next little bakery spot: Paris Pastries. The display case of little cakes and meringues totally did me in and we had to pick up a few things, but you guys, these were SO BAD. Out of the 4 items we purchased NONE of them were good. I was super sad, but got over it pretty quickly. We will not be revisiting!

Now that we’ve gone through some fails, let’s perk this post up and talk about some wins!

I’ve never had a caramel/candy apple. I’ve also never had a burning desire to have one until recently when walking by Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and seeing their apple monstrosities. Have you guys seen these? They have the basic apples, but then they have the super pimped out apples that are larger than my face! I needed one and of course we had to go for the Reeses coated version.

We had the lady slice it in store and when we got home and opened the bag we had quite the surprise. There was so much coating still on the apples, but a large amount had fallen off and was sitting in the paper basket. I could not believe that all this peanut butter cup goodness had been layered onto one apple!

Needless to say this was absolutely amazing. It totally makes my apple dipped in PB look like child’s play!

The Hat is apparently a San Bernardino County institution and they serve pastrami dip sandwiches. The spot has old school diner vibes and serves food in large portions. We knew this coming in and ordered their famous pastrami dip and a “small fry.” The “small fry” was placed in a fry container, but it was almost like the carton was an after thought because the fries filled the bag almost a quarter of the way up.

The pastrami was served in a super soft bread spread with mustard and a hefty amount of pastrami topped with pickles. I really enjoyed this sandwich in all it’s savoriness. I can see why people love this place so much. When we went it was filled with families and older couples-it was definitely a jump back in time.

After the Hat we walked around thinking about having something sweet. We thought through a few places and couldn’t decide until we remembered Baked. It’s been a spot that we had gone into, but never tried anything from. Since we were in that “try something new” mood we figured it would be the perfect day. We ordered for mini cupcakes-a s’mores, nutella, ube flan, and a dulce de leche.

We enjoyed the ube flan and dulce de leche the most, but they were all super yummy! This bakery has some Filipino flavors embedded into their baked goods and I am here for it. I will definitely be back when I am in that cupcake mood to get some of their larger cupcakes…or maybe I’ll get a bunch of the minis again. You guys know how I love trying little bits of everything 😀

Even though some of these spots/items ended up being a fail I really enjoyed trying them out. I find it super easy to get into a routine and stay there whether it’s with a workout, food, or just life so it’s nice to switch it up every once in a while. Stepping out of my comfort zone (even if that’s just with CPK) gets me a little more comfortable with trying other things when those opportunities open up.

What is something new you have tried whether it’s a food, workout, event, anything? Let me know in the comments below!

P.S. I was super serious about your CPK suggestions if you are a CPK lover. Let me know what you love!

Happy Monday-ing you guys!

Long Weekend Recap

I love a good long weekend…who doesn’t? We took full advantage of this one and did (and ate quite a bit). Go ahead and settle in for what may end up being a long post!

Friday we ended up making some dinner at home. I don’t like to waste things and we had some potato buns that needed to be used up so we got some Boar’s Head pastrami and made sammies.

We also tried a couple of more slices of cake from Susie Cakes-one was raspberry and the other was red velvet. I loved the red velvet whereas the hubs preferred the denser raspberry.

Saturday, we started out with a workout, breakfast snack and then a hike. The hike ended up being somewhat of a fail because we were hoping for ocean views and super blooms, but instead got very hot and a few creeks. It’s not a complete fail because any activity is good activity 🙂

We made it home for showers and naps before heading out to Magicopolis for a magic show. It was from 8 to 10pm and ended up being hilarious and magical!

After much pondering we decided to try Cheesecake Factory out again for late night dinner.

We started with their bread (noms) and Asian lettuce wraps (double noms)

For our main we got the Tuscan chicken from their skinnylicious menu

And we had to get dessert so we got their chocolate truffle tower cake. This was pretty fantastic. Our server said this was the “lightest” of the 3 chocolate cakes they offer. I was happy with our choice of the chocolate tower 🙂

Sunday morning included a workout and a fun little brunch at Claudine Kitchen and Bakeshop. This time I got a salmon sandwich and the hubs got a create your own omelette.

We had ordered their special cookie butter coffee cake of the day, but they ended up refunding us because they were out 😦

Luckily for us, it was a warm day and we thought açaí bowls sounded pretty tasty. We found Ubatuba Acai at a different location that you can have as many toppings as you want!

They also had a lot of different bases like chia pudding, açaí, pitaya, etc. We ended up ordering one to share and got açaí, chia pudding, and pitaya. I believe we topped it with sweet and condensed milk, honey, mangoes, and two types of granola.

It was refreshing, sweet, and oh so tasty!

We ran some errands and then headed to a couple’s massage. Hubs had gotten this Groupon a while ago and we never had a chance to use it, but nothing gets us more motivated to use something other then it being close to expiring. Anybody else? I have never had a massage (crazy! I know) and so I was a tad nervous, but it ended up being a really great experience.

Sunday night means burgers so that is what we had for dinner and we used up all our potato buns so yay for no waste!

After Claudine’s we had walked around and found Sweet Lady Jane Bakery so we stopped in and saw so many delicious sweets. We picked up a slice of triple berry for dessert later and ended up having it after dinner!

This caps our weekend! We definitely had a lot of cake this weekend, but recently it’s been our go-to dessert 🙂 Thanks for reading!

Friday Night Fun

Good morning lovelies! Welcome back to another post 🙂

Every fun filled weekend begins with a good Friday night? Am I right?

Let’s start at the beginning shall we?

We ended up heading to the mall and grabbing some coffee. This iced oat milk latte is a total dream from La Colombe. Honestly, this is hands down one of the best coffee shops ever. Their coffee is always smooth, never bitter. It is perfect the way it is and it doesn’t need sugar, but I do add a little bit of simple syrup for sweetness because it’s me and I like things a little sweet 😉

We mosied around and took in the sites until we were ready to head out and find some dinner. We love Vito’s. You all know this, we know this. It’s not a secret. Sorry (notsorry) about the messy box-we ate a slice in the car. Lawwwwdyyy is it delicious when it is super fresh!

Since we were trying to figure out dessert we also headed to Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar. I’ve been wanting to go since it opened, but I am not a fan of huge lines (who is?) so we waited and our patience paid off because we had 2 people in front of us! Winning!!

We had to get her famous crack pie. It’s pretty similar to gooey butter cake if you’ve had it, but this had a cookie crust. To be honest this was our least favorite item. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it was just sugar (again not a bad thing, but a tad too much). I know a LOT of people love this item and it’s their favorite thing, but I preferred the other two items much more!

Speaking of other two items we also got the birthday cake truffles. These were yummy! Sweet, but I liked the texture of the crumbly cake and the smooth frosting holding this together. It was definitely a birthday cake flavor which I LOVE!

The last item we bought was a slice of the birthday cake. The hubs and I agreed that this was delicious, but we weren’t sure if it was worth $7 a slice. The frosting was light and airy. The cake was also pretty light, but held up well to the frosting. Thinking back on this cake now I’m a little ashamed to say (babe don’t kill me) but I may pay $7 a slice for this…I mean look at it!

It was all about the experience and we had a VERY enjoyable experience at the bakery. Everyone was super friendly and helpful. The decor was so cute! I would recommend a visit if you ever get a chance because they have some yummy sweets and frankly, I think Christina Tosi is pretty awesome. I mean have you seen her on Master Chef?

Let me know if you’ve had a chance to visit Milk Bar and what you thought in the comments 🙂 Till Thursday! See you later!

November Eats Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of November Eats. If you haven’t checked out Part 1 yet feel free to check it out before reading this post!

Now on to the food:

Leo and Lily’s has been a favorite brunch spot for as long as I can remember and this sandwich was just everything! So. Good.

Bibi Sara and MOD Pizza came together to create this meal. We got a chicken and beef kabob from Bibi Sara and a make your own pizza from MOD.

The Stand had one of the best grilled chicken sandwiches and the fries were pretty bomb too 🙂 We’re super excited to go back and check out more including some sweet potato fries we spotted.

PSY Street Kitchen has friendly service and tasty food. This delicious spread included a burger and another chicken sandwich.

Dough Girl was a new discovery so we went halfsies-one side cheese and one side mobster which featured lobster bisque sauce with tiger shrimp.

Mendocino Farms is a great lunch spot and an even better afternoon date spot 😉

Porto’s guava pastry and tres leches cake is something special. The guava and cheese pastry has that wonderful bright guava flavor. The tres leches is moist (sorry!) and sweet but not too sweet!

November was the month for sandwiches, burgers, and pizza for us, but really what month isn’t? We’ve definitely covered a lot of ground food-wise in the last month and we’re pretty proud 🙂

I hope you guys have enjoyed our November Eats! Let me know what new places you have tried or want to try in the comments below. Till next time friends!

 

 

Sweet Endings

The weekend is here and I really wanted to end on a sweet note 🙂 I decided to do a picture ode from a recent visit to Paderia Bakery.

We got more than our fair share of sweet treats, but we restrained ourselves from buying the entire bakery display of goodies (pat on the back for us)!

They have cookies, cheesecakes, and malasadas of all different flavors…

 

I hope you enjoyed this picturesque ode to Paderia and have a weekend as sweet as these treats 😉