California Eats Part 2: Passionfish, Peppers, Sprouts

Wow, I can't believe how long it's taken me to start writing this post. Summer vacation was loooong ago, but I still want to share the rest of my CA food stories.

For the first time in I don't know how many years I tried a new restaurant in Pacific Grove, called Passionfish. I had read about it and wanted to try it because they serve sustainable seafood. It was quite difficult to choose from their menu as many of the dishes sounded enticing. But finally I decided on an heirloom tomato, watermelon, feta and arugula salad with mint-lime dressing as an appetizer. This is a combination of ingredients I had long been wanting to try and it was delicious!

For my main I decided on poached Monterey Bay spot prawns with linguini cauliflower-bacon custard and lemon butter although I was warned that it was going to be messy! It was indeed messy as I had to de-shell my prawns, but they were very good and the linguini custard was very comfort-food like. I didn't really care for the small orange eggs hanging off the prawns. Hope they weren't a delicacy because I couldn't get myself to finish them!

For dessert I had the raspberry peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. It was good, but not great. The dough part was a little dry and I prefer a bit juicier and sweeter.

We did also have a chance to visit my long time favorite restaurant Peppers in Pacific Grove. As always I got full on their darned tortilla chips before dinner arrived but I was still able to enjoy my portabello mushrooms with roasted red pepper sauce and the usual Mexican side dishes.

On our way from Monterey to Yosemite we stopped in Merced to finally have our share of In-n-Out burgers, my so far favorite fast food burgers. I ordered my usual animal style cheeseburger and animal style fries. Mmmhmmm! Those items aren't actually on the menu. You have to be an insider to know about them. I don't feel like an In-n-Out insider but I'm glad I know about these secret menu items. Animal style means fried versus raw onions paired with a lovely sauce.

Last but not least I have one recommendation for a place in South Lake Tahoe. It's called Sprouts. It's a charming cafe right on 50. I tried the Mexican Vulcano salad and the quesadilla. The food was nice and fresh and pretty healthy and it tasted good.