September 21, 2014

mmm-yoso!!! a blog about food. Sometimes interesting food, interesting places and sometimes the comfort of repetition. Today, Cathy is writing while Kirk and Ed(from Yuma) are relaxing, or something.

For the past few weeks, The Mister and I have had one criteria for food. Wherever we go, it must be air conditioned…and have covered parking. More than once, we have stopped at Mission Fashion Valley mall. For those of you non-San Diegans, here's a glimpse of the temperature around 1:30 last Tuesday… similar to this 2007 day (and coincidental visit to Nordstrom Cafe).Nordstrom is a higher-end retail/fashion store which has an in-store cafe, like quite a few other establishments (linked in the second paragraph of that post).More or less cafeteria style, where you order and wait for your food to be assembled (or order, pay and your food is brought out to the table). There is a very attentive wait staff who will refill your beverages for you, even if only water.The go-to item for me here is the Roma tomato basil soup (cup, $3.95, bowl $4.95). I have been known to stop in here during the cold of 'winter' for a bowl of this amazing soup. As you can see, I order in each size, depending on other ordered items (and level of air conditioning inside the store). Tomato soup is always available and there is also a varying soup du jour.The accompaniment to the Roma tomato basil soup is a cheese topped 'crouton' as the staff calls it. Crack is what I call it.Salads we've enjoyed in the past few weeks: Nicoise with salmon ($13.50). The roasted salmon is coated with Dijon and fresh herbs; other items on the salad include green beans, kalamata olives, potato, egg and capers. The second salad is grilled shrimp and arugula with sweet corn ($11.95) which is wonderful and includes grilled polenta croutons. The bottom salad is chicken, apple and goat cheese ($10.75) and even though not in the photograph, has a lot of chicken breast under the plethora of ingredients including fresh apple slices as well as dried apple chips and spiced almonds.There is a wide variety of desserts to choose from, but we have defaulted to the creme brûlée ($5.25) twice. When you are seated, your waiter/ess asks if you would like the brulee now, or a bit later…and so the sugar top is freshly torched and the burnt cream is brought out with a warm and crispy top. You can see in the bottom photo that the cream part is flavored using real vanilla beans…