ed fromyuma – Page 16

Mustard’s Italian Food

August 17, 2008 ed fromyuma Italian Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

Kirk, Cathy, other yosoers, and many FOYs are eating, thinking, and searching for ultimate tastes. ed (from Yuma), however, is just blogging about a new place in Yuma.

Sad to say, Mustard's is no longer in business as of August 2009. According to the local paper, the location will be taken by Das Bratwurst House.

The opening of a new restaurant in Yuma is a big deal — particularly if the restaurant is neither a chain nor a Mexican eatery. So when the Munch Lunch Bunch (a group of us who eat Friday lunch together most weeks) descended upon Mustard's Italian restaurant at the corner of Madison and Second, we were excited and hopeful:

The meal started off well, as we were all given a small bowl of marinara and slices of Italian bread (most likely from La Brea):

The warm marinara was tasty and tomatoey, but very mildly flavored, somewhat lacking in herbs and spice.

I ordered one of the lunch specials that day, crab raviolis (8.95?). In a fairly short period of time, the plate of raviolis arrived looking very pretty:

I liked that the raviolis were not overcooked, and the pasta still had some chew. Although not especially rich, the light cream sauce was smooth and complemented the raviolis and the diced vegetables. At first taste, I thought that the light green bits on top of the pasta were pieces of pickled artichoke hearts for they contributed a slight sour note to the dish. Further tastes and a closer look made me aware that these were slices of pepperoncini. They added complexity and contrast to the textures and flavors of the dish. The only shortcoming of the raviolis was the lack of much crab flavor in their fillings. Well, okay, maybe the lack of any crab flavor.

The raviolis came with a nice little side salad, mixed baby greens and romaine tossed with a light Italian dressing containing little dots of grated cheese. The tomato slice and red onion slices added a bit of color and variety:

Friends had a couple of different sandwiches (meatball and grilled beef and mushroom), neither of which looked exceptional. Both came with an underdressed tricolored rotini salad with chunks of mozzarella. Others selected the spaghetti with shrimp, mushroom, and spinach cream sauce:

I didn't get a bite of this, but it disappeared quickly and those who ordered it were very pleased. Service throughout lunch was a bit harried – with one server working several tables – but was friendly and competent.

This seemed like a restaurant worth returning to, so Tina and I soon arrived to try a dinner at Mustard's. This meal was a bit more problematical, although it started off well with the bread and marinara. In addition, we had brought a bottle of wine, which was opened by our helpful server, who also provided excellent full sized stemware. We felt the $10 corkage was perfectly appropriate for the service and the glasses.

Wanting to try a variety of items, we ordered a minestrone soup (3.95) and the zucchini and chickpea salad (6.95). We were not sure what to expect with the salad, as neither of us had heard of such a thing before, but we certainly weren't expecting what showed up on the table:

The same mixture of greens as in the lunch salad were topped with pepperoncini slices, sizable chunks of raw zucchini, and (no, I am not making this up) kernels of canned hominy. Say what? Someone can't tell the difference between hominy and chickpeas? The salad also had no dressing; I guess we should've said something, but maybe zucchini and hominy salads never have dressings. 😉

The soup was also rather unusual, as it had little in common with any minestrone (or for that matter most any other soup) I have ever eaten before:

First, while the broth (if that's the right term for the liquid here) was appropriately reddish, it was largely flavored by the same marinara sauce that came with the bread. No deep savory stock whatsoever. The ingredients also seemed a little out of the ordinary. Not only were there no chickpeas (no surprise considering), but there were no beans of any sort. Instead, slices of nearly raw mushroom, chunks of undercooked zucchini, bits of diced tomato, and fresh frozen peas swam in the diluted marinara. To be truthful, the soup wasn't horrible – it just wasn't minestrone.

At the bottom of the bowl, lay another surprise, multicolored tortellini:

As I fished one of these out of the soup, I realized that the minestrone soup listed on the menu was the same as the tortellini soup. Well, I suppose that's one way to keep inventory modest.

Tina had opted for the penne with tomato, fresh basil, and garlic sauce (10.95):

This dish was okay, I guess, but certainly far from spectacular. Part of the problem was with the fresh tomatoes; typical supermarket slicers simply didn't bring enough flavor to the dish. Similarly, the few fresh basil leaves added little, and I can't recall much garlic either. While the dish was not terrible, it was not terribly good either.

I opted for the dinner special, which was some pork dish called carnaval (sp?)(18.95, if memory serves). It arrived looking like this:

Two thin boneless slices of pork loin were topped with undercooked spinach leaves, ricotta cheese, melted mozzarella cheese, shrimp, and some kind of grated cheese. The rest of the large platter was filled with penne pasta topped with what seemed to be a blend of the marinara sauce with the cream sauce that had been on the lunchtime raviolis.

Though the pasta was not overcooked, it was generally flavorless. The pork with all of its toppings, on the other hand, was bizarre — the sort of melange one might expect of a faux Italian restaurant like Olive Garden:

The combination of ingredients never came together, and I left nearly half of the pork uneaten. To be fair, the waitperson's description of the dish should have warned me about what was coming – but sometimes imagination just falls short of reality.

As I was finishing the meal (or more accurately, as the meal was finishing me), I overheard the chef/owner explaining to another table that lunches at the restaurant had been going well, but that there were still some glitches with the dinners. I couldn't have said it better. Maybe next time.

Postscript:

Since I wrote the first draft of this post, there has been a next time. I had been wine tasting with some friends at Old Town Wine Cellar (which is just 2 blocks away from Mustard's) and we decided to bring a few bottles with us and have a meal. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera, but here's a brief summary anyway:

We shared the sausage and spinach appetizer, and it was excellent. Full flavored and well thought out with a lot of garlic and some olive oil, each slice of the spicy sausage sitting on a few leaves of the lightly sauteed greens.

This night the carnaval was made with veal (23.95), but it was better prepared (the spinach wasn't raw, for example), and the veal went much better with the shrimp and cheeses. I finally got a taste of the shrimp and spaghetti dish, and the shrimp were perfectly cooked, and the whole dish was good. I had the chicken marsala (15.95), which I liked. The unbreaded chicken was completely covered with a very generous serving of mushrooms, and the wine sauce (while not tasting strongly of marsala) complemented both the chicken and the 'shrooms and was not sweet (I hate cloyingly sweet marsala sauces).

Only negative notes: the side of penne pasta that comes with the chicken dishes was topped with an underflavored, but homemade tomato sauce. It cried out for some good grated cheese, but none was there. I was also unhappy with the side salad, which had been good on my first visit. This night it lacked any baby lettuces and was severely underdressed. When I say severely underdressed, think burlesque dancer. It also tasted like it had been sitting in a refrigerator for hours (days?) .

I know that this post is somewhat snarky, and I hate dwelling on a restaurant's shortcomings. Also I would like this place to succeed. We need more independent and interesting dining choices here. Still, if this modest eatery is going to become a success, it needs to get better and more consistent.

Mustard's Italian Food. Madison & Second, Yuma AZ. (928) 345-9013:

Mutant Green Chilies

August 3, 2008 ed fromyuma Mexican Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

Today it’s ed (from Yuma) posting at mmm-yoso. Just a note, if you are researching genetic variations in pepper cultivars and you Googled some search terms and ended up here, you probably want to search again – unless you like eating chile verde.

When I moved to Yuma after having lived for most of the previous 15 years in California, I was sure I knew what green chile was – chunks of pork stewed in a mildly spicy green colored sauce consisting of tomatillos, green chilies, onions, garlic, and fresh cilantro.

My sense of green chile was challenged, however, soon after I arrived in Yuma and began eating at some of the "old school" long-time Yuma Mexican restaurants. I realized then that not all green chile was the same. Although it took me a while to get used to these mutant forms, nowadays I appreciate their unique flavors and their place in the traditional cuisine of this border community.

One of the best and most unusual examples of this old style of green chile is the version found at Yuma’s oldest Mexican restaurant, one that has roots back into the 1930s, Chretin’s. Recently relocating from a rather shabby building in the middle of an older residential section of town (see the first picture), Chretin’s now occupies a large and fancy location at the intersection of Arizona Avenue and 16th St (second picture):

For $7.60 (or less as a lunch special), you can get Chretin’s green chili burrito enchilada style (also known as saddle style or as a wet burrito):

This style of burrito is fairly simple but also very traditional in Yuma. One fills a flour tortilla with the green chile and then ladles more green chile on top of the burrito along with cheese. Of course, some of you must be saying, "Green? Green? There’s nothing green about that chile." And you’re right. Do not try adjusting the color balance on your screen, because Chretin’s green chile is indeed brown in color. As near as I can tell, this style arose back in the day when fresh or frozen green chilies were not available year around. Therefore, the main source of chile flavor (rather minimal in actual fact) had to be dried green chile powder. One of my friends says that Chretin’s green chile is just odd flavored brown gravy with meat, since the sauce is clearly thickened with flour and the main source of picante heat is black pepper:

A careful look at this close-up shows that the meat in the green chile is a very tender, coarsely ground beef, reflecting the Sonoran background of most of Yuma’s citizens before World War II. The ~~gravy~~ sauce also contains flecks of tomato and bits of onion. While this is very far away from anything I would’ve considered green chile when I moved to Yuma, I have grown to like this unusual dish at Chretin’s.

Another old-school Mexican restaurant in town is El Charro, a restaurant that has been managed by one branch of the Gutierrez family since 1949. For many native Yumans and numerous winter visitors, this restaurant on 8th St is the essence of Mexican food in Yuma. Personally, I have always found their large portions to be generally bland and low in flavor. One example of this blandness is their salsa, which tastes like a can of chopped tomatoes mixed with a can of diced mild green chilies:

Nevertheless, I have always been intrigued by their "El Green Saddle," as they call their version of a green chili burrito enchilada style. In fact, this dish is so much a part of the tradition here that it is only dish mentioned in the history of the restaurant painted on the wall:
When served,"El Green Saddle" looks like this:

Again, you would be right to say "this isn’t green!" And yeh, the predominant color of this "green" chile is red. Even when one cuts into the burrito and looks at it up close, there is as much tomato red here as there is chile green:

So what is the secret to this dish? Having eaten it several times, I am convinced that El Charro’s green chile is simply coarsely ground beef and onions cooked with left over table salsa. That would explain both how it tastes and how it looks. It would also explain why El Charro features this dish. You have to do something, I guess, with all that leftover salsa.

Another branch of the Gutierrez family (92 year old Bessie and her descendents) also began in the restaurant business back in the 1940s, although their oldest restaurant currently in operation is La Casa Gutierrez, which has been located in an old house on Orange Avenue since 1960:

Although their fast food outlets, Mr. G’s and Chile Pepper, serve credible versions of their green chili recipe, its best incarnation is in a green chile dinner (Tuesday lunch special pictured) at La Casa Gutierrez:

Although this green chile is the most watery of any in town, I still love the fresh green chile flavor that arises from all these large pieces of green chile. Nonetheless, the use of ground beef and presence of chunks of tomato, instead of tomatillo, marks this as another Yuma mutant green chile:

While I have had the green chile burrito enchilada style at the restaurant (and it’s good), the green chile lunch special on Tuesdays is one of the best meal deals in Yuma. For $5.25 (including tax), you get chips (store-bought, unfortunately), salsa, a good-sized portion of green chile, your choice of a beverage (the lemonade is killer), rice, beans, and a soft and flavorful flour tortilla almost the size of a bedsheet:

The newest of the restaurants serving atypical green chile in Yuma is Eduardo’s, which dates back to 1964, meaning that it is less than 45 years old. Currently located in a strip mall on Avenue B between 16th and 17th, this small restaurant has its own unique take on green chile. The Chile Verde burrito, enchilada style, currently costs $5.50 and looks like this:

From the outside, this burrito looks a lot like the others, with almost as much red tomato color as green chile color. When you cut into the tortilla, you find beef, tomato, fresh green chile, cheeses, and sauce all mixed together:

It is only when you focus on the meat itself, that you can see one of the main differences between this green chile and the others in this post. Eduardo’s does not use ground beef. Instead, numerous sizable chunks of stewing beef have been slowly cooked to utter tenderness:

These chunks of beef give this dish a wonderful deep beefiness. The other difference, one that you cannot see, is in the spiciness of the finished product. All of the other mutant green chilies are very mild in flavor and have virtually no picante heat. Eduardo’s, on the other hand, sets your mouth afire with chili spice. While not a standard California-style green chile, I have to admit that this is one of the tastiest green chilies I have ever eaten.

I hope you folks have enjoyed reading about these unusual and weird green chilies in Yuma because I have enjoyed eating them.

Swiss Noodles

July 27, 2008 ed fromyuma Cooking, Recipes, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!

All regular readers of mmm-yoso know that both Kirk and Cathy can cook. ed (from Yuma)? Well, today will prove that (with some help) he is not completely lost in a kitchen.

I still remember getting to know Tina at a party last spring, and as often happens with me, we began discussing food. When she not only told me that she loves spaetzle, but that she also could prepare those tasty egg noodles, I realized we could make wonderful food together – in particular a flavorful Swiss dish that cried out for homemade spaetzle. Now we’d like to share (at least virtually) this traditional meal that is one of our favorites. Here’s how it is done.

Ingredients:

1 medium onion
4-5 slices (or 1/4-1/3 lb) bacon
2 bunches Swiss chard

1/3 lb Swiss cheese (preferably real Gruyere)

2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
pinch nutmeg

black pepper to taste.

Start by chopping the medium onion:

Then dice the four or five slices of bacon (I got some applewood smoked bacon from my local butcher, but bacon ends and pieces work well too):

After discarding the large rib ends, chop up two bunches of Swiss chard (green ribbed if possible). By the way, this is a huge bowl:

Then shred approximately a third of a pound of Swiss Gruyere cheese (pictured is a little over half a pound of aged Gruyere in wedges and then grated):

At the same time, you will need to prepare the dough for the noodles. After you mix together two eggs and half a cup of milk, add a cup and a half of flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a half a teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of nutmeg, and beat with a wooden spoon or with the dough stirrer on an electric mixer until the ingredients are fully combined, thick, somewhat stiff, and stretchy. The dough should look like this:
At this point, you should have a large pot of lightly salted water being brought to a boil on the stove. On another burner, begin to fry the bacon at medium heat. Cook until much of the bacon fat has been rendered, but do not cook the bacon fully. Then add the chopped onion and mix together and continue frying:
When the bacon and onion mixture is ready, add the chard handful by handful and stir. If you wish the resulting dish to have some crunchy parts, add leaves and rib pieces at the same time. For a more uniform texture, separate the ribs and cook them for a minute or two before adding the leafy parts. Reduce heat, if necessary, to prevent overcooking.

The other half of the dish, the noodles, take less time. Back in the day, my grandmother would have spread the dough out on a small hand-held cutting board and sliced strips of the dough into the boiling water. Lacking my grandmother’s talent, patience, and wrists, most people today will use a spaetzle press to extrude the noodles. One can also extrude the noodles through a colander, but notice that the perforations at the bottom of the well of this press are not round and are irregular in shape; this flatness and lack of uniformity is key to top quality spaetzle:

When the water is boiling, fill up the utensil’s well about halfway, place over the pot, slowly push down, and send the fresh noodles into the boiling water:

Unlike Italian pasta, these egg noodles do not easily overcook, so that one can refill the well and drop more noodles into the boiling water. Using a wooden spoon, stir the noodles and let the water come back to a full boil. At this point the spaetzles are done.

After draining in a colander, the noodles should be added to the frying pan with the other cooked ingredients and quickly stirred together. Place the contents of the frying pan into a bowl and add the shredded cheese to taste. At this point, you may also add fresh grated black pepper (unless, like me, you forget). You will notice that the spaetzle noodles are not smooth and uniform, but rather pitted, bumpy, and irregular. This texture gives these homemade noodles plenty of surface areas so that they interface wonderfully with gravies or sauces. After the ingredients are all stirred together and the cheese has become wonderfully melty and gooey, the dish should look like this:
For our meal, Tina and I had previously chopped up a couple of heirloom tomatoes and added a few leaves of fresh basil:
After we tossed the tomatoes with the basil, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil, we plated this salad next to our main course:
This was more food than two hearty eaters could devour, and probably could serve up to 4 normal people. The heirloom tomato salad was good, but the noodles were supreme. The combination of textures and the creamy smoky flavors made this dish (even though I was at the stove) a success. I have no idea what this dish is called, but with the spaetzle, the Swiss cheese, and the Swiss chard, I guess calling it Swiss Noodles will have to do. Before I got to know Tina, I made the dish with regular packaged egg noodles. It was okay back then, but she just makes things better. Yum!

Pupuseria Cabañas 3: Odd Bits and Bites in Yuma

July 13, 2008 ed fromyuma Latin American Cuisine, Salvadoran Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

Kirk and the rest of the mmm-yoso crew are no doubt out scouring San Diego and the rest of the world looking for good food to share with you. Today, it's just ed (from Yuma) with more food and photos from his favorite dining destination.

*** I am saddened to write that Pupuseria Cabanas is no more. One of the few cases of a restaurant doomed by its success. At least as I have heard it, the landlord was getting complaints from the towing/repair shop next door that there was no place to park during the day because the pupuseria had too many customers. Lucia was not allowed to be open weekdays, and then on Nov. 1, the restaurant was empty with no sign about another location etc. I will update if (I hope, when) she has relocated *** :-(

While San Diego has a much richer dining scene than poor old Yuma stuck out in the middle of the desert, Yuma does have one benefit for me. With such limited options, I can fully explore the range of dishes offered by my favorite places. Case in point, I have probably eaten at Pupuseria Cabañas every week since my first visit. In the over two months since my last post on this place, I have tasted many different things and learned more about this tiny and wonderful restaurant. Certainly enough stuff for another post.

Soups

My favorite soup is still probably sopa de pata, whether the hoof is hiding under the tripe:

Or completely visible:

I have even found out what cow toes taste like (the covering skin is very beefy – almost gamey – in flavor):

No matter what cut of hoof or type of tripe, there is always a lot of tasty tendon to chew on:

For something completely different, they offered albondigas one day:

I have no idea if this is authentic Salvadoran or just a Mexican soup that they felt like cooking, but in either case it was very tasty – as good an albondigas as I've had in town.

And the meatballs were especially rich:

One weekday night, my friend Dave suggested having dinner at Pupuseria Cabañas – since he had already been there and tried one of their outstanding soups. That night, the available soup was bean:

The beans were tender and flavorful as were the pieces of soft pork scattered throughout the incredibly rich thick broth. Then, almost simultaneously, Dave and I discovered something weird in our soups. They looked like this:

Oh my god! What were these? What do you think these skin covered, bony, finger-length things were? Hint: a pig has only one of them.

No, not that! These were pigtails. Yeh, I thought they'd be curly also. Clearly, the skin, bones, and richness of these appendages contributed to the wonderful succulence of the dish. It may be the best single bowl of bean soup I've ever eaten.

Other Dishes

In addition to always having pupusas and a soup, I have found that other tasty items are sometimes available at the restaurant. For example, one day they had a Salvadoran version of a torta, the flavorful chicken touched with Salvadoran coleslaw and something like a barbecue sauce:

For breakfast, one can get fried bananas served with black beans,queso blanco, and crema:

The pureed black beans were flavorful, and the tangy sour dairy items complemented the slightly sweet bananas.

On another occasion, the special was fried yuca and what they call chicharrones (here pork, not skin):

The pork was the essence of deep fried piginess, and the yuca (note – this is not yucca) was a revelation. I have had fried yuca elsewhere and had always been disappointed with the limp greasy results. Here it was absolutely perfect; the outside of the vegetable was crunchy with no hint of grease and the inside was light, fluffy, and starchy.

Over time, I have grown more fond of the rich chicken tamales (even though I have learned that no banana leaves are killed in their preparation):

Mystery Veggie

In a previous post on this restaurant, I mentioned that my favorite type of pupusa had cheese and some sort of green veggie in it. I have since learned that this vegetable is called loroco, and basically, it is a flower bulb. A bunch of them look like this:

Loroco gives pupusas a distinct herby almost flowery aroma that I find very pleasant. Mixed with cheese inside a pupusa, this is how they look:

Other Notes

The variety and quality of the aguas frescas at Pupuseria Cabañas continues to be remarkable. I have had various fruit drinks ensalada – topped with fresh chopped fruits – often apple and mango:

Other fruits are also served regular agua fresca style, and at times, I have had melon, strawberry, watermelon, and at least one slightly sour Salvadoran fruit whose name I've forgotten.

At least on their business cards, the restaurant is now officially known as Pupuseria Cabañas – no mention of tacos. The name derives from the inland state of Cabañas in El Salvador (where the family is from). Before coming to the desert, they lived in Hawthorne, California.

I know many of you are eager to jump in your car or hop on an airplane just to come to Yuma and eat at this restaurant. Therefore, it is my duty to let you know that our current temperatures are usually over 110°. Also, the restaurant will be closed from July 21-August 8. But do come visit in the fall; the wonderful food at this restaurant is worth the cost of gas (at least from San Diego or Phoenix. From London or Tokyo, your results might differ.)

One last note: I have learned that the restaurant actually has a phone number, (928) 782-1874, so visitors may call ahead to find out what dishes are available.

Pupuseria Cabañas, 3405 8th St, Yuma AZ, (928) 782-1874

Cathy and Ed’s Eating Adventure: Balboa Tofu House

July 7, 2008 ed fromyuma Korean Restaurants, What Cathy Eats!, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!

This is a Very Special Episode of mmm-yoso!!!, documenting a very special meal. Cathy is "talking" in green. Ed will talk in blue

While Cathy and Ed both post here at mmm-yoso, before Ed’s last visit to town, they had only met once. So they were looking forward to sharing a lunch.

After exchanging some e-mails, we realized that we both liked the Balboa Tofu House on Convoy. What’s more, nobody had ever written about this place at the blog. That settled it. We were surprised neither of us had blogged Tofu House, since we both ate here kind of a lot. Apparently it was some secret neither of us wanted you to know about.

If you were paying attention to what ed just wrote, yes, it’s true. ed and I have only met for a total of four meals at this point in time, two of those with Kirk. (for you Sudoku/applied logic wizards out there, that means the three of us have met for exactly two meals together). (Sure, we post here, helping each other out and keeping this blog going when one of us is overwhelmed with life or work or is out of the country on a vacation or just doesn’t feel like it, but the three of us having an actual meeting and eating together… Twice).

Blogging. It’s magic. (sorry for rambling…on with the post!).

Because we arrived at 11:30, we each could find a parking place in the usually hellishly crowded strip mall parking lot. An auspicious omen. Note: Cathy’s picture here must have been taken some morning at 7 AM. I’ve never seen the lot so empty: (9:30 a.m.) (on a Sunday.) (Just before meeting Mr. C for dim sum across the street)

The interior of the restaurant with a lot of nice wood surfaces seemed much like it was 10 years ago when I first started coming there. One thing that has changed are the prices (not that we were expecting . . . ). The soft tofu soups now range from $7-$9. And my mouth was set or one of those soups. The menu lists numerous combinations of ingredients that one can have with the broth and soft tofu. The range of add-ins includes things like pork, pollock roe, kimchi, shrimp, mushrooms, oysters, clams, fresh peppers, and more. If my memory serves — and at my age that is always problematic — more different combinations were listed than before, and the list of possibilities ends with the challenge to put together your own combination. In addition, customers are given the choice of spice level and of regular or vegetarian broth.

I must confess that I didn’t look at the rest of the menu, but Cathy did.

ed and I had lunch the day before, at Asia Cafe, and the Nem Khao was still on my mind…

I wanted crispy -not fried- rice. OK, I *needed* some more crispy rice. So anyhow, we ordered. (I am inserting this photo of Nem Khao from Asia Cafe, so everyone will know what I am talking about).

The first food to hit the table was the pan chan. I thought the selection and quantity were little disappointing. On previous visits, seaweed covered with a rich deep chili sauce had been the highlight of the side dishes. It was woefully missing:

The kimchi, however, was quite good with a slight touch of sweetness to offset the pickled crunch of the cabbage:

Then my soup (a seafood combination with mushroom and bell peppers) arrived bubbling hot and steaming:

After taking a few pictures, I grabbed one of the eggs that sit on every table top and broke it into the soup:

Soon I broke up the egg with my chopsticks and whisked it throughout the bowl, adding touches of eggy richness throughout and cooling the soup enough so that I could begin eating.

For me, this was perfect soup. The spiciness of the broth flavored up all the ingredients. And the textures — from the creaminess of the tofu to the chewiness of the mushrooms and the crunch of the peppers — were wonderful. This is one of those dishes that tastes so much better than it looks:

Along with the soup came what they call brown rice:

Obviously, brown means different things to different folks. Actually, the color in the rice comes from the few dark grains that stain the rest of the white rice purple. It tastes slightly sweet and is chewy and hearty…Sometimes I describe foods so chewy and fiber-y as "tasting healthy" (which means no flavor) and in this case, it is just really good rice. A rice I have a craving for, and I don’t usually crave rice.

Cathy ordered Hot Stone mixed rice with mushrooms ($10)

It arrived looking like:

and it sizzled.

(here’s a detail view):

Nice close up,ed.

After mixing:

Thanks for taking the photos, ed. I was so busy waiting for the rice to get cool enough to eat after scraping the hot stone pot that I didn’t take any photos…oh, we were talking, too…

My bowl of goodness was topped with sliced enoki and shitake mushrooms, as well as cabbage, carrots, corn and some onion. It satisfied my cravings for flavor as well as texture of crispiness of the rice formed on the hot sides of the pot. The veggies were very fresh and just enough fresh in flavor which contrasted with the crispy rice I was scraping. Although, I did add kimchee for more flavor once I got to the non-crispy rice part of the meal…

and between the two of us, we ate up our pan chan…

and everything else!

The food and company were excellent. Let’s do it again. I agree!

Balboa Tofu House 4646 Convoy San Diego 92123 Website

10 New Pictures

June 21, 2008 ed fromyuma What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, yoso-silly

This is ed (from Yuma). I thoroughly enjoyed looking at Kirk’s 10 favorite pictures from this blog. I see Cathy is also working on a 10 picture post. I thought it would be fun to do something similar – except with one change – here are 10 pictures that have never before been posted at mmm-yoso!!!

Don’t despair, I will refrain from posting pictures of trees:

And pictures of flowers:

Well, except for those pictures. What follows are 10 of my favorite or most interesting food pictures that you have never seen before.

First, this photo that looks like some sort of abstract modernist painting is actually a close-up of a chile relleno. This was my first experiment using the close-up feature on my Canon:

This next picture is a mystery. It is clearly a bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup somewhere in San Diego, but I have no memory of how it tasted or where I bought it. It had transparent noodles and was served with a sprig of basil, bean sprouts, and jalapeno slices. Any ideas?

For several years, one of my very favorite restaurants in the Monterey area was owned by chef Robert Kincaid and was called the White House. Contrary to what some of you are probably thinking, it was not called that because it served up a lot of baloney and made a hash out of everything. Rather, instead, the restaurant occupied a beautiful old Victorian mansion with a white exterior near downtown Pacific Grove . As well as serving tasty food, most of the dishes there were also beautiful to look at. Here, if memory serves, are two East/West fusion potstickers, stuffed with minced pork and served with an Asian sauce:

On my last visit before the restaurant’s untimely demise, I had a roast pork loin dinner that was almost too beautiful to eat. The operative word, however, is almost:

This next picture makes it into this post not because it is exceptionally beautiful food, but because Tico’s in Marina (a few miles north of Monterey) has served me the best breakfasts that I have had since . . . since? Well, some of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had:

Although I have tasted fluffier omelettes, Tico’s hollandaise sauce is to die for (and no, that is not just what my cardiologist says). The home fries are also the best – perfectly seasoned all over, crunchy on the outside, and moist and tender within. If Leff is right (is that a paradox or an oxymoron?) maybe these good home fries are a trend.

At home, I rarely take pictures of my cooking – and there is probably a reason (many reasons?) for that – but one evening the beautiful colors of an heirloom tomato that I had cut up sent me searching for my camera:
I should add that I love heirloom tomatoes. Now that I can get them April-November (these were photoed in November!), I am nearly in heaven. I just wish I had taken more pictures of all the varieties because I have easily eaten enough that I could have done a post purely of tomato portraits.

Of course, my favorite unpublished pics would have to include at least one featuring raw seafood. Here is a photo with some of the items served in a recent chirashi bowl at Sakura:

Since we’re on the subject of seafood (any segue in a storm), I thought you might enjoy this picture of a shrimp ceviche tostada from TJ’s Marisquero in Yuma:

Right after I moved to Yuma, I read about the basics of Sonoran cuisine in some Chowhound posts by Canon Fowler (no relation to my camera) who grew up in Tucson in the 20s and 30s. Among many other matters, he wrote about Sonoran enchiladas (also called patty enchiladas), but such simple fare is hard to find these days. The best incarnation of them currently in Yuma are the enchiladas del Piso at Viejo Loco, a dish composed of two thick handmade corn tortillas – so thick they are almost corn cakes – set side by side and covered with sauce, cheese, and topping. This day, I ordered it with green sauce and espinaca (spinach). While not a traditional sauce or topping, it tasted very good:

There is only one fitting way to finish this post. As a way of thanking Kirk for sharing his blog with all of us and letting me occasionally post here, I offer up a photo of an actual loco-moco from Yuma:

One Meal at Karinya Thai

June 15, 2008 ed fromyuma Seafood, Thai Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!

Who knows what Kirk and Cathy and the rest of the yosoers and FOYs have been doing for today? All we know is that ed (now from Yuma) is sharing his return to one of his ol' stompin' grounds.

10 years ago, when I was ed (from PB), one of my favorite restaurants was Karinya Thai, located just a couple of blocks from the beach on Garnet. While I never much liked the stirfries that ask one to match a particular meat or tofu choice with selected vegetables, I regularly enjoyed dishes like the papaya salad, some of the curries, and the whole fish.

Recently I realized that I had not eaten at this restaurant in at least five years, so I decided to try it once more for old times' sake.

As before, the fairly large multi-roomed restaurant was nicely decorated with Siamese knickknacks, creating a pleasant atmosphere that is highlighted by classical music playing in the background:

One major difference in the restaurant today compared with 10 years ago is the relative lack of business. Throughout the time that I dined, only one other table in this room was occupied, and few other tables anywhere in the restaurant had customers.

I began with the papaya salad ($6.95), and it was as good as my memory of it:

While Kirk might like a little more funkiness, a hint of fish sauce pervaded the dish. In terms of spicy hotness, I had requested it to be seven (on a scale of one to 10), and the salad did not disappoint. As you can see from this picture, the entire salad was flecked with chips of red and green Thai chilies:

My eyes watered, my nose ran, and my mouth burned. It was good.

The dressing finished with a slight note of sweetness and was a perfect match with the crunchy green papaya strips and even brought out the taste of the bits of peanut scattered throughout.

Service this evening was excellent. The helpful young man who waited on the table recommended a good selection from the modest wine list, kept refilling my water glass, and even brought me a full carafe of water. Several times during the meal he came by to make sure that everything was fine.

For my main course, I ordered whole fish with spicy three flavored sauce. On this evening, the fish was a striped bass priced at $18.95. When it arrived, it looked beautiful – in a fried and sauced dead fish sort of way:

The sauce was supposed to be spicy hot (again I had requested a seven), but very little picante fire was discernible. Instead, the primary flavors were garlic, diced bell peppers of various colors, and a sour note that contrasted with a background sweetness:

When I began eating the fish, I started with fleshy part of one side, giving me several bites of flaky moist fish:

Quickly, however, I ran out of flaky moist fish. Large parts of the fish had been fried to crunchy doneness:

As I was eating the fish, I was reminded of a recent trip to Mar Azul in Yuma, where the waitperson asked if we wanted the whole fish fried light or fried hard. At Karinya, this fish was definitely fried hard. Except for the fleshy central filets on each side, the fish was generally crunchy and not especially fishy in flavor. The following pictures illustrate the condition of most of the fish:

I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in Mr. Fish. I always say that I prefer whole fish preparations that yield flaky, moist, and tender morsels of fish. OK, that's what I say, but on this evening, the culinary puritanism in my brain was overwhelmed by the hedonism of all this deep fried crunchiness in my mouth. And in fact, I couldn't stop eating the fish until all that was left was head, tail, and bones:

Even with my conflicted feelings about the fish, I would happily return to Karinya. I wonder if the curries are still good.

It would be nice to finish the record of this visit to Karinya with some conclusions. Instead, like Mr Fish, this post doesn't have conclusions, just an ending.

Karinya Thai 4475 Mission Blvd San Diego (enter from Garnet), CA (858) 270-5050

Tres Tacos at Mariscos German

June 5, 2008 ed fromyuma Mexican Restaurants, Taco Shops, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!

Kirk and Cathy and all the other yosoers are eating, taking pics, and having fun. Today, though, ed (from Yuma) wants to share three tacos with you and explain how he broke an important law.

I’ve never been very good at following directions or abiding by the rules. On the other hand, one culinary law rarely violated since I moved to Yuma is my rule against eating Mexican food anwhere outside of Yuma or Mexico. Yes, I know there is great Mexican food elsewhere, but when I go to San Diego or Monterey, for example, I am far more interested in other cuisines. I get enough good Mexican stuff around home.

So when I pulled into the empty lot next to a liquor store that surrounds the Marisco German truck at 35th and University, I felt a small twinge of guilt:

I had my reasons, however. First, almost all of the Chowhound buzz about this small San Diego chain of Mexican seafood eateries (estilo San Felipe) has been very positive. Second, Chris, a friend of yoso, compared Mar Azul, an excellent Mexican seafood house that I had just posted about, with Mariscos German. Third, as I was leaving my favorite San Diego used book store at around dinner time last Wednesday, I glanced up and noticed that the cross street was 35th. I took that as an auspicious omen and headed up 35th until I found the taco truck.

I’m certainly glad I did. Shortly after placing my order, I was handed a small styrofoam cup full of broth (free with order). The plastic spoon dredged up bits and pieces of fish and veggies:

After taking that picture, I ate the other solid goodies from the soup and then spooned a little bit of the broth into my mouth. Oh wow! The stock had a depth of fishy flavor like the one at Mar Azul, but even more complexity, all of which was highlighted by a significant picante hit of red chili. In my haste to wolf down the flavorful contents of the little cup, I forgot to take a picture of the broth by itself. Oops.

Soon after I finished the soup, I was handed a styrofoam tray about 10 to 12 inches long filled by three enormous tacos (each $3.75):

The gigantic taco on the left is a smoked marlin (marlyn) taco. In the center (partly covered by its neighbors) is a gobernador taco. And to the right, the taco is octopus (pulpo). I had wanted to try the scallop (callo) taco, but the truck was out of them.

My favorite taco of this trio has to be the gobernador:

The perfectly cooked shrimp had been grilled together with bell pepper slices, tomato wedges, slices of celery, and perhaps onion on a very hot griddle, charring some of the veggies and leaving little flecks and bits of smoky goodness throughout. Then the shrimp and veggies were placed in a warm yellow corn tortilla on which a layer of white cheese had been melted (much as in a vampire taco). Perhaps the cheese serves the same purposes as on vampiros – adding richness and flavor while keeping the tortilla from being soaked with juices.

The taco de pulpo was similar in having the seafood with veggies cooked at high temperature before being put onto the tortilla:

All the tacos were so huge that no way could I eat them in standard taco fashion before I had consumed half the filling with the forks provided. Not until then, could I fold the tortilla over small enough to cram into my rather large mouth. As I forked my way down into the generous filling, I discovered some of the sources of that great Smoky charred taste:

As you can see, many of the vegetables showed the dark scars of the hot griddle. The flavor of the octopus taco (a tako taco?) was outstanding, at least partly because of the smokiness. On the other hand, the pulpo was a bit chewy for my taste. I guess I have been so spoiled by the tender octopus in most Mexican cocketeles that I have forgotten how chewy octopus usually is.

The most powerfully flavored taco was the marlyn:

The combination of flavors in this taco is outstanding. Here the grilled charred vegetables were complemented by the deep, rich, dense, smoky, fishiness of the chunks of smoked marlin. And the veggies in this taco also added a welcome contrastive crunch. As with the gobernador, the tortilla was covered with mild white cheese, adding a smooth richness. Again, the taco was far too gigantic to be picked up and eaten in a standard fashion. Let me say that I am not complaining about being given too much taco for my money; I repeat the point only because actual size does not always register in photos.

My one and only complaint about this wonderfully smoky and fishy treat is that it was a bit greasy:

Of course, as soon as I spotted the grease I stopped eating. Yeah right, who am I kidding? – that’s not gonna happen with something that tastes this good. Plus, sometimes an intrepid reporter has to put him/herself at risk for the good of the community. Yeah right.

In no way should this little report about three tacos be confused with a real review. The three tacos that I ordered are similar in many ways, but the truck at 35th and University offers 15 different tacos, eight cockteles, aguachile, tostadas, burros, ceviches, and caldos.

In addition, Mariscos German also has trucks at 3269 Beyer Blvd, and 174050 S. 43rd, and a restaurant at 2802 Ocean View Blvd. Try one, you’ll like it!

Mariscos German, 35th & University, 619-239-2351, Open 10 AM – 7 PM daily.

Mariscos Mar Azul: Yuma

May 24, 2008 ed fromyuma Mexican Restaurants, Seafood, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

Everybody at mmm-yoso is eating, no doubt. Kirk is not only tasting his way through San Diego, but still has posts about his great trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Cathy is taking photos and eating food all over San Diego county. Still, today, ed (from Yuma) wants to share the latest entry into the world of Yuma Mexican restaurants – and this place is new and different and bueno.

March 2011 update: Mar Azul is still going strong. Since they got a liquor license, customers can no longer bring wine, but Mar Azul will happily sell you beer.

Tina, whose work often takes her to South Yuma County, kept telling me about an awesome Mexican seafood restaurant located on Somerton Avenue in Somerton, Arizona.

Before we could make it down to this place, Mar Azul, I read in the newspaper that the restaurant was opening a branch in Yuma at 1314 4th Ave — in the back of the strip mall anchored by the large health food store. Needless to say, I stopped by for lunch soon after the place opened:

The space had been completely refurbished and remodeled, and was clean, bright, and welcoming. I could do without the flatscreen TV, but I am sufficiently used to televised distraction in restaurants these days that it really doesn't bother me much.

In addition to sodas and stuff like iced tea, the restaurant offers a nice range of aguas frescas: horchata, pineapple, jamaica, and limonade, the last two of which are especially tasty:

As soon as one receives her/his drink, a bowl of split key limes hits the table so that one can tart up one's beverage or add some tang to the seafood. Since Mar Azul has no liquor license, they are okay with customers bringing bottles of wine, and I have found that New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs go well with Mexican seafood.

Among the appetizers, the toritos are hard to resist, the crunchy breading covering the fresh yellow chile stuffed with cheese and chopped shrimp ($1.25):

Even better is an order of red aguachile (also available in green)(13.99):

These uncooked shrimp are prepared much like ceviche, and for those of us used to cooked shrimp, they look strange, almost like raw oysters, but the flavor is outstanding:

The chewiness of the shrimp is accented by the hot and spicy, slightly sour flavor of the marinade. The accompanying avocado, red onion strips, cucumbers, and tomato slices make this almost into a salad course. This is the only dish I have ever had in Yuma that comes close to the excellent cebiche at Latin Chef.

For those who want some thing even more like a salad, I heartily recommend the stuffed avocado ($6.99), available topped with either fish or shrimp ceviche. A whole large avocado is peeled, cut in half, and depitted. The two halves are then surrounded by romaine lettuce and covered with a generous amount of the ceviche. Here's a picture of the whole order with the fish ceviche:

Here's a picture of half an avocado and some of the shrimp ceviche (notice that this shrimp has been cooked before being marinated):

For soup lovers, the restaurant offers fish soup, shrimp soup, and seven seas soup (siete mares), none of which I have tried yet, but given the quality of everything else, I am sure they are outstanding. I have had the clam chowder, which was smooth and creamy and showed off an excellent fishy stock. Though not full of clams, the soup contained numerous chunks of potato. A friend battling a cold ordered the broth ($2.00), which she said was very deeply flavored and even contained a shrimp:

The restaurant also serves a complete range of Mexican seafood cocktails. Although they are a little more expensive than the ones from the seafood taco trucks like Juanita's (this medium sized one is $9.99), the campechana is very well made with fresh scallops, an oyster, perfectly cooked shrimp, and chunks of tender octopus, accented by chopped red onion and diced cucumber and all brought together by a slightly fishy tomato water:

The seafood tacos here are also very good. The gobernador ($2.25) is very much like a folded shrimp quesadilla:

Inside, it is full of chopped shrimp, chopped tomatoes, and melty mild cheese:

While this is not health food, it is extremely tasty.

The fish tacos ($1.25 apiece) are also outstanding:

The generous pieces of fish are wrapped in breading and fried perfectly, their exteriors crunchy and their interiors moist and flaky. The cabbage, pico de gallo, and crema are a perfect accompaniment:

Add some of the very spicy and flavorful house salsa, and they are even better:

In addition, the restaurant also serves perfectly fried whole fish (tilapia ($9.50) or red snapper ($13.99)). Served with rather mediocre french fries, three corn tortillas, salsa, and cabbage, the fish has been wonderful both times that we ordered it. This is a picture of the red snapper:

In each case, the fish was cooked expertly, fully done and yet moist and flaky inside. These close-ups of the snapper (first pic) and the tilapia (second pic) illustrate both the perfection of the frying technique and the dusting of spices that adds flavor to each one:

Mar Azul is not the first attempt to establish a Mexican seafood restaurant in Yuma. Its predecessors have not been successful. I have hopes for this place, however. First, it is better in quality and selection than those seafood houses that have gone out of business. Second, I am amazed by how the business has grown in the short time the restaurant has been open. On my first visit, I was alone – except for the waitstaff. Today, only a few weeks later, eight tables were occupied at lunchtime, and someone came in for take out.

It is also nice that instead of going to Somerton for the restaurant, the restaurant came to Yuma for me.

Mar Azul, 1314 S. 4th Ave., Ste. 5, Yuma AZ. 928-329-6606. Open 11-9 daily. Also at 109 E. Somerton Ave., Somerton AZ. 928-722-0117:

Pupuseria y Taqueria Cabañas 2: Yuma

April 29, 2008 ed fromyuma Salvadoran Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

Kirk still has tales of Southeast Asia. Cathy is roaming about looking for food in San Diego, but today ed (from Yuma) finishes his discussion about the best Salvadoran restaurant in Yuma.

When I walked into Cabañas for my second visit, my idea of Salvadoran food was pupusas and tamales. Okay, I'd also eaten some fried plantains at a couple of other Salvadoran places, but I didn't find those interesting enough to consider going out of my way to eat them again.

On that second visit, I was hoping to try some tamales, but it seems that the restaurant only has tamales on the weekend. After some linguistic misunderstandings, I ended up ordering soup – though I wasn't sure what kind of sopa it was going to be. When the soup arrived, accompanied by a hand made corn tortilla, it looked pretty much like most soups look:

With the first taste of the broth, I realized that this was very different. Rarely have I tasted a broth with such depth of flavor and width of complexity. Perhaps the original stock was a chicken flavor (perhaps), but all I could taste was the intense flavor of a multitude of vegetables with a hint of shrimp.

My first bites were of those tasty vegetables. There was onion, carrot, zucchini, potato, and some other squash like vegetable. All of them had contributed to the incredible broth. Hiding underneath the surface of vegetables were numerous fresh tasting pink shrimp:

The shrimp was perfectly cooked for shrimp in a soup – tender and juicy. Also, please notice the rich golden color of that broth. That deep color matched the deep flavors of the soup. I'm not making this up folks; this was ultimate soup.

Since that visit, the soups have become the main attraction of the restaurant for me. Each broth is intensely savory and complex. My culinary heritage tends to be west central Europe, and the standard vegetables that go into most of my traditional soups are onion, celery, and carrot (and cabbage when appropriate). At this restaurant, squashes (and/or squash like items) make a major contribution to the breadth and depth of the flavor. This makes some primal sense as squashes were the very first domesticated crop in the New World – around 10,000 years ago. So these Salvadoran soups have an ancient heritage as well as a great taste.

This is well illustrated by what they call "chicken soup." The soup itself is a rich chicken broth that tastes primarily of zucchini squash. The bowl is full of zucchinis cut into inch and a half slices. There is not a single piece of chicken in the bowl:

The nicely roasted chicken, along with rice and an undressed salad, is served on the side:

The leg and the thigh were mildly seasoned and have a nice crusty exterior. The insides of each piece were juicy and tender:

I advised Tina to dump her rice into the bowl with the stock and the zucchinis, as I usually do when I am served rice with a Mexican soup. The more I think about this dish, the more I believe that the chicken also could have been broken up and put into the soup. That would have intensified the chicken flavor of the stock (as if that broth needed any help) and added nicely flavored chicken bites to it. It also would have been a real chicken soup that avoided the boiled chicken texture and flavor that sometimes mars caldo de pollo.

The least wonderful of the four soups that I have tried at Cabañas was the beef rib soup. You have heard of damning with faint praise; this is praising with a faint damn. It was very good, but just not quite as good as the others.

When I asked about what soup was available that day , the young man said "beef rib soup," but then he had to turn and ask the cook a question, and I suspect that he was asking whether the soup was ready because he was answered with an affirmative and then he assured me that they had the soup.

The bowl was packed with the range of vegetables (potatoes, squashes, and carrots being most predominate) and two huge chunks of beefy rib meat:

Compared with most caldo de res that I have had in Yuma, this was a good soup. The beef was rich and flavorful, with just a bit of fat:

My only complaint (and that is too strong a word, really) is that the soup would've been better with a little more cooking. The beef was tender, but not falling apart. My spoon couldn't break the two huge chunks up into bitesized pieces, so it became finger food. The stock had a nice beefy flavor, but it was the least intense of any of the soups I have had at the restaurant. Maybe another hour on the stove would have changed that.

One interesting note about that soup was the unusual vegetable that I found hiding in it:

Do you have any idea what this is? At first I thought it might be some sort of marrow bone since it had an obvious ring around it. Then I took a small bite and realized that this was indeed a vegetable of some sort, but I had never seen such a thing before (or so I thought). When I asked the young man what it was, he said it was a male banana – whatever that is. Perhaps he meant plantain. In any case, after I popped the piece into my mouth and started chewing, the flavor of savory banana was apparent. Nonetheless, I was totally amazed to have a chunk of banana, skin and all, in a beef rib soup. Another sign that this place is different from anywhere else I've ever eaten.

I have saved the best for last. One day they offered cow hoof soup. When I ordered it, I was warned that it had tripe as well as a cow hoof in it. Rather than deterring me, that excited me. As with many of their other soups, this one didn't immediately look at all strange (though in this pic it does look fuzzier than in real life):

Like their other soups, squashes and potatoes were evident throughout, but a major element in the flavor of the broth was tripe. And the bowl contained numerous pieces of flavorful and chewy cow stomach:

At first, I noticed that this was a different tripe from the little pillows of tender joy that I am used to in menudo. This had more chew – though it was by no means tough – and a good tripe flavor. But then I discovered that the great tender joy of this incredible soup was resting on the bottom of the bowl, a cow hoof:

Having never encountered such a thing before, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I found was a mass of bone covered with the most tender and delectable soft tendon. These gelatinous emanations were just at the edge of melting into soup. This is as close to a religious experience I can have while eating. The words that come to mind are etherial, ephemeral, diaphonous, luxurious, transubstantive. This is how the flesh of angels would taste. Oh my god, what a textural delight.

Up to this point I had not understood why the tripe was the chewy kind, but now I realized the essential contrast that underlies this wonderful bowl of joy. The mouth feel of the various vegetables, the chew of the tripe, and now this miraculous cow hoof covered a gigantic range of pleasurable textures. In my reverie, I involuntarily began the mmm-yoso dance, eyes closed, arms bent, swaying side to side in my seat.The only down side was that I had to explain the mmm-yoso dance to Tina, who was probably wondering if I was having some sort of a seizure.

It seems somehow appropriate to end this post which began with me searching for a tamale with a tamale. Since I have been so blown away by the soup at this restaurant, I have had only one of their tamales – a sweet corn tamal that made a perfect dessert for a meal:

As you can see from the picture, the masa is full of chunks and flecks of sweet corn. What you can't see from the picture is that the tamal came with wonderfully sour crema. With the balancing of sweet and sour, this was a perfect treat. Tina said that she had eaten similar things at fancy restaurants. Of course, she added, then they cost a lot more.

Someday I will have to try more of their tamales, but right now, it would be hard to go there and not order another bowl of soup, particularly if there was a cow foot in it.

Last Sunday, Tina and I pulled up and the place was CLOSED. I almost cried. I stopped by today, and they were open – just had some church festival last Sunday. Woo-hoo! Sometimes life is good.

Pupuseria y Taqueria Cabañas, 3405 8th St, Yuma AZ. Open every day except Thursdays and special days at church. Open for lunches and dinners.