A glorious Thanksgiving weekend

I've just come back from the Thanksgiving weekend I had in San Diego, where I was born and raised, and where most of my family still lives. You should be aware of the following equation: Filipino family + holiday + son/daughter coming from a location more than 2 hrs. away = getting fed almost constantly for the entire weekend. That's pretty much true. Anyway, here's what was served in my folks' house in SD:


We had a smallish turkey - for about 15 people. And we had around 15 guests, so it was rather perfect. When I was really young, we would have many more than 15 guests, and the turkey would be a lot bigger. We'd also have leftovers up the ying-yang - it was so difficult to get rid of them! The one thing that I know I couldn't exactly reproduce on this table is not visible in this photo: my mother's gravy (giblets and neck meat included). It is the best! You'll have to take my word for it ;)

The day after, I decided to go to one of my favorite areas in SD: the Kearny Mesa area around Convoy St. Insiders know that this is where the top East Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Korean cuisines) are to be found. A sort of "Asian restaurant row", so to speak. As for me, I went to a Szechuan restaurant that was tucked away in a street some distance away from the main Convoy restaurant row called "Ba Ren", where I ordered the mabo tofu, of course. This version had that spicy and numbing flavor combination that is a must for this dish. A definite winner. I'll have to order the "water-boiled" dishes the next time around. I also did some Asian grocery shopping.

Last night, I went to the same area with a couple of really good friends from high school to eat at a Korean BBQ restaurant called Boo Cho. Unlike the restaurant in Oxnard, this place uses real charcoal for their tabletop grills, which really makes a difference in taste. This place did not disappoint. My friends had ordered lightly salted beef fillet and marinated short rib (kalbi, remember?); I ordered the samgyeopsal (literally "three-layered skin/flesh"), a term used for pork belly. The pork used this time around was from a special, rather luxurious breed known as Berkshire (or in Japanese, kurobuta). This pig has extremely balanced proportions of meat and fat in the belly, and everywhere else while we're at it. I'm definitely going back to that place.


The panchan at the Boo Cho Korean BBQ restaurant in San Diego.


Holding a crispy slice of Berkshire samgyeopsal. You can see the grill in the center of the table.