beno "dj beno" h.'s Profile

technically, no one in our family has allergies; but we're very careful about what we eat.  for example, right now i'm starting my 2012 new year's resolution of eating grains no more than two days a week.  i easily let my son's second birthday be one of the two days for that week since i knew we'd at least have birthday cake that day, and since we got such a nice cake from "let them eat cake!," i'm totally glad i did.

my wife ordered the cake sometime the week before the party.  the shop gave us a lot of options but also gave us some good suggestions about what works well and what doesn't work as well.  my wife sent me out to pick up the cake a couple of hours before the party.  the cake was totally done on time.  a woman was waiting for me with the cake at the kitchen.  i'm not sure, but i _think_ she's the owner.  she was very nice and explained to me more specifics about what she put in the cake and how she made it.  she showed me the cake; and, wow, i was totally impressed right away with how it looked!  i knew my son and his toddler friends would enjoy the cake simply based on the fun, colourful drawings all over it.  i like how, not only was the complete top surface, covered with the drawing, but the outer circumference also had graphics.  that's so thorough!

anyway, the cake was a hit at the party.  not only did it look so fun, it also tasted great!  kids and parents loved it.  moreover, i felt reassured that i could tell the parents that the cake was much healthier than your usual birthday cake.  since i dj a lot of weddings, i'll recommend this bakery in the future to my clients if they have any interest in healthier eating.

i'm so glad that they opened up this gymboree in sunnyvale!  it's not a really big one, but i really think it's the best.

to tell you the truth, the first time i came to this gymboree, i was kind of turned off because the check.in lady was kind of rude to me; and i was getting snubbed based upon my appearance, since i was coming in as a dad without my wife, and i looked having come straight over after skateboarding, and all... however, i have never seen that woman again, and my experiences since then have been nothing but positive.

my 2 year old son is now in the level 5 class, and he seems to love it.  the teachers seem to work really hard.  they set up the room with different playground setups, and they vary it up all the time.  they have the kids exercise their imaginations as they play, so it's not all just physical but also creative.  the teachers are very enthusiastic and energetic.  i think my son usually has natasha as a teacher and she's great.

we had her lead the group at my son's second birthday party.  this is a great place to host a toddler birthday party.  i wasn't sure what to expect of my son's friends since they haven't all been to a gymboree before.  i was worried that some would be shy or scared; but wow, they all had so much fun!  even though she had not met most of the kids before, natasha lead and taught them so well.

natasha and her assistant stephanie were also so helpful with setting up the party itself too.  they helped me unload all the food and drinks and cake, helped set it up, helped serve it, and then helped clean up and load stuff back into my car.  lemme tell you, when hosting your kid's second birthday party, you have a lot on your mind because, at this point, you're entertaining a mix of your friends and your kid's friends along with _their_ parents.  you're trying to keep an eye on your own kid, but you also want to be a good host and make sure the other parents are having fun; so yeah...  i _really_ appreciated all this extra help from natasha and stephanie.

anyway, i know there's so much to think about while raising a toddler; and people will always try to sell you this and sell you that, and everyone wants you to sign up for this class and that class.  however, i think especially _this_ gymobree is a good, complete package for classes as well as parties.

chino is not a great food destination, but i think this has to be the best restaurant in chino if not maybe all of the inland empire.  the people here really know food.  i can proudly say that i found this place on yelp.  this is definitely a case of a yelp success story.  one thing to note though: please make reservations before showing up here.  it's not emphasized enough through yelp; but reservations are not just recommended but pretty much required.  my wife and i didn't get that message via yelp, so we just showed up.  thankfully, the owner denise is very nice, and she managed to squeeze us in even though we didn't have a reservation.  she's really nice, but i don't want to make any promises that she can do the same for you if you just show up; so please, please, please make a reservation first.

i'm from up in the san francisco bay area.  even the owner denise had to admit how that pretty much automatically makes us foodies since the san francisco bay area has so many great, famous restaurants; but, let me tell you, owen's bistro would totally fit in up there amongst the big ones, no problem.  skip all the franchise chain joint in the spectrum and the shoppes and head over to historic downtown for a _real_ culinary experience here at owen's bistro.

since my wife and i didn't call ahead, we didn't know that we had shown up on italian pasta night.  i actually don't usually eat much pasta anymore at restaurants because i'm aiming for more of a gluten.free, minimal carb, grain.restricted diet.  actually, i'm more strict for my son; so, since my wife and i were out on a date night without him, we were happy that it turned out to be italian pasta night since we could enjoy all this wheat.based pasta without worrying about what to feed him. even with the menu being a little more casual on the italian pasta night; wow, everything came out still very impressive, delicious, and well.plated.

on this italian pasta night, the prix fixe was really cheap, $15.  they also had various add.ons and wine on the menu.  in the mood for something bacony, i chose the spaghetti carbonara.  my wife chose the tortellini but also added on a side of italian sausage.  we got a couple of great wines to match.  the buttered bread was amazingly good too, but i didn't want to eat too much of it because i'm trying to be all low.carb and everything, right?  

the food was really delicious, and the service was very attentive, personal, and friendly.  i'm glad i discovered this restaurant on yelp and will try to come back whenever i'm in chino.

why is a good creperie so hard to find?  it's not that i don't love a good crepe just as much as the next guy; but, yeah, i'm almost ready to give up on most creperies.  like, there are the asian crepe places, _those_ tend to impress me more often; but the _french_ creperies most often disappoint.  i'm really starting to think it's not worth trying these kinds of places.  after all, i don't want to waste my gluten/starch/grain allowance on such bad experiences, and i can't find enough creperies that make gluten.free, buckwheat crepes.  la creperie cafe in chino is unfortunately no exception to this dismal trend.

i'm from up in the san francisco bay area, where food is generally much better.  already it's hard to find a good french crepe place up there.  why the heck would i ever expect to find a good one down in chino?

i appreciate that the servers here were very apologetic about all the things that went wrong during our lunch, but these were all things that they really shouldn't have let go wrong in the first place.  when my family entered the restaurant, it was pretty empty except for a few office parties.  i'm totally bewildered as to why these groups chose to torture themselves with this place.  the hostess sat is in a booth, kind of tucked away.  then it took forever for us to get any service.  the busser/runner came first, and he was cool in that he apologised for the slow service and asked for our beverage order.  then it took a long time for a server to come take our order.  right after he took our order, another waitress came and asked for our order.  dude, that's nice; but it totally shows how disorganised they are!

then the waiting resumed; waiting, waiting, and waiting.  i flagged down the busser/runner at least to get my wife's drink.  he apologised; and, yeah, that was cool.  then he brought the peach iced tea, which was nothing special.  he apologised again.  he was very polite.  then the server showed up with our escargot appetizer.  he apologised for the delay and said something about how "it" would be on the house.  i wasn't sure if he was talking about the beverage or the appetizer since both were extremely late.  in either case, he later flat out refused to take either off the bill, so that was totally an empty promise.  the appetizer was okay.  i've had much better escargot, but it wasn't inedible or anything.

then our entree crepes finally arrived.  again, nothing special at all!  my jambalaya crepe was rather soggy, and it only had one shrimp in it.  my wife's seafood crepe in cream sauce was slightly better.  however, _nothing_ really stood out.  the caesar salad that i ordered with my lunch was just so.so.  it had those old school, out.of.the.box croutons on it.  ick!

well, all in all, this was a bad experience.  i shall not return.  the only nice thing about this place was the christmas decorations which were up since we went at the end of december.  that was nice, but everything else was very disappointing.

i'm from the bay area's silicon valley up in northern california, but i visit chino often because my wife's family lives here.  whenever i'm down here, i really want to hit up the chino skate park.  the chino area has two skate park: the chino skate park in ayala park and the chino hills skate park.  the chino skate park is definitely better because it has a real design whereas the chino hills skate park has a "wtf" design.  now that i've skated at quite a few skate parks, i've gotten used to seeing how skate parks easily fall into those two categories: ones with real designs and ones with "wtf" designs.

when you enter the park, you first see a nice street area with pyramids, ledges, rails, and stairs that leads into a tranny flow area that is kind of split into two sides.  in the back, you'll find a steel coping bowl and a concrete coping, tiled pool - both with deep ends.  i just wish this park had a baby bowl.  the mellowest place is the shallow ends of the steel coping bowl.  the pool is fun.  as you drop in, the tranny really sucks you in.  as you hit the wall, your feet get massaged by the tiles as you get ready to experience that pool coping grind.  then you plunge into the deep end and feel the force of the deep end walls.  i feel the pool is a bit tight though.  you got to really get ready to hit wall after wall and pump over each bump or else you'll lose too much speed.  i don't know if it's just me, but i feel the steep coping bowl is a bit slippery.  i'm not sure if it's morning dew, dust, or wax.  i try to tell myself that it's just wax and just to control my slides instead of trying to prevent them.  i notice it gets slippery up at the coping in the shallow ends, but i sometimes even slide out just as i am about to enter the deep end, in which case, i have gotten thrown right into the deep end.  i prefer to wear knee pads while i skate the bowl and pool.

helmet and pads laws are sometimes enforced to some degree.  i have seen a cop come and give lectures to unprotected skaters, but i have yet to see a ticket issued.  usually, it's fine to skate natural and free, without helmet and pads.  personally, i pretty much always wear at least a helmet though since i'm an old guy.  anyway, yeah... as i type this up, i wish i were at the skate park instead of sitting here behind my laptop.  gee, i really just wasted the past like ten minutes.  please appreciate my sacrifice.

wow, this place rocks!  it's the real deal!  my family was looking for a lunch spot in l.a. koreatown on christmas day.  we live up north in silicon valley's koreatown, so we don't know a whole lot of places down here and couldn't find much useful information online.  we saw that the galleria mall was bustling, so we pulled in.  the supermarket, the bakery, some of the little shops, and the food court were all open on christmas day.

we looked at the restaurants, and vons chicken looked like the healthiest, high protein, low carb choice.  we ordered the 8.piece drumstick box for $9.99.  apparently, for $4.99 more, we could have added a whole chicken.  that would have been a great deal but way too much food.  my wife decided to order a kimchi jjigae as an extra dish.  that actually comes off of their 5boon ddookbaegi (5 minute bowl) menu, but this restaurant is actually three restaurants in one.

i'm glad we ordered that kimchi jjigae because the chicken took a while, whereas the kimchi jjigae came out really fast.  the kimchi jjigae was pretty good.  i mean, it was rather standard, but i appreciated how they had lots of dwaeji gogi (pork) in it.

anyway, the vons chicken part of the meal was the real star.  it took a while, but that's because it was so fresh.  i like how oid 8.piece order had one extra drumstick.

the chicken really was baked, not fried.  they slit the drumsticks in such a way that it allows the marinade and heat to penetrate the inner regions without letting the drumstick fall apart.  that's cool!  the order came with our choice of two sauces.  we chose the garlic and carrot sauce and the bool (fire) volcano sauce.  the bool volcano sauce was tasty, although i wish it were spicier.  i think, between these two, i actually prefer the garlic carrot sauce, which was very rich in garlic flavour.  the order also came with a styrofoam tub of chicken moo (daikon radish).  that was a little to sugary for me, but chicken moo isn't the most important thing to me.  i wish the also gave yangnyuhm gochoo (marinated peppers), but at least i had some from the banchan from the kimchi jjigae.

one thing is that i wish they used like organic chicken and used less sugar.  one of my favourite parts about this restaurant is how well they package your order in the box and then in the bag.  the packaging is in authentic korean style.  the bag even had pictures of some trendy kpop boy band.  i think they are u.kiss.  that's cool!  i wish we had a vons chicken up in silicon valley koreatown.

while traveling down from the san francisco bay area to socal, my family stopped in thousand oaks for dinner and discovered this gem.  the restaurant is attached to a relatively plain hotel.  from the outside, i could tell that it was a nice restaurant, but i thought it looked empty.  however, that was just because most people were seated in the dining room with the bar, and it was a weeknight after all.

the restaurant has a very international fusion menu.  when my wife said she found a tapas place, i expected only latin.american or spanish food; but they do lots of good asian and californian dishes.

we ordered the shrimp harissa, the beer salad, the vietnamese pork belly, the jamaican jerk chicken, and the braised short ribs.  mmm, everything was very delicious.

the waitress, the host, and the busser were all very nice and polite.  we had our toddler son with us.  i'm glad that the host knew to seat us apart from all the childless couples and young adult parties.  our son's pretty good, but i always appreciate being away from glaring eyes of people that don't like to see or hear kids.  actually, this restaurant is surprisingly family friendly.  we saw other families there.  we weren't the only ones.  when i apologised to the waitress for how my son left food bits everywhere, she told me not to worry about it and that she has three kids and that our mess was not even a mess.  wow, she was even cooler than i had thought!

yeah, this is a cool restaurant run by cool people .  i noticed that the menu pages had some bible verses.  that reminded me of in.n.out (in a good way).  the owners must have some decent understanding of spirituality.

if i ever find myself in the area again, i surely hope we can return.

all our dishes were great: the shrimp harissa, the vietnamese pork belly, the jamaican jerk chicken, the heirloom beets, and the braised grass.fed shortribs.  wow!  they all rocked.

this place has amazing banchan.  like, i get sick of hearing people say, "i judge a korean restaurant by their banchan."  people seem to say that too often, as if just to sound cool; kind of like, "oh, you guys think you know how to judge korean restaurants; but, let me tell you, you don't know korean food.  you're looking at the wrong things.  like, i know korean food; and i only look at the banchan," etc.  anyway, i have to say that _this_ restaurant had amazing banchan.  when i saw all this banchan come out; i had to think, "hrm, maybe they'll skimp on the entrées."  well, yeah; the entrées in our special set menu c were not huge; but i get the feeling that this restaurant focuses more on _variety_ than sheer quantity.  it's like going out for tapas instead of claim jumper.

i live in santa clara koreatown and work close to home; so i'm not too far from all those indian businesses up and down el camino real in sunnyvale and santa clara.  i eat a lot of indian food, so i'm not necessarily easily impressed by just any ol' indian restaurant.  however, whenever i got to the mynt, i'm surprised by how well this place impresses me even if its away from the epicenter of indian cuisine in the south bay area.

it has good variety: some authentic south indian dishes as well as nice "northern indian" dishes.  i can't find many buffets that serve pani puri even out where i live.  i like how they have the yelp discount when you check in.  the people that run the restaurant are very friendly.

this place has very cheap gas, but it only has four pumps; so the lines are very long.  also, my pump kept stopping early on me.  anyway, the most important drawback to this place it doesn't have enough pumps, so you have to wait a while to get your gas.  furthermore, which direction the "line" goes can be confusing at times.