Fresh Guacamole and Mexican Potato Skins

Went to celebrate L's birthday tonight in Acapulco, the Mexican restaurant on George's street. Been there a few times before (got my surprise birthday bash there) and the food is always yummy albeit a teeny bit pricier than a lot of other places. But then a lot of other places don't make their guacamole fresh and tangy like Acapulco does, or their fajitas spicy and sizzling, and the desserts oh my....well I could go on.

I've never tried the chilli, which was trés tempting but I was ravenous and you know when you're super hungry and you want to 'bite' into something not suck or slurp it? Well I was in a bite-some mood (when am I ever not?) so I forego the veggie chilli (yet again) for my tried and trusted fave: The enchiladas (I used to watch an ol Winnie the Pooh episode when I was a young kid where Eyore made enchiladas for everyone, I remember thinking then how exotic they sounded and wishing I could have me some enchiladas) : Soft tortilla wraps filled with vegetables and refried beans, served with sweetcorn and Mexican rice, drizzled all over with melted cheese, guacamole and spectacular sour cream! There's something about Mexican food that is very filling. Usually we skip out on the starters but since it was L's birthday we decided to splurge a bit and went for the combo starter for 3 even though there were 4 of us: it had some usual fare, the onion rings, the nachos, the buffalo wings but the two things that made my tastebuds hop into a space shuttle and rocket into space were the mini Corn Chilli Sizzlers deep fried baby corn and whole jalapeno chillies filled with soft cheese and the Mexican spud skins filled with cheese, sour cream and chives...yummy! ofcourse it came with salsa, sour cream and some spanking fresh guacamole, which was utterly sublime! It transported me right back to California. Nowhere in Dublin have I had such good guacamole (as of yet, not even Taco Taco!)

My friends got sizzling fajitas and Tostadas. Dessert as always is highly recommended in Acapulco. We were so full yet who could resist the deep-fried icecream, deep fried dish of bananas, caramel and cream in a tortilla wrap (quite tasty) while I had hot chocolate fudge cake with ice-cream. I usually dont like choc cakes (Yes for a cake lover it''s quite weird but I find choc desserts quite blasé usually) but since I got one at my birthday surprise party which my friends threw I've been sold on this cake. It's warm, soft and melts in your mouth along with ice-cream and gooseberry (I think that's what it is, but need to check that) sauce. The cake was as good but the portion was tiny compared to the last time. Not happy.

Oh and the service was so much better this time. Nice waitresses and cool manager who waved goodbye to us as we left as well as wishing L and her sis a happy birthday!

More Choc Soup shennanigans

So I decided to take my friends to Chocolate Soup, and this time we all got to experiment. I got the French toast, which aint nothin' like a French toast. It's more toast with cream cheese, and walnuts. Served with maple syrup (I heart maple syrup). Now I was in the mood for something sweet and the toastie was very savoury unless I dipped it completely in maple syrup, which I'm guessing was the idea (although not enough maple syrup) but probably more appropriate as breakfast and not as dessert. The guys got Fresh fruit fondue which was quite smashing, fruit was fresh (did not taste like out of a can), the choc was bitter (although some did not like that) and it also came with marshmallows and popcorn! trés cute! J asked for a choc-fudge sundae and they gave her choc soup instead. So not right! (Just the other day I was complaining about the crappy service in Ireland when it comes to food and am not happy to say that unfortunately choc soup aren't too big into their customer service either)

Anyway J asked twice if that was her sundae, and the bewildered manager told her (quite harshly) "Yes it's hot chocolate sundae" so J was like whatever, maybe she was wrong. Of course one spoonful and she knew that it was chocolate soup not sundae. She felt sick, cos 'eating' choc soup is like eating hot chocolate with a spoon. And copious amounts of whipped cream. How can you mix soup up with sundae? Duh!

An hour later, and the chocolate fondue in the cup had solidified, that's how cold it was. See JL looking bemused.

Everyone loved the location, one thing I hadn't noticed before was how you could walk on this see through glass strip on the floor oh, and the Habitat lights rock!

Next time I'm trying the Brownie-icecream sandwich! and their hot fudgalicious cake!

PS: L told me that apparently Haagen Dazs do fondue as well, and so do Brasserie 66, next stop...Fondue baby!

More Black Forest Huntin

Marks and Spencers in Jervis has a really nice bakery section where they do fresh cakes and pastries. (I highly recommend the Tiramisu - even better than the one in restaurants)

A small, dark circular cake thingy caught my eye, and the little sign beside it said Black Forest Delice....Delice?? hmm what the hell I thought, so I bought a piece. After what was like half an hour in the queue. I took a bite before I was even out of the store. It wasn't black forest. It was a chocolate cake, one layer immersed in some (yummy) syrup with a white fudgy layer in the middle and more chocolate on the top. Not Black Forest. Oh no. Another cake going incognito as the Big BF. But they can't fool me. Waste of a €3.20 though. Should have taken a picture to expose the culprit.

Until next time on the Great Black Forest Hunt....!

Chocolate soup...?

I happened to chance across a futuristic-looking* little cafe on Debenham's second floor on Henry Street the other day, called Chocolate Soup. What an odd name for a cafe I thought, soup and cholocate, weird combo or what?

One glance at the menu and I found out Chocolate soup is actually a dessert that this place specialised in. It's made of chocolate, cream and milk with different flavourings. But I tend to like my soups savoury (and less calorific) so I decided to forego the weird concoction (don't worry I'll be trying it tomorrow or one day) for one of the numerous other sweet delights they had on offer.

Usually cafes in Dublin offer tonnes of French pastries and scones with some stale, defrosted chocolate cake slices or below par cheescakes. But this place is not your ordinary cafe. Among the usual fare, they had, wait for it...chocolate fondue! (shrieks of Oh-my-god) , they had this brownie sandwich which is stuffed with ice-cream and sauce in the middle and they had french toast!

No ordinary French Toast, let me tell you. This French Toast was chock full of yummy-sweet goodness, with ice-cream and bananas and what not. Not only that, they seem to be one of the few places that actually do proper pancakes. And I mean pancakes not crepes. (Note to all European eateries, those flimsy, crispy things are not pancakes (And where's the maple syrup godammit?!)

So there I was standing in the middle of the queue my mind reeling with the various possibilitiesI had to send my taste buds into space, when a creamy demure looking piece of cake caught my eye. It sat next to the humdrum, ubiquitous chocolate cake (Borrrrinnng) and looked like it needed someone to believe in it. And you know what? I went for it. It was called Pear and Cookie cake. Really soft and fluffy, with fresh cream and juicy pears. There was no sign of cookie though. Which is just as well, as biscuits and cake should never meet as far as I'm concerned. Biscuit is cake's poor cousin and they should remain separate. Forever. (Unless it's biscuit and ice-cream or ice-cream and cake, and it's maybe OK for cheesecake but then again cheesecake ain't really cake is it now?)

That's probably one of the best cakes I've had in Dublin in a long time.

*And what's really chic and original about Chocolate Soup (apart from their left-of-field dessert menu) is their seating area: It's a long, narrow corridor slightly jutting out of the second-floor building that looks like it belongs in some trendy part of Tokyo or something.

Search for the Ever Elusive Black Forest

A and I are forever in the search for good, sponge cream cake, none of the frozen stuff you get in the icy department store aisles or the stale icing- sugared pastries in the so-called bakeries here in Dublin.

So there we were in London, strolling down Chinatown and it was nearly Valentine's Day and all the store fronts were decorated with hearts and pink stuff. So distracted by all the ornamentation and filigree, we happened upon across a cute little bakery and went in for a snoop and there they were! Displays of the yummiest looking cakes on earth and they had Black Forest too! Let me put this in context now,I have been searching for the original Black Forest Cake since God Knows When (read: a-very-holy-guacamole-long-time) and it doesn't seem to exist in Ireland. Or Dublin atleast. I ask people and they scratch their heads and look perplexed like I've asked them what the seventy six thousand and two hundred and thirty five squared is by four sixty seven. So they scratch their chins and go "Black Forest...?" "Hmmm maybe in Germany.." "Ummm...ahhhh...ooohhh...yeah I don't know"

Like hello. It's cake, It's black, it's Foresty. Has no-one heard of it?! So imagine my ecstasy when I found what looked like a mini-Black Forest. So, back to London and there's this big sign saying Black Forest cake for £1.79 and the Chinese lady behind the counter nods her head when we ask her "Is this the Black Forest cake?" It didn't look like Black Forest but what the hey, who was I to digress...?

So we packed our mini-Black Forests and headed for the nearest cafe. One spoonful of the cake and the realisation came that we, once again, had been duped.

The 'cakes' in question were swiss rolls, with whipped cream and a glazed cherry on top, disguised as mini-Black-Forests for the poor, uninitiated, English-speaking loser-tourists. There was no sign of maraschino cherries, kirsch, or that stickly sponge filler sandwiched between chocolatey layers that makes the Black Forest so irresistible. The only thing they had in common was the chocolate flavour.

But hey, they were pretty good for a swiss roll.

The search continues...

Holy Guacamole!

So who'd have thunk it that holyguacamole.blogspot had been taken already huh? apparently whoever has taken it, hasn't used it since Nov 2003! 2003 people! Not very philanthropic is it?
what a waste , so I made mine holyguacamoletotally.blogspot. com It's about life and food. and life and more food. and...did I mention food? I love food.

But I find it really hard to get good food and restaurant reviews for a 20-something-crowd in Ireland. I'm not a food snob, nor a food critic and those snobby food reviews in the papers don't really fit my age-group, tastes or budget. There's no-one to go round and check out all the hidden and not-so-hidden great and small foodie places in Ireland. And abroad. So I thought hey I love food, I eat food, why not write food?

I love simple good food, none of that escargot and frog legs crap. oh and desserts are why we were born in the first place. They are the meaning of life. If you nudge your cake with a fork a bit and squish the sponginess under your spoon, you may just find out the answers to life.