For one of my meals while visiting downtown Phoenix, I went to Wren & Wolf for dinner with a couple friends. We picked this restaurant because it was one of the few high-end restaurants that had short-notice reservation slots available, and because the reviews were good for both the quality of the food and for the dining experience.

As our appetizer, we ordered a Renaissance Tower from the raw bar. This came with six oysters on the half shell with cocktail sauce, pomegranate mignonette, horseradish, and hot sauce; four tomatillo and Calabrian chili shrimp; a half lobster with crab stuffing; and a quarter pound of king crab.

This was amazingly high-quality seafood. Everything had a very strong, intense, pure, and clean flavor. I think the oysters could’ve had a little bit more salt to extract and enhance more of the oyster flavor, but in general, this is probably some of the best seafood I’ve ever had (and I eat a lot of seafood).

One of my dinner companions doesn’t like seafood, so to accompany the Renaissance Tower, we also ordered German potato dumplings with gouda, manchego, and brown butter sage sauce. I tried one and this was a bit too cheesy for my preference, but I still thought it was good, and my friends seemed to enjoy these a lot.

For my beverage, I ordered a non-alcoholic version of a drink called “I Love You, But I Love Me More” made with black currant and berries, blood orange, and lime topped with a skewer of raspberries. This had a nice, deep fruity flavor without being tangy or sour. The fresh raspberries were also nice, as they served as a palate cleanser in between our different main entrées.

After wrapping up our appetizers, we got our first entrée, Japanese A5 wagyu cooked tableside over binchō-tan charcoal. My friends told me that they’ve never had Japanese A5 wagyu before, so I figured this would be a good opportunity for them to try it for the first time, especially with the added experience of tableside preparation.

As expected, this was incredibly flavorful, especially after covering it with a generous amount of the provided flaky salt.

After splitting four ounces of Japanese A5 wagyu amongst ourselves, we ordered some more steak, but this time a cut that was more reasonable to have in a larger portion—a 10-ounce filet of beef tenderloin cooked medium rare with a side of whipped Parmesan potatoes and roasted baby carrots.

This was very tender and flavorful, and by adding a bit more of the flaky salt we had left over from the wagyu, I was able to enjoy even more of the rich beefy flavor.

Our next entrée was duck breast á l’orange served with harissa atop a bed of forbidden rice.

As far as I can remember, this is the best duck I’ve ever had. It was thick and meaty with a smooth and clean duck flavor. The duck skin was cooked perfectly and added a pleasant textural contrast to the breast meat. The forbidden rice was also incredible—it tasted like gourmet rice infused with a well-proportioned blend of vegetables.

Our final dish of the meal was pistachio-crusted pork tomahawk schnitzel, topped with apple and fennel, served with herb crème fraîche and a side of demi-glace.

I didn’t have too much of this because I was busy working on the duck and forbidden rice, but I did have a small slice of this, and I liked it. There was a perfect ratio of crust to meat, and the pork was unexpectedly very juicy. I was the one who ended up cleaning the final bits of meat straight off the bone, and the pork was tender enough that it was very easy to nibble everything off.

Here are some photos I took from around the restaurant:

I went into this dinner without really knowing what to expect apart from Wren & Wolf having a good reputation for fine dining. I ended up being very pleased throughout my entire dining experience.

The service was excellent. Our waitress was very attentive to our needs, and when my friends told her that they were unfamiliar with some of the dishes and beverages on the menu, she took extra time and care explaining everything thoroughly.

One subtle thing that contributes to the indication of the level of fine dining of a restaurant is the way in which they serve kitchenware. We ate our food “family style” and split all our dishes, and as our entrées were coming out, we were also always served a fresh set of plates and utensils. That is an indication that the restaurant wants to make sure you are getting the full experience of each dish as the chef intended, without flavor profiles from different dishes inadvertently mixing and affecting each other.

The food was amazing. I’m not really the biggest fan of cheese, but even the cheesy dishes were delicious. It was blatantly obvious that the ingredient quality across the board was very high. The dishes weren’t oversalted or overseasoned, which allowed the ingredients to speak for themselves.

We all left the restaurant very full and very satisfied. The food definitely was expensive, but was still a very competitive and reasonable price considering the large portion sizes, high quality of the dishes, unique ambiance, and nice dining experience. In terms of value for money, I think not too many other places can offer substantially more than what we got at Wren & Wolf.

The menu changes routinely/seasonally and has a wide selection of offerings, so if this is within your budget for a nice meal, I think this would be a great spot to check out in downtown Phoenix.

I’ve always been a fan of Taco Bell ever since I was a kid. Although it’s not my favorite restaurant ever, I still like their mindset of innovating new menu items and coming up with unique combinations and collaborations to introduce novel fast food to the world. Even though I don’t drink alcohol, one of my favorite late-night activities on the Las Vegas Strip is to walk to the Taco Bell Cantina just to order some regular food and a Mountain Dew Baja Blast and sit upstairs near the subwoofers while people-watching and enjoying the music.

When Taco Bell announced they made Crispy Chicken Nuggets with three new dipping sauces, I had to try them. Due to hereditary health reasons, I have to minimize my intake of saturated fats from red meat, which naturally means my diet contains a lot of fish and birds. Because of that, I was looking forward to sampling Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Nuggets to see if they were good enough to be added to my regular fast food chicken rotation.

Each five pieces comes with one dipping sauce included, so I purchased fifteen Crispy Chicken Nuggets. The 5-Piece Crispy Chicken Nuggets entrée was US$3.99. The 10-Piece Crispy Chicken Nuggets entrée was US$7.49, and I upgraded it to a Combo for US$2.50 more to get Seasoned Fries and MTN DEW® Baja Blast™ Zero Sugar. With the nuggets, I received one each of Hidden Valley™ Fire Ranch Sauce, Bell Sauce, and Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce. (Note that these prices could be localized for Las Vegas and may be different in your region.)

The first thing I noticed was that the breading was very crispy and these nuggets resembled popcorn chicken more than chicken nuggets. When I split them open, I saw that the meat quality seemed notably better than regular chicken nuggets you’d find at other fast food restaurants. Visually, they look like cut-up chicken strips rather than nuggets with blended chicken.

Sizing per nugget seemed to be a hit-or-miss, as some were very large while others were pretty small. However, when considering the total average, I think they’re larger than what you’d expect from an average chicken nugget from other fast food restaurants. There were some tiny pieces that were mostly breading, but after taking inventory, I noticed that those did not count towards the 15 chicken nuggets.

When testing the sauces, I followed a certain methodology. I dipped the chicken nuggets into each sauce, then after each taste test, I ate unsauced fries and drank some Mountain Dew as a palate cleanser. I repeated this cycle with multiple different ordering permutations as to fully minimize the possibility of a previous flavor affecting a current flavor. I also dipped fries into each sauce, then after each of those taste tests, I ate unsauced chicken nuggets and drank some Mountain Dew before further testing additional permutations.

Bell Sauce is basically just chipotle sauce, but with an extra kick of herbs and spices. This was most like a generic sauce I’d expect from a Mexican-inspired American fast food restaurant.

Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce was special in that it was stronger on the mustard flavor and weaker on the honey flavor, which is usually the opposite of what I see with other fast food restaurants’ honey mustard sauces. Although I wouldn’t consider it to be spicy, it still definitely had some heat to it. This is one of the most unique-tasting fast food sauces I’ve seen, and this sauce has a recognizably distinct identity to it. Out of the three sauces, this was my favorite.

Hidden Valley™ Fire Ranch Sauce had an underlying flavor profile of the type of ranch you put on salads—which I guess is expected, because it’s co-branded with Hidden Valley. This is notable because I’ve found that most other fast food ranches are more so standalone sauces, as opposed to resembling ranch dressing. Out of the three sauces, this was the most difficult to form an opinion on, and was probably the most uninteresting sauce—which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it would be good for people who might want something simple, straightforward, and familiar.

After finishing all 15 chicken nuggets, the thing that stood out to me was that they were much saltier than pretty much any other chicken nugget I’ve had from any other fast food restaurant. Dipping the nuggets in sauce sometimes helped mask the saltiness, presumably because the sauce added additional flavors that could be enhanced by the salt, but when eating them plain, I feel like they could’ve gotten away with using about half the salt and still be comparable in saltiness to other fast food chicken nuggets.

Overall, my impression of Taco Bell’s new Crispy Chicken Nuggets is that they’re not bad. I don’t think I would go out of my way to go to Taco Bell specifically to order these chicken nuggets, but I wouldn’t be opposed to throwing in a five-piece entrée with the Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce along with my regular order of tacos if I’m already there and I’m extra hungry that day.

For one of my dinners during my stay in Denver, Colorado, I decided to go to Uchi in the Five Points neighborhood for omakase.

Uchi had their ten-course omakase listed as “market price,” which I had not seen a restaurant do before (“market price” is generally reserved for individual menu items that are freshly imported on a regular basis and have frequently-changing pricing based on localized supply and demand). When I asked the waitress for the market price of the omakase, she said that it was US$305.50 for two people, which I had also never seen a restaurant do. I’m not sure if she just thought I was poor and was trying to manipulate the numbers so that it seemed cheaper, but she said that it would be just over US$150.00 per person. At that time, I believed her when she said that it was designed for two people, so my friend and I decided to order one omakase.

This might be a good time to mention that it’s actually been about a week and a half since I’ve been to this restaurant and this blog post is a little late, so I don’t quite remember all the finer details of the menu items. Not to spoil the review or anything, but this omakase was so underwhelming and disappointing that I wasn’t particularly in a rush to edit these photos and share my experience online like I do when I go to an amazing restaurant.

As an opening refreshment, we received a non-alcoholic citrus cocktail.

Our first appetizer was tai crudo with New Zealand snapper, lemon, tomato, and other vegetables.

It contained only four fairly thin and small folded slices of fish. The fish was mild and the vegetables were intensely sour and overdressed, so it tasted like I was just eating pickled vegetables instead of a well-rounded crudo dish.

For my drink, I got a zero-proof Spicy Yu made from non-alcoholic gin, yuzu honey, thai chili, and lemon.

Next, we were served a small plate of nigiri. The fish quality was good, but they were cut pretty thin and narrow so each bite wasn’t particularly satisfying.

After the nigiri was a small cut roll topped with minced seafood.

Nigiri and rolls usually come as part of the main courses of an omakase, but apparently we were still in appetizer mode, because we received one oyster each with habanero and mango. The shell of my oyster was chipped (which you can actually distinctly see in the photograph) and some of the shell seemed to have gotten into the oyster during preparation, so I had the great misfortune of having a crunchy oyster.

Next was a sashimi bowl with twelve total thin cuts of fish. This was delicious, and it almost tasted like it was dry-aged because it had an extra deep umami to it, but like everything else, each cut was way too small for it to come close to giving a strong, satisfying, full flavor per bite.

Our first warm dish was mapo tofu with crispy tofu prepared Szechuan-style and topped with shiitake ragout.

Even this was really small, which is silly because you’d think tofu is pretty cheap so they’d at least give you a refreshing portion of this, but I guess not. It had a very unique flavor profile to it, and the sauce added a nice, spicy kick to the tofu. The fried shell was a bit too thick compared to the amount of tofu that was given, but overall, I enjoyed trying out this creation.

Our second warm dish was wagyu over asparagus with a side of garlic chips in house-made sauce.

This tasted good, but again, the disappointing portion size detracted heavily from the eating experience. These cuts of wagyu were sized perfectly if you were to put two pieces in your mouth per bite… but there were only five pieces, so that would’ve gone through this course very quickly.

Afterwards, we got four more pieces of nigiri—bluefin tuna chutoro and otoro. The fish quality was great, but again, the cuts of fish were disappointingly thin and small.

We switched back over to hot dishes and got a lobster bisque.

I feel like a broken record here, but there was barely any soup here. They basically served it in a shallow plate instead of a bowl, so there wasn’t actually much bisque in the bisque. The portion size of the lobster was also tiny, and it felt like I was just eating lobster scraps instead of the actual meat of the lobster.

What little there was to eat, though, was delicious.

Up until this point, I had been questioning whether this omakase was actually supposed to be for two people, or if we had gotten baited by the waitress and my friend and I were splitting one person’s portion between ourselves. After receiving the lobster bisque in a single plate, I decided that I had been right and that this omakase isn’t truly supposed to be for two people.

I’m comfortable enough with the friend I went with, and I trust her cleanliness, so I didn’t mind dunking our spoons into the same soup together, but if I had chosen to dine with someone I wasn’t fully familiar with, this course would’ve been interesting.

From here, our meal service sort of just… stopped.

My friend likes oysters, so she put in an order for an extra oyster, à la carte for an extra US$5.00. After taking her special request, the waitress literally disappeared. We took this opportunity to use the restroom and watch the cooks at the sushi bar prepare other diners’ food, but otherwise, we were sort of just sitting there for what I believe was about half an hour.

Eventually, the waitress came back with my friend’s oyster. As if trying to one-up themselves in how small they can make each dish, they came out with an oyster that was about half the size of the oysters we had gotten as part of the omakase.

After another noticeable wait, we got our tenth and final course of the omakase, dessert: chicory and buckwheat banana cake with white coffee ice cream.

I think this was fine, but at this point, I had been let down so badly by so many different facets of the restaurant that I was mentally done with dinner and wanted to leave.

Here are some decorations from the sushi bar:

Here are some photographs of the dining tables, from the perspective of the sushi bar:

The ceiling of the restaurant had a glass opening with a view of Altius Farms on the floor above.

Here is a view of the outside of the restaurant:

In case it wasn’t clearly implied throughout my blog post, I do not recommend getting omakase at Uchi Denver. I have been to many different chef’s tasting menus and omakase experiences, and I’ve also done a fair amount of “build your own” tasting menus by ordering a large collection of small plates at fine dining restaurants, and I can confidently say that I have never gotten so little value for my money as I did at Uchi Denver.

I think there are two potential solutions that would encourage me to change my mind:

1. Keep the omakase as a couples-only experience, keep the price the same, and serve exactly double of everything.
2. Keep the portion sizes the same, cut the price in half, and market it as omakase for one.

Otherwise, I would consider Uchi Denver to be a hard pass.

A couple months ago, Burger King revealed the Mexican Street Corn, Fried Pickle Ranch, and Maple Bourbon BBQ Whoppers in a press release covering the Million Dollar Whopper Contest. In summary, people from across the United States proposed their own ideas for special Whoppers, and the top three recipes actually went into production so that customers can vote for which is the best.

I’ve always been more of a McDonald’s person than a Burger King person, and I actually don’t even remember how many years it’s been since I’ve last been at a Burger King (before this trip, obviously), but I like trying out new foods and innovative dishes, so I decided to try four Whoppers—one of each of the new Whoppers, plus one classic Whopper as a baseline.

In central Las Vegas, each of the new Whoppers costs US$6.99 for the entrée (i.e., just for the sandwich, and not as a meal or combo), but there is a special digital-exclusive deal called the “Million Dollar Whopper® Flight” that lets you buy all three at a discounted rate of US$18.99, saving US$1.98, if you order ahead online. A regular Whopper comes in at US$5.89, which brings the total to US$24.88 before taxes. Note that this is region-specific pricing, so your Whoppers may be more or less expensive than mine.

In order to give as balanced of a review as possible, I followed a controlled methodology for taste testing. I split each Whopper into fourths. I ate one quarter of each fresh Whopper, one after another, then ate another quarter of each fresh Whopper, again, one after another. Afterwards, half of each Whopper remained. I took the leftovers and refrigerated them for eight hours, and once I was no longer satiated, I retrieved and microwaved them all together for two minutes. For the second half of the taste test, I repeated the cycle—two rounds of eating a quarter of each Whopper per round until I was done.

In no particular order, first up is the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, fried pickles, pickle ranch, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese.

This burger was unbelievably salty to the point where it felt like the inside of my mouth itself was getting pickled. I think a lot of the sodium might have been concentrated in the Swiss cheese, but either way, it made for a pretty unpleasant experience.

I’m generally fine with fresh pickles and will sometimes even request pickles on sandwiches that don’t usually come with pickles because I think they add a nice kick to the flavor profile, but these fried pickles were something else… in a not-so-great way. This Whopper might be great for someone who likes fried pickles, but I think they just aren’t my thing.

This Whopper was the one that had the sharpest decline in quality after refrigeration and reheating. I didn’t really want to finish the second half of this Whopper after microwaving it, but for the sake of not wasting food, I removed all the fried pickles and scraped off as much Swiss cheese as possible, which made it a bit more palatable for me.

Overall, the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper was my least favorite out of the four.

Next is the Mexican Street Corn Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, Southwest seasoned tortilla crisps, Mexican spicy queso, street corn spread, lettuce, and tomato.

The most straightforward and easy way to put this is that this was like a ground beef taco in the form of a burger. Upon my initial bite, I was going to say that it basically tastes like a normal Whopper but with Fritos® inside, but after I started recognizing more of the flavor of the sauces, I realized it was definitely a distinct and unique Whopper, and not just a regular Whopper with one extra topping on it.

Out of the three new Whoppers, this one was my favorite.

Last but not least out of the new Whoppers is the Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, bacon, American cheese, crispy onions and jalapeños, maple bourbon barbecue sauce, and maple bacon seasoning.

This most resembled a menu item that I would expect to see on a fast food restaurant’s permanent menu. I can’t really think of any specific menu items or restaurants off the top of my head, but this was basically the same as a Texan-style BBQ cheeseburger that I’d find at a burger joint. The components of the Whopper worked well together and formed a cohesive and complementary flavor profile.

The reason why this wasn’t my favorite Whopper was because the barbecue sauce was way too sweet. I also don’t think the sauce was applied to the burger in the most effective way. Instead of splitting it so that it makes direct contact with both the toppings and the base of the patty, it was only spread on the top bun. This meant that the sauce wasn’t really absorbed by the beef patty, but it was extra absorbed by the bacon and crispy onions, so the bacon tasted like candied bacon and the crispy onions were a bit soggy.

And finally, serving as the control group, I also ordered a regular Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, sliced white onions, mayonnaise, and ketchup between a toasted sesame seed bun.

I don’t know if this was just the nostalgia kicking in from when I would eat Whoppers once in a while as a kid, but in my opinion, this was overwhelmingly the best Whopper.

This had the most vegetables, which gave the sandwich the most refreshing overall flavor profile. I love raw onions, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was trying to do as unbiased of a review as possible of these unmodified Whoppers, I would’ve asked for extra onions. Mayonnaise is my favorite condiment, but I haven’t had much of it over the past few years since I found out that I have high cholesterol and need to minimize my saturated fat consumption; that fact might’ve caused tasting the mayo in this Whopper to be extra satisfying.

As a disclaimer, even though I go to fast food restaurants somewhat often, I usually order basic and straightforward sandwiches with either beef, chicken, or fish as the meat and a balanced portion of vegetables. I try to avoid fried foods, I don’t like bacon, and I think most cheeses smell like mold and sometimes make me want to vomit. Thus, I think it’s reasonable to say that I have a “cleaner” palate, and my opinions on these Whoppers would probably align closer with people in similar situations as myself, as opposed to people who might be more used to foods with more intense and explosive flavors.

I’m glad I tried the Million Dollar Whopper® Flight, not only because it was nice participating in a limited-time event, but also because this reminded me that I am most compatible with and should probably just stick with chicken and fish sandwiches like I usually do.

Like usual, I still add at least a day or two of buffer before and after travel days when I go to a different city, so when I went to Seattle for the Sea-Meow Convention, I had some extra days in town to spend together with friends. On one of the days, I got dinner with Dani at 2120, a New American restaurant in downtown next to Amazon’s Spheres.

(Note: The lighting in this restaurant was very dim, and these photos were taken with my phone, so they’re not quite up to the same level of quality as many of my other food pictures.)

As our first appetizer, we got steak tartare made from prime New York beef topped with shallot, extra virgin olive oil, parsley, egg yolk, and pickled mustard seed with a side of house-made potato chips.

Steak tartare is often served with bread, so it was interesting to see it served with potato chips here. I think chips would be fine if it accompanied beef that was particularly strong or gamey, as the fried flavor of the chips would pierce through the beefiness. However, this steak had a smooth and mild flavor—which, in itself, is good—but I think it would’ve worked much better with plain bread, as the potato chips ended up being a bit overwhelming for this. Adjacently, I think chips would work if the beef was bland, but this tartare was properly seasoned, so the chips just ended up adding a bit too much saltiness to the overall flavor profile.

For our beverages, we ordered two drinks from the zero-proof menu: Dani ordered a No Bucks Given made from cranberry compote, ginger syrup, and fresh lime juice mixed into a soda base; and I got a Pear Citrus Spritz made from pear compote and fresh lemon with a soda base.

My pear drink demonstrated a peculiar flavor profile phenomenon in which, if I drank a normal sip, it would just taste like I was drinking lemon juice with no pear, but if I took a tiny sip to the extent that it was only enough to just barely wet my tongue, I would be able to identify the pear flavor with almost no lemon.

Our next appetizer was a half dozen Washington oysters served on half-shells with a side of apple cider mignonette. These were solid oysters with a pure taste and refreshing texture.

As our side to along with our main entrées, Dani wanted to try the beet salad with roasted pear, pistachio, whipped chèvre, and cranberry vinaigrette.

It surprisingly wasn’t bad, but there’s only so much you can do with beets, so it wasn’t particularly delicious.

Our first main dish was grilled octopus with serrano and white bean purée, chili flakes, sautéed kale, chickpeas, and burnt orange gastrique.

This would have been my favorite dish of the restaurant if it wasn’t about four times saltier than it needed to be. I could tell that the octopus had a deep, rich flavor and the texture was incredibly soft and tender, but because it was egregiously oversalted, it bordered on being bitter.

Next was smoked salmon rillette with parsley, pickled red onion, fried caper, chive oil, lemon, and aioli with a side of crostini.

This was fine and was technically exactly what the menu said it was, but I guess I didn’t really quite properly grasp what rillette was, because it wasn’t what I was expecting. This dish sort of tasted like I just opened some really high-end canned salmon dip and ate it as a spread on bread.

The density of the crostini was a bit too low. … In simpler terms, there were too many holes in the bread. I would’ve appreciated it if the bread contained more bread.

For our carb dish, we ordered house-made oxtail pappardelle with rosemary, pecorino romano, heavy cream, lemon, and oxtail jus.

This pasta came out with way too much Parmesan cheese on it. I’m not a fan of cheese, especially the types that smell extra moldy like Parmesan does, so that single-handedly ruined the dish for me. I think it would’ve been a lot better if they added fresh Parmesan tableside, because then I would’ve been able to decline it. I couldn’t really tell how the pasta was because all I could taste was the cheese, so I wasn’t really able to objectively assess the dish.

Our final entrée of the night was seared scallops with pickled shimeji, celery root purée, Japanese eggplant, and chili oil.

Dani had a portion of this dish and brought the rest back home to give to her housemates, so I only sampled half a scallop. The portion I did have was great—the scallop was thick, tender, and rich with flavor. However, almost every other component of the dish was a bit too earthy to the point of being bitter.

For dessert, we ordered some Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet.

This was a refreshing conclusion to our meal. It had a good balance of pear and raspberry flavor, and it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The portion size was also satisfyingly large, and was way more than you’d get at an ice cream shop for the price.

I took some photos of the restaurant. It looks empty because we were one of the first reservations of the day and I snapped these pictures on my way to the restroom right after we arrived, but by the time we were done dining, the restaurant was pretty full and bustling.

Although 2120 wasn’t a bad restaurant, I thought it was a little bit underwhelming across the board. They market themselves as fine dining, but I think they spent too much on the perception and presentation of the restaurant, and not enough on improving the dishes.

Usually, I’m able to get a general gist of the theme of what I enjoyed or what I think could be improved, but I couldn’t really come up with something like that for 2120. It seems like my likes and dislikes were quite scattered, with different kinds of compliments and critiques being applicable for different dishes (which explains why my dish-by-dish feedback above was fairly diverse).

I found the environment of the restaurant to be pleasant, and I had no complaints about the service. However, the only menu item I found to be worth the money was the sorbet, with everything else not quite meeting expectations at their respective pricepoints.

I guess it is possible that I was so unlucky that I somehow only picked their mediocre dishes and managed to avoid all their specialties or something, but based on my dining experience this day, I think there are a lot of other restaurants I would recommend before this one.

I recently came back from New Zealand to the United States of America, and I am headed out-of-state again shortly. I used (and will be using) Los Angeles International Airport for my travels due to it servicing convenient non-stops to both destinations, and while in Los Angeles County in between trips, I decided to meet up with one of my friends who was also in Los Angeles while visiting from Phoenix.

We decided to go to Spoon & Pork, a Filipino comfort food restaurant. They have a location in Silver Lake, but we decided to go to the one in Sawtelle, a neighborhood near Santa Monica. I wanted to try as many different dishes as possible, so we opted for the Kanin Club, a 90-minute unlimited menu tasting experience for US$65.00 per person.

Our first appetizer was lumpia shanghai, also known as Filipino spring rolls, with pork, shrimp, and sweet chili lime sauce.

Our plate of carbohydrates that we ate little-by-little throughout our meal was rice with fried garlic confit oil. I’m a big fan of garlic, so as you’d expect, I was a big fan of this fried rice.

Our first small plate was bistek with skirt steak, sweet onions, and lemon-soy gravy. The steak was incredibly tender and flavorful, and this ended up being my favorite dish of the meal.

Our second small plate was tocino, which is apple-cured grilled pork belly with atchara. I usually don’t like pork belly because of how fatty it is, but this pork belly was amazing. The flavor of the fat was nice and smooth, and although the texture was that of what you’d expect from pork belly fat, it seemed to mix well with the meat, more quickly than what I’d expect.

Our first large plate was patita, which is slow-cooked deep-fried pork shank with chili garlic glaze. This portion was much larger than I expected. It wasn’t quite as good as the pork belly, but it was still tender and had a good kick of flavor to it. The left-on pork rind added some good variety through its crispy texture.

Next was twice-cooked patatas bravas with datu puti aioli. They came out blisteringly hot and I think I scorched my tongue a bit on them, but they were still a solid potato dish—crispy on the outside and very soft on the inside.

Lately, I’ve been watching quite a few YouTube videos by Jessica Lee Seul, a former K-pop star turned content creator. A few months ago, I saw a video of her trying different sisig dishes at various different price points, and the memory of that video inspired me to also try sisig for the first time, at this restaurant.

… I hate it. It’s basically extremely salty pig scraps.

As our final dish, I ordered another beef dish. I think this was tapa, or beef sirloin strips, but I don’t exactly remember. This was good, but not quite to the level of bistek.

Here’s a shot of the restaurant’s interior.

I’m not really sure how the math adds up exactly because I forgot to take a picture of the in-store menu and the prices associated with the different portion sizes, but from what I felt, the all-you-can-eat seemed a bit overpriced. It was a bit more expensive than other all-you-can-eat places you’d see of this nature, and on top of that, the regular menu prices are actually pretty affordable, so it made the AYCE look extra high. I have a suspicion that we might have actually saved money if we just ordered everything à la carte.

The garlic rice, bistek, and tocino were amazing, and I would add this restaurant to my regular rotation if it wasn’t so deep west and far away from the places where I usually stay when I’m in Los Angeles County.