Tacos Por Favor

Tacos Por Favor: has been recommended to us several times. Today it was recommended again and we up and went. On a whim I got a carnitas sandwich (with egg and this delicious mole sauce and avocados and onions) that turned out to be outstanding. In fact, everything we got was wonderful. That includes pastor soft taco, chorizo soft taco, mahi mahi sopes, and a guacamole burrito. Oh, so delicious. The pico de gallo and salsas are great too. Not expensive and apparently they deliver. The al pastor and the sandwich were probably the best, but all of it was something I'd want to eat again.

Party Time (Jaipur and Hornsby's)

Went to a party catered by Jaipur's. It was an excellent Indian food experience. I particularly loved the dessert (sweet dough balls in syrup) due to the whole cardamom pods, but all the dishes were great.

Also picked up some Hornsby's hard cider...not a Santa Monica exclusive by any means, but I hadn't realized that hard cider was mass marketed in any way other than apple-flavored beer. Hornsby's is more cidery and has tempted me to brew my own hard cider if I can find the time.

Finally, the Korean taco food truck on Venice beach was excellent...wonderful flavors.

Santa Monica Farmer's Market (various)

Farmer's Market (Santa Monica) today.

Mis Padres Tacos: one chicken w/ veggies taco and one beef w/ veggies taco (plus a few chips and a bit of salsa). Great all around. The corn tortillas are flavorful. The beef is properly browned/charred, the veggies are all fresh and combine into a wonderful taste. The chicken taco is put together slightly better than the beef, just because the beef could use a bit more kick...add the hot (red) salsa to really complete the beef taco. The chips are high quality and the salsas are pretty good. The red salsa is hot and very fresh tasting. The clear-ish, pink-ish salsa is mild-to-medium but not as flavorful. In all, I can't recommend this more. I would say it's better than any Mexican I had over three years in Texas.

Cafe Laurent: Peach and custard tart and blueberry muffin. The tart is just short of amazing. Beautiful and very tasty peach on the buttery pastry dough, separated by a creamy custard. Wonderful flavors, the tart is marred only by the slight sogginess where the peach juices flowed past the custard and reached the pastry dough. If I could only get these fresh! The blueberry muffin isn't bad. Not amazing like the tart, but still a good muffin. Plenty of blueberries, a good size, correctly cooked, but just not special. I talked with the salesperson again, he told me the only difference in the pastries at the farmer's market and the storefront is the environment/age, and he recommended I check out the Normandy Bakery for bread.

I think I need to update the pastry ranking because any pastry from the Cafe Laurent stall is great.
Oh, and when I last ranked pastries I forgot to mention the cheese danish/roll I got from Portos last week. I'll have to go again to remember exactly what it was like, but I do remember it was surprisingly good.

Espresso Experience: A Russian Kream Koffee. Great coffee here. Last week I got the espresso con panna and was blown away with the combination of whip cream and espresso. This week my Russian Kreme was good, but not quite great. The aftertaste was excellent, being nice and mellow. The coffee itself had good flavor, but the sweetener was a bit cloying...perhaps there was high fructose corn syrup involved?

Old Town Baking: A bag of six hand-sized ciabatta's. Not bad, they're coated in flour so that's what the mostly taste of. They're very soft with a pretty good crumb, but just don't have the flavor or texture that I'm looking for in a ciabatta. Last week's harvest loaf was great though, so I'm going to keep buying from this stand.