Thursday Lunch

Last Thursday, Nancy Millar and I decided to "do" lunch. We have a few favorite places, but are always up to trying someplace new. This time, we headed up 10th street and found ourselves at the Korea Garden restaurant (3424 N. 10th). I think we were the only customers there for lunch. The menu is definitely not your typical Valley fare. I don't know that I could pronounce any of the names of any of the dishes, but the descriptions are in English and are numbered. Nancy chose a vegetarian variety of one of the dishes and I chose N1, a dish composed of noodles, vegetables and shrimp. When our order came out, it was accompanied by three small side dishes: green beans in a spicy sauce, bean sprouts, and Kim-chi ( a Korean cabbage dish). All were good and not too hot for my taste buds. Nancy said she had had the dish she ordered at another restaurant and this was definitely better.

When we left there, we still had room for dessert, so we headed further up 10th street and stopped at Euro Gelato ( corner of 10th & Violet). For those of you unfamiliar with gelato, it is the Italian version of ice cream. It contains most of the same ingredients of regular ice cream, except there are no eggs, and it is processed with less air, so it is denser and to my palate, smoother. They have quite a variety of flavors and you can get different size dishes ( based on the number of scoops) We decided not to be too decadent and went for the 3-dipper. You can either do all one flavor or mix and match, which is what I did. I choose a pumpkin pie flavor, then topped it with a bourbon vanilla and finally, a cappuccino flavor. It ended up tasting like a piece of pie with whipped cream and a coffee all in one dish.

I had not been to either of these restaurants before, but they have both been added to my "Do-over" list. If anybody is looking for a good Korean food, or a tasty dessert, check out either place.