Red Pavilion in Meridian

When my mom was visiting me a few weeks ago, we tried a Chinese restaurant called Red Pavilion in Meridian.  I had heard some good things about them and wanted to check them out.

They start you off with a big bowl of crispy noodles and sweet and sour sauce.  I could just eat that and be happy LOL

This was honey almond chicken.  It was different from anything I have had before, but it was good!

This is something similar to fried rice.  It looked mild, but was actually really flavorful.

This is chicken egg fu young.  The sauce was a bit spicy,but the flavor was great!

I just wanted a picture of the food on my pretty leaf plate LOL

I have really struggled to find a good Chinese restaurant in Idaho.  I think this is the best so far (minus the buffets).

Restaurant Review - Grand China Buffet

I LOVE buffets!  There are 2 Chinese buffets near me, and I decided to try Grand China Buffet in Boise a few days ago since I had tried the other one a few years ago.

I always like to start off with a plate of appetizers.  I went for cream cheese won tons, sweet and sour chicken, veggie roll, fried zucchini, and a chicken meat ball.  They were all so good!

I love egg drop soup.  This was delicious!

My next plate of food had chow mein, veggie egg foo young, honey chicken, and chicken with broccoli.  The egg foo young was a little too thick for me, but otherwise it was another great plate of food.

Most of their sushi had fake crab in it.  The best one of the three was the one that had cream cheese in it.

Sooooo much dessert.  Two fried donuts, jello, chocolate pudding, and mint chocolate chip self serve ice cream.

This food was honestly so good.  Sometimes buffets only have okay food since they are making so much, but everything I tried here was amazing.  They also had tons of cold food that didn't appeal to me, a Mongolian noodle bar, and dim sum which I just didn't even have room for.  I can't wait to go back here!

Santa Barbara Axxess Blogging...Year 3 #5 - Empress Palace

I am literally failing at using my Axxess card.  This week I achieved my 5th punch since Oct 1.  That is basically 1 punch per month which is not acceptable.  My mom and I have now made a commitment to use it at least once a week until it expires or we go to all of the restaurants we want to try.

Empress Palace is one of our favorite Chinese food restaurants in Santa Barbara.  They have a really high quality of food that only a few other places have.  And..every dish there is always so good!  The deal at Empress Palace is buy one entree, get one free.  Wahoo!  You also receive 15% off every time you go after the first time.

My mom and I like to order family style.  We chose to order sweet and sour chicken and chicken egg foo young.  All of their chicken dishes are made with white meat which is really awesome!  These are two dishes we hadn't tried there before, and both were delicious.

The sweet and sour sauce was delicious and the portion size was huge.

The egg foo young patties were very large and so delicious and crispy!  The rest of the dish tasted like it was cooked in a slow cooker...it just melted in my mouth!

With our Axxess card we saved $13.99!  I definitely plan to return....after I have been to all of the other restaurants on my card LOL

As a side note...can you tell I took these pics with my phone?  I think they came out pretty nice :)

Spring Garden in Ventura, CA

As you can tell from my blog, my family loves to eat.  A while ago an ad popped up on my mom's Kindle for a voucher for a Chinese restaurant about 30 minutes away called Spring Garden in Ventura, CA.  Last weekend, we decided to try it out.

My mom, my dad, my sister and I all have different tastes but we like to order family style so we ordered 4 dishes plus fried rice.  Below are the delicious dishes we ordered:

Fried rice.  This came with the meal.  It only had some pieces of egg in it so I loved it!

Orange beef.  This beef was amazingly tender and the sauce was delicious.

Honey walnut shrimp.  I don't eat shrimp but the walnuts were really good LOL

Chicken egg foo young.  I really liked the chicken in this dish but didn't love the patty part for some reason.

Cashew chicken.  This was delicious.  I only wish I had ordered it with white meat.

This place was really, really good.  The service was excellent and the food was all tasty!  Although this restaurant is a bit of a drive for us, I have a hunch we will be going back.  Try out Spring Garden if you are ever in Ventura and craving Chinese food.