2 Houses, 2 Meals, 1 Day

As you can see, Sunday was a big day.  For eating anyway.

House 1 was brunch at the Ramos House.  Yes!  The Ramos House in San Juan Capistrano.  And it's actually a house!  Like a house house!  It's just so charming and adorable I can hardly stand it.  It's situated on a tiny road with other house house businesses including a petting zoo.  A petting zoo!!  Although I've been in Irvine for years...we won't go in to detail about how many...ahem...I have never once been to the Ramos House, or the cute little street it's on or the petting zoo...so I was seriously beyond excited.  I still might be.  Can you tell?

So yes, this road the cafe is on is small.  Like really small.  Like people walking in the middle of it and as you're driving down it, you can't help but to think that you really shouldn't be.  Which, as I found out later is the case.  The parking is in the back around the corner and on the other side of the train tracks.  It seems a little strange, but it totally works.  Once you walk over those train tracks, it's kinda like you're not in Orange County (whew! finally!), and you're in a quaint, quite little town where all the houses are old and interesting.  And you totally forget that you have to be at a group meeting in LA for school in 3 hours...maybe the best part.  And did I mention there's a petting zoo?  That might be the best part.

Or was it those amazingly pillowy buttermilk biscuits?  Or the apple cinnamon beignets?  Or Brian's giant sized bowl of ooey gooey mac and cheese?  I mean, seriously, mac and cheese at 9 in the morning?  But, sigh, I must take full responsibility for the irresponsibly early mac and cheese.  We brunched with Maryn and Brian, and I insisted we get there at 8:30 (yes, a.m.) because Ramos House does not take reservations, and I heard stories about 3 hour waits!  Apparently, they may have just been stories...urban legends, perhaps.  The place was totally empty at 8:30 a.m.  As in, choose your own table empty.  Heh.  Sorry Maryn!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but see!  It's just another reason for you to try it and see it for yourself!  But I will say that everything was totally amazing and yummy.  I've actually been wanting to go so bad to see if this place lived up to all the hype, and while I think a 3 hour wait might be excessive, it was a really cool place to go. 

But that was House 1.  House 2 was umm...another story, shall we say?  Trio House is not a house, which is ok, IHOP isn't really a house either.  It's this smallish place that serves up a hodge-podge of Asian rice and noodles.  Their words, not mine.  Well, the "Asian rice and noodles"...I added the hodge-podge.  But it totally is!  Pho + Hainan chicken and rice  + fried Hainan chicken and rice (read chicken katsu) + pad thai + gyoza...I mean...seriously, who are we kidding here.  If I haven't said anything about it yet, I had a major aversion to fusion food.  And in my opinion, a restaurant that bundles up the entire continent of Asia into 1 menu, is close enough to fusion food.  Close enough to make me uneasy anyway. 

Oh and there was this too:

I know it's hard to read, but the menu says: "We are not responsible of any typos or misprints on the menu".  So much for accountability.

I'm not sure what would motivate a restaurant to print that on their menu, but my crazy imagination can only venture to guess that there must have been some incident that sparked this!  I imagine it went something like this:

customer: Where is the chicken in my Hainan chicken and rice?
server: Oh, there's really no chicken.  You ordered Hainan rice.
customer: But it says chicken and rice.
server: That must be a typo.  We can't be responsible for having an accurate menu.

A little far-fetched, perhaps.  But we did order the Hainan chicken and rice, fried aka chicken katsu by another name.  Along with some super spicy drunken noodles.  Definitely more spicy than drunk.

My little plate of Asian mish mash.