SOS from Fashion Island
This week, Five Things I Ate is in Southern California. She will return to loveable gloom of the East coast next week. If you’re new check out past posts here, and make sure to follow our Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Turquoise Bowl at Little Lion Cafe
1424 Sunset Cliffs Blvd, San Diego, CA 92107
Ahh, California. Every morning I wake up to the chirping of birds, endless blue sky, and shout to myself: Another day in Paradise where I am Depressed as Hell!* And that’s how I know that New York is my one and only true home. Still, when in California, I try to do as Californians do, so I strapped on my sneakers for a brisk early morning walk (things that under no circumstances I do in my normal life, where I can be found pressing the snooze button for an hour) along pristine beachy cliffs and dropped into Little Lion Cafe for a bowl of chia seed pudding (something I’d never eaten before). To my surprise, the pudding’s not bad; although I did quickly find out why it’s called the “Turquoise Bowl.” It’s dyed an alarming shade of bright blue-green due to the addition of spirulina, which Google told me is algae (but highly nutritious algae!). So there you go, folks. Do I feel sunnier? Healthier? Ready to ditch my all-black wardrobe? Not really, but at least I got a really good photo for the ‘gram. You’ll fall in love with my life once you see it.
Kale salad at Pizza Port in Ocean Beach
1956 Bacon St, San Diego, CA 92107
“You ladies seem like fun,” said the hopeful man sitting next to us. I glanced at my two tired coworkers, the three of us surrounded by a pile of duffle bags and a cloud of jetlag, and wondered how one unhelpful hopeful man could ever be so wrong. I looked down at my food. “We’re not fun,” I finally said. “We’re eating kale salad at a pizza place.” The kale salad was in fact one of the best I’d ever eaten, but it seemed prudent to keep that fact to myself. Lightly tossed in a champagne vinaigrette and mixed with just the right amount of hearts of palm, pomegranate seeds, feta cheese and sunflower seeds, it was a great balance of salty, sweet, and tangy. Maybe we are fun, we’re just kale salad people kind of fun.
Charred broccoli vegan pizza at Blind Lady Ale House
3416 Adams Ave, San Diego, CA 92116
I’m not sure why I left the pizza capital of the world**, where I rarely consumed a slice, to spend three straight days eating nothing but pizza (and a bowl of chia seeds) in San Diego, but the body behaves in treacherous ways beyond my comprehension. Maybe it’s because cheese likes to betray my stomach, and vegan cheese, a punchline everywhere else, is a legitimate option in California. Like on this roasted broccoli pizza I ordered at a bar known for their award winning craft beers, where I proceeded to order a glass of wine. It was topped with “almond ricotta,” which I was very grateful didn’t even try to pretend to taste like dairy, and instead did its own little flavorful thing. The pizza was thin and crispy and tasty and the charred broccoli was nice and garlicky. Was it anything like a New York slice? Not really, but sometimes it’s nice to have a change.
Teriyaki chicken bowl at Hana Grill
401 Newport Center Dr, Newport Beach, CA 92660
By the time you have received this letter I will have spent four days and three nights stranded on Fashion Island, a sprawling shopping mall in Southern California that is the only destination I can walk to my from my conference hotel room. I have eaten seven meals at this godforsaken Island, spent more than two hours total in its Whole Foods Market sipping matcha lattes amongst trophy wives at 10 in the morning between panels, and made myself more than acquainted with food court lunches. Which is why you can trust me entirely when I tell you that the teriyaki chicken bowl at Hana Grill is pretty damn good for a food court meal, because believe me, I know all too well. It’s a bargain under 10 dollars, the meat is juicy and well-marinated, and the rice is fluffy. Plus, there’s a little condiments bar with every type of pickled vegetable, chili sauce, and sesame seed sprinkles you could ever need. But someone, please, rescue me from Fashion Island.
Biscoff cookies at Delta Airlines
35,000 feet in the air, trying not to barf
Do you love adorable Dutch tea cookies? Do you love them even more because they claim to be “Europe’s Favorite Cookie with Coffee,” even though you’re so deep into America it hurts, but you dream of windmills and idyllic bike rides? Well, a curious Google search at 35,000 feet told me that Biscoff cookies apparently owe their charming popularity due to Delta Airlines, which was most recently voted the Worst Airline to Fly This Summer by Forbes in 2018. Still, they’re pretty damn good cookies, and when I’m miles above the ground strapped into a tiny chair and next to Xanax and mini-bar sedated passengers, these little cookies are the creature comforts I crave. I might even buy some for my ground-level teatimes.
See you next week back in the trash city of my dreams,
Soph
* But functioning and under control, thank you very much, to all you friends and fammos reading.
** No, not Old Forge, Pennsylvania — the real pizza capital of the world, New York.