Monday, August 9, 2010

Restaurant Review: The Mission

To celebrate Dong's first day on the job as a licensed pharmacist, we checked out The Mission for dinner (of course he was paying, tee hee!) The Mission serves what they call "Pan-American" cuisine - a tasty mixture of Mexican, South American and Southwestern cuisines. It's also charmingly located inside an old red church, complete with ivy crawling up one side.





Inside, the main dining area is illuminated by hanging lights and gorgeous stained glass windows. A bar lines one side of the room, with the stained glass windows adding great effect. Wooden beams overhead add a rustic appeal, and you can see the kitchen through a window in the back. The back of the restaurant is dominated by a clay facade, like you'd see on a Mexican church. It's a pretty dramatic and cool effect, and really gets you ready to enjoy some delicious food!






Their dinner menu changes with the season, so I wasn't able to try out the scallops that I remember Shirley raving about a few weeks ago (wahhh!). However, there were plenty of other offerings to choose from. For our appetizer, we ordered the tostada, my entree was the puerco, pork tenderloin with mango salsa, and Dong ordered two soft tacos with pulled pork and chicken.

May the food porn commence.


First up was the tostada, consisting of pan-seared tuna (on the bottom), with avocado sandwiched between crispy corn tortillas and salsa on top, drizzled with some delicious sauce that I can't remember the name of. It was so good... crispy, flavorful, and the tuna was moist and flavorful. Gone in sixty seconds!


My entree, the puerco, was pork tenderloin topped with mango salsa, with a side of warm greens and some mushy stuff that I didn't really like. The pork was okay... it was a little bland, but the mango salsa helped it some. In actuality, my favorite part of the dish were the greens, which was mixed with rhubarb. They were slightly bitter, helping to offset the sweetness of the mango. And lastly, there is that unidentified mush beneath the pork... I think my dislike of it stems from my distaste of mushy foods. I'm fine with mashed potatoes, which has a firmish consistency, but this was kinda weirdly runny in my mouth, with bits of chewy something. It didn't taste that bad, but the consistency really turned me off... Thankfully, Dong finished it off.



And last but not least, Dong's soft shell tacos! In the picture you can see his hands, all clenched up and ready to devour! In the words of Dong, they were "very good". They gave us pretty generous portions, since by the end of it we barely managed to clean our plates. Then again, we did have generous portions of the nachos and salsa that they set out before the food came... As a forewarning, they do charge for extra salsa for the chips. Just so ya know.

All in all, it was a pretty satisfying meal, and we were happy stuffed little campers when we left!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

oh lately it's so quiet

So it's been about a week since we've moved to Camillus and after the mad chaos of the first few days with unpacking and building furniture, the place is starting to take shape. Sure, there are still random boxes around and I wonder if we'll ever finish unpacking all our books, but overall it's pretty livable. We finally finally finally got our Verizon Fios installed yesterday for internet and TV so I'm not spending all my time playing Fable II! Which is a pretty cool game and quite addictive. Dong got pretty frustrated at me monopolizing our nice new TV.

But now that we have things pretty set up, it's been so quiet... I need to start working again, make some money and offset the gluttonous spending of the past few weeks. Which reminds me, I need to pay my massive credit card bill... Ugh.

Speaking of working, today is Dong's first day of work as a licensed pharmacist! I'm excited for him and I'm sure he'll be fine, but it will be a while til I'll get my license... I'll be taking my compounding exam again in January, so hope that everything will work out and I'll be licensed by Feb perhaps! In a way it's a little relieving that I'm not yet a licensed pharmacist with major responsibilities, I feel like I have a little more time to whip myself into shape. But it's also kind of sad to be left behind while all your friends and peers have moved on to this next stage of their career (and salary, darnit!

What a text heavy entry~! I'll leave you with a nice song~

G.NA - I'll Back Off So You Can Live Better