Happy Hour: Garlic Jo’s – All night Tuesdays and Wednesdays

Might as well continue the garlic theme and go with Garlic Jo’s, since it’s taking us back home.  It’s just at Newport on PCH.  The happy hour menu consists of appetizers and tapas type style plates.  Prices usually range from about $3-$6, not including drinks.  Everything that I post is awesome.

Garlic cheese bread that’s so addicting.  Try not to eat too much of it before the rest of the food otherwise you’ll get full fast and kick yourself in the pants for not saving room for the other dishes you have to try.

Cream cheese jalapeno wontons with a cream sauce and chili mango sauce.  I really like the jalapeno because this is the only place I know that puts jalapeno and is key to setting it apart from amongst the hundreds of places that serve cream cheese wontons the same plain old boring way.

Baby spinach salad with diced tomatoes, bacon garlic chips, with miso dressing.  The miso dressing is really light and flavorful.  If I weren’t around people I would take a shot of it.  Just try not pick off all the bacon before you finish salad. 

The Vampire Killer is roasted whole garlic cloves and anchovy in olive oil topped with parsley and parmesan cheese.  The second picture is when it’s spread on a baguette.  I love roasted whole garlic cloves because aside from the garlic flavor itself, there’s a mild sweetness that comes through when it’s roasted.

Salmon tacos with the salmon lightly breaded and deep fried with lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, a cream sauce on a flour tortilla and a side of a chili sauce.  The cream sauce and breading of the fish makes the texture and the taco itself different from other fish tacos and brings to a higher level, so it doesn’t feel like tacos from a fast food joint.  It feels more gourmet.

The star of the show, garlic pizza.  On a flat bread with gouda and mild cheddar cheese with slice garlic and topped with garlic and parlsey with a side of three different sauces ranging to mild to spicy, which is my opinion with not that spicy but is still good.  This pizza really amazed me because I never thought a pizza without any sauce on the pizza itself would be good.  Instead the absence of sauce allows the simplicity and strength of the flavors allows it to speak for itself.

This is Erik the bartender and he works on Wednesday nights.  Don’t worry, I got his permission to post him.  He is super nice and great to talk to.  You tell him you’re friends with Christine and the In-N-Out group.  I say In-N-Out because some the the most important people in my life work for INO. 

UPDATE:  Garlic Jo’s no long has happy hour :( LAME!  But it is still worth it if you go for dinner.

Garlic Festival: To Die For… Because you will

 

Freshly picked corn THAT day, or so it says, with garlic butter.  Garlic butter aside, the freshness of the corn is what truly makes this special.  I’ve always had frozen corn or corn from a grocery store, with who knows how long its been sitting, but never I thought anything of it.  But once you’ve had corn as fresh as this, you can really taste the difference.  The corn is perfectly sweet but not too sweet, and each bite is crisp but not like raw crisp.

Butter garlic bread, and let me tell you they loaded up the butter.  I actually got to see them making this and let me tell you it made me want to find a cardiologist.  They literally toast it then dunk it in bins full of melted herbed garlic butter.  Don’t bother ripping a piece in half because the butter will just drip off when you squeeze it.  Be prepared to sacrifice some cardiac vessels but it’s totally worth it.

I would say the star of the festival, shrimp scampi :) :) :) What’s even worse/ better, depending on how you look at it, is that dipping the garlic butter bread in the excess scampi sauce is absolutely to die for.  There something about it that oddly enough made it unique and something unlike any scampi I’ve ever eaten, yet there was also something so familiar.  I was fortunate enough to catch a demonstration of this being made and I will tell you two secret ingredients that sets this scampi apart from the rest: clam juice, and lobster butter.  The clam juice is what made it unique, yet familiar at the same time.  Not only that, but I didn’t even know lobster butter existed!  Everything about the scampi was pure genius.  If you’re allergic to shellfish, take a preemptive Zyrtec, and Claritin together, and if you go into shock anyways, you’ll pass away at your happiest moments.

Garlic Festival: The Good

 

I would say that this post is more so a feast for the eyes since everything eaten in this category is simple and doesn’t need much explanation.  But simple foods go a long way.

 

Garlic fries, definitely a staple at the garlic festival.  Fortunately when you don’t have any festivals or areas to go to in the area, you just go the Trader Joe’s frozen isle for the same garlic fries at fair quality.

Garlic ice cream and it’s free :) I believe the base flavor is vanilla and then flavored in garlic.  The garlic comes through as an aftertaste.  To those that have never tried it, it’s a concept that is difficult to imagine but trust me it works.  The portion is very small, like a little cone with a shot of ice cream, but its great for a perfect amount of sweet to offset all the savory. 

When you need a five minute break from the garlic completely, chocolate covered strawberries and cream puffs.  Now granted you can definitely make this at home with a simple chocolate sauce, but we’re six hours from home, I’ll take it!

Garlic Festival: The Whatevs

These are the dishes I’m more so neutral about, that were not that impressive.  I don’t think anything I came across I would consider bad, tasting that is, but I probably would not be upset if I didn’t came across it to begin with.

These are deep fried artichoke hearts with garlic chunks and parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.  The part that doesn’t impress me is that it’s just chunks of garlic on top.  Anybody can do that!  I don’t feel it incorporates or infuses garlic to make it seem special at all.  However, unbeknownst to  me, I did see that it does come with a special garlic sauce that you can get poured on top.  But I only found out after I saw someone else with it and the person at the booth never asked so I never knew about it.  That’s what also irks me about this, is that I see that it could have been potentially great.  But whatevs, can’t dwell on should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.

It looks, smells great, and there is definitely a generous infusion of garlic, but I should have known better.  It’s garlic chicken stir fry!  I’m Asian!  I eat this stuff all the time.  I took the first bite and realized that everything was all too familiar.  In all fairness though, for anybody that doesn’t come across Asian food often, I think it would be worth it and something you would really enjoy.  Like I said, it doesn’t taste bad, but I have had this or something similar to it a thousand times and I feel like I can get this anywhere.  So I will take credit and admit that it’s partially my fault.  The stir fry is in this category because of my own personal prejudices.  I do my best to keep an open mind, but sometimes it’s hard to when you’ve eaten stir fry your whole life and have so much to compare it against.  I realized after eating this that it’s not just about slapping some garlic on a dish for me, but if adding garlic among other things would make a dish truly stand out.

Gilroy Garlic Festival! 7.23.10

Since there is a lot to cover, I am going to it break up into posts based how good the dishes were: the whatevs, the good, and to die for (literally).  I also know the posts are getting kind of long so I’ll try to cut it down.  But sometimes it’s hard not to get carried away when you eat something that’s just that great.