Remarkable Tacos at El Camino

When tacos were all the craze in the States over five years ago, it seemed as though many food blogs I read were really into them. I was very jealous. Very. Jealous.

I've heard about a few decent taco joints in Ottawa. But the one that intrigued me the most was El Camino. Not only was it the newest craze in Ottawa this summer, but a friend also highly recommended it.


We had originally planned to go to El Camino on Saturday night but our family had other plans. We ended up going out to dinner with our large extended family. And of course when I checked Twitter that evening, I saw that Ottawa Senators' stud defenseman, Erik Karlsson, had been there for dinner. Bah!

My stomach still felt very heavy after brunch with my friends. We ended up leaving the apartment around 6pm. It wasn't tough to find the restaurant. We walked up Elgin Street and then saw a line up. Bingo.





We ordered our tacos and waited off to the side. You can watch the kitchen work their magic if you order from the taco window.


Once we got our tacos, we added some Cholula hot sauce to our food and began to walk back to Lucy's place. Lucy already devoured two out of her three tacos by the time we got about two blocks away from the restaurant.






My food was still warm when we arrived. I got an order of betal leaf shrimps and one crispy fish taco. The fish taco was remarkable! The warm pliable flour tortilla held the red cabbage and cilantro topped crispy fish. I believe there was also a slice of avocado too. I could've eaten four more of these if I had space in my stomach. The little wedge of lime helped.

The betal leaf shrimps reminded me of eating Vietnamese spring rolls with fresh thai basil. The flavour of the betal leaf help cut through the heaviness of the savoury shrimp filling. The filling surprised me. It was soft and slightly mushy instead of plump seasoned shrimps, as I had expected.

Lucy ordered two fish tacos and a pork taco. She was starving when we went, which was why she downed the tacos so quickly.


Andrew ordered one each of pork, lamb and ox tongue. The pork and lamb were both slow cooked and pulled apart. His favourite was the lamb. After trying a small bite of his lamb taco, I'd have to agree. I'd definitely get the lamb and crispy fish tacos next time.

He found the ox tongue to be a bit on the bland side compared to the other two tacos. It wasn't gamey though.

Andrew: "My tacos are dripping!"
Lucy: "Mine didn't drip."
Me: "That's because you inhaled your tacos so quickly!"

We'll definitely be back to El Camino. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

It was fun celebrating my birthday with great food and better company! Thanks everyone!

~*~

Birthday Brunch at Art Is In

We were going to head over to Benny's Bistro for brunch last Sunday. There were six of us though. KG suggested that we head over to Art Is In as a Plan B. At first, I thought we might be able to wait to get a table together and if we weren't able to get one, then we'd just walk to Le Moulin de Provence or something. But after a couple of busy days at work, I just wanted to keep things simple so I changed the plans the night before. Sorry guys!

We arrived around quarter after ten. The outdoor tables were full and there weren't many tables available inside. I was unfamiliar with how it worked. It looked like people at their tables had numbers, so I assumed we had to order and pay up at the front and then find a table. There was quite a bit of a line but the line kept moving. We didn't have much time to look at the brunch menu.




I was thinking of either the french toast stack or the benny.

Luckily, the people at the table by the open garage door looked like they were just finishing. They were very friendly and had a random conversation. Apparently it was national coffee day. Good thing I had ordered a cappuccino.

While waiting, I scanned the tables to see what everyone else was eating. I had actually forgot what I had ordered once I sat down. A small table, off in the two o'clock direction, had ordered the french toast stack and I thought to myself, "Oh that looks good. Why didn't I order that?"


The egg wobbled when the plate was placed on the table. Awesome. So I had ordered the french toast stack after all! It was gorgeous to look at and was very tasty. In hindsight, I could've just opened up my wallet and checked my receipt.


VN asked for their Crispy Winniped Style Cinnamon Apple Jack. It was described to her, by the cashier, that it was a crêpe with apples. That's one hefty crêpe. 

I didn't get a decent photo of KG's pancakes or J's sandwich. VN and KG both had maple butter and loved it. They were surprised how good it tasted. It definitely was not healthy. Maybe that's why it was so addictive.


G and JL both ordered the eggs benny with bacon.


Silly me. I got an almond croissant to share with VN. We didn't have any space in our stomachs to eat this during brunch.

We learned a very important lesson during our brunch. Maple butter is godly!

~*~

Leftover Lunch - Korean food

In the last part of summer and early fall, we were on something of a Korean food phase, and it seemed like every other meal we made had some Korean ingredients incorporated into it. We bought a very large container of kimchi from Arum Korean Market on Bank Street, so this encouraged us to make other Korean dishes. The lunch above comprised of leftover soondubu jjigae (soft tofu stew) from the previous night's dinner.

 

As you can see, there is a fair bit of kimchi in it, so I'm not sure if it actually qualifies as a soondubu jjigae or if it is more of a kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew). Regardless, it turned out to be one of the best Korean stews I've ever made, since I finally made the effort to buy dried anchovies to make a proper broth. For this lunch, I heated up the leftover soup and added some Shin Ramyun instant noodles -- without the seasoning packets -- to bulk it up a little.

 

As a side dish, since I was apparently feeling quite fancy that day, I also made a kimchi omelette. I was a little overzealous and added too much chopped kimchi, so the omelette fell apart somewhat in the pan. It was still pretty delicious for a quick leftover lunch.

 Now that I am taking the time to come home for lunch, I have even more incentive to cook dinner. Great dinners typically turn out to be the best lunches on the next day. Now the challenge is to keep this habit up and continue posting about homemade food!

Quick Quesadilla Dinner

We had cheese. We had defrosted pork chops in the fridge. And leftover chicken. It just made sense to make quesadillas.

Since it was just the two of us, we set aside some pork chops to make pork cutlets later. We used the rest with a bit of some Cool Runnings seasoning.

Onions and mushrooms were sautéed, separately, of course. We topped half of our tortilla and then folded them over in half. The quesadillas were cooked with a little butter in a pan over medium heat.


We enjoyed our quesadillas with salsa and iced tea. The only thing that was missing was a nice side salad. It was a deliciously quick dinner nonetheless.