Julie's Dining Club

Friday, January 24, 2020

Lotus

By jewree Friday, January 24, 2020 dessert, reviews, snacks

Biscoff. Or, depending on what country you are in, perhaps you know it was Speculoos. Or perhaps you don't know the base at all, but you know of something called "cookie butter" or "biscoff spread" or "speculoos butter". Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about?

I'll start with the basics. Lotus is a Belgian bakery, founded in 1932, known for their biscuits - hard style, slightly spiced, shortcrust biscuits: Speculoos biscuits (or, Biscoff in the UK and US). Biscoff = "biscuit" + "coffee", as the biscuits are designed to go alongside your coffee.

The biscuits are ... well, boring, honestly. Sure, I guess they go nicely with a cup of coffee, and are served with coffee and espresso in many places in Europe (and on some flights), but ... why? They are boring, really.

But a few years ago, someone realized you can grind them up into a paste, add more vegetable oil and sugar, and turn them into a butter-like spread, much like peanut butter, but with just the biscuits as a base. "Cookie Butter". Let's just say, this stuff got popular fast, particularly when Trader Joe's introduced a version.

Given that I was never into the cookies, er, biscuits, and I don't like things like Nutella in general, the cookie butter fad never really hit me. I didn't know what I'd do with it really, and the few times I did have it, it always just felt too rich (and, um, it is. Don't look at the nutrition stats). Remember the time I had it slathered inside the otherwise delicious fried chimney cake cone soft serve ice cream from Turn Dough in Venice?

I guess people use cookie butter nearly anywhere you might use peanut butter, in sandwiches, globbed on ice cream sundaes, on waffles or pancakes, etc, but yeah, it just hasn't ever struck me as something I really want.

But I also love trying new snacks, particularly when people recommend them to me, so when a friend recommended a grab-n-go snack pack featuring Biscoff spread ... I couldn't resist.

I'm glad I didn't. I think I have been missing out on some cookie butter fun.

Biscoff & Go Cookie Butter and Breadsticks.

"Enjoy your Biscoff on a go with this individually packed of breadsticks and Biscoff Cookie Butter dip. Perfect for lunch box, party favors, snacks."

"Cookie butter and breadsticks". I'll admit, this certainly didn't sound very exciting. Breadsticks?

The packaging looked like Dunkaroos (does those still exist?), or cheese spread and crackers. You pull pack a foil top to reveal a compartment with the item to dunk, and a compartment with the dip.

Cookie Butter & Breadsticks.

"Enjoy the great taste of the famous Lotus Biscoff Cookies crushed into a smooth spread and served in a snack pack with crunchy breadsticks. To create this irresistibly smooth spread, we crush the Lotus Biscoff cookies finely after baking. That's how we keep all the goodness of their unique flavor. Take this snack pack wherever you go!"

The breadsticks looked as boring as I thought they might. They certainly are not something I'd call "breadsticks" as they are not soft and doughy, but I don't have a better name for them either. Hard, bland style not sweet cookie sticks that taste a lot like hard bread? Yeah. The breadsticks alone are not exactly a tasty item, although I certainly can't claim they taste *bad* either. I think they'd dunk equally well in a cheese sauce, pesto, or anything else you might dip, well, breadsticks into.

And then the sidecar of cookie butter. Spreadable caramelized biscuits. Consistency like peanut butter. Very sweet, with a depth of flavor from brown sugar and a touch of spicing. So very rich.

It turns out, the bland breadsticks are what you need to combat the richness of the spread. While a spoonful of the spread is quite delicious, much more than that just isn't actually appealing.

I enjoyed dunking them several at a time into the spread, and getting a big glob on the end of my sticks.

Breadstick + Cookie Butter + Toffee Bits.

And then I started dunking the sticks, with cookie butter, into more toppings. Toffee bits were first. I liked adding more texture, but they weren't quite what I wanted with the cookie butter.

I enjoyed them even more when I pulled out my can of whipped cream and a shaker of rainbow sprinkles, and made creations with several breadsticks, a generous glob of cookie butter, far too much whipped cream, and some sprinkles just for fun.

I wanted to do a version with breadstick + cookie butter + cacao nibs, and started to come up with many other great ideas, but then I looked down, and alas, the entire package was gone. Doh.

Turns out, I liked these things.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Happy Lemon Bubble Tea Catering

By jewree Wednesday, January 22, 2020 catering, drinks, reviews

"ENJOY FRESHLY BREWED TEA & SHARE THE HAPPINESS!"

Happy Lemon is a worldwide bubble tea sensation, established in China in 2006, with 1500+ locations already, spanning China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietname, Philippines, Japan, UAE, UK, Canada, and the US.

The menu is not nearly as extensive as many other shops, although when you visit a shop in person, there are plenty of customization: pick your drink base, your size, your sweetness, ice level, type of milk, and toppings. They have a standard lineup of green or black tea bases for fruity or milk teas, smoothies, and a fairly small, but good, lineup of regular toppings (boba, pudding, aloe vera, lychee jelly, taro balls), and the slightly less standard Oreo mix-in, "puff cream" and very trendy cheese foam. Notable, at least to me, is that there is no taro milk tea and no fresh taro chunks.

I did not visit a shop in person however, so my options were more limited, as we had them cater a private party.

Catering Setup.

For the catering setup, they brought only green tea, black tea, and milk tea (black) base, only boba for a mix in, and cheese foam for a topping. There was no option to customize sweetness nor milk (green tea was unsweet, no milk, same with black, and the milk tea was non-dairy creamer and condensed milk, quite sweet, and used black tea). These were made to order thought.

In addition, they brought a non-caffeinated option that came pre-packaged, Okinawa Milk tea, with either whole milk or soy milk, no mix-ins or toppings available, as they came sealed.

I adore, adore, adore cheese topping on bubble tea (often known as "cheese foam", "creama", or "cheezo"), here called "salted cheese", so I was delighted that even with the limited options, we had that one. For those unfamiliar, no, it is not like they dump cheddar cheese into your milk tea, rather, it is a fluffy topping, made from whipped cream and cream cheese (or, powders), and is usually salted, rather than sweet. You may read all about it in many other forms that I've enjoyed: like Bubble Nini Tea in Sydney's Purple Rice Blended with Yogurt + Taro Pearls + Pink Salt Cheese Milk Foam, the Ube Marble creation from Boba Lab in Santa Monica with red bean, berry boba, lychee jelly, pudding, salted cheese foam, the simple version on my taro milk tea in Sydney at Chatime, the Royal Sesame Taro Milk + Red Rice with Cheese from the Original Royaltea also in Sydney and many, many more.

Extras!

After the serving time ended, they left all the extras (since we paid for them), so I got to try quite a few.

I was overall pleased, although there wasn't anything particularly extraordinary about their offerings.

Okinawa Fresh Milk (Soy).

The only decaf option they had was the Okinawa fresh milk, which is basically just sweet milk. In the base of the cup was a sweet caramel like syrup, and other than that, it is just milk. Instructions were to shake to mix it up.

Since these were pre-packaged offsite, they had no option to include boba or cheese foam. They had both soy milk and whole milk options. There were many of these left at the end, so I grabbed a few to stick in the fridge to try later - the Happy Lemon staff encouraged it, saying that since they didn't have boba, they'd keep fine.

I started with a soy version, as I do love soy milk. I know I was told to shake it up, but I wanted to try it separate first.

The milk was ... uh, just milk. It was not very soy prominent actually, less than a normal soy milk in my opinion. As I love soy milk flavor, this was a bit of a letdown, as I wanted to taste more soy. The syrup at the base was *extremely* sweet, and sorta reminded me of the syrup that boba comes in. I did take a full sip of that, and wow, cloying, and not good.

Once I shook it up, the sweetness balanced out, but it was still very sweet, and the end result was basically just sweet milk, with no distinguishable soy flavor. I was not particularly happy with this.

Okinawa Fresh Milk (Whole Milk).

Next up was the regular whole milk. Again, syrup in the base, instructed to shake. Here you can see the result of shaking, it looks like a black milk tea, due to all the syrup.

It tasted very similar to the soy, just more plain. Again, very sweet, in a brown sugar sort of way. I did like it, it was sweet and creamy, but more than a few sips quickly left me bored. I wanted mix-ins, I wanted toppings.

I ended up using it with my morning cereal, which worked great - sweet cereal milk!

Jasmine Green Tea with Boba, Salted Cheese Foam, Matcha Powder.

For the drink that I ordered, I wanted to minimize caffeine, but didn't want just boring milk, so I went for the green tea option. There was no milk option for this, but that was fine with me. I added boba and cheese foam of course, and the server added matcha powder without asking.

The cheese foam, the part I was most exited for, was fine. It wasn't as fluffy as other places, and wasn't as salty or, uh, cheesy and savory, but it also wasn't too rich, and the consistency was good. It was good, but not extraordinary.

Green tea is something I rarely get, but I did like it - far more refreshing than I remembered, and it combined actually really nicely with the cheese foam. It was not bitter at all. I see why this is their most popular drink, it really does work. You could use the straw to get a sip of just refreshing tea, or drink through the hole and get a bit of both. I enjoyed it.

And finally, the boba. The texture was decent, nicely chewy, although they were a bit hard, and were kinda clumped together. Perhaps this is due to catering setup? The boba was also extremely sweet, soak in sweet syrup, a lot of which was added with the boba. Decent quality, a bit sweet, but worth getting if you want it.

So overall, a decent drink, and I was pretty happy with mine, and, to be honest, it was to get forced outside my standard order of taro milk. This was my favorite of the drinks I tried.

Milk Tea (black) with Boba, Salted Cheese Foam, Matcha Powder.

When the event ended, we still had plenty pre-paid, so I tried another, this time, I went all in: the milk tea. Made with black tea base, non-dairy creamer, and sweetened with condensed milk. Again with the sweetened boba, and of course, cheese foam. Basically, as decadent as you could get, and very different from the green tea.

It was very sweet. It was very creamy. It was ... liquid dessert. Caffeinated liquid dessert! Another style of drink I don't normally order, but it reminded me a lot of Thai iced tea that I used to get regularly, just with the fun additions of boba and foam. Enjoyable for sure, although so very sweet, and it was another nice "forced" going outside my norm. My second favorite drink.

Ice Cream Sundae with Boba & Cheese Foam!

A few hours later, after lunch, I had a bowl of ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate. I went to add some standard toppings, hot fudge, sprinkles, etc, etc, and realized ... the boba tea setup was still going strong. While I didn't want another bubble tea ... I did want a bubble tea ice cream sundae!

I approached a bit sheepishly, and said something like "so, uh, I have this lovely bowl of ice cream ..." and the server was on to me in no time, "oooh, do you want boba on top? And cheese foam?" I was delighted that she didn't find me weird, and she told me that one of their locations is right next to a froyo shop, and people come in with froyo all the time and just order toppings for it. Heh.

I loved my creation. The boba, while too sweet for what I really wanted in my drinks, was perfect in all its syrup on top of my ice ream. It added a sauce (the syrup) and a fun texture, all at once. And the cheese foam? Still not as lofty or thick as I wished it was, but it totally sealed the deal. I added sprinkles too, I was so very proud of myself for this. I loved it.

And no, I don't credit really for thinking of this ... I was drawing off my own experiences with boba sundaes, which I've had before at Devon Cafe in Sydney (both a taro soft serve version with coconut foam, boba, tapioca pudding, taro syrup, and more, and a salted caramel soft serve wit cheese foam and uh churro) and TP Tea in Tokyo (milk tea soft serve with boba).

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

JetBlue Mint, Flight 633, BOS-SFO (December 2018, July 2019, December 2019)

By jewree Tuesday, January 21, 2020 airlines, cookies, dessert, ice cream, reviews, travel

December 2019 Flight

Flight Details:

Departure: BOS, 4pm (scheduled), 4:30pm (actual - not their fault, we had a passenger decide they needed to deplane ...)
Arrival: SFO, 7:35 pm (scheduled)
Seat: 4F (single suite)
Class: Mint

Our flight was not the best. Seatbelt sign on for the first 3 hours straight due to turbulence, and back on many times throughout the flight. Crying child right in front of me. Flight attendants that were the least attentive I've ever seen on a Mint flight ... they really, truly just seemed to not care, at all.

Amenities

Nothing new to say here, same seat, same blanket, yadda yadda. I appreciated the hand lotion in my amenity kit immensely on this trip since my hands were so so dry from the east coast winter.

Food & Drink

Menu & Ordering

December Lunch/Dinner Westbound.

The menu was as follows:

WELCOME TASTE

Roasted marcona almonds

DELISH DISHES
Choose three. Please note: The first two dishes listed below are chilled.

Butternut Squash Salad / arugula, cotija, pomegranate & pumpkin seeds
Green Goddess Salad / baby gem, haricots verts, asparagus, english peas, cucumber, avocado, feta
Pan-Seared Seabass / parmesan risotto, broccolini, carrot-chardonnay sauce
Spicy Brick Chicken / collard greens, horseradish mash, onion sauce
Orecchiette / pork ragout, parmesan, robiola cheese, parsley

SWEET BITES
Enjoy both.

ICE CREAM: Toscanni's, Boston, MA
FRESH FRUIT: papaya, mango, pineapple, strawberry

WHEN YOU RE-TREAT

COOKIE, milk bar, NYC and beyond

This was a very, very uninspiring menu for me. Meh to the nuts instead of chips & dip for the starter. I'm allergic to avocado in one of the salads. I've had the seabass dish several times, and although the fish is sometimes nicely cooked, I dislike the sides, and hate the sauce that comes with it. The pasta is hit or miss, with the robiola cheese usually the only redeeming part. And I loathe chicken. The only items I really actually wanted were the other salad with butternut squash (but not the cojita or the pomegranate with it ...), and the sides that came with the chicken.

Drinks

The drink lineup as always featured a sparkling, two red, and two white wines, plus cider, beer, liquor, soft drinks, tea, and coffee.

Drinks.

SPARKLING: Château de Brézé. Cremant de Loire, NV, France
WHITE: Villa Alpini Sauvignon Blanc, 2018, Italy
WHITE: The Wonderland Project Sonoma Chardonnay, 2016, California
RED: Bodega Chacra Barda Pinot Noir, 2018, Argentina
RED: Casanuova delle Cerbaie Rosso di Montalcino 2012

This was the exact same lineup I had on my flight to Boston, so I knew I wasn't particularly into the Chardonnay or the Italian red, but liked the pinot noir. I liked it again.

Food

Mediocre Meal.

My meal was mostly pretty meh, one of the weaker Mint menus I've had in a long time. The wine was really the best part.


Welcome Taste: Roasted marcona almonds / pinot noir	.

About an hour into our flight, welcome tastes and drinks were finally served (orders for drinks and meal were taken soon after takeoff).

As with my eastbound flight, the welcome snack was nuts, not warm, and this made me sad. They were fine marcona almonds, very salty, but, just nuts. I really missed the dip based snacks.

Delish Dishes:
Spicy Brick Chicken / Butternut Squash Salad / Green Goddess Salad.
Dinner Roll & Oil.

As always, main dishes were done seat by seat, so since I was in the 4th row it took a while. This was fine with me, since I was still served dinner by 5:45pm Boston time, which was only 2:45pm at my destination.

My trio came alongside the warm dinner roll that I never want. The olive oil is nice quality though, and I always use the salt and pepper shaker.

Green Goddess Salad.

"Baby gem, haricots verts, asparagus, english peas, cucumber, avocado, feta."

I started with the Green Goddess Salad, even though it has avocado (I'm allergic) and feta (I don't like). I wanted the salad base, and I do really like asparagus and peas. I hoped it would have a tasty dressing. I did ask to have the avocado left off, but was told it was pre-plated. My allergy is minor, so I knew I could just push it aside. It didn't look very good though, two small chunks, both brown.

It strangely ... had no dressing. None at all. It was dry, dry, dry. I wonder if this was an error? It seemed really odd to have absolutely no dressing to it. This salad also had no crunchy element, and I am always impressed that JetBlue normally has really nicely designed salads, usually with something in there for crunch. I added some of my almonds.

The baby gems were fine, crisp, but there was just two (large) pieces of it. I didn't notice the haricot verts, I believe they were cut up, as was the asparagus, so they all just blended together to be fairly flavorless but crisp green things. The peas were shelled, and again, just more small bits of crisp green vegetable that had no flavor. I was pretty sad by the flavorless veggies, particularly with no dressing.

The feta was ... feta. Not my thing. At least it had a flavor?

Overall, one of the most disappointing and boring salads I've had on a JetBlue flight, flavorless and no dressing ... MEH.

Butternut Squash Salad

"Arugula, cotija, pomegranate & pumpkin seeds."

Next up, another chilled dish, sorta a salad.

This is actually the dish I was excited for, and almost doubled up on rather than trying three different things. I hadn't encountered it before, but I love winter squashes, and wondered what form the salad would take. I'm glad I didn't double up.

There were some good things, and some bad things, about this dish.

The bad? The arugula was entirely wilted, and basically non-existent. It was more of a garnish than anything else - two sprigs under it, and one on top. And, completely wilted. I've never seen such sad greens on a JetBlue flight, usually they are fairly fresh seeming.

Much like feta, I don't particularly like cotija, but at least the flavor isn't quite as strong as feta, and it was basically lost in here. Not sure what cheese I'd rather see, and really, I think a sour cream or mayo based sauce would make more sense to add a creamy component?

The pomegranate I really disliked, not that I ever particularly like pomegranate, but here it was really ... gritty? The seeds were quite pale too. I do think they made sense with squash and pumpkin seeds, a very seasonal dish, I just didn't really want them in the first place.

Now, moving positive. The pumpkin seeds were fine, and I appreciated the crunch. I pulled some out and added to my other salad to better complete it.

And then, the main attraction, the butternut squash. It was ... ok. Roasted, seasoned with what seemed sorta like a Mexican inspired seasoning. Not too mushy, not too firm, decent flavor. Certainly nothing special, but I didn't dislike it. I really wanted a creamy sauce with it. Two undressed salads just left my palette ... bored.

Spicy Brick Chicken.

And finally, my hot dish, the chicken. Yes, I dislike chicken, but I wanted the sides.

The chicken was very aggressively seasoned by the looks of things. A decent size breast, just coated in ... something. I assume "spicy" and ... brick? I didn't try it, as I really, truly do not like chicken.

But under it ...

Close Up: Chicken Sides.

"Collard greens, horseradish mash, onion sauce."

The reason I got the dish, besides not really having any options I wanted, is that the sides really did sound good. I like collard greens, I like mash, I like horseradish, I like onion, and I love sauce!

The sides were great. Better even than I had hoped. I devoured them. They were quasi warm, and I dug into them immediately (before trying my salads, actually).

The mash was a rustic style, not traditional creamy mashed potatoes. I liked this, full of chunks and texture. The horseradish added a nice slight kick. I was pleased with this, even on its own without sauce.

The collards were also good, cooked down nicely, not too soft, and flavorful. I think some of the chicken seasoning was on them, which was nice, although I added more salt and pepper to amp the flavor up a bit more.

Alongside both was the onion sauce, which was really hard to describe. Not thick like a gravy, but not thin either really. It was flavorful though, and went fine with both the collards and the mash. I think it would have been hard to use with the chicken, if it was intended to be?

I liked all the sides individually, I liked them combined, and I really appreciated the warm, comforting meal.

Sweet Bites: Fresh Fruit.

"Papaya, mango, pineapple, strawberry."

I have really, really mixed feelings on this fruit. In many ways, it was incredibly lackluster and quite under ripe.

The pale yellow item in the center is the mango. It was firm, not soft. Rather sour. Basically, green mango. Not that I'd expect good mango on a US flight, but ... yeah, this was just not fresh ripe mango. I did kinda like the sourness though?

The pineapple was juicy and fine, quite sweet to contrast the sour mango, but I'm not particularly a fan of pineapple.

The papaya was more unripe than the mango. It was very firm and fibrous. Not juicy, not good.

I had a single strawberry, cut in half. It was moderately ripe, and had a decent flavor. The best piece from the assortment, and I added it to my ice cream.

Sweet Bites: Toscanini's Ice Cream.

"Pumpkin Fluff & Vanilla."

And finally, time for ice cream. As always, sourced from our departure city, which for Boston means Toscannini's. As always, a scoop of vanilla, plus two scoops of a (usually seasonal) offering. For the fall/holiday season that meant ... pumpkin. But not just pumpkin, pumpkin fluff!

The ice cream was served rock solid, and took a while to get soft enough for my ideal eating meltiness, which was fine, as I was quite full from my meal, and it was still very early for dinner. It did get to be a nice style of melty.

I don't necessarily get excited about pumpkin, particularly given that this was right after the holidays where I over-indulged in my mom's pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread pudding, and pumpkin cheesecake, but ... FLUFF!

Did you know fluff was invented in Somerville, MA? Toscannini's is located in Cambridge, right next door, so this ingredient has a local touch too.

The fluff added a interesting sweetness to the pumpkin base, and almost reminded me of marshmallow topped sweet potatoes. There were classic pumpkin spices in the mix too, but, none were too aggressive. Definitely a far more interesting flavor than your standard pumpkin ice cream, and I appreciated the effort to be unique.