CozmoDeck: May Be A Good Deal!

I found out about CozmoDeck not too long ago - a friend of mine got them for free from a shopping event and gave me a few cards.

So what is a CozmoDeck? It's a promotional tool for restaurants - each card in the CozmoDeck is a gift card that gives you $15 off a meal ($50 or more minimum order on FOOD ONLY).
Not bad, not bad ... since an uncustomized CozmoDeck is only $30 apparently. You can also get a customized one for $65 - this lets you get multiple gift cards from just the restaurants you want - 52 cards total, hence a "deck".

I got one for James Beach, Ciudad, and Pink Taco from my friend, Kat (and they were free! Even betta! Thanks Kat!)

You can see the list of participating restaurants on their website.
They have The Wilshire, Tagine, and Luna Park among others. It's actually a pretty good deal I think. $50 is pretty easy to do even with just two people at these places if you order dessert.

Oh, another note though! I won't recommend buying them now, since they expire December 29th, 2008! If the price remains the same next year, I may get myself one.

2008 Sri Lankan Festival

So I read on a fellow LA foodblogger (Eating L.A.) that this past Saturday was the Sri Lankan festival at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. I've never had Sri Lankan food before, so I took this opportunity and went.

They've set up tents all along the promenade. One of the popular booths was this Curry Bowl, that lists a Tarzana address (in case anyone is interested in going there).Seeing someone preparing the food really attracts a lot of attention. We saw them making this "kottu roti" and, of course, decided that we should get some.
Kottu roti is made from 'roti' (flour dough), chicken, and vegetables, all chopped up. "Ready to eat!" was what they were aiming for. This somewhat reminds me of pad see ew and the like, but a slightly spicier version (not too spicy though). The roti is very doughy in comparison also, a lot more doughy than what I'm used to and it made it very filling.

We also got the String Hoppers (also $10)
The yellow stuff on the top left is coconut, then to the right is some fish - according to the girl it was salmon although it sure doesn't look like it to me - a little spicy but not too bad. The strings were again, kind of doughy. I guess that's the way they like it?

I also got some Falooda, a dessert beverage from "the Indian subcontinent" (says wikipedia):
This particular one is made with milk and rose syrup, and tapioca seeds, then served with a dollop of ice cream.
Talk about Sweet. This was actually too sweet and too ... fragrant ... for my taste. You can really 'taste' the fragrance of the rose syrup. I liked it enough and drank about 1/3 of it but I was also already really full from all the food and couldn't finish it.

I was stuffed so I decided to "walk it off" in the shops and spent even more money ... *sigh*
Anyway, it was a pretty interesting festival, with a lot of new and interesting food (for me), plus it's free and right on the promenade, so if I'm free next year I may hit it again.

Those Japanese ...

They sure know how to entertain themselves :P

Going through the candy/cookie section at Mitsuwa or Nijiya is always fun! Because, well, you never know what you'll find. Like this one!F cup cookie ??? What does that mean? And the cookies are rectangular shaped, so they're not referring to the cookies ... 58.7 kcal ... I wish I can read Japanese. Maybe if I eat a lot of these I'll be an F cup ?_?

Oh and then these:
Couque D'asses .... uh huh. Did I miss something? Does "asses" actually mean something in French? I actually went to the French dictionary online and found nothing, so .. yeah, anyway :P

Can't wait for my next trip to Nijiya or Mitsuwa :O