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Ahi Tuna - Islands Hotel Restaurant

Islands Hotel – Palm Terrace Restaurant

690 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660

866.554.4619

The “Large Plate” at the Islands Hotel of Ahi Tuna is simply delectable and delicious. It is seared so you get multiple textures going on at the same time. Cutting each of the four pieces into quarters is the best way to maximize the flavor and enjoyment. Because even though this dish is called a Large Plate, it can go very fast if you just cut the pieces into halves. If you notice from the picture that the sides of the tuna pieces are slightly white around the edges. This was because of the searing. The texture here was so remarkable because the outsides of the pieces had a little bit of pepper and nori. Nori is a type of seaweed. And so that white area was a little bit chewy and then when I bit down into the pinkish-purple part of the tuna then it got extremely tender. So this is a very rewarding piece of food for someone who likes texture foods.

And there are mushrooms in the dish. The mushrooms come in many different shapes and sizes, but most of the are small. I even was lucky enough to find some lightly battered and fried pieces of something that tasted like mushrooms, but I wasn’t completely sure. The contrasting saltiness of these small fried pieces meshed very well with the Ahi.

The coconut curry sauce was flavorful and rich and only a small amount of the sauce was needed to add even more flavor to the Ahi Tuna. The dish would have been fine without the coconut curry sauce, but its addition helped push the dish from extremely good, to beyond excellent.

There were also small pieces of red pepper floating around the dish and they were just a slight accent to the flavor. I would scoop up a few pieces of pepper and some curry and a mushroom or two in a forkful along with the tuna. This would definitely be a taste-bud rewarding experience. And even though there were only four pieces of tuna, it lasted for a very long time during conversation and eating.

The meal felt healthy and light, and yet filling enough to not require an appetizer or desert.

-Tyler

Souffle - Pomodoro Newport Coast

Pasta Pomodoro

Newport Coast
21133 Newport Coast Drive
Newport Coast, CA 92657

(949) 759-1303

Hours:
11:30 AM – 10PM weekdays
12 NOON to 10PM weekends

Last weekend I was really hungry. I got so hungry that I didn’t even want to wait to drive somewhere for lunch. So we decided to go somewhere completely new to me. The place was Pasta Pomodoro. The food was beyond excellent and the prices were very reasonable for the quality of the food and the portions. As you can see from the picture above we shared a Chocolate Souffle for desert and coffee. The souffle was cakey and warm on the outside and fudgy and soft in the center. It came with some small bit of ice cream or gelato or something. It just was a small thing that contrasted with the chocolate. The coffee was the perfect addition to the souffle.

Penne Portobello

The dish that I ate was Penne Portobello. It was a penne pasta with creamy garlic sauce. This dish is $10.50 and it is 1043 calories. And this was a good thing because I was extremely hungry at the time. But the real gem of this dish was the perfectly cooked sausage pieces. I usually don’t even like sausage in my pasta at all. But this Penne Portobello tasted so god with it. I think the sausage was cooked in a pan because it had this delicious texture that was slightly blackened and crispy and chewy on the outside. While on the inside the sausage was tender. And as if that wasn’t enough to love the dish, there was these juicy pieces of portobello mushrooms floating around. And they had this exquisite dark color. Each bite was a great blend of tenderness and squishy mushroom goodness. The flavor of the portobello mushrooms was slightly meaty with a tiny bit of saltiness. There was even grilled chicken in the pasta. The pieces were small but well prepared. They did a good job not overpowering the other ingredients. The chicken just added a little more substance to this hearty dish.

Overall the customer service was well above par at Pasta Pomodoro. The waitress gave us fresh bread and pesto oil dip that was some of the best bread I’ve ever had at an Italian restaurant. She was friendly and did a great job refilling our drinks and water. And our food came to us nice and hot and with the utmost excellent presentation.

-Tyler