All You Can Eat- A Meal of Champions, A Test of Pride

    I'm always weary of All you can eats (AYCE) because you either spend the night with bad service while fighting with other patrons for food AND/OR eating so much that you end up feeling like crap or throwing it all back up. But yesterday's meal was different. I went to Irvine to visit my besties and we decided to get AYCE at this place called Zenko's. About $22 for AYCE. Awesome! And the best part? The waitresses were all super nice and attentive and the food was pretty good! And the best best part? Together we beat their previous personal  record by eating more than 22 plates of food (the 4 of us) and more than $160 worth of sushi not including appetizers. We definitely got our money's worth. In fact we even busted out the calculator just to make sure. As a trophy, we even took home our order receipt to frame on the fridge. My friends are hardcore! Loves it!

    These were our appetizers. We ordered 4 orders of fried calamari, a miso soup for each of us, and baked mussels. I had 2 misos just myself!

    Is your mouth watering? Yes it was amazing. The sushi wasn't dry either, which is something I was worried about since it was an AYCE place. We basically tried to order some of everything on the menu. They tried to save plates by putting as much sushi on one plate as they could. Notable dish was definitely Box 1. If you look closely the sushi is inside a jalapeno pepper. Box 2 we have 2 BSCR rolls, a baked scallop roll, and a green dragon roll. Box 3 tuna, white tuna, albacore sushi and some type of fried tempera crunch roll thingy. Box 4 has a salmon skin roll and something else. Honestly everything starts tasting the same when you are eating for pride, trying beat your previous record. Plus, we had many flat screen TVs on around us and also unlimited time to eat as much as we wanted.

    And here comes the conspiracy theory...  Look at our waters! They were so freaking huge! So I'm pretty sure they did that not to help quench their customers' thirst but to try to get us fuller, faster since the rice would start to swell up more in our stomaches. Cunning and clever idea, but they obviously didn't know who they were messing with. Everyone had multiple refills of water and then proceeded to order even more sushi. 

    And they all kept on coming and coming. One thing I would like to say is about the fried Philadelphia roll in Box 2. I personally hate Philadelphia rolls. I think they are the worst invention ever. Who the hell puts cream cheese in sushi? It's not a bagel. But this one was fried in tempera batter and I have to admit it was quite tasty! 

    I ended my meal with another order of miso soup and then with this tempura green tea ice cream! It was a great way to end our victory meal. My bestie was really worried that I wouldn't enjoy Zenko's because it was completely opposite of my pervious post from Sasabune. This was the typical Korean owned Japanese joint with "fake" Japanese food. Honestly, I really enjoyed Zenko's. I know it represents all those unauthentic Japanese rolls but those rolls are good too. If I wanted to go to a really authentic Japanese place, I would have gone elsewhere. Just because it's not a real Japanese meal didn't make it any less tasty. And breaking a record was awesome too! Great night!

 

    And since I was in the area, I obviously had to stop by 85 degrees Bakery, which I've previously mentioned in my cakes post. So yesterday altogether, $78 was spent buying bakery items at 85C. Yes... I can't really explain myself. Stressed spelled Backwards is Desserts after all. Box 1 is 85C's Chocolate Cookie Crumble, Box 2 is their Strawberry Cadina, and Box 3 is a half eaten Black Forest cake. 

    Miscellaneous breads I ended up purchasing. The black bread in Box 1 is a Japanese Calamari Bread. It looks gross but is delicious. Other breads I purchased included, sweet bread, chocolate bread, pineapple bread, brioche, coffee bread, mocha bread, just to name a few. The fun part about 85C is they constantly have fresh bread coming out of their ovens. When a worker brings out a new tray of fresh bread they shout "Fresh Bread" and then all the other workers shout in unison too! Then everyone tackles them for their fresh bread. Personally, I think 85 is a good bakery but if you are in Irvine the best bakery to check out is Les Versailles Boulange in Westminister. Their coffee, eclairs, brioche, and other breads are better than 85!


Happy Eatings and grab your besties and eat til you get kicked out!