Ventura County Lunch Bunch

The Greek at the Harbor

2012-02-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

One of the inherent problems with Bunch-a-lunch is the lack of independently owned restaurants in Ventura County. Invariably, the conversation with my dad goes something like this:

Me: “Hey, you wanna Bunch-A-Lunch?”

Dad: “Sure, what were you thinking?”

Me: “I dunno, lemme look.” Then I pull out my phone and start googling.

Dad: “You never find anything on your phone.”

Me: “I know, but at least I’m making an effort.”

Then we will throw two or three restaurants on the table to narrow it down. Once we give ourselves a few to pick from, we usually figure it out fairly fast.

Today though, my dad mentioned that he just had a bowl of cereal. To be fair, it wasn’t just a bowl of cereal. In his own words he described it more as a culinarily religious experience, “It was really more of a bowl of blackberries, blueberries and strawberries with a little bit of cheerios sprinkled on top. I love the $0.99 cent store! I can’t believe people pay $4 for blueberries at Vons when they have the exact same package for $0.99 at the $0.99 cent store! They couldn’t be throwing all of those blueberries away at Vons, people MUST be buying them! Do they not know that they can get the same thing across the street for a buck???”

At some point I threw The Greek at the Harbor into the mix because I was married there and have been wanting to try it since Gordan Ramsay broke them down and built them back up again like a bunch of green army recruits. About the same time, my dad mentioned he wasn’t very hungry. I’m thinking - a match made in heaven! My dad has issues with ethnic food, (For the record, American and Mexican don’t count as ethnic food, they qualify strictly as food.) so with him not pining for a great plate of food and me wanting to check out an ethnic food restaurant was something I couldn’t pass up.

The new interior décor was fab – way better than the dated and stuffy banquet interior when I was married there. But it’s all good because I had a belly dancer and a dude that danced with a full glass of wine upside-down on his head at my wedding. I’m pretty sure you can’t say that about your wedding. The patio area was a little confused with forest green chairs and teal trim, and there was a strange dusting of pepper on the bread basket, but once I worked up the courage, I tried the bread and regained hope due to its yumminess.

Having never been to Greece, I don’t know if I am a qualified judge of a good Gyro, but I have been to Daphne’s in Ventura several times. It came with a piping hot pile of thick cut French fries. They lacked salt, but I was so impressed with the fact that they were burning my tongue with every bite that I kept shoveling them in. When I picked up my Gyro to take a bite, I wasn’t expecting much. This might be related to the fact that my dad took a tiny bite of my meat and started obnoxiously mushing it up in his mouth like baby food, showing me every painful mush. When I finally sank my teeth in, I was pleasantly surprised. The meat was moist and the Kalamata olives gave a fabulous bright note that really complimented the soft warm pita.

For most of the time that I spent inhaling my sandwich, my dad stared at me in bewilderment at the sheer thought I might possibly enjoy such an ethnically diverse meal. But regardless of his non-adventerous palatte, I think that after re-visiting the Greek, it's definitely time to spend an anniversary dinner there.

Allison's Country Cafe in Ventura, CA

2011-01-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

The other day my mom and I ran into each other driving down the street so I made the universal sign for hunger, by pretending to shovel food in my mouth. In response she vigorously shook her head like a savage animal, which I assume indicated that she too shared my hunger pains. In a much more dignified manner than I displayed initially, I waved to her to try to tell her to follow me and I also mouthed the words. Though while driving and shaking her head like a wild animal in agreement I figure it was probably the hand motion that ended up getting her on board, that and the fact that she was also very hungry. We cruised a few blocks down and stopped at Allison's Country Cafe on Telegraph Rd in Ventura.

I'm pretty sure that if you are a Ventura local, you've been to this restaurant. But if you haven't, there's few reasons why you shouldn't. (But to name a few if you have, Cilophobia, Anthropophobia, Decidophobia, or Coulrophobia might want to wait until you get over your fears. Those of you with Coulrophobia can't ever be too careful either!)

I was a little worried about going to a grown up sit down restaurant in my current state as I had come straight from the gym and was, well, disgusting. I can't decide if I thought the waitress not giving me a dirty look for looking completely disheveled and being smelly was a positive or a negative for the restaurant. On one hand, I'm glad she wasn't judgemental, on the other, what does that say about their normal clientele???

Going out on a limb, I ordered the lemon pancakes with berries and they were ridiculous! I am not a pancake eater (at least since I was pregnant and ate pancakes every morning for at least three months, that really ruined normal pancakes for me. Bleh!), but these were really good. So good in fact, I'm sure I negated any calories burned at the gym plus a few by eating them - and I could't even finish the whole plate!

My mom order the one and only breakfast item that I've ever seen her order. Bacon and eggs. As bacon and eggs go, these are cream of the crop. They offer the hash browns as regular hash browns or obrien potatoes with onion and bell pepper, which my mom loves. And their breakfasts come with gigantic biscuits with homemade raspberry jam. When I've ordered non-pancake breakfasts here before, the biscuits usually become my lunch or breakfast for the next day, there is just so MUCH of them!

We both topped our yummy breakfasts off with better than average diner coffee and I'm sure we'll go back one of these days. As a side bar, I once recommended that some family that was visiting from out of town go here for breakfast. Well, they liked it so much that they went two mornings in a row! They would have gone a third I'm sure, but they had to leave town.

Me-N-Ed's Pizzaria in Camarillo, CA

2010-11-14T13:49:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, we visited Me-N-Ed's Pizzaria in Camarillo, CA and while this one didn't fit the bill for being "independently owned" as is our usual Friday Lunch Bunch criteria, in our defense, we had my two sons, ages 7 and 11 and my nephew age 8 joining us. God bless them, but they are loud, especially when they all get together. So after driving around on Ventura Blvd and not seeing anything particularly kid appropriate we ended up at Me-N-Ed's Pizzaria in the Albertson's shopping center in Camarillo, CA.

The first table we sat down at was one of the only booths available and it was right under a TV that was turned up to a volume I would expect for Monday night football, not a quiet afternoon in Camarillo. We quickly repositioned ourselves in a semi booth under a TV that was thoughtfully muted and the kids spent the entire wait for the pizza playing on the video games without actually having money to play them. (Score one for mom!)

Barely peeling them away from the video games, we finally dragged them back to the table (Mind boggling that they could have been having so much fun pretending to play the video games) where the five of us shared a large pizza with pepperoni and sausage and garlic (garlic only on half - obviously for me!). As pizza goes, it was pretty good, but nothing compared to my absolute favorite: Topper's Pizza. In my opinion, the crust was good, and far better than Domino's, but the kids complained that it was burnt and in fact, there were a couple of spots that may have qualified as such. For the price, I tried to ignore it as it didn't seem overly burnt, just crispy and the flavor was good with the right ratio of toppings to crust.

Pricewise we couldn't have found a cheaper lunch. The pizza was $10 bucks and fed all five of us with at least 2 pieces each. Since I'm such an ogar, the kids all had water and I bought my dad a coke which I may have snagged a couple sips from. So at the end of the day, we all at for under $13 bucks. (Granted, after we were done we went over to Rite Aid where where the kids enjoyed Ice Cream Dibs and a fudgecicle for another $6 or $7 bucks!)

Definitely a place I will visit again, especially if I have kids in tow and want a satisfying meal for dirt cheap. On a scale of 1 to 5 pepperonis, this place rates 4 pepperonis. I would have gone 5, but had to take one away since it is a chain and the crust was on the verge of burnt.

Blackbeard's Seaside BBQ at the Harbor in Ventura, CA

2010-10-29T19:58:00.000-07:00

Since the BBQ theme seemed to be family friendly enough, the whole gang (Me, my parents, husband and two kids) made it out for lunch bunch a couple weeks ago. I figured this would be a good opportunity to use one of the gift certificates I had on restaurant.com. (If you aren't familiar with restaurant.com, see my restaurant.com post.) And truthfully, it is probably one of the only ways I would have ever tried the restaurant.

The restaurant was fairly new at the time, but it's family friendliness didn't disappoint, they had fun decor including a life size pirate that was a great photo opportunity for all the kids.

The food on the other hand left something to be desired. The menu was pretty limited and nothing seemed particularly memorable. The meat was generally dry and the other food generally bland. We were very disappointed in the food.

On the other hand this place looked like it has potential. We unanimously decided that this restaurant was better come back after they worked out the kinks - like making enough money to fill the entire dining room with tables and chairs.