i looooovvvvve chocolate cake from bonjour bakery in gardena! thank you fishpimp!!

Celebrated my birthday with a small group of close friends last night at:

Taps Fish House Brewery
101 E. Imperial Highway
Brea, Ca 92821
(714)257-0101

This is one of those restaurants in that new Downtown Brea area, that's still relatively new to So Cal folks. If you don't drive by, you won't even know it's there [like I didn't know until I drove thru it one day]. But it looks like a smaller scale Old Town Pasadena with not-as-nice shops. However, it's still very new and I'm waiting for more shops to move in before I really go and take a walk around. However, I think it's trying to achieve what Pasadena has done with Old Town - just on a way smaller scale.

Anyway, several months back, I've always passed by this one place called Taps and saw that it was a brewery and has an oyster bar. So I thought I would try it out.

On a Friday night, it was a really typical crowded bar restaurant with lots of people in their 20's, 30's and 40's. The do have a massive big screen tv where we saw Kobe and Reggie duking it out though. There is a large oyster bar where you can be seated with bibs on as well as an enclosed Garden area with heat lamps and fireplace where we got seated in. I personally preferred outside because the main dining hall was not only loud but I think the air needed to be filtered.

Brea sometimes is as far away in feeling from the ethnic enclaves of San Gabriel Valley as you can get. As one of my friends noted, "this is nothing like eating in Rowland Heights." Yeah, I have to agree, we were the only table of an Asian persuasion in our then-present dining area. But no prob, as long as the service is good (and it was) and no lynching mob trying to pick a fight with us, I'm fine. Brea reminds me of Walnut Creek up in the Bay Area. ;P

The food itself was pretty good -- actually better than the place we went to the next evening I think but it might have been because I was hungry. Since they specialized in oysters from 10 different places around the globe, we decided to indulge in half a dozen of two different kinds. I believe we had the Fanny Bay (upper left) and the Hama Hama (on the right). The Fanny Bay was more plump, bigger and more briny - which is what I love about oysters. The Hama Hama is good for beginner oyster eaters. :P

We also started off with a very good calamari dish that wasn't the traditional breaded and dip in cocktail sauce kind. This one was pan seared with tabasco, garlic, worcestershire sauce etc. Much tastier than the boring old way.

surf and turf -- crab stuffed jumbo prawns

A few of us opted to have clam chower, cajun gumbo (which my friends say Norms Restaurant is actually better) and I had the lobster bisque. For the main entree, I only got to capture a few of the dishes such as the surf and turf, crab stuffed jumbo prawns (i think i'm making up these names here), the seafood cioppino, chilean sea bass (which was really good) and the jambalaya (which wasn't very good at all). So pretty much, things seem to be a hit or miss. But for the most part, it was adequate albeit a bit pricey.

seafood cioppino

All in all, I would go back and try it again - perhaps for lunch.

Thanks again to my friends and to everyone else who really made my day.

cheers!

I'm out.