Oh, Karma Cafe.

I had such high hopes that you would give me respite from long drives to Long Beach and 45-minute wait times at the always heavenly Open Sesame, where I must go every time I’m craving lamb kabob or hummus or falafel.

Sadly, you’re not the one for me. At least not yet. I don’t know, maybe the timing just isn’t right for us. I mean, you’ve only been open for about a month and a half, and you’ve got so much potential. It’s just that, well, I stopped by three times in the last two weeks with high hopes and an empty stomach. And each time, I left unsatisfied.

Day one was a fluke. You were closed in preparation for a promotional event the next day, when you planned to give away sandwiches. I could live with that.

So I returned the next day (too late for the free food, totally my fault).

I sat on a high-backed, red velvety chair at a wobbly golden table near a fountain in the middle of the room. The trickling water sounded pretty. The college girl gossiping at the next table about how all of her friends are jealous of her good looks did not.

I ordered the server’s recommendation: lamb kabob ($12.99). The seasoned skewers came out on a red plastic plate alongside pungent garlic hummus and long grain rice. Your online menu says the dish comes with warm bread, but none accompanied my plate. The lamb was overcooked and incredibly tough. The rice was bland and oily, and while I loved the overpowering garlic in the hummus, I wish it would have been a little warmer. It tasted like it recently came out of a refrigerator, and I think the flavors bloom better at warm temperature.

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Thoroughly enjoyed this week’s episode — not necessarily the culinary challenge unfortunately, but for the drama that unfolded. (And I was especially stoked to learn at the end of the show that Restaurant Wars will still go on and Bourdain will be back to judge, hooray.)

The challenge this time was to create a healthy boxed lunch set for Chicago’s finest. You knew something was going to go down when a scene preview depicted obnoxious Lisa crying sabotage by accusing someone of cranking up the heat on her rice and of course, the camera immediately pans over to her arch-nemesis Dale …

Alas, it was all carefully manipulated editing by the Bravo folks to play up the tense rivalry between Lisa and Dale. I’ve said it before but I really detest Slimeball Spike. That cat’s smarmier (is that a word?) than a used car salesman, trying so hard to be a slick hustler. I was so happy when his chicken salad attempt was described as pedestrian by Padma. Speaking of, leggy Padma is finally growing on me, though I’m sure most of you guys out there have long appreciated the eye candy.

I usually get hungry for some of the foods prepared by the contenders, but not so during this challenge. (Although I did really want to try Antonia’s spinach and bacon salad with the poached egg from the Quickfire round.) Richard’s “burrito” was essentially a giant spring roll, but I still like his playful attempts. Good for Dale nabbing the win for his lettuce cups with bison, even after Antonia dinged him for cooking too much Asian food. Personally (and perhaps with just a wee bit of bias) I’m happy to see more Asian-influenced cooking on the show, haven’t seen much of it and barely got a hint of it from last season’s (Vietnamese) winner, Hung Huynh. I loved that Lisa and Slimeball Spike were at the bottom of the heap for their lackluster dishes. But they were spared this time, much to my disappointment.

And what to say about the colossally spastic trainwreck that is Andrew, who finally got the boot for his wacky sushi cut roll? I generally like to root for or at least be entertained by the awkward/quirky characters. But Andrew got so twitchy aggro with each episode that I was actually getting worried that the guy would just go postal or something. Can’t wait to see who goes next week!

Didn’t intentionally set out to eat lunch at what’s become the proud little bakery that could: Cream Pan in Old Town Tustin. The Japanese bakery might owe its resounding success to Yelp, where it’s garnered more than 130 glowing reviews in the last year. Actually, Cream Pan has undergone an expansion and is now Japonaise Bakery & Cafe, but I can’t help but still call it by its original name. We wound up at CP after striking out at Black Sheep Bistro (only open for dinner) — and Claro’s Italian Market (closed on Wednesdays).

Savvy Cream Pan devotees know to arrive early to nab the coveted Strawberry Croissants, easily the star pastry of the house. It’s really more of a flaky turnover filled with cold vanilla custard and fresh strawberry slices and then dusted with confectioner’s sugar. At $2.20 a pop, these little beauts, in addition to a small selection of sandwiches, have been known to disappear by noon on most days …

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Had a mad hankering for some pollo asado or Mexican rotisserie chicken and of course, whenever I get on any kind of food kick, I’ll do it to death. So it was three consecutive days of rotisserie’d bird for me. My absolute favorite part? Eating the tender, juicy meat with the crispy and flavorful chicken skin, mmm. That’s what does it for me. That combined with some homemade salsa is a beautiful marriage, all tucked in a steaming tortilla with some fluffy rice. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some good ol’ Zankou and Rosine’s in Anaheim, too — but something about the Mexican-style rotisserie chicken always has me feenin.’

My first craving took me to Super Pollo in Costa Mesa, my local stop for some spit-roasted poultry. The next day, I went straight to Juan Pollo, a favorite of mine since my teen years. (There are only three Orange County locations of the San Bernardino-based chain.)

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This wasn’t the first time I had been told to visit. About a year ago, I remember Kat gushing about the fried mozzarella at this Italian eatery, which was called Il Ghiotto until 2004.

Turns out, Grandma Ruth, who remembers when Spadra was the name of Harbor Boulevard and not the restaurant, has been coming for years. She also remembers when the building was a bus depot because she had to go there to pick up a bicycle my mom’s friend had shipped back from college in Santa Barbara. Before that, the place was an old Pacific Electric railroad station, the restaurant’s website says.

The room where we ate breakfast used to be the baggage room, grandma said.

Frankly, I couldn’t have cared if I was sitting on the sidewalk if it meant I could still eat the mushroom sauce slathered all over this omellete that came wrapped in a crepe (yes, a crepe!).

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In case you don’t know, Ruta’s is a local institution that’s been around since the early 1970s when a group of hippies opened a coffee shop in downtown Fullerton, then successfully saved the building from demolition.

Since then, those hippies also have opened restaurants in Tustin and Orange and have expanded their offerings to include home cooked American favorites, vegetarian specialties and my favorites: gigantic salads that come in bowls bigger than my head.

It’s with one of these salads — the chicken avocado — where my bender began Wednesday afternoon over lunch with an old friend in Orange.

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• Jit Fong wrestles with a monster of a cream puff at Blue Frog Cafe in Orange
• Cupcake addict Kat pops on over to the newish SusieCakes in Newport Beach for some frosting-filled treats
• Kat overdoses on garlic at Sasoon Chicken in Orange, then turns to chocolate for a garlic breath cure
• Jen finds a winner of a breakfast burrito with a Polish sausage version at Athenian Burger #3 in Buena Park
• Ellyn seeks the warm comfort of soon dubu or Korean tofu soup at Cho Dang in Garden Grove.
• Kat finds food like her mom makes at Mitasie in Huntington Beach, a must-try Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall.
• Take our poll: What’s your favorite reality cooking show?

In other OC food blogs:

• Christian Z of OC Mexican Restaurants visits Azteca in Garden Grove, home of the mega shrine to all things Elvis and oh, some serviceable Mexican fare, too.
• Edwin Goei of Monster Munching waxes poetic on his $40 omakase sushi meal at Gen Kai in Irvine
• Julian Hsu over at OC Food Blogs is happy that a renovated Wasa Sushi has reopened at the Irvine MarketPlace, though he admits he likes the cooked fare better than the raw.
• Rawfishionado discusses bad sushi bar names and then tries Sushi Island in Costa Mesa.
• Griffin over at GriffinEatsOC hits up Park Bench Cafe in Huntington Beach to celebrate his dog’s birthday. The outdoor eatery is pet-friendly, with a menu for Fido and of course, food for people, too.

Anyone else disappointed during last night’s episode that there wasn’t a “Restaurant Wars” competition for this season’s Top Chef?

It’s the one showdown on the reality cooking show that I most look forward to every year but instead, it was replaced by “Wedding Wars.” Lame. The remaining eight contestants had to split into two groups to cater a couple’s wedding. Yawn.

As arrogant and in-your-face Dale is, I think the guy has the talent and ability to turn it out in the kitchen. Plus, I loved when he went off on Lisa a few episodes ago. He’s unapologetic and definitely has a short fuse but I like him anyway.

At this point, my bet’s on the final two coming down to Richard and Dale. I can’t stand Spike or Lisa and Andrew is such a spaz. I wonder if he’s going to snap one of these episodes and just stab someone with a fork. Antonia is a wild card, she’s been doing well, but her food thus far just hasn’t really impressed me.

However, fellow reporter and Top Chef fan Chantal Lamers posed a pointed question: “Will a female ever win Top Chef?”

I expected to find basic, run-of-the-mill Vietnamese offerings at Mitasie in Huntington Beach, what appeared to be yet another hole-in-the-wall on the outskirts of Little Saigon. But I kept finding cool and elegant little surprises at this bright shoebox of an eatery, where the dishes average around $6 each. God, I love how cheap Vietnamese food is.

It’s pronounced Mit-ah-zee and I have no idea what it means, but the owner mentioned it might possibly be French-influenced. The small shop is almost lost among a slew of ragtag businesses in an older strip plaza, not to mention all the shiny new chain restaurants that have popped up right across the street at Bella Terra.

Something definitely new for me: Goi tao or Vietnamese Apple Salad ($5.50). It’s finely julienned bits of green and red apple, dressed in a light fish sauce vinaigrette and topped with fried shallots. I know, apples and fish sauce?!? But it was an amazing burst of flavors — sweet, salty, tangy and plenty of crunch. The closest comparison I can think of is the goi xoai or green mango salad, but the apple is certainly more appealing.

It’s one of the handful of interesting items on the menu at Mitasie, which includes fresh spring rolls made with chicken, not pork; a light but lemony chicken noodle soup; and some tasty claypot offerings … (Click on the jump to see more dishes; for the full review in the Orange County Register, click here.)

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Today’s chilly weather egged on my craving for a hot, steaming bowl of soup. And I wanted to venture out of my usual sandwich-for-lunch rut. The Korean District’s Cho Dang Soft Tofu, which serves Korean soon dubu, or spicy silken tofu stew, sounded perfect.

I danced between the oyster tofu soup or the mushroom one, and picked the latter. There are 12 kinds of tofu soup, all $9, with the same red pepper paste-anchovy broth base but with different ingredients, including clams, beef, pork, tripe, dumpling, octopus and more. If you’re feeling especially hungry, you can also get a combination ($15) of soup and various types of Korean barbecue.

There isn’t really an art of eating soon dubu, but there are a few steps to remember. The meal comes with a raw egg that you crack into the boiling bowl of soup. The soup is incredibly hot and cooks the egg immediately. My soup didn’t have as many oysters as I wanted; I fished out five pieces. After you eat the rice, there will be a layer of rice clinging to the bowl. Pour water into the bowl, then scrape and eat the crunchy rice and water mixture. Though it sounds funky, it’s my favorite part of the whole meal.

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