Aliso Peak

Aliso Peak trail is a short 3 miles round trip trail in Southern California in the city of Aliso.  The peak sits right by the coast and provides an incredible view on the beach down below. The difficulty of this trail is quite easy, but there are some steep portion of the trail that go up and down on gravels. Thus extra caution is advised.


To get to Aliso Peak, there are 2 starting points. The first starting point is to go from Aliso Summit trail head, but that trail head was closed when we went there for some reason. The second trail head is closer to the peak and starts from Sea View Park. The Sea View Park is right by the gated community of Aliso Sur. make sure you don't approach the gate since you are not a resident there.  We parked our car on the curb side right by the park. When we got off the car, we could already see a gorgeous view of the canyon down below.

The trail starts on the side of the gate of the gate community. There is a sandy trail that forks to the right and that is the starting point. Along the trail, there are several picnic tables on the side for people to enjoy the day.  Upon approaching the picnic table, the easy part of the trail ends here and now the trail becomes narrow and goes downwards. Be very careful here since it is a bit steep. Once we got down to the bottom of this down hill section, we kind of got into the gated community, but of course we don't plan to enter the community.

The trail continues along the side of the community and goes towards the beach. The trail is actually wide here because it needs to allow trucks to go on this trail as well. So be aware of any incoming vehicles. On this section of the trail, we could see the Aliso Peak down below! 

Once we got the the bottom of the peak, the ascend beings. The ascent of this trail is just a small part of this trail. It was not difficult at all. We got to the top right away and the view was breathtaking. We could see the entire coastline and the Laguna Beach. Since it is early morning just 30 minutes after sun rise, the color is beautifully golden along the ridge. There is also conveniently a bench at the top for people to sit and enjoy the view.

Looking back at where the trail started, we could see the community built on top of the hill. It was really a beautiful view from the peak. We could also see the nicely built golf course down below in the canyon. That is actually a very well built golf course to allow players to enjoy golf in the shade.

Overall, this was a great hiking experience since it was our first time hiking in Southern California. The sun was not as glaring as what we expected and we would definitely try a longer trail next time.

Capital Seafood

Capital Seafood is an authentic Chinese restaurant located in Irvine along Jamboree street. In the morning, it offers Cantonese styled Dim Sum dishes and at night it offers traditional Chinese seafood dishes. The restaurant is located in the plaza that has many other Asian restaurants.


Initially, we were just at the plaza to purchase some bread for breakfast, but we happened to tumble across Capital Seafood and wondered why it opened so early. We figured that it must be serving Dim Sum in the early morning and thus we decided to give it a try since we haven't had Dim Sum for a while.

We went in and the restaurant was about half full. We were led to the table and chose to get a pot of Jasmin Tea.  Right after we sat down, many Dim Sum cart were brought to our table to allow us to pick the Dim Sum dishes that we would like to have. We have been to many Dim Sum restaurants and we could tell that Capital Seafood restaurant does not do Dim Sum as its main business because the Dim Sum dishes that are being served are very limited.

We picked the usual Dim Sum dishes to see how it is. The shrimp dumping is gigantic! The shrimp dumpling served at Capital Seafood is twice as large as the one served in other places! The dumpling was filled with lot of shrimp! Although the dumping is big and filled with lot of shrimp, the taste of the dumpling isn't that great. The skin of the dumpling was falling off and hard to use chopstick to grab it since it is so big!

Siu Mak was huge too! We were shocked when we saw it! Siu Mak has a pretty good taste. It was still juicy inside and has chewy texture!

When we got our bill, we were shocked to see how much each Dim Sum dish cost. The cheapest one was $4! This could possibly due to the large dumping.

Overall, we think it is a bit too pricy for a Dim Sum place and may not go again if we don't have to.

CoCo Ichibanya Curry House

CoCo Ichibanya is a restaurant located in Irvine California that specializes in curry dishes.  It is actually a chain restaurant originated from Japan!  The restaurant itself is located at the heart of Irvine business district and the restaurant is usually packed with customers lining up at its door.  The restaurant itself is easy to find in the plaza that it is in. It is located directly at the corner of the plaza and can be spotted easily when coming out of the parking garage at the back.


CoCo Ichibanya does not take break in the afternoon and operates from lunch time to dinner. We got there around 1:30PM avoiding the busy hour, and we still had to wait for 5 minutes. When we got to the reception, we signed in by ourselves on the tablet to indicate number of people in the party, and whether we have any special request. After about 5 minutes, we were led to the bar table, which is still nice since we could see the chefs in the kitchen making curry.

So the curry at CoCo Ichibanya is more like Japanese style curry. Not Indian style or Thai curry. Thus the curry taste is more sweet rather than spicy. It does have spicy option however.  The menu of the restaurant offers many different curry dishes, but we believe that the curry sauce is the same for all of them. The only difference is the meat or the vegetable that come with the dish.

CoCo Ichibanya also allow customers to customize the curry, and of course you can add spiciness to it as well. The maximum level of spiciness is 24! We are not a fan of spicy food. So this time we ordered a port cutlet curry with egg wrapping around rice, and a customized curry dish.

The dishes were served quite quickly and the rice was served in a big bowl plate with lot of curry sauce! The curry taste is quite rich and sweet, which we really like! The egg wrapping rice is very common in Japan, but we find the egg wrap to be a bit thing and we thought the rice is usually flavored with other spice.

Overall, we loved the taste of curry here at CoCo Ichibanya! It is the kind of East Asian curry that we like since its more sweet than spicy.