Day Trip To The O.C.

Orange County Baby! I love Irvine. I swear I'm going to retire there when I get old. Good food, wide freeways, not as bad drivers as those Asians in the San Gabriel Valley. Let me introduce you to the best pho that you will be able to find in all of SoCal. Pho Kimmy at 14932 Bushard St. Westminster, 92683 only serves one thing- Beef Pho. All you get to choose is how you want your beef done and any side orders you'd like to add to your bowl of pho. You also get to choose what size you want but that's about it.

Here's my small order of Pho Tai, which is beef noodle soup with raw beef. Don't be scared. The soup cooks the beef so there's nothing to be afraid of. It's actually better to order the raw beef so that your beef won't be overcooked.

Here's my side order of baby egg yolk. It melts and pops in your mouth. Yes, it's also raw! Pho Kimmy can hold it's own with the pho of Vietnam. Seriously it's THE best. They also have the shittiest parking ever. Some 5 year old must have designed it for take your kid to work day.

If Vietnamese food isn't your thing and you want some authentic Taiwanese food, then head on over to Yu's Garden at 5408 Walnut Ave. Irvine, 92604. This place is structured like a school cafeteria. You just pick and choose, and the lady scoops. This place is super small, but they make a mean stinky tofu and sweet potato porridge!

Marianted pork and bittermelon

veggies and tomatoes and eggs. yum to the last part!

Tofu & pork knuckle

Minced pork and string beans

Some really good meat and Taiwanese sausage

And after you get all your dishes, you can choose if you want steamed rice or sweet potato porridge to go with that. Yum!

Happy Eatings!

Legit Vietnamese Food Made At Home For You To Order

I love me some good Vietnamese food anytime, but the best Vietnamese food is when some little lady is sitting there inside her kitchen making it all herself. The following are the 2 best home Vietnamese places in the San Gabriel Valley. They work out of their homes, so make sure to call them at least a day in advanced with what you want to order.

Lady #1: Call her "Ho yi" (yi as in aunt). She's at 1321 Pine St. Rosemead and for $13/14, she will give you this.

This can feed about 4/5 people. There's layers and layers of bahn cuon inside. It's basically a crepe like thing with mushrooms, shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts inside. Yum!

Lady #2 has no name. Just call her lady. Lady is at 212B Avondale in Monterey Park. She makes awesome Bahn Beo right from her home.

You take it home like this along with her sauces.

She gives you everything you need. There's the shallots, the mung bean paste, the shrimp, the fish sauce, etc.

And viola! Bahn beo at home! They're super good. They'd be awesome for parties if my friends actually enjoyed Vietnamese food. If you wanna try them message me for the numbers.

Happy Eatings!

Cooking 101

So while I was in high school taking useless and unpractical Advanced Placement classes, my bf took more practical classes like cooking. Awesome, right? So I pretty much can't cook, but I'm awesome at eating. So the bf & I were starving the other day and he decided to pull out the Food & Wine Annual Cookbook for some simple recipe or inspiration instead of giving into my demads and taking me out to get ramen. We ended up on deciding on a mushroom and fried-egg BLT club sandwich. I pretty much sat on my ass and didn't do anything though. My job was supervising.

Ingredients: raw mushrooms.

BF frying the bacon

Cooking the mushrooms

Him making the eggs over easy

Our finished product. I cut the tomatoes in the back by the way, which is why they look like crap. The BLT was delicious though and the over easy eggs would pop and explode in your mouth. Yummy! Success!

Happy Eatings!

Days 3 & 4

Days 3 & 4 of Eating With Random People I Don't Know

Location 1: 888 Seafood Restaurant 8450 East Valley Blvd. Rosemead, 91770

Appetizer with jellyfish, thousand year old egg, scallops, mushrooms, etc. It's a cold dish.

Shrimp with mayonnaise, shrimp balls, and pecans. 

 scallops and peas. 

 shark's fin soup (not the highest quality obviously)

 sea cucumber, veggies, abalone, and mushroom

 lobster

Steamed Fish

 Chow Mien for long life

Dessert with green bean, sweet dates, red bean paste.

This dinner wasn't very impressive. They also serve dimsum in the mornings here at 888. Their dimsum isn't very impressive either so my advice is stay away if possible!

Day 4 of Eating With People I Don't Know

Location 2: Phoenix Inn Chinese Cuisine at 208 East Valley Blvd. Alhambra, 91801

Traditional veggie soup

 Cold Kitchen 

 Congee/porridge 

 Insides of pork

 Pumpkin, veggie, and beef

 tofu & veggies, lobster, string beans and fish

 More beef

Free Dessert!

FYI, Phoenix the restaurant is located right next to it's dessert shop. I don't really like the restaurant cause they've always had bad service and just okay food. This time, the food wasn't bad and there was actually some service. I think it's because it was a Monday night and there was only 2 tables. Nonetheless, I wouldn't go here on my own. By the way, I saw a bug crawling around while I was eating so do what you want with that information. Next door at the dessert shop, is another story. I'm there a few times a week!

Happy Eatings!

Old Drunk Chinese Men Karaoking

Day 2 of Eating with People I don't know = more far away food pictures.

So apparently Lincoln Plaza Hotel offers special dining options for parties. Aside from this place being super ghetto, their food is usually pretty good. This was not the case for their "party mode" though. The place is already small, but literally some genius decided it would be a good idea to allow some Chinese people to have a party with 8 tables. The regular restaurant was still running. All they did for the party was put up a "wall" to separate the normal patrons with the 8 tables of craziness. I was, unfortunately part of the 8 tables. Those 8 tables may have been the minority in the restaurant, but they brought in their own karaoke machine and DJ and began singing Oldies (Pretty Woman has since been ruined for me) & Fukienese songs, while the staff, other patrons snickered and tried not to laugh in their faces. The non-chinese people in the restaurant were extremely confused. I can honestly say I was ashamed of being Chinese at that moment. (Don't worry it gets worse with tomorrow's post.)

Party Mode Dishes:

Half a baby piglet. This was made very yummy.

Fried crab/shrimp balls.

Scallops, peas, shrimp galore in a fried basket of noodles that was edible.

Fish stomach soup with shrimp.

Fried chicken with shrimp chips.

Sea cucumber, mushroom, "abalone", & veggies.

Lobster

Steamed Fish

Scallop, shrimp, fried rice.

Tapioca dessert known as Mo-mo zha-zha.

This place definitely could not handle the 8 tables. The food was luke-warm (ick) by the time it came out. 8 tables also is a very small party for Chinese people. I don't know what this place would have done if it was more. They were over an hour late starting the food, which may have been due to the horrible Chinese singing going on. The food was definitely better when I went for a regular dinner and ordered off their specials menu and a lot cheaper. Also note to their management: What the hell were you thinking letting people karaoke and take over your hole restaurant making singing to their desires? How do the other people feel? Poor non-chinese people looked super confused and all they wanted was a good Chinese meal and they got their ears torn off in the process.

See my past blog post on what you should order at this place on a normal night (here.) because this place is pretty darn good on a normal basis.

Happy Eatings & run if you see a Chinese person with a microphone!

More Vietnamese Amazingness

Remember my baked catfish post the other day (here) where I wrote about how the new Phong Dinh was not anywhere close to the old, dinky one down the street? Well here's the pictures from my visit at the original, old location.

I started off with a 3 colored ice Vietnamese drink. There's red bean, coconut milk, and some green tapoica inside. Yum!

Here's the waiter cutting up our catfish. This catfish had onions and a bunch of other yummy seasonings stuffed in it, unlike the catfish at the new Phong Dinh. So so good!

In addition to their awesome baked catfish, they also have set menus. There's beef fillets and salted fish in hot pot.

Here's some sweet & sour fish soup loaded with tomatoes, veggies, & pineapple.

Here's the chicken salad and egg rolls that are part of the set meal too.

By the way the pictures are taken super far because I was trying to be conspicuous while taking these pictures at a dinner with random people I didn't know. The place maybe a little dinky, but food is yummy. If you're going to visit Phong Dinh, make sure to go to the old one at 2643 San Gabriel Blvd. Rosemead.

Happy Eatings!

Lunch Deals

A lot of people turn to fast food because it's cheap. You get a full meal, fries, and a drink for $5-7? Well... if you went to lunch in the San Gabriel Valley and took advantage of their  lunch deals you would be paying a lot less than that. Here is my lunch from QT Cafe on Garvey. They had $2.88 and $3.99 deals. Crazy! My mom also says that tipping is different in Asian places... it less than 10% during lunch and less than 15% during dinner. I personally think she is full of it.

Free Chinese Soup

Fried Kumquat flavored Tofu

Fried String beans

Salty fish with egg plant in hot pot

I finished my day with a trip to a Chinese bakery and then to a trip to Champion in Focus Plaza. 

This is one of my favorite drinks. This is a lemon tea drink with aloe. Focus Plaza is awesome. They have a bunch of places to eat and see there. There's also the cleanest 99 Ranch Market inside as well. It's located at 140 West Valley Blvd. San Gabriel, 91776.

Happy Eatings! This makes you reconsider how much cheap fast food really is huh? Especially if you can have a good sit down meal for half the price!