Hairy Crab Crossandwich, Anyone? Hong Kong Edition

Let me introduce you to one of my new favorite places in Hong Kong: Hysan Place. Sure it has floors and floors of shopping that exceeds the Times Square nearby, but I love it for its bakery!

 Urban Bakery has tons of tasty breads, cakes, and pastries like any other Asian bakery. Sure, their cranberry cheese bread is good, but the best part of Urban is their… croissants! I’ve never been a fan of eating croissants. Why, you ask? The crust has to be perfect for me. It should be toasted and flake off as you take each bite. Damn skippy, it should!

 How can you not love a bakery with a sign like this? Bonus points! Well, Urban’s croissants are amazing. They are so good and in demand that they sell out everyday. Their usual flavors include Ham & Brie and Langoustine. If you’re a foodie though, you know that it’s currently Hairy Crab season, which is the best of the seasons we have each year! Ha!

 Well Urban Bakery has added a new, seasonal “crossandwich”! Ha! Aren’t they clever with the name? Love it! Feast your eyes on the amazing Hairy Crab with Caviar and Chives! As the sign says the crossandwich is “handpicked seasonal hairy crab crossandwich tailor made for foodies searching for the extreme”. *Raises hand*

  Review: The crossiant in itself was absolutely delightful. I could eat it all day. I have to admit that although I love Hairy Crab, it didn’t make for the best flavor croissant. I would go with the Ham and Brie if you have a choice. I’ve had that multiple times and that remains my favorite flavor. The Hairy Crab is in demand because it’s special right now. I think it’s worth trying just because it’s kind of gimmicky? Is that a word?

 Well, Urban Bakery is still a win! Here are the other croissant choices available currently.

Put them on your to-visit list whilst in Hong Kong!

Address: Jasons‧Food & Living, B2/F, Hysan Place, 500 Hennessy Road, Causeway

Happy Eatings! 

D'ange Bakery in San Gabriel

D’ange Bakery on Las Tunas Drive may just be my new favorite bakery. It is a sandwich shop, drink station, and bakery all wrapped up in one. 

On the bakery side you’ll see typical traditional Chinese baked goods but with a modern twist. You won’t see the yellow bo lo bun here. For example, there’s a chocolate bo lo pineapple bun and also a taro variation of it as well. The center also oozes chocolate or taro depending on which one you pick. Much snazzier than the normal pineapple bun!

 Pineapple buns are out! Here are the new and improved flavors!

 Mixed Fruit Tea

There are other Asian inspired pastries as well as more Western style brioches and cookies.  The sandwich menu consists of mostly western sandwiches.They have pulled pork and Italian sandwiches as well as more interesting eye brow-raising ones like curry seafood sandwich which has shrimp, imitation crab and egg.

The pastries prices at D’ange are comparable to that from JJ’s Bakery in Arcadia. I like D’ange much more though. They also have a $4 after noon tea special, which includes coffee/tea and a slice of cake. It’s a good way for new patrons to sample their cakes. Personally, I’ve had my eyes on the pistachio coffee mousse cake.

D’ange also has a decent smoothie and tea variety. I had a mixed fruit tea that was pretty good. If you are looking for delicious and different varieties of bread, drinks, or desserts, D’ange may be worth checking out.

800 W. Las Tunas Dr. in San Gabriel.

Happy Eatings!

I Have a Sweet Tooth

I have a problem when I eat with my mom. Her parenting has taught me that you can skip out on meals each day and just eat at 5 different dessert shops to supplement it all. Yeah we're not very healthy, but come on, desserts are so good! I'd eat dessert for breakfast if I could. Well... I have and so so a lot. 

 This is made fresh everyday! Are you drooling yet?

  Juchheim is a pastry store with an amazing story. So long story short, the man surnamed Juchheim was from Germany and ended up in China during the First World War when the Japanese Army occupied Chinese territory.  Juchheim was taken by force to Japan where he then set up this amazing shop. Full story here!

Look at the packaging! Love Japanese things! 

 Here's the baker at the location in Sogo in Causeway Bay where there is a shop. The cakes are baked at each location daily! Keep in mind this is a very small kiosk shop. 

 Oh my goodness! How good did this taste? Very!!! It was like an amazing, gooey sponge cake! They don't add any additives to their cakes, which makes it that much tastier and well healthier? Don't mind me- I'm trying to justify eating cake and desserts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

 Next up on the list is Passion. They are a new pastry shop that just opened in Hong Kong that brought over their chefs from Switzerland. 

 raspberry flavor 

 Green tea and raspberry in the back

 Lemon, chocolate, blueberry

Yum! Could you eat dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?


Happy Eatings!

Mediterranean Sandwiches & Desserts! My New Favorite Place!

(Don't let the long lines scare you. They go really fast!)

Yum, yum, yum! For my birthday, I wanted to go to Disneyland and my friend works for Disney so she was was able to get me tickets for cheaper, but I had to go to Burbank to pick it up amongst Justin Bieber fans & Jonas Brother Fan Vans hovering all over. My friend also took me out to lunch on her break to the most AMAZING place. I think this is one of my new favorite places! Porto's Bakery is located at 3614 West Magnolia Blvd. Burbank, 91504. Go, go, go!

Here are the famous potato balls at Porto's. This is some serious yum! They gave us the potato balls up front in a tray and then gave us a number (Carl's Jr. style). Then, we went over to pick up our drinks. The staff brought the rest of the food to us. They are pretty good at hunting you down since there is seating outside and inside of this place!

Left was my pina colada smoothie and right was my friend's mango smoothie. Yum!

Here's the their tuna melt sandwich. Their chips were baked, but they were so good! Delicious.

This was the torta de pollo sandwich. Wow!! So so good! I'm actually drooling right now.

This was one of the 3 cakes I got. My friend was nice enough to treat me out for my birthday. I got 3 cakes: an opera cake, a double chocolate cake (pictured above), and an oreo white cheesecake. They were all so good!

The best part about this place is it's pretty cheap! For everything we got it was about $27. We got smoothies & cakes so that's a pretty good deal! One con about this place is definitely their parking. They have a private lot but it's so small.

Happy Eatings!

By the way, I highly recommend this place if you couldn't tell already!

Just Another Day in the SGV (San Gabriel Valley)

I've determined that the best food in L.A. is either in Downtown L.A., Orange County, or in the San Gabriel Valley. All of which are at least an hour drive from me. Well, you gotta do what you gotta do for food.

Organic food is the way to go! My favorite snack at Green Zone at Valley Blvd at San Gabriel is their fried salmon triangles on the left. I've also determined finally, that I actually do not like their tofu as much as I did last time (middle picture). Anyways what brought me to Green Zone again this visit aside from their awesome dumplings and free refill Passionfruit Green Tea, was their Hainan Chicken Rice. There's been people raving that they have the best Hainan Chicken rice that even tops that of Savoy's. Their chicken rice wasn't bad but I don't know if I would say it's the best I've ever had. Hainan Chicken just needs to be eaten in Singapore. There's just no excuses. I did like how they were no bones in their chicken though. It made it easier to eat. My mom makes amazing chicken rice. I think she could give any place a run for their money except she doesn't and will never be able to master the art of cutting a chicken. Her pieces of chicken are the size of the whole plate. Major Fail.

We usually make a day trip out of SGV visits and buy a crap load of food since we have to drive so far for it. Look familiar? These rice balls are filled with drugs or something. They are delicious but you can't buy them from a restaurant or Japanese market. Why? Apparently I can't give you the address of where to get these because you have to call a number and order in mass numbers. Some person is making it from their house. Sketchy and awesome! By the way, these are also ingenious. You see the arrows in the first picture? That tells you how to unwrap your ball of rice. The wrapper is engineered so that the seaweed doesn't get soggy from touching the rice or the meat. It's hard to explain, but basically there's a layer of the wrapper that keeps it from hitting the rice and you keep scooting the seaweed over so that you can get a mouthful of the rice, salmon, & crunchy seaweed.

Next stop was Momo's Bakery in Alhambra. They used to be an awesome bakery when they were Kiki's Bakery. Ever since they've become Momo's, their cakes have totally tanked. But one thing has stayed the same-their pandan sponge cakes! Delicious! That's right. That green color is all natural! Delicious!

Here's a place I haven't posted on yet. Duck House at 501 South Atlantic Blvd. Monterey Park. This location isn't as good as their old location but I guess that's what happens when someone gets gunned down in the parking lot-your restaurant loses customers and they close down. =[ This is definitely not the best Peiking Duck I've ever had but it's decent for being in LA. Be sure to call at least an hour in advanced so they can prepare it for you. They run out of ducks often so be prepared to have a back up restaurant in case that happens to you. Above is their salad with sesame sauce that is really good.

Here's the duck. All the meat is separated for you. It's also nice that instead of those huge white buns, they give you little mini tortilla thingys. Much tastier. If you have a big party with you, you can also choose to get duck bean sprouts and duck soup as well.

And your finished product should look something like this before you wrap up all the goodness. Yum.

Happy Eatings!

The Party Don't Start 'Til I Walk In...[the Night Markets!]

Here's some of the awesome stuff I bought at the night market. There's Chinese New Year boxers, fobby pencil bags, & little cartoon god figurines.

I'm entirely convinced that ding tai fung isn't that great and it just has good feng shui or something because there's a ton of places that have the same if not better food... but minus their horrendous 3 hour wait. Take Kao Chi for example-located right across from Sogo. Good location. No lines. Good food!

Left is an order of yummy pork. Right is some xiao long bao. Yummy.

Left was our delicious order of panfried pork & veggie buns and right was more veggie dumpllings!

BBQ pork and fried rice

Taiwanese speciality honey ham with bread again!

Kao Chi was delicious! Way better than Ding Tai Fung. Onto our next stop... Remember 點水樓? Well Grandma really wanted to try it after I was raving about it. So we went back to it and ordered the same stuff we did last time but with 3 new additional dishes!

Left is our minced tofu bowl. Middle is steamed stinky tofu!!! I loved it! And right is the veggie fried rice Grandma wanted. Unfortunately that was Grandma's last meal before she left for Hong Kong. At the same time, fortunately it was Grandma's last meal before she left for HK-because now it meant it was time to party!!!!! Finally get to eat what I wanted to eat! Ooh the excitement.

Here's how my pre-party to the Night Market started.

Baker's Boy is a bakery located near the train station. It has THE best coffee bread that is made fresh every morning. My mom's friend insisted we had to try it. The skin flakes and crumbles into your mouth. It's amazing. In fact, I think I can safely say this coffee bread alone was better than any of 85C Bakery's Bread. Yeah... I know. That's how effin good it was!

This is a pretty well known shallot drabing place. So shallot bread that melts in your mouth. The guy makes it fresh in an oven the size of a table and that's the size of his entire "shop." You can add additional ingredients like egg, veggies, bacon, cheese, etc. We went with Shallot drabing with extra egg and some veggies. Yum, yum, yum! Did I mention this is still part of the pre-party?

This is Yongkang Restaurant. It is dirty, small, and authentic so obivously I loved it! Left was this steamed BBQ pork concoction that was soooo spicy. Underneath all that deliciousness was some bits of steamed yam. Right was our soup version of hongyaochaosiu

And look how awesome their toppings were. Yes the pickled veggies were just in a bowl like that. I don't know how many days it's been like that but it was delicious. So was the chili sauce!

And finally here was their beef noodles, which is what they are most known for there.

Now it's finally time for the party. Where's the party at? Tongyuen night market! Let's start! Get ready to drool!

Taiwan night markets are way more exciting than the ones in Hong Kong. Love, love, love it! This is the Tonghua Night Market.

Momma got a basil seed drink.

Two Peck has stores all over Taiwan and I love them! They have the best crispy chicken you will ever have in your life with a touch of pepper! Instead of the ones you get at boba shops where the popcorn chicken is all batter and no meat, this place is all meat with the most crispy and awesome skin!! A must try!!!!

Next was my favorite-fruit tea! I got their apple fruit tea. Btw, fruit tea is a speciality in Taiwan.

And even though I was seriouly about to pop out of my pants by now... I couldn't resist picking something delicious from the bingtanghuolu cart. I ended up getting the sugared pears!

We randomly were walking towards the end of Tonghua Street and saw a dessert stand. Of course we HAD to get in line. We kinda of regretted it later when we had to roll ourselves back home. Above is lemograss desserts with a combination of tapoica balls.

Hope you are drooling now because that was a lot of food. More to come before I'm done with my recaping! Happy Eatings!