Torn...

(Kelly & I lunching at Starry Kitchen)

I had an amazing, scrumptious food experience today with my friend Kelly. Everything was 5 stars good. The staff was extremely nice, but I am torn... Read on to find out why. Hmph... where should I start? So let me start out by telling you the story of Starry Kitchen. It is located in Downtown LA across from MOCA and the Walt Disney Concert Hall at 350 South Grand Ave. Los Angeles, CA. It had really humble beginnings. Basically a young couple (Thi & Nguyen) started cooking in their apartment after Thi was fired from her previous advertising job. Cooking was just a hobby for her but soon their apartment turned into a full on mini restaurant that simply asked their guests for $5 donations. Guests had to sneak into their apartment, enter in secret codes to get into the gates, etc. Hardcore right? That is, until a health inspector showed up and shut down their business. Boo... but then the couple opened a cafe/restaurant in Downtown LA. The food is delicious, first of all and the total comes out to about $8.50 per meal. It's fusion food and the best part is that the menu changes every week. New dishes are rotated in and out. Nguyen actually told us that after he rotated their famous tofu balls out, he actually got hate mail in his inbox. Awesome!

So this is how Starry Kitchen works. Here is this week's menu. You join their facebook fan page for updates by clicking here.

It's a simple 1, 2, 3 process. You choose what meat you want, what type of vessel (i.e. bread, wrap, etc.) you want to hold it, and then a side dish! Under the meat section for this week was the Lemongrass Chicken, Chinese Hoison Burger, "Nom Nom" Pork, Lemongrass Tofu, & Spicy Crab Cakes aka the "Crack Crab Cakes." Yes, they are THAT good. Then you can choose whether you would like your meat placed in various salads, tortilla wraps, or bahn mi sandwiches. And last but not least, then you choose something from their daily sides. Let's go on to what we ate.

After doing our 1,2,3's we ended up with this piece of amazingness. This is the Spicy Crab Cakes with Mayo & Wasabi in a Tortilla Wrap. These crab cakes were soooo good and the wasabi was not too spicy but you could still taste it inside. The cucumbers inside also complemented the crab cakes really well. It was delicious or as Kelly said over and over again !!!Scrumptious!!!! Our side dish we chose for this dish was the cold slaw, which was mixed with sesame sauce and honey. Yum!

But the standout dish was the "Nom Nom" Pork. Wow! Amazing. First of all, the bahn mi bread was fresh and amazing. The pork tasted as if Taiwanese sasuage had a baby with amazing Vietnamese Nem Nuong and produced a hybrid of amazingness. It was just THAT good. For our side dish, we ordered Curry Rice which was good but not as good as the Curry Rice I've had at Curry House. It was still good though!

Now onto the cons to this place. Downtown LA has the worst parking. Starry Kitchen tells you to park in the American Plaza and get validated so that you only pay $3. If you forget to validate the parking becomes $50. $3 is the cheapest parking you can find. The public parking next to them is $6.50 and $8. Okay... fine. The designated parking lot is a mess! The entrances and exits are so small and the parking lot was just full on confusing. It was like going in a maze. Parking is usually free so if I'm gonna spend $3 I expect red carpet and everything. This was plain crap, but it's Downtown so I guess there's no much you can do about it. Secondly, all the one way streets were horrible. Going into oncoming traffic is not a good thing. But even with these cons and the fact that I drove over 45 minutes to get here, I felt that it was still worth it because the food was that good. That was until... I got something to go.

I was raving about how amazing this place was to the BF who then wanted to get in on some on the goodness so I bought him a Hoison Beef Hamburger in a Bahn Mi to go. I chose the Jap Chae as his side dish. I was so excited that he was going to be wowed because Kelly and I had such a good experience. I was super careful not to spoil the taste. I had them separate the sauces so that the bread would not get soggy and everything! So I delivered the dish to him and he was super disappointed as was I. I couldn't believe that something could taste bleh from Starry Kitchen. I had such high hopes. I told him to give them the benefit of the doubt since I did have to drive 45 minutes home with the food, but he was not happy and honestly neither was I. Maybe the hoison burger would have been good if he had eaten it there? I don't know but I think it will be near impossible to drag him there to give it another go. Plus, another downside to Starry Kitchen is that they have pretty bad hours. They only open from Monday-Friday from 11-3PM.

So now you know why. I'm honestly extremely torn. For me, there was no doubt in my mind that it was 5 stars perfect but after having a taste of the to go I ordered I feel as though I'm going to be torn until I go back again to eat again. By the way, next week they are switching out the "Crack Crab Cakes." Darn... those things are yummy. And the "Nom Nom" Pork... is still going to be on the menu next week. I don't know what to do. I'm so confused now. 5 stars? 4 stars? But if you just judge the to go by itself it would have been a 2 star. The Bf made a point. "Food should be good no matter if it's to go or not. The Hat's pastrami sandwiches taste good even days in the fridge." Yes... but he hasn't had Starry Kitchen's Crab Cakes or "Nom Nom" Pork. I don't know... Kelly & I loved it.

Happy Eatings. You can also visit their website here to see what dishes they have rotating in and out each week! Please let me know if anyone tries their other menu items. I'd love to hear if it really is a problem with their take out or not.

Sincerely,

Confused Soul

Vietnamese Food For Your Everyday Needs

Do you ever find yourself wanting some homey Vietnamese comfort food? Just the basics? Well that's what you can get at Pho Ly Thuong Kiet at 303 East Garvey Ave. Monterey Park, 91755. The food is good and cheap. Just make sure to bring a trash bag with you to sit on cause this place can get dirty! Gross I know, but anything for some good legit Viet food right? Uh... yeah by the way they have another location in Rosemead that I think is cleaner but that's not saying much. The trick to eating is to have no standards because then you will never be disappointed if you don't expect too much!

Comfort Vietnamese Food:

Pho Ly Thuong Kiet's menu only has a few items but that just means that each item is amazingly good. Here's their Pho Ga (Chicken Noodle) speciality. Their broth is awesome, but what makes it really good is the garlic sauce concoction on the left that you dip the chicken in! They also give you mini quail eggs inside and other chicken "insides" if you please. Their other speciality chicken rice also has that amazing garlic sauce of theirs. Even though their chicken rice is good, I personally prefer Singaporean Chicken Rice or Chinese Hainan Chicken Rice. There's a difference in the way Vietnamese people make their chicken rice. By the way if you are wondering why this place has such an ugly name, it's cause the owners got really uncreative or just plain conceited and just used their name following the word Pho. They seriously should have stuck with Pho 999, 99999999 or something. (FYI, Vietnamese people love the #9, it's the equivalent of the Chinese obsession with the #8.)

My favorite thing to order at this messy, dirty restaurant is their Bahn Cuon, which is basically like a crepe with mushrooms and pork inside. The bean sprouts, cucumbers, and pork on the side can wrapped with the bahn cuon and then dipped into their fish sauce. This place is awesome! Go, go, go! It can get pretty dirty throughout the day though so you have been warned!

Well twice a month, my mom is vegetarian for the entire day so most of the time I just join her not because of gaining good karma points, but just because it's easier to buy food when both people are eating the same thing. I'm sure I do appreciate the bonus good karma points those 2 days come with though! I just make up my meat with 24 hour McDonalds later in the night. The solution to spicing up our vegetarian days especially when we don't go out to Asian central in the San Gabriel Valley is driving 15 mins away for Vegan Vietnamese food at 18625 Sherman Way Reseda, 91335 from Vinh Loi Tofu.

Vegetarian/Vegan Food:

This is vegetarian Bun bo Hue. It is beef & pig's knuckle vermicelli. Usually they toss in some pig's blood, etc which is totally not vegetarian. But- at Vin Loi, everything tastes just like it's supposed to except it's all vegetarian! It's delicious.

This is their House Special Fried Rice. It looks kind of blah, but it's really good.

Happy Vietnamese Eatings!

Ahola To My Lighter Wallet!

So it was our friend Daria's birthday the other day and Birthday girl was insistant that we took her to Roy's Hawaiian Resturant to celebrate her 2 week late birthday dinner. Even though I drive past it all the time, I've never eaten there before just because it looked like a fancy, "American", expensive place to me. It just reminded me of P.F. Chang's, which is another restaurant I've never been to. I've just looked at their horse statue from up close and also admired their expensive looking to go bags that people take away with them. A general rule of thumb that I go by is to skip out on big, fancy, "American" restaurants because the food is so so and the prices are super expensive but since it was for a birthday, Roy's it was!

We sat down and were given edamame as an appetizer.

Roy's had a special fixed menu for $35, which by the way is a fortune in Asian food. That could feed a village in some poor country for weeks and it could feed me for maybe almost 3 days if I had to starve myself. (I eat a lot if you haven't noticed by now.)

Here is what their winter fixed menu looked like. (appetizer choose one)

• lobster bisque
• rock shrimp tempura
• vietnamese lumpia & bibb lettuce wrap

Seriously... did Mr. Roy and his people just put Vietnamese and lumpia in one sentence? Ugh!!! Super annoying! Vietnamese egg rolls are called Cha Gio and Filipino egg rolls are called lumpia. Both respective egg rolls taste totally different. They don't even use the same ingredients or sauce, or egg roll skin. Mr. Roy sounds like some white guy who just used as many asian terms as he could and stuffed them into one dish. Super annoying.

My friend and I both chose to get the fixed menu and chose the rock tempura as our appetizer. Yum but it was so small. I may weigh 95 pounds but I'd like to be fed properly. Thanks.

Left was my order of tiger shrimp and right was my friend's order of the salmon. My shrimp was okay but my friend's salmon was WAYYYYY better! Darn I was trying to decided between those two. That was totally my bad. I should have gone with my gut and went with the salmon. The other possible choices from the fixed menu were:

Entree (choose one)

• dynamite crusted salmon
• grillled petite fillet
• lemon basted tiger shrimp
• tender braised beef short ribs

Birthday girl decided to skip the fixed menu and just go with this scallop dish.

But for me and Jenny, we both still got to choose a dessert as part of our fixed menu and we both chose the chocolate souffle.

Dessert (choose 1)

• Chocolate Souffle
• Pineapple Cake

Uh... Chocolate Souffle say what? This is obviously not a chocolate souffle. It's more like a lava cake. Not that it wasn't good or anything but I was expecting something that looked like souffle. My mom & I love souffles so we go to wherever we can possibly find just to try their souffles. No bueno for them lying and getting my hopes up. Boo.

And Birthday Girl got a complementary souffle as well as a picture of us they took and put in a Roy's picture frame for her. They also brought out a pineapple cake, which they made sound as though it was free but turns out was not.

Overall we paid for the service and the pretty good food. Too expensive for my taste though especially when they don't know how to properly label their menu. FYI, if you will be visiting Mr. Roy soon, don't forget to tell them it's your birthday even if it's not. Free stuff is awesome. Plus, they don't check ID so everyday can be your birthday! Also please tell him to change the names on his menu. It's annoying me. The only thing Hawaiian about them was the fact that they said Aloha when we walked in and that some of the servers wore Hawaiian print shirts. Happy Eatings you wanna-be "Hawaiians"!

How Do You Deal With Jetlaggg?

There are other ways to deal with jetlag other than having 24 hour McDonalds &Subway on call, which is what I usually do but this time I tried to switch it up a bit. Plus, In & Out only opens until 1/2ish so I decided to make a post as an ode to all those other places aside from your typical fast food joints that have been there to help me along the way to get be back on schedule!

Tommy's World Famous Burgers-Thank you for your chili! Thank you for your late night drive thrus! Thank you for your heart attack in a box hot dogs and thank you for your chocolate milk shakes! Though you have not helped me get back on schedule, you have helped me with food coma!

$3-4 will get you a crap load of food from Yoshinoya which is also open til the wee hours in the morning. By the way, their clam chowder is bomb! Who would have known right?

This is the famous Cici's cafe on Ventura. My friend and I were deciding what to eat at 4 AM in the morning. My vote was for the famous The Griddle but Cici's was so much closer that we ended up going there instead. They were quite yummy though. I still can't wait to check out The Griddle and their massive french toast. *drool*

And thank you Sprinkles Cupcakes for being there for me.

And to you Chipotle, for your burrito bowls.

And last but not least... sugar cookies! You all must seriously go out and buy this now. The best cookies you can make in your home from Pillsbury. They are the best sugar cookies ever but they are special edition and only are available when it is a holiday. See the Easter bunnies for Easter? I buy boxes of them each holiday to store up until the next one comes out. Get the Easter edition now or else you'll have to wait until July 4th. Takes only 8 minutes to have the softest melt in your mouth cookies!

I'd also like to give a shout out to my local Mcdonalds, Subway, Arby's, Pho restaurants, and of course the great Get Shaved Truck. Happy Eatings!

I Want Hawaiian Shaved Iced & No One Is Gonna Stop Me

So what do you like to do for fun? Oh, well apparently I like to risk my life to chase down food trucks in the middle of L.A.! So there's been a big buzz about this amazing shaved ice that serves melt in your mouth shaved ice from a truck in the Los Angeles/San Fernando Valley area. Even though I've heard raving reviews from word of mouth as well as online, I have to admit I was very skeptical. Why? Because real amazing shaved ice is supposed to look like this...

Left is shaved ice from Hong Kong and right is from Singapore. It has been really hard trying to find shaved ice in the U.S. aside from at a few Taiwanese places that have even been able to come remotely close to the quality of shaved ice found in Asia. But being the foodie that I am, I had to go try it. I mean, what is Hawaiian Shaved Ice anyways? Okay so my friends were off school for Spring Break so it was perfect timing to have an adventure chasing down a truck. They change locations everyday so you have to check on their website to see what their destinations for the day are. You can visit them at: www.getshavedice.com

So I checked their schedule and got my friends ready to chase them down. The website said there would be in Eagle Rock that day for the first 3 hours. Eagle Rock? Where the hell is that? It has a cool name so whatever right? So having the most awesome friends that will let me drag them into doing whatever I want food related, the Wehebs, bf & I crew went waiting for the truck to stop at Eagle Rock.

Are you seeing double? Don't worry your eyes are fine. Those are indeed 2 different times I chased after a shaved ice truck 1 day apart from each other. So obviously you can tell the shaved ice was really good! First picture is me with the Wehebs & 2nd is my cousins posing in front of the truck when it came to Chatsworth a day closer. On a side note, while we were in Eagle Rock we literally saw 8 or more cop cars light up. After Rna & Weheb got home to tell the story to Papa Weheb, apparently we shouldn't have been in Eagle Rock. Can you say Compton what what? But I'm happy to report we're all alive and will continue to follow the truck-just at other locations and not at Eagle Rock for safety reasons. No wonder why there were so many cop cars....So onto the ice!

Here are the most popular flavors at Get Shaved. I'd recommend trying these if you are gonna try them. Left is strawberry & Banana Shave Ice over Vanilla Ice Cream topped with Sweetened Condensed Milk. It's called Monkey Brains. It was delicious! Melted in your mouth! I really liked how they used condensed milk because a lot of non-asian desserts don't use it. Right is another delicious favorite. It's a Root Beer Float also topped with sweetened condensed milk. They have 4 different sizes and even the biggest size is under $4! What a steal. And it's even a show just watching the guy pack all the ice into the little cup. Trust me-you are getting a lot of ice in that thing! So as you can tell, I took my cousins back to Get Shaved a day later and we decided to try some other flavors. At first one of my cousins said she wouldn't eat any because she had just gotten her wisdom teeth taken out that morning and she still had cotton balls in her mouth. But one she took a bite of Get Shaved, she managed to eat it! It's a miracle!

Left is the Monkey Brains again, Center is the Island Breeze & Right is the Passion Nut. The Island Breeze is Mango flavored with Coconut & Guava Shaved Ice over Vanilla Ice Cream and the Passion Nut is Passion Fruit, Coconut and Melona over Vanilla Ice Cream. There's a bunch of other combination choices and if you can't find something you like, you can create it! My favorite is still the Monkey Brains though and Root Bear float. I think the condensed milk just does it for me. You can also add red beans and ling he mu powder to it! And here's the trick. Check their website and get to the location before they are supposed to be there. Or else, you'll be stuck in an hour long line!

And while we were getting shaved ice, my cousin mentioned she never had anything from the Kogi Taco Truck. So... of course we waited in line for food and left the swollen cousin in the car. We got Korean Tacos and Korean Sliders. I still think Kogi is overrated and they seriously need to do something about their lines. To see what I ate from them last time & an even better taco truck with no lines click here.

And then for the first day of truck chasing, we decided to celebrate our shaved ice victory by doing okonomiyaki at Gaja. Though my BFF Weheb looks pro here, we failed. We ended up ordering an monjayaki--essentially a liquid version of okonomiyaki and that was way too difficult to cook on our own. Click here to see my last visit here when we didn't fail. The pancake on the right looks so good because the kitchen made it for us.

I am so lucky to live in LA because there are a bunch of really popular food trucks. I have a list of 3 so far that I need to try so I'm hoping to be able to try those soon. As for now, I'm content in trying to chase down Get Shaved at least once a week. My advice is to skip the Kogi truck. There's a bunch of resturants that do the whole Korean taco thing so go to one of those instead-but GET SHAVED! Happy Eatings!

Hellllllooooooooooo L.A.!

(view from Neptune's Net)

Finally after a month of traveling throughout Hong Kong, Taiwan, & Singapore I was finally home, sweet home. My schedule was intense for the past few months. It looked something like this.

• Early December-Early January=Hong Kong
• Early January-Early February= L.A.
• February-March= Back to Hong Kong, off to Taiwan, stop by Singapore, back to Taiwan & then back home.

So what was the first thing I had to eat?

First Lunch Back in the U.S.: Seafood in Mailbu!

Personally I don't really care for the beach because I don't like getting wet or dirty. Plus, my family yells at me each time I get tanner than my usual shade-but Neptune's Net is apparently the place to go. Someone in my group of friends reccomended it years ago and I just haven't ever made time to go try it. And how did they find out about this supposedly awesome place? From the horrifically craptastic movie-Fast & Furious.

Luckily the food was no where close to being as craptastic as the movie. Left was the bf's order of fried clams, shrimp, & fries and right was my fish & chips. Food was great but I don't like the beach or traffic so sitting in a car just to get food in an area where there's nothing aside from Pepperdine University & a bunch of surfers sounds pretty boring to me.

First Dinner Back In The U S of the A goes to: The Boiling Crab (Garden Grove location)

This is Boiling Crab. It's famous for Cajun Seafood. The original restaurant is actually in Texas, but the locations in California seem to have been taken over by Asians. The servers, hosts, are all Asian. It's like the new, hip place to go. The customers, though are really diverse because who doesn't love good food? If you live in CA and you've never been to BC, you've seriously been living under a box. Go, now! Oh and by the way the wait for them is typically 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours. Have fun with that. Why? Because their food is THAT good! Who doesn't want to look ridiculous in a bib? Now here's the thing, there one location in Alhambra and one opening soon on Main St. but that restaurant is really small. This was my first time going to the bigger location in Garden Grove and it was huge! Sure the line was still 1 1/2 hours not counting the 1 1/2 hour to drive there but I think from now on I would be willing to drive further to avoid waiting waiting for 3 hours at the Alhambra location. By the way, if anyone from BC reads this... I remember going to you back in the day where there were no lines and you were just a lonely seafood place with no customers. Now that you've blown up, I want a VIP card or something where I don't need to stand in a 2 hour line. Thanks.

Anyways, here is a typical before & after picture of my visits to BC. Left is what they are most famous for. You got their shrimp, clams, sausage, corn, etc. all marinated and set on your table in bags. Fancy, huh? BC also has crawfish, blue crab, regular crab, lobster, etc. Sometimes you can actually see runaway crawfish from the kitchen according to our waiter. Anyways so basically what makes BC so good is that they have a list of seasonings you can choose to have your seafood marinated in. Garlic butter, etc. The best seasoning is appropriately titled "The Whole ShaBang!" Then you choose how spicy you want your seafood. Yum!

Unfortunately, even for those that are regulars at BC, are so concentrated on the normal seafood that they forget about the other awesome parts of BC's menu like-their delicious raw oysters! They even got the sauces ready for you. Right is the gumbo. I was determined to try it after watching The Princess and the Frog (They talk about Gumbo throughout the whole movie), but it was just okay at BC. I've definitely had better. The oysters are a must though!

Here are their chicken wings, fried catfish with cajun fries, and fried calamari. I love their catfish!!! Wings aren't bad either, but the squid was just so so.

It's great to be home and getting McDonald's drive through 24/7 & In & Out Burgers again. Lots of food adventures back in the U.S. to come but don't worry if you're missing my Asia posts because Hong Kong & Beijing trip will be coming again in June. Toodles & Happy Eatings!

Good Bye Taiwan! The Last Supper(s)

Thanks to 888 reader M, I am happy to report that "frog eggs" are not actually frog eggs. After I read her helpful comment, I went to confront my mother on why she didn't correct me when I told her I was drinking frog eggs with boba, she just laughed. Turns out my whole family sucks and thinks it funny to toy with my emotions when it comes to frogs when they KNOW it's a senstive subject for me after my sister screwed me over many years ago. Asses. Props to me for actually trying it though. in my defense there were minuate things of frogs all over this place. I thought that the milk was made with frog eggs and they just added boba. Boba does NOT look like frog eggs, weirdos.

Yum... same rule of the night markets applied to random street carts. The longer the line means get in line! Quick! Here's some freshly steamed yummy pork and cabbage buns! I love street food! Too bad right after we got to the front of the line and finished eating our bun, it was already time for dinner. Wow, eating so much is really a hard job I tell you!

We went to Dou Xiang Cun for dinner, best known for their old school hot pots that still use coal. (It was super hot that night so we didn't get that though) Instead we got the cold noodles on the left and the beef pancake thing on the right.

Their ong choy was pretty good but their spicy pork was bleh. Pity cause that's one of my favorite dishes.

And we finished our last meal with real sweet & sour soup. Panda got nothing on this! One word- LEGIT.

This was our last meal in Taiwan, or so we thought. We were awakened really early the next morning by a phone call for us to grab lunch with a family friend. The mother and I weren't planning on eating that morning until we got to the airport since EVA Airline's lounge in Taipei has the best food. Freshly steamed yam, buns, cakes, etc. But... how could I turn down just one more meal right? I mean so what if I happened to miss our flight? Right?

This is the very well known Lao Deng. It may be a small shack with a very limited menu, but this place is delicious. You also have to be able to eat spicy to come here. The food is not for the weak! Even their side dishes were spicy!

2 different flavors of spicy rice baked to perfection and spicy enough to burn your tongue off! It was like a happy meal. There was surprise yam at the bottom!

Left is some spicy dan dan noodles, a Taiwan speciality and must try! Right is some hong you chao shou aka basically spicy wontons.

And for dessert, we had some doufu hua aka tofu pudding.

And with that our last supper finally came to an end. It was a nice time being back in Taiwan after so long. Can't wait to come back. If you are going to be in Taipei, I have a list of helpful tips you should look over to better allocate your time.

• Skip the Ding Tai Fung craze and go for some place with better food and no waits. I recommend going with 點水樓 or with or Kao Chi.
• Make sure to go to at least 2 different night markets to check out what each place sells. Every night market is different. I liked shilin and Tongyuan.
• Do make sure to allocate at least one entire meal to eating on the street. That's where the best food is.
• Do go visit Dongque fenyuan for their amazing boba and go 3 doors down to check out the most amazing buns you will ever have. See this post for details.
• Do try real Taiwanese fruit tea. It's amazing.
• Do try Two Peck and the most amazing crispy chicken you will ever have. Here
• Skip Mr. Donut. I don't care how famous it is.
• Do try Taiwan's famous pepper pork buns and their shallot drabing aka just go eat in the street and you will find a stand.
• Do try real Stinky Tofu, fried or steamed!
• Skip the malls. The brand names are all the same and just head to the street!
• And last tip, try to take EVA Air. They have this class called Deluxe class where you get more space and leg room than economy. You also get to go into their amazing VIP lounge area! It's a Taiwanese airline so they are really good especially in Taiwan.

Oh yeah so I did not take pictures of the VIP room food I stuffed down my stomach because I didn't have time since we were way behind and late since we decided to grab lunch before we left. But!!!! Good news is that we got upgraded to Business Class on the ride back to L.A. which meant... MORE FOOD!

Pate, salad, Ding Tai Fung's Beef Noodle Soup, Steak, etc. They even had abalone! Not bad as a return to the States present to me!

Happy Eatings! See you again soon Taiwan!