No Meat? No Problem!

My family eats vegetarian food fairly often since there's 2 days a month that Buddhists go vegetarian for the entire day so I'm always looking out for good vegetarian places. The best vegetarian restaurants are the ones that I wouldn't mind visiting even when I don't need to be eating vegetarian. Vegelink in North Point is one of those 'private kitchens' in Hong Kong. They make you sign a "membership" card when you eat there. It's free, they just give you a little club card. I presume it's because they registered their restaurant with the government as a private kitchen and not a restaurant so by having membership cards it justifies their cheaper rent. 

 Appetizers are egg rolls and fake pork jerky. 

 So hot that the picture came out blurry! Just the way I like it! 

Here's the mushroom dumpling we ordered. It was very good. The best part was that they had some great spicy sauces and pre-mixed vinegar to dip it in. 

 Tofu skin roll. Inside was an array of mushrooms and carrots that were steamed. 

 Veggie flour roll. 

Emperor's dumpling. This was another tasty veggie dumpling that was really good.

The total came out to $180 HK for the vegetarian dimsum. Vegetarian Taiwanese fusion food. The address is: Shop 108, 1/F, Foo Yet Kall Building, 56 Java Road, North Point

北角渣華道56號胡日皆大廈1樓108室

Happy Eatings! 

More Veggie Food!

More postings from Hong Kong. This is our favorite vegetarian joint in Hong Kong. Everything tastes like real meat and it's absolutely delicious! I have a lot of friends that are vegetarians and their everyday meals are so boring that I feel bad for them. Too bad they don't realize there are so many choices available. If I ate fusion vegetarian food like this all the time, I could do it on a daily basis!

Delicious! I've blogged about this place before so I'll spare the details but it never gets old. I also love how the food always changes and you never eat the same thing twice!

Happy Eatings!

Go Big or Go Home! Last Day in Hong Kong!

It's my last meal in Hong Kong. I am very sad to leave since I am going to spend 2 months in Beijing tomorrow. Wish me luck and let's all hope that I don't have to have an encounter with a squat toilet! I wanted to try donkey in Beijing, but as usual my mom won't let me. We'll see what happens.

Stop 1: 大少爺 in Happy Valley.

Pepper and salted beef cubes and my tasty pineapple lime drink with honey!

Grilled pork's neck. Thai style!

Baked ox tongue with cheese, mushroom in white sauce over rice.

Here is their signature Thai Chicken Rice dish! Was muy bueno!

Gaia Vegetarian Restaurant aka 大自然 in Causeway Bay is an all vegetarian place! It has the best food. They also have vegan items as well. Everything tastes just like real meat and is super good! Go at 3 PM, everything is half off! We ate everything below for $230ish dollars HK. So cheap!

Sprouts fruit salad, abalone, & salmon hand rolls. Tasted like real meat! Loved it! I got 2 just for me!

Fruit salad wrapped in rice paper.

Cold Chicken salad.

Fried eggplant with fried garlic and chili sauce. This is spicy but it's amazing!

Cold tofu in spicy sauce.

Baked garlic and avocado bread with melted cheese. *drool*

"suckling pig" along with the bread on the side.

Radish and oyster omelet.

Dessert: Tang Bai Fu

Mango shaved ice. Yes, there's rainbow sprinkles on top.

Bye Bye Hong Kong. See you in December!

Vietnamese Vegetarian Food

It was that time of the month again-vegetarian day time! This time we went to Veggie Life at 9324 Garvey Ave. South El Monte, 91733. You don't have to be vegetarian to check out this place. If you ever just want a break and want to eat healthier, then you can check out vegetarian places. Their food isn't bland so there's no need to worry. It tastes like the real Vietnamese meat dishes so you should give them a try.

Here's the veggie bi cuon "beef" rolls. Not my fave, but my mom seemed to enjoy them.

"chicken" curry noodles. These were pretty good.

Bon rieu noodles were really good. It's a very clear broth that uses a lot of tomatoes in it. It's not spicy at all, perfect for all those that can't handle any spice. 

And here was their standout dish, their veggie Bon Bo hue. Bon bo hue is beef noodle soup that is spicy. Veggie Life actually makes a really good broth. 

Veggie Life is a very small restaurant so you may need to wait a bit. The best time to go try this place would be on a non Buddhist holiday. Then there's practically no line!
Happy Eatings!

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!

Vegetarian Food So Good, You'll Consider Becoming a Monk!

I proud to say today was an amazing day. Not only did I wish eternal damnation onto my worst enemies with the help of this old granny (Click here to see actual video of it), but I also had an amazing vegetarian meal that was so good... I'm considering becoming a nun just to be able to eat vegetarian all the time. Thankfully, even without being a nun I can still have vegetarian food everyday if I wanted to. I have a favorite vegetarian place in Wan Chai in Hong Kong. It's owned by a crazy lady that my sister & I think is the awesome and insane person ever. Only problem with her place is that they have set meals per person and give way too much food-which normally isn't a problem but it is when you are not going home right away and are forced to carry bagfuls of food you were not able to finish. She literally makes you around 10 dishes or more of huge portions. Love her awesome food and her craziness nonetheless. Well last time I was in Hong Kong in December, the fam bam and I went to try out a new vegetarian place called 心齋 (See previous post here) to see if we could find another really good vegetarian place other than "the crazy lady place". The place wasn't bad, but it could not match the place that "crazy lady's restaurant" had in my heart. But today, I am happy to report that that I have finally found a place that will match her. Behold, 大自然素食 in Causeway Bay. I didn't see an English name but 大自然 means Nature so I'm sure the English name should be something to that extent.

We got inside and were greeted with this appetizer of pickled cucumbers and a tip to take our time to order because in 30 mins, everything would be half off! Awesome! Really? Yes! Cheap & Good? Really? Yes!

I was so excited! They had an assortment of vegetarian hand rolls! Remember Gourmet Vegetarian-the vegetarian place I went to in L.A. where I said they had amazing vegetarian hand rolls? (See here) Well this place's hand rolls knocked theirs outta the park! This was their "abalone" hand roll. So good!!!

Left is a fruit salad with walnut roll and right is one of my personal favorites-Salt & Peppered Eggplant. The eggplant dish is supposed to be made with lots of garlic but because this was a vegetarian place they used more bread crumbs to mimic the garlic texture. According to Buddhist, garlic is one of the goods that one should keep away from so therefore this place opted for no garlic to appease their Buddhist customers.

Left is their stir fried peas dish. It's supposed to be made with meat. So this place used some fake meat to give it the right texture. Super good. Tasted as if it was the real dish. I couldn't help it at this point. I wanted more hand rolls! Here's my "salmon" hand roll. It tasted very good. You could tell it was not salmon but it didn't taste like spam or fake meat so I was pleased. The other hand roll is a mango & avocado with brussel sprouts hand roll that does not have rice. My mom didn't want to use up her food quota for the day and convinced herself that eating another hand roll that does not have rice will not make her full.

At this point, we were beyond full. Just then my aunt looked over at another table and spotted something that looked tasty. So obviously we had to get it too! This was toasted bread with cheese and avocado! Delicious!

And then the bill came. It really was 50% off! Our bill came out to $300 something HK dollars, so we only paid $100 something which is a little over $20 U.S. for 3 people! We ordered a lot of stuff too! Most places also charge you per person for drinking tea. They didn't even do that! We'll definitely be back. Finally! A place that matches my "crazy lady" place.

We ended our day with dessert. Remember yummylicious dessert place 石魔坊 ? (Click here) We tried this yam pudding on the left. Right is some sesame tangyuan aka glutinous balls that gramps brought home.

If you're in L.A. and want some good vegetarian food, my fav place there is at Gourmet Vegetarian but of course food in Hong Kong is way better!

Happy Eatings!

Vegetarians Know How to Eat Too!

(Looks like just a regular meal of dim sum but it's all vegetarian!)

    Greetings from L.A.! I will be back in the States for about 3 weeks before heading back to Hong Kong again for Chinese New Year so have no fear tons of food posts to come from both sides of the world! Today's post is on vegetarianism and the awesomeness which it entails. There was a recent episode of Top Chef where celebrity guest judge Natalie Portman surprised the compettiors last minute at a steak house by telling them she was a vegetarian. She was complaining how as a vegetarian, it was difficult to find places that served good food. Yeah, um okay. It's obvious that she didn't put much time or effort to look for food if she can make a statement like that... or maybe she just needs to read my blog. 
    Buddhist cuisine and culture is followed by many East Asians. Some Buddhist eat nothing but vegetarian food all the time, and others eat strictly vegetarian on certain days of the month as well as major Buddhist holidays in adherence to the 5 basic Buddhist precepts. My family does the latter. We are vegetarian on the 1st and 15th of every month in the lunar calendar. My mom's friends are always surprised that someone as young as me wouldn't mind going a full day without any juicy meat. What they and Natalie Portman don't know is that there are so many delicious vegetarian choices out there! In fact you can't even tell you aren't eating meat because it tastes so real and so delicious! There are so many delicious places in HK. Our favorite is the place in Wan Chai, which my sister and I call "The Crazy Lady Yummy Vegetarian Place." We actually don't know the real name of it because we really refer to it as such since there is this awesome, overly stylish, crazy, hyper woman who is the chef of that restaurant. She makes the BEST vege fish ball curry! I'll be sure to visit that place and blog when I do!

    Today's vege restarurant is called 心齋 ( Sum Jai) in Hong Kong. It had a cutesy decor. Even though it was Chinese style vegetarian food, you had the option to sit in regular tables or to sit Japanese style on the floor. Cool!

    This is our order of cha siu and various other "meats" and our order order of pineapple bun with coconut filling inside.

 

    Next we had an order of "Pork" Chang Fen (猪肠粉) that had a special pink skin and then Hong Yao Chao Shou which is a Chinese spicy wonton basically (Box 1). In Box 2 we had salt and peppered flavored tofu. Yum!

    Next was a vege dim sum (Box 1), a steamed vege dumpling (Box 2), and egg tarts (Box 3). 

    We ended our meal with a panfried "pork patty" (Box 1),  cold Osmanthus jello (Box 2), hot steamed Hawthorne Jello (Box 3). The same Hawthorne that was used in my previous dessert post with this Hawthorne Soup. 

    Now let's take it across the world to San Gabriel, California to Gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant. They have amazing lunch specials where they give you the same portion size as dinner but charge you half off! Lunch runs til 2:30 PM and even includes weekends. Plus you get to choose between yummy 5 grain brown rice or porridge with bread. 

Box 1 is Minced "Pigeon" that is eaten in a lettuce leaf and Box 2 is Sliced "Cuttlefish" with vegetables.

    Here is their super delicious sushi hand roll! Soo good. It's my favorite. I think it's supposed to be a fake salmon skin roll because when you order this they make sure to tell you to eat it right away or else the beets and seaweed will get soft. There's no rice inside basically just lettuce, shredded beets, and a little mayo sauce. Sounds like a weird combo but it's so good! On the left is a picture of their awesome 5 grain brown rice. It's really good. You can choose if you want your meal to come with brown rice or porridge with bread. Also worth nothing, their tea is soooo good! This place could have easily given you some crappy, cheap tea but they went all out with delicious Taiwanese Jasmine Tea! The boss is a very devout Buddhist who only wants to best ingredients in her restaurant. 

    Box 1 is Gourmet's delicious spicy tofu bowl! It's amazing! The tofu is soft and the skin is just all goodness! Box 2 is a vege version of the typical Chinese dish of Stir-fried pork kidney. It is just as delicious or even more delicious than the real thing!

    There are many  other vegetarian options in the San Gabriel Valley. This place in definitely one of my top 2. Also there is very good Vietnamese vegetarian good available as well. Most of these places really make dishes that taste as if you were eating meat! Depending on  how strict the vegetarian restaurant is, they food they serve may be more plain and bland since some Mahayana Buddhist purposely avoid eating certain strong smelling plants like garlic, shallots, onions, etc. They refer to them as the 5 spices 五辛 because of their negative as they tend to excite senses, which is bad I guess if you are a super hardcore Buddhist. I really think the best vegetarian place so far that I've experienced is "The Crazy Lady Yummy Vegetarian Place", which I will definitely blog about in the future. 

Happy Yummy & Meat-less Eatings!