Weekend of eating started with a wine tasting party and ended up at the local Jose’s Taco truck (Whittier) not far from my house…the cabeza tacos and the shrimp tacos are easily my favorites…followed up by the asada mulita made with fresh masa.
Lunch with my cousins today in Little Saigon at Banh Cuon Tay Ho 4 next to the Zero Degrees on Bolsa and Brookhurst. I always forget how good it is fresh made.
Ran errands this evening and found dinner at Bruno’s in Brea. Can’t beat a couple of Happy Hour specials and their housemade spaghetti and meatballs.
@JeetKuneBao put it this way, Boba Guys are Asian Americans, and so are the majority of their customer base so they can do and call it what they want and people will still come. Same thing goes for Melissa King (Top Chef) doing “Hong Kong Milk Tea Ice Cream with almond cookie crumbles” for Humphrey Slocombe. I’ve tried the ice cream, not a fan. And now King has a yuzu cream ice cream flavor for HS…traditionally yuzu as cold dessert is mostly sorbet even in Japan. I have yet to try BG’s HK milk tea…but should I? No disrepect to Boba Guys, more power to them for sustaining a brand that expanded to LA…but my preference would be something that’s closer to the experience in Asia rather than going to a place that has flavors all over the place (e.g. Thai, Horchata, HK, etc).
Pretty good, actually, but not amazing. For the pricce we paid, though, I thought it was an astonishingly good deal (2 plates or 12 pounds total!!!). Batter was quite nicely crisp but not particularly seasoned (used to Ricky’s, I guess… , and thick cut fries are not my fav type (although these were a good version). I find mushy peas oddly comfortably, so I enjoyed that. And that we stuck around for quiz night.
We got into town relatively late, so we went to the nearest pub, which was Salmon Tail. A very respectable joint.
The cream cheese and cucumber salad I had today + almond and cinnamon tea, OTOTH, was really, REALLY good. And scone + clotted cream.
Point taken. Curious if Boba Guy’s stood up to the real Pantyhose Milk Tea in HK. Probably not. I get excited when I see HK Milk Tea on a menu even at these new school/American born places, only to be disappointed.
If you ask if the Milk Tea is prepared with a pantyhose/stocking they probably would look at you weird
Just hit up a Hong Kong cafe, even if it’s only half decent. No BS no hipsterism. Or drop by Tak Kee Lee or Smile House Cafe again (the latter for their chilled milk tea) when you come up to SF.
The key questions to ask actually are: do they use a multiple leaf blend, how many types, and approximate ratios, then their brewing process. You’ll know then and there. If an American establishment using a one leaf blend (e.g. Numi organic tea like Melissa King’s HK milk tea ice cream), an evaporated milk brand that’s not similar to or exactly the “black and white” from Holland, and something equivalent to the “Confucious” brand (I call that in jest, it’s just some old Asian dude with a beard as the mascot) condensed milk, then you’re dealing with hipster farce. Haha don’t ask if a pantyhose was used for brewing/straining, they’ll think you’re a pervert. It’s a cheesecloth (kind of) stained brown from the black tea, but yeah…
To be fair, Humphrey Slocombe’s Vietnamese coffee (with condensed milk) ice cream I enjoy a lot.
And the whole idea of HK milk tea was conceived because a blue collar dai pai dong owner wanted to create something for his blue collar labor brethern (the coolies) carrying sacks of imported Sri Lankan tea from the boats off the pier, for the British colonials enjoying their high end afternoon tea. So he made it a bit more complex and accessible. 60 - 70 years later, hipster boba. He’s still alive, but I wonder what he would think.
To Boba Guy’s credit, my friends who are into them really enjoy their boba where they put in the effort to create the right texture and cook it properly. I tasted some recently so that is my assessment. Of course it will not compare to the fresh “fun yuan” in Taiwan where the texture is insanely fluffy/silky with a light chew, but for Asian American / local offering that’s not a Taiwan franchise/import, it’s very decent boba.
The realization that I haven’t had boba for quite some time (to which I said “Why the heck not? And why am I talking to myself?”) when I visited Van Leeuwen next door made me do this. So technically, this was a bangbang. This middle cup is the black sesame latte: Housemade black sesame ginger paste, topped over a bed of almond milk, with almond jelly add-on, at 50% sweetness. (I shoulda done 75%, but my dentist would have frowned upon this. On second thought, he’s putting a kid through Swarthmore, so he might have actually cheered me on.)
Robot cut lamb noodle soup @thechez5 this was pretty damn good, up there with Beijing Pie House, different style, excellent broth and the robot cut noodles were really good with dat QQQ
No disrepect to Boba Guys, more power to them for sustaining a brand that expanded to LA…but my preference would be something that’s closer to the experience in Asia rather than going to a place that has flavors all over the place (e.g. Thai, Horchata, HK, etc).
, and thick cut fries are not my fav type (although these were a good version). I find mushy peas oddly comfortably, so I enjoyed that. And that we stuck around for quiz night. 
