Salami and chopped salad sandwich at eStretto near gcm. It’s either here or the kismet formerly known as madcapra when I don’t feel like making lunch.
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Shanxi Noodle House
Knife cut noodles made by a robot. Good chew. A little vinegar and some chilli oil really bring this dish together. It’s a nice place, I like the General Kwan decorations (that red face guy for those that don’t know). If I had to pick, LaoXi Noodle House all the way. I like the hole in the wall mom-n-pop feel and I think the food is slightly better although less Shanxi speciality dishes. Also can’t stand places adding Sichuan dishes to their menu, worst trend in the SGV. The Cats Ear was pretty good, again a little vinegar and chilli oil. The vegetables dishes were swimming in a pool of oil… @JThur01 if your wondering why some Taiwan/HK people don’t like Mainland food, this is the reason, a pool of oil is disgusting.
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Carlos’s Tijuana Tacos (Whittier)
Finally made it to their brick & mortar location on my way home from the La Habra Costco. At 11:30AM, the parking lot was full and there were a fair number of people inside.
They’ve added items to the menu at their restaurant location…nopales, adobada, mushrooms, and birria…in addition to their asada, chicken, and chorizo. They also make burritos, vampiros, and tortas.
I went in for a birria taco, a mushroom taco, a adobada vampiro, and an asada quesadilla. The tortillas are still made by hand.
The birria at Birrieria Gonzalez is better…there wasn’t much complexity to the flavors at Carlos’s. I’m guessing they added the mushrooms to the menu with the popularity of Tacos 1986 and it was tasty, but I don’t know how it compares.
The vampiro and quesadilla were fantastic. I’m coming to love a crispy crunchy vampiro just for the texture alone…bonus for tasty fillings and crispy grilled cheese edges. They cook their adobada on a proper trompo that you see as you walk in. The quesadilla was great. Open until 11PM most nights.
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Hmm I learn something new today…crispy beef brisket. I love me some brisket-daikon clear broth (I been craving this lately should I hit up Ocean Bo @moonboy403). Had no idea that crispy was a thing.
That sandwich looks amazing. I’ve got to get there.
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I haven’t had that at Ocean Bo for a long time so I’m not sure. But the one at Tang Gong which uses short rib is pretty good…expect more chew.
The batter was light and crispy and brisket was very tender but underseasoned. I also wish that they would cut the briskets a bit thicker so the flavor would be more beefy and the chew would be better as well.
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With the cold weather (by LA standards) I was feeling stew tonight so I visited Akkad Mediterranean and Iraqi Grill for their tabse badengan.
It’s not much to look at but I really love this dish for a winter evening. I’ve never had any other version so I can’t say how it compares but Akkad’s is a very luxuriant and smooth sauce of tomato and eggplant with a few large chunks of beef. I know Solanaceae fruits are frequently served together but I forget how synergistically they pair in flavor and texture. The sauce is so dense you can stir that entire plate of rice in and lose sight of every grain because they’re so thickly coated.
Practically speaking, it’s a little scanty on meat but truly, the vegetables are what I show up for. Like other eggplant braises there’s a surfeit of oil that likely results from frying the eggplant first (which soaks up the oil then releases it when the cell structure breaks down) but given the viscosity of the sauce most of the oil is emulsified in like your best red gravy. Because it is so rich I really appreciate the pickled vegetables and raw onion that help lend crunch and zip to an otherwise heavy dish. Even so, half an order is the most I can manage at a time.
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Tak Kee Lee (SF) Hong Kong cafe, pickled mustard greens and pork strip rice noodle soup, with a hot milk tea & coffee with condensed milk. Lazy weekend brunch
Highlights from Sushi Yoshizumi:
Smoked and seared baby bluefin (katsuo style prep). That is one fat baby
Hokkaido kinki (aged, salt cured and grilled). So much fat it turned to gelatin
Medium rare karasumi (miso cured first then dried across three weeks)
Bold, powerful, structured, masculine, and a fine balance between rice and sake lees vinegar sourness, acidity, with the perfect pitch of umami, along with the sweetness coming from the fat of this great pieces of kohada from Amakusa
Aged winter buri
Sogen Junmai (Ishikawa Prefecture) by San Francisco Japantown
Tasting a pour of Tokugawa Ieyasu Daiginjo (Aichi prefecture) with a very interesting savory character prior to the finish in the vein of an aged Alsace Grand Cru Riesling
Roasted Dungeness Crab with garlic noodles at Le Soleil (SF) on Christmas night
Enjoying one last meal at Cafe Salina, the unsung hero of Cantonese dim sum (the owner let the old master dim sum chef go and is repurposing to do something else). Here are some steadfast classics this 76 year old master tried to keep alive: multi layered crispy puff pastry crust mini egg tarlets, glutinous rice rolls, black sesame rolls (the Cantonese nickname for this was analog camera film), and a super labor intensive “thousand layer cake” (sweet salted duck egg yolk, winter melon)…nobody else knows how to do this anymore.
Japanese style drinking party to celebrate the end of the year (or rather “forgetting the bad parts of the year”) Lots of special sake, 3 bottles of note:
Annual Asian Chefs Association Dinner at Le Soleil, BYOB so I brought Alsace Grand Cru Riesling and a Junmai sake from Fukushima prefecture. Fun pairings with Vietnamese fusion! The pairings were super crazy with the pork belly claypot (strong nuoc mam presence) and the Riesling held up to the coconut curry crab!
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you don’t see “fei lum” anywhere anymore
never seen this before!
The sad part is this… this dim sum chef came to SF in the 1990s, made one restaurant legendary, moved to another restaurant or two, went into retirement then got hired by this HK cafe to do more casual everyday dim sum. This was 3 years ago, and he really did make dim sum great again. Unfortunately due to inconsistency and the fact that during dinner it’s super quiet to ghost town, this eventually became unsustainable. While Dragon Beaux is nice, it is gems like these that not everyone appreciates…and so it fades out of existence, and does anyone else care at that point except for us hard core fans. And who wants to learn from the master to do things old school, make very little money and only appreciated by the food geeks?
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When you don’t want to wait 4 hours at Howlin Rays. Mrs Knott’s Chicken is ok. Fine if you’re already here but definitely not crave worthy. In the OC I’d prefer Crack Shack, Buttermilk Fried Chicken, BBQ chicken BB wings and the broasted chicken at Chicken Box.
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Went to Goto@Silog again. They’re shortening their hours and closing at 3pm after the New Year
Got the same thing again, arroz caldo and sisig. While the arroz caldo is great, the sisig is just the best. We will probably just get two plates of that next time and I’m sure they’ll look at us funny. Need to find more people to go with so we can try the crispy pata and bulalo.
Originally we wanted to do a dessert bang bang with D’New Aristocrat’s banana turon and Jollibee’s peach mango pie, but we woke up too late. So we just got the pie.
Bo Luc Lac from Garlic and Chives. Objectively not the best bo luc lac but personally I love it, the sauce is what makes it.
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Garlic and Chives and Newport Seafood is kinda known for their bo luc lac but just down the street Khoi Hung has the best in Little Saigon and possibly in the So Cal area…the sweetness is balanced out with tons of garlic, served with arugula and red rice. I have yet to find a better version than Khoi Hung. I know you guys are fans of both G&C and Newport but their bo luc lac is not as good
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Hong Kong Cafe
HK Milk Tea
Pineapple Bun
Old Fire Soup (free with entree)
Egg Sandwich…I was looking at pics of Australia Dairy Co lol
Scrambled Egg and Tomatoes
They ran out of rice rolls!!! Aahjcjrocjkkkkkllldncjs!!!
@beefnoguy this place is to SGV as Tak Kee Lee is to SF. Next time you are down here you gotta try the rice rolls and milk tea! And I gotta try the lemon tea and chicken wings
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That soup is so fecking legit
Had something similar at Harborview SF (good part of the crew came from R&G Lounge v1.0) for Thanksgiving but in banquet style size
The green veg is I believed preserved/salt cured and dried/pickled. 菜干 (tsai gan/ choy gon), carrots to counter with sweetness (green turnips could be added for more complexity), pork neck bones. Though when you eat the veg it doesn’t taste pickled/cured from rehydration due to cooking.
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I 
The Chicken Box!
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tire shop taqueria - iki ramen - petit trois bang bang bang
carne asada and chorizo tacos are outta control!
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Damnit, now even more annoyed that I didn’t make it out there while was in SF! Argh.