HK style breakfast and lunch/Marukai Market Mashup/KTown Kimbap...come along!

Americas - USA West Los Angeles
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Secrets out via Jonathan Gold review…

Delicious Food Corner in Monterey Park.
This is one of my favorite places to eat. Also there is another similar breakfast place up Garfield, forgot the name.

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Good Morning Beautiful

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Menu

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Fish and Lettuce Congee. Very light. Can serve 2-3, but I am a fei fei. Cantos we like the rice to be “burst open”, which gives the creamy consistency. Just enough “watery” so it is not Gruel served at a English orphanage. This is soul food. This is what we eat when we are sick cooked by our Parents/Grandparents. It is what feeds a whole family during civil war (Thanks Mao, I’ll be coming for you, you bastard) or nourishes a whole working class family. It is a Old Ass Recipe. It is almost instilled in every Chinese kid to NEVER waste rice. (I believe Koreans and Japanese also believe this). Yeah it’s just porridge but it’s more than that also. I see some fancy porridges coming out, that’s cool do your thang, please don’t overprice it and don’t forget the physical/historical/social importance of this most humble dish. I said too much. Don’t forget to season with white pepper!!!

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Pineapple Bun/Bolo Bao (wouldn’t it be genius to ask Bolo Yeung to advertise for your bolo baos…I am alone on this)
So good with the butter. Comes with 2.

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Rice Roll and You Tiao/Zha Liang.
That sauce is peanut sauce and sweetned soy. So you get sweet and salty with some fat from the you tiao.

Also had a Hot Milk Tea. I don’t think they do it Pantyhose style.

Also different sandwiches, eggs and toast, different rice rolls, spam and noodles, etc.

There is boxed macaroni, SPAM, non-aioli mayo and other ish along those lines. That is authentic and true HK Western food. Or canned cream corn with fish or chicken, that is the real thing. Please don’t judge them because the veggies aren’t grown on a farm with rainbows and are whispered “you are beautiful veggie, grow” or the meat/poultry came from a place where they feed them fruit straight to the mouth and they are massaged twice daily.

I’ll make a dinner visit in the next few weeks. Hopefully some steamed eggs, a plate of greens, and some sweet and sour pork. And a “over rice” dish to go.

Little Tokyo. Damn it Kinokuniya! Why is your book selection so good?? Spent like $80 lol.

Marukai Market Mash Snack

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Made my own Ikura, Sesame Spinach, and Rice snack.

Off to Chinatown for one of my faves…

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The name is Hong Kong Wonton for goodness sake. For me it is perfect, the wontons are just right, the broth…you can taste the chicken/pork/dried seafood. A little chilli sauce for the wontons. Every Chinese person gets the wonton noodle soup, unless you are old you get the bittermelon.
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Closeup say Pork and Shrimp!

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Hi Sifu!!

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The best drink in the neighborhood!!! Go send a buddy to get one while waiting for Howlin Rays or get 2 for Chef Zone and Amanda.

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HK Market Western. Husband and Wife team up to bring you kimbaps. There are other stuff, but most of the locals get the kimbaps. Like stacks of them.
Shout out to my Korean elementary school friends and their Mommas (Momma Ahn and Momma Kim), who introduced me to this dish. I was so jealous they had this for lunch!

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20 pieces in a box!!!

Thanks for reading!!

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Damn thanks for the heads up on thats sauce otherwise my wife woulda died.

I gotta stop by DFC one of these days, my vet is right around the corner.

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Aww no prob. When you mentioned it, I look at the menu pic and it says nothing about peanut. I might casually mentioned this next time.

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Place is awful. No redeeming qualities.

I think this place might account for 50% of all Accent sales.

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MSG is great! Glutamates are natural.

Thank God MSG was invented.

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I enjoy MSG. Immensely.

But not when it’s used to such an extent that I can actually taste it. As a separate ingredient.

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Sugarcane juice FTW - And naive ol’ me thought I was the only FTCer at Saigon Deli…

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You know it is a dick move to insult someone’s favorite place. I will never do that to any of you guys. We have our reasons. It also passively insults me.

I like DFC because it taste good to me.
I like it because in a way it connects me to my Cantonese side and connects me to my maternal Grandfather who is Canto, who passed away recently, He loves congee and I regret not spending time with him here sharing a bowl. And I like the food.

F’in ass hole

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i like DFC. popular with the HK crowd, including B level chinese actors who usually play the bad guy when hollywood casts an asian bad guy.
i have no idea why this pic is included, but there it is:

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i wasn’t so crazy about the pineapple buns myself, but my lunch partner insisted.
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the pork fried rice with an egg might be the most popular dish there; i saw it on every other table.
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and i highly recommend the soup with fish paste instead of wontons - flavored with orange peel and cilantro, the texture of the fish paste made for a very pleasing bowl.
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and aforementioned chinese B movie actor who has played the bad guy in varied hollywood flicks.
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very HK style seating - as many as 3 different parties at a table jammed in tetris style.

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and if you want cheap kimbap in the SGV, go to the square supermarket (san gabriel & garvey)

i think these were $4.25 or maybe $.4.50

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the better deal can be had fri-sun when there’s a table in front of the cashiers serving prepared food including kimbap for only $2 each.

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Same area at the Square has pretty good marinated cuttlefish, as well as sardines. Bonus if you go after 8 p.m., where things are often discounted 50%.

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thanks for the report and the saigon deli tip.

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50% discounts are good.

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Is all this in Monterey Park? I like the look of that fish paste soup.

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Delicious Food Corner…Monterey Park

Marukai…Little Tokyo

New Dragon…Chinatown

Saigon Deli…Chinatown

Wool Um Ma…Koreatown

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ispe, how about your favorite spots for congee/jook?

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If we’re just talking Chinese (aka HK, Taiwanese, etc.) congee, then the salted pork with thousand year old egg at Har Lam Kee is tough to beat, esp. when you pair it with their grilled turnip cake and add just a smidgen of the tableside black vinegar and chili paste (to the turnip, not the congee, don’t mess with the congee). At Harlam Kitchen (its sister joint at the food court in the Square Supermarket), the congee is just as good, but for some reason their special seafood congee (or the “lai wan”) is really superb.

(Sidenote, don’t overlook the congee at Xi Guan Noodle House in the same food court at the Square, where even though the congee is great but not outstanding you do get the opportunity to wash it down with their deep-fried salted squid, which to me is like eating those hugely addictive Japanese shrimp crackers.)

And speaking of sea creatures, I’m always a proverbial sucker for the fresh abalone congee at Sea Harbour. It’s seasonal, so call ahead and beg, nicely. And while you’re begging, make sure to specify that they add some judicious slices of conpoy to your porridge. Goes down like liquid meth.

Special shout-out should be made for the millet porridge. My favorite used to be at Fortune Garden in Alhambra before they ditched the joint and moved east to Chino. No worries, the millet porridge, gratis no less, at Beijing Pie House is like the perfect Liquid Drano to palate cleanse the greasy-umami goodness of those meat pies you’re no doubt wolfing down by the fistful.

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the wonton soup is also a good value there. not a destination place, but if you’re in the area, you can do much worse.

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bring a friend, get the soup and an order of that pork rice with an egg on top.

or eat it all yourself.

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Hi @ipsedixit,

Aha! I was wondering what the complimentary bowl of Millet Porridge was for at Beijing Pie House. :slight_smile: It felt weird to have carb on carb, but that’s good to know. Thanks.