Cha for Tea (Long Beach) 7.22.14

Yesterday, I had a work meeting and since I've decided this week is a "stay-cation --> vacation" week, we met across the street from campus instead of on campus, at Cha for Tea  in Long Beach.  Cha for Tea is a local chain tea shop that serves boba milk tea (and other teas) as well as a small menu of appetizers, entrees & noodle soups.

My two favorite things here are the crispy chicken and the fried dumplings (yeah, yeah, the reducing the gluten consumption is not going so well here), both of which are often being handed out during lunchtime as a sample by a gracious employee seeking to capitalize on passing food traffic.  Yesterday, I had the green tea salad with fried dumplings:

Green tea salad with fried dumplings

The salad was fine. I liked the dressing (green tea sesame ginger) a lot--it's a thicker vinaigrette that goes well with the greens and I'm really glad that they use a spring mix instead of the romaine or leaf lettuce that's pictured on the menu. The crispy dumplings were their normal awesomeness with crispy hot goodness and lots of meat (ground chicken). All in all, it was a fine meal.  Would I go out of my way to come eat here regularly? Probably not, but it's very convenient to campus and the salad made for a much prettier picture than the dumplings on a plate by themselves so yes, a fine lunch, but nothing to necessarily write home about. 

I also ordered the almond milk black tea which is there biggest seller and is usually one of my favorite drinks of all time: 

Almond milk black tea

For some reason, yesterday, either my tastebuds were slightly off or the milk tea itself just wasn't as good as usual.  This is actually great news because, seriously, I need to stop paying over $4 for tea. Maybe it was just the fact that I didn't get a cool heart bendy straw to cap off my experience.  Whatever it was, I will probably go back and have another milk tea at some point, but maybe I'll ask for a little less sweetness as yesterday just seemed too sweet and not almond creamy enough.  I probably should have just asked for an adjustment, but I have a martyr complex so I thought I'd just suffer through it. 

Overall, I like Cha for Tea, but I'm not crazy about it. It's conveniently located, but unless I need somewhere to meet someone, I'm more likely to make some tea in my office or go to Thiptara for lunch where I pay the same price but feel happier about the quality to value ratio.  

Daikokuya Ramen & Ozero Tea & Desserts (Little Tokyo) 7.21.14

So, my friend and I had been planning to get together for awhile to check out the Japanese American National Museum's current exhibition Perseverance.  We finally found a day that we could get together for a museum & lunch date, but, I failed to notice, when I visited the website yesterday that JANM is closed on Mondays. Super sad panda....but hey, there's always lunch to be had, and in Little Tokyo, good eats are never far, so we decided to head over for an early lunch to Daikokuya.

            

(Random street shots of Little Tokyo in LA, because I'm never down here and well, there are beautiful things besides food.)

Daikokuya is an LA-area Ramen chain that was been ranked in Yelp's Top 10 Restaurants in 2011 and is pretty much super busy all the time.  Luckily, we were there early enough to get a seat at the bar without a wait and we quickly ordered two bowls of the Daikoku ramen, which is a pretty standard tonkatsu broth based ramen with chasu (pork), egg, ramen noodles, bean sprout, and green onions:

This was the pristine picture before stirring in the green onions, but you can't really see the goodness of the ingredients, hence...

The less composed picture with the ramen noodles, pork & egg.  Sorry for the shadow in the corner. I probably should have taken more time to compose the shot, but I was hungry. 

So, this is probably the best ramen I've had since returning from Tokyo.  I don't eat ramen THAT often so that's not saying a whole lot, but it was delicious. The broth was savory and delicious, the noodles were just the right texture of firm, the meat was super tender and the egg--OMG, the EGG.  I am not generally an egg fan, but that egg was seriously one of the best things I've eaten in awhile and really made the dish.  My friend thinks that it must have been marinated in something to infuse it with the flavor it had and it was a lovely medium boiled texture so it was cooked all the way through (not runny), but the yolk wasn't firm like a hard-boiled egg tends to be.  It was super good and pretty darn filling.  

Cool Art on the Wall of Ozero

Before getting back in the car for our ride back to her place, we stopped off at Ozero Tea & Desserts where I had a mango jasmine iced tea and my friend had a brown sugar milk tea with boba. 

Mange Jasmine Iced Tea & Brown Sugar Milk Tea w/ Boba

I'm really glad there's not an Ozero around the corner from my house because the mango jasmine tea was pretty addictive--just the right amount of sweet mango syrup blended with a lovely jasmine tea.  When I say, "just the right amount," I mean that the mango didn't over power the taste of the jasmine blossom in the tea which made it really balanced.  I am a stickler for well-made iced tea (a lot of places really overbrew their tea) so this was a nice post-meal treat. 

So, lesson learned--check the hours when going to visit a museum and make sure they're not closed on the day you plan to visit...or don't and have a great meal anyways.  

Wang Cho Korean BBQ (Chino Hills) 7.20.14

Another day, more beautiful eating.

Today's culinary adventure was All You Can Eat Korean BBQ restaurant Wang Cho in Chino Hills.  Wang Cho has 4 menus to choose from according to their website, but if you go on Sunday for lunch, the lunch menu isn't available.  All of our selections were instead from the Wang Cho Prince menu ($19.99 per person; $9.99 for children 3-8; Free under 3--2 hour table time limit).  Let me just preface this entry by saying that I rarely go to AYCE places because I just don't eat enough to make it "worth" the trip (the notable exception to this is Las Vegas where I crab & prime rib buffets to death), but we were meeting some friends for lunch and it had been awhile since I had eaten Korean BBQ, so why not? (Note: It is almost 7 hours since we ate and I am still full--serious meat coma)

One of the things I love about Korean food in general is banchan.  Banchan are the assorted side dishes that come with Korean meals.  Here are some pics of Wang Cho's selection of refillable banchan:

Side 1: Pickled daikon, rice paper, glass noodles, more rice paper and kimchee

Side 2: Lightly dressed green salad, bean sprouts, bean curd strips, potato salad

The banchan were fine.  We went through a lot of rice paper and some pickled daikon.  The kids (a 2-year old & 8 year-old) liked the noodles.  I've definitely seen a larger and more diverse selection of banchan, but theirs were fine, flavorful and waiting for us at our table when we were seated (which is always good when eating with young people). 

We ordered: marinated boneless beef (x2), pork belly, spicy marinated pork, squid (x2), veggies, California Roll (for my son mostly), spicy tofu stew, and angus brisket. It was nice that there were a few things on the menu for my mostly pescatarian husband and I really liked the meat.  The yelp reviews said that the plates would be pretty small, but I actually found the portion sizes to be fine (like I said, I'm not your typical AYCE consumer though), particularly because I didn't want to be charged $5/person for food waste (excessive left-overs).  The service was pretty attentive and the grill was changed regularly.  Our grill did leak sauce from the bottom, which was weird, but avoidable with a strategically placed napkin under the table.  

Anyways, here's the food:

Grilling onions, spicy pork, and marinated boneless beef

Piles and piles of cooked meat (spicy pork, brisket pictured)

If you like AYCE Korean BBQ and live in the Inland Empire, I'd recommend trying Wang Cho and saving the drive further inland to Rowland Heights, Garden Grove or K-Town. It's clean, the meat is well marinated and generally pretty tender.  Their Prince menu (which is the low-end option) still has 24 dishes and is a meat-eaters delight.  While I'll probably end up staying closer to home for Korean BBQ, it was a nice trek to suburbia for a delicious Sunday of eating. 

Luna Modern Mexican Kitchen (Corona) 7.18.14

Last night, my 8-year old son went to a friend's birthday party in Corona, giving my husband and I a chance to have an actual date, like real grown-ups on a Friday night.  Since we're never out in Corona, we used yelp to figure out where to go and the number 1 recommendation for restaurants in the area turned out to be Luna Modern Mexican Kitchen.

Luna is in back of a strip mall/ industrial park, next to a Marriott Residence Inn.  It was pretty busy at 8pm when we got there, but we were seated after just a few minute wait, allowing us time to check out the wall of tequila behind the hostess stand:

My husband said this wouldn't photograph well and he's kinda right, but it's much more visually striking in person, especially if you're a tequila aficionado.

Since we were actually posing as real life adults, we even had a cocktail.  I know. Walking on the wild side: 

Coco-Piña: Some blend of coconut, pineapple, tequila deliciousness

(BTW, for those of you in the area or on your way to Vegas, it's just off the freeway AND they have a M-F 2-7pm Happy Hour so you can get started on Vegas early...but only if you're not DRIVING right after. Don't drink and drive.  That's dangerous.)

Okay, on to the food.  There's a nice basket of chips and salsa served prior to the meal which I didn't capture on photo because, well, chips and salsa look like chips and salsa.  It was delicious, but not anything super special. 

Pipian de Puerco: "Slow roasted pork loin cooked in a medium spicy blend of chiles, serrano-cilantro chimichuri sauce, grilled vegetables and fried plantain arroz blanco"

So, when the dish came to the table, this was not at all what I expected it to look like.  It also had a faint aroma of barbecue sauce, but to my surprise and delight, it was very tasty.  The pork was cooked perfectly and the serrano-cilantro (green) chimichuri sauce was delicious with bright notes of spice.  Just a note--all of their food is on the sweet side, so if you're not a sweet-savory fan, it's probably not the best place for you.  I was not a fan of the rice.  Definitely the least beautiful part of the dish in terms of both presentation and taste, but yum overall on the dish. 

Pepita Crusted Tilapia: "Fresh water tilapia, fried plantain arroz blanco, fresh vegetables, red curry mango sauce" 

So, again the tilapia was really well cooked, but this dish was also on the sweet side.  The lemon helped to balance the dish, but it was sweet overall.  The veggies were roasted (as on the pork dish) and my husband was big fan of the roasted veggies (I thought they were okay, but I prefer my roasted root veggies to have a little more crispness on the outside--they were a little soggy for me). 

In re-reading this review, it seems fairly critical, but I actually really liked the vibe and liked the food and drink enough that I'd definitely come back if I were in the area.  I probably wouldn't brave the 91 East on a Friday night to come back but enough yum for a second visit for sure. 

Black Sheep Grilled Cheese Bar & Hans' Homemade Ice Cream (Anaheim) 7.17.14

My friend, Hong, came down to visit from the Bay Area so we decided to grab a bite at the Packing House.  It had been a couple weeks since I had been and last time, my friends had gotten delicious looking grilled cheese sandwiches from the Black Sheep Grilled Cheese Bar so we decided to check it out this time.

Yes, there's an actual black sheep on the counter. 

Black Sheep is "a division of the Cellar" which is a local cheese focused collective.  If you want just a regular grilled cheese, you can check out the "Classic," but their simple menu allows for some branching out from the traditional cheddar & swiss as well: 

Menu of Gluten-Dairy goodness

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention that generally I'm not a big gluten-dairy indulger, but well, go big or go home in this case.  Let's get to the food. 

"The Man" Salami (lots of it) & Cheese on Sourdough

I tried a bite of "The Man" and it was salty goodness, especially if you like a lot of salami to your cheese.  My friend, who likes things on the spicy side, said she could have used some jalapeño to give it some kick, but if simple, meaty sandwiches are your thing, it's a good choice.  Our server at the counter recommended pairing with Coke (in a glass bottle because it's fancy), an indication that this was the traditional side of the menu. 

#1: Cypress Grove fromage blanc, caramelized onions, roasted tomatoes, arugula pesto

This was my sandwich and it was AMAZING! It was honestly the best grilled cheese I've probably ever had AND I'm not even a fan of goat cheese.  (When I looked at the menu, I hadn't realized that Cypress Grove specialized in chèvre so I wasn't expecting a goat milk cheese, but that's what I got so I decided to go with it)  The fromage blanc is mild and flavors blend together well on the marble bread.  Seriously, as soon as I got home and despite my fullness, I wanted to run down the street and get another one.  It's that good. 

Since I had decided it was gluten and dairy night, it was time to head over to Hans' Homemade Ice Cream where I sampled several flavors: Cookies & Cream, Mocha Almond Fudge, Honey Vanilla and Wild Mountain Blackberry: 

I settled on a waffle cone single scoop split between the Honey Vanilla and the Wild Mountain Blackberry: 

Pro-tip: At Hans' you can split a single scoop between two flavors (the honey vanilla's at the bottom of this cone--and yes, that's the size of a single scoop! They're really generous with the scoops)

Definitely an indulgent Americana night with a hipster twist!  I'm sure I'll be back at both of these places again soon.  Maybe I will see you there! (Hint, hint, friends--come visit me!) 

Orange Roll and Sushi (Anaheim) 7.16.14

Yesterday's meals weren't particularly photo-worthy, nor was tonight's dinner, but I did have lunch at one of my favorite places, Orange Roll and Sushi. I love it because it's close to my house, the rolls are HUGE, and it's pretty reasonably prices for sushi.  I have many ambitions in life, but one of them is to be the yelp duchess at this place since I am certain that I eat here more than anyone.  I just sometimes forget to check-in.  Anyways, I'm sure this will be the first of many posts about Orange Roll and Sushi and this post itself is a bit of a compilation of my last few trips here.

Today's lunch:

OC Roll: Inside--spicy tuna, tempura shrimp, avocado, with salmon & lemon on the outside 

(one of my faves)

Other delicious photos from previous visits

Lunch last week with my husband: 

Left: Sunset Roll--Inside--Shrimp tempura, spicy tuna, cucumber, avocado; Outside--Tuna

Right: Autumn Roll--Inside--Spicy tuna, cilantro, avocado; Outside--Peppered Salmon & Albacore

Some other, fairly recent time: 

Top: Euclid roll: Inside--Spicy tuna, cucumber, avocado, cilantro; Outside--Yellowtail, jalapeño

Bottom: Salmon Nigiri

Just a note for non-spicy-tuna lovers, they have plenty of rolls without spicy tuna on the inside.  I like the Orange Roll (salmon inside & outside) personally, but if you love the California Roll based rolls, make sure to check out the list of Chef Special Rolls on the linked page from the menu.  If you just look at the photographs of the Chef Special Rolls, you'll mainly see the spicy-tuna based rolls. There are also plenty of cooked dishes for non-sushi lovers, but the sushi is just SO PRETTY and I love sushi so that's what's featured in today's post. 

Thiptara Thai (Long Beach) & Thuyen Vien (Anaheim) Restaurants 7.14.14

Monday was a good eating day.  Had a lovely lunch at Thiptara Thai in Long Beach...

(Pork with Spicy Eggplant, Jasmine Rice & Salad Lunch Combination) 

....Then followed it up with a great dinner at Thuyen Vien Restaurant in Anaheim.  Thuyen Vien is a Vegetarian/Vegan Vietnamese restaurant that we decided to try for my husband's birthday.  Here was our beautiful meal:

Banana Flower "Tacos" --Fresh and light, but probably not my favorite part of the meal

Eggrolls--Fried to crispy deliciousness, wrapped with mint & lettuce & dipped in veggie "fish" sauce OMG. YUM. 

"Pork" Bun: Vietnamese Vermicelli with Soy Pork and lots of veggies (and some apple slivers) hidden beneath the copious rice noodles 

Buddha's Feast: Tofu, Veggie Shrimp, lots of Veggies & Cilantro