Empress Pavillion

One of my relatives was in town, so I took her and her daughter (well, she's about one year old, so I mean she was taken out but didn't really eat very much) out for Dim Sum, and the most convenient place I know of is always Empress Pavilion, mainly for their easy parking situation (Empress is located in Bamboo Plaza, and has tons of parking in their structure.) I know that I have to get there super early (usually, I leave my place around 9am to get there by 10am, around 11:30am it's completely packed and the wait time swells to around 30-40 minutes). This place is popular! Mainly I think it's because they stop dim sum service around 1pm so it's always a rush to get there on time.

This is a traditional dim sum place, ladies with huge dangerous steaming carts, showing their wares as they wheel on by. I usually get a few staples that I must get when I go to dim sum...

Hargao, or shrimp crystal dumplings, are the number one thing I always look for when going to dimsum. My grandpa judges these by the thickness of their skin (the more see through and thin the skin is, the better the dumpling), and these are pretty decent. I love dipping these in hot mustard before biting them in half. They're definitely best when they're fresh (most things are, aren't they?)

Next up, in the foreground, fung gyiao (phoenix legs, or better known as chicken feet), and in the background, siu mai dumplings. I don't always get chicken feet but they're alright, the chewing around the bones is almost fun. The sauce is pretty good this dish, although one of the pieces that I had, still had a claw they hadn't clipped off yet. Kinda..ew. Siu mai awas good, as usual, meaty and succulent. Again, they're really good after a dip in some hot mustard.

Last up, some dessert - egg tarts, which are usually my favorite, and cha-siu bao,(pork buns) the steamed kind. These egg tarts were way lame - the egg mixture had been way too overcooked, so the texture wasn't right. And it tasted just...off. Plus, as a super special surprise, as I lifted my egg tart to my mouth, I noticed there was a huge gnarly hair sitting underneat my tart. Awesome! Ah, well, such is restaurant eating. The Pork buns were ordered mostly for my little cousin, who ate little bits of it dipped in the chicken feet sauce (she loved it!)

I usually head here for dim sum but I admit this was one of the less awesome trips I've had. I was completely stuffed afterwards though, it was mostly just to two of us eating so we didn't get as many dishes as I'd get if we had more people with us. However, it was relaxing and we weren't rushed or anything, so that was nice.

By the way, Happy thanksgiving! I know this is a very un-Thanksgivingish post, but there you have it :)

Empress Pavilion
988 N Hill St (in Bamboo Plaza)
Ste 201
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 617-9898
http://www.empresspavilion.com/

Kabuki Japanese Restaurant

Julian and I met up for a lunch, because we both had the day off (me for an indefinite amount of time, him for just the day). We met up at Howard Hughes Center, so we could catch a movie afterwards (RocknRolla - you've seen one Guy Ritchie movie, you've seen 'em all). We love sushi so we went to Kabuki, the only place at Howard Hughes Center that has it. More sushi posts, I know! I think I need a sushi line directly IVed into my bloodstream...


I started off with an arnold palmer, with green tea instead of regular tea. This was pretty tasty and was refilled once, so I was happy. Love the color on green tea...so pleasant!

Complimentary edaname was brought to the table, also with an extra bowl so we could discard the edaname shells. It's edaname..hard to mess up.

We each got a bowl of miso soup to start, nice and warm, and not too salty. Fresh green onion and tofu and seaweed permeated this soup. One of the better miso soups I've had recently.

Now to the main event. We ordered a number of rolls to share - from the closest roll to the end - BCD Roll, Baked Scallop Roll, and Spicy Tuna roll. All of these were quite tasty and very fresh. The BCD roll had a mixture of veggies like shredded carrots and crabmeat, it was good but probably my least favorite of the bunch. The Baked Scallop roll was basically a California Roll, but had scallops on top. The scallops were a bit addicting - they weren't overcooked and had a good bite. Even the California rolls they were atop of were solid, with real crabmeat, or at least a close proximity to that. The spicy tuna was great, really tasty.

This is an order of the Kabuki Omakase Deluxe lunch. There were more cut spicy tuna rolls, and from the left - shrimp, albacore, tuna belly (?), salmon and tuna. Again, spicy tuna was solid, and I remember having the tuna and shrimp. They were okay, not melt in your mouth, but decent quality.

We wanted to try out one more cut roll, so we ordered the tempura roll, which was basically a california roll dipped in tempura batter and then deep fried. I was disappointed with this one, as it was a bit cold, and obviously deep fried earlier in the day, so the fried bits were not fresh. What's the point of deep frying a california roll if it isn't even fresh??

Overall, the lunch was pleasant and good company always makes food better. Kabuki is not my favorite sushi place, but service was quick and the sushi was overall good. I'll probably be back here again.

Kabuki Japanese Restaurant
6081 Center Dr
Ste 203
Los Angeles, CA 90045
(310) 641-5524

www.kabukirestaurants.com

Bobbi's Coffee Shop

Back in San Jose for Judy's wedding, and stopped off for breakfast at Bobbi's Coffee shop with a few friends before heading back. Brian had never been here before! I couldn't believe it. This place has quite a soft spot in my heart, sometimes we'd come here before late date days at school. It was worth getting up early for this.

The place is pretty small, and you seat yourself. The booths are covered in old pleather (real? I dunno), the chairs are those old chairs that you see in old bingo halls. The menus are laminated, and the prices are super reasonable. A waitress asks who wants coffee...I opted out that morning, but a few of us wanted it. I chose orange juice. We made our orders and the food started piling in...

Owen got a pancake combo, that came with 2 pancakes, 1 egg over easy, 2 sausages and that's pretty much it. It doesn't seem like much but it was pretty filling - pancakes expand in your tummy! He liked these a lot.

Jay ordered a linguica special - 3 halves of linguica sausage, criss-cross cut and grilled, with 2 eggs over easy, hash browns and wheat toast. A moment to chat about the hash browns - these are the hash browns of my dreams. Every hash brown I have had, or ever had, must be compared to these hash browns from Bobbi's. They are seriously good, crunchy, crispy, potato-y, with a shot of ketchup these are a piece of heaven.

This is my plate of corned beef hash - corned beef hash, hash browns, poached eggs, rye bread toast. Kind of a carb fest, but I so rarely get to come here, so I went all out. This is like the perfect breakfast. Perfectly poached eggs, nice and runny, superb hash browns of course, corned beef hash that wasn't too salty, and rye bread, already buttered. I can think of nothing better.

Brian got something different than he usually gets "just for fun" (Brian's catchphrase when he orders something different) - biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs and fruit instead of hash browns. The gravy is a sausage gravy, and it's not too salty either. This seems like a small amount of food, but once you started eating it, it was so rich and filling. Brian only ate most of one of the biscuits, and kept encouraging the rest of us to eat it. (he always does this - his enemy is carbs!) It was pretty tasty but I don't think I would order this myself. I only like biscuits and gravy a small percentage of how much I like corned beef hash.

Bobbi's is an institution to me. I hope it never closes.

Bobbi's Coffee Shop
1361 S De Anza Blvd
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 257-4040

Orange Sponge!

Okay, this only slightly has to do with food, but I could not resist...check out how cute this sponge is...

It's an ORANGE SPONGE. Orange. As a sponge. Happy and smiling. I am doing my best to not use it and gunk it up with food bits and stuff, but it IS still a sponge. It still makes me smile though...how could you not??
This was spotted, and immediately bought, at the Bargain store on Sawtelle - I don't know what it's called but it's next to Volcano Tea on Sawtelle and Olympic.

Ma Dang Gook Soo

We had lunchtime adventure in Koreatown the other day, and I got to try Sul Lung Tang for the first time. Kurt wasn't feeling so well, and sul lung tang is his version of chicken noodle soup. Ma Dang Gook Soo doesn't have any english signs in the front - is that a good sign?

Ordering was a bit difficult, I didn't really know what to order, so I just got the most popular thing according to Ray and Kurt. This is the stuff sitting at the table...

Spicy paste, a huge bowl of salt, spicy seasonings, and special pink salt from Australia. I think they expect you to use a bunch of salt here.

A pitcher of barley tea was set down for the table, and poured into these cool metal cups. I like that the pitcher had a faded picture of Snoopy on it - Snoopy rules! This tea was nice and refreshing.

Now here's my bowl of sul lung tang. The flavor was very light, it actually tastes a lot like many other Chinese soups I've had in the past. Adding salt was definitely necessary. Rice noodles floated around the soup, which were light and slurpable. I added a ton of...

...green onion to the soup as well. It added a nice texture and flavor to the mild soup.

Here's a close up of the huge bowl of salt, and in the backgroun, kimchi of two kinds - cabbage style and radish style. Both were good and had that nice tingle when it hit the tongue, from fermentation. We got refills of this...I think twice.

Kurt got the hotter kimichi style of noodles. This stuff was super spicy, I tried a small taste and my whole mouth was on fire. He finished this and was whole face was sweating. I think this would burn a whole in my stomach, and even I have a pretty big tolerance to spicy!

All in all, cute place that has a very mom and pop type feeling to it. Not my favorite kind of Korean food but maybe I'll have it again when I'm feeling under the weather.

Ma Dang Gook Soo
869 S Western Ave
Ste 1
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 487-6008

Din Tai Fung - Post 2, another visit

I think one of my favorite comfort foods is dumplings. They're just so perfect - the right amount of wrapper and meat filling, steamed, boiled and in soup, panfried, fried, just so many ways to enjoy a dumpling. And so many kinds! Different fillings, different ways to enjoy them. There's no limits to where you can take a dumpling. One evening, I was craving them bad, as were some of my (ex)coworkers, Ray and Kurt. So we took the trek to enjoy them at the mecca of soup dumpling establishments, Din Tai Fung.

I've been here before (post is here) but hadn't enjoyed this place in awhile, and thought it deserved another post. This time around, I noticed that Din Tai Fung had renovated a bit and had a little more room - I guess they had taken over the space next door, so there were fresh new booths in the back and a surprisingly nice and modern bathroom.

There was a crowd outside the door, as always, when we arrived. I was expecting a gnarly wait time (30 minutes and above, my guesstimation) but the hostess said we would have a ZERO wait time if we decided to share a table with another group. Heck yeah! We were seated immediately at a big table, already being half occupied by 3 other diners. Admittedly, this is not the optimal dining experience, as we don't know these other diners yet are in this small space with them, but for a zero wait time, we were all willing to compromise.

The menu is also the tally for which the wait staff tear off a copy, and use to keep track of what to bring to the table. We made a bunch of choices and soon food started arriving at the table...

The traditional xiao long bao - pork soup dumplings. I noticed one of them had already burst, spilling out its' precious guts all over itself. Sad! But it was still tasty! Ha! You know the drill - carefully lift dumpling into soup spoon, dress it up with some soy sauce, vinegar and thinly sliced ginger threads, bite at the top, slurp out the soup, then devour whole dumpling. The process of eating is even fun, and the taste is just killer - savory, thin skins, porky innard goodness.

One does not live on dumplings alone (although I probably could!) We also ordered some noodles, I think they were with pork pieces. The noodles themselves were pretty good, I don't usually prefer this noodles style (lo mein) but at a place that makes their own dumpling skins, I guess it was good to take a chance on these. The veggies that accompanied the noodles balanced out the soy sauce flavor. Kurt really liked these noodles a lot.

We gotta have some veggies too, right? Ray suggested we get some veggies, and we had a choice of spinach or chinese broccoli. Ray chose spinach, and I commend him, it was a great pick. The veggies had a great flavor to them - lots of garlic - just really tasty.

More dumplings! These were crab and pork, I think. Solid and good as the other dumplings, though I prefer the ones with with soup in them, from here.

To round out our carbs, we got pork chop fried rice. The pork chop was a little dried out, but I thought it was still edible. The rice was nice and fluffy. This was really good with the aforementioned cooked spinach.

This place is always hopping, but I'm glad we got to skip the wait time this time around. I will be back, I'm sure.

Sushi Kushi Imai

More sushi posts? I guess I've been on a sushi kick recently, or have been just really lazy about getting around to posting about sushi joints. Seriously though, if someone told me I had to choose one food type to have for the rest of my life - I think I would choose sushi (before dying of sweet sweet mercury overdose.) Sushi Kushi Imai was within walking distance of my former company (weird to say that, I got laid off recently so it is now my "former" company instead of my "current place of employment"...but I digress), so we would frequent there because of their decent sushi and lunch specials.

The place is usually always hopping with people during lunch, and sometimes the service can get a little slow (especially when the check is supposed to come.) But it didn't deter me too much, again, their specials were hard to beat.

Every lunch special comes with miso soup, every time I went there it was always too salty but I always gulped it down without too much complaint.

A bowl of rice is set down before actually getting your combo plate, for some reason. I am always tempted, at this point, to start eating the rice out of hunger. But I do my best to hold myself back because I know what's coming...

...the combo lunch. My choice that day was kushi and sushi, just like the name of the restaurant, conveniently. The kushi (skewers) are chef's choice, that day was fish, okra and chicken. Pretty tasty, especially if you dip it in a special kushi sauce they have - a mayo based sauce. For the sushi, I got spicy tuna roll. Solid showing of spicy tuna. A mixed green salad comes with the lunch, as does some steamed veggies in ponzu sauce. It's a lot of food, and there's plenty of choices to tailor it to your liking - there's teriyaki of all kinds, handrolls, sashimi, tempura - you choose 2 for the lunch combination.

On another visit to Sushi Kushi, Stacey got the salmon bowl - the special of the month. It was coho salmon sashimi from Alaska, atop sushi rice. They were quite generous with the salmon sashimi so that was much appreciated, I'm sure.


This is a thing of beauty to look upon - this is the chirashi set, which also comes with the salad and miso soup. Generous cuts of sashimi, including tuna, salmon, albacore, a mound of spicy tuna, whitefish - all attractively displayed in a box, the bottom filled with sushi rice. This is a SERIOUS amount of fish, and the quality is pretty good too (I mean, yeah it's not like, Sushi Sasabune or anything, but for $11.80 for all this fish,it's way worth it!) Looking at it again makes me want to go tomorrow...

I've never gone for dinner, so I can't vouch for the prices then, but there's a happy hour from 5:30 pm to 7:30pm. Sounds good to me...!

Sushi Kushi Imai
8300 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
tel: 323.655.2253
http://www.sushiandkushiimai.com/

Sushi Kaiten Daichan

Whenever we're craving sushi, at a reasonable price, we usually end up going to Kaiten Sushi Daichan. We've yet to find another place that's as quick, decent quality and with as friendly service as Kaiten! Kaiten means conveyor belt sushi, so this is what you usually see when you're seated at the counter...

Different sushi and cut rolls go by in front of you, and each plate is a different color, indicating how much it costs. The more pricier rolls are usually the more elaborate plates, or you can order directly from the sushi chef (usually, Chef Bruce! He's way cool and nice!) Anyways, these are a few cut rolls that we grabbed this one time we went...

Spicy tuna roll, delicious and fresh. The yellow plate indicates it's the cheapest price point plate, I forgot how much it is exactly but it's not too bad.

And California Rolls, just for the heck of it too.

Iced tea, I usually get green but this time I got regular. I love their big ice cubes, shaped like top hats. The waitstaff is always very quick with the refills.

Albacore sushi, always a treat.

These little fried seafood balls are always tasty. They're filled with mostly fish, and topped with a bit of roe and chopped green onion. Watch for these right as they go on the conveyor belt, they're great when they're super fresh.

Salmon sushi is always welcome in my book. Whenever Chef Bruce sets a few of these down, they're always gone in a flash.

I felt like getting some Tamago sushi, but Owen wasn't in the mood to have any so I got to have both! Yum.

We ordered this special roll directly from Chef Bruce. It's called a "Tuna Meet Ball" and it's one of Owen's favorites. A salad with tasty dressing is in the middle, and surrounding it, is a few cut roll pieces, the filling is fresh ripe avocado. Perched on top of each avocado roll is a "ball" of spicy tuna. The creaminess of the avocado is really rich but not overpowering, and the generous portion of spicy tuna is a kick in the mouth. This is delicious and we've ordered this a number of times already. A few other rolls we might get on other visits are the (unpictured) "My Roll", or "Your Roll"...funny names, great sushi.

When you're ready to go, Chef Bruce presents his "dessert" - some sort of cut fruit. This time it was plum, I've had orange and white peach other times. It depends on what season it is! This is seriously some good plum, very sweet. Chef Bruce knows how to pick them!

Again, it's so nice that we have a place to go to whenever we're craving sushi, and we can really go all out without worrying too much about how much the bill will end up being (if we go sparingly, we usually end up spending, oh, 20 dollars each maybe, but if we "go all out", it's never more than 30 dollars each). Hooray for Kaiten!

Kaiten Sushi Daichan

11301 Olympic Blvd
Ste 203
Los Angeles, CA 90064

(310) 914-5028

Sushi Kura

Recently, I decided to try a place I hadn't tried in ages - since school, in fact. I wanted to try out Sushi Kura, which was a mainstay while I was at Otis, one of my favorite places to go, actually, for cheap Japanese sushi combos. A smiling old Japanese lady would take my order, rush behind a curtain, and present me with fresh, delicious nigiri, and maybe a side of tempura, perfectly fried. One day, while at my first job, I discovered that Sushi Kura was under new ownership - I walked in, and everything was different...gone were the simple old faded framed pictures of different kinds of sushi, it was decidedly dark inside and owned by a new family. Well, not one to judge immediately by the book of the cover, I ordered my usual, and it was...disgusting. Totally a disappointment, and I hadn't been back...until now.

I was going to give it a test run, maybe things got better and I could start going there again. I placed an order for pickup, and stopped by. The parking lot was bustling, and I managed to get one of the last spots in the lot. There's a lot of other little fast food places in the same lot, and it gets busy during the day. The decor of Sushi Kura was still cheesy, a far cry from the simplicity I remember. I hurriedly picked up my food and ran outta there... and opened up the takeout containers to reveal...

...one spicy tuna handroll. This wasn't too good. There was way too much roe - I mean, I like roe but isn't this a spicy tuna handroll? Tuna. Not roe. Yeah, it was edible but nothing special.

This mess was a teriyaki chicken bowl that I ordered. Not good at all. Way too big pieces of onion, the sauce was too gloppy, the chicken was just not my bag.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm probably not going to come back here again. It's just a shadow of the awesome Sushi Kura I remember from my past.

Sushi Kura
5567 W Manchester Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90045
(310) 568-9800

Dynasty Chinese Restaurant

Judy's bridal shower was at Dynasty Seafood restaurant, mainly because us bridesmaids were planning this on the fly, and wanted to choose somewhere where they'd have a private room. I tease about the name of this place, as I call it "Dy-NASTY", but it's actually okay, a bit more upscale than the usual Chinese restaurant. Anna had wanted to get dim sum, but it ended up being a banquet type meal, because we were required to spend a certain amount of money to have the private room. Ah, well, at least we get to grub on banquet food that I don't get to have very often...

First up was a cold appetizer platter with, starting from the right - seaweed salad, cold cut pork, jellyfish, another kind of cold sliced pork, and in the middle, little red squiddie things. Jellyfish is something I haven't had in ages, so it was a nice treat. Seaweed salad was good too.

Seafood soup was up next, or was it sharks' fin? Or fake shark's fin? Anyways, it was tasty and seafoody, with soft tofu and those Chinese button cap mushrooms from a can. Yum.

Everyone's favorite banquet food, Honey Walnut Shrimp. This was a pretty well done version of it, even though it looks drenched in mayo it was not too bad. I like the candied sesamed walnuts a lot too.

This tender beef dish was a surprising win, I usually don't like the way they make beef dishes in these Chinese banquets, but this was really delicious. With a bit of rice, this was amazing. I would order this again, for sure.

This combination veggie meat seafood dish contained sugar snap peas, thinly sliced white chicken breast meat, squid slices, carrot and mushroom slices, all cooked together in a light starchy sauce. Pretty standard banquet dish, decently done, the squid was nice and springy, and I like any form of sugar snap peas. Solid dish.

This dish was fried fish filets with spicy salt. Pretty tasty, I really liked the spicy salt on this one, and the fish filets were yummy and free of any bones. I guess you could call them Fish McNuggets, as they were cut into bite size pieces.

Chinese style Fried chicken, all chopped up and ready to be attacked by chopsticks. This was pretty good, actually one of the better fried chicken I've had in awhile, with nice and crispy skin, and moist chicken meat. Wish this was in front of me right now.

One of the more decadent dishes of the banquet was Lobster, chopped up and cooked Chinese style, with scallions and ginger. It was good but not very many people ate it, as at this point, we were all getting pretty full (there were only 8 of us, eating a banquet made for 10.) I ended up bringing home a bunch of this for my parents as leftovers, which I think they appreciated. Look at those little lobster eyes staring back at me as I eat it! I think that makes the lobster taste even better, haha...

A mountain of fried rice, with shrimp, charshu pork pieces, scallons and egg. Tasty, but again at this point, we were getting a bit too stuffed.

This is the cake that I had bought from La Patisserie, one of the best bakeries in the world, in my opinion. Their cakes are consistently moist, super tasty and classically pretty. My mom picked this one out - I think it was their Black Magic cake - Chocolate cake, truffle and chocolate chip fudge fillings, iced with fudge and ganache. Can there be any more chocolate on one cake?? This was super delicious, and I usually don't really like sweets. It's that good. Funny story about the personalization part - so I asked for them to write, "Happy Bridal Shower Judy" on it, and when the lady first did it, and showed it to me - it said, "Happy BRIDLE shower Judy" on it...and I had to ask her to redo it...and she had to ask someone else how to spell "Bridal". Nice!!

Anyway, I think everyone had a good time and enjoyed the food, and DyNasty was actually very good to us - but I don't think I could ever stop calling it DyNasty, it's just too much fun.

Dynasty Seafood Restaurant
10123 N Wolfe Rd
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 996-1680