Mitsuwa Food Court (Torrance)

The food court at Mitsuwa always has something good I want to eat, and since we were there to check out their gift shops and meet up with Dean and Ryan, we decided to eat there for lunch as well. The variety in choices and the quality of food is such a treat, even though it's a bit of a drive from our usual radius of "food we're willing to waste precious gas money on". Anyways, I love that we all can get what we want and compare food...maybe I'll get THAT (pointing at someone else's tray of awesome food) next time! Here are some of the things we got...

Bryan got a ham sandwich combo from Italian Tomato. I've only ever gotten slices of cake from here (when they have it in their display case, sometimes they don't though), so it's nice to see what they have for meals too. The sandwich looked very dainty and diner-like. The sandwich was on white bread, with ham, egg, cheese, cucumber, lettuce and tomato. The set comes with a side salad and some sort of creamy soup (Bryan didn't eat it and it formed quite a nasty layer of skin on top of the bowl).

Here's what Dean got from Curry Club - a port cutlet curry.



This is what Ryan got, a variation on the special of the day - curry with fried shrimp, sausage, a fried egg, and fried tofu, with a drink and a little styrofoam cup to come back and get soft serve ice cream after you're done with your meal. This looks awesome! And like a good amount of food...

...as was mine, which was also the special (fried shrimp, sausage, curry rice), but I added a "crokke" - fried potato. I shared the crokke with Owen, and couldn't finish this plate. The sausage itself was WAY too salty, to the point of unpleasant salty, so after 2 pieces I was done with those. The curry and rice are always spot on - I love Curry Club for that - and again, being able to get the soft serve after the meal is freakin' awesome. More on that later...

This is part of Owen's ramen set - a plate of stuff. Near the top, going clockwise: cha-su pork, a naruto fish cake, green onion with an ume plum, bamboo shoots, and in the middle, some black..uh, fungusy stuff. You eat all this along with...

...this, a bowl of ramen noodles (salt ramen soup flavor). Owen said he was cool with the noodles but the plate of toppings was not to his liking.

Owen got this coffee float from Curry Club, when I went to get my soft serve after I finished my meal. He loved this - the simplicity of having cold coffee, then soft serve on top acting as the cream and sugar in the coffee as it was melting - it was very good. He is sure to get this again.

Another trip to Mitsuwa yielded a plate of fried stuff. I forgot what number combo this is but it had pork cutlet, 2 pieces of fried shrimp and a crab crokke. The combo also comes with rice (probably some of the best rice in the store, they really do a good job of cooking rice here, all really good quality), miso soup, cabbage shreds, pickled cucumber and napa cabbage, dipping sauces, fruit cup and tea. It's an amazing spread.

Here's a close up of the fried action. This pork cutlet rivals all other pork cutlets I've had in my lifein the top 3 spots of the best I've ever had. Juicy, crispy on the outside, seasoned well, everything is perfect about this pork cutlet. Paired with amazing rice, it really is a flavor combo out of this world. Also, the fried shrimp are great, and the creamy crab crokke's insides are what you think they would be - creamy, delicious, savory, around a fried outside. That's some good fried stuff.

I love Mitsuwa - where else is there a one stop shop for good Japanese food, and shopping for little Japanese toys or trinkets, or Japanese dishes or tea sets, or perhaps some Japanese art books? And then to do the weeks' grocery shopping on top of that? It really is the best.

Mitsuwa (Torrance Location)
1815 W 213th St # 235
Torrance, CA 90501
(310) 782-680

Toe Bang

A birthday celebration for my coworker Kue ended up being a great culinary trip for me - I only know the outer limits of Korean cuisine, and have barely begun to experience the full force of what Korean food has to offer to me. Initially, we were going to go to a more, ah, upscale looking place, but all of us felt like we were underdressed to eat there (It was more like being in a club and being watched while you eat in clubbing clothes). Kue took one look at the place, then went back down the stairs and headed to this place....Toe Bang.

Yes. Toe. Bang. Weird name. Good food. We all ordered a bunch of dishes to share with everyone at the table (like, 10 of us!) Here's how it all started...

Chopped cucumber and carrot wedges in little dishes, with a salty bean paste as dip. They had a few plates of these sitting out on the table as we were sitting down. Next to the cucumber and carrots were the radishes and salt that go with Korean fried chicken, which you will see later on...

The first dish of the night: Spicy rice cake with ramen noodle, cabbage, fish balls and green onion. The spice on this is much more spicy than I'm used to for dishes, so it got my tongue burning already. I made sure to only eat sparingly of this dish, as rice cakes expand in your stomach, and I knew we had a lot of courses to go, however, this dish was very tasty and a good start to the dinner.

Korean fried chicken, we meet again...still seems like Chinese fried chicken to me, but fried chicken, regardless of nationality, is always welcome in my book! This went along with the seasoned salt and radishes in the first picture. I had a small piece of this, and it was pretty solid.

This is one of the weirder dishes I've seen at a restaurant, something I would maybe make at home if I had nothing in the fridge. This is a ramen dish, with spam, hot dogs, spinach, tofu, green onions and enoki mushrooms. I guess this is a "wartime" treat, where there actually wouldn't be any access to regular meats or poultry. It was actually pretty good, as good as any spam/hot dog dish can be. It's just such a novelty to see it being served here!

Korean sausage up next. I was warned by the others that this sausage is an acquired taste, but I thought it would taste more like chinese sausage. It didn't. It was...odd. I don't think I have acquired that taste yet, but at least I tried it. I think it tasted like...dry organ meats with vermicelli noodles running through it as the thing keeping it together. That's what I remember it tasting like, anyways.

Sorry for the blurry picture, but I was in a rush to take this one - a Korean seafood pancake. I was excited to try this, as Korean pancakes are super delicious, but I think this one fell a bit flat. The seafood was ok, but the edges weren't crispy enough, just barely browned really. The pancake texture was just soft and yuck. I still ate it but...eh. Could have been better. Maybe if the pancake diameter hadn't been so big. The dipping sauce was okay, soy sauce and green onion and minced garlic and stuff.

A massive, impressive plate was placed in the middle of the table, containing an order of their skewer combination. From the salad, going clockwise - rice cakes with hot sauce drizzled on it, prawns, mini wieners, beef skewer, goji berries (I think), halved fishcake balls, mushroom and bell pepper, chicken hearts, chicken white meat with teriyaki sweet sauce on it, roasted garlic cloves, intestine of some sort, and scallops. Whew. That's a lot of skewers. Everything I tried (a little of this, a little of that) was pretty tasty. I did NOT try the intestine. Eh. I've had it, I only like the chinese version of it. Otherwise, everything was good.

Kalbi Ribs over onions on a skillet. Can't go wrong with that. A little chewy, which made it a bit harder to eat but decent marinade. Again, can't go wrong.

Here's a remnant of a spicy kimchi pancake that I had forgotten to take a picture of before it became a pale shadow if its' former self - you can see how it broke apart really easily (a shame), and how it is completely embedded with jalepeno slices, making this a minefield for your tongue. I thought I could take it, but I really couldn't - my eyes were watering with pain. This is a REALLY spicy pancake.

The last savory dish of the night - some sort of "Chinese inspired" beef stirfry thing - I'm kind of mystified as to why that they called it that, because I have never had anything like this in all my Chinese food filled life- they took slivers of beef, fried it in tempura, then stirfried it in a sweet savory sauce with mushrooms, zuccini and cabbage. Really random, not my favorite. The batter was just too much for the beef, the ratio of batter to beef was 2 to 1.

This was our dessert of the night, fresh lychee and maraschino cherries over ice, which was treated to us by the manager, along with a bottle of soju. The ice kept the fruit really refreshingly cold, and every piece of lychee I had was really good. This is a great way to end quite a marathon of eating (and drinking, but since I'm allergic to the alcohol, I'm resigned to being the designated driver, not that I mind too much). Thanks to everyone who went and picked out the food to eat, and happy birthday again, Kue!

Toe Bang
3465 W Sixth Street
(inside Chapman Plaza)
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Three Square Cafe

Owen and I met up for lunch around his workplace, and we decided to try out Three Square Cafe. I had been to Three Square bakery a bunch of times (their jalapeno cheese pretzel comes to mind) but wanted to try their cafe fare. After a short wait, we were seated in their outdoor patio area. I was pretty hungry, but our waitress didn't seem to be too concerned about taking our order or being around much. Anyways, she did end up coming around (finally), and this is what we got:
Our usual Arnold Palmer order. This was really light on the lemonade, and came already mixed, which is fine. A really light flavor on this one, plus no refills made by our waitress (again, we were lucky to make our orders within, oh, 20 minutes after sitting down. And this place isn't very big...but enough about our lacking waitress)...

This is Owen's order of the mini sandwich sampler, which gives you a choice of 3 sandwiches to try. I saw it on the menu and instantly I knew he was going to order it - he loves having a meal where you can try a bunch of stuff all at the same time. The presentation of this dish is really nice, everything has its' own little container/plate. Let's focus on the sandwiches...

Starting with the sandwich on the right side - this is a shrimp grilled cheese sandwich. I like how they cut the top of the little bun so they could grill it, to give it some texture. The filling to this was tasty, the combo of shrimp and cheese was pretty good, and the bread was delicious.

The middle sandwich was the Bavarian meatloaf on pretzel roll with sweet mustard. The taste ofo the meatloaf is exactly like eating a slice of SPAM. So Owen hated it. I liked it, as I can eat Spam and not feel bad about myself (well, most of the time...) The roll was really tasty, and I enjoyed eating what Owen didn't want to eat, but at the same time, I don't know if I would choose to order this, now that I know what it tastes like.

The last mini sandwich was a Tuna salad with avocado and red onions on brioche roll. This was Owen's favorite mini sandwich, all the flavors mixed really well with every bite, and his love for avocado knows no boundaries. Maybe he should have gotten tuna for all three of his choices...

A good barometer to any restaurant is how good their burger is, so I got their Pretzel burger with Swiss cheese, caramelized onions and French fries. This was a little overwhelming - the pretzel bread is very good on its' own, but paired with a burger patty, it ends up being a bit much. The burger itself - decent, but not memorable. Fries were okay but a bit more boring than my expectations, I guess I expect more...zing, or something, when I'm getting fries with a burger at an establishment like this. The caramelized onions were a good touch though.

It's cool that dog owners get to bring their furry friends to sit outside with them on the patio, and the cool breeze from the ocean adds to the pleasant outdoor seating, but this place was a bit too trendy for me, and maybe if we had gotten better service I'd want to go back more often. As it stands now, it was good to try but I'm sticking to the bakery next door to get my pretzel bread fix.

Three Square Cafe
1121 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice CA

Tofu Villa

Owen and I went to an art show opening at GR2 a few weeks back - for an artist I really like (BoyGirlParty). So cute! I love her stuff. Anyways, afterwards, we wanted to get a quick bite to eat, around Sawtelle. A new place, called Tofu Villa, (which had taken the place of a boba shop that used to be there) had opened up near Beard Papa, so I decided to give it a shot. Owen was a bit skeptical, as he thought it was only going to be tofu, but I assured him it was not. We were quickly seated inside, made our decisions quickly and made our order, and instantly, this arrived at the table...

Amazing Korean Pancakes and a sort of salad with tasty dressing. I say amazing, because these pancakes were perfectly crispy but soft and gooey in the middle, and freshly served off the grill (they were pretty hot when they got to our table.) They were the right size, the big ones get a little too undercooked and flabby, whereas these had that extra crunch from being small enough to be cooked to a crisp exterior. Owen and I loved these, I could say that these are the best Korean pancakes I've had yet.

Tons of banchan arrived, enough to cover almost every bit of retail space we had on our small 2 person table. There's pleny to see here, but Owen especially seemed to like the black beans (not pictured), and the tofu spinach (upper left), I liked the japchae (middle), but really we liked everything and getting to try a variety of little dishes.

I got the Korean bbq rib bimibap, a simple platter with two pieces of Korean style rib meat, different kinds of chopped veggies, two pieces of tofu and a perfect sunny side up egg. I prefer the bimibap where it's mixed in a hot stone, so the rice gets a bit crispy, but this version wasn't bad either. I wish there had been more of the spicy red paste to mix everything together (I like my bimibap SPICY) but everything was fresh, so I couldn't complain too much.

Owen got a sizzling platter of bulgolgi. It was basically Korean style fajitas, and you can't go wrong with fajitas, heh. This also came with a small metal bowl of white rice. This was pretty tasty, as marinated meat goes, but not the best bulgolgi I've ever had. Still good though.

When we finished and asked for the check, we were each given one of these - a small looking, but deceptively large amount of frozen yogurt (pinkberry style, "natural" yogurt) in a sampler cup. I actually liked this yogurt better than pinkberry! The yogurt, when eaten, had the first taste of the sourish yogurt, but then sweetened to a honey aftertaste. Owen loved this, and I agreed, it was a very nice surprise ending to our meal.

The service was really good, but I wish they had refilled our waters at least once. They were attentive otherwise. I think we'll be back, as this is a much more convenient place to get our Korean food fix on, instead of Koreatown.

Tofu Villa
2130 Sawtelle Blvd
Ste 112A
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Korean Food Mart (Koreatown Plaza)

Our lunchtime adventures at work have expanded their radius all the way to Korea town! One of our favorite places to go for lunch is in this Korean food mall, within Koreatown Plaza, because of the variety and quality...I'll just go over some of the usual things everyone gets...

This is the dumpling and soup combination at Chew Young Roo. They make fresh dumplings/baos here, right in front of your eyes. From the left - King Dumpling, Red Bean dumpling, and then 2 shrimp dumplings (warning: they're pretty spicy!) This combo also comes with a brothy soup. I've never gotten this combo so I can't tell you what the soup tastes like but it looks like miso soup.

The King Dumplings (in one order, you get 4 of them for 6 dollars) is something that we usually order then share as a group. They're really good- fresh, bursting with meat and veggies, and great with a little bit of soy sauce drizzled in over them before taking a big bite.

Here's what I've gotten a few times - cold noodles and kalbi ribs combo. This is a combination that is the best of all worlds - delicious meat and onions on a sizzling plate, contrasted with cold noodles, which are extremely refreshing. I like the addition of the half egg as well. With a side of kimchi and sliced radish, this is a filling meal but the noodles are pretty light. Highly recommended.

Right outside the foodcourt, there's a Kyedong Fried Chicken. This is a box containing a "whole fried chicken", chopped up into pieces.

I just like the picture of Chef Kyedong...he seems so proud of his chicken.

And here it is, the reveal of what's inside the box...they really chopped up the whole chicken, into little bits even. It also comes with radishes, a common accompaniment to Korean Fried chicken.

Here's the delicious close up. The taste of the fried chicken is surprisingly sweet - after frying, they poured some sort of glaze on it, which was an interesting taste combination. It was like eating candied fried chicken. Pleasant, but not necessarily my bag. I think I prefer a spicier coating or plain, but this was still pretty tasty. My favorite pieces were the drumsticks, of course.

Koreatown Plaza really feels like a transplanted part of Korea in LA. They even have a grocery store, selling meats of all kinds that I will indulge in someday. Oh, they also have really good melon and mango popsicles - I can find them nowhere else.

Koreatown Plaza
928 S. Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA

Stinking Rose

Stacey had never tried the Stinking Rose, and had been curious, so I made reservations for a few of us to go. Last time we had been there, it was for my 23rd (?? something like that, the years start melding together) birthday, so it had been a few years since we had been here last. We were all willing to go again, so I made some reservations and we headed over after work, which is a hop skip and a jump from where we work on Miracle Mile.

Stinking Rose has a bunch of memorabilia on the walls, a la Buca di Beppo style (although I think Buca di Beppo ripped this place off). We were lead to our booth, in the middle of a faux patio area, and settled in.

They delivered a set of bread rolls to our table, which we dug into. I remember last time I was here, they had a separate container with this garlic parsley mix which we could spoon over our bread, but this time, they had baked it right onto the bread. I actually preferred the other version, where I could spoon my own amount on top of the bread (because I would have smothered it with garlic, hah!) but the baking of the garlic mellowed it out a bit, so I wasn't horribly upset.

Owen and I ordered the Bagna Calda for the table. "garlic cloves, oven-roasted in extra virgin olive oil and butter with a hint of anchovy. "...This is a pretty neat dish... you take one of these cloves, mash it with some bread, and you've got an amazing flavor/texture combo going on. I think I ate a bunch of these on their own too...I love garlic.

Now, the main courses...Owen got the Garlic Braised Boneless Short Rib, which comes with, of course, garlic mashed potatoes. I tried a bite of this, and agreed with him - it tasted like my version of pot roast that I'd make sometimes, and that's not a bad thing. The meat was soft, easily cut with a fork, and the gravy was spot on, not too salty.

I chose the Forty Clove Garlic Chicken - roasted chicken, with a ton of garlic cloves (were there really 40 of them? I didn't count), and those garlic mashed potatoes. This was pretty decent, the white meat was still moist and not overcooked like I sadly get most of the time whenever I order chicken from a restaurant. The skin was a good golden color, and the mashed potatoes were great. I enjoyed this dish for what it was, a good roasted chicken dish.

Stacey got the Italian Garlic Meat Loaf, the other dish was mulling over to get. What a HUGE chunk of meatloaf - this was the size of half a brick, literally. I tried a taste of it, and it was pretty good, very garlic infused. More of those garlic mashed potatoes again...and...spinach? What is that? I actually don't know what that green mass is on the plate...

Bryan got the salmon and veggies as a side - so healthy! I didn't try any but he finished it all so I'm assuming it was decent.

I've had it before, but everyone has to try the Gilroy's Famous Garlic Ice Cream with caramel mole sauce. If you notice, the dish itself is frozen as well - I guess they pre-scoop these, and freeze everything, dish and all. The ice cream was EXTREMELY hard, very difficult to even try to liberate a small bite out of the garlic ice cream scoop. We had to let it thaw out a bit. It was actually very good, more of a sweet creamy mellow garlic flavor and not at all gross like most people would think garlic ice cream tastes. The caramel sauce also elevated the ice cream's flavor.

The Stinking Rose was pretty good, especially for a chain and a hyped special occasion dinner place on Restaurant Row. I admit though, my stomach hurt a bit afterwards..was it all the garlic? Maybe we're not meant to eat that many garlic cloves...but it was worth it either way.

The Stinking Rose
55 N. La Cienega Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA

Royal T Maid Cafe

Amber mentioned that there was a special event going on at the Royal T Maid cafe coming up, and was thinking about going. Since I had never been to the famed "first Maid cafe in the US" dealio, I agreed to go (I guess you gotta embrace your girly side every so often, right?) She made reservations for us at at 3:30pm.

The place was abuzz with activity as we walked into the main restaurant space. The gallery had an impressive collection of a lot of cool Japanese artists, and a section of the gallery was set up for people who had arrived to the event in their finest maid/lolicon/gothic lolita outfits - a photographer would shoot some pictures of you in this cutesy environment they had set up. A lot of people were dressed up - it was nice to see that people had a gathering place to show off their hard work/frilly costumes. But enough about the space, we were there to have high tea....

Even though we had made reservations, we were told we still had to put our names on a list and wait...which we complied to, even though Wonder was pretty hungry. When I saw that another party got immediately seated when they pushed the fact that they had reservations, I had to step up and make a bit of a stink - we had been waiting for at least 40 minutes! A table cleared up after that, so we were finally seated, but it was not a good start to our high tea...

After glancing at the menu, we all decided upon the special high tea set of the day, which was the most expensive thing they had...ah, well, sometimes you have to splurge, right? We were given amazingly pretty cups to drink water out of (those awesome bodum cups - two layered, so drinks would stay really cold/really hot.) The team of three waitress "maids" were really working hard during this event (one of them in high heels, no less!) so we were trying our best to be understanding of their situation.

Our teas arrived first - I ordered some sort of white tea. Each tea came in its' own bodum tea infuser, which is very elegant in presentation. Since it was burning hot outside, I requested some ice and poured my tea over it to make iced tea...which was refreshing.
And then they finally brought out our high tea sets...I admit, they're very pretty...

They're even prettier when they're next to each other.


I always start high tea sets from the bottom, so my descriptions will go the same way...the bottom of the tier started with mini tea sandwiches, and when I say mini, I really mean MINI...from the left...egg salad, tuna salad and avocado, spicy tuna and avocado, and cucumber. I remember the spicy tuna being my favorite, mainly because it was a nice Japanese twist to the usual high tea sandwich. These tiny sandwiches were basically two bites each, tops, so they were pretty much gone in a second.


I then oddly went to the top tier, because quiche is always best eaten before dessert, and before it got cold. It was a mushroom cheese quiche, and to be honest, it kinda sucked. It wasn't very flavorful, the taste was very bland. The crust wasn't rich or flaky, it was just..eh. Probably the weakest thing on the tier, which was unfortunate because I love quiche. Well, briskly moving on to dessert...

From the front center, we have: a pistachio macaron, a black sesame layer cake, a fruit tart, and a chocolate cake. The macaron was okay, I've had better but I don't have them very often so it was a treat, the sesame layer cake was the surprise delight of the desserts - moist, tasty, loved the top layer of...jam? I dunno, but whatever it was, it was delicious. The fruit tart was decent, I always like fruit tarts for the fruit and less for the shell. The chocolate cake was too rich and sweet for my tastes, and I couldn't finish all of it.

All in all, the maid cafe was definitely playing up the ambience level of the tea experience and not really the food. The price was a little too steep for me to come back very often, but they nicely gave us each a gift bag, which contained a "free coffee or tea" coupon. I used it that day to get Owen an iced latte, which he really liked (I think it was made with organic beans), so maybe I'll come back for the coffee bar and not so much the food.

Royal T Maid Cafe
8910 Washington Blvd Culver City, CA 90232