Wowza! Well it's been awhile .. a very long while. And I'm finally going to do another review! Yay! Even though no one ever reads this (except my dear boyfriend), I guess it's important to keep food-blogging. For my own memory. Lately, I've realized how difficult it is for me to remember things as the years go by. I have the worst memory out of all the people I know. It's not quite the importance of the food itself, but the way I felt when I ate it and how much I enjoyed the moment and with whom. All these posts act as memory-joggers actually! :) Although I won't be cheesy and describe my emooootions, I'd most likely remember the general feel at the time. So, here's the review:

In Temple City, California .. there's this wonderful mom and pop joint called Dumpling Inn. They're Chinese-Koreans (meaning Chinese people raised in Korean), so they have customers of both ethnicities, and then some. We were there on a weekday during the lunch special so there weren't many people. Actually, we were the only ones for most of our entire visit, so service was good. The lady who owned the place was very maternal and gave us tips on how to order and what the best deal would be, even encouraging us to order less. She insisted we would not be able to finish. And true to her words, we left stuffed and carrying take-out bags.

(1) Steamed Pork Dumplings - So juicy. So tender. So delicious and home-styled! It's nothing like those tiny pre-packaged supermarket dumplings you would get at Cha for Tea or some other cafe-styled restaurant. This is the real stuff. Hardy, meaty pork and onion stuffed home-made dumpling skin. That's right -- home made dumpling skin. I only know this because I've been going to this place since I was knee-high. Apparently, they do it the old-fashioned way: pulling and tugging on dough until its chewy and thin.

(2) Steamed Fish dumplingsss. Do NOT pass these up! Stuffed with fish paste, these babies are the best ones I've had so far. They're tender and juicy and still pretty big, considering seafoods on the menu are usually served in lesser portions. Well, not these. Although smaller than the pork dumplings, they're still very packed with the paste. =) This was definitely one of my faves.

(3) A fried chicken dumpling and wonton skin that came with the lunch special. Fried isn't my favorite so it was just 'eh' to me. At least it wasn't dripping with grease like some "Chinese" places (ahemmm Panda Express). I do have to admit, it was perfectly crisp on the outside, but the dumplin skin was still chewy and tender on the inside. This I know from the plate of fried dumplings that we ordered.

(4) Fried pork dumplings, I believe. Read comments above.(5) Za Jiang Mien - oh babyyy. There's no direct translation, but look for noodles in dark sauce, or something of that sort, on the menu. =) It's not amazing, but its something I grew up with. So I have a special place in my heart for this. One thing to note about this dish is that the noodles are handmade. All the carbs (minus the rice) at this place is made right in the kitchen, with a chef pulling on dough for chewy perfection. These noodles had the right texture. We couldn't finish this so we took it to go. Note: Eat this hot! It's just not the same heated in a microwave.

(6) This was the lunch special beef and brocolli. It was alright .. just your average Chinese restaurant beef&brocolli. There was definitely MSG though, which accounts for the super savor of the flavor. To all those places that boast NO MSG, screw you! Authentic Chinese restraunts should be using MSG and lots of it -- its the wok staple. To all those Americans who are "health conscious," you all use chemically engineered chicken broth and flavoring for your soups and what not. Tell me that's healthier than MSG. Go ahead, proveee it.

(7) Fried Rice that comes with the lunch special. Its .. fried rice? Nothing special. What a typical Asian mom would whip up in 5 minutes.

(8) Here's the Korean flava to the restaraunt. Kimchee served at every table. Not like Korean BBQ kimchee, although I am told there are different kinds of kimchee. This was on the sweeter side. The lettuce was very crunchy still -- very home-made. By the taste and look of it, it hasn't been underground or soaked for longer than a week. But it's free, so who am I to complain?

All in all, this was a good experience. Now I can cross off one more thing on my list! We left satisfied, our stomachs and wallets. We didn't have to blow big money for this meal. I believe the check came out to be about $25. One bad thing was how hot it was outside (this was during summer break) after so much food and how thirsty we were after the meal (msg dehydrates, as does any salty food). I would recommend this to anyone looking for a home-sweet-home kind of food. The experience was reminiscent of me coming home from college Friday night, and my mom expecting me to down hardy home-cooking. If you come alone or do take-out, $8 can get you 6 of those big fat dumplings in a white styrofoam smileyface box. You will not leave disappointed.

Because I am kind, I have decided to update Love Stuffed. :) For you, Christopher Wu, daily complainer. I don't really know what to review. I've had so many things to eat, I don't even know where to start. But here's your update. =D It will be continued after my Calculus Midterm.

In the U.S.

Back from Hong Kong & Thailand. The trip was pretty good, minus the Thailand part. I'm sure the country of golden steeples and mango sticky rice had more to offer, but whatever it was -- I didn't see much of that grand splendor. I have no pictures of the mango sticky rice, but I just want to say that it was the only dish and only "attraction" I really enjoyed. The rice is mixed with some sort of sticky coconut cream type thing, and you eat it with fresh mangoes. I also want to state that the plethora of homeless dogs was a sad sight.

Hong Kong was definitely a trip. My days were filled with different meals between doing what I did best: shopping, shopping, and more shopping! What the actual city was lacking in glamour on the outside (run-down buildings, clothes hanging in public, and leaky air conditioners), it made up for in convenience (subway/metro/cheap taxis), retail (bargains and bargaining on every corner), and food heavens. Chinese people are known for their affair with food and Hong Kong was a perfect example of that. Whether small or big, the restraunts met my expectations to the "tea."

The first thing I want to review is the airplane food. I know, I know -- what's there to review? Airplane food always sucks, right? Well, I think to really enjoy food, you should always be as broadminded as possible. You can't stab your fork into something with the mindset that it'll already suck. Then what's the point?

I took Cathay Pacific Airlines. If my memory serves me correctly, we had 3 meals and snacks. The only memorable part of the meal was the smoked salmon salad and the cute little green tea cups (I took three with me).


It's not a very good picture but there it is. It's a very simple salad with tomato, lettuce, and smoked salmon. Strangely enough, I had my best smoked salmon experiences on this trip. The first time was this one (where it was perrfect!) and the second time was in Thailand at the hotel's complimentary lunch buffett. :) Inbetween mini bagels, toasted to perfection. YUM!!!

Anyway, the flavor of the airplane smoked salmon salad was definitely close to a 10. It was just the right amount of salty and smoky, with a hint of pepper, and it was not fishy at all! I mean, the salmon flavor was definitely still there, but the fishiness was not overpowering in any way. =) Plus, the veggies were definitely fresh, which is a new one for plane food. The tomato was sweet with the perfect taint of sour. I can't give the same ratings to the rest of the meals, although the smoked salmon sandwich (the snack they were giving out) was pretty good too, forget the overpowering foccacia mini bread that sandwiched the cream cheese, salmon, and tomato slice.

Christopher Wu, tune in to my next post when I review the amazing Pizza Hut.

Eastern Skies

Well, my dear nonexistent readers, it seems as though I have been given the opportunity to fly across the world to explore Hong Kong with my boyfriend and his cousins. This means, my food list will have to be cut short and perhaps edited -- probably just pushed back. I sure am disappointed but not really since I haven't even been keeping up with my fooding. So, I'm more disappointed in myself than anything. But, I will be dropping nearly $2K on this trip, and I do not think I should be asking my parents for money to eat out when I come back. No siree. However, I am going to be flexible about this. I will blog about my food adventures in Hong Kong. Of course, I will not be able to update as I go and I will run mostly off of memory from 3 weeks of jam-packed shopping/eating action. I can't say how far my literature can take us but pictures are worth a thousand words. SO, my departure is on August 1 for tres weeks. Bon voyage!

Anime Expo 08

Anime Expo o8. There wasn't much hype for it, but it's tradition. Plus, it would be a chance for me to test out my new Sony Alpha 300. :) That's right -- my baby arrived. Well, it's been here but I haven't been able to use it since I had no memory card. So what I really mean is, my memory card is here. Thank you Chris for buying it for me!

From my experience, Anime Expo was the best when it was in Anaheim. Among a couple of reasons why, it seemed more like a community than a convention when it was held there. The hotels lined up on the same xl-bungalow and the convention center smack dab in the middle. Then, after many amazing years of costumes, late nights, and adventures -- it was moved to Long Beach. The LBC provided a new environment (though I had been there previously for Key Club Convention) with an ocean view, etc .. but it definitely was not as fun. Everything was spread out and hard to get to. Then this year, it was moved to Los Angeles. I can name a couple of reasons why this year was disappointing for me: (1) it was too close for a hotel, but extremely expensive in gas money & parking money & food money altogether ; (2) my friends didn't want to go although this may have been because we've mostly grown out of it; (3) my cosplay that I had spent mucho time and money on failed last minute and I was [understatement] very upset.

BUT, I made the best of it. Or at least I tried to. I only went Friday and Saturday this year. On Friday, I went with Chris to check out the convention -- scope out merchandise and the types of cosplayers there were this year. Seems like I wasn't the only one who wanted to do Vampire Knight. Seeing all the VK cosplayers was depressing; I should have just bought the uniform when I had the chance. Oh well, too late now. I highly doubt I'll ever go to AX again, but who knows? Chris bought a toy car that was pretty crappy, to say the least. You basically have to run after it to keep it running. Chris and I ended up sitting at an emptier area in the lobby, but with a good view of cosplayers walking past. We critiqued, yawned, and constantly checked the time. I had never, at any AX, looked at the time over and over again, waiting for the convention to be over for the day. Well, since it was 4th of July, we left, planning to meet up with Sherry and Risa at Newport Beach for an Independence Day Festival. We had to eat dinner at Chris' house first and by the time we finished, it was too late to go so far. Instead, we went A.Tam's house and watched the view of fireworks (from literally more than 10 sites) shows from his backyard. Then we went to light our own and we called it a day.

Because I felt so left out from the 'cosplay community' .. I raped my closet for a costume. I came up with a Mario outfit in less than 5 minutes and spent a total of 10 putting it together with double sided tape (which held pretty well).

On Saturday, Nick came over and we drove over to Chris' house -- only to find that he was unable to go with us. He met us at the convention later on, after Nick and I met up with Matt and David. We had Exhibition passes so we abused our rights of entering and exiting where ever we wanted. :) Thanks Nick's brother! We walked around the exhibition hall (feet killer!) while I went on a hunt for a Totoro toy for Sherry. By the time I found a suitable one, I was super starving. That's when I decided we had to go and we ended up at Orochan! HOWEVER, Christopher Wu did NOT bring my camera down from his car so I did NOT get ANY pictures of my meal. Whatever.

This time at Orochan, I decided to enjoy my food so I got the Miso #4 Orochan ramen bowl with egg and garlic with an order of the Cha-Su Pork Plate (melt in your mouth pork). Not the BEST bowl of ramen but what are you gonna do when you're hungry? After dinner, I forked over some more money at a gelato/mochi place in Little Tokyo's main plaza. The Kona coffee mochi was delish! When I find the name of the store, I will definitely post it up. We talked for a bit at the square and then headed for Alhambra to sit at Cha, where I would fork over even MORE money. But I was definitely happy to meet up with my friends there. And now here I am, blogging before I get too lazy to do it.

All in all, my feelings about Anime Expo were lukewarm. Eh~! Not that bad, but definitely not amazing. But maybe its one of those things as you get older. And also, I feel guilty for eating so much today, but what I've learned from these past years of weight-struggles is that today is nothing I can't fix with the next two days of hard exercise and diet, diet, diet.

The Pig Place

So, it's been awhile. My bad! My new camera is well on its way and will be arriving next Wednesday. Yay! I'm pretty excited, except I don't even have a memory card to go with it. My wonderful boyfriend is buying me one though. (: So, a lot of summer adventures will be logged. Anyway, this post will be reviewing the wonderful Pig Place, or more formally known as Hae Jang Chon. It's in K-Town (located in downtown L.A.). I didn't quite discover this place on my own. Rather, a couple of my friends insisted I haven't had real Korean BBQ if I didn't have rice paper with it and continued to insist that we had to go there after our shopping spree at Beverly Center. I was pretty skeptical at first; it looked like any other Korean BBQ place I had been to. But just one taste of this, and the Pig Place had me going back weekend after weekend. I think half the reasons why I go home to Los Angeles so much is to eat. The other half of the reason is to escape this jail cell called UC San Diego.

On with the post!

^ Chris, sitting outside on the bench. We were waiting for our friends to come. Our other friends came from their own foodie adventure. Well, hardly food. They went to do the spicy tuna challenge and came back with x-large drinks and a bottle of Pepto Bismol.

Choi and Kim with their Big Gulp and Pepto Bismol after their Spicy Tuna adventure, jealously eyeing our Korean BBQ that they couldn't possibly stomach after all those habanero spices. =D That's how the it got started -- Onion, Kimchi, Kimchi Pancake, and BEEF. The aroma was super amazing. It still is, after the third and fourth trip. =)

After finishing off three plates of Korean BBQ, the grand finale was the Kimchi fried Rice. It's my favorite part. The flavor is ... it's just wonderful. All the flavor from the meat grease, all that kimchi, the pancake -- it was a carb/grease heaven. YAY. To balance it off, there was also a Kimchi Miso soup (I think). It was alright. By the time I go to the soup, I was pretty full and couldn't down anymore.

I think the thing about Korean BBQ is having friends with you. It's the conversation and the meat. +) So wonderfullly delicioussssss.

Sam Woo of San Diego

It's not just recently that I've been interested in food. Rather, I have been in love with food for most of my taste-budding career but only just admitted to this deep, rather embarrassing, infatuation. This relationship has been ongoing without my knowledge but now I am coming out: I love food. After all, I am Chinese and this love for food runs deep in my veins, centuries old into ancient dynasties of China. But, of course, you don't need to be any type of Asian to love food! After reading four handfuls of foodie-blogs, I have discovered a world beyond campus cafeterias and home cooking.

My very first food review will be on Sam Woo, the one located in San Diego on Claremont Mesa. Located next to the 99 Ranch Market, the place to go for fresh fish and bok-choy. I have to admit: this isn't my first time eating at a Sam Woo. I've never really been a big fan of this chain restaurant . I'm not into duck or sweet stir fried anything, but staying put on campus for so long has made my stomach ache for real Chinese food. I Googled that picture on the side to show you what these type of restaurants look like. The Sam Woo we went to was really small and did not have such a large variety and it was not as decorated as the one in the picture, but it did have the traditional duck hanging in the window.

Sam Woo serves up Cantonese-styled food, particularly barbecued duck, chicken, and pork. When I arrived, I was disappointed that this particular Sam Woo did not have duck or chicken claws like the Sam Woos back home. But that wasn't going to stop me now! Nor was it going to stop my roommate [Kristine] or my suite mate [Nancy], both who are just as in love with food as I am. =D True friendship, I say! (My suitie just brought me a poptart! See what I mean?!)

So we ended up browsing the menu. It was hard to choose so each of us chose one item (Nancy got Duck Soup Noodle too, which she described as "heaven").

Here we have the time-old and well-known Hot & Sour Soup ($7-8). Extremely different from Panda Express. It had a perfectly thick texture that went down extremely well to warm up your stomach. In the soupy mixture, there was strips of pork meat, strips of black mushroom, green onions, peels of bamboo, and I think its eggs (?). It was a bit too sour, but nonetheless, its a very satisfying Hot & Sour Soup. I would have preferred a different soup but it was such that most of the better tasting (imo) soups were also more expensive, but next time I want to try their Shark Fin Soup.

Kung Pao Chicken ($5-6) -- a plate of grease, peanuts, chopped water chestnuts, green onions, chili peppers, and chickens. It was okay. It was much too oily and it did not differ from pseudo-Chinese food restaurants. We ate this with rice ($1/person) -- real rice, might I mention, and not the soft mushy stuff shaped with an ice cream scooper at UCSD cafeterias. The only good thing about it was the large portion given; it was enough to take back to the dorm and eat in the wee hours of the morning to satiate my hunger. At this point, you may be asking: why did you choose dishes we can find at Panda Express? What's the point? Well its the simple fact that we're poor college students. From past experiences at Sam Woo (when I was with my parents), I would recommend their Blossom Platter (small $24, large $36), BBQ Three Delicacy Combo ($18), & Spicy Salt Shrimp ($16).

How could we go to Sam Woo and not have their Barbecue? This one is called the Double Barbecue Duck with Noodle. I was pleasantly surprised that it was really tasty. The duck meat was not too dry and the steamed lettuce helped to wash down the grease and unhealthiness from the rest of the meal. San Diego's Sam Woo served a pretty good BBQ duck: it was not drenched in sauce and all skin like the Sam Woo in San Gabriel Valley (on Las Tunas, I think). The noodles were whatever. I've had better and it was definitely not 'Q' enough, but the main part of the plate was the duck anyway. While this was a fairly good plate, I would still recommend the BBQ Three Delicacy Combo that I mentioned above (if you're not short on cash).

Did I mention it was a Cash Only restaurant? This was strange as I do not recall any Sam Woo being cash only. But it is a Chinese eatery so I shouldn't have been surprised. The service was not too shabby for an Asian place as many other reviewers have said, but then again I was speaking Mandarin to them most of the time. The only thing that I was annoyed with was that there was only one waitress for 7 different tables. This did not lengthen the time of getting our food (Chinese restaurants are known for fast service), but getting to order and getting the check was a pretty lengthy process of me waving my hand in the air and meekly saying "Auntie!" in Mandarin. Actually, now that I think of it, that probably wasn't the right term to use.

Anyway, it was a pretty good trip. Afterwards, we splurged at 99 Ranch Market (a Chinese supermarket) on snacks and other good deals. But that was only after going to a small 'boutique' of sorts that sold lingerie, fake designer sunglasses, fake designer shoes, fake designer jewelry, cheap makeup and nail polish, and a whole lot of nothing. Yet, Nancy was able to buy a pair of sunglasses and some "Chanel" earrings, which I purchased as well.

Before we left Claremont Mesa for good, I drove across the street to the Tea Station where I ordered a hot Rose Milk Tea to go. Three words: it was good. A perfect mixture of creamy hot milk tea and the scent of roses. =) Heaven, in a cup!


P.S. As I said before, the picture quality sucks. So bear with me until I get my dSLR.

Testing: 1 2 3

Yay, I finally have one of these. After reading a bunch of FoodieBlogs on Blogspot, I've been dying to have one myself. Instead of a Food Blog, however, my posts will consist of my many loves that may or may not be interesting to others. Whether it be carne asada fries (artery clogger) or Disneyland (feet killer), the Farmer's Market or The Grove, I will do the best I can to rave & review about it. A new Sony Alpha a300 dSLR is in the works right now and soon I'll have it. But until then, please bare with me as I post up pictures that aren't exactly of the best quality!