Tales from Taiwan, Part III: Bento Lunch

For lunch, I present to you... bento (便當).

Bento is a concept originated in Japan, consisting of a packed meal for one person. It's composed of the usual - rice, meat, vegetable - all in single portions, neatly packed into a box. In Taiwan, bentos are a popular lunch item. You can choose a few "side" items with a main protein.

Pictured below is the grilled pork bento. My four side items were cauliflower, slivered cucumbers, chicken hearts, and some sort of sliced bean curd. The grilled pork was really good - it was well-seasoned and tendered, and the sesame really added a great final touch. The side dishes were all very good except for the bean curd, which I found slightly odd. I think it was the fact that it came with dried anchovies - the two flavors didn't mix well together or something.

Bento 烤肉便當

Another popular lunch item that I tried was the soup dumpling (小籠包), which originated in Shanghai. They are not your typical baozi (包子, or steamed bun) - thus, the word dumpling describes them more accurately. They are, however, steamed in a bamboo basket, just like baozi, and their shape somewhat resembles baozi, so they are called "xiaolongbao" - little steamed bao. They are filled with not only the ground meat, but also soup - so that the whole bao becomes super juicy.

I'm not too big a fan of these soup dumplings in the first place, but I tried them since the Taiwanese are quite obsessed with them. I must say, out of all the soup dumplings I've tried, these are not the best.. they were not the juiciest I've had.

Soup dumplings 小籠包

The soup dumplings also came with a bowl of soup, and I chose corn chowder. Taiwanese corn chowder is not the same as American corn chowder, which adds cream to make it very thick. I like the Taiwanese style more... yum. Although from this photo, I guess it looks just like egg drop soup, haha.

Taiwanese corn chowder 玉米濃湯

Tales from Taiwan, Part II: Breakfast

O.m.g. breakfast is heaven. Or maybe it's just breakfast in Taiwan.

At school, I rarely eat breakfast due to 1) a late morning schedule and 2) a busy morning schedule. But here, due to jet lag, I've been waking up early enough to eat breakfast. Plus, I want to catch as many meals as I can. The first morning, we went out to get 蛋餅 (dan bing - Taiwanese omelet), which is very, very different from the Western omelet:

It's made with a thin Chinese crepe wrapped around a fried egg. You can get yours stuffed with a different ingredient such as tuna (canned tuna, that is), pork sung (Taiwanese pork sung is so much better than the stuff you can buy in the U.S.), corn, ham, etc. I got mine with corn. They also add some thick soy sauce (醬油膏) and sweet chili paste (甜辣醬) if you ask for it spicy - which, of course, I did. It was delicious.

蛋餅 Taiwanese omelet

Next day, we went to eat 飯糰 (rice ball), which was AMAZING. Inside was fried dough (油條), pickled radish, pork sung, marinated egg (滷蛋), and corn, seasoned with sesame. Mm... the fried dough and pork sung provided the crispiness of every bite. So delicious - I loved it.

飯糰 rice ball

Did I mention that I got real Chinese soymilk both mornings? Mm-hmm. Yup, goodness in a cup.

Third morning, we went back to the Taiwanese omelet place, but I decided to order a breakfast sandwich instead. It's quite simple, and I've made it before back at school: toast, Asian mayo (which has an addicting sweetness), fried egg, pork sung, and slivered cucumbers. But honestly, the Taiwanese pork sung makes all the difference - and makes the sandwich soo much better.

早餐三明治 Breakfast sandwich

All in all, deliciousness. Are you jealous yet? ;)

Tales from Taiwan, Part I: The Plane Ride

The plane ride was... long. The route was from RDU to ORD to NRT to TPE. Two meals on the Chicago to Tokyo flight, one meal on the Tokyo to Taiwan flight.

I didn't bother taking any photos of the airplane food provided. Needless to say it wasn't very appetizing. Watch out for the dinner roll from AA - I think it can really be used as an assault weapon. JAL was slightly better - the cold noodles with sesame sauce was actually pretty decent. However, all the entrees were so salty! I couldn't eat more than two bites of each...

The highlight of the trip was definitely the layover in Tokyo. I had originally planned to splurge on sushi and sashimi at the NRT airport, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for my wallet), I didn't land in the terminal with the sashimi place, so I ended up just getting noodles instead:

味噌拉麵 miso ramen

As you can probably tell from the name, this is miso soup with ramen. Some additional ingredients include cabbage, corn, carrots, tofu, and sliced pork. The soup was full of flavor, and the noodles' texture was perfect. As S says, they look really rubbery but have just the right amount of chewiness.

牛肉烏東 beef udon

The beef udon has a fewer ingredients than the miso ramen - only onions, thin beef slices, and scallions for garnish. The udon texture, again, is wonderful. The soup is pretty heavy in flavor - I wouldn't have finished the entire bowl. But without the heavy flavoring in the soup, I suppose the udon noodles wouldn't taste as good since they really soaked up all the aroma of the soup.

So those were the highlights of my ~30 hours of travel. Oh, and the biiiig cup of milk tea that S's parents brought me when we got picked up from the airport =D

Destination: Taiwan

I am in Taiwan! I have wanted to visit for ages now, and finally, I am here. I cannot wait share my food experiences with you guys :)

Chubby's Tacos

I am the worst blogger ever.

The past who-knows-how-many-times I have been to Chubby's Taco's, I have either forgotten to take pictures or bring my camera/ phone altogether... but finally, today, I remembered... after taking a bite out of my tamale, that is...

Anyway, Chubby's is one of my favorite Durham eateries! I was first attracted to the salsa bar (thaaaat's right folks, salsa bar) - all freshly made, all very delicious. Of course, the first time I went, I tried every single kind, but I have narrowed down a few favorites: Bandido's Salsa, Chile de Arbol, and the Habanero. The habanero is honestly one of the best spicy sauces that I have ever had, by the way - and that's speaking for all the Asian spicy foods that I've eaten...

The amazing salsa bar at Chubby's.

I usually order a taco and make it a meal, which comes with rice and beans (black or refried) and a bag of corn chips. However, recently I have discovered that their tamales are quite good, so pictured here is my meal from today, tamale with spicy chicken tinga:

I have also ordered the smothered tamale, which is the same thing but with chili, shredded lettuce, and tomato on top. I think I prefer the regular tamale, to be honest...

Tamale, refried beans, rice.

But of course, if it is your first time here, you must try the tacos. I really like the carnitas or spicy carne asada. My friends also highly recommend the fish tacos - the chipotle cream sauce does look very delicious.

If you haven't made your way down to 9th street yet for taco and salsa, you are definitely missing out. You'll get a great meal at an unbelievable price. And you'll probably see me there, sampling another flavor of salsa... (yes, I am easily entertained).

Restaurant: Chubby's Taco's

Price: $5-10

Sawasdee Thai Restaurant

**Wrote this review a while ago, but S hadn't given me photos from the evening until now... I really enjoyed this place, it's been voted the best Thai place in Indy's Best of the Triangle, and it has awesome reviews on Yelp, so if you're nearby, give it a try!

Also, sorry for the blurry images. 1- They're taken with a phone camera because I forgot my camera, and 2- It was really dark inside...

A while ago, S and I went to Crabtree Valley Mall, and on the way back, we decided to go to Sawasdee for dinner. I have heard about this place for a while now and have wanted to try it, so we went to their new location on Glenwood. It's a pretty well-hidden, dimly-lit place, but don't be deceived by appearances...

We didn't know what to order, so we asked our waitress for suggestions. Upon hearing that we liked spicy food, she immediately pointed out two items: Pad Prik Kra Paw, which is a stir fry with bell peppers, basil, chili, garlic, and onions, served with rice, and Drunken Noodles Chicken (Pad Kee Maw), which is spicy rice noodles, stir-fried in chili sauce with egg and basil leaves. We ordered one of each, as well as a calamari appetizer (too hungry...)

The calamari appetizer was decent (although small), reminded us of Twisted Noodle's fried tofu actually - I think it was the batter.

Calamari with sweet-sour sauce

The Pad Prik Kra Paw (with pork) was super spicy! We ordered both of our dishes to be two stars (out of three) on the spicyness scale, and I consider myself to be quite spicy tolerant, but wow, that was some dish. Other than that, the pork was cooked pretty well, and there was a lot of other flavors.

Pad Prik Kra Paw with pork

The drunken noodles were really, really good. It was also a very spicy dish, and you could tell that the spicyness was blended in beautifully with all the other flavors to create a really nice aroma. Unfortunately, towards the end it got a little too oily for me, but I still finished everything (yes, the entire entire plate!) because it tasted so good. Yup, that's how great it was.

Drunken Noodles Chicken (Pad Kee Maw)

Aaaaand because we loved everything so much, we decided to order dessert! (Funny how when you've eaten a lot of good food, you want to eat more...) We were instantly attracted to one thing on the menu: kanom tuay (sweet coconut pudding). It was served warm in four small cups on a long tray - an elegant presentation. The pudding's consistency was not as soft as custard or jelly, but not as sticky as sticky rice. The coconut flavor was strong but not overwhelming. Overall, it was a great combination of texture and taste. Both of us enjoyed it very much, and we left the restaurant very satisfied.

Sweet coconut pudding (Kanom tuay)

If you can't tell already, I absolutely adored this place. No wonder it's voted one of the best Thai restaurants around here and has such good restaurant reviews. I really want to go to the Capital Blvd location now and see if the food is consistent... or you can try it and let me know how was your visit. I hope it was as enjoyable as mine!

Restaurant: Sawasdee
Price Range: (dinner): $15-25

A note about BOGO sushi

So I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but IMHO, the quality of BOGO sushi in Durham has gone down the past month or so. Sushi Love has hired some new sushi chefs who are not doing so well with the proportions and sauces. S and I have gotten a plate back that was flooded with a mix of eel sauce and spicy mayo. Very disruptive of the flavors of the rolls - we felt like we were eating sweet & sour sushi.

Mt. Fuji, on the other hand, is just a lack of taste and freshness, which I have mentioned already. I tried a couple of rolls the other day, and they have not been memorable or impressive.

I have not been to Shiki Sushi recently, but hopefully they have retained their creative and consistent flavors...

What has happened to the sushi in Durham? The economy, probably. Or maybe just the wrong season for fish?

Korean Grill Buffet

So it was my birthday a couple of weekends ago, and my friends and I went to a Korean barbecue in Raleigh, Korean Grill Buffet, to celebrate! My roomie has heard some pretty good things about this place. It's an all-you-can-eat grill, which of course gets all the guys really excited. The pricing is decent, so I was looking forward to it.

If you don't know how Korean bbq works, basically you have a grill at your table and cook the meat at your own table. Some of the meat has been marinated already, and there is sauce available for the others. I usually make a lettuce wrap with a couple of pieces of grilled beef or pork, a small amount of rice, and tiny bit of Korean chili paste, and I eat the entire wrap in one bite.

The restaurant is medium-sized with a buffet in the middle and grill tables on the sides. We had a rather large party so we took up an entire 8-person table with two grills, but if your group is smaller you'll be pretty close to your neighboring party. The interior was overall a little too dimly lit for my liking, but the individual tables had more lighting from the overhead exhaust fan set-up.

The buffet had the meat assortment at the start: chicken thighs (both marinated and unmarinated), marinated pork belly, marinated pork/ bulgolgi, and unmarinated beef. Moving on there was lettuce, different sauces and kimchi dishes, cold noodles, seaweed salad, etc. Finally, at the end of the buffet were some soups and typical Asian-style dishes like kung pao chicken and mapo tofu.

None of us really went for any other of the side dishes and of course all stacked up on the meat (9 Asians, 6 of them guys.. what did you expect?), and began grilling. Our server was helpful and attentive - changed the grilling surface regularly, replaced the shears when we accidentally took them apart, gave us another set of tongs...overall, pretty good service.

As for the grill itself? It was not bad. The marinated meats had way too much flavor, which was expected - the meats were basically sitting in sauce, so they are soaking up the flavor the entire time. The bulgogi is particularly salty - the thin slices are very easily overseasoned. The unseasoned beef slices were much better, and we enjoyed those a lot. The flavoring of the pork belly was good, although it did not hold up well to the grilling because the texture became rubbery very quickly. Finally, the chicken thighs were very tender, especially the unmarinated ones, but they do take a while to cook completely on the grill, so you should be advised to cut them into small pieces for faster cooking time.

Table-center grill, filled with assorted meat, mushrooms, etc. I am attempting to cut the meat pieces smaller & easier to handle.

After I was satiated with meat, I decided to try some of their other offerings. Nothing in particular impressed me, although I was really horrified by their red bean soup, which was salty... I'm beginning to think that this restaurant really has a salt problem. Actually, most of my fellow diners and I believe that they've made a mistake and used salt instead of sugar in the soup. Whatever the case, it was quite bad.

Overall, it was a decent experience. Lunch price is pretty reasonable at just $12.95 per person on weekends. (You can check out their full menu pricing on their website.) I'm not sure I'll be coming back anytime soon, though, partly because of the drive, and partly because I just don't want to smell like grill for the rest of my day.

Restaurant: Korean Grill Buffet
Pricing: (for lunch) $12-15; (for dinner) $17-20