SHAN DONG RESTAURANT, OAKLAND

Tom and I still don't have Oakland Chinatown totally figured out. We haven't had the best meals there and aren't quite sure where to go. Plus, everyone speaks Cantonese, which means mu Mandarin is pretty useless there. Luckily, we decided to meet up with our friends who've spent plenty of time there, and they took us to one of their favorite spots, the Shan Dong Restaurant.

Now, this is one of the random restaurants off a main street in Oakland Chinatown that you'll never go into unless someone takes you. When we arrived, it was pretty full, but we were able to grab a table. So this place is known for it's noodles and dumplings, and that's exactly what we ordered. You can even get homemade noodles for $1 more, but my friend said it's pretty much the same, and not worth spend the extra $1.

So here's what we got. This is the sesame noodle.

It's made with really nice fresh noodles, a sesame sauce, chilis and sauteed veggies. It's actually quite tasty (I'm kinda craving it now). Plus, you can get it with pork if you want. We also got a scallion pancake:

Which was pretty good. And finally, I got a plate of dumplings:

It's really nice that they even offered an option for chicken dumplings. I don't know if I've actually seen that in another restaurant. And they were pretty good. The skins were kinda thick, but the filling was pretty tasty. Overall our lunch there was quite good, and I think we didn't spend too much money there. And the best thing is now I know a restaurant to eat at when I'm hungry and in Chinatown.

SMALL BITES

Here's a collection of small bites that I didn't feel needed their own individual posts.

The first was a visit to a new cafe that's opened near our home called Cafe St. Honore. We had walked and driven by it several times, and I noticed that it served breakfast, so one morning we decided to go check it out. Armed with a newspaper, we were hoping to find a cute French style cafe, hopefully serving some nice homemade pastries and baguettes.

We did find a cute cafe, though the very white interior feels a bit sterile. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything homemade. I don't think the place has a kitchen, and it was very clear to me that they had purchased all their pastries (basically croissants and chocolate croissants) premade by someone else. The "breakfast menu" was quite short - it was basically a selection of the aforementioned pastries and a few baguette selections. Tom ended up getting a baguette with butter and coffee. Since I'm currently off the coffee, I got a baguette with poached eggs. Here it is below:

Yeah, I know. It's not pretty. I confirmed that they didn't have a kitchen when I saw our server cooking the poacked eggs in a pot on a hot plate behind the counter. It ended up being pretty overcooked. The baguette was really the worst part - it was leaden, so dense, not airy at all and none of the crunchy outside. I had Tom finish it off for me. And it made me sad knowing that Cafe Fanny was just a few blocks down the street. (We also wondered why they didn't just buy their baguettes from Acme Breads since it's located next door to Cafe Fanny.)

I'm not saying this place was horrible. The service was very friendly. It's open late and they offer free wi-fi. However, it isn't the place for breakfast, nor for baguettes.

Next up was our visit to the Asian Pearl Restaurant located inside the Pacific East Mall. We have visited most of the restaurants at the Pacific East Mall, but this is one of the largest one that we had not yet visted. One of the reasons we hadn't visited was because this place is really more well known for its dim sum, but since they start later in the morning, (I think around 10:30) we've eaten breakfast by then.

So one evening we couldn't decide where we wanted to have dinner at the Pacific East Mall and decided to give Asian Peal a try. It's a much larger, nicer restaurant than the rest of the places at the mall. (it actually had tablecloths). Because it's a large restaurant, it looked pretty empty when we entered, though there were other people eating there.

We ended up ordering three dishes (though only 2 are pictured). Tom got his usual salt and pepper shrimp and we got a cold tofu salad.

I liked the tofu salad, and the salt and pepper shrimp were pretty good. The dish that I ordered that isn't pictured is a clay pot with chicken and tofu. It was actually pretty awful. The sauce was really gloopy and not too flavorful. I ended up eating the tofu in the pot and left the rest there.

However, the food wasn't our issue here. It was really the service. They took forever to allow us to order and after they delivered the food, they basically ignored us. Though we asked for our check, they never brought it, and Tom finally went up to the front to pay (which he also had to wait to do.) Tom ended up leaving a tiny tip, which is really unusual for him, but that just shows how bad we thought this place was.

The funny thing is that Tom ended up going back there the next day for dim sum with his friends. But I don't think we'll be returning there again.

Bite #3, Superbowl Sunday. For Superbowl, we spent the afternoon at my friend, Kim's, house. We all made stuff and kind did a weird combination of foods for Superbowl. Starting in back, you'll see a bowl of hummus with veggies. Next is homemade nacho cheese with tortilla chips, I made my own homemade chicken pate (so much easier and cheaper than you could ever imagine, and totally tasty) with cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, Tom insisted on getting KFC, Kim also made some small snacks, including Totino's pizza rolls, and these chicken patties with cheese that were fried. Not surprisingly, we all stuffed ourselves. And we even watched a bit of the actual game.

And the very last bite - pizza at Cheeseboard. I actually have had Cheeseboard pizza before, but I've never actually had it at Cheeseboard - they have some pretty weird hours, so I've never really made it there while they're open (or I refuse to wait in the long line). Lately though, I've had Tuesdays off from work, and since we were able to snag a parking space right in front, we decided to drop in to get a couple slices and visited next door to get some cheese.

I will admit that the pizza is much better out of a pizza oven than a regular over. I still don't think that Cheeseboard pizza is as amazing as people claim, but I will say, the experience it having it there is much better than having it elsewhere. I'm sure we'll be back again soon.

JAC'S ASIAN BISTRO

We have a small strip mall just 2 blocks from our home. It's a little sketchy, with an "adult video" store, a strange massage parlor and a pizza place that never appear to be open - but it's also the home to our favorite bahn mi shop (Bah Le). So when a restaurant, Jac's Asian Bistro, opened there a few months ago, I was rather skeptical about it. Every time we drove by, Tom would jokingly say that he wanted to try it, so one evening I finally caved and we walked over for dinner.

The place was very minimally decorated, but it was nice to see some other Asians dining there. As we were seated, we were handed some massive menus, that went on for pages and seemed to have anything imaginable on it (including some dishes involving hot dogs.) We ended up ordering a few dishes to share (including several off the menu where all the dishes were $5.99 and under).

Before our food arrived we were given a couple of bowls of house soup, which wasn't too bad.

Then our dishes started to arrive. Tom had ordered a chili-garlic fish dish. And considering it was off that $5.99 menu, it was pretty good.

Next, my dish arrived. I had gotten a seafood chow-fun with XO sauce. It wasn't off the cheap eats menu, but it was only $7.99 and it was a pretty big portion.

Lastly Tom ordered this dish with mushrooms and bok choy, also off the $5.99 menu and it was surprisingly good. The bok choy was fresh, as were the mushrooms, and best of all, it was really cheap!

Overall, the dinner at Zac's was pretty decent. It certainly wasn't the healthiest or best Chinese food around, but for the price and quantity, we'd happily go back.

P.F. CHANG'S DOES NOT SERVE CHINESE FOOD

If you go into P.F. Chang's thinking this, you might not be too disappointed. Actually, we've had a few more crappy meals this month than we normally do. I don't think our experience at P.F. Chang's was as bad as Vong's, but it was pretty terrible. But let me back up a little. First, why were we even at a P.F. Chang's? I had managed to avoid this nationwide chain of "Chinese Bistros" for quite a long time. I just refused to eat at a place that'd put China + Bistro in the same title AND used funerary statuary as it's primary decorative element (I don't know, it just kinda creeps me out - kinda like having a sarcophagus decorate a restaurant). But they lured me in by sending me an offer for a free entree off their new grill menu. Well, if they were gonna give me free food, we may as well try it out.

So after a bit of shopping at Ikea, we headed over to the closest location, in the Emery Bay shopping mall. I was kinda of surprised that there was a wait for a table for 2 at 7pm, but we were given a little buzzer and wandered over to William Sonoma for a bit. After about 20 minutes, our buzzer went off, and we were seated. The interior of the place was quite expansive, with high ceilings and fairly modern decor. (but I repeat, the funerary statuary creeps me out). After we were seated with our menus, we were left alone for quite a long time, without anyone coming by to ask us if we wanted something to drink or if we had any questions. And as I looked around, I realized that the place was really understaffed. We weren't forced to wait not because there weren't tables available, the restaurant was pretty busy, but because there wasn't enough wait staff to serve everyone. (and not enough staff to even clean the bathrooms - toilet paper would've been nice).

Looking over the menu, I was not surprised to see the typical Americanized Chinese food being offered - like General Tso's chicken and Moo Shu whatever. But to my dismay, there was no sign of the new grill menu. I looked over the little card I was sent, thinking maybe they hadn't started offering the new menu yet, maybe we were too early. (Even though I'd seen it on the website) So we decided to order a few items off the regular menu.

When our waitress finally showed up, she took our orders. We decided to share two appetizers and each got an entree. Our appetizers showed up pretty quickly. One was a vegetarian egg roll, but I found it odd that they had rolled it in cornstarch of flour prior to frying, and there was a strange residue left on the exterior of the egg roll. Plus the serving was kinda wimpy. Our shrimp potstickers turned out to be a bit better. They were pretty plump and filled with ground shrimp, carrots and other stuff and tasted decent enough, though they weren't really that hot.

As for our entress, I got the Dan Dan noodle, which I didn't think were that terrible. Tom thought the noodles were kinda gummy, and my main criticism is that it was on the salty side. Otherwise, it was edible. Tom ordered their version of General Tso's chicken (below), which was basically pieces of fried chicken covered in some sauce. The sauce had so much corn starch in it, that as it sat, it kinda solidified, but the worst part of his meal was the brown rice. On the menu, they said they had steamed it, but the rice was so overcooked that it was bordering on the texture of porridge. It kinda reminded me of when I lived in Italy and didn't have a rice cooker. I didn't know how to cook rice on the stove (and I still don't) and so my rice would always come out overcooked and mushy.

My favorite part of the meal was the fortune cookie. It was actually pretty good, though I don't think they made it. Tom said he liked his Pellegrino. Maybe our experience would have been slightly better had we had better wait service that evenly midly showed interested in us, but that wasn't going to happen. I told Tom that I might email P.F. Chang's and complain about the lack of a grill menu, but he said why bother, we'd never be coming back, and I agree.

AN OAKLAND WEDDING BANQUET

As many of you know, Huong and Kjell got married in the Bay Area a few weeks ago. Their ceremony was on Sunday, but they had the traditional Chinese banquet on Saturday evening at the Restaurant Peony in Oakland Chinatown. We arrived a bit late (having been told that everyone shows up late to these things), so food started being served shortly after our arrival.

We got seated at a table with all of our friends, and the table next to us was filled with even more friends (it's nice going to a wedding when you know so many people). And even though some of the food was unfamiliar to Tom and other guests at our table (and I just didn't eat a lot of what was served), we still enjoyed the plentiful food.

We started off with the typical plate of cold cuts, filled with slices of pork, pickled veggies and jellyfish. I enjoyed the jellyfish, though would have preferred it with more pickled veggies.

The next item that followed were these tasty fried crab balls. (There was also a plate of roast suckling pig, which I didn't photograph since I didn't eat any)

Next up, a dish or broccoli, shrimp and scallops- all very fresh and tasty.

Next, my favorite dish of the night, the Peking duck with those fried shrimp chips that my sisters and I used to fight over when we were kids.

Here's a photo of the duck after we had consumed the skin with the little pancakes (unfortunately, the didn't give us nearly enough scallions or plum sauce)

A plate of ginger scallion lobster was served.

Followed by a plate of pan fried noodles:

And the final dish, the steamed fish with soysauce, ginger and scallions.

Overall, the food was decent enough, but it was actually really oily and greasy, thus it was a heavy meal. Since it was so oily, I actually didn't end up stuffing myself and walked away from the meal a little hungry (amazingly enough). I'm not a huge fan of the banquet food at Peony, but I've heard from many sources that they have a great dim sum, so I'm hoping to try that out in the future.

Oh and to finish the meal, we had a bowl of red bean soup (the Chinese aren't really known for their desserts), but at least this was a nice, light way to finish the meal.

DA LIAN, BERKELEY

You've seen me write many times that Tom and I are big fans of a local food TV show called "Check Please, Bay Area." We've tried quite a few places that we've seen on the show, so when my parents came to town, we decided to try out a Chinese restaurant we'd seen on it, called Da Lian.

Da Lian is actually located really close to us, but it's not a place we would've tried normally. We tend to just walk by it, and check out other restaurants nearby. When we arrived at the restaurant, it was pretty empty, which was a good thing, since we had a party of 8. My mom and dad did all the ordering, and tried to gear it to more healthy stuff since my cousin, Cindy, was there and she's doing the vegan thing.

We started off with some vegetarian lettuce cups, which were pretty good. In the background, you can also see a grilled scallion/sesame pancake thing. Their version was quite good, and my little cousin, Max, liked it so much that we ended up ordering an extra one for him to take home.

Here's a pic of the lazy susan loaded down with food. I didn't bother taking individual pics of everything since there was so much of it and it all arrived pretty quickly.

Overall, Da Lian was a pretty good place. It wasn't the best Chinese food I've had here, but they made an effort to cut down on the sodium and make things a little healthier for us. Also, they did have a good variety of dishes, so I was glad that I was able to find a good place fo my parent's and Cindy's family. I don't think Tom and I will be going back on our own any time soon, but it's a good place to take a group, and I don't doubt that we'll be back at some point.

DIM SUM: WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE DO ON XMAS

It's starting to become a Xmas tradition for us to go to dim sum on Xmas morning- no matter where we are. Last year it was dim sum at the Pearl. This year, it was dim sum with my extended family in Monterey Park. I guess it's because there are so few places that are actually open and have good food, so people in the know flock to the open dim sum restaurants.

When I was a kid, I actually hated going to the dim sum restaurants in Monterey Park. Back then, there weren't any dim sum restaurants on the westside where we lived, so my parents would wake us up super early on Sunday (the only day we actually had the option to sleep in since we had Chinese school on Saturdays) and would haul our asses over to Monterey Park, which is East of LA. Ummm, maybe this is where you start seeing where I get my obsessiveness for food.

One place we often visited was NBC Seafood, which is where we headed on Xmas morning. When we arrived, we found out that NBC was under construction. It was still open and serving food, but there was very little parking, and a whole lot of people were trying to get in. We had 15 people, so we ended up splitting up into 2 tables. This place was sooooooooo busy. They were turning tables like crazy and they weren't very nice about it. But at least we got our fill or yummy dim sum dishes like:

Baked pork buns, chicken buns and fried sesame mochi

Spare ribs and flat rice noodles stuffed with shrimp or fried dough
This strange concoction of shrimp balls and corn- it was allright.
Panfried flat noodles with dried shrimp and green onions served with peanut sauce. The noodles themselves were rather tasteless, so you had to add the sauce to give it flavor.

These greasy, but super tasty cause they were just fried, shrimp dumplings.

And of course, the regular shrimp dumplings (Tom's learned how to call them by their correct name- har gow, and I made him show my mom), siu mai and some Chinese broccoli.

We spent over two hours there, and by the time we finished and left, there were even more people waiting to get it. I guess it is worth arriving early after all. But we had a great meal and I certainly look foward to getting more dim sum in LA next Xmas.

A GREAT DINNER A GREAT CHINA

My Aunt Sherida's in town to help take care of my soon to be born baby cousin and her friend had told her about a Chinese restaurant in Berkeley that's famous for its Peking duck. She didn't know the name, but a quick search on Google and we found out that the restaurant is called Great China and it's located in the heart of downtown Berkeley. So while my mom was visiting last weekend, we decided to check it out.

Unfortunately, parking is really hard to find in downtown Berkeley on a Friday night around dinner time, so it took me a while to find a spot. By the time I arrived, I was cold and hungry, but luckily, all the ordering had been taken care of.

We started off with a very good seafood soup. It was perfect for me, cause I'm coming down with another cold (as is Tom- I'm telling you, little kids are germ factories.)

Next, we were served this lovely Peking duck. On the side were these super thin pancakes, but what made the duck so special was two fold. First, they had removed all the fat off the super crispy skin. The other thing was that they had removed all the meat from the duck, so that was served in the pile under the skin. It was really great and my aunt kept saying this was the best duck she'd ever had.

My mom and aunt had done some major over ordering, though. So the food kept coming. Luckily, it was all really great. A lof less greasy and oily than some of the Chinese food I've become accustomed to. And the flavors were a bit different. Here's some ground chicken in lettuce cups:

Another one of our favorites were these freshly made steamed buns with crab. The buns were really delicious, and even though we were stuffed, we couldn't help be eat more of them.

Lastly, my mom had specially ordered lobster. It was something the restaurant didn't normally serve, and they had to order the lobsters especially for us. Even though I've had lots of lobster with ginger and green onion, but this one was unique due to the rice wine they used. Also, the lobster was exceptionally fresh and sweet tasting. I really enjoyed this dish a lot.

So dinner at Great China ended up bring really great. Though the service wasn't so wonderful, I wouldn't mind going back for some more of the delicious duck and lobster.

MORE BREAKFAST OPTIONS

I'm sure you guys are getting sick of reading about breakfast posts, and believe me, I do have other things to write about. But Tom and I continue to look for different breakfast options in our area. One place just 3 blocks from out apartment that Tom wanted to try out is a place called Nations. It's a burger place, but it's open 24 hours a day and everytime we drive by it in the morning, the parking lot is packed with cars.

So we figured we'd give it a try. The minute you walk in, you realize you're not in for a fancy meal. You don't have many options for breakfast, but they're all cheap. No wonder this place is so popular. Tom and I ordered our breakfast, and paid around $11 for the two of us.

Here's a shot of the seating area.

As you can see, it's nothing fancy. And kinda bordering on ghetto. Here's a pic of
Tom's Giant two egger:

You get double portions of eggs, bread, bacon and hash browns. Meanwhile, I ordered just toast and hash browns.

Ahhh, take a look at my fancy plastic cutlery. The hash browns weren't bad, but I don't think we'll be coming back. When I mentioned to my coworker that we'd gone to Nation's for breakfast, he mentioned that a teenager had been shot there recently....great...

Another one of our local and favorite breakfast places is Daimo. It's a great casual Chinese restaurant in the Ranch 99 complex near our house and we like going here in the mornings for some simple dim sum and congee. Here's a typical samples of what we get:

In front you can see my order of duck congee. Mmmm, my favorite. and Tom also got some different varieties of ride noodles- one with shrimp and the other with roast pork. We actually just had breakfast there yesterday and Tom got a bunch of dumplings.

Lastly, I haven't mentioned my CSA membership at all, but I'm pretty happy with it. I'm a member of the Fully Belly Farm CSA and I pick up my order every Friday morning about a half mile from our house. It's a little different from our CSA in Boston in that our boxes are smaller, but we also pay less. The selection has been quite good and I actually pick up my box in front of someone's house, so it's kinda sad that I don't have any real person to person contact with the actual farm members. But every week that I go, I see all these boxes piled up at the pick up point, and it's great knowing that so many other people are also supporting local farms.

Here's a picture of a typical box: You'll see radishes, corn, Komatsu (a type of green), squashes, green beans and a few other things. I hope that this will inspire some of you to join a local CSA in your area.

CATHY'S VISIT: DAY 1

I got three separate complaints yesterday that I need to update my blog, and I suppose you guys are right. I have been here nearly 5 weeks now. I've eaten out plenty of times, and I've even documented a few of my meals. But Tom and I are still working on getting our place set up (still need a couch), so blogging hasn't been one of my top priorities.

But my little sister, Cathy, and her boyfriend Ben visited last weekend, so I took the opportunity to try out a few new places and even took pics of it! Tom and I have found some great breakfast places to dine out at, so breakfast is something we go out for quite frequently. When Cathy and Ben visited, we took them to a place called La Note in downtown Berkeley. It's a French restaurant that was highly reviewed on Yelp, so I figured we'd give it a try. (oh, and if you're wondering how I find places to eat up here, Yelp is an important resource. It was started in the Bay Area, so a ton of people use it and there are a lot of reviews up).

So when we arrived at La Note, the place was packed, with a bit of a line at the door. We were able to snag a spot on a bench and helped ourselves to coffee as we waited to get seats (who knew that Berkeley students would be up so early on a Saturday morning). We probably waited about 15 or 20 minutes before we were given a table. And turns out, we just came at the wrong time. By the time we were seated, a bunch of tables had opened up and the line disappeared. Oh well.

Here's Tom with his menu.

As you can see, they're going for this kinda rustic French country side feel. I think it's pretty cozy and cute. They're also really famous for their pancakes (which Ben ended up ordering), but I wasn't in the mood for that. I got eggs, sausage and some really great homefries.

And here's the thing I've noticed having breakfast out in CA, almost everywhere will have chicken apple sausage as an option (a huge plus for the non pork/beef eater that I am) and almost everywhere has excellent homefries. The ones at La Note were roasted with rosemary and garlic cloves and had lots of crispy spots, just the way I like them.

Tom ordered two sides of meat (figures) and also went for a basket of breads. He said they were pretty good (though they had toasted the breads and he isn't a fan of toasted breads), but I got to try the croissant and I liked it.

I think Cathy and Ben also enjoyed their breakfasts. And even though it's a bit farther from us, I wouldn't mind going back again in the future. The service was a bit rush, but was friendly over all and the food was pretty good.

After breakfast, I headed off to work. But everyone came and did a tour and chocolate tasting with me. I was able to leave work an hour early to join my family for dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby.

Now, if you're Asian and familiar with the Bay Area, you've undoubtedly visited the Chinese restaurant in Emeryville at least once. It's called East Ocean Seafood Restaurant. It's well known because it sits out in the bay and you have this great view of San Francisco. We got a little lost trying to find it, but when I spotted a giant building that looked like a pagoda, we knew we had arrived. This place is super popular for weddings, and we knew there'd be one going on when we made the reservation. But they had no problem seating a party of 16 (yes, please keep in mind that I have a large family), so we went with it.

Since there was a wedding going on, the normal diners were all place in a smaller, separate dining room. My Aunt Sherida did the ordering, so we just sat back, ready to eat a lot.

First, we started off with lettuce cups with shrimp:

and that was followed by a corn soup:

For some reason, my aunt decided to order lots of dishes with tofu. There were like 4 of them. So here's shrimp with fried tofu:
crispy skinned chicken:
seafood with broccoli:
green veggies with tofu:
and steamed with with black bean sauce and tofu:
The food turned out to be quite good, though the waitservice was shoddy, probably overwhelmed due to the wedding. Everyone enjoyed dinner, though, and it was a great place to go for such a large group. My little cousin, Max, especially enjoyed the tanks full of seafood.