Sun Wah BBQ

I learned this Chinese New Year what happen's when one is racist. I refused to take the advice of a white foodie for Chinese New Year dinner recommendations. A white foodie who I should have known to trust, as I had tasted his cooking before and known it to be very good.

Sun Wah was where he recommended that I go, and Sun Wah is where I should have gone. Instead, we went to a place that I won't deign to mention in these pages. Let's just say that that Chinese New Year dinner did not end with much satisfied patting of a full belly that one expects after this holiday.

Luckily, my friend has a generous heart and allowed me to join in on a subsequent dinner gathering at Sun Wah, where I had Chinese New Year Dinner #2 and all was redeemed. Hail Mary! And the Peking Duck was great. Just thinking about it makes me wish I were seated at the table again, chopsticks ready to dive in, quick like a heron seizing its prey.

Sun Wah BBQ, 5041 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL

San Tung

My first meal back in San Francisco. A quick bite with my dad, who had picked me up from the airport.

My father loves Chinese dumplings, and San Tung does them pretty well.


You can really tell that they made their own dough, rolled it out by hand before stuffing the wrappers with filling. I would stick to the boiled dumplings and eschew the pan-fried ones, which are usually my favorite. The dough for the pan-fried ones is too thick and dense and sort of gobs up in your mouth.

It's been nice spending more one-on-one time with my dad in the last six months. I got to learn how my parents met, and it's funny to think that they were young and brash once. More than that, for once, I won't say!

San Tung, 1031 Irving (b/n 11th and 12th Ave.), San Francisco, CA

Queens Food Crawl: AA Plaza

On the corner of Main St. and 41st St. sits AA Plaza.


This is the window where you order food, where one needs to be faster than a businessman trying to get his coffee and bagel on a Monday morning at the deli on the ground floor of his midtown tower.

Further down you can see people preparing the food. Here a lady is prepping scallion pancakes.

We opted for fried fish balls cooked in a bubbling spicy broth. Fish balls on a stick make me think of Hong Kong, where food stalls sell all things on a stick: fish balls, octopus tentacles, little birds, sausages, and so forth.

Some milk tea to help dispel the searing afternoon heat.

Our favorite: rice crepe topped with sesame, hoisin and a peanut sauce.

GIANT scallion pancake. Also known as not-very-good scallion pancake. Don't get it. To thick and starchy, not scallion-y enough.

Since this was only our second stop, we were still trying to limit our food consumption. This is my friend trying to get one more bite.

AA Plaza, 40-66 Main St. (@ 41st), Flushing, NY

Queens Food Crawl: Spicy & Tasty

Towards the end of my stay in New York, I began to come to the slow realization that the eating opportunities were not limited to the island of Manhattan alone, and I suddenly had a burning desire to do a food crawl in Queens. Luckily, two of my friends were willing to accompany me on this trek.
The first thing I did upon entering Spicy & Tasty, a well known Sichuan restaurant, was plaster my face against the glass encasing this Sichuan pickle buffet. Horrifying to see all the variations of pickled vegetables that were only a subway ride away these past four years.

Fried meat. Scary bald Chinese man with giant cleaver ignoring me.

We decided to start with the spicy bamboo. It's really hard to pace oneself when the food is salty and has got a kick to it. We found ourselves repeating to each other that this was only the first stop, and we were not allowed to order everything on the menu.

Then we opted for the Dan Dan Noodles, and I sort of am torn on this decision. The noodles weren't that exciting, but we felt like it had been written up enough in reviews that we couldn't properly say we had visited the restaurant without ordering them.

These are the noodles after you mix the sauce that sits in the bottom with the noodles.

We were much happier with this squid in spicy sauce. Hello squid. I miss you. I still remember the pain of leaving this dish with squid still sitting on the plate. I felt so guilty and tried to explain to the waitress that we loved the food but we were on a mission and couldn't afford to finish the squid. I think she just thought we were weird.

Spicy & Tasty, 39-07 Prince St., Flushing, NY

Lao Sze Chuan

Even though it struck out two out of three, Lao Sze Chuan is the only restaurant I visited, only place I visited that weekend, that made me want to go back to the Second City. You'll have to watch what will hopefully be an inevitable transformation as the months roll by and I learn to appreciate that Chicago does indeed qualify as a major metropolitan area, but right now I'm struggling with the concept. Remember, however, that you are talking to the girl, who when she went back to visit the parents in San Francisco one early return trip felt that the city of hills seemed so flat without the requisite skyscrapers or high rises dotting nearly every block, that I literally expected a cow to start walking by the Victorian's at any moment: moo.

Lao Sze Chuan is a Sichuan restaurant that I found doing so desperate Internet searches for something to eat before my friend and I were headed to a comedy show at Second City (Funny, miraculously actually made me laugh despite my deep tiredness and general curmudgeonly personality, but a little mainstream, and played off of the audience's nervous and tentative homophobia and racism too much for my tastes.). Chowhound directed me to Lao Sze Chuan, and despite its corporate takeovers, it served me well this night.

Every meal at Lao Sze Chuan begins with a complimentary dish of spicy pickled cabbage: the Sichuan kimchee.

My friend and I are both Cantonese, and we caved and ordered a favorite of ours: stir fried pea shoot leaves. Mistake. The dish requires some poor minion to only pluck the top two, largest and most tender pair of leaves, discarding the stem and the accompanying smaller shoots. Lao Sze Chuan appears to have reversed the instructions and served a plate of what any self-respecting Cantonese restaurant would have fed to the rats. The stems were woody, but we were so happy to have some vegetables after Giordano's that we steadily worked our way through the heaping pile of greens.

Now Chowhound didn't knock things out of the ballpark. One commentator enthusiastically recommended the Pork in Peking Sauce which was both too salty and way too sweet.

But someone did make the brilliant suggestion of asking for the Ma Po Tofu with the ma lai or numbing spice famous in Sichuan cuisine. Silken tofu in a spicy sauce that just soaks into the rice, this was fantastic, and I was finally happy. To boot, the Pork in Peking Sauce was pretty good mixed in with the fiery punch of the Ma Po Tofu.

This dish alone gives me hope for the foreign land known as Chicago. There is hope for this town yet.

Lao Sze Chuan, 2172 S. Archer Ave., Chicago, IL, 312-326-5040

Joe Shanghai - Hit or Miss

I don't like saying this, but you probably have already known this for awhile. Well, if you care at all about food and have lived in Manhattan for more than 12 months, you should already know this: Joe Shanghai is hit or miss.

These scallion pancakes are good, but not great. A bit too thick and a bit too skimpy on the scallion.

The crab and pork soup dumplings are so pretty good, but this day wasn't one of those batches where you can't imagine ever being tired of them.

Here are the pork ones. I thought maybe this one was going to be one of those hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark days, and ordered too much. And it wasn't one of those days, and towards the end I was forcing them down. They were still tasty, but not at a dozen-plus per person.

String beans may be my new fried calamari. Something I repeatedly order, but which usually results in disappointment.

Joe Shanghai, lower your expectations, prepare for a wait, and you'll be okay.

Beijing Restaurant

My friend recommended Beijing Restaurant in San Francisco, and turns out my mom did too. It's rare that my mom will come to love the same thing as a lanky, former cross-country runner.

Beijing Restaurant tastes like home-cooked grub. Of course, my favorite thing was this take on crab rangoon - imitation crab meet with cream cheese, wrapped in a spring roll wrapper and deep fried. So fake and so good. I'd have pictures, but some of the photos got corrupted.

Both my mom and my friend like this warm pot dish they have on their menu, of which I also don't have a picture because of my photo editing program's decision to be cantankerous this morning. The restaurant, which Yao Ming has patronized (as evidenced by photos splashed on the walls), needs some help with the descriptions. The warm pot dish is appetizingly described as "Slice Pork With Preserved Vegetables in Warm Pot." Yum. The salted, preserved cabbage has a slightly sour taste the perfumes the milky broth. It's a comforting dish, nothing extraordinary, but tastes like something you'd want after a rainy day.

Then we got this crepe sandwich filled with chive and scrambled egg.

The crepe was paper thin and all-in-all, it was a well-executed dish. If you make it out there, look for a Beijing specialty noodle dish that has the Sichuan peppers that will numb your tongue if you bite into it. Sounds unappetizing, but it's oddly appealing.

Beijing Restaurant, 1801 Alemany Blvd. (b/n Ocean Ave. and Ruth St.), San Francisco, CA, 415-333-8182

I've got a problem, but I'm reluctant to tell you about it. It's the sort of problem that is along the lines of, "I'm really worried about myself. I've got too much money." Though trust me, with my student loans and love for delicious food, too much money is certainly not the problem right now.

My problem is that I think I eat too much good food. Which is to mean that it is getting harder and harder to be impressed. How does the New York Times food critic do it? How does this terror of the restaurant world stalk the streets of this fine town and try to eat for the Times readership. Though admittedly, said readership, being blessed to live in one of the finest dining towns on the planet, may also suffer from my predicament, so maybe the Times food critic is safe.

I became increasingly aware of this ailment when hitting up favorite spots while back in the Bay Area. I revisited this restaurant twice, which I guess I can now tell you is called Shanghai House. Over those two trips, I probably ate at least three orders of the soup dumplings myself. They're still good, but turns out you need to eat them while they are piping hot because within 10-15 minutes the broth either evaporates or soaks into the dumpling skin because the xiaolongbao are not very juicy by then.

The problem was that everything else tasted either not so great or fine, but not extraordinary. The green beans I raved about were not as crisp or salty upon the second and third engagement. The alcohol was too strong in a dessert of dumplings filled with red azuki beans in a rice wine broth. Their service at least has improved.

Maybe I should just be grateful that most of the food I eat is good, and that I'm lucky enough that maybe one out of three restaurant visits I get to try a dish that merits a moment of pause and appreciation.

Shanghai House, 3641 Balboa St. (b/n 37th and 38th), San Francisco, CA, 415-831-9288

Dinner Party: when did we grow up?

I am still shocked to discover, somehow, while we weren't watching, my friends and I became sulf-sufficient, and could merit the title of adulthood -- if at least, only nominally.

My college friend invited me over for dinner at her apartment which she decorated around this chandelier.

It was a lovely evening of wine, good food and better conversation.

Clockwise from top: Rolf Beeler Hoch Ybrig, Raw Milk Taleggio, Pata Cabra Goat Cheese

I could not get enough of this cheese plate. If she had just served this and the wine, the dinner party would have been a success in my book.

Upon her mother's instruction, my friend didn't season these scallops at all, and they were very flavorful. So maybe we're adults with a bit of momma's help. No shame in that.

This piece of halibut is gigantic. I can't imagine these thing flopping its way out of the sea.

It made for some hefty portions.

Brace yourself: she cooked this corn in the microwave.

I swear, one of these days I'm going to nuke a live lobster and see if it really does keep the juices in.

The tea she served with dessert was a little bit gimmicky. You dump this ball of tea leaves into a pot of hot water.

And slowly this miniature floral arrangement reveals itself. This gimmick more than worked. I was enthralled.

The baklava came with high hopes, as she grabbed it from a shop in Queens. I figure anything that comes from one of the other boroughs, has got to be authentic. Lo and behold, there was corn syrup in the ingredient list!

Now that just doesn't seem quite right. And neither did the fit of my pants when I left their apartment.

The Mother of All Food Crawls

I was going to write about dinner at Uva with a high school friend visiting with her husband from California, but then I remembered that back in 2005, pre-engagement, the two of them visited and embarked upon the Mother of All Food Crawls.

We're talking fourteen food stops in 48 hours.

View The Mother of All Food Crawls in a larger map

Some were planned, some spontaneous. Myself and two high school friends (G and K) living in New York took around S and A from the Bay Area for a whirlwhind eating tour. I stole these pictures from my friend, and here we go

Day 1, ~10:30 p.m. Sushi Samba, planned
A complimentary appetizer of flash-fried Japanese river crabs because we had to wait a really long time for our table despite making 9:45 p.m. reservations.

Not pictured: edamame, blistered Shishito peppers, fried calamari.

Neo Tokyo Roll (yellowfin tuna, tempura flakes, and aji panca); Green Envy Roll (wasabi pea crust, tuna, salmon, asparagus, and aji); Pacific Roll (king crab, avocado, Asian pear, soy paper, and wasabi-avocado cream).

Two orders of Kampachi (Japanese yellowtail) Sashimi Tiradito with yuzu, black truffle oil, and sea salt.

Yellowtail Ceviche with ginger, garlic and soy.

Miso-marinated Chilean Sea Bass.

Day 1: ~12:00 a.m., Flute Bar, unplanned

Foie gras platter, smoked salmon platter, and bubbly obviously.

Day 1: ~1:00 a.m., L'Express, unplanned

Somehow we decided we needed Dinner #2.

Steak tartare with mesclun greens, moules frites, chocolate mousse cake, tarte tatin.

Day 2: 8:00 a.m., Norma's, planned

We ate family style modified for individual orders, while sitting around a circular table. Five people, five dishes, eat one-fifth, pass to left.

Seared rock lobster and asparagus omelette with home fries.

Crab cakes spice with Habanero peppers with dill yogurt mustard sauce.

Mandarin Orange French Toast.

Artichoke Benedict

Day 2, ~10:00 a.m., nap

Four friends passed out on my bed.

Day 2, ~12:30 p.m., Rice to Riches, unplanned

Marscapone rice pudding.

Pear rice pudding.

Day 2: ~1:30 p.m., Cafe Habana, planned

Mexican grilled corn with this delicious mayonnaise slathered all over; chicken diablo sandwich with fries; avocado and white cheese sandwich with fries; Cuban sandwich with fries, chicken dish with beans.

Someone couldn't wait for the food-paparazzi picture.

Day 2: ~3:30 p.m., il laboratorio del gelato, planned

Twelve flavors available, five people, 2 flavors per small serving, the solution seemed obvious.

Which two flavors did we not want to try?

Chocolate gelato, rum raisin gelato, vanilla rum gelato, peanut butter gelato, papaya sorbet, tangerine sorbet, coffee gelato, green tea gelato, raspberry gelato, lemon sorbet.

Day 2: ~6:30 p.m., Joe Shanghai, planned

Three orders of crab and pork soup dumplings, one order of pork soup dumplings, one order of string beans with pickles.

Day 2, ~9:00 p.m., A Salt & Battery, planned

It's so sad, the Second Avenue location has closed. You'll have to go to the west side for your fish 'n chips fix now.

One large order of cod bites, one small order of chips.

Gone in no time. End of a long day, but we've still got it!

Day 3: ~8:00 a.m., Le Pain Quotidien, planned

I like the 19th street location best because they bake the bread there.

One Tuscan Platter of Parmesan, ham, tapenade, the some amazing ricotta, pesto, sun dried tomatoes, olives and greens.

Mesclun greens salad.

Two orders of baguette with jam and praline spread.

Day 3: ~10:30 a.m., Artisanal, unplanned

Large basket of gougeres.

Sinful Experience Flight: Humboldt Fog (goat, California, airy yet rich, tangy finish); Brillat Savarin (cow, French, velvety, neutral to pronounced; Robiolo Due Latte (cow, Italy: yielding, lactic subtle).

Sampled of cheese condiments and some Langres to the left (cow, France, salty but not too aggressive, smoky)

Great Iberian Peninsula Flight: Serra de Estrella (sheep, Portugal, rich, intense, subtle toffee finish); Pau (goat, Spain, creamy, slightly sweet and nutty); Cabrales (3-milk, Spain, complex, buttery, numbingly intense)

Day 3: ~1:30 p.m. Alice's Tea Cup, planned

We went to the UWS location, but they've got the east side covered now too.

Scones: pumpkin, orange walnut, strawberry chocolate, banana butterscotch.

Clotted cream and jam.

Carrot-Cumin Sandwich.

Alice's tea and Rooibus Bourbon tea.

Day 3: ~6:00 p.m., Ota-Ya, planned

Sadly, this place has closed down. They had the best tempura. Now the next best option in the neighborhood is Tenzan for fantastic rolls.

Shrimp tempura.

Black Draft Roll, Crispy Salmon Roll, Mexican Roll, Volcano Roll, three orders of "white tuna" sashimi.

Day 3: ~8:30 p.m., Chola Eclectic, planned

Uttapam (rice and lentil vegetable pancake)

Chicken chutneywalla (curried mango chicken, mint, coriander, fresh ginger); Goa fish curry (spiced Chilean Sea Bass, fresh coconut, tamarind, chili-tomato sauce); Murli's chingri malai (spiced shrimp, raisins, ginger, fennel infused, tomatoes-coconut sauce); Bhindi masala (sauteed okra, onions, bell peppers, ginger, fresh tomatoes.)