After spending some time in China, you will find that the Chinese people are very prideful, and not simply prideful about their country, but about their regions as well. It seems like if you go anywhere in China, you will hear that whatever region you’re in has the best tea, best dumplings, best noodles and really anything else you can think of (best dog?!). The same goes for hot pot. So if you may think hot pot is simply a bot of boiling water to cook food in, you are wrong.
Just across from Yang’s new location in the new mall on Wujiang Street is another place that serves up xiaolongbao (soup dumplings). It’s called Nan Xiang Steamed Bun Restaurant and cooks them up in the original steamed way. Nan Xiang is actually the part of Shanghai where xiaolongbao originated and you can still find the original in its location near the Yu Garden, but the line is always crazy-long, so when I saw the Nan Xiang restaurant right next to Yang’s, I figured I would give them a taste.
Once upon a time, there was a street called Wujiang in Shanghai just outside the Nanjing West Subway Station. At all hours of the day, the street was lined with food vendors and inside the old buildings were delicious, old-school Chinese restaurants. On that street was a hole in the wall called Yang’s Fried-Dumpling, which served a delicious xiaolongbao (pronounced shiao-long-bow) with the special twist that it was fried (as opposed to the traditional steaming method). Xiaolongbao is one of Shanghai’s signature dishes, a dumpling stuffed with pork that creates a soup inside when cooked. The dumpling is sealed air-tight so the soup stays inside until it is eaten. Even though Yang’s went against tradition by frying their dumplings, there was always a line outside their door.
On our way to my Chinese homeland, the girlfriend and I happened to have a layover at the Tokyo-Narita Airport in Japan. This was great for the girlfriend since she loves her sushi and also great for me because I was hoping to find myself some Melon Fanta. Sadly, the Melon Fanta was nowhere to be found, but at least we found some sushi. The little airport restaurant was appropriately named “Sushi” (I thought Japanese people were supposed to be creative) and we took a seat inside.
I’m not the kind of guy who judges a book by its cover. So just because a restaurant looks good on the outside doesn’t mean the food will actually taste good. But there is at least one exception and that is Flor de Izote. Located at the sketchy end of North Hollywood, I took one look at this place and knew it would be awesome. Why? Orange! Everywhere. The entire exterior was orange and so was the interior. And not surprisingly, I was wearing orange that day, so I was pretty much camouflaged. So yes my favorite color is orange, and hell yes I was excited to get down with some food in an orange room.
Out in Hollywood, there is a little taco stand on a corner called Cactus Taqueria. Having heard a lot about this place, I felt that I needed to stop there to have a Mexican dinner before the Belle and Sebastian concert. I showed up and found the little stand in the corner of a parking lot on Vine. There were a few people waiting for their orders and another few groups eating out in the outdoor, yet covered seating area. It looked like a great place to find a good taco.
EDIT: Apparently this place is now called Blitz, but still reps the state of Michigan.
A couple weeks ago I headed to Phoenix with the girlfriend for a wedding. But this wasn’t just any weekend, it happened to be the weekend of the Michigan-Michigan State game. It’s usually a pretty big game, but with both teams undefeated (at the time), it was a game I couldn’t miss. Fortunately, said girlfriend found an interesting bar for me to watch it at in Old Town Scottsdale. It was called Upper Deck Sports Grille and was dedicated to Michigan and Michigan State fans. You would think Phoenix would be big enough to host ex-Michiganders at more than one bar, but you would be wrong.
Not too long ago (at least in my head), Ajisen Ramen opened its doors at the Century City food court. I’m not sure where else this Japanese ramen chain exists in the US, but I do know it is a pretty popular and slightly upscale chain in the land of Asia. I decided to check it out to see how it held up against its Asian brethren and found that the menu was pretty similar to what I remembered from Asia. It had a variety of ramen options and some tasty-looking Japanese appetizers.
A long long time ago, the girlfriend and I went on a binge of buying up restaurant gift certificates. They would have specials like $20 for $10 and other such things that seemed like no-brainers. Fast forward to six months later and loads of these gift certificates are sitting around collecting dust. We could take it no more and decided to use one at a restaurant called Food Fair by Diego. It is in the strange area that is sort of West Hollywood or Beverly Hills or Melrose or something like that, so even though the name sounded like it would be a pretentious joint (how many typical restaurants put the chef’s name in the restaurant name, it actually turned out to be in a one of those corner strips and was kind of a hole in the wall.
One day, while driving down Ventura in Studio City, my coworkers and I spotted a burger place that looked great. Not only that, but they also spotted a comic book store above and geeked out. Now I am not ashamed to say that I once collected comics, but those were eventually replaced by beer and burgers, so I was much more interested in the burgers in this case. The place was called Fat Jack’s and we vowed to return one day.