Bacon and Avocado Musubi – What Floats UR Boat

This place specializes in literally only 3 musubi options and they are all nothing like what you would expect from “sushi.” If you get all three they come in a boat, but I needed to conserve stomach space and stuck with one filled with chipotle caramelized bacon and avocado. The avocado was insanely creamy and the bacon was insanely perfect. The rice and seaweed added perfect balance to an already great mix of food.

Winner Winner – The Naughty Churro

I love me a good churro, and I love me some fried chicken and waffles. While this sandwich of churro “buns,” fried chicken and maple butter isn’t exactly how you would picture a churro, it is easily the must gluttonously delicious thing I could find at the 626 Night Market and worth every penny/calorie.

Pix*e Halo Halo – Mix*E

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of sweet red beans. Maybe it’s the gringo in me, but I love me some Halo Halo, a Filipino dessert filled with crushed ice, coconut, jellies, ube ice cream and pudding, plus those sweet beans. Fortunately, Mix*E offers a beanless version that is fantastic.

Balut – Kapamilya Filipino Restaurant

Once upon a time I visited the Philippines. Unfortunately at the time I hadn’t heard of Balut and when I came back and started meat blogging I knew I had to try it out. Sadly it took until now to try it. Basically, it’s a boiled, fertilized duck egg and tastes much better than it looks. There will certainly be a full Strange Eats post to read eventually, but until now enjoy this video:

Food court food isn’t typically known to be great, but then food court food isn’t generally Middle Eastern. Massis has kind of built a food court empire around LA, dishing out mostly Middle Eastern food with a sprinkling of random things like Argentinean Skirt Steak and Idaho Trout. I found myself at the Santa Anita mall and went looking for kabobs.

My kabob of choice was Persian Koubideh because I couldn’t get that stuff out of my mind after my recent visit to Raffi’s in Glendale. I watched as they grilled the ground up beef in the background of the stall, and it took a surprisingly long time for a food court spot. I assumed this meant there was a certain amount of attention to detail correlated to the preparation.

Eventually it arrived on a bed of rice, with the Russian Bean Salad I had chosen for my side and a tomato and pita for some reason. The koubideh turned out to be pretty great with some solid seasonings and plenty of it. Everything else, though, was somewhat disappointing. For one, the rice was plain. And I know that’s how rice generally is, but not Persian rice, which can have amazing things mixed in. Then there was the side, which I guess tasted okay, but it was pretty disappointing that hummus was not an option.

Regardless, Massis served me pretty well for a food court. The centerpiece of the meal was very good and fit into my expectations of food court prices. If only the sides were better, I would consider making Massis my go-to food court spot.

In a land of perpetual drought (Arizona), there is a place that dares put cucumber slices in its water, thus ruining its precious resource. That place is O.H.S.O. in Arcadia, Scottsdale and while scholars maintain that the meaning behind O.H.S.O. was lost thousands of years ago, today it means a few things. One is biking, another is dogs, yet another is brewery and finally it also represents brunch.

Unfortunately, we did not go for brunch. We went for lunch on a weekday, when the vast menu is whittled down to a few choice items. Of these choice options, unvegan options were quite limited, but I managed to find a burger with nearly everything I could ask for. It was called the AZ Burger and was topped with jalapeno cream cheese, poblano aioli, onions, lettuce and tomato, with a side of fries. I ordered without the onions, lettuce and tomato and asked for it medium-rare.

And, apparently due to my picky-ness, O.H.S.O. decided to just bring me out my burger fully deconstructed. It was something I had never seen before, but I can’t say it was a bad thing. The only trouble was my not knowing exactly the balance of ingredients they would have put together in the kitchen. I did my best and the burger was, well, fine. I thought the patty itself was pretty nice with a good ground and a nice amount of pink in the middle, however, the cream cheese and poblano aioli just didn’t really add anything to the burger. In fact, I might have just been happier with a slice of cheese and some ketchup.

Yet, I found that O.H.S.O. was an intriguing enough restaurant to come back to. I wouldn’t get the same burger (or water for that matter), but I wouldn’t mind seeing if their brunch was worthwhile.

Once upon a time, some great people brought me to a place called Din Tai Fung. Although I was living in Shanghai at the time, I had no idea what to expect on this first visit to Xintiandi and my first introduction to Xiaolongbao (way before it was cool). Luckily, they taught me how to bite in without scalding the insides of my mouth, and I quickly fell in love. More than six years later, I finally made in back to Din Tai Fung, but this time it was in Arcadia, California. Despite the obvious distance between Arcadia and Shanghai, much of Arcadia looks like it was pulled directly out of China. The Din Tai Fung, though, looked little like its counterpart across the Pacific.

In Shanghai, Din Tai Fung is a fancy pants dumpling house. It’s in an affluent part of town and not exactly priced for commoners. In Arcadia it’s a pretty basic place with prices for anyone (to be honest, the actual dollar amount of the food in each place is probably very similar, however, people make much more money on average over here). Nonetheless, the options on the menu were quite similar to what I remembered from back in the day.

So, like any good dumpling-seekers, we began with old-fashioned (pork) Xiaolongbao and its not-so-old-fashioned cousin with pork and crab. Combined with the black vinegar on the table, these guys brought back some great memories. Although they came out steaming, the soup inside wasn’t as hot and scalding as other Xiaolongbao I’d had in the past. Of the two dumplings, I definitely preferred the pork on its own without the crab. To me, there is something pure (not in the Kosher way) and simple about about those pork soup dumplings that makes them great, main reason why I keep on getting dumplings delivery every weekend.

Next, we had the Shanghai Rice Cake with shrimp. The dish consisted of little rice cakes stir fried in a delicious brown sauce, with shrimp and some sort of green leaf that was only there because I was sharing with my friend. The little rice cakes are kind of noodle-y and do a great job of absorbing flavor and adding a unique texture to the dish. They definitely made for a nice change from all the dumplings we were eating.

And speaking of dumplings, we also had ourselves a batch of Shrimp and Pork Shao Mai. As opposed to the crab and pork Xiaolongbao, these kept the two animals separated and depending on the way they were eaten, it could be a mix of meats or not. While these dumplings weren’t bad by any means, I definitely didn’t feel that they were nearly as good as the Xiaolongbao.

We finished off the main meal with some classic Pork Buns. These thick, bready buns were filled with an entirely different pork than any of the dumplings we had eaten. These were more on the sweet side and a tasty way to mix things up. Yet, after destroying so many dumplings earlier in the meal, the pork bun was a bit hard to tackle because of its size.

For the finale, we ordered Sweet Taro Dumplings. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know I have a special place in my heart and stomach for taro and the prospect of eating taro dumplings excited me. They came out looking like regular Xiaolongbao, but inside they were filled with the good old purple stuff. Well, kind of. They weren’t lying when they called them “Sweet Taro” because these sure were sweet. For someone who loves sweet red bean, the sweet taro would be perfect, but I am not one of those people. It was the first time I had been let down by taro and I will be sure to think twice before eating a sweetened version of that delicious tuber again.

Din Tai Fung definitely delivered the goods on the dumplings. Although it has been a while since I’ve been in China, they definitely did justice to my memory of the motherland. Now, if only a branch of Yang’s Fried-Dumplings would open on this side of the ocean, we’d really be talking!