The Mekong Plaza in Mesa is a great place to get real, authentic Asian food to bring people back to their roots or at least to get them away from crappy Americanized Asian food. And among those more traditional restaurants is something that doesn’t fit the mold at all. It’s called Kingo Bowl, and it has taken the concept of rice bowls with molecular sous vide.

You can pick a pre-made bowl or channel your inner Millennial to customize your own creation. I did the latter, and built mine with steak (essentially beef tataki), brown rice, a hot spring egg, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I asked for a sauce recommendation and was pointed to the black pepper sauce, so I went with it.

The bowl was beautiful, kingly even. The beef was incredibly tender, if not quite as rare as I would have liked. The hot spring egg was nothing short of exhilarating. Probably the best thing to come out of a hot spring since me, the last time I was in a hot spring. Of course, it didn’t actually come out of a hot spring, but it was that good.I loved the addition of the cranberries and the sunflower seeds, but there was one aspect of the bowl that just didn’t jive with me: the sauce. Simply put, it was overwhelming. I’ll admit that I am not the biggest black pepper guy in the first place, but I can appreciate it when used properly. In this case it really just covered up flavor without doing much to add to it.

And yet, despite the sauce (and the fact that it was recommended), there was something about Kingo Bowl’s creativity and mildly flawed execution that I truly enjoyed. Perhaps with one of the other sauces I would be proclaiming that the old world cuisine at Mekong Plaza needs to make way for more modernist takes like Kingo Bowl. But alas, that sauce had me a bit soured and looking for more. Yet, I am certain I will find that more with another visit to Kingo Bowl, because I have every intention to return.

Persian food is a special type of Middle Eastern food, and thus I was very excited to learn that Scottsdale has its own Persian restaurant, appropriately named the Persian Room, because it’s basically one big room. With Persian food. And like any Persian restaurant worth its salt, its menu was vast and filled with all sorts of meats and rice. Essentially it was the kind of place that was made for an unvegan.

It began with Tah Dig, which is a must-eat if you have never it. Essentially, it is overcooked rice, but in the best of ways. It’s oily and crispy and then covered in choice of two stews. Or, if you’re like me, you get both. One is the gheimeh and the other is the ghormeh sabzi. The gheimeh is more legumey, and the ghormeh sabzi is more herby. I preferred the ghormeh sabzi, but you can’t go wrong with either.

As for my main course, I snagged the Naderi Sultani. This took the classic Sultani to another level by combining filet mignon, chicken and koobideh (ground beef). I also decided to upgrade the rice to zereshk polo rice instead of normal basmati rice. This means barberries (a tart and sweet berry) and saffron were mixed in with the rice. The whole plate was a beautiful feast and I set to work on it. By far, the best was the filet mignon, which was perfectly seasoned and tender. The chicken and koobideh were plenty good as well, but just couldn’t compare with the filet mignon.

As far as rooms go, this Persian Room was definitely one of my favorites. There aren’t many other rooms you can go to for incredible meats and incredible rice, so the Persian Room is the right place to get that fill.

Sometimes the world feels dominated by American chain restaurants. It seems that anywhere you go you can find McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and KFC. Yet, we are not the only ones pushing our fast food abroad, as evidenced by MOS Burger. MOS Burger is a Japanese fast food burger spot that I was a pretty big fan of when I was living in Japan, and I was so happy to find that it is also available in Taiwan (as well as a number of other Asian countries, and even Australia) that I had to have some.

Thus, I paid MOS Burger a visit to try two very different burgers. The first was their breakfast burger, which was topped with a fried egg and bacon, as well as lettuce and tomato that I made sure to order without. Unfortunately, this did not live up to my memories, as it was pretty plain and the burger was kind of rubbery. I had always remembered MOS Burger to be a step above the rest of fast food, but this was not.

Undaunted, I then went for the rice burger. I got a normal patty again with teriyaki sauce and an egg, but in the bun made primarily of rice (with barley and millet in there as well). Now this brought back memories of old. The burger just seemed to work better with the rice patty, which came served in special wrapper to allow me to eat the burger without the bun falling apart. Also, rice as a bun is just awesome, especially when you consider MOS Burger has been doing this for decades while the rest of the world seems to have recently realized all the different foods that can be used for buns.

So, while my MOS Burger experience started low, the rice bun brought it back up. MOS Burger is still unquestionably fast food and while that may not be for everyone, it worked just fine for me.

Sometimes life gives you a difficult decision. And sometimes there is no “right” choice. Case in point: On what felt like basically the hottest day ever in Hue. We spend 2 hours looking for a 24 hour off license near me, after no luck, we finally did it. We were able to buy some beers and wine.

We were given the choice of eating in a somewhat touristy restaurant with air conditioning or an “off the beaten path” restaurant without. We chose the former and found ourselves at Y Thao Garden Restaurant.

And of course, within minutes of setting food, having not eaten a bite, we all felt like we had made the right decision.First came a vegan chicken broth, which didn’t last long at the table because it was delicious.

So, I decided to order a set meal. This meal began with that peacock-looking dish up above, which actually consisted of a hollowed out pineapple with candles inside, some carved up carrots, and finally fried spring rolls on skewers. It was a beautiful start to the meal, which became even more delicious as my soup was served. Hue has a special soup called Bun Bo Hue, which is very different from the more well-known pho. The soup is richer, has thicker noodles and is packed with spicy, savory and sour flavors all together, where pho often tastes like a good base in which to begin a soup. Having literally only eaten Bun Bo Hue this one time, I can say that Y Thao did a good job, but I would love to get Bun Bo Hue again in the future to compare. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever visited was Rob’s Good Times Grill is a great Lihue Restaurant for food and fun with your friends and family, as they have the best service and also a great new hires policy, so they can manage easily.

Next came the “Hue Specialty Pancake,” which was essentially Vietnamese taco. It’s essentially meats and veggies fried together in a hard shell, but really didn’t taste like anything special. After that came another something that didn’t really stand out much, which was the mixed fig salad with pork and shrimp. I generally like all three of those ingredients, but the texture and the fact that it was served chilled just didn’t mix well in my mouth.

Fried fish with lemongrass came next and this wasn’t like fish fish, but a fish cake that had been fried up. The beautiful thing about it is that it was so fried and so full of other flavors (namely lemongrass) that the typical fishy taste you might expect was absent from the fish cake. Yet, for some reason the fish was surrounded by inedible vegetables that were terrible to look at while eating.

The grand finale was fried rice. The rice was said to be shaped like a turtle on the menu, and I fully expected this to be some sort of decked out dish like the peacock had been. Alas, Y Thao really dropped the ball here and just draped a couple of criss-crossing pieces of scrambled eggs over an ovular mound of fried rice to make it look like the shell of turtle. Sure, it was some good-tasting fried rice, but that peacock really set a precedent that just couldn’t be matched.

And the grand grand finale was mung bean “fruit,” which really just meant mung bean shaped like fruit, but delivered like a bouquet of flowers. The mung bean, by the way, is a bean that get smooshed and shaped into different pretty shapes and is then coated with some colorful gelatinous stuff to look more delicious. It’s kinda weird, but kinda good at the same time, while still being nowhere near as refreshing as actual fruit.

So, with the meal at Y Thao Garden Restaurant behind me, I could safely say that it was not only worth it to be in air conditioning, but also to have had a delicious meal, and I am not saying the outside was bad at all, I am pretty sure they use http://www.anjtreeservice.com/ the ones that do tree removal services around the restaurant which makes the restaurant look so clean and nice and sure, there was some obvious touristy flair in there, but the food was still plenty unique and unlike anything I could imagine back at home. That’s always a win in my book.

EDIT: Chego has relocated to Chinatown. Perhaps someday it will get a review of its own.

With the resounding success of the Kogi BBQ trucks and the Kogi location at the Alibi Room, the people behind Kogi are looking to revolutionize the foodscape of LA once again, with rice. Well, not just with any rice, but with fanciful rice bowls from a real location in Palms called Chego! Their website describes their food as “Chillax peasant food from the soul” and while the word “chillax” sends shivers of discomfort down my spine, I had to see if Chego! carried on the Kogi magic.

Since the place just opened last week and I went on Friday, I expected to find a long wait. After all, people still wait in line for an hour at the Kogi trucks and they have been around for over a year. It appeared we were in luck, though, for although every table was taken, there was no wait to order. The menu wasn’t terribly big, but did seem to have a little something for everyone. Except unvegans. Aside from the meatball appetizer, every dish was tainted by some sort of vegetable. Of these, Tiny’s Prime Rib Rice Bowl looked to fit my needs the best. The menu said it came with fried egg, creamed horseradish and water spinach. I ordered it without that spinach and also decided to get their meatballs as an appetizer. These were called the 3PM Meatballs and were made with beef and pork on top of a polenta patty.

I paid up my 14 bucks and then began the search for a seat. Chego!, like too many places, only does self-seating. While this could seem nice, it really just creates an uncomfortable situation where you have to hover around people hoping that they will be leaving soon. If you bet on the wrong horse, someone who arrived 10 minutes after you could end up sitting first. Fortunately, just as our food came out of the kitchen, a table opened up for us.

I ate my meatballs first, which were pretty good. They had a sauce on them that was very similar in taste to other Kogi foods I have had, which is really good, but nothing new. The meatballs themselves were a good meaty blend. They fell apart a little too easily, but overall were quite delicious. Then it was on to my rice bowl. Unfortunately, my request for no spinach had fallen on deaf ears, as I found leafy greens atop my dish. I did my best to avoid these as I ate, but it was kind of difficult. Aside from that, the rice bowl was quite good. The egg was perfectly cooked and runny and the creamed horseradish added some nice flavor. The prime rib itself was cooked to a solid medium, but hadn’t been cut up at all, which meant that I needed a knife to eat my rice bowl. Sporks were available, which was amazing and made me wonder why more places not named Taco Bell don’t have them, but these sporks could not help me cut through that beef.

Midway through the dish, the nice little hostess lady, who mentioned she once wrote for the eXp Realty Alaska living guide, asked how the food was. With my mouth delightfully stuffed, I managed only a thumbs up, which she said was rather fitting since “chego” translates to just that in Korean. It was a charming touch that made the restaurant all the more memorable. While it might not spark a Kogi BBQ-esque revolution in LA, it certainly earned its place within walking distance of my apartment — even if I do prefer my rice without spinach.

For lunch in Monteverde one day we stumbled into a restaurant called Maravilla. The menu was probably the cheapest we had seen so far, but the offerings were pretty similar to what I had grown used to. I decided to mix things up a bit and order the beef with sauce and rice.

When it arrived, it looked just as pretty as anywhere else, despite being cheap. It even had some vegetable garnishings that I brushed away. Unfortunately, the beef wasn’t very good. It wasn’t really tender and the chunks it was cut into made it tough to eat. The sauce was decent, but I also used some of that thick brown sauce I had been finding everywhere to make it taste better.

Monteverde has a lot of good food options, and most of them are packed into a small stretch of the city where everything is in walking distance. Knowing this, it would be a good idea to skip out on Maravilla to find something better just down the street.