As a vegetarian I’ve had a lot of tofu in my life. Some of it has been very good, some of it has been very bad, but it’s hard to tell how tofu is going to be until you eat it. When I saw that SeriousEats was giving away a pair of tickets to a tofu making demonstration at En Japanese Brasserie, I was intrigued. To enter the contest you had to write a haiku about tofu, so I submitted the following “masterpiece”:

people say “tofu”
like it’s a curse or bad word
have they eaten it?

I didn’t expect to win, so I promptly forgot about it. Then late Friday night I got a congratulatory email from SeriousEats, which left me scrambling to change my work schedule and to find a second person to join me at the last minute for a class on tofu.

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In the morning dead salty fish and at night tasty deep fried fish cakes stuffed with cheese.
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Before leaving for LA I knew exactly where and what I wanted to eat once the plane lands in LA. A restaurant in Rowland Heights call The Boat has two of my favorite dishes. One is the boneless Hainam Chicken Rice and the other one, the dish that I wanted to eat, is the Continental Fried Rice. What makes it continental I have no freakin idea but I know it’s freakin awesome. Tomato fried rice topped with one fried chicken thigh and leg, one fried egg, half a fried hot dog and a piece of tomato!!!!
Sadly there will be no photo of this since I didn’t get to eat it. Once I got onto the plane I didn’t feel so good, kept drinking hot tea and felt really tired. When we landed I told my sister I wanted something hot and comforting so she and her bf took me to Taiko for Japanese food. Taiko is located in Brentwood at the top floor of a mini mall and is known for their udon. After scanning through the menu I decided on a bowl of oyakodon. When I told the waitress what I wanted she asked me if I wanted just that or the combo. With the combo I would get a small bowl of oyakodon and a bowl of basic udon. After hearing that option I quickly changed my order. It was silly of me to not eat udon at a place known for their udon right?!
For $11 I got a not so small bowl of good, not great, oyakodon and a big bowl of super silky udon with pieces of rice krispie like tempura. After my first slurp of the udon I really wanted to say thanks to the waitress for letting me know about the combo. The noodles were smooth and silky great for slurping. The broth was clean and tasty. The bits of tempura, now soggy, gave the noodle an extra level of tastiness. One minor criticism, I can’t believe I’m going to say this but….., they gave me a lot of udon. Along with the bowl of oyakodon there were just too much food for me but I did my best to finish the udon. The oyakodon was alright, tasted great but the egg wasn’t runny enough.
Overall it was a superb meal and for $11…come on!!!

- Taiko 11677 San Vicente Blvd Ste 302, Los Angeles

It’s burger and cake day!!

Started the day early since it was a long drive out to Santa Monica. We were going to have lunch at The Counter, a burger place that my older sister had gone to many times and had tempted me with her photos many times. Finally it’s my turn to try this place and see how just good this place is.

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Yeah that’s a bowl of bacon and spinach and nothing else.

What’s not to love about izakaya?! Beer, small plates, good food, yakitori, chicken skin!!, pork belly, sake, noisy, usually quite small and hidden, and just makes me feel I’m in Japan sorta. Though I do hate the long wait seriously I got to Hagi at 6:10pm and it was already PACKED!!! Do people not work?

Hagi is situated JUST outside of Times Square between and underneath couple other Japanese restaurants. Here’s a tip, once you get down look for the clipboard and write your name down. Don’t wait to get a person and tell them, dinner for 2 please they will probably just tell you to write your own name down on the clipboard.

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Cafe Zaiya is a one-stop place for many Japanese goodies, especially the one in Midtown (there’s also one in the East Village) because you can also find Beard Papa there. I don’t go there as often as I want to because it’s a bit of a walk from work. During lunch time the place is packed and chaotic! No matter where you stand you’ll be in someone’s way and standing you will. There are just so many choices so many decisions to make about what to eat you will be standing there quite a while. Everything looks so good I just want to eat the entire store every time I go there but must always save room for beard papa!! I love bread, rice, bento boxes, sweets and Cafe Zaiya has all of them and more.

The most recent trip I got a jumbo chicken sandwich(wasn’t that jumbo compare to the other chicken sandwiches), curry pan(curry sauce stuffed inside bread then deep fried), and a cream puff. Bad thing about getting a sandwich with a piece of deep fried chicken, the once crispy outside is now soggy. Besides that the sandwich was quite delicious, the bread nice and chewy. Jumbo it was, I was pretty full after that but on to the next. The curry pan was quite oily and a bit of trouble to eat it without getting oily fingers and little bits of stuff all over the desk. I had been craving for curry so this really hit the spot, unlike the bland curry katsu I got at a Korean place. What can I say about the cream puff??? It was gooooooooood and probably a bad idea to not had digested the other food first.

Yeah I plan to go back and try the rest of the sandwiches then move onto the bento boxes. So much stuff to try….*sigh

- Cafe Zaiya – 18 E. 41st St

- Posted by Donny