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Showing posts from March, 2015

The Slanted Door (Ferry Building Marketplace)- San Francisco, CA

During a recent trip to the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco, we stopped by The Slanted Door for lunch, a modern Vietnamese restaurant that came highly recommended per a review by Kevin Hsu of kevinEats .

Blockheads Shavery- Los Angeles (Sawtelle), CA

After lunch a t Ts ujita LA Artisan Noodles , and exploring part of what Sawtelle Blvd. has to offer (Cocos, Ni jiya Market, Curry House, Hide Sushi, Seoul Sausage, Gottsui, to name a few of many great places!) , we de cided we wanted a dessert to cool o ff from the walking we did and to quench our thirsts after th e heavy noodles we had earlier in the day. By this time, Blockheads Shavery was filled with customers, all of who seemed to be experts in ordering what Blockheads Shavery calls " snow cream" , or what is generally called shaved snow-- combinin g elements of shave d ice and ice cream together. Ordering is simple and is done in 3 steps: 1. Choos ing a flavor (Original, green tea, black sesame, sea salt, and a special brown sugar created with soymilk were offered during our visit) and size 2. Choosing toppings (60 cent s each)   3. Choosing a d rizzle, of which include condensed milk, strawberry puree, coconut pur ee, chocolate sauce, and carame

Tsujita LA Artisan Noodles- Los Angeles (Sawtelle), CA

Tsujita LA Artisan Noodles has been in my radar on places to try for quite a while, given the wide media press ( LA Weekly , Jonathan Gold ), and recently, I was finally able to try it out! To avoid the lines, we had a late lunch around 3PM. Still, the restaurant was over 70% capacity, with lots of people seated outside, enjoying the LA sunshine.  After being seated, we were handed a simple menu, consisting of ramen, tsukemen, sides, and rice bowl options. The drink of choice seemed to be water for the day--pitchers of water were placed at almost every table--so we went with that too!

Bamboo Wheel- Los Angeles (University Park), CA

Alongside the Chinese Food Truck , the University Park neighborhood now has another authentic Chinese food truck-- Bamboo Wheel. Bamboo Wheel is actually a food truck version of Bamboo Creek, which is located Monterey Park, CA, and offers a regular menu of entrees and rice dishes (curry, beef stew, pork stir fries), noodles, a chinese burrito (aka jian bing ), homemade wontons, and stewed eggs and preserved vegetables. Like the Chinese Food Truck, the menu is mostly written in Chinese, with smaller English subtitles. Daily specials are also offered by the food truck, although these are only written in Mandarin (ask the employees for the translation)--these change, but items like da pan ji (spicy chicken), dou hua yu (tofu fish), hui guo rou (twice cooked pork), and stir fried rice cakes have been featured when I've visited in the past. Apt for the primarily USC student customer base, payment can be done by cash, but also credit card through their Square application. For

CREAM- Los Angeles (University Park), CA

Last Saturday, the first Southern California branch of CREAM (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me) opened in University Gateway, an apartment/shopping complex located adjacent to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus in Los Angeles, California. Based out of Northern California , CREAM aims to provide reasonably cost, proprietary and high quality products with friendly service in a "fun and relaxed atmosphere," and is an extremely popular dessert outlet in Northern California. CREAM happened to offer free ice cream sandwiches (normally 2.99 USD) to all customers on their opening day, so I decided to I checked it out. There was quite a queue outside during opening night (took around 30 minutes!), but music from KXSC radio, a raffle for more free CREAM sandwiches, cheerful and motivated employees, and a complimentary drink holder made the wait doable. Inside , CREAM was bustling, with lots of employees running around, scooping ice cream