Eating With Chan

I've eaten at two places that the Man Versus Food guy has been to.  One was a Jucy Lucy (note that it's not "juicy") place in St. Paul, Minnesota.  The last place was Orochon, the "infamously hot" ramen place in Little Tokyo.

I was downtown the other day looking for a place to eat.  On a whim, I went into Weller Court, the mall adjacent to the old New Otani Hotel (I say "old" because it has a new name).  Then I saw Orochon.  The place was mobbed.  Some of my people were busy negotiating with the waitress to get seated earlier -- ugh, how embarassing.  So we waited our turn and took a seat in the main dining room.  It was the busiest ramen place I'd ever seen, an odd sight in normally deserted Weller Court.

Here's what I ordered:

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You order by number.  The higher the number the milder (blander) the broth.  Some of the women next to me ordered #7.  The reminded me of an old friend who used to work at a Starbucks in Manhattan.  His location was near where lots of models worked and apparently they'd come in and order steamed non-fat milk with shots of vanilla.  The employees referred to this drink as the "honkey."

So I think the #7 is the Orochon version of the honkey.  I got #3.  The #2 is the one that gets your photo on the wall if you eat it within a 1/2 hour. 

It was ... OK.  Just hotter broth.  Nothing special, just peppery. I'd rather go to Hakata Ramen for something that tasted like more htan just peppers. 

Laos is kind of like Thailand without all the glitz.  And without the money.  And without the tourists.  It's not exactly like an Asian paradise, but it's definitely the road less traveled. 

There's not much Laotian food to be found in LA. There are a couple of places in Orange County, notably Vientiane Restaurant.  It's located in Garden Grove, not too far from Little Saigon. 

Today I had Khao Poon there.  It's a coconut curry soup with white noodles.  You also add vegetables (cabbage, long beans, banana blossoms) to the mix.  It was lovely, and reminiscent of the same soup I had in Vientiane.  The real Vientiane, that is.

Kaopoon

Sue's Kitchen is a hole in the wall on a busy stretch of Crenshaw Blvd. in Torrance. It shares its minimall with, among other things, a sports bar, Indian market, all natural pet food store, and a foot massage place. 

I've gone to Sue's for over a year when I need my fix of Sichuan food and don't feel like driving to Alhambra or Monterey Park. It's really (generally) good food and has gotten good reviews on Yelp.  The odd negative review on Yelp is mostly about serivce -- "they're not friendly" or "they didn't say thank you." I just think they're being Chinese -- it's no different than going to a place in San Gabriel.

They do a lot of the simple standard Sichuan dishes -- good, hearty soups with noodles, wonton with chili oil, plus lots of dumplings (and the "Chinese burrito"). 

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This is a wonton mein soup. It was a little blander than I wanted -- I should have gotten one of the spicier items on the menu. They have a "noodles in spicy sauce" that is very good -- it has pork, chilies, and lots of Sichuan peppercorn.

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Sichuan and Yunnan restaurants often have trays of side dishes you can order. These are some of my favorites -- cucumbers, seaweed, and roasted peanuts (with Sichuan peppercorns).

I really enjoy regional Chinese food, and Yunnan and Sichuan food are my favorites.  Here are some samples of what I am talking about:

Yunnanchicken

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These are two different plates of Chonqing chicken, a dish of fried chicken bits, scallions, Sichuan pepper corns, and lots and lots of chillies.

Yunnanwonton

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In Sichuan wonton (or chaushau) are served with a hot chilli oil with lots of scallions and Sichuan peppercorns.  The first picture shows the dish as it arrives on the table; the second shows it after I've spooned the oil over everything.

Yunnan dandan

Dan dan noodles: fresh wheat noodles with a savory pork sauce (with a hint of peanut).

Yunnan veg

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Yunnan and Sichuan food is accompanied by various side dishes -- something you wouldn't see in a Cantonese restaurant.  Many of them are vegetarian, but others include cured meats (pork and beef), dried bean curd, and sea weed. 

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In the penultimate episode of the Amazing Race the teams had to go to the Donghuamen street market. The contestants had to eat various fried animals -- starfish, scorpions, and some kind of larvae. It all looked gross. 

On the way to Beijing I thought that I'd try to eat some of this stuff, but when I was actually at the market I kind of chickened out.  My friend Karen suspects that the "weird" stuff wasn't actually there for consumption, but was a draw to get people in to eat the "real" stuff, various dumplings, stir fried vegetables, Northern-style pancakes, and candied fruit.  I think she might be right -- one vendor yelled "You want balls?" before taking two skewers of some kind of animal testicles and slapping them on a grill.  When I said no, he took them off and put them back where they came from, presumably for the next person who happened by. 

Here are my pictures:

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Crabs (ok, these were tame)

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Starfish, and various squid bits.

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That's snake on the left. The noodles on the middle seem to be the "real food."

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Larvae, various bugs, starfish, baby shark.

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Scorpions

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Giant crickets

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Sea horses.

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More larvae. And enoki mushrooms.

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More of the "real food." THere seemed to be a lot of this noodle vegetable thing around.

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Who wants snake on a stick?

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I like a good goat curry, something I first tried in Zimbabwe of all places. 

This is Vah Chef's version. I don't know about the head meat, but it's very entertaining.  He gets very excited about his creation at 3:57

Some days are meant for barbecue.  And because I live in an apartment with no private balconey it's difficult to provide it for myself.  When I lived at Crenshaw and Adams I went to a local place called Leo's, a place my parents had gone to when they were younger. But Leo's closed a few years back, so that wasn't an option.  So on Friday afternoon I went to Lucille's Smokehouse by Del Amo.  No good.

The next day I went to Woody's in Inglewood. I got pork ribs and chicken links. They were tasty, but that evening and even the next day I felt really dehydrated. Woody's must dump whole Morton's containers of salt into their sauce or something.

Not completely satisfied I went to Bludsoe's barbecue in Compton.  We got there after 7, and at first they told us that they were closed.  Luckily for us they let us order anyway.  Boy were we lucky.  Beef ribs and chicken came in a hot sauce that had just the right amount of heat to bring out the best of the meat.  I tried a sample of brisket which was spicy, moist, and flavorful. I think I found my new favorite barbecue place.

Pho Minh appeared in a front page article in the May 1 LA Times.  The 22 year old owner left school to pursue a dream of opening a pho restaurant in South El Monte, but facing stiff competition from neighbors, he's in a tough situation. So today we went out to try it.

Pho

The broth was very good, but the noodles were undercooked and the meat was tough.  I was happy that there wasn't a big bunch of nasty cilantro swirling around in it though.

The restaurant was very busy -- so much attention from the article.  They were clearly overwhelmed by all the attention.  One of the waitresses even ran through the restaurant because she couldn't keep up.  Other staff members didn't seem to know what to do.  Everyone seemed to do everything, which, of course, means that nothing was getting done.  Tables sat with dirty dishes while new patrons sat waiting to be seated.   

Hopefully they'll get in the zone. I'll go back in a month or two.

My friend Marc used to work with me.  I'd make jokes about going to Jolibee to eat spaghetti.  He would say, "Don't go there. You won't like it. Only Filipinos like it."  I kind of took that as a challenge, but the opportunity never arose.

Today, though, I had the chance to try another place I used to joke with him about, D J Bibingkahan.  I just happened to be driving in Carson and thought ... Filipino food!

Here's what we got:

Filipino

At 10:00 is a Chinese-y style soup with little bits of bok choy and carrot floating in it.  12:00 is eggplant foo young, which was OK. The woman who worked there said "eat it with catsup."  Except there was no catsup anywhere.  It turned out that she meant this reddish banana sauce. It wasn't bad.  4:00 is a really salty, salty beef stew.  The two giant lumps of rice are there to soak up all the saltiness.  At 7:00 are two sausages ... I was expecting something savory, but these were really sweet, almost like someone scraped the outside off of a piece of Chinese char siu and stuffed it in a casing.  When I tried to cut one in half with my spoon a jet of sausage juice shot out and hit me in the glasses. 

Guess how much this cost?  It was $18 for two people... for something scooped out of a steamer tray.  My physical therapist told me to try a place called Max's... I'll go there next time.