Eating With Chan

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.

One of my favorite online food websites has lots of pictures of airline meals.  Here are some of my meals from my recent trip to China.

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Air China's finest beef and rice!

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Jook, Air China style.  This was some bland stuff -- I mean, there was no flavor at all to it until the little packet of mushrooms was dumped on top.  The bao was all right ... it had vegetables inside.

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Mystery meat and rice. I forget whether it was pork or chicken.  The bun on the left has red beans in it.  I was supposed to be flying China Eastern, but everything on the plane said "Shandong Airlines." The cup, however, says Air China.  It didn't matter really -- we were waiting on the tarmac for about an hour waiting for the plane to take off for Kunming.

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More gross jook. This one looks a bit like kindergarten paste, with green stuff floating around in it.  The little yellow packet in the back is a mini preserved egg.  I took that home. It's still in the fridge.

During my trip to China I took a "mental health" evening with Karen to avoid the Hwangpu river boat cruise.  We walked around Nanjing Road and ducked into a mall. There we discovered Mochi Sweets, the "Japanese luxury deli."

What they served were big frozen mochis with flavors like "cafe au lait", "purple potato",  and "chestnut cream."  I tried "honey lemon cream" and Karen had "strawberry." 

The mochi was very chewy with a creamy, fruit interior.  Check this out:  www.mochisweets.com

Mochi