Just a few more reports to go from our trip to Seoul in July. We made a few returns on this trip: to Gwangjang Market, to Gwanghwamun Gukbap, and to Oreno Ramen (the first visit for me, the second time for the missus and the boys). This report is of a lunch that was also a return of a kind. One of our very last meals in the city in March 2024 had been an excellent dim sum lunch at the Samseong location of Tim Ho Wan, the famous Hong Kong-based dim sum chain. Now, it’s not like eating Chinese food would normally be a high priority in Seoul but when you live in a dim sum desert like Minnesota, you have to take every opportunity to eat high quality dim sum that you get. As it happens, we thought that lunch was even better than at the better dim sum places in the San Gabriel Valley outside Los Angeles. And so it was a given that we would return on this trip as well. And we did—but not to the location we’d eaten at in 2024. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Chinese Cuisine
Legendary Spice 4 (Minneapolis)
About 10 minutes into lunch at Legendary Spice this past weekend, the missus turned to the rest of us and said, you know, this might actually be the best Sichuan restaurant in the Twin Cities. We were dining with friends who are core members of our Grand Szechuan crew and none of us could quite muster up a rebuttal. The truth is both restaurants are very good indeed. But we eat at Grand Szechuan very often and have developed a deep familiarity with their menu. This familiarity, tended over more than a decade, has bred love, not contempt; but it is true that Legendary Spice’s somewhat different repertoire of Sichuan dishes sometimes feels fresher by contrast. This was certainly the case on Sunday when not one dish was less than excellent. Here are the details. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, September 2025 (Bloomington, MN)
I regret to inform that till this past weekend it had somehow been almost five months since we’d last eaten at Grand Szechuan. I blame our summer travels and the fact that most of the friends we typically go there with were out of town when we got back. On the other hand, I am very happy to inform that is now only three days since our last meal at Grand Szechuan. We went back for lunch this Sunday with most of our aforementioned crew of Grand Szechuan regulars and did our usual excessive order. We got a mix of all-time favourites and dishes that we had not ordered in a while. Do I need to say that it was an excellent meal? Well, it was. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, April 2025 (Bloomington, MN)
We didn’t go out to eat this past weekend. The missus is out of town and the boys and I spent what felt like the entire weekend setting up our community garden plot in advance of the rain that has been pissing down in southern Minnesota since Monday evening (and will continue through Wednesday). But I have a Twin Cities meal report for you anyway this week. It’s of another meal at Grand Szechuan in Bloomington. We’d eaten this meal with friends just about a month ago. At the time, I’d only just reported on another meal eaten at Grand Szechuan just a few weeks prior, and so I’d held off on posting the report, expecting to merge it with a report on our next meal there. I do hope we’ll eat there in June before our summer travel plans get going but if not the memory of this meal will have to tide us over till the next. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, March 2025 (Bloomington, MN)
What better way to mark your return to Minnesota than with a meal at Grand Szechuan? You’re right: there is none. I got back from Delhi on Friday evening, and at noon on Saturday we descended on Grand Szechuan for lunch. It had somehow been three months since our last meal there (this Christmas blowout). We made up at least partially for lost time with another large meal. We were a group of 10 regulars—the four of us plus a few friends we eat there with often. The only surprising thing about the meal was that we did not order the Triple Flavour Squid/Spicy Squid Roll. We did get some other dishes we order often but supplemented them with others we hadn’t had in a while. The absence of squiddy goodness notwithstanding, it was another excellent meal at our family’s favourite restaurant in Minnesota. Continue reading
Legendary Spice 3 (Minneapolis, MN)
You have been disconsolate, wondering if I would ever post a Twin Cities restaurant report this week. I apologize: it’s been a very hectic week and a half and I just did not have time to get it ready to post on schedule on Wednesday, or even yesterday. But dry your eyes, tell your emotional support team they can go home: here I am now with my third report on a meal at Legendary Spice, probably Minneapolis’ best Sichuan restaurant. Now, you’re probably wondering how this can be my third review of Legendary Spice when there’s only one other review with its name in the title. That’s because when they opened, it was under the name Lao Sze Chuan and I first reviewed it as such. After a year or so the ownership split and what was Lao Sze Chuan became Legendary Spice—though the menu did not change. Meanwhile, a new restaurant named Lao Sze Chuan opened not too far away. We have not yet been to that new incarnation of Lao Sze Chuan (which, I believe, has the same menu as Legendary Spice). At some point I’ll redress that oversight; here now is my report on our dinner at Legendary Spice this past weekend. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, Christmas 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
We bade farewell to Twin Cities dining in 2023 with lunch at Grand Szechuan on Christmas and it seemed only right to see 2024 off the same way. We once again descended on them with a bunch of the people we eat there with most often and once again had a bit of a blowout meal, comprised largely of old favourites—and also one dish that I ordered without telling anyone (look to the left). 2024 was a year in which we ate out a lot (see my post from yesterday on my favourite restaurant meals of the year). Our meals at Grand Szechuan were among the highlights of the year and this last lunch was no exception. Given the vagaries of the restaurant world—to say nothing of the additional stresses of the pandemic—we feel very fortunate that Grand Szechuan—our family’s favourite restaurant in Minnesota—is still going strong. And we are very grateful that they are still putting out food at a very high level. Continue reading
Mian (Costa Mesa, CA)
Our first meal out on our trip to Southern California in June was at the location of Din Tai Fung in the fancy South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Our penultimate meal saw us return to almost the exact location for more casual Chinese food. We ate one floor down, literally right below Din Tai Fung, at Mian. A noodle/soup specialist, as you might expect from the name, Mian is a mini-chain spun off by the proprietors of Chengdu Taste several years ago. They now have eight locations in all: five in Southern California, one in Las Vegas, one in Houston and one in Honolulu. At all of them the menu is centered on noodle and noodle soup dishes along with a short list of Sichuan snacks. Portions are generous and prices are reasonable (though maybe they feel more so when eating at the South Coast Plaza). All in all, it makes for a good family meal without having to wait very long to be seated. Continue reading
Henry’s Cuisine (Los Angeles, June 2024)
Okay, let’s get back to California in June. I still have one more report to come from our trip within a trip to the Bay Area (when last seen, we’d eaten excellent dim sum at City View) but I’m going to scoot back down to the greater L.A metro, where we spent a few more days after driving back from the north. Our first meal out after our return was eaten with old friends at Henry’s Cuisine in Alhambra (in the San Gabriel Valley). We had actually been scheduled to eat dinner there with them before we left for the Bay Area but those plans had to be scrapped. I’m very glad we made it in after all for this was an excellent lunch. Here’s a quick look. Continue reading
City View (San Francisco, June 2024)
Okay, it’s time to put the San Francisco trip reports to bed. As I think I mentioned before, a full half of our meals in the city involved Chinese food. Only one of these meals was planned: dim sum at Yank Sing on our first full day. Our brunch/lunch at 606 came about mostly because our evolving plans put us right by it on the second day. On the third day we started out with a visit to Alcatraz Island (highly recommended) and the original plan had been to eat at Hog Island Oyster Co. in the Ferry Building right after. But as the older boy had not been able to enjoy dim sum at Yank Sing (on account of a blessedly mild and brief bout of food poisoning), he asked if we could go eat a full-on dim sum meal again. And so we ended up at City View at Walter U. Lum Place. Continue reading
Yank Sing (San Francisco, June 2024)
On schedule for once, here is my second meal report from our brief visit to San Francisco in mid-June. We’d arrived the previous evening (when we had dinner at State Bird Provisions). Our first full day started in Berkeley, on the campus of UC Berkeley, to be exact, walking the missus’ undergraduate haunts with the boys. From there we returned to San Francisco for lunch. Dim sum was what we were after. The best dim sum in the Bay Area is said to be in the suburbs, not in San Francisco proper but it seemed unlikely we’d be driving to the suburbs just to eat. Luckily, there’s very good dim sum in the city as well and if you ask for recommendations from local foodies, the venerable Yank Sing is likely to be on most people’s lists. There are two locations; we went to the one on Spear St., in the Rincon Center. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Lèpot (Minneapolis)
No, not fondue, Chinese hot pot.
I was alerted to the existence of Lèpot (or is it Lè Pot?) about a month ago in the comments on my writeup of Kung Fu Hot Pot. I actually ate lunch there just a few days after that but it’s taken me a long time to get to writing it up given my ongoing backlog issue. Anyway, here is that writeup now. I ate lunch there by myself on a Saturday in mid-July en route to Surdyk’s to check out their summer sale (I restricted myself to just one bottle of mezcal, because I am restrained like that). Getting to and away from Lèpot was a bit of a trial on account of road construction on surface streets and ensuing traffic snarls but the meal itself was simple enough to sort out. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, Summer 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
Yes, I am aware that I did not post the last New York and Seoul restaurant reports from my winter and spring travels that I’d said I’d post this past weekend. Let’s not dwell on that. Let’s instead look to the present and to the Twin Cities metro. It has been a dangerously long time since my last Grand Szechuan report—a full four months, in fact—and so here is a mid-year check-in. It comprises a look at two separate meals eaten just a couple of weeks apart in July and August. The first was a small affair with just the four of us in attendance; the second featured a larger group of seven. At the first meal we placed a fairly basic order of ye olde Sichuan cliches; the second was quite a bit more extensive (and also had more than twice as many dishes). Both meals were very good; the second was truly excellent. Here is a quick report on both. If you haven’t been eating at Grand Szechuan this summer, it’s not too late to correct your error. Continue reading
Chengdu Taste IV (Los Angeles, June 2024)
This post draws to an end the first phase of my meal reports from Los Angeles in June. A couple of days later we embarked on a week-long driving trip up the coast to San Francisco and back again. There was a little more eating out in Los Angeles before we finally returned to Minnesota but those will show up in chronological order in a couple of weeks. Here now is an account of a return to another old favourite that we had somehow not gone back to in a long time: Chengdu Taste in Alhambra. I noted yesterday that our last visit to Ahgassi Gopchang had been in January 2019. Well, my last report on a meal at Chengdu Taste was of a meal eaten in December 2017! Even subtracting three years hit hard by the pandemic, that’s a long time. Part of it, as I’ve said before, is that since we do actually have very good Sichuan food in the Twin Cities, Sichuan meals are not our top priority on our regular trips to Los Angeles—there’s a lot more to eat there that we either don’t get at all or get pale versions of here. It is, however, also true that even the best Sichuan in the Twin Cities metro (at Grand Szechuan) cannot compare to the best in the San Gabriel Valley. This was confirmed at this return to Chengdu Taste. Continue reading
Din Tai Fung (Costa Mesa, CA, June 2024)
I still have three food reports to come from Seoul in February/March and one more from New York in May. I’ll get those done by the end of the month. But I’m first going to sneak in the first report from our ongoing trip to California. First up is our first meal out, eaten at the start of last week. The boys had asked to eat soup dumplings/xiao long bao on this trip and so we decided to kick off our gorging at the Costa Mesa location of Din Tai Fung. This was the missus and my first visit to Din Tai Fung in more than 11 years and the first time with the boys in tow. That first visit was not to this branch, of course, which is much newer; it was to the Arcadia branch (I’m not sure if it is still extant). I reported on that meal in August 2013. I noted then that while the meal was fine, it was nothing out of the ordinary and not worth the hassle associated with eating at Din Tai Fung. What did we think of it this time around? Read on. Continue reading
Tea House III (Minneapolis)
At the end of my last review of Tea House, the Twin Cities’ OG Sichuan restaurant, I noted that it would likely be less than three years—the time elapsed since the prior review—till we came back to eat there again. Well, that was in the spring of 2018. In my defense, the years of the high pandemic had something to do with many of my review plans/promises of that period not being kept. It’s also true that when we get on Highway 35 to go north for Sichuan food it’s very difficult to not get off at Exit 6 and head to Grand Szechuan instead of driving for another 20 minutes. In the interim, however, Jon Cheng—the Star Tribune’s restaurant critic and one of the few professionals in the area who doesn’t seem to think his main job is to be a booster—named Tea House the best Chinese restaurant in the metro. That was in 2022. We’ve been meaning to get there ever since to see if very dramatic changes had happened since our last visit. Well, we finally got there this past weekend. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Tim Ho Wan (Seoul, March 2024)
In my report on our meal at Grand Szechuan at the end of March I noted that in our three months away we had barely eaten any Chinese food. I listed two meals: one a Korean-Chinese lunch in Seoul and the other an Indian-Chinese takeout dinner in Delhi. Somehow I forgot about the third, which was the best of the three and the only non-hyphenated Chinese one of the three: dim sum at one of the Seoul outposts of the Tim Ho Wan empire. Tim Ho Wan, as you probably know, started out in 2009 as a no-frills, reasonably priced dim sum shop in Hong Kong, famously picking up a Michelin star. Multiple branches opened in Hong Kong (I’ve previously reported on a quick meal at the Central branch) and then all over the world (including the US). We’ve not eaten at Tim Ho Wan’s US locations but when we saw there were three in Seoul, we couldn’t resist. We ended up eating at the Samseong location in Gangnam. This is the flagship Seoul location and, most importantly, the largest of the three. A long wait seemed the least likely here and that hope proved true. After a brief wait we were seated and very quickly after that we we were eating. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, March 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
We got back to Minnesota on Wednesday, March 27. On Sunday, March 31 we ate our first meal out. Of course, it was at Grand Szechuan, our family’s favourite restaurant in Minnesota. It’s always one of our favourite ways to welcome ourselves back to Minnesota after extended travel. And given that we hadn’t eaten any Sichuan food in three months—and no Chinese food beyond one Korean Chinese lunch in Seoul and one Indian Chinese dinner in Delhi—it was a particularly great way to welcome ourselves home after a long time away. We were joined by two friends who often eat with us there. Here’s how the meal went. Continue reading