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
Tag Archives: Dumplings
Lanzhou Ramen (Milan, July 2023)
Four and a half months after our trip to Italy ended, I am finally almost done with my meal reports. The last leg of our stay was in Milan. We were there for two nights and a day, partly to see the Last Supper and partly to meet up with one of my oldest, dearest friends who lives an hour outside Milan. She and her husband drove over for dinner in the evening. That meal featured Italian food. For lunch, however, we ate our first non-Italian meal in three weeks. We hadn’t really planned this. We’d chosen our AirBnB on the basis of proximity to the train station and after arrival from Padua we didn’t have the energy to go very far for lunch or the appetite for anything very filling. Google indicated that we were in a neighbourhood that featured a number of Asian restaurants and we decided to go eat a light lunch of noodle soup and dumplings at a place called Lanzhou Ramen, about 7 minutes walk from our flat. We arrived to find a small but attractive restaurant. Here’s how the meal went. Continue reading
Bukchon Son Mandu, Insadong (Seoul, March 2023)
Back to Seoul. I’ve previously posted a look at my dinner on my second night there—it featured excellent haemultang at Wonjo Agujjim—and lunch later in the week at Namdaemun Market’s kalguksu alley. Here now is a report on the place where I ate my first meal a little after arrival at my hotel: Bukchon Son Mandu in Insadong. The temptation to lie down and take a nap was strong but I resisted and went out to wander and try to get my bearings near the hotel. Walking through the narrow alleys off Insadong-gil I happened on Bukchon Son Mandu. I liked the food well enough that I also stopped in there for a small snack after lunch on my second day. And for reasons of convenience it was also the place where I ate my last lunch before heading to the airport. Here is a look at the restaurant and everything I ate. Continue reading
Dumplings etc. (Hong Kong, December 2018)
A quick roundup of small meals/bites that even I don’t have the energy to blow up into individual posts of their own. First, breakfast on arrival at Crystal Jade’s branch in the Hong Kong airport. This is where we had our first and last meals of our trip in 2016 and there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to eat there again right after landing. A bit of disappointment here as I was looking forward to a bowl of their excellent congee—what could be more restorative after a 15 hours flight?—but discovered they’d recently taken congee off their menu at the airport. It’s just a small selection of noodle dishes and dumplings now. Well, the dumplings themselves were not disappointing at all. I got an order of the pan-friend dumplings and an order of their XLB. A pretty good first meal in Hong Kong. Continue reading
Dumplings and Noodles at Crystal Jade (Hong Kong, Jan 2016)
A sign you’ve married well: you get off a redeye flight from New Delhi to Hong Kong with two small children in tow and suggest to your partner that the first thing you do is sit down at the airport location of Crystal Jade for some dumplings and noodles and she excitedly agrees. This, by the way, is something all visitors arriving in Hong Kong should do, whatever the time of day. You’ve got to get your trip off to an auspicious start. Of course, it’s not like this will be your only opportunity to eat at Crystal Jade. The Singapore-based chain has >100 branches in Asia (and a couple in San Francisco too, apparently) and Hong Kong has 21 of them. Continue reading
Si Hai/Four Sea (Los Angeles, July/August 2014)
This is the penultimate food report from our recent Los Angeles trip. This meal slot was to have been occupied by a return to one of our old favourites, Chung King, but after the havoc wreaked on our system earlier in the week by lunches at two Thai restaurants, Chengdu Taste and Hunan Mao (not to mention leftovers at night) we decided to go for something milder. And so we washed up at the San Gabriel outpost of Four Sea/Si Hai for Taiwanese breakfast (the original is in Hacienda Heights).
(By the way, I’d noted in my review of Chung King last year that they didn’t seem to have a lot of business at weekday lunch and had speculated that they must be doing much better at dinner and on weekends, given the high rate of turnover in the SGV for places that aren’t popular. For what it’s worth as we drove by Chung King on the way to Si Hai at noon on a Saturday there didn’t appear to be any more action there (no one outside, not many cars in the adjoining parking). Can anyone who’s been recently comment?)