http://www.yelp.com/biz/y…e-house-oakland
I had lunch with my parents at Ying Kee Noodle House in Oakland. My mom said their dumpling noodles soup was really good so thought I’d try it.
The shrimp dumplings were huge, at least 3 to 4 whole shrimps in each dumpling and the bowl of noodles was huge, way too much for me to finish. The broth is light, not too salty. It was really inexpensive too, less than $6 a bowl. Cheap eats.
Ying Kee Noodle House
387 9th Street
Oakland, CA
http://www.koipalace.com/….html?page=home
My dad’s birthday is tomorrow but we celebrated with an extended family dinner tonight at his favorite restaurat Koi Garden. We had a 8 course meal.
A suckling pig prepared like peking duck where you eat the skin with a white bun, green onions, and plum sauce.
Complete with LED cherries.
A deep fried something, I think it was pork wrapped in mu shu skin and coated in batter.
Lettuce wraps, loved the crispy fried bread in the meat mixture.
Scallops in broth.
Shark fin soup made in a coconut.
Abalone, fish stomach, and mustard greens.
Lobster noodles.
Plus there was a fish that I didn’t take a picture of.
We also had cake and these mung bean filled buns in the shape of a peach.
Happy Birthday Dad!
Happy, excited that we’re home to make her dinner.
As always, I leave stuffed after this Chinese banquet.
We went to Dublin to have Mother’s Day dim sum and tried some interesting dishes.
Here is a taro bun with salted duck egg. Just the right amount of sweetness and saltiness and the bread so fresh and delicious.
This is a breaded fish wrapped in noodles. This is a version of zha liang except stuffed with fish. This has to be eaten really hot or else the breading gets soggy. Great with the sweet soy sauce provided.
After lunch, I went to my parents’ house to do laundry. I really really really miss having our own washer and dryer. It was so nice to use theirs, they just seem so much stronger than the ones in our apartment, the clothes come out cleaner and the dryer works so much better.
While washing and drying, I played with Happy. She loves her Loofa dogs. She chews on the squeaker until she gets it out then removes all the stuffing while she’s at it. She is very happy, so cute!
Here she looks like an evil dog…
Next time I go to Pet Food Express I’ll have to get her more of these Loofa dogs, in the 2 years my parents have had Happy, she’s gone through at least 10 of them…
http://www.yelp.com/biz/h…t-san-francisco
Had dinner in SF Chinatown this weekend at Hong Kong Clay Pot Restaurant. We ordered three dishes:
Salt & Pepper Shrimp
Ong choy stir fried with green chilies and fermented bean curd
Oxtail clay pot
The oxtail clay pot was the best dish of the meal. The sauce was very yummy over rice and the oxtail meat was tender and surrounded by well marinated tendons and fat. Probably not very healthy but delicious if you like oxtail.
After dinner I cheated on my cats and hung out with two other cats. This is Macintosh who is the friendlier of the two. He took a cat nap with me and came eagerly with the shake of the cat treat package.
This is SpyderCat, the more aloof of the two but he also sat next to me while I was watching TV and was grooming himself. I found his sitting position quite funny, like he was trying to sit like humans do (when in actuality, it was so he could groom his stomach).
Hong Kong Clay Pot Restaurant
960 Grant Ave (at Jackson St)
My mom’s birthday is this coming Tuesday but she decided to have her celebration a bit early on Sunday. Apparently you’re not supposed to celebrate your birthday after your actual birthdate, it’s bad luck.
My parents planned this dinner at Koi Garden in Dublin, now their favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. It was quite the extravagant dinner, we were all quite stuffed and had leftovers to bring home. We had one of the private rooms in the back so my parents and friends also sang karaoke using a gadget called Magic Sing. All the songs are stored on a memory chip and all you have to carry around is the microphone and cable to hook it up to your TV. The songs are not like music videos but just a photo slideshow with the words for the songs. At the end of each song, they give you a score. It’s pretty handy… so much has changed since they came out with the huge laser discs.
My parents singing together:
So on to the meal…
Fried salmon skin, very crispy, like pork rinds (so a bit oily) but fishy… omega 3s?
Squab with cha su and seaweed salad.
A 6.5 lb Australian lobster. Apparently these don’t have claws, so all the meat is in the tail and body. The lobster is stir fried with sugar snap peas and chives, served with some broccoli. Surrounding it is also geoduck and ham.
Here’s looking at you!
A shark fin soup cooked in a winter melon, good on this cold evening.
There was chicken and pork in the soup.
Rehydrated dried abalone with fish maw (stomach) and mustard greens.
Each person got their own serving… with enough left for seconds.
Fresh crab meat served with vegetables: white mushrooms, Napa cabbage, asparagus, and Chinese broccoli.
The white mushrooms looked so clean, like they weren’t even grown in the ground… very fresh and delicious.
Drunken chicken.
Lobster meat noodles with lots of vegetables (especially packed with many types of mushrooms). They used the lobster meat from the little legs of the 6.5 lb lobster we had earlier.
For dessert, sweet bird’s nest soup served in a steamed papaya. Piping hot! but very good, good for your skin and possibly good for my cough because my throat felt much better after eating it.
My mom cutting her favorite cake, a Sogo mango mousse cake (the same as our wedding cake), plus those cute little buns that look like peaches.
A very rich meal and very delicious. I learned to love to eat good food from my parents. I used to go out with them a lot to eat dinner with their friends. I probably was a bit bored because I’d usually be the only kid there but I didn’t mind it so much as long as we had a good meal and I could spend time with my parents rather than sit at home.
The service here was excellent as usual. I think my parents frequent Koi Garden enough so that all the managers know them and are always willing to accommodate them when they come in for dinner, and even more so for a special occasion like my mom’s birthday.
Happy Birthday Mom!