Category Archives: Asian

Sai Jai Thai Delivery

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http://www.grubhub.com/sf/sai-jai-thai/

One of the best things about our new apartment is all the great food nearby and lots of them deliver. We’ve had some bad food too but one of our favorites is Sai Jai Thai. We’ve eaten in the restaurant before, you can read about it here.

You can find their menu here and delivery is free and usually delivered within 30 minutes.


From 12 o’clock and clockwise: green beans and tofu, red curry with duck, pork shoulder, and pad see ew with chicken. We’re convinced that when you order pork shoulder for home, the portion is bigger than in the restaurant.

Sai Jai Thai
415-673-5774

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot

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http://www.littlesheephotpot.com/

We met up with my parents for dinner since they happened to be on our side of the bay this evening. We had dinner at Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot in San Mateo. (Hints: they take reservations only for parties of 6 or more and parking lots are free after 6pm in San Mateo, some lots are multilevel but you have to find the separate entrance for the upper levels).

Ron and I arrived around 7:30pm on this Saturday evening and I put my name down for a party of 4. They told me the wait would be about 40 to 45 minutes. Surprisingly, it was more like 30 to 35 minutes only.

We were seated in a booth in the corner so it was likely quieter there than in the middle of the restaurant since the booths have high backs to block out some of the noise.

You order by checking stuff off a list and the waiter recommended that 4 people usually order about 10 dishes, since we felt a bit hungry, we ordered 14 + dessert. Also, we went with the half regular broth (left) and half spicy broth (right) although the spicy wasn’t spicy enough so Ron asked for additional spicy sauce and poured the entire bowl in.

Here’s a selection of the other things we ordered which include: a-choy, napa cabbage, goose intestines, chicken feet, assorted meatballs, assorted tofu platter, and thick noodles. Not pictured but we also had lamb, fatty beef (really good), premium beef, fried fish cake…

Getting ready to start cooking!

Everything was really good except maybe the lamb meatballs a bit gamey. The noodles seemed fresh made and were nice and chewy. We all really enjoyed the fried fish cake as it was a bit like fried tofu but kind of chewy… hard to describe but let’s just say it was good. We basically finished everything but still had a bit of dessert with the sweet yam with red bean cake.

No sauces were included with the meal, they are 50 cents each and I think we ended up ordering two, one was kind of like minced garlic and the other was a fermented bean sauce of some sort. We also ordered two beers and our meal came out to be about $25 per person (what you would expect from and all-you-can-eat place but with better quality).

A good meal for a cold evening.

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot
215 S. Ellsworth Ave
San Mateo, CA

Hong Kong Clay Pot Restaurant

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http://www.yelp.com/biz/h…t-san-francisco

We met up with friends for dinner in Chinatown. There were 8 of us so we decided to try one of their set menus plus add a dish. This set menu was only $88 and included lobster and crab plus we added the tofu clay pot. Ron and I had eaten here before and enjoyed it so I think that was one of the reasons why he chose it for our dinner tonight.

The soup was a mostly tofu with shrimp and the free appetizer was fried chicken wings.

This is the tofu clay pot with plenty of mustard greens and mushrooms. Very yummy.

The lobster, garlic, was a bit small but tasted really fresh.

Sauteed catfish with black bean sauce. I bit hard to eat with all the bones.

The crab, ginger, also a bit small but prepared well.

A whole chicken served with a ginger sauce. Parts of it were tough the breast meat was good and although the sauce a bit oily, it was very ginger-y.

Free dessert of black sesame soup, so fresh that we had to wait for it because they were making a whole new batch.

Our meal also included a dish of mustard greens, salt & pepper pork, and honey walnut prawns. For 8 people, the entire meal $130 (that includes tax & tip).

After dinner, we gathered at our apartment to share some moon cakes brought back from our friends on their recent trip to Taiwan. These were literally bite size but still so dense that it’s hard to eat a whole one. Delicious with freshly brewed oolong and jasmine teas.

Hong Kong Clay Pot Restaurant
960 Grant Ave

Cocobang

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http://www.yelp.com/biz/cocobang-san-francisco

Tired of cooking and craving to try something different in our neighborhood, we decided to try Cocobang, a Korean restaurant a few blocks away.

Upon entering the restaurant, your eyes are first drawn to this huge white projector screen above the kitchen that is playing music videos. It’s quite dim inside too with a reddish tinge to their lighting. The place is pretty small but seems like it’d be fun for a group of friends to hang out and drink soju cocktails. Service was a bit slow as we had to wait about 10 minutes to get our menus then had to call the server over to take our order. Understandable though since there only seemed to be one server and two cooks in the kitchen and the place was getting packed.

We tried their seafood pancake which has tons of squid and was surprisingly spicy. I think they put the Korean red pepper mixed with the batter. There was no sauce but that was okay actually.

Next we had the rice cakes with ramen. The rice “pinkies” were great, just the right amount of chewiness. I wish there were more veggies in the mix, it was mostly sauce and lots of fish cake.

We think they totally forgot about our chicken since it took another 15 to 20 minutes to come out after we finished the first two dishes. We decided on half fried chicken (no sauce) and half order of the fried chicken with the sweet tangy sauce. It was served with a huge mound of cabbage salad with a dressing of what tasted like Japanese mayo and a bit of red pepper powder. The chicken pieces were huge and meaty with some wings mixed in. The batter for the fried chicken was a bit sweet and the fried batter by itself would have made a great snack! The sweet and tangy sauce was good but I’d almost say it ruined the great tasting crispy skin. Surprisingly we all really loved the salad.

I’d say we’d definitely go back, the rice cakes dish was the best I’ve ever had since KoKo House closed in Berkeley.

Cocobang
550 Taylor Street

Ying Kee Noodle House

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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