Category Archives: Asian

Mother’s Day

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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…

Taiwanese American Cultural Festival

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http://www.sftafest.org/

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco today so Ron and I enjoyed the afternoon in Union Square for the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival.

Clear blue skies (there was a lady singing on stage but she’s hidden by the podium).

We enjoyed a bit of lunch. Homemade ba-wan.

and Chinese tamale, had lots of peanuts, chestnuts, pork, and mushrooms.

There was an owner and his dog enjoying the warmth and music but the dog was sitting in a funny position…

We stayed to watch the children of the Fremont Taiwan School perform some cultural dances. They were very cute.

It was a very nice warm afternoon. I’m glad the sun is back. I’m glad we went to Costco this morning too, now I have food for breakfast and lunch for the next few weeks!

My Tofu House

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http://www.mytofuhouse.com/index.html

Today I went out to Fairfield to celebrate two one-year-old birthdays. My friends from pharmacy school threw this big shindig for their daughters, complete with pinata and three cakes! (One main cake and two mini cakes, one for each girl). It was good to catch up with friends and see how much their girls have grown. Unfortunately, the weather was icky so the drive wasn’t so pleasant but it was worth it to join the celebration.

I definitely wasn’t in the mood for cooking so we went out to dinner with our friends. We decided to try out My Tofu House on Geary Blvd. Our friend was in the mood for something warm and soupy so this sounded like the perfect place.

When we arrived, we had to sign up on the clipboard and wait about 15-20 minutes (this was around 7:45pm on a Saturday night), not too bad.

The menu is only two pages so it was easy to make a decision. Also, they do NOT serve beer or wine, just tea and soda. They serve four different appetizers with my favorite being the bean sprouts with tons of garlic.

The rice is cooked in a large stone pot and peas and garbanzo beans are steamed with it.

We ordered the medium spicy combination tofu soup. Really thick with lots of tofu but not that spicy. The tofu was nice and silky. Next time I think we’ll try the “very” spicy.

Each person got a grilled fish, not super crispy so not oily.

The seafood pancake was more on the bready side. It was nicely toasted on the bottom but the top was a bit mushy.

The kalbi was so good! Sweet and carmelized and lots of yummy onions.

The spicy pork portion was huge! The meat was very tender and nicely marinated.

For four people, this was the perfect amount of food. Our only complaint of the night was that it took them too long to refill our tea… otherwise, we were completely stuffed and our tummies were warm and happy.

This restaurant is #9 on the 7×7 The Big Eat SF: 100 Things to Try Before You Die list. I’ll have to go through the list to see how many of these we have already tried… but I do highly recommend My Tofu House.

My Tofu House
4627 Geary Blvd (between 10th & 11th Ave)

Visit to Colma and Katana-ya Ramen

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http://www.yelp.com/biz/katana-ya-san-francisco

Earlier this month was the Chinese celebration of tomb sweeping day. It usually falls the week before Easter and we visit the graves of our dearly departed family members to clean their grave sites, leave some flowers, and pay our respects. I missed the celebration last year because we were in Singapore. Today I decided I’d visit my grandparents’ grave site in Colma to leave some flowers and clean up if necessary. My father’s parents passed away before my brother and I were born. When I was in junior high school, we did autobiographies and through this I learned about my grandparents and how hard they struggled to get here and how my dad almost wasn’t able to come to the US with the rest of his family. Sometimes when I whine and complain, I just have to remind myself how easy we actually have it now compared to when my family first arrived in the 1960s. It was a beautiful day to visit, the sun was shining high in the sky while I planted some flowers in the vases and scrubbed some of the dirt off their stone. I wish I could have known them, I’m sure they were wonderful people, look how great my dad turned out!

It was a beautiful day but I spent most of it inside. I had the windows wide open and was enjoying the warmth but it also made me really sleepy. I napped for a bit before heading out to meet up with Ron and friends for dinner. We ended up at Katana-ya for ramen. The restaurant is kind of small, maybe seats 25 people max. We had a group of 5 and the wait was about 30 minutes.

We ordered ramen since our friend said it was the best. They have a selection of about 15 types of ramen then you can choose from three types of broth (soy, miso, or salt) and if you want it light or strong, and if you want it spicy, the degree of spiceness. Actually quite a lot of choices.

Ron had the Katanya Ramen which is basically the kitchen sink, includes gyoza, pork, corn, and egg… this is with soy broth.

I had the BBQ pork ramen with light miso broth. The pork was good, maybe a little bit tough, not quite as good as Tanpopo. Although I asked for light miso, it was still a bit salty for me but overall, I liked the amount of green onions and bamboo shoots.

Service was decent, everything served pretty quickly. But there was an automatic 18% service charge included for our party of 5… seemed a bit much since usually places don’t start automatically added tip unless you have 6 or more… but I guess since we took up like 1/5 of their restaurant, they’d better make it worth their while.

They open until 1:15am per their window sign, good for late night munchies.

Katana-ya
430 Geary Blvd (at Mason)

Bay Area Rainbow Symphony and Sushi Tani

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Ron received some free tickets for a concert by the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS). BARS is a non-profit organization and their mission is to provide “a safe and supportive environment for musicians of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. BARS makes cultural, social, and educational contributions to the San Francisco Bay Area by performing ambitious repertoire to a high standard.” Ron knows one of the members of the orchestra who gave us the complimentary tickets. The concert was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Franklin @ Geary, their next concert is also there on June 20th.

We both enjoyed the concert and it makes us want to pick up our instruments again, Ron played the violin and I played the flute. We’ll see if that happens. Ron’s violin is in the closet but my flute is on loan to my parents’ friend’s daughter.

After the concert, we were starving so went to find dinner. It was already 10:30 so we weren’t sure what would be open. I had just purchased a whole bunch of gift certificates from Restaurant.com because there was a 70% off code (FEAST, expires 4/20/09) so that some $25 value gift certificates ended up only being $3. So we went to try Sushi Tani since we called and they were open until midnight. The GC had a few restrictions though: minimum purchase $50 but not including sushi, sashimi, rolls, alcohol plus 18% gratuity is added to the original bill.

The restaurant was empty when we showed up at 10:45pm but during out meal, two other couples walked into the restaurant. We ended up ordering lots of appetizers and their bento box. We ordered a bit too much so had leftovers to take home.

We were able to sneak in some sashimi with the Ocean Trio Cocktail appetizer which had tuna, yellow tail, and salmon with yuzu sauce. We found the salmon and tuna a bit mushy but the yellow tail was yummy.

Agedashi tofu. There was a lot of it and very freshly fried, it was made really quick!

Chicken Karaage served with tonkatsu sauce. Yum.

Tempura, 2 shrimp and tons of vegetables. Hot hot hot (like heat-wise).

The dinner box special, we chose chicken teriyaki and ton katsu. The salad dressing was yummy, a bit sweet and nutty. The ton katsu was a little bit dry. The chicken teriyaki was good.

Sorry for the blurry pictures but I was just using my phone because it was convenient.

We haven’t figured out if buying those gift certificates are actually worth it… Our total bill was around $70, minus the $25 then adding 18% gratuity of original, so we ended up paying $57 for dinner. I think ordinarily we wouldn’t have ordered so much but we felt like we had to in order to meet the $50 minimum food purchase. We do have enough for lunch for both of us the next day so maybe it all works out. Plus it encourages us to try somewhere new.

There’s still plenty of other Japanese restaurants around our area so I think we’ll continue exploring.

Sushi Tani
4828 Geary Blvd