Category Archives: Asian

My mom’s birthday dinner at Koi Garden

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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!

Godzilla Sushi

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http://www.yelp.com/biz/g…i-san-francisco

We had dinner at Godzilla Sushi tonight, close to my work, unfortunately for me, only open for dinner. Ron met someone who recommended it as a cheap sushi joint in Pac Heights.

The restaurant has 5 tables and then a sushi bar.

We ordered three of their special rolls, from top to bottom:
1. Tinky Winky Roll with scallop, salmon, chopped crab, avocado, shiso leaf, sprouts and tobiko
2. Pink Dragon Roll, inside with shredded crab, avocado, cucumber and outside with fresh salmon and wasabi tobiko
3. Godzilla Roll, inside with tuna, hamachi, sake, BBQ eel, avocado and outside with tobiko

Here are their other special rolls:

After we got our order, we decided it wasn’t quite enough so ordered two other things, suzuki nigiri, which is Japanese sea bass:

and the spicy baked mayo mussels (the mussels were chopped up so very easy to eat, kind of tasted like it was seasoned with sriracha hot sauce, was yummy):

We shared their large size of hot sake and our meal came out to be around $38 + tip. Ron said he found the fish texture a bit mushy but I thought it was fine. I guess the real test would be to have sashimi or the chirashi (sashimi over rice). I wish they’d open for lunch then I could have sushi for lunch!

Godzilla Sushi
1800 Divisadero Street

Golden Deer Vietnamese Restaurant

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

I was craving some Vietnamese pho for dinner so we went in search of a place on Clement Street. We ended up at Golden Deer Vietnamese Restaurant on Clement near 10th & 11th Avenue. We basically just picked one of the restaurants on Clement and hoped for the best.

There were three other groups inside the restaurant so there was plenty of free seating and there only seemed to be one guy working as the waiter and cook. I was happy to see the pho was under $6. It seems to be getting more and more expensive. The menu underneath the glass of the table said they served bun bo hue (the spicy broth with thick rice noodles and lots of different proteins including pork blood) so I quickly decided to order it instead of pho since it’s one of my favorite dishes.

I was a bit disappointed when it came out though, it smelled good, but the noodles were regular thin rice noodles and there was no pork blood and very little meat. But for what it was, it tasted pretty good and after adding the bean sprouts, it lightened up the saltiness of the broth a bit.

The restaurant opens late though, until 12am Mon thru Thu, and until 2am Fri thru Sun. So although we’ll still be on the search for good authentic Vietnamese pho and bun bo hue, I think this will be a good last minute dinner kind of place.

Golden Deer Vietnamese Restaurant
908 Clement Street (between 10th and 11th Ave)

Neecha Thai Cuisine

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

Our friends were visiting from LA so they invited us to join them for dinner this past Saturday. Funny enough, the restaurant they chose is about 3 blocks from where I work but I’ve never been there. They used to live in the area so they said it was their favorite Thai restaurant in the city.

Ron and I shared three dishes. First up was the “muk krob” which is a deep-fried battered calamari cooked in a secret house sauce with crispy red onions and topped with deep-fried Thai basil. It was crispy, sweet, sour, gooey… yummy! You probably wouldn’t have known it was calamari but the sauce was so good, I don’t think anyone would care.

Special eggplant: eggplant, prawns, chicken and pork sauteed with jalepeno peppers, red bell peppers and Thai basil in a secret house sauce. I love most eggplant dishes and this was no exception.

Moo Gratiem: BBQ pork marinated in Thai herbs and garlic served with a spicy chili sauce. This was a bit too sweet for me but not bad overall.

I would definitely go back there again, it was quite reasonable for the amount of food we had. For our three dishes plus rice, I think it came to $35. We were stuffed.

They also have a location in Oakland, see their website for more info.

Neecha Thai Cuisine
2100 Sutter Street

Taiwan Restaurant Take 2

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

This weekend, we visited Taiwan Restaurant once again for breakfast. Ordered some of the old and some new things.

You tiao, fried dough stick. It was kind of cold and a bit chewy..

Ron contemplating the rest of the menu…

Something known as a petal bun, Ron says it’s hard to make since it’s flaky and requires a lot of lard to make it. He says he wasn’t very good though. I don’t like them so didn’t try it.

Hot soy milk with sugar being added.

A bowl of noodles with some ground meat, bean sprouts, and the tea egg. The tea egg was the best part.

Green onion pancake, looked deep fried rather than pan fried. Nice and hot, a bit chewy so was nice.

I think we’re learning we don’t like this Taiwan Restaurant as much as the one in Berkeley for some reason. So I’m not sure if we’ll be coming back again unless we really have a desperate craving.

Taiwan Restaurant
445 Clement Street