Category Archives: Asian

Taiwan Restaurant

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

Blast from the past… Ron and I used to go to Taiwan Restaurant in Berkeley on weekends for Taiwanese breakfast. We were driving on Clement the other day and noticed Taiwan Restaurant… Ron got excited since the way the name was displayed seemed almost exactly like the place in Berkeley. So we decided to check it out this morning.

We were disappointed the restaurant still treated Friday after Christmas as a weekday so they didn’t have all the weekend specialties. Oh well, just means we’ll have to visit again on a weekend! Also, it looks exactly the same as the Taiwan Restaurant in Berkeley so we think it’s the same owner, the decorations are the same, the menu is the same… yay!

We ordered soy milk, hot and sweet. It actually wasn’t very hot so when you add your own sugar, it doesn’t quite dissolve.

I can’t remember what this dish is called, I know it as bamboo rice with meat in a can. Ron says when he was a little kid in Taiwan, they would eat these as a late night snack. It was kept in a tin can and heated until ready to eat.

Fried turnip cake.

The youtiao was a bit more dense than we usually like it but it does soak up the soy milk well.

This is my favorite Taiwanese snack, called ba-wan. Outside is a glutinous rice “shell” and inside usually is pork with bamboo shoots and mushrooms. The “shell” can be yummy when its the right amount of stickness but can also be quite tough if overcooked or reheated too many times. In Taiwan, they are kept warm in a large vat of heated oil, sounds disgusting but it does keep it at a very nice temperature. It’s served with two sauces, sweet and savory.

Our breakfast came out to be $13, plus $2 tip.

Afterwards we went to check out Marley & Me. I cried. I don’t want a golden retriever and I love my cats, but I still really want a dog.

Taiwan Restaurant
445 Clement Street

Hanoi Bistro

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https://webpos.wlinformation.com/hanoibistro/

I forgot to blog about this restaurant we went to on Tuesday night. I had an optometrist appt on Tues afternoon at Taraval Eyecare just to get a check-up and see how my vision is doing. My slight astigmatism is stable and now my left eye has caught up with my right eye… so now when I buy contacts, I don’t need to buy two different ones! hooray!

Since we were in the area, we decided to meet up with Tiff for dinner and she suggested Hanoi Bistro which is on the corner of Taraval and 19th Ave. While we were waiting for her to come back from shopping, we went to the public library down the street to get a library card! I haven’t had a public library card since high school. The SF system seems pretty convenient though, you can request books online to be held at a certain branch and you can return your books to any branch, not just the one you checked it out of.

At the restaurant, while waiting for Tiff, we ordered some appetizers to start, I got one of my favorite drinks, the three color drink. I was a little disappointed since it felt like there weren’t that many beans or jelly threads and later during dinner I saw them serve one to another guy that had way more stuff in it…

We ordered the fresh spring rolls and were able to have them make us half shrimp and half shredded pork. These were yummy. I always feel refreshed after eating them.

This is the pan fried onion cake. A bit oily but the outside was nice and crispy. The curry sauce could have been a little thicker as it kept on sliding off the onion cake.

After Tiff came, we ordered the rest of the main courses. This is the garlic noodles with five spice chicken. The garlic noodles were so good, lots of garlic flavor for sure! The chicken wasn’t too special, still moist so that was good.

Not a very good picture but here is the tamarind crab. The restaurant has a sign out front touting “Holiday Crab Special $19.95” so Tiff says she’s been wanting to try it since she drives by the sign at least twice a day. The sauce was tangy but the crab was so hard to eat, it was so saucy and the meat was hard to get out of the shell. We were exhausted after eating only a few legs.

We also had a bowl of pho which I didn’t photograph. It isn’t served with the plate of bean sprouts, mint, jalepenos, etc. Just the noodle soup. The noodles they have are the slightly wider flat noodles which is a nice twist.

Ron and I look forward to going back to try their tamarind chicken. The tamarind sauce was really good on the crab so it should be really good on fried chicken… mmm-mm…

Oh, interesting site I found while looking for the restaurants website, it seems like a health code inspection site of restaurants in SF, good thing that Hanoi Bistro passed without any violations…

Hanoi Bistro
890 Taraval St (corner of 19th Ave)

Joy Sushi – Winter Solstice

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http://www.joysushi.net

Ron’s family invited us over for dinner and to recognize winter solstice. We went to his parents’ house to pay respects to their departed grandparents and offer then rice dumplings. We’d come back after dinner to eat the rice dumplings.

We went to dinner at Joy Sushi, a Japanese restaurant that we frequent. We ordered a ton of food and I hardly remember what is what… Henry had gotten a $50 GC for only $3 but we had to spend a minimum of $100 in order to use the GC. He bought it from Restaurant.com when they were having a sale. A very good deal… now I have a new place to check out for cheap(er) eats.

We shared some sake.

Rainbow roll and blossom roll.

Agedashi tofu.

I forget what roll it was with the eel.. but the one with the salmon on top is lava roll, spicy salmon. Plus some sweet shrimp sushi.

The best part of the meal. Hamachi kama, the yellow tail fish cheek served with a vinegar sweet sauce. We ordered two! So good.

Baked scallop roll.

Ron’s mom always likes to eat udon. This is their beef udon. The beef was a bit tough but the noodles were fun, a bit chewy.

The family.

Green tea cheesecake… not good.

Tempura green tea ice cream.

Overall after the $50 GC, the dinner still cost about $100 after tax and tip. We ate plenty and rolled out of there. We always have a good dinner there. Oh, they take reservations, so call ahead if you’re planning on going on Friday or Saturday night.

Joy Sushi
30 South B Street
San Mateo, CA 94401

Shin Toe Bul Yi

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

Our friends K&J are back from their around-the-world tour and have moved back to SF. We went out for dinner at Shin Toe Bul Yi. I’ve heard good things about the restaurant so it seemed like a good time to try it.

My favorite item of the night was the green onion pancake. Ron says it tasted good because it had lots of egg. All I know was that it was yummy.

We also had steaming bowls of seafood tofu soup and beef tofu soup. They also have the rice sticks with spicy sauce. The tofu soups weren’t spicy enough for us. They had plenty of yummy side dishes.

We barbequed at our table on a gas powered grills. We had the pork belly and the beef. The beef was different than we expected, it was like a pieces of a thick steak sliced rather than the thinly sliced bulgolgi.

We had a nice chat about some of our adventures over the past year. I’m glad they’ve come back and am looking forward to their wedding 🙂

Shin Toe Bul Yi
2001 Taraval Street
(between 30th and 31st Ave)

Homemade Singaporean Chili Crab

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Ron went crabbing again on Sunday and had better luck this time around. He caught one Dungeness crab and one Rock crab.

Here they are in a salt water bath.

We didn’t have time to cook them until Monday night and Ron attempted his own version on Singaporean chili crab and it turned out pretty well. Almost like the real thing except we were missing the buns (we used sourdough bread to dip the sauce instead).

One crab for the both of us is quite filling with all the bread and slurping up all the sauce. I’d share the recipe but Ron didn’t tell me what he actually put in the sauce, harass him if you want to find out what he used 🙂