Category Archives: Asian

Banana Island and Spot Lounge

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So Ron planned a semi-surprise birthday dinner for my big 3-0. I knew we were going out for dinner but I didn’t know where or who would be there.

We arrived at Westlake Shopping Center in Daly City and Ron didn’t seem to know exactly where he was going since we ended up driving around the shopping center and going past the parking lot entrance. Last weekend we went to Lime Tree and Ron mentioned something in passing like “oh, this is one of the Singaporean restaurants that I found online”… so I was thinking “one of”? I guessed right that we were going to Banana Island but Ron wouldn’t admit it to me. But I told him the restaurant was behind the new parking lot so we should enter that way.

The guestlist was a bit given away because as we were driving, we saw Henry’s car parked on the street and then we saw Patsy and her hubby in the parking lot! It didn’t matter to me that it was a surprise but I was just happy that everyone had time to come out to celebrate my birthday.

When Ron and I arrived, Grace unfortunately had to leave but gave me a lovely bottle of J sparkling wine before departing to take care of her sons. I’ll let you know how it is when we crack it open.

Already there waiting were Ron’s brothers Henry and William and Patsy and her hubby. Later on, Nancy and Ryan came. Also Cathy and Tiffany.

Ron did the ordering to give everyone a taste of what we had in Singapore.

Tiger beer.

Satay chicken and beef.

Roti with curry sauce.

Hainanese chicken (missing the chicken rice though).

Stir fried Ka Kong.

Beef rendang.

Char Kuay Teow (stir fried noodles).

Pineapple fried rice.

Po piah.

Fried fish with sweet & sour sauce.

The food reminded us of being back in Singapore although more expensive…

To end the meal, Ron ordered me a very special cake…

A Hello Kitty head.

It’s a cake for kids from Citizen Cake.

I forgot to mention I got a cute Hello Kitty balloon too.

Unfortunately I had to cut the cake and there wasn’t really any other way to do it except through the middle…

The cake was really dense and hard to cut.

I felt so terrible but it would’ve been a waste not to eat it..

My friends tried to stitch her up…

Then they were just cruel…

The cake needed an accompanying cup of coffee or milk since it was really dense. I didn’t eat most of my piece so I’ll be having it for breakfast for the next few days 🙂

These aren’t all the photos so I should be posting up some more later. I took a break from taking photos today so will have to get photos from everyone else.

Afterwards, a few of us went to hang out at a soju bar called The Spot Lounge on Taraval. They serve soju cocktails ($12.95/bottle) in many different flavors: mango, lychee, pear, yogurt, etc.

Reminiscent of our younger days…

The place has food too so looking forward to going back to try their rice cake (duk bok kee).

I guess getting older isn’t so bad afterall… thanks to everyone for coming out for my birthday and all the happy birthday messages!!

Banana Island
416 Westlake Center
Daly City, CA

The Spot Lounge
2325 Taraval Street
San Francisco, CA

Lime Tree and Crepevine

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Today was a kind of a busy day… I got up early to take care of bills (yuck!) then went to get gas, drove to Concord for my friend Grace’s son’s 3rd birthday party, went to County Square Market (an Asian supermarket), Target, the post office, Pet Food Express, Michael’s, Lucky, and then drove all the way back to San Francisco and we went to dinner with Ron’s friend Andrew at Lime Tree and Crepevine.

The highlights of the afternoon:
1. Picked up great fruits from the Asian market… some prickly pear and white peaches the size of a softball. Will take some pictures as we dig into them.
2. When you buy postage at the post office, the machine prints the stamps on self-adhesive paper instead of spitting out those booklets… pretty cool stuff… but can’t believe that first class mail is 42 cents!
3. At Pet Food Express they were having cat adoptions, I got to see all the babies before they packed them to go for the day. One of the cats looked almost exactly like Mochi!

So Lime Tree is a Southeast Asian restaurant. We got to have some familiar flavors of Malaysia and Singapore.

Murtabak served with curry sauce, a crispy roti prata stuffed with minced meat, green onions and eggs. Smaller than those in Singapore but tasted pretty similar.

Chicken satay with peanut sauce. The chicken was pretty moist. Though it was missing the lontong (a kind of rice cake).

Mie Tek-tek, an egg noodle with chicken and vegetables in spicy broth. Sounded interesting so thought we’d try it. I think it’d be better as a lunch item rather as something to share for dinner. I liked the spice though, glad we got the spicy instead of the mild.

Beef rendang with rice. I only had a bit, had a strong coconut taste. The guys seemed to enjoy it though.

Chili crab! The sauce was good, sweet and spicy and thick! But there was no fried bread rolls to go with it 🙁 Although I have to give the place credit, they are smart and they give you a crab leg crackers, crab meat forks, tons of napkins and wet naps.

Afterwards, we went for dessert at Crepevine. We ordered the “Georgia” sweet crepe which is filled with apples, cheddar cheese (yes, that’s correct!), cinnamon, and sugar. It’s served with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream.

It was lovely. The cheese was a bit salty so balanced the sweetness of everything else and the touch of cinnamon made it even better. YUM!

Lime Tree
450A Irving Street
San Francisco, CA

Crepevine
624 Irving Street
San Francisco, CA

Sam Won Korean BBQ Restaurant Oakland

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http://www.yelp.com/biz/sam-won-bbq-house-oakland

We went out to Oakland to visit with my dad and had lunch together at one of our favorite Korean BBQ Restaurants. This is one of the places where we were first introduced to the concept of Korean BBQ and where we had our first learning lesson of not wearing your best clothes to have Korean BBQ.

We got there about 1pm for lunch and there were only a few other tables occupied. During evenings, you would usually have to wait for a while to get seated. I’m guessing it was quiet since it is Saturday and there are less businesses open.

I really like their side dishes, as you can see my dad is already digging in.
(From top left to right: tofu, broccoli, spicy cucumber, kimchi AND
bottom left to right: eggplant-one of my favorites, black beans, spicy radish, and octopus)

The octopus was a new one to us, simple with spicy sauce drizzled on top.

We didn’t do the BBQ thing today but I wanted to try something I haven’t had yet so I ordered the kimchi tofu rice cake stir fry. It was a bit too sour for me and I wished it had more rice cakes. It has plenty of fatty bacon though so if you like that, this is the way to go.

Ron ordered the stone bowl bibimbap which came out sizzling hot and continued to sizzle through the whole meal. He had to keep on stirring it around to aerate it to cool it down. I love all the vegetables in bibimbap… makes you think you’re eating something healthy!

We have leftovers, enough for another full meal 😛

We went to the Korean supermarket, Koreana Plaza, to stock up on Korean foods… we’re going to have a yummy week!

Sam Won
2600 Telegraph Ave
(b/w 26th and 27th St.)
Oakland, CA

Sushi Raw San Bruno

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http://www.sushirawsanbruno.com/

We attempted to go have dinner with Ron’s parents tonight since we hadn’t seen them for a few weeks but unfortunately, they already ate so we went to find our own dinner before visiting with them.

We ended up in San Bruno and stopped at Sushi Raw. The restaurant itself looks like a converted Jack-in-the-Box or other fast food joint since it had a drive-through window still installed.

The place only has about 10-12 tables but also has a sushi bar. The tables had cute bowls for soy sauce/chopstick rest.

We ordered something called the Island Roll which has hamachi, salmon, and tuna wrapped in thinly sliced cucumber. It was $13.95 which was a bit expensive but likely because it contained so much fresh fish. There was a tangy sauce but we still requested for wasabi because their sauce didn’t quite do it.

We tried their tako sunomono which is an octopus salad. The restaurant that makes my favorite tako sunomono is in Stockton because they make it spicy… haven’t been able to find it since. The toasted sesame seeds were a nice touch but still not exactly what I wanted. This was $6.95.

Lastly we ordered the special bento box where you get your choice of 3 items. We chose the tonkatsu, chicken teriyaki, and spicy tuna roll. The bento is served with miso soup and salad. The miso soup was good because they added those white long mushrooms. The rest of the bento was good but not spectacular but had a nice presentation, I liked the plates. This was $13.95.

Now upon coming home and looking online, apparently you can place your order online and they can deliver! Too bad we don’t live down there. One other thing to mention, their wasabi was good, nice and spicy, it hits you in the nose when you least expect it.

Sushi Raw
1789 El Camino Real
San Bruno, CA 94066

DooBu Korean BBQ & Tofu Restaurant

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

We met up with our friends Tiffany and Cassie to have dinner in Japantown. Cassie recommended this Korean restaurant called DooBu, what a cute name!

We’ve passed by a few times while shopping in Japantown and heard good things about it so were excited to try it.

The place was pretty empty on a Tuesday evening, while we were there, only 2 other parties came in to have dinner as well. But that just means we got better service.

We ordered an appetizer and 3 bowls of tofu soup. You can tailor the spiciness of the tofu soups from “non-spicy” to “spicy”. We were warned by Cassie that “spicy” was really spicy but thought we’d try it anyways.

Our dinner included a deep fried fish per person:

Plus with each tofu soup, a stone pot of purple rice.

The appetizers (tofu, chap jae, seaweed, kimchi, & bean sprouts). In this picture is the sauce for the pajun (a pancake).

Ron & I ordered a kimchi and vegetable panjun, kind of like a Korean pizza or pancake, served on a hot stone plate. Had lots of vegetables and with the sauce, was really yummy.

We also ordered their special: ham and cheese tofu soup. It was a bit weird to have so much cheddar cheese and it was very gooey. It ordered “spicy” but it was tolerable, not as hot… definitely not like the experience we had in Korea, read about it HERE.

Cassie and Tiffany ordered the dumpling and rice cake tofu soup. I tried one of the little rice cakes. Cute and chewy.

Boy we were stuffed, the bread of the pancake and the cheese filled up our stomach.

DooBu
Korean BBQ & Tofu Restaurant
1723 Buchanan Street
San Francisco, CA
415-292-6002