Category Archives: Southeast Asian

Indonesia Restaurant

Leave a reply

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

I was having a craving for laksa but wasn’t able to find a place in our neighborhood but thought we’d try the Indonesian Restaurant that we passed by a few weeks ago.

We ended up ordering four dishes.

Tahu Telor
Deep fried tofu in scramble egg, bean sprouts, and crushed peanut served with peanut sauce dressing.
Not very appetizing looking but reminded me a lot of one of my favorite breakfast in Singapore called Tahu Goreng (a deep fried tofu dish served with cucumbers and peanut sauce).

Chicken Satay
Five grilled chicken skewers served with a peanut sauce.
The chicken was a bit dry. The pickled vegetables were really yummy though.

Soto Ayam
Shredded chicken in coconut milk, bean sprout, fresh tomato, clear noodles, and hard boiled eggs.
The crispy things on top tasted a bit stale so a bit bitter. I was hoping it was like laksa because of the coconut broth but I was very wrong.

Rendang
Slow cooked beef in coconut milk, galangal, lemon grass, and Indonesian bay leaves.
Yum, delicious and spicy. Loved the fried garlic on top.

They have lots of other dishes so we’ll probably be back since we live within walking distance. They open late too, see hours below.


Indonesia Restaurant
678-680 Post Street
Mon-Thu 11:30am-12am
Fri-Sat 11:30am-3am
Sun 12pm-11pm

Poleng Lounge

1 Reply

http://www.polenglounge.com/

Tonight I went out with Vicki and Joyce for dinner. We hadn’t had the chance to catch up before the holidays so this was our chance. I found Poleng Lounge on Opentable and it seemed to have good reviews and it was easy to make a reservation.

The restaurant was pretty empty at 6:30pm but then that is pretty early to have dinner. It seems like they have music in the evenings and a pretty mellow atmosphere.

We ordered some yummy appetizers, roasted edamame, roti, and sweet potato fries with banana catsup. The edamame was salty and smoked, yum. The roti was nice a hot but the accompanying curry was a bit cold. The sweet potato fries were delicious and the catsup was unique.

We ordered the shaking beef. The beef chunks were a good size and the dipping sauce complimented the meat well.

The garlic lobster noodles were a bit greasy but very yummy. The noodles a bit chewy and lots of garlic. Don’t order this on a date!

They have delicious cocktails too! I’m sure you’d be happy with whichever one you order.

We had a bit room left for dessert (probably I had more room than Vicki and Joyce…) and ordered the bread pudding.

One of the best bread puddings I’ve had. There was a slight burnt crust on the bottom because of carmelization and the rest was moist and delicious. It was served with a taro (I think) tapioca with a bit of black sesame seeds. That was really yummy.

I’d like to go back again on a weekend and see what the night scene is like… it’s pretty close to where we live so I think this may be a nice place to frequent. Here we can have the cuisine we miss from Singapore.

Poleng Lounge
1751 Fulton Ave @ Masonic

Homemade Singaporean Chili Crab

2 Replies

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 🙂

Banana Island and Spot Lounge

Leave a reply

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

1 Reply

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