Asian Court

My oil was low today.  I stopped at the Midas to get it changed, and headed along Route 40 to find something to eat.  I didn't want to spend too much, but the promise of dim sum drew me in to Asian Court.  It's tucked away from the Baltimore National Pike so you have to know where to find it - namely, somewhere in the Giant shopping center.

Apparently, I am the last food blogger in the area to have found out about this place.  No worries.  I know about it now.

No menu is posted, but you will be filled up on about $15 of dim sum.  The warm colored dining room is covered with murals that evoke China, excepting the bar which has a flat screen TV playing Chinese telenovelas (when I was there anyway).  The place was pretty busy, and filled mostly with Chinese-American diners, a sign that this is probably a good place to be.  There wasn't a whole lot of room for the wait staff to navigate around the tables with their dim sum carts.  The first waitress to come to me had to stop across from my table, and I needed to get up to choose my plates (small ones are $3, with higher prices ranging from $4 for medium plates to $8 for the largest ones).

I don't remember exactly what I ordered, but the waitress was very keen on recommending the rice (I've had better, especially with the thin and chewy prawns, but it was still flavorful and I ate most of it).  I also got some fried pork dumplings (very tasty - my favorite thing), another type of steamed dumpling whose contents I can't quite place (also tasty, though I came back to this plate less often) and a set of taro dumplings with a delicious and delicately crispy fried batter on the outside.  They were just beautiful but difficult to pick up with a set of chopsticks - easier to cut in half with them, and then pick up each half.  By the time the second cart had come around with shu mai - my most favorite type of dim sum - I was regretting having ordered so much.  They will let you take home the leftovers, however, so if you order too much you won't be wasting it.  I was going to be adventurous and order the chicken feet, but with so much food in front of me, I needed to conserve what was in my bank account and not stuff myself.

With all that dim sum plus a pot of piping hot jasmine tea, my total came to $17.50, a pricier lunch than I had planned to get today, but about right for all the food that I got.

Food Truck Crawl on the Miracle Mile in LA!

En route to an hour of eating. I'm following that guy. Okay, I'm going the same direction as that guy, not really following him so to speak.

Tuesday was my day to venture into the wilds of Downtown Los Angeles. I had chosen Tuesday because I was going to a Web Soup taping that evening - fun as always, and the nice people there helped me find my lost keys and even gave me a bottle of water to make me feel better. Awww... (plus, Web Soup Chris Hardwick is coming back to the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse in June).

But I started my day in LA by seeking out food trucks. It all started out the night before when I read on my new phone about the Dim Sum Truck (Twitter: @dimsumtruck - NB: since so many of these food trucks get their word out through Twitter, I will post links to their Twitter feeds. This will be helpful if you visit LA, or if you actually are visiting my Bawlmer-based blog from the City of Angels). It's one of those Android phones (Hey, these things really are useful!!!) and I downloaded one of those free "apps" to tell me where food trucks are. The Dim Sum Truck was at the Miracle Mile yesterday, right across from the LA County Museum of Art (or LACMA). I had even set my GPS to its location (5850 Wilshire Blvd, LA, CA) to just go right there. What I found, however, was more than just the Dim Sum Truck. Oh yes, much, much more.

If you see this across the street, you are in the right place.

In retrospect, there were about sixteen trucks along three blocks of the Miracle Mile, including the Cool Haus ice cream truck (Twitter: @COOLHAUS) on the other side of the street. When I first saw the trucks I almost short circuited: I literally wanted to go to each one, but I knew this was not going to happen. So I had to peruse them all. A few of the many standouts:

* The Wien (Twitter: @thewientruck), one of two wiener trucks there, with regular, all beef, Polish, spicy Polish and (if I remember correctly) veggie dogs all priced around $5, before toppings and stuff. A dog is still going to run you not much more than $6 or $7 if you get a few toppings. And yes there is a bacon dog.
* Bool BBQ (Twitter: @BoolBBQ), which I ate from last year, with its revolutionary Korean BBQ tacos
* La Rue de Paris (Twitter: @laruedeparis), which sells pastries and especially crepes from between $4 and $8.
* No less than two Indian and two Mediterranean trucks, selling everything from tikka masala (New Delhi Express, Twitter: @newdelhiexpress) to pitas (Pita Pusher, Twitter: @pitapusher) to Mediterranean-Mexican fusion (Kabob Express, Twitter: @mykabobexpress).
* And of course, several taco trucks, including one of at least three Korean food trucks (the aforementioned Bool BBQ).

The Dim Sum Truck

After much hemming and hawing, I finally settled on three. The first one was the whole reason I went to the Miracle Mile in the first place: the Dim Sum Truck, which was the very last food truck I stumbled upon. For just $6, I got three pieces each of pork shu mai ($3) and shrimp har gow dumplings ($3), along with a garlicky soy dipping sauce. And I got my food almost instantly, too - warm as is usually the case from dim sum carts, and flavorful. This was as good as I've had dim sum lately, certainly better than your standard "Asian buffet" or "frozen" variety, and as good as the stuff you'll usually find in most restaurants.

dim sum and samosas

The next one I stopped by was the Bollywood Bites food truck (Twitter: @BOLLYWOOD_BITES). I stepped up to it before the enthusiastic guy came out to draw in customers, and went for the cheaper $2 order of potato and pea samosas. Theirs came with two dipping sauces, and were incredibly fragrant, flaky and tender. The filling also was better than many samosas I have eaten, even at many restaurants.

The Bollywood Bites food truck

My last stop was a taco truck. This time I stopped at the Komodo Food Truck (Twitter: @komodofood). Though I almost went with the Bool BBQ truck again, what drew me to Komodo was not its intriguing pan-international fusion tacos, but the Baltimore Ravens flag hanging from above the window.

There it is, hons.

Yes, I am a sucker for a Bawlmer ex-pat. I bought one of the Java tacos - Indonesian spices with pork, scallion and cucumber for $3.


While not nearly as spicy as they advertised (it didn't make my mouth hurt anyway), it was still a juicy, slightly sweet and savory, and tasty soft taco. I had some flashbacks to a cochinita pibil that I had made a while back, not so much for the flavor as for the look. Ooooh, I wonder if anyone is planning a Yucatecan food truck? (Note: some of the trucks take Visa or Mastercard. Komodo does, but you must spend at least $10. They make this easy for you, since they offer whole meals that cost $10).

I drove away from the Miracle Mile thinking that this was, by far, the best $15 I had ever spent on lunch in Los Angeles, and I have had more than a few of those over the last several years.

Finally, a helpful list of food trucks that showed up at the Miracle Mile on Tuesday. I have posted Twitter links wherever I could.

All-American Gourmet Grill (American food - Twitter: @AllAmericanGG)

Bollywood Bites (Indian - Twitter: @BOLLYWOOD_BITES)

Bool BBQ (Korean fusion, including their legendary Korean BBQ tacos - Twitter: @BoolBBQ)

Chili Dancer (pan-international dishes, focusing specifically on Thai and Southeast Asian food, that showcase chilis - Facebook: The Chili Dancer, though nothing is posted; Twitter account has been so inactive that I'm not sure it's even theirs)

Cool Haus (gourmet ice cream sandwiches - Twitter: @COOLHAUS)

The Greasy Wiener (hot dogs, including New Jersey-style "rippers" - Twitter: @TheGreasyWiener)

Happy Cup Ramen Truck (ramen noodles, duh - Twitter: @HappyCupRamen)

Kabob Express (Mediterranean-Latino fusion - Twitter: @mykabobexpress)

KoManna (Korean - Twitter: @KoManna)

Komodo Food Truck (pan-Asian and pan-international tacos - Twitter: @komodofood)

La Rue de Paris (pastries and crepes - Twitter: @laruedeparis)

New Delhi Express (Indian - Twitter: @newdelhiexpress)

New York Galbi (Korean - Phone: (213) 985-8219 - I cannot find a Twitter or Facebook account for them)

Pita Pusher (Mediterranean - Twitter: @pitapusher

Vchos (pupusas and "Central American-inspred tapas" - Twitter: @vchostruck)

The Wien (hot dogs - Twitter: @thewientruck)
Other photos:

The view towards the Mediterranean food trucks

Got pupusas indeed!

All those food trucks

Guido-Approved for the Left Coast. Orange people welcome.

And from New Jersey to New York, all in a small section of the Miracle Mile.

Snacking State-by-State: California Part 2B - the Northern Half (The Best Little Shiu Mai in Chinatown)

To finish with California, I head back to the big city: this time San Francisco, home to sourdough, fog, and the thriving Chinese and LGBT communities of Chinatown and the Castro, respectively (related note: the Castro was the home of Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in the US). While we don't, alas, think of the gay community's contributions to San Francisco's culinary landscape, Chinatown fortunately has an extensive food history.

Snacking State-by-State: California

Official Name: State of California
State Nickname: The Golden State
Admission to the US: September 9, 1850 (#31)
Capital: Sacramento (7th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Los Angeles (largest, & 2nd largest in the USA), San Diego (2nd largest), San Jose (3rd largest), San Francisco (4th largest)
Region: West, Pacific (small sections of the state can be considered Northwest or Southwest in terms of its food and culture); Pacific (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Acorn, Chile Pepper, Pinyon Nut, Salmon
Bordered by: Baja California, Mexico (south), Arizona & Nevada (east), Oregon (north), Pacific Ocean (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: golden trout (fish), California Valley quail (bird), grizzly bear (animal)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Where to begin? "New California cuisine", diversity of ethnic cuisines, especially Asian, Latin American and Mediterranean (Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Thai, Salvadoran, Korean, Italian), citrus (especially in the south), wine (especially in the center and north), seafood, dates, and so much else

One of the oldest Chinatowns in North America, it survived the massive earthquake of 1906 to grow bigger and better than ever. If you ever visit San Fran's Chinatown, as I did a few years ago, don't spend time in any one restaurant. I mean, sure, go ahead and do that, but I had more fun trolling up and down the streets on my own dim sum crawl.

When we usually think of Chinese food, we think specifically of things that nobody eats in China - I mean nobody. Chop suey, for example, is not Chinese food. It was actually just stuff that a Chinese immigrant in California threw together for some white patrons, as New York author Jennifer 8. Lee points out in her fascinating must-read book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (note: fortune cookies aren't Chinese either - they're of Japanese origin). As for General Tso's chicken? Nope, not Chinese either. Lee gives us the scoop on her search for it in the Hunan province home town of General Tso (aka Zuǒ Zōngtáng) himself:

Unlike kung pao chicken, which nearly every self-respecting Chinese chef can make, a request for General Tso's chicken left many cooks, waitresses, and restaurant owners [in Hunan] scratching their heads.

The refrain was consistent: "We don't have General Tso's chicken here" or "We've never heard of it." Even after I showed them pictures of the dish on my digital camera, they would frown and look at me blankly, then helpfully suggest another chicken dish, often the local specialty, mala or kung pao. [Lee, p. 68]

Out of all the foods Americans are familiar with that actually are Chinese, perhaps the most popular is dim sum. PBS mainstay Martin Yan writes in his Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking about the place of dim sum in China's varied cuisines:

Dim sum is to China what hors d'oeuvre are to France or tapas are to Spain. Dim sum is social food, meant to be enjoyed with family, friends, and business associates along with plenty of conversation.

Dim sum has evolved into an art form over the past eleven centuries since its origins in Guangzhou. The majority of Westerners are only now beginning to realize the elegant simplicity of popular dim sum dishes like char siu bao and maw mai gai. [Yan, p. 1]

Yan starts his cookbook with dim sum, and it's where I end my trip back to California.

The recipe: Surefire Shu Mai (Pork Version)

One of my favorite types of dim sum is the popular steamed version of the pork and shrimp shu mai dumpling, native to Guangdong (Canton) in southern China. Yan swaps out the traditional pork and shrimp for ground chicken. Never a fan of ground chicken, I followed his recipe but put the pork back instead of the chicken, and left out the shrimp.


As with the California roll, there were many varied ingredients. However, most of those ingredients were far more easily assembled than the sushi. Usually I halve the recipes but I love shu mai so much, I made the whole thing.

* dried mushrooms (about $2 or $3 at H-Mart - I only needed two of them)
* ground pork (I used about a pound, $5 at Whole Foods)
* sliced bamboo shoots (one can was less than a dollar at H-Mart)
* an egg (I did buy a dozen for this, but I knew I'd be using a lot of eggs in the near future)
* green onion (just one - a bunch is a buck)
* soy sauce, salt, cornstarch, white pepper and sugar (got it all)
* fresh ginger (same)
* sesame oil (almost out)
* shu mai or dumpling wrappers ($1.75 at H-Mart, in the freezer section)
* one carrot and about a 1/3 cup of frozen peas (decoration)
* lettuce leaves or parchment paper to line the bamboo steamer (I tried both. I had better luck with the latter)

In addition, you will need a wok with a steamer rack, and a bamboo steamer. If you do not have these, you just have to find some other way to steam the shu mai.

Yan also has a recipe for an excellent dipping sauce of powdered mustard, white vinegar, soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar and chili sauce. Make it while the dim sum is steaming and refrigerate.



The first part is the easiest: mix all of the above ingredients, rehydrating the mushrooms and mincing them along with the bamboo shoots and the ginger. Yan says to mix it all until spongy.

The next part is the tedious part. Here you will need two moist washcloths or kitchen towels, one to cover the wrappers while you work with them, the other to cover the dumplings that you have made but not yet steamed.

To assemble each shu mai dumpling, take a sheet of dumpling wrapper and put about a tablespoon and a half of the filling in the middle


Next, fold the sides around the filling like a purse, puffing some out until it bugs out of the middle a little bit.

Fold those sides around

Line them up like little shu mai soldiers

Top each dumpling with some shredded carrot and a few frozen peas if you like. I did that. Yan also suggests that you can smooth out the sides with wet fingers to make it look neater. I didn't do that.

Next, prepare your wok for steaming by placing the steamer rack in the center of the wok and filling the wok with enough water to almost come up to the rack. Once it sets to boiling you will set the bamboo steamer onto the rack. While the water builds up to a boil, place the shu mai into the bamboo steamer, making sure they don't touch.


Set them on either lettuce leaves or parchment paper, cover the steamer, and steam for about 20 to 25 minutes.

And of course, put the bamboo steamer lid on the top steamer tray.

I had better luck with the latter, as the shu mai that I set on (albeit small, piddly little) lettuce leaves wound up having goopy, sticky wrappers at the end of steaming, while the parchment paper produced a far more stable dumpling. Note that at no time did any of the filling fall apart. The steaming will make that pretty solid. I had to steam about five rounds of shu mai altogether. Martin Yan says his recipe will yield anywhere from 24 to 30 dumplings. I eked out 35, so maybe mine were a wee bit smaller than they should have been.

Apart from the goopiness of the first round of shu mai, this recipe turned out very well. The filling tasted about the same as any I have had out. Only the dumpling wrappers left something to be desired, and I have to find out if that is due to their having been frozen but not quite thawed, or if the water level in the wok was too high, or if I just left it to steam too long. The next time I make this type of dim sum I will have to experiment to see what yields a less soft wrapper in the end. These are easy to heat up and eat up. After heating in the microwave for about 30 seconds (I did it in stages, 15 seconds each), it was quite good, in fact slightly better than when I first took them out of the steamer.


I leave California having learned about some foods I had never eaten until I lived in the Golden State: California rolls (and by extension, sushi), shu mai (and by extension, dumplings) and California cuisine (as opposed to, say, California's cuisine). And I made my own date shake on top of that! It is not meant as a put-down to say that Colorado, the next state on my list, will be easier to handle. It will - there just aren't as many people. And there are a few key dishes that just scream "COLORADO"! None of them, I might add, involve Coors. Yekhkhkh.

Sources:

Lee, Jennifer 8. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Twelve Books: New York, 2008.

Waters, Alice, and the Cooks of Chez Panisse. Chez Panisse Vegetables. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 1996.

Yan, Martin. Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking: The Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series. William Morrow: New York, 1995.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "California" page and the Food Timeline State Foods webpage link to "California".

Zhong Shan Restaurant

The City Paper's annual Eat Guide is out, and as usual I found out about some spots I had previously known nothing about. There's the Immeasurable Chicken and Waffle near Carroll Park, which is owned by a gospel trio of the same name (minus the food part of the name of course). Then there's the long-open Club Charles, which I now know has been using the kitchen of the long-defunct Zodiac, and cooking up some of the same menu items (I know they were famous for their vegan offerings, but please let their burger have been resurrected).

And then there is Zhong Shan Restaurant, an import from Philly that brings some much needed dim sum to downtown Baltimore. But what they are most known for, apparently, is their Chinese hot pot - or as they call it, "Chinese fondue - which sounds like a cross between Mongolian BBQ and pho: you get a choice of four types of broth, several types of meat (sliced thin and raw, which then cooks in the broth), several types of vegetables (I assume you can skip the meat if you want to go vegetarian) and choice of either vermicelli or Cantonese wontons. Though I wasn't going specifically for that, I did look for it on the menu. Since it wasn't on the one I got last night, I assumed it wasn't being offered at the time. But I could be wrong.

Zhong Shan is very bright on the outside and inside. A beautiful desk greets you on the other side of the door, and the friendly owners greet you behind that desk. Zhong Shan also does take out, but I wanted to sit down. The first thing that caught my attention was the dining room: it was empty. Granted, I was out well past the typical dining hour, but I'm not really used to being the only customer, so it always weirds me out. Don't ask me why - it just does. Fortunately, other customers showed up over the course of the hour or so that I was there.

As I noted, Zhong Shan is very bright inside, with gold colored columns and chandeliers in the middle of yellow and off-white walls, and a massive Chinese mural on the wall. Across from the mural is mounted an HDTV that was showing some sort of movie about people fighting. It was in Chinese, of course, but subtitled in... Chinese, so that didn't help me at all.

Since I couldn't find the fabled Chinese fondue, my eyes scanned over the dim sum offerings. It's been a while since I've had dim sum (between $3 and $5 per item, order at least three items), but it would have to wait again: I didn't know, but it's difficult for them to serve fewer than three different pieces of dim sum at a time, due to how they prepare it. Oh well, I'll just have to return again sometime, preferably before 3, for the taro dumplings, pork shu mai and chicken feet (icky in America but a delicacy in China, so why not try 'em sometime?)

While sipping the complimentary tea, my eyes did alight on the shredded duck ($16), but they were out of duck, so I went for the shrimp spring roll ($1.50 each) and crispy pork ($13). The spring roll was hot - meaning temperature hot, not spicy hot. It came with both duck sauce and chili sauce. I was warned that the sauce would be hot, but I didn't find it that hot at all. Then again, I like hot things, so my "not so hot" might be another's "OHMYGODTHISISSOHOT!!!" The spring roll was fine; it did its job.

The crispy pork, I was told, is one of their more popular menu items. Paired with white rice, it is a large plate of crispy breaded pork, mixed with slices of celery and carrot, and coated with a thin, sweet and sticky sauce that makes that duck sauce quite unnecessary. It goes well with the chili sauce, I might add. I can see why the crispy pork is so popular. It's not at all gummy or filled with breading and gristle like most crispy porks or chickens I have had in the past. In fact, beyond the coating there really wasn't much breading at all. Just a lot of pork - that's the point, is it not? It was delicious and I have to recommend it, but as usual I needed a doggie bag. The waitress gave me an extra helping of white rice to go along with it!

The folks who came in after me ordered up a few things, but I only got to see their side order of ribs. Damn, they were big. My only thought was "THAT is a SIDE order!?" I would've needed a doggie bag for that alone.

The total bill came to about $15 before tax and tip. I left a good tip, for the extra rice and the friendly service - I can't remember the last time so many people came by to ask me how the food was. I was even complimented on my chopstick-using skills! That made my night.

Georgia on My GPS Part 4: On to Raleigh

As you are reading this, I am heading back to Baltimore (I love auto-scheduled publishing). I wanted to go to Atlanta, but I've been hemming and hawing for a while because I wasn't sure I'd have the time or the money, or that my car would be able to take the extra driving (this trip pushed it over the 150K mark). That, and Atlanta is too fabulous a city to devote just one quickfire night to exploring - and I'd rather have seen it on a Friday or Saturday night when more bars are actually open!

So Atlanta is off my itinerary for this road trip. But it'll still be there when I get back (since Cathy's moving down here at some point, that isn't too far off), and I can spend a good few days in the ATL. But I've already planned for when I do get back. I asked Leslie at the Southern Social blog what is best to eat in Atlanta (thanks, Leslie). She quickly recommended a favorite Chinese restaurant off of Buford Hwy., Chef Liu. From the photos I've seen, this place looks like a dive from the outside (as many good places do), but serves delicious authentic Chinese - think more Mandarin Pork Cakes and Soup Filled Dumplings, and less General Tso's Chicken and Crispy Orange Peel Beef. Atlanta's Blissful Glutton blog corroborates Leslie's recommendation, in this post from four years ago. Since this place has been making damn good food for a while, and since it was recommended to me, it'll be the first place I stop when I finally do get to Atlanta.

But alas, I am instead heading back up the 95. I had already planned a stop in Raleigh - ATL trip or not. Raleigh is about a half hour off of I-95, but it's the perfect place to stop for the night since it's about halfway between Savannah and Baltimore. Besides, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has this amazing looking exhibition about chocolate that I would be a damn fool to miss.

Random Photos around SoCal

Today we went for glorious, glorious dim sum at the Ocean Star in Monterey Park, followed by random grocery shopping at the 99 Ranch (the Chinese-American answer to H-Mart). Before finishing, we had a little time to stop off at the Joseph Filippi Winery in Rancho Cucamonga for some wine tasting and purchasing. Since it's late, I'll just let the photos do the talking.

Scenic Atlantic Avenue in Monterey Park

Hmmm, I guess the Ocean Star doesn't have much to worry about in this economy.

Yes, I should have taken the picture before I finished the dim sum. I wish there were more dim sum places in the Baltimore area.

This is only a simulated lobster ball. In the event of an actual lobster ball you will be given further instructions through your local Emergency Response System.

Insert your own line here.

They also had live fish, both swimming in tanks and laying in bins of crushed ice. The big-eyed cod was a bit disconcerting. There was one with very big, glazed-over eyes that was definitely not alive at all. but prodding its neighbor with tongs showed me that it was very much alive.

Perhaps the most descriptive name for a food item I have seen since those "Round Cookies" I bought last year.

Home of Christians. Not sure which ones. Probably just some random Christians.

Five wines tasted for five dollars. I bought two, a rosé and a chocolately dessert wine. You should have seen the guy stocking the shelves. Damn he fine!

Museums and Dim Sum in Warshnin

I headed down to the DC area today for a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a little bit of something else to boot.

A Little Bit of This: Sharper Image goes out of business

Get to a Sharper Image soon because they have been liquidated! Every Sharper Image store in the nation is closing down as of late July or early August at the latest. You might find a nice knife set. I picked up the Ion Tape2PC USB Cassette to MP3 device, a device the likes of which I have craved for years. Yes, I know all I have to do is hook my stereo up to my sound card and I can get the same results. But I don't have a stereo with audio jacks in the back - the speakers connect in a totally different way. So basically I'm connecting the headphone jacks of my PC and my stereo, which produces a very quiet sound with lots and lots of static. And even with that, my stereo and my computer are in two totally different rooms. Hopefully this won't sound like crap, but most reviews I've read suggest that it won't. Normally it sells for about $140 to $150. Not this one! I got it for $100 before the $10 tax - about 33% off. The prices are just gonna keep droppin' so be fast. But just to inform you: the Sharper Image in Towsontown Center closed down months ago. The closest one is in Bethesda's Montgomery Mall - a "Westfield" Mall. There are three others in the DC region - Georgetown, Dulles and McLean.

A Little Bit of That: Dim Sum at A&J Restaurant

On the advice of the Washingtonian Magazine's 100 Best Bargain Restaurants in and around DC, I went to the very first one on their list, Rockville's not-so out of the way A&J Restaurant, which serves Northern Chinese dim sum (there's a second one in ArlingtonAnnandale). Oh! My! God! This place was just fantastic! They were very busy but the waitress seats you as quickly as you come in, hands you a menu and a pencil and comes back with a pot of hot green tea ready for your order. You just indicate what you want. Prices range from about $1 or $2 for a nice, palate-cleansing bowl of millet congee to bigger chicken, pork or beef dishes for $4 to $6. No one dish is very big or pricey - think Northern Chinese tapas if you're not familiar. But like tapas, if you order too many, you fill up and your wallet gets drained very quickly. And BRING CASH, PEOPLE! A&J does not take credit cards.

As is usually the case, I ordered too damn much (no, not a single dumpling or meat bun). And it was all wonderful.

Pardon the blurriness. I took these with my camera phone. Left to right - boiled peanuts, pickled cabbage, and millet congee

Millet congee - I think the waitress was surprised that a non-Chinese guy was ordering congee. She actually asked if I like congee. The reason I ordered it was as a palate cleanser. But I wouldn't have ordered it had I thought it was nasty, so I said, "Yeah". It's plain, bland and thick, but it's supposed to be. The perfect breakfast food to get you up and energized in the morning.

Pickled cabbage - I was thinking a Northern Chinese version of kimchee, though I knew it wouldn't be exactly the same thing. I was right - not the same thing. Not too spicy, very crunchy and tangy, but unlike kimchee it will not burn your tongue or drip everywhere.

Spicy boiled peanuts - This was one item recommended by the Washingtonian's staff. I ordered it because I was intrigued, and hey, I like boiled peanuts. These are very different from any boiled peanut you will find below the Mason-Dixon Line. Alone, each peanut is savory, spicy but not too spicy. Together the spiciness can build. Fortunately, it's tough to eat more than one or two at a time with a pair of chopsticks (they will offer you a fork if you want one).

Left to right - green tea, chicken smoked-on-the-bone, the peanuts, pork shao bing, and the cabbage.

Smoked chicken - As I heard on NPR yesterday, many Chinese believe that the tenderest chicken meat is next to the bone. They don't play around. I got to find this out today. The skin was fatty and the meat was so moist - not dry in any way. True, there were little bits of bone everywhere, but not too difficult to break apart from the meat. The flavor was just remarkable. I only regret that I couldn't take this with me, lest it sit in my hot trunk all day.

Pork shao bing - Another thing that the Washingtonian raves about is shao bing, or little flatbread sandwiches, often covered with sesame, stuffed with meat. Mine had pork in it. This was really my least favorite dish, as the bread was too dry for my liking and the pork kinda got lost in the mix. But you might like it.

Left to right - Thousand Layer pancake. Yep, that's all that's in the photo.

Thousand layer pancake - I had forgotten about this when the waitress brought it out. My first thought was "Oh shit, as if I didn't have enough to eat!" This is pretty difficult to eat with chopsticks, and it makes a terrible mess flaking all over the place. So I just gave up and asked them to box it, along with the peanuts and cabbage. What little I had was a sometimes-flaky, sometimes-chewy, sometimes-flavorless pastry that really needs some spicy sauce on top. Which they have aplenty.

Total cost of the meal was $16 for all that food. It would have been less had I exercised some temperance. It's more than one group of lunchers could do -two women and a man, all co-workers came in and pretty much didn't know what to expect. The guy spent a few minutes asking if they had General Tso's chicken, then if she had even heard of it, and then if they had any kind of fried chicken dish on the menu (no, na-ah and nope). Not that kind of a Chinese restaurant. So they gave up and left. The woman behind me, a woman with her Chinese-American parents, remarked at how they had just given up! I should have recommended the smoked chicken.

By the way, right next door there's an Entenmann's Outlet Store. Go to it if you like cheap Entenmann's products.

A little bit of something else to boot - After lunch I hopped on the Red Line (the Metro stop is very close by the Twinbrook Station) and museum-hopped. It's great that the museums are open late in the summer. it sucks that they were closing early just for today, the day I came down. But I did get to see a sneak preview of the Natural History Museum's underwater mammals exhibit, their gems and minerals, the National Gallery of Art's "Treasures of Afghanistan" traveling exhibit, and a great exhibit showcasing dresses of Native American woman artists at the Museum of the American Indian (only there until early August and it's breathtaking so get down there to see it). I stopped in the Mitsitam Cafe, only to leave daunted by the $3 price tag on the absolutely cheapest item (the Washingtonian had this place on its "cheap eats" list a few years ago!?!?).

After getting back to my car, and further daunted by the Capitol Beltway, I circumvented it with my trusty GPS and took the backroads back from Rockville to College Park (technically Hyattsville though I did cut through University of Maryland). This time, I wanted to stop by a favorite international market I had gone to in my days as a student at the University of Maryland. The market was still there, though now not under the same owners. In the pat it had a wider range of Latin American, African and (mostly) Asian ingredients - and I don't mean the kind you will find in the "ethnic" section of Giant. Ten years later, and now it's a Bestway Market, a predominantly Latin American chain with four stores in DC, Maryland and Virginia, with some African and (much less so) Asian foods thrown in. Actually, it's mostly Mexican and Central American, with some South American, African and Asian foods thrown in. I went in to get some annatto seeds to make a cochinita pibil, and picked up some Yucatecan hot sauce and couscous to boot. Total cost: about $6.50. They had cheeses from Michoacán, Oaxaca and El Salvador, but it cost me too much, so I had to pass. These I can probably get on Eastern Blvd.

Amsterdam Trip Part Drie: Little Bites Here and There

I've had very little time to report in, but two things are for certain. One: it's very difficult to not find a different cuisine to sample every night. Two: it's fairly easy to spend €15 to €20 (that's $23 to $30) on a meal. At least I get a free breakfast. Unfortunately, it's godawful, so I just go to the local Albert Heijn supermarket and buy a croissant for €0.50.

Again, I have no access to my photos at this point. Yep, stupid hotel's wireless just is untappable with my computer. So photos will come later. I must say that, apart from the hotel kitchen, everything I´ve eaten has been quite good. To wit, a few cuisines and their attached restaurants:

Dutch - already addressed this in my previous post. But I am desperately looking around for stroopwaffels to bring back. Man, I love those things. You can get them for a little more money at Trader Joe's for about $5 (at Albert Heijn they are €1.50, or around $2.25). Lovely things. Also bought some syrup, which is far less sweet and far more molasses-y than our own. Also bought some sambal oelek, a very hot spice which is...

Indonesian - My friends and I all had some nasi goreng and Bojo, as well as a few other things. RE: Indonesian food is like Chinese food in the US. It. Is. Everywhere. That's due to Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. I had a very hot mackerel. Jim had lamb satay. I can´t recall what Gil had. I have to ask him. Total cost for me was about €15.

Surinamese - Most Americans have never heard of Suriname. And though I tried to find a purely Surinamese restuarant in Amsterdam, all I could find was a Surinamese-Chinese one. That´s the Wok to Walk, a popular franchise here. I got the Balinese bami with pork for about €5.

Italian - O Sole Mio is pretty close to Bojo, and for that matter it´s close to a few good eet-huisen. I got the pizza napoletana (anchovies, tomato sauce and mozzarella) for about €11. €4 more and I was in tiramisú heaven.

Sweets - Australian is not an Australian place. Instead, it has waffles, crepes and lots and lots of chocolate. My crepe with nutella, chocolate sauce and whipped cream was €4. The crepe was not soft at all, but that turned out to be a good thing, as I needed it to be hard so everything would not fall out.

Irish - Hoopman's is one of many, many Irish pubs in Amsterdam, again near the street with the aforementioned O Sole Mio and Bojo. I had a hearty salmon chowder for lunch today, their Galway Bay Chowder, for €10. Very good idea, considering the ridiculous amounts of snow, little styrofoam ball-sized pellets of hail, and more snow that we have been getting here. No problem, though: it's supposed to get much sunnier on the day I leave. Wat yammer.

Middle Eastern - Crystal on Leidestraat, one of the main thoroughfares through the city, serves up a mean hummus and falafel platter. My friends got lamb shaorma and something else - I forget what exactly. Mine cost about €11.

Indian - Bollywood ain't just the biggest movie industry in the world, it's also a cozy two-story restaurant across from Bojo. Most of their entrées run about €20, but we each got the chicken table meal for €14: pappadam, chicken soup (the only part I wasn't too crazy about - lots of grains of chicken), chicken curry, the tastiest and tenderest chicken tandoori I have had in a very long time, and naan.

Chinese - Two Chinese places to talk about, both on Zeedijk near the Red Light District. Nam Kee has been mentioned in various travel guides, and no wonder: they get you in very quick if they can, and will seat you sometimes with someone at a partially full table if there is nowhere else to put you. It´s Chinese but serves many Vietnamese and Indonesian dishes. In fact, many Chinese offerings had typically Indonesian names, such as the Chinese lumpia (spring rolls, €3), which were tasty if greasy. I ordered the nasi goreng, another Indonesian favorite, for €11. Heeeeeel lekker. Jim got the salt and pepper squid (€12). I don´t know what Gil got, because he went off to the small town of Arnhem to visit a friend. That´s the last I´m seeing of him this trip.
The second Chinese place, which all three of us went to a few days ago, was the Good Fortune Dim Sum restaurant. Many good pieces of dim sum there, and the proprietress and waitresses were able to talk to us and others in English, Dutch and several other languages. She commended me on my at least attempting to talk to her in Dutch, even if my friends gave me a ribbing for it. Total cost: €60, or €20 each.

Not sure if I will be checking in again tomorrow or before my flight. I will try. But the photos will be going up later this week, after I´m back in the US. I haven´t had any time to comment, by the way, but thanks to all of you who have given me suggestions and tips and input. I´m still looking for some Belgian chocolate, but it´ll have to be obtained here in Amsterdam. A train ticket to Antwerp, the nearest Belgian city is €58! YIKES!

A Weekend of Food: from Monterey Park to Temecula! (UPDATED WITH PHOTOS)

I was quite busy this weekend, with everything from dim sum to buffalo burgers to Carolina-style BBQ to wine tasting! A very brief rundown:

Ocean Star, Monterey Park

My friends and I were looking for food choices on Saturday, and the idea of dim sum struck me again (I couldn't get it out of my system from San Fran). So my one friend Gil suggested this place in the LA suburb of Monterey Park, again with a large Chinese community, the Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant. The place looked like a hotel inside, and the dining area was humongous! As soon as the three of us sat down carts were being bought to our table filled with all sorts of dim sum - some gristly chicken dish (the only one that wasn't very good), rice steamed in banana wrappers, sesame balls, clams in oyster sauce, Peking duck, Chinese broccoli steamed on site, and bowls of congee to cleanse the palate, among many other things. The three of us left, stomachs bulging (the photo at left doesn't even begin to tell how much we ate). Grand total came out to about $25 per person, for an experience that easily could've cost twice that!

Carolina-Style BBQ with Friends

I visited a friend that same night who made some wonderful Carolina-style BBQ. Originally, our plan was to do steamed crabs, but it was too damn expensive to ship them into SoCal, and even the local Asian supermarkets were either out or too pricey! So BBQ it was - tenderly cooked in sugar and vinegar. Throw it on a bun, add to that BBQ sauce and cole slaw, and eat away! Best with sweet corn smothered in butter and, of course, Old Bay. It's so fun to see people, like some folks in attendance, address the matter of why you would sprinkle seafood seasoning on corn. ***SIGH*** Add to that a heaping bowl of boiled peanuts as nibbles. Mmmm.

Temecula Valley Wine Tasting

Yes, Southern California has a wine industry, based in the city of Temecula. Yes, it's inferior to that of Central California. But yes, there are some tasty wines, none of which can be shipped to Maryland (which is why my buddies spent several hundred dollars on wine yesterday, and I spent, well, none). We stopped at a few wineries to taste some whites, reds, rosés, sparklings and ports. They all make you pay for tastings, usually about $6 to $8 for 5 to 6 wines. Places visited include, among others, the Filsinger Winery, with a very funny wine server, and the Oak Mountain Winery, inside a nice, cool, cavernous round building which is dark but cheery inside. I signed a petition to get Maryland to start allowing out-of-state wineries to ship to them. A lot of good that'll do.

Mad Madeline's BBQ

After the whole wine thing we three went to Temecula's Old Town area, looked around for food, and found our choices were limited to BBQ, BBQ and barbacoa (Spanish for "barbecue"). So, we went to a fairly crowded place, Mad Madeline's (their website is much fancier than their restaurant). Madeline's has their seating outside, under a big porch, and their kitchen is indoors (of course). You can watch country music videos while waiting for their specialties, such as burgers and whatnot. We each ordered burgers - Jim and I the buffalo burgers, Gil the feta burger. These were some of the best burgers we've had in a while. I am already a fan of buffalo, and prefer it to beef whenever I can get my hands on it. Even better is buffalo with red onion, spicy mustard and ketchup on top. Mmmm. Grand total: $40 for the three of us, for burgers, sides and whatnot.

Other photos

Funny vintners with a sense of humor

We didn't eat here, but the name of the restaurant is funny. The sign is even funnier!

San Francisco #2: Dim Sum and Then Some

I'm not sure, but all the dim sum I ate yesterday may or may not have canceled out all the walking I did around town. And all that walking - walking from the B&B to the Muni (the quite efficient - and clean - mass transit for the city itself, much of it underground), then after hopping the cable car and taking it to historic Chinatown. Mmm, okay, so I didn't do as much walking as I thought. But I walked a whole lot more on the way back, skipping the cable car altogether.

Stockton Street in Chinatown has many grocers, knick knack shops, clothing shops (both touristy and not), and not a whole lot of tourists. There were definitely non-Chinese roaming around but there weren't many, and it was easy to find people that did not speak English (and folks keep talking about making English the official language - ha).

I came, in part, for food, and the Lonely Planet guide I brought with me - San Francisco Encounter - suggested a "dim sum crawl." That is, go to different dim sum joints and just buy some here and there. The clerks to a woman (I only ran into female vendors) looked a little annoyed that I just bought one or two pieces and left, but it is money in their pocket. Here's where I went:

Fortune Star Cafe - I got a cold but tasty steamed shumai with pork and shrimp for under $1. Very moist and flavorful, this shumai was open on the top (I saw this shumai in several places up and down Stockton and off its side streets).

Wing Sing Dim Sum - Here I pigged out on a big rice ball, which tasted like chicken broth but was hardly soggy at all, and some custard buns with rice dough on the outside, sort of like what they wrap mochi in. This all cost me about $1.50. I had a very difficult time communicating with the woman behind the counter, but I still got what I wanted (dim sum) and she still got what she wanted ($$$).

You's Dim Sum - I got what was described as a shark fin potsticker (again, I saw this everywhere), three for $1. Didn't get the ubiquitous steamed buns that were everywhere. And they came in many different varieties, too - chicken, pork, chicken and pork, shrimp, red bean, rice, etc.

A few other places I stopped had my stomach bursting, or soon will anyway.

Mee Mee Bakery - I'm not the biggest fan of fortune cookies, but these folks make many different flavors and sizes of fortune cookie. I bought a 1 lb bag of flavored fortune cookies for $7. The flavors? Not only the traditional vanilla (that's the flavor we get in those free cookies at every Chinese restaurant in North America), but also strawberry, chocolate, and a few other flavors I didn't catch. I ate a strawberry one. Pretty tasty. The fortune I'll keep to myself.

Molinari Delicatessen - My eyes began to bug out when I turned the corner, hit Columbus St. and practically found a Little Italy right next to Chinatown, in SF's North Beach Nob Hill area. I bought a 2 lb. salami ($10) - "world famous" apparently. And I'm not coming back in God knows how long, so I figured I'd just buy it now. Haven't tasted it yet, but the patrons seem to love the food there.

Stinking Rose - I know I'm insane, but stuffed as I was I had to go into this restaurant. I've seen another one in LA of the same name. Their claim to fame is that just about every dish is made with garlic. In fact, it says right on their menu, "We flavor our garlic with food." But with all that dim sum in my stomach, I wasn't about to order much. I ordered their:

• garlic potato soup, which came with a pastry crust. At $8 for the soup, I was determined to eat as much of it as possible. I could only finish half of it. Very tasty, smooth soup, which was as potato-ey as it was garlicky.
• bagna calda, which means "hot bath" in Italian. Usually it is anchovies and garlic in a hot bath of olive oil. This one was a small pan filled with slices and slices and slices of garlic (it seemed like hundreds), with some sprinkles of anchovy, all in olive oil. The anchovy actually tasted like garlic - I couldn't taste it at all! Very good, especially when you spread the garlic on the bread that they give you. Don't even need a knife, just use the spoon they give you. Only $5 but I still couldn't finish it.
  
• Chateau de Garlique - you figured it out: a white wine infused with garlic, or made with garlic, or whatever ($7). It was an experience to drink it, an experience I'm not quite ready to go through again.

Stuffed with all the dim sum and garlic my stomach could, well, stomach, plus 1 lb of fortune cookies, 2 lbs of salami and an adorable outfit for my niece ($9), I made it back to the Muni and my B&B, ready for a night of debauchery. Granted I could move after all this food!