Too Much Food

One of the few places in South Orange County to get a traditional Taiwanese breakfast is at Formosa Restaurant (台灣小館) in Lake Forest. We’ve been coming to this tiny hole-in-the-wall (attached to a Quality Inn motel) for as long as I can remember and it’s been turning out traditional versions of the comforting, starchy Taiwanese [...]

Long time no post! Life has been a bit crazy around here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped cooking or baking. No recipe today, but since it is Dragon Boat Festival, my mom and I spent the day wrapping up homemade vegetarian 粽子 (pronounced “zongzi”, a type of stuffed glutinous rice dumpling). We decided [...]

One of the many Korean restaurants (I think I counted 4 last time I checked?) on Culver Dr. in Irvine. We’re faithfuls of Kaya, but this night we were faced with a 15 person-deep waiting queue and we were already starved. So off we went down to the plaza next door to try our luck [...]

Here’s a recap of our lovely meal at Cedar Creek Inn, as promised! OC Restaurant Week offers diners prix fixe lunches and dinners (lunch can go as low as $10, dinner as low as $20) and it’s a fantastic way to try new restaurants that you normally wouldn’t visit. It took place last week and [...]

Spring Natural Vegetarian Restaurant was highly recommended to us by many of my mom’s vegetarian friends. With branches in Taipei and Taichung, Spring Natural offers buffet-style vegetarian lunch, afternoon tea and dinner in a clean, airy and elegant setting. As the afternoon tea (served between 2:30pm and 4:30pm) offerings are comparable to that of lunch [...]

One of the best restaurants that I tried this time while staying in Taichung was Sakura, a small Japanese restaurant specializing in both sushi and cooked foods. Located in a nondescript alleyway in the Xitun district, Sakura is a bit difficult to find but well worth the search. The storefront:

Getting to Yizhong Street; the main road parallel to Yizhong Street. One of my favorite places to go in Taichung is Yizhong Street (一中街). Located near National Taichung First Senior High School (considered by Taichung residents to be the top high school in the city), Yizhong Street is a young person’s shopping and food paradise. [...]

Some close family friends insisted on taking us to He Ji, one of their favorite Hakka-style cuisine restaurants on the outskirts of Taichung City. Hakka cuisine is hard to come by in the U.S., they wanted give me the opportunity to experience it firsthand. Hakka cuisine is usually characterized by the use of bold, strong [...]

One of my favorite 小吃* to get whenever I come back is 潤餅, or “run bing.” You can order these in the U.S. as “spring rolls”, but the use of “spring rolls” is a bit troublesome . . . Spring rolls in the States refer to so many things, from the Vietnamese fresh rice paper [...]

We’re in the midst of Mid-Autumn Festival (otherwise known as 中秋節 or Autumn Moon Festival) here in Taiwan; besides Lunar New Year (which occurs between the end of February and the beginning of March of every year), Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the biggest and most important holidays here in Taiwan. It’s a time where [...]