Sunday BBQ

Summer means time to bring out the grill. So we had a family gathering at our house this past weekend to celebrate early my mom and cousin's birthdays. Top Sirloin was on sale at Stater Bros, so we bought a couple pounds. Some of the meat was cut up into steaks...


which I marinated in some red wine, olive oil, salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and garlic powder. I should have marinated it a bit earlier. It didn't come out that great, but at least I learned what didn't work. Anyone have a good marinade they'd like to share?


The remaining meat was cut into long strips and laid to rest in a sort of bulgogi marinade. These would be put onto skewers, which was the magic word of the day.


Bell peppers and onions on one side, and you got your jjo ggoo mi (sp?), a sort of baby octopus.


Squash and eggplant.


Potatoes and sweet potatoes.


Meat grillin on the charcoal.


We also grilled some shrimp, garlic and ginko nuts.


And what's a bbq without ice cold drinks?

Didn't get a chance to take a picture of my cousin's salad and potato salad. Sorry.


My aunt bought a cake from 85C/85 Degrees in Irvine. She said it's quite a popular Taiwanese joint. I'll have to check it out sometime when I'm in the area.


An inside look: A light fluffy vanilla cake with two types of cream: strawberry and not sure what the yellow stuff was. It tasted a bit frozen/custardy. A pretty good cake.

85C
2700 Alton Pkwy Ste 123
Irvine, CA 92606

I hope to make more use of the grill these next two weeks before school starts. An early Happy Birthday to my cousin and mom!

Beer Station

Mornin. Happy lazy Sunday to ya all.

Beer Station inside "Life Plaza"/Diamond Plaza in Rowland Heights. A chill place to drink and relax without having to feel like you're going to be accosted by some punk kids or bothered by indoor cigarette smoke typical of many asian drinking joints. I feel safe drinking here. A Taiwanese old time "pub" type place. I wish I took pictures of the inside decor of this place. Wooden benches and tables. An old bicycle decorated with holiday lights. A poster of Mao.

The name of the place is a bit misleading because they really don't have that big of a selection on beers. Sapporo, Kirin(sometimes), Widmer's Hef, Amber Bock, and Bud Light on tap. They've also got Taiwan Beer bottled. The last time I came here, I noticed they upped their drinking selection to soju (it didn't say what brand) and strangely enough an appletini and other drinks of that nature.


Drink menu. I took a picture because I found it funny that they only had Snapple Pink Lemonade and none of the other flavors, like Fruit Punch or Kiwi Strawberry. Do they sell boxes of just Pink Lemonade? $2.75 my god that is steep...

Complimentary "kimchi" because I don't know what else to call it. Sweet and vinegary cabbage with a sprinkle of spiciness and garlic. It's nice to munch on while drinking. If you go here and don't get any, make sure to ask for some, but be warned: the servers don't always speak the best English. Example: I once asked for it and 15 minutes later, they came out with some stir fried cabbage dish.


Small hot sake. $3.50. About 4 shots. Sometimes it doesn't come out that hot and you can ask them to microwave it for you again. haha.

Large hot sake. Around 8 shots. $6.00. I think it used to be $5.50. The small one isn't worth getting.

Cheap sake I know. But it's cheap for a reason mang. Sake bombs!


Taiwan Beer. For the longest time, I kept thinking this was Tsingtao. It's a pretty light beer with a flavor of honey and apples.

They've got a grilled menu, (skewers), as well as some other items. I haven't tried a lot of their menu. Their fried rice is okay, but nothing too special. I do recommend their three ingredient chicken. It's cooked in a clay pot with lots of garlic and has a lot of basil flavor to it. Also recommended is their beef with satay sauce. And if you're adventerous and want to go balls out, try the chicken testicles. And that's no joke kid.

Chicken skin glazed with some kind of teriyaki sauce. Crispy on the outside with a bit of chew. This was meh to me.


Grilled beef. Seasoned with cumin. Two good sized pieces for $4.


Grilled mushrooms again in that kind of sickly sweet teriyaki sauce. Not bad, but it wasn't very warm when it came out.

Food here is consistent for the most part (their yakitori style stuff at least), and it's nice place to eat while you drink. Their menu is a couple pages long. Service is friendly, and despite a small language barrier, I've never had any real complaints that I can remember. It's a nice and relaxing place to drink, and if they're closing and you still want to party, you can walk next door to the 9 P.M lounge...


(Inside Diamond Plaza, near the entrance towards your left)
1390 Fullerton Rd
Rowland Heights, CA 91748

Stay tuned for my next post, where this blogger ends his night in tears. =*(

Fires, Noodles, and Pies

I woke up today, hoping that the fires would have quelled down, but it had gotten worse. I am currently waiting to see whether or not we will have to evacuate, as they have already called people in the south side of DB to get out. Things are all right here, and the skies are okay, but we can definitely smell the smoke now. I hope that these fires will be controlled soon, but it doesn't look too good right now, especially with the weather being so hot. At least the winds have calmed down a bit from yesterday.

A view from the top of Diamond Bar Center, facing the south part of DB that I took earlier today.
So while I'm waiting (and because I don't want to do any school work right now), here's another post about food.

It seems that most of the restaurants across Mt. Sac are mostly a variety of Chinese and Japanese restaurants. If you want your burger fix, you can settle for Burger King, or drive down a couple of blocks to In N-Out. After another tedious week of school, I decided to check out a place called Yummy House that noticed a few weeks back, but couldn't try out because they took cash only. The front of their place says they have Taiwanese food, noodles, and dumplings. When I looked at their menu, they also had a small section for dim sum. And if you care about health ratings/are paranoid about how clean a place is, like I often am, the place got an A. However, I also remember my Chinese econ professor telling me that only real Chinese restaurants have C ratings, and the As and Bs are fakes. I know this was a Taiwanese restaurant, but just thought I'd throw that in there.



I opted for the Beef Stew Noodle. I'm not sure exactly what that stuff in the middle was, but it reminded me of an asian relish. The soup had a good amount of somewhat tender pieces of beef, noodles, and slices of some kind of cabbage(napa?). The soup was a bit sour(perhaps vinegar? as I heard that Taiwanese food uses a lot of it) and the chili oil in it gave a spicy kick, which slowly burned my lips and throat. I liked the noodles, but I couldn't finish all of the soup. The sourness of it was too much for me. My friend ordered the meatball soup (sorry no picture) which had rice noodles, cilantro, and pieces of previously frozen chicken meatballs. This soup was not spicy, and I thought the broth was rich and good. It had a lot going on in there, but what exactly was in there, I have no idea. Both of them cost around 6 bucks for a decent portion of noodle soup.
The service was curt and not very friendly. Still, I'd come here again to check out some other items.


Yummy House (located by Pho Express)
20781-2 Amar Rd
Walnut, CA 91789
*CASH ONLY*

Yesterday, I bought some pies at Coco's for a dinner party, but after sitting in traffic for a good two hours, I decided to just head back home. I was so hungry while waiting that I debated eating the pie with my hands. While I was sad that I couldn't make it (there was sashimi), at least the up side was that I had some pies. I love pies!


I got the apple pie, which was around 9 bucks. I thought that the apples could have been cooked longer, but it was okay. It was a little too sweet for me. It leaves that kind of weird taste in your mouth if you know what I mean. All in all, Coco's has some decent pies, but you really can't beat a home made pie...

The chocolate cream pie, Roughly 11 bucks. Not exactly the prettiest pie with its haphazard shavings of chocolate and ugly frosting bits. I haven't tried this one yet because I'm going to bring it into work on Monday, so I'll let you know then how it tasted.

*Update on the pie*
The word cream was misleading, as the chocolate filling turned out to be more custard than creme. It was a bit thick like pudding and enjoyable. I didn't like the frosting/creme so much around it, and would have liked more chocolate. The crust was a bit buttery and dry for my tastes, although it had been in the fridge for two days.

Coco's

20955 Golden Springs Dr
Diamond Bar, CA 91765

I cannot believe that it is 90 degrees in mid November here. This is horrible...