Mandarin House

I ended up not going down to SD because I was too tired to drive today. I'm going to leave tomorrow. So with that said, here's a Thursday post.

I went to LA/Koreatown this week after my finals to take my grandpa out for lunch. He's over 90, and this man still loves to go out to shop and eat. As we entered the food court, he started getting really excited, just because there was so much variety and forgot that we were there to go to Mandarin House, one of his favorite eats in the area. The place serves Korean-Chinese food.


I haven't tried many things here because we go here mainly for the jjajjangmyun (black bean sauce noodle). It is derived from the Chinese dish, but the taste is definitely different. I've only been here for lunch, and a lot of times, there's a bit of a wait, but never longer than 10-15 minutes. The inside of the place isn't that big.


After we were seated, we were given the standard: tea, cabbage kimchi, and raw onions, which I enjoy with a bit of vingear, with black bean sauce. I thought the kimchi wasn't ripe enough. It tasted like they just made it that day, and it needed to sit out for a bit longer. It's usually good though.




I ordered the gan jjajjang for a little over 8 bucks. The sauce and noodles come out separately, and you have to mix it together. They were a bit skimpy on the cucumbers, and I wish I got more. The noodles were cooked fine, and the waitress cut them for me. It's a pretty good portion, and you'll definitely be full. The sauce had small chunks of pork, lots of onions, and some zucchini. I don't know why, but the past couple times I've eaten this, I started having really bad gas pains. I think it was just eating too much of the onions and the fact that my stomach has gotten more sensitive lately because this never really happened until this year. So a caveat to you all. I was careful not to eat all the onions this time although I wanted to. Next time, I'm just going to pop a couple tums after I eat.
The jjajjang for the most part has been pretty consistent here, and I personally think it's a much better place than what the DB and Rowland Heights area offers. It's the sauce that's superior to the other places I've tried, and I think it might be because of their liberal use of meat. I've also tried their jjamppong here and wasn't very impressed with it because I thought the broth was bland and oily, but like the jjajjang, it came in a big portion.

Service wasn't that attentive. We had to ask for everything, but they were pretty busy. I've never really had a problem with the service here though overall.

Mandarin House (Koreatown Plaza 1st Floor)
928 S Western Ave Ste 147
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Free small fries from Carl's Jr.

(taken from spoofee.com, courtesy of the lakers)

The long and winding road

has finally come to an end, and I have survived the semester. I did okay on my finals, but I'm on the borderline, so we'll see. What's done is done and somewhere, somehow, the band played on.

So I lied about the sushi. I have had this craving for ikura and had to get some, so I went over to the local sushi place across from Mt. Sac. Sake Sushi was formerly Jun Sushi from what I read on Yelp and famous for their $2 nigiri, which was supposedly fresh and good quality. I gave a short blurb here about my first visit with them in the summer, but no pictures.

Prices are cheap, and the service is courteous in this dimly lit, quiet restaurant.

First of all, they got happy hour 5-7 PM, which is 50% all beer. Not sure about the weekends though. They don't have anything on tap unfortunately, and just bottles. So I got a large bottle of Kirin, $3.


They also have some kind of special where sushi, sashimi and rolls are around 20-30% off. I'm not sure about the times for that though. I went around 5-6ish on a weekday, and the discounted price was going on. I ordered some nigiri, which all ended up being around $3.


Tuna. This was actually decent, and surpassed my low expectations from my previous visits.


Not very fresh at all and their seaweed they use isn't very good quality either.


Scallops (hotegai). This was pretty bad. I've actually had worse, but this came close to that experience at Tadashi's in La Jolla. It was not fresh at all, and I definitely paid for this the next morning, if you know what I mean. Ironically, this was in their "premium" section of sushi. That's not the exact word they used, but they have two separate sections for sushi, and this was in the section that was higher priced with things like uni and such.


I also got the regular udon $5.99. The soup came out very hot, which was a plus. I liked how they put a bunch of oyster mushrooms into the udon and the noodles were good and not overcooked. The broth, however, was a bit watery and bland, and I enjoyed Yama Bowl's broth better. Or, it could just be that they don't use msg/as much salt as Yama. Either way, I didn't like it.

Maybe their rolls are better, but I judge a place on their nigiri rather than their rolls. The yelp reviewers must have been high. The sushi is not fresh at all. On the other hand, they got 50% off beer, and I suppose it might be good with some cheap sake and rolls. But if you want good quality stuff, you're better off going somewhere else, like Sushi Koyo on DB Blvd.


Buzzed and warmed by the alcohol, I walked back to school in the cold weather.

20795 Amar Rd
Walnut, CA 91789

And with that, my rotation of the restaurants across Mt. Sac is done for the year.

A play on jomo's blog. lol =)
What I'm drinking:

I saw this at Albertson's and decided to give it a shot, since it had been a while since I'd last had a IPA. The Metolius Brewery from Portland, Oregon. Initially, This was way too bitter for me, probably due to the fact that I hadn't had an IPA for a long time. My second bottle tasted a lot better. The beer was okay, but nothing wowed me about it. This guy is a lot more descriptive about the beer than I can ever hope to be.

I'm gonna pass out now. Good night. Going to SD tomorrow for the weekend, and I'll be bringing my camera =)

Thai Corner

Everyone's in a corner
they'll never turn around

-John Frusciante
(I couldn't help but give a plug for one of my favorite songs.)

Hello friends, food bloggers, and creepers!
herb jankies here with your weekend update.

Last week, I checked out Thai Corner in the Stater Bros Plaza in Chino Hills. It's one of the first places you see going down on Grand Ave, next to the donut place and Tuesday Morning. It seems that that specific spot has some bad luck with business. I've seen a sandwich shop, then a wing place there, and now it's a Thai place.

I came for the lunch special, and it was $6.99 for an entree with your choice of meat, a drink (thai iced tea or ice coffee, no refills), 1 thai spring roll, and soup of the day. I had a hard time deciding because I read on Yelp that the eggplant was good, but since it had a while since I had last gotten pad thai, I ordered that with chicken.

I was pleasantly surprised when my soup came out because I was expecting tom yum.


It was a bit on the salty/sweet side, but addictingly so, and I had no problem finishing it. I think the soup base was made with some tamarind paste...It had some rice noodles, along with some overcooked mushy carrots, bean sprouts, and green onions. As for what it was, I don't know. When I asked the waitress, she simply replied, "Noodle soup.


The spring roll wasn't as greasy as other rolls I've gotten in the past. There wasn't too much filling inside my roll, and I also found a pineapple in it, which wasn''t one of the ingredients described in their menu. Winner!
The pad thai was average. The question of authenticity always comes up for me. How do I know what is real pad thai? I once went to eat with my college roommate, who was Thai, and he told me that what we were eating wasn't the real deal. At the same time, I like what I like, and I'll use the example of American Chinese fast food with real Chinese food. I like both. Back to business though. The noodles were chewy and sweet, but the chicken wasn't too great and dry. Honestly though, there hasn't really been a place where I've gotten pad thai, and the chicken wasn't dry. One complaint I had was that the green onions were raw. If it was for garnish, then my complaint isn't valid, but it would have been nice if it was cooked. Overall, a good sized portion for your money.

The service was friendly and quick, but one thing that I was slightly annoyed at was that the waitress never told me about the drink special. I only found out about it when I left the place and saw their outside flyers. If i I had known, I woulda gotten the Thai iced coffee. Oh well...everyone makes mistakes.

Would I come here again? Yes. I'm always willing to give another place a try, unless I have a horrible experience. They have a pretty wide menu, and I've been reading about larb lately in other blogs, and want to try it out here. I've only had larb once or twice, and want to try it again.

Thai Corner
14230 Chino Hills Pkwy #H
Chino Hills, CA 91709

-open daily from 11:00-2:30 and 4:30-9:00
and until 9:30 on Fridays and Saturdays

*They take card, but you have to have a $10 minimum.

For dinner today, I decided to make some chicken teriyaki. I love this stuff, and I've always got to try it, wherever I go. I don't care if it's some nice sushi place or Jack in the Box. Yet, I've never made it before, so I decided to give it a shot today, roughly adapting the recipe from mmm-yoso's blog. (If anyone is reading this from San Diego and doesn't know about this blog, it's worth checking out. I found a lot of good restaurants through Kirk's site, and it's an excellent resource for places to eat in the San Diego area. My first food blog I read too when a friend introduced it to me a couple years ago.)


I quickly cooked some chicken breast in a pan, along with some cooked red cabbage and carrots. For the sauce, I used soy sauce, sake, ground ginger, garlic powder, honey, sugar, and oj. Why oj? I've used it before in teriyaki marinades for bbq, so decided to put it in for fun. Cooking is about experimenting, isn't it? Yeah, I was lazy too and used the powder. Overall, the sauce came out okay, but it felt like it was missing something. Still, I thought it was better than some of the teriyaki places I've had in the area. This isn't to boast about my cooking; rather, it's just to point out that the places that serve teriyaki aren't very good. Anyhow, I put it over some rice, and I ate it with some siracha sauce and kimchi. Overall, I was satisfied with my meal.

I do have a question though. You know at those fast food type chinese places, and you order their chicken? How does it come out so moist? Is it a different part of the chicken, or is it the way that they cook it?

Lastly, my parents went to Korea a couple weeks back, and I was very specific about what I wanted: some fresh mountain spring water(I remember having some as a kid, and it was delicious. of course memory is a very unreliable thing...) and yut, a sort of Korean rice taffy candy that will wreck absolute havoc on your teeth. What I got instead was a Polo hat and Godiva chocolates...lol. But if I've learned anything about food blogging, there are plenty of opportunities to write about food, so here ya go:

Yeah yeah yeah. I understand that the flash created that glare, but without it, the chocolates don't look as nice. I have never really eaten much Godiva before, simply because of the price, and the fact that I don't see it around at the places I shop at. Anyhow, I liked how these looked and wanted to take a picture of them. I've only eaten a couple, and they are pretty good. I think I had a truffle one, and one with some sort of honey paste. But would I go out and buy some? Hell no. I'm fine with my See's Candies, or even a Reese's Peanut Butter cup...



1 final done, 4 more to go...then it's off to San Diego!