 Like many small businesses in the so-called “Little Saigon”s throughout the states, Hai Ky Mi Gia is operated by Chinese immigrants. Originally, Hai Ky Mi Gia is a popular noodle soup joint in District 5, Saigon – the Chinatown of Saigon – before 1975, and it remains popular today. When Saigon fell, the Chinese immigrants in Vietnam left the country with the Vietnamese and became associated with Vietnamese political refugees in foreign lands such as America. [...]
Continue reading Hai Ky Mi Gia – more noodle soups
 Above is our table at 10 a.m. (after we have cleared the first few dishes). To your right is Hong Kong Lounge at 9:31 a.m., exactly 1 minute after the doors opened. Every seat was filled. When we arrived at Hong Kong Lounge at 9:10, 20 minutes before the restaurant opens, a line had already formed. While we were eating, the line formed again outside and kids were pressing their face against the frosted [...]
Continue reading Hong Kong Lounge – it’s never too early for dimsum and tea
 One of The Clog‘s editors said: “Let’s do a cafe crawl around campus.” I happened to have tried almost everything at UCafe and been going there forever these days, so I took up that part of the crawl. I sent a 466-word essay to the editor, right before I saw her email from 5 minutes earlier: “hey guys, cuz we’ll do 5 cafes total, let’s make it 100-150 words each”. Haha oops. Cutting [...]
Continue reading My regular lunch stop these days
 Bánh bía from Tường Ký Fast Food. Filling: taro paste with salted egg yolk, would have been perfect without bits of candied winter melon. $13 per box of 4. I’m having writer’s block. Don’t know if that’s true (I once met an Ivy League law school professor who said, as diplomatically as she could, that scientists can’t write), but that’s how my friend put it when I told him that I’ve been sitting around [...]
Continue reading Tuesday mind-wandering: food blogging is weight watching?
 The waiter brought out a kettle of tea, but Nancy Togami waved him back, asking for just plain hot water. Carefully, she used her thermometer to check the water temperature. One hundred and eighty degree Fahrenheit, too cool to steep the Baochong and Phoenix Honey that she brought. But Nancy brought her own water too, which measured close to 200 degrees, so we used her water instead. I’ve never brought [...]
Continue reading Pair Dim Sum with Tea at Shanghai Dumpling King
 Little Mom and I… we just have different tastes. She likes seafood. She prefers crunchy to soft. She doesn’t like sticky rice (!) She thinks the mini sponge muffins (bánh bò bông, the Vietnamese kind) are sourer than the white chewy honeycombs (bánh bò, the Chinese kind). I beg to differ. The mini sponges can be eaten alone; the honeycombs are almost always stuffed inside a hollow fried doughnut that is more savory [...]
Continue reading Sandwich Shop Goodies 19 – Bánh tiêu (Chinese sesame beignet)
 Rice comes as a side dish at Renee’s Place on Solano. I can’t imagine anyone eating orange scallop (it’s like orange chicken, but with scallop) and lion’s head meatball without rice, but whatever, it could just be because I’m Asian. But 3 dollars for what seems to be a cup of rice is just too far. The rice is dry and fluffy and nicely done alright, but *three* dollars? Originally, Kristen and I [...]
Continue reading The most expensive white rice ever
 Okay so this is sort of interesting. Because it hasn’t happened to me before. Oct 24: I received an email from YGNetWorldLTD.com informing me that company T (let’s call them T for now) in China has just registered “FlavorBoulevard” as their domain name in China and Asia (flavorboulevard.cn, flavorboulevard.com.cn, flavorboulevard.asia, etc.) and that I needed to contact them if I want to object this and secure my trademark. Okay. Oct 25: Company T emailed me, saying “We [...]
Continue reading Domain fight?
 There’s China in Texas, so we shall eat Chinese as we cross the state line into Texas. In fact, Little Mom turns down barbecue and steak even before the words can leave my tongue. And it’s not because the occasional wind brings a subtle wisp of cow across the fields onto the streets of Amarillo. We’re Texans, there’s barbecue for birthdays, barbecue for spring, barbecue for summer, barbecue for picnic, barbecue for Fourth of [...]
Continue reading ‘Cross country Day 4: Chinese in Texas
 Oakland Chinatown, except for places like Tây Hồ, Bình Minh Quán, and the Korean restaurant on 13th street, carried on its everyday business on Thanksgiving as if it were a town in China. The Chinese dedication is admirable and to be grateful for. Without it I would haven’t had two meals worth of $1.75 wrapped in bamboo leaves. Yes, two meals. Jung, as the lady at Sum Yee Pastry pronounced, is a heavy deal. [...]
Continue reading Treasure in the Jung
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Tea and Mai
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