 While turkey, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole (which I haven’t had in years and REALLY want some) make up the traditional Thanksgiving feast, I will keep up the tradition of posting something different for Thanksgiving (like duck and avocado pie). Not necessarily better, just something different, because no Thanksgiving dinner is the same, right? 🙂 So here it is: the fried chicken stuffed with fried sweet rice at Yum’s Bistro in Fremont. Known on the menu as “crispy chicken with flavored sweet rice”. The sweet rice (sticky rice) with diced bits of Chinese sausage, chicken, shrimp and mushroom are made into fried rice the normal way, then stuffed into the chicken skin – a fully intact continuous chicken skin from head to leg – which is then fried or broiled. How they skin the chicken, I’m not too sure, this dish may only be feasible to make at home if you’re a chef… but it looks interesting, and it tastes GREAT. Continue reading Stuffed chicken at Yum’s Bistro
 Pretty is the right word. Hearsay, or “Heresy” as Aaron calls it for some reason, warms your senses with a large yellow glass chandelier dangling several meters above the bar. The old walls, now lined with artsy thin bricks, bring to mind the image of a mahogany cascade from the high ceiling; tiny specs of light from the chandelier reflect off them like a meteor shower. It feels like a church almost. The only thing that could be remotely heretic here, if you understand “heretic” in its broadest meaning of “being different”, is if you don’t drink and you’re dining with a group of alcohol-appreciating friends just five feet from an alcohol-sparkling bar. Which is exactly what I was doing. But I found plenty of things to occupy myself with, taking pictures of food being one of them, which would not have been possible without the flash light from Harshita’s iPhone (there was practically no light beside the chandelier). Eating was another possible activity. Our group of odd number managed to share the even number of pieces in the Chef Nick’s Appetizer Plate without too much a fight: the beer-batter-fried asparagus is the […]
Continue reading Indulge in the dark
 Sometimes things just refuse to go the way you plan. I’ve been looking forward to the fried chicken at this place called Number 1 Chicken Rice & Seafood for half a year. It’s in Houston, so I have two time windows each year, each a couple of weeks long, to plan my voyage. Last winter we hit the place less than an hour after they closed (which was like 8 pm, I think), this June we were even more determined. According to Aaron’s sources, they open on Sunday between 6 and 7 pm. Strange, but okay. We camped out at the museum for over an hour because the museum is relatively near Number 1 Chicken, and we didn’t want to take any chances. At 6 we drove into its parking lot. The OPEN sign wasn’t lit up. Aaron checked the schedule posted on the door: they’re closed on Sunday. Fine. I’m not meant to eat Number 1 Chicken’s fried chicken. Surely there must be other fried chickens somewhere along Alameda. Following Varun’s advanced GPS system that didn’t allow us to type in anything unless the car is stopped (for safety reason, even though the one who […]
Continue reading Sweet El Meson in the Rice Village
 It takes us six years and a cross country drive to set foot into one of the Cracker Barrel, thanks to Mudpie waking up right as a sign comes into view to show which exit to take from I40. (In my defense, Cracker Barrel doesn’t show up in the Bay.) There are as many people in the store as antique candies on the tables and shelves near the cashier. We put our name on the list, then quickly merge into the buzzing about knick knacks and candles, preparing for a thirty minute wait. A mere ten minutes later our name echoes on the microphone, we get seated near the dining hall entrance, four menus swatted onto the wooden table, the waitress is a little disappointed that we aren’t ready to order yet. Then it comes our turn to wait for the food, and we play games. Continue reading ‘Cross country Day 3: Entering Southern Cooking
 Ketoprak at Jayakarta, Berkeley – warm rice noodle salad with bean sprout, cucumber, shrimp cracker and peanut sauce – $6.25 There is only one on the East Bay, and three in San Francisco. (I don’t count the Asian Fusion stuff and places with, like, one Indonesian noodle salad.) That is just way too few Indonesian restaurants in an area where Asian cookeries sprout like mushrooms after the rain. Historically, the Indonesians have settled here at least 10 years before the Vietnamese, and at about the same time as the Thai. After a few wholesome meals at Jayakarta, it is beyond me why Indonesian food has not gained much popularity in the States. Take the palm-sugar-smothered rotisserie chicken ayam kalasan. It loses to no other chicken but my mom’s. I’m hooked from the first bite. The sweetness is in eve.ry. single. strand. of meat, it’s tender, it’s firm, it can make me rob a school kid for $7.95 when the craving gone mad. Continue reading Jayakarta and my first Indonesian meals
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