My #FoodFris are turning into Supper Fridays with all these late posts.
Today, instead of a dish, I want to show you something special from Japan.
Nakau is a fast food chain in the Land of the Rising Sun. They don’t serve burgers or fries but Japanese food such as noodle and rice.
Piping hot
We had these during our trip to Kyoto last year. The meals were not drastically expensive but my mom wasn’t very impressed by our second meal. I still can eat five more bowls of udon before I surrender.
Easy meal
Nakau machine <3
What’s great about the chain is that even if you do not know Japanese, you can order a meal. They have coupon machines with pictures of the dishes and the price. Feed it your cash and it will spit out a coupon. Pass the coupon as you settle down at the counter and the food will arrive very soon.
However, I’ve heard that single ladies do not visit such establishments alone. It has to do with gender stereotype. Oh well, it doesn’t apply to visitors, I suppose.
In Part 1 of Glutton in Hoi An, I introduced the street food (ok, ok some were from restaurants) I had while in the town.
For Part 2, I’ll be talking about meals I had in restaurants–a bit pricey but still cheap when compared to Singapore.
Restaurant: Morning Glory
Address: 106 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street (TripAdvisor)
One of the restaurants run by Miss Vy (She’s Lonely Planet famous) where I had my grandest meal in Hoi An at the Morning Glory.
Instead of the airconditioned seats, I picked the two-person seater at the veranda. Similarly, I ordered enough to feed two persons and a child.
I ordered the stir fried morning glory (which disappointly turns out to be just kangkung), Hoi An pho, iced coffee and a kem flan (Vietnamese crème caramel).
The stir fried vegetable came with a serving of rice. I wasn’t brave enough to ask the waiter to take the rice back as I didn’t want to seem like a food waster. So I ended up eating my bland veggie with rice.
The Hoi An pho was the first I had. I was surprised by the mild soup as I remembered a stockier soup in Saigon. It was OK.
The kem flan came with shaved ice on top of the creme caramel. Interesting traditional combination.
The bill was 200,000 dong, one of the more expensive meals I’ve had but worth every cent.
Restaurant: Blue Dragon
Address: 46 Bach Dang St., Hoi An, Vietnam (TripAdvisor)
I visited Blue Dragon at one of those awkward timing in between lunch and tea time.
The meat set meal (120,000 dong) was definitely not an Asian-person appetite serving. Maybe a really hungry Asian person-sized.
Overall, the meal was yummy. The beef fried spring roll was a bit dry. The fried wonton and it’s spicy seasoning was great, it felt like I was eating seafood because of the sauce.
The rest of the main meal: rice with chicken and fried noodles wasn’t fantastic.
I forgot that I had a frui salad at the end so I was pleasantly surprised to be serviced cool banana and pineapple.
Please don’t let my review of the food stop you from visiting the place. It’s actually pretty cool since they are linked to a charity also called Blue Dragon. On the yellow wall, you can see the mark of where the last big floods reached in the shop.
Restaurant: Chinh’s Riverside Restaurant
Address: 54 Cua Dai Road, Hoi An +84, Vietnam (TripAdvisor)
Since Hoi An has both the sea and a huge river, seafood is a recommended dish. I did a search of cheap seafood places on TripAdvisor, found Chinh’s and decided to visit when I was at Cua Dai beach.
The place is right before the bridge bringing you back to Hoi An old town. The view is fabulous since you can see the river. I saw two fisherfolks who sat so still that I thought they were puppets put on water as a symbolic tip of the hat to the fishing life.
Chinh’s seems to be a family-runned place When I was there, there was a lady and an elderly lady. I heard them chopping and stir frying in the kitchen.
Again, being the gauche tourist, I ordered a two-person’s servings of seashells and prawns. The coffee was unfortunately from a 3-in-1 mix.
Nice place to watch the river flow by.
Restaurant: Mermaid
Address: 2 Tran Phu Street (TripAdvisor)
On the first night, Linh the homestay owner made a face when she heard that we were heading to Mermaid for dinner. The place is too small and not airy, she said.
Linh was right.
I decided to visit the Lonely Planet-famous eatery during yet another awkward meal time. I ordered the white rose and a coffee.
The white rose were sticking to each other, not quite the “har gao” feeling I was looking for.
There are better places for food in the city but don’t let me stop you. (Bad reviews didn’t stop me from experiencing it neither.)
Vietman will always have a place in my stomach. It was the place I first started liking raw vegetable, ate banh minh, slurped good pho and discovered my love for buttery Vietnamese coffee.
So during my trip to Hoi An last week, I ate like the glutton I am.
Thought with all my cycling in Hoi An, I probably would have dropped one dress size. Unfortunately, my body believed in replacing all the muscle and fats I’ve lost in case of a zombie apocalypse so I probably ended up half a dress size larger.
I’m not sure if it’s the food portion or my vigorous cycling, I was really really hungry on Day 2 of my Hoi An trip. Even after a meal, my stomach would send signals to my brain saying: Hey! You should put more food into your mouth.
My brain obeyed and I ended up eating double portions of everything: banh mi (one pate and one plain) for tea time and a dinner for two at Morning Glory. Yikes! I was very pacified after the meal at Morning Glory that my stomach stopped complaining and was busy digesting but the feast went on.
Enough about my appetite, let me show you some of the yummies I had.
Cau Lao
A famous noodle dish in Hoi An. My sister and I were trying to figure out what Cau Lao might mean in Chinese. Translations say “dry noodle” and she wondered if it’s “gon lau”.
The better Cau Lao I had was in the central market, eating next to locals. I was charged the price of a big bowl which I think is my tourist tax. Still, it’s only 20,000 dong (S$1.25).
The noodles are flat and translucent. There are slices of pork and pieces of pungent leaves–a taste I associate with Vietnam and have grown to love.
However, the best cau lao was made by the lady running the homestay. I had two servings and it was terrific!
Banh Mi
My first Banh Mi in Saigon took me by surprise: fluffy, crunchy, tough and airy. A wild combination for a small baguette.
Unlike the jaw breaking French baguette, banh mi is more airy but with an equally stubbon but crispy crust.
The banh mi that I eventually ate in Hoi An was from a stall which legendary Anthony Bordain visited before. The reviews on TripAdvisor raved on and on. Despite just putting my head on my pillow and the sun being bright and strong at 2pm, I decided to find the famous stall and stuff myself with bread.
Banh Mi Phuong is not too easy to find. It’s next to shoes shops so you might miss it. At the junction of Nguen Duy Hieu and Phan Boi Chau, head towards the bridge but look at your right. The stall is right next to the small pedestrian entrance to the cloth market.
I bought one with pate and two empty ones to chew. The lady was puzzled why anyone would get empty ones when her fillings are to die for. (I didn’t dare tell it’s for my food baby–aka tummy.) All that bread for 25,000 dong. Amazing!!
I found a picnic spot opposite Hoi An town. It was a not too romantic place, perfect for my not-too-romantic face stuffing.
The sandwich was alright, yummy but not out of this world delicious. I wouldn’t mind having it from time to time. But the filling were substantial.
Pho
Pho
I’m not a pho connoisseur but Hoi An pho tasted different compared to Saigon pho. The stock less “busy” with clearer soup.
Before starting my meal, I drown the vegetables that came with the noodles. After drowning them in soup, they become half cooked and more edible. The flat noodles were perfect with the clear soup.
Coffee
I had coffee at about every rest stop, coffee shop and restaurant. I was charged all sorts of prices from 9,000 to 25,000 dong. I had 3-in-1 mix, pre-made and metal filtered coffee.
The best coffee place for Vietnamese coffee in Hoi An is at Cafe 139, on Nguyen Duy Hieu. It’s a cafe under a house, next to the ditch/river. For only 10,000 dong, you get a buttery iced Vietnamese coffee *and* a glass of sweetened tea.
The serving is very petite–the regular Vietnamese size–while the ice cube really large. I usually read while I wait for the ice to melt before taking careful sips.
This edition of #FoodFri features part 1 of my Glutton in Hoi An post. In the next edition, I will showcase three (or more) restaurants I visited. Stay tuned!
Hi folks, I’m still in Hoi An, Vietnam, now until Sunday. Instead of showing you what I’ve eaten for the past two days, I plan to reveal it all in one go after the trip as part of my Glutton in Somewhere food series.
So today, I want to share the different seafood I had while I was back in KK at the end of last month. I didn’t do a Glutton series for Kota Kinabalu because the food was too familiar for me to cheer about.
KK is a seaside city and there’s plenty of seafood to go around. My favorite seafood is probably prawns but they’re a bit more expensive than crabs so I don’t eat prawns too often. I also suspect it’s because I don’t get to eat it so often that I like it more.
Mom usually brings me to this other seafood place when I’m back. But this time, they changed location to somewhere nearer my house. This new eatery opened while I was in Singapore so I never visited the place.
We had crabs (the seafood, not the STD).
Crabs
As well as some challenging seashells. She eats seashells by the seashore
On another day, my sister brought us to a roadside eatery for coconut and clams. (An odd combination, I must say.)
The clams were barbequed and quite yummy. But the chilli is what brings the yumminess to another level. Even I as a non-chilli eater liked it (but didn’t have too much of it). Clammy
So the next time you are in Kota Kinabalu, remember to stuff yourself with seafood!
How’s everyone’s week been? Mine was busy covering an annually tradeshow. Luckily, they keep us journalists pretty well-fed in the press hall so I’m a happy camper.
Today’s #FoodFri is a picnic lunch I had in the grounds of Fontainebleu Castel in France. As you can see, it’s not quite as scandalous as Manet’s <<Le déjeuner sur l’herbe>> but it was a peaceful lunch.
I bought the supplies from the Monoprix near the castle after I dropped off at two bus stops too far from my destination. I decided that I did not want to stress myself with ordering lunch en Francais so I bought couscous, chicken, yogurt and H20.
Being cold, pre-cooked food, it wasn’t the best tasting dish I’ve had in France but I’ve had a worse meal (instant noodles I brought from Singapore.) Sacrebleu!
I found a quiet spot overlooking the castle grounds.
Not far away, a kindergarten group was having their lunch.
I decided to skip Versailles and go to Fountainebleu because I know that if I ever come back to France with other people, I would be dragged to see the Sun King’s palace. Napoleon had stayed in this castle and there was an exhibition of his things in the castle.
#FoodFri, short for Food Friday, is a weekly post where I feature a dish I’ve had while travelling or a dish you should try when you come to Singapore.
While we were in Xi’an last year, we went in search of an unpronounceable noodle dish. The Chinese writing for it looks like it would take two minutes to write just one character.
We didn’t know how to say the word, but we knew how to look and point.
We found a tiny stall with quite a lot of patrons. We settled down and sheepishly asked for a bowl each, mumbling our way through the name.
Biángbiáng noodles
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a terribly fantastic dish. Maybe we weren’t used to minced meat mixed with sauce and fried egg with tomator or maybe the stall wasn’t the best around.
From Wikipedia:
Made up of 58 strokes, the Chinese character for “biáng” is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage, although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary.
The Pair that Writes Together Wins Together
Restaurant review site OpenRice has a competition which you can win up a maximum of S$2,000 travel vouchers.
All you need to do is team up with someone and start writing restaurant reviews. Each review only needs to be over 300 characters (seriously) and has a photo. The team with most reviews win.
When you are writing your review, remember to tick that you want the review to be entered into the contest. It’s opt-in, sneaky!
Unfortunately, the leading team has 61 reviews now. Fortunately, the quality of their content is not very brilliant.
I’ve teamed up with my housemate because we both love to eat. Watch out for the Pointy Toed Hippo (yes, that’s our team name).
Even if you do not win the contest, they give you points for good reviews. Points can be used to redeem in real life stuff. I’m aiming for vouchers.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
[Update Jan 15, 2013: Hello readers from Hong Kong! What’s up?]
I met another traveller, K, while I was in San Francisco. On our way to a taco place she loves, she asked what I usually do when I travel.
I thought for a short while and said: “Eat.”
I cannot imagine not trying local food in a new location. I usually detail my travel food diary in the Glutton-series and #FoodFri where I feature a yummy, or not, dish I’ve had.
Best dish I ever had
My most memorable dish has to be the noodles in my 大盘鸡(dapanji) in Luoyang, China.
I thought 大盘鸡, or roughly translated as “big plate of chicken”, was a literal big plate of steamed white chicken. Turns out, it’s chicken in soy sauce with potatoes.
The stall I went to only had portions for two people and more. I was alone but ordered the two-person set anyway.
I like chicken very much as I gobbled down the salty meat and the starchy potatoes. Just when I thought I could not eat another bite, one of the employees brought me a large plate of udon-like noodles.
I asked for half of the portion she gave me but regretted it once I bit into the noodles. It was too tasty!
It was a strange type of noodles. It was thick and white like udon but was more firm like ramen and more chewy.
Mixed with the salty soy sauce, the plain noodles transformed from boring Cinderella into the main character of the dish.
After I finished my small portion, I could not eat another bite which was a real pity.
Until this day, I dream of it… My beautiful chewy, white Chinese udon.
It’s lunch time here at my office and I am hungry.
Today’s #FoodFri feature is the multi-flavored xiao long bao (literally “mini dragon buns”, or “mini steam basket buns”) from Paradise Dynasty in Singapore.
I usually avoid restaurants to save money but I got this set using a Groupon voucher so it was a lot cheaper. According to my voucher, the eight different flavors are: Original, Ginseng, Foie Gras, Black Truffle, Cheese, Crab Roe, Garlic, Sze Chuan.
My sister and I each had a steam basket and tried to guess the different flavors. Most of the time we probably got the flavors wrong because some taste quite alike. Those that are really unique, eg Szechuan, are easily guessable.
I don’t think the buns are worth the fuss even though I’m a a big xiao long bao fan. I guess it’s more of a fun dish to treat guests to.
YQtravelling 