Pizza at Love Letter

This is the best place for fried chicken and pizza in OC. 

http://www.yelp.com/biz/love-letter-pizza-and-chicken-irvine

It locates inside H-mart supermarket at diamond jamboree plaza. The specially menu they have here is sweet potato pizza. I don't think this is a traditional pizza style, but their creativity works. It's pricey. A medium one is around $15.

Fried chicken is awesome. A half chicken costs $8.99.

They will cook right after you order and it takes around 20 minute. So if you want to eat their, call them first, then departure, otherwise you have to wait like forever, especially when you are hungry.

Dinner at J Zhou Oriental Cuisine

Well, J Zhou Oriental Cuisine is now so famous for their dim sum. Let's try dinner today. I am too tired to cook, so this may be a good reason lol.

There are several dishes in the daily special menu they don't serve anymore, such as the last one. I didn't ask for reason. The photo of fried shrimp dish (12) in this menu is misleading. Actually it looks like in my photo (a little bit disappointed). However, the quality of shrimp is amazing! I'd rather to eat here instead of buy shrimp and cook at home (at this size, it should cost the same price in supermarket, e.g. whole food).

Here is the soup from crab meat and fish with bean leaves. It costs $17.8, pricey ha~~~ It can be enough for 3 people (2 bowls each). If you have only 2 people, don't order soup, it's HUGE!

Another $8.99 dish: roasted duck. All we can say about this one: AMAZING. If you buy a pack of duck legs from whole food, around $8.5, you still have to cook, and not sure the outcome is the same or not. I will come back for this one definitely!

The most impressive dish today is stir-fried sea cucumber with green onion. The seafood is fresh, not frozen, and imported from Mexico. I am afraid of frozen sea cucumber from China which you can find in 99ranch (That one is smelly and black orzzz) but I can't find the fresh one at market, so this restaurant is the best place to enjoin this seafood.

At the end of your meal, they will serve dessert: sweet soup of red bean and red date (Hong kong style).

Authentic Taiwanese cuisine at Chef Chen restaurant

The restaurant locates at a big plaza. 5408-B Walnut AveIrvine, CA 92604. We come here very often for Taiwanese food. It is verified: the taste of food here is almost the same as in Taiwan! Here are what we tried.

 Ma po tofu

Meat ball with sea cucumber

Pork intestine with pickle (no pig blood)

Fried fish with hot and sour sauce

Meat pie

Seafood soup (with tapioca)

 Seafood and chicken over rice

Another kind of seafood soup but in clay pot

pork rib with boiled vege

Stir-fried rice noodle

Home baked Vietnamese cracker

I just found that Farmer Direct - a supermarket near UCI sells a  lot of Vietnamese crackers and rice papers. I got one today for myself: sesame cracker with baby shrimp (Banh trang me tom). Though the instruction is using microwave, but as I know, people in Vietname use charcoal to bake, so I decided to use my beloved Breville oven. Just set toast function for 4 slices, level 4, then here is the result:

Meet Fresh - Taiwanese-based dessert chain

Last week, we came to Diamond plaza to try Meet Fresh - a Taiwanese-based dessert chain - the first store in the US.

TIP: don't come here in weekends or dinner time/ evening, you have to wait about 30 minutes on line to order, and about 15 minutes to get your food.

I think the quality of the desert is better then it was in Taiwan (as I know, they are closing a lot of stores in Taiwan), especially the taro ball.

Here is their signature dish

UCI Palo Verde garden

Jaipur vegetables from trader joe's

We didn't have time to go out for Indian food ( the closest Indian restaurant that we love is 30 mins driving), so here was our solution: a pack of instant curry from trader joe's.

Actually, the total cooking time was 15 mins, because I cooked some grounded chicken before add the curry. To make it have more flavor, I also added: 1 spoon of coconut powder, 1 tea spoon of cumin powder, 1 tea spoon of curry powder, 1 tea spoon of paprika powder when I stirred the meat at medium heat (of of these I bought from Trader Joe's). After five minutes, I added 1/2 cup of water and mushroom, closed lid for another 5 minutes. Finally, I added the curry, stir well and cook for another 5 minutes or until the mixture got boiled again. 

If you have fresh cilantro, add some is great!

Happy Pho - shiitake mushroom

I love Pho, a traditional breakfast in Vietnam, but I don't like to eat pho outside (it doesn't not taste good, usually). I also don't want to buy instant pho from asian market, because they use so much MSG and other chemical for soup base. So, It's really happy that we found this product at Wholefood market (around $3 for w servings per box). Unlike other instant noodle, this soup base powder does not include much salt, so I add a tea spoon of fish sauce. The most important thing: no MSG.

To make a bowl of pho has more flavor, some slices of onion and chopped green onion (it will be better if you add cilantro) are added.

As it advertised, the noodle is made from brown rice, so even I use a mixture of water and chicken broth to cook, the final product's color looks so so brown !!!!

In amazon website, they sell 6 box/pack, but it's still very expensive. I will buy more once I see it in wholefood market, much much cheaper.

A very good Vietnamese Restaurant in Campbell

We went to Lequy restaurant because we search Vietnamese food in Yelp, and this one has the highest  stars. This is the first time we see a Vietnamese restaurant declares that they don't use MSG and use  free range chicken. So, let's try!

We arrived when there is only several customers in the restaurant because it was quite early for dinner time. It was so clean and beautiful. Here are some dishes we ordered:

Fried spring rolls with crab meat and shrimp: This one was expensive, around $8 for 3 big pieces. But when we ate, omg, this is the best spring roll we can find in California.

I ordered pho (beef) with the choice of well-done meat. The pho's soup is almost the same to what you can have in Vietnam. The owner told me that he cooked beef stock for 3 days. That sound amazing!

BBQ pork with shrimp: this dish was about $13 and it came with a bowl of soup: a must-try. 

Fresh spring rolls with avocado. We ordered this dish because we observed all the herb and vegetable in other dishes were so clean, that's why we dare to try vege rolls like this. Though it's expensive ($6) compare with other store, but I think it's worth the price.