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Anonymous.
AnonymousEver come through Temecula?
A Taste of China on 79 S near Butterfield is my local favorite. I agree about the art in resturants and how our students often have no idea of the beauty and diversification of cultures. Fortunaltely, I am able to provide visuals for my world history students; but, what I find interesting is that the place mats are not Chinese; they are more Christian, with thank God for this Day and it's Blessings on them. I have not asked, but I suspect the owners are Tawainese and, in fact, Christian. The food and ambiance, the courtesy and the fact that the personell are Chinese make this my frequent place to eat.
Cathy, Chaparral HS, World History
AnonymousRemember your first dim-sum experience? I do. It was unlike any dining experience I ever had. The noise, the traffic, the incredible variety of food choices that made me want to stop every cart and try everything I saw (of course, that’s impossible). The pointing, the nodding and getting your paper stamped 
. It really made me feel like I was in China.
What a wonderful experience to share with your students.
The best with most variety, and the most economical dim-sum restaurant I found is NBC Seafood Restaurant in Monterey park. I took six of my top students as a reward last year (unfortunately, I couldn’t get funding for the bus to take the whole class) and spent about 7/8 dollars on each person. We still had leftover food to take home. My students absolutely LOVED it! If you can’t get the money for field trip, you can arrange a carpool and have your students pay about 10 dollars per person.
Here’s the restaurant information for those interested:
NBC Seafood
404 S. Atlantic Blvd. (Harding Ave.)
Monterey Park, CA 91754
626-282-2323
You can find couple of reviews on this restaurant at:
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-reviews-2810837-prod-travelguide-action-read-ratings_and_reviews-i
Enjoy!
AnonymousI remember back in middle school that we went to a restaurant with my teacher but it was only a field trip. Why not do two things at once? If possible, you can take your students on a field trip to an Asian restaurant and at the same time have them learn about the food, its history, culture, etc.
AnonymousWhile in Los Angeles, a group of friends and I went to eat dinner at a little Japanese restaurant. The food was amazing and the service was awesome. My favorite part of the whole meal was the desert, moshi! It was so delicious. I have tried to find a store that sells it out here in the desert, but I have been unsuccessful. Does anyone know of a store that sells moshi out here in Palm Desert?
Michele Jones
AnonymousDon't forget Krua Thai on Sherman Way in North Hollywood for some authentic thai flavor. They're open late!
AnonymousThe Los Angeles Thai Temple on Coldwater Canyon and Roscoe Blvd. off the 170 freeway is beautiful and is a great place to get a meal on the weekends. from about 10 am to 4 pm, there are stalls with great authentic thai food at very reasonable prices. Parking can be a hassle, and on Thai holidays it can get crowded (but on those days they sell handicrafts and other Thai merchandise).
AnonymousWhile teaching about the arrival of Buddhism to China, it would be interesting to introduce students to the concept of religion and vegetarianism, discussing why some monks and other followers decide to become vegetarians and the long tradition of vegetarian cooking in China.
There is a delicious Chinese restaurant in Monterey Park named Happy Family Vegetarian Restaurant (111 N. Atlantic Blvd., #351 on third floor, Monterey Park, CA 91754) that specializes in this tradition, cooking up all sorts of mock or imitation meats, including duck, chicken, squid, fish, beef, and shrimp (among many others I have yet to try).
I would love to bring a couple of dishes of various "meats" for my students to sample so they can see how creating these imitation meats truly is an art form.
AnonymousThe 11 Feb San fernando Valley Edition of the Daily News had an article about a 10-course meal dinner parry in Bangkok, Thailand. For $25,000 a person, you got treated to some nice grub from internation chefs. While the proceeds are for charity, I can tell you that the food stalls on the streets of Thailand re probably much tastier (and cheaper) than whatever the hotle patrons were served!
AnonymousBeing raised eating nori, like it was candy: I find it hard to believe when others don't feel the same why I do. Nori comes in different flavors, but it is seaweed. There is the nori that is just dry with no flavoring: this nori is used tradionally for sushi, one needs to prepar the tsu(mixture of vinegar and sugar) or sushi rice vinegar and wet the nori with this before rolling the rice, nori that is lightly season and roasted, nori that is salted (Korean: delicious when wrapped around hot rice, what we Japanese in Hawaii refer to as musubi or rice ball), nori season with shoyu and sugar: so it is sweet, and of course many people in Hawaii love the spam musubi, with the nori wrapped around fried season spam and rice.
As a little girl, my grandmother would put the dry nori over the range to make it crispy. Nori is very good for the hair and complexion, that is why Japanese women have beautiful, strong black hair.[Edit by="cori on Mar 19, 10:04:23 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousThe sixth graders at my school go to Chinatown for a fieldtrip. I think that a fieldtrip that involves eating at an authentic restuarant would be okay with the school district. It is useful to scout out the area and the menus beforehand. You might even ask the restuarant if you can preorder so that waiting time is minimal. Students might also do a little research on some of the ethnic foods that are offered at the restuarant beforehand.
AnonymousDim-Sum:
888 Seafood Restaurant is a great place for Dim Sum. I love to go there on the weekends with my parents. Caution: Do get there EARLY!!!
My favorite dish is "Chinese Broccoli with Oyster Sauce.” It’s very fresh, crunchy, and light.
888 Seafood Restaurant
(626) 573-3483
8450 Valley Blvd
Rosemead, CA 91770
AnonymousThis is in response to Leticia Garcia's excellent post on the Happy Family Restaurant in Monterey Park. I've never eaten at Happy Family, although I've talked to people who have and they invariably give it a rave review. However, I am quite familiar with Vegetable Delight, a vegan Chinese restaurant that seems to be an exact San Fernando Valley counterpart to Happy Family. It is close to where I live in the unfashionably unhip North Valley community of Granada Hills and my wife and I eat there on a regular basis and often get take-out when we're too busy to dine properly. (In fact, after every Tuesday-night East Asia seminar I have come home to take-out from Vegetable Delight, a ritual I will miss now that the seminar meetings are officially over.)
Vegetable Delight is at 17823 Chatsworth Street in Granada Hills, near the intersection of Chatsworth and Zelzah Avenue, about a block north of Granada Hills High School and not that many blocks north of the CSUN campus. There is limited parking in back but always plenty of street parking in front, as Granada Hills is never quite Beverly Hills, not even on Friday and Saturday nights. You see CSUN students dining at Vegetable Delight, along with dedicated vegans who drive in from all over the Valley and even points distant as Hollywood, and no wonder. The food is astonishingly delicious and creative, with all the ingenious mock-meat variations described by Leticia in her post on Happy Valley, and then some. One of our favorites is a type of Chinese hot-pot called saquo, a thick soup of Chnese black mushrooms (aka shiitake), vegetables and roast duck (vegan-duck, of course). It comes in a flame-heated bowl, or not, as you choose. We eschew the flame, a choice recommended strongly for those teachers dining with students. (A member of my Academic Decathlon team, a senior no less, spilled a bit of hot soup on his finger while goofing off with the revolving service platform at our traditional post-Super-Quiz dinner.) Note to browsers of Vegetable Delight's extensive multiple-page menu: saquo appears under the misleading heading of "Casseroles," where a number of types are available, including a vegan version of shark fin soup! Peking Duck is also a recommended dish (Beijing Duck in pinyin), along with roast duck and kung pao duck. The vegan shrimp, in an amazing triumph of trompe gout, tastes incredibly like the real shellfishy thing. You can get it kung pao or stir-fried or in a sweet-and-sour version called sweet pungent shrimp (actually "sweet pageant shrimp," an even better name, as it is spelled in the delightful menu). The appetizers are varied and marvelous, including everything from cold squid and Szechuan wontons to chicken drumsticks and ham salad. Traditional favorites such as beef and broccoli and sweet-and-sour pork are expertly done, and the orange chicken is so good that my sixteen-year-old niece, who eats the real thing at Panda Express all the time, says she can't really tell the difference. Indeed, Vegetable Delight is one place you can take your most carnivorous friends and never hear any complaints about "vegetarian rabbit food." And while brown rice is abundantly available and ordered by the discerning, white rice is availabe as well for die-hard polished-grain fanatics. You can even get Tsingpao beer, although it's much inferior to the excellent jasmine tea poured from bottomless pots. The desert menu is limited but delectable, including soy ice cream and a large variety of raw "ice-cream" pies made from cashews, almonds, etc. (The coconut and key-lime versions are especially esculent.)
Vegetable Delight has been around since 1993, owned and operated by a delightful Taiwanese couple, Bill and his wife Li, who will cook your food and serve it to you with grace and charm (sometimes, on busy nights, assisted by their son and daughter, the latter a UCLA grad and now a medical student). The ambience is wonderful, with spacious booths and tables placed so that you don't have to dine with other guests crowding your elbow, and soothing Chinese music to set the mood. Bill and Li are very accomodating when it comes to large groups, making it a great place to take students. And the inexpensive prices make it affordable for most students and even for some teachers who want to go crazy and pick up the tab. In addition to taking Academic Decathlon teams to Vegetable Delight after the televised UCLA Super Quiz, I have hosted post-production parties for the Monroe Drama Club. Students love Vegetable Delight. One of my favorite memories is of a Decathlete who was born and raised in China, Zhou Qingan (or Quin Zhou, as she calls herself), reading the Mandarin characters as she got out of the car, letting us all know that the real name of Vegetable Delight is "Heavenly Aromatic Vegetarian Restaurant"--not a bad name for the best vegan Chinese place in the Valley.
Leigh Clark
Monroe High School[Edit by="lclark on Jun 11, 10:39:54 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousSeveral posts have dealt with nori, the Japanese form of dried laver that is encountered most commonly by most Californians in the form of the dark green-black strips wrapped around sushi cut rolls (Californnia roll, spicy tuna et al.) or shaped into small cornucopia-type horns for holding the rice and other ingredients of hand rolls. Virtually all the nori used in sushi bars is toasted first. You can can toast your own nori by holding a sheet about three to four inches above a gas flame for a few seconds. It will turn from black to a dark emerald color as it toasts. (It can catch fire easily; so watch out.) You can also buy it already toasted, usually in packages labeled Sushi Nori. (Eden, the macrobiotic foods company out of Michigan, makes an especially declicious brand.) Toasted nori is light, crispy and crunchy, nothing like the "vegetarian beef jerky" several posters wrote about. You can use toasted nori to make your own sushi cut rolls at home or wrap several sheets around a small handful of rice to make a rice ball or crumble the nori over rice, soup or salad. But nori is only one of several delectable seaweeds available in certain local restaurants and Asian markets and specialty markets like Whole Foods, Erewhon, Follow Your Heart and, in South Orange County, Mother's.
wakame Wakame is the second most commonly encountered Japanese seaweed in Southhern California, although many diners may not be especially conscious of the fact that they're eating it. Wakame is in virtually every bowl of miso soup you order at a sushi bar or Japanese restaurant (and in many Chinese, Thai and Korean restaurants that now also serve miso soup on a regular basis). To prepare wakame at home you must soak it first for five to ten minutes then drop it into boiling water, reduce the heat and simmer for about fifteen minutes. It adds a subtly distinctive flavor to any soup, not just miso, and chilled and mixed with sliced satsuma tangerines and diced scallions and dressed with sesame oil and brown rice vinegar, it makes a delightful salad.
kombu Kombu is a dried form of kelp, the plant you see growing up from the ocean floor on the glass-bottom boat ride at Catalina (or swim through, if you're a certified scuba diver). Kombu does not have to be soaked before cooking, but, as it is the saltiest of these seaweeds in packaged form, the excess salt should be rinsed off before adding it to soups And if you're one of those old-fashioned types who still cooks dried beans at home, kombu is far superior to bay leaf in subduing the hard-to-digest (i.e., gaseous) aspect of beans. Just drop a strip of kombu into a pot of simmering beans and the finished product will turn out smooth and digestible. The kombu itself becomes thick and gelatinous and can be eaten along with the beans or fished out and served with shoyu (soy sauce) as a side dish.
hijiki Hijiki (also spelled hiziki) is the king of the seaweeds, unbelievably tasty, with a soft-firm texture unique unto itself. This is one seaweed that is hard to find at restaurants, Japanese or otherwise. I first tried it at Gen-mai, of blessed memory, the macrobiotic sushi bar and restaurant named for brown rice that used to be several blocks north of Ventura Boulevard on Van Nuys Boulevard in a Sherman Oaks pod mall, right next to the Pineapple Hill Saloon. Affter becoming hooked at first bite, I tried to find hijiki at other Japanese restaurants. I even asked the old man who used to serve noodle dishes at Tokyo House in the pre-Grove Farmer's Market if he had any hijiki. He threw his head back and laughed and said that if I wanted to eat hijiki, I would have to come to his house. You can find hijiki at Inaka, the spectacular Japanese macrobiotic restaurant (and subject of a forthcoming post in this thread), at E and E Restaurant at the corner of Reseda Boulevard and Nordhoff Street near the CSUN campus, at Oiwake, an all-you-can-eat restaurant in the Japanese Village in Little Tokyo, and, or so am I told, at a very few select sushi bars catering to a mostly Japanese clientele. Otherwise, you have to make it at home. Start with a good brand of hijiki, pre-cut fine (Ohsawa is the best, Eden a good substitute). Soak the hijiki at least ten minutes (fifteen to twenty is better), then drain the soaking water and simmer the hijiki for fifteen to twenty minutes in a small amount of water with shoyu (soy sauce) and mirin (Japanese rice cooking wine) for seasoning. After cooking, chill it and serve it plain or seasoned with gomasio (a Japanese condimennt of mixed salt and toasted sesame seeds). You can eat hijiki with a fork, but that is really a desecration. It needs and deserves wooden chopsticks (plain, not lacquered).
arame Arame looks a lot like hijiki when cooked, but, at least to my taste, it is definitely inferior to its look-alike cousin. Arame has a heavier, slightly more bitter taste, too much yang, compared with the light yin touches of hijiki. However, it's still very good, if you like seaweed, although even harder to find at restaurants than hijiki. Real Foods Daily in West LA on La Cienega near the Beverly Center makes a very good arame side dish. (There are two other RFD locations, one in Beverly Hills and one in Santa Monica, but I have no eaten in either one, although I imagine that they, too, serve arame.) If you decide to make Arame at home, prepare and serve it as you would hijiki.
Seaweeds are rich in iodine, of course, but also other important minerals. Hijiki, for example, contains more calcium than milk! (Got hijiki?) But most importantly, seaweeds just taste great.
Leigh Clark
Monroe High School
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AnonymousLos Angeles and San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival
This year I attended the LA Chinese New Year festival for the first time. It was an amazing celebration! The main attraction was definitely the parade. It was filled with marching bands, martial arts demonstrations, lion dancers, and best of all the dragon dancers. The LA Parade also featured some local Chinese Celebrities. One of the celebrities was from the show CSI. What really surprised me about this celebration was seeing the streets lined with spectators from all cultural backgrounds. I used to think that this was a just a Chinese cultural event but now I realize it is a celebration for all. Toward the grandstand area there were many carnival booths selling all sorts of Chinese cuisine and merchandise. It seemed as if everyone enjoyed the festivities that day. My most favorite part of the day was browsing the many shops in Chinatown. The town is filled with herb, tea, and trinket shops. It also has live poultry shops! A couple weeks later I was fortunate enough to experience the San Francisco New Year Festival as well. I heard some where that the SF Chinese New Year celebration was the largest outside of China. I believe it! The SF celebration was much larger than the one in LA. The Chinatown in San Francisco is much larger than the one in LA. This parade was filled with many more lion and dragon dancers, marching bands, dancers, and floats, and fireworks galore! The parade lasted over 4 hours and the finale dragon was over 100 people long! After the parade my family and I had a late dinner at Sam Wo Chinese restaurant. This 100 year old restaurant is in a narrow, character filled building. It is 3 stories tall and you have to walk through the kitchen to be seated. This fun filled, affordable restaurant has become a family tradition. If you ever get a chance to experience the San Francisco New Years parade I recommend Sam Wo’s.
John Yamazaki
[Edit by="jyamazaki on Jul 12, 9:32:05 AM"][/Edit]
AnonymousIf you want great sushi made in a family-owned restaurant, and don't want to go far I would recommend Honda's (next to Best Buy on PCH). Mr. Honda is so sweet and takes the time to get to know each client. I went with people who have been going there for 10 years. The food is delicious as well. The only problem is that it is located in a strip mall, but once you go there, you will be so into the food and ambiance that it won't bother you!