dresese

Trip to L.A.

My family and I made a trip to L.A. last weekend. It was the first time in a few years I got a chance to go down. We stayed at my sister-in-law's friend's apartment in Playa Vista. He took us to Venice Beach, which was fun and interesting. I also got a chance to hang out with my friend Ben. I told Ben I wanted to eat at the strangest, most unique Chinese restaurant he could find. So we went to the Monterey Park neighborhood, and ate at a Yunnan-style restaurant. Yunnan is a region of China close to Sichuan and Guangzhou. It is renown for it's tea implements, if I remember correctly. The food at this restaurant was very spicy. Ben and I got these dishes:

• A corn, fish, pine-nut stir-fry. This was very tasty, the fish was so light, and the sweetness of the corn went well the the slight saltiness of the fish.
• Part of a pork hip, with vegetables. I've had this before in a Shanghai restaurant. The skin was nice and dry, and there was a lot of very succulent fat right below. Very nice.
• Vermicelli noodles. But these noodles were much thicker then the thin, transparent vermicelli noodles I'm used to. Very interesting.
• Spicy yunnan style yam cake. This was interesting for two reasons. First, the stir-fry itself was spicy and had a hard-to-place flavor. It was a bit different then other spicy stir-fries I've had. The star of the dish was not the usual meat or tofu, it was a sort of a resilient gelatin-like substance made out taro root. It didn't have a whole lot of flavor, but it carried the spices of the dish in a nice way.

We could only finish the pork, the rest we took home. We were so stuffed we didn't need to eat dinner that night.

Meanwhile, Greta and everyone else went on a quick tour of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and other places, including Mann's Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame.

It was a nice trip. My only regret is that I wasn't able to visit my friend Farhang when I was in town.

Posted by ahyatt at November 27, 2003 08:06 AM