Seattle: Beecher's Handmade Cheese

Right after having chowder and gyros from Pike Place Chowder and Falafel King, we decided to walk Pike Place a bit more and decided to stop by Beecher's Handmade Cheese. They make their own cheese in house, which is pretty cool since there's a small production room for you to see the cheese-making process. Definitely a good way to grab people's attention!

Beecher's Handmade Cheese

1600 Pike Pl (between Pine St & Post Aly)

Seattle, WA 98101

Store front right on Pike Place.

Cheesemakers (is that the right term? haha) cutting curds into long blocks.

Pieces of curds cut up, and in the back is a machine working on curdling the milk mixture to separate the whey and the curd.

Beecher's also has a menu with their in house cheese as the star: the Flagship and the Just Jack. The Flagship is aged one year and has a mellow cheddar taste to it while the Just Jack is similar to Monterey Jack cheese.

Food arrives!

"World's Best Mac & Cheese" made with Flagship & Just Jack (both cheeses made in house). It's good but I don't think it is the best haha. Good blends of cheeses and the spices they add really carries the mac & cheese.

Grilled cheese with Flagship & Just Jack. This was my favorite. Perfect grilled cheese. It's salty, cheesy, and buttery haha. Totally wished we order a tomato soup to go along with it :P

It's pretty cool to see cheesemakers make cheese right in front of you, which is something I didn't expect to see in Seattle. I ended up buying a small block of their Flagship. I haven't touched it since I got back but hopefully I'll find a use for it, or maybe I'll just eat it with some crackers and a glass of wine haha.

**Sorry for the lack of update! I'm limited to what I can upload to Flickr each month and since I don't want to use Facebook photos, I had to wait!

Seattle: Pike Place Chowder & Falafel King

"Boudin, you suck."

That was the only thing that I kept on thinking about after I tried the clam chowder at the famous Pike Place Chowder.

After walking around Pike Place Market, we decided it was time try the famous Pike Place Chowder. As we walked towards Post Alley, we see a line and we knew we were at the right spot. Since it was raining that day (of course), the line was crazy long and people were braving the weather, standing outside just so they can have clam chowder. Ridiculous. Until I got my chowder.

Pike Place Chowder

1530 Post Alley

Seattle, WA 98101

People were sitting outside even though it was drizzling and at 50 degrees haha.

AHHH chowders!! Of course they don't just have clam chowder there, and in fact they have up to 8 kinds of soup/chowder most of the time.

Traditional clam chowder. Freaking amazing. Creamy, buttery with lots of chopped up pieces of bacon. Best clam chowder hands down.

Seared scallop chowder. Amazing also. They add lots of dill and lemon in there so even though basic ingredients are simlar, the dill totally changes it up.

Manhattan clam chowder. Good savory tomato-based clam chowder. Usually not a big fan but love the briny flavor. Very hearty.

Shrimp and crab bisque. This was the only soup that I felt like it wasn't up to par as the others.

After having the chowder, we started walking around Pike Place more but I needed something to eat with soup so when we saw Falafel King, I decided to stop and grab something salty. I guess they are known for their falafel since it's in their name and a lot of people do order the falafel but I wanted something smaller like a sandwich so got the gyros instead.

Falafel King

1509 1st Avenue

Seattle, WA 98101

Menu. Price is decent.

Making my gyros. That spice they are sprinkling on is hella good.

They use Kronos gyros. Kronos is a company that makes that big lamb/beef mix for restaurants. Better if they made their own but I guess it is hard :P

The gyros. It's different since they use a garlic tzatziki sauce rather than the traditional tzatziki. Pretty unique. Nice warm pita too.

Definitely two spots I wouldn't mind going back again, especially Pike Place. In fact, before we went back to LA, we all stopped by Pike Place Chowder again just to have the chowder. We were sad we had to leave hahah. As for Falafel King, definitely will try their falafel but I do have to say, their cashier was just rude. Damn fool.

Seattle: Le Panier Very French Bakery

So I went to Seattle during the Memorial Weekend with a few friends (Diana, Connie & Mikol) since it was the long weekend, and it's a city that a few of us had wanted to visit. Right after we left from LAX at 6am and arrived in Seattle, we headed straight for Pike Place Market (more on that later) to explore, and being as touristy as we can haha.

Since we didn't really eat breakfast we decided to search for a spot around Pike Place for breakfast as soon as we got there we saw how packed Le Panier was so we went in.

Le Panier Very French Bakery is essentially an European-style bakery and is an extremely popular breakfast spot with over 300 reviews on Yelp with a really really good rating. They have everything from bread, pastries, cookies, pies, and even sandwiches, but most people seem to like their croissants, which is what we got :]

Le Panier Very French Bakery

1902 Pike Pl.

Seattle, WA 98101

Lots of people in front of the bakery.

The moment you walk in, this amazing aroma you would expect from a bakery just hits you. Pretty small location.

Some of their cookies.

Spreads, pastries, and pies.

Glass full of baked goods.

Chocolatine, chocolate croissant with almond cream. It is without a doubt the best croissant I've had. That almond cream makes all the difference.

Good touch with the sliced almonds and powdered sugar. Blows any other croissants away.

Flaky, creamy, buttery, chocolaty. Perfect.

Croissant à la framboise. Croissant filled with raspberry jam. Sweet & tart at the same time.

Both croissants were absolutely delicious and they definitely would go well with a cup of coffee. Seriously one of the best stop in Seattle. I'm glad this was our first stop since it definitely kicked off the trip in the right direction! I seriously wish I can have a chocolatine for breakfast every morning, rather than some pain au chocolate from a major coffee chain hahah.

Torrance: Mitsuwa Japanese Gourmet Food Fair

Everywhere, Mitsuwa Japanese Market in Torrance always put on a gourmet food fair inside the market, and this year was no different. Numerous vendors would come from different parts of Japan to display some of the specialties that you usually can't find here the states. It really is as authentic as it gets since everything is imported from Japan, from the ingredients to the chefs at work!

Mitsuwa Japanese Market

21515 South Western Avenue

Torrance, CA 90501

Decided to walk through the fair first before buying anything and first stop, fishcake! Probably close to 10 kinds of different fishcakes available. 3 for $5.

Apparently, Mitsuwa has partnered with Chibaki-Ya Ramen, which is this famous ramen spot in Sendou, Japan to create a Chibaki-Ya instant ramen.

Seafood bento box that has all sorts of sashimi and caviar. Pretty damn expensive... $15-24 per box and they weren't big.

Desserts, konjac, dangos $1-$1.50

Inari bento boxes!! Most popular was the crab inari and they were making right in front of you

Crab inari galore

Some sort of purple sweet potato from Japan that is suppose to be super good.

They bake it on super hot rocks!

Sweet potato sponge cakes

Sweet potato apple pie... looks so good haha. $8.50 for one... hella small.

Most popular food stand there, Kukuru Takoyaki from Osaka

They are hardcore, constantly yelling when new orders are done haha.

My dad ended up getting a regular fishcake, spicy roe fishcake, and a squid fishcake.

My super expensive crab inari hahaha

Crab flavor wasn't really strong but it's actually pretty loaded with fresh snow crab.

Also got a Kukuru takoyaki

I love it when the bonito flakes dance cause of the heat

Also decided to get a bowl of Chibaki-Ya's ramen this time: gyu-tan ramen (beef tongue). Every year it's something different. Last year it was shark fin! $9.50 for a bowl.

Beef tongue in a super oily broth haha

I couldn't resist the sweet potato apple pie so I got one to go.

Love how it glistens :]

They baked it with golden delicious apples.

A small slice of the pie. On the bottom it has a pastry crust, then a layer of sponge cake, sweet potatoes & apples, then finally regular pie crust. It was overly sweet so it was perfect for me. Just wish it was bigger haha.

Every year the crowd is always ridiculous when the fair is here and this year is no exception. Hopefully next year the fair can get bigger and much more vendors can make the trip here to the states!

Rowland Heights: Happy Harbor Dim Sum

Before Leonard left for DC for his Masters, we decided to meet up and go all out one last time and since he was heading to the East Coast, he wanted some good dim sum so we came to Happy Harbor.

Now this spot isn't your typical cheap dim sum fare in 626. It's actually... quite expensive. The bill in the end for the both of us came out to be $30 PER PERSON. That was just ridiculous. Then again, we did order a lot since we wanted to try a few things besides the usual hahah. They also don't have the ladies pushing the cart around. You order off a menu and they bring the items to you. In a way, that's good since you know every single item is either freshly steamed or fried to your order. Located inside the 99Ranch plaza, it is just a mess to find parking and we also had to wait about 45 minutes before we were seated around 11am. Damn Chinese people... eating so early hahah.

Generally I don't really take pictures of dim sum or Chinese food in general, since I eat it so often, but when I saw the many awards and accolades it had won, I decided to bring my camera along.

Happy Harbor Restaurant

1015 Nogales St.

Rowland Heights, CA 91748

Got my hopes up when I saw how empty it was outside... later to find out everybody was inside, escaping from the sun haha.

First to arrive, 鳳爪 chicken feet! One of my favorite.

排骨 spare ribs. Good flavors on it, and not too fatty.

燒賣 shumai. Classic dim sum.

叉燒酥 bbq pork pastry. Another one of my favorite. Buttery goodness haha.

叉燒包 bbq pork bread. One of the best I've had in 626.

芋頭糕 taro cake. It was extremely soft and lots of huge taro chunks.

炸糯米雞 fried lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice. It sounded interesting so we decided to get it. They didn't really fry the whole thing since it's more like, they pan-fried an egg then added the sticky rice onto it.

咸水餃 salty dumpling. Another fried goodness with pork mixture inside :]

小籠包 xiao long bao. Not bad here either, pretty legit.

炒腸粉 stir-fried noodles. It's similar to chowfun but they roll the noodles then they stir fry it. Really good with hoisin sauce.

春卷 egg roll. Leonard's favorite. Pretty damn good here actually haha.

水晶餃 shrimp dumpling. One thing I like a lot about this place? They gut the shrimp! No disgusting black things like many Chinese restaurants.

We really shouldn't have ordered this but Leonard convinced me that we could finish an order of 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake, even though we already had taro cake earlier. Yeaaa didn't feel that great afterwards haha.

So somehow we spend $60 after tax+tip for 13 items at a dim sum restaurant between two people. Yea... next time... more self-control and definitely listen to my stomach when it says it is full.