Showing posts with label skewers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skewers. Show all posts

Friday, August 31, 2012

Torrance: Fried food feasting at Kushiage Dining Horon

Found a little gem in Torrance!

Kushiage Dining Horon is a restaurant that Calvin and I have wanted to try for the longest time because it is a restaurant that specializes in fried food!  More specifically, fried skewers.  Kushiage is like yakitori, except that it is all fried instead of grilled.  The great thing is that most skewers here are only $1, so we just marked off whatever we wanted.  Not the healthiest thing but meh, feasting time!


Kushiage Dining Horon
2143 W 182nd St
Torrance, CA 90504
dininghoron.com

menu
Izakaya menu.  We ordered a few things off this menu too.

asahi
Of course, beer + fried food is one of the best combo ever.  In this case, Asahi and fried skewers!  Also, from this picture you can sorta tell that it is a small restaurant.  We sat at the end of the restaurant.

sunomono
Sunomono.  Cabbage not cured for that long, so it's quite crunchy and refreshing!

tonkotsu ramen
First item that arrived was the Tokotsu Ramen.  Very thick, rich, flavorful, oily ramen broth.  Chasu is very good too!  They also use straight noodles, but I do prefer chijire men more because the wavy noodles allows the broth to stick on easier.  Seems like during lunch, the place is a ramen bar.  Need to come here.

sauces
Two types of sauce: honey mustard and worcestershire-based.  The worcestershire-based sauce is pretty much a lighter version of tonkatsu sauce.

salts
Different types of salt to try with the kushiage: curry salt, saffron salt, and Himalayan pink salt.  I used the pink salt much more versus the others.

first arrivals
Skewers arrive!  Scallops, salmon, quail.

Untitled
Scallop with herb butter.  Fresh scallop fried with butter!

salmon with roe
Salmon with salmon roe.  Thin piece of salmon.  Too bad I got a piece without much roe :P

soy infused quail egg
A look inside at the soy-marinated quail eggs.  I love quail eggs so I liked this a lot.  Couldn't really taste the marinade though.  Very good with the honey mustard sauce.

sizzling pork jowl
Before the rest of our skewers arrived, our Sizzling Pork Jowl came!  Pork jowl is actually a really delicious cut of pork since there's tendon throughout the jowl so it gives it a nice bite, but tender at the same time.  The soy dressing was really good and filled the whole restaurant with the smell.

2nd set
Sausages, pork belly, chicken meatball.

sausages
Black pork sausages.  A bit salty, but you get a great pop when you bite into the sausage!

pork belly with welsh onions
Pork belly with Welsh onions.  Super soft pork belly!

chicken meatballs
Usually in yakitori places, chicken meatballs are grilled and comes in all sort of shapes and sizes.  Here, it is in a corn dog shape, then fried.

meatball
Inside.  Awesome with all sauces and salt.

3rd set
More fried goodness!

curry bread & mochi cheese
Curry-filled bread and fried mochi with cheese.  The curry bread is essentially a small piece of toast, folded in half with some curry.

cheese
Cheeeeese!

variety
Fron to back: chicken meatball stuffed shiitake mushroom, enoki mushrooms bacon wrap, garlic trio, and eggplant with miso.  Didn't try the eggplant since I don't like eggplant... but...

Chicken Meat Ball Stuffed Shiitake Mushroom
...  enoki mushrooms bacon wrap was awesome.  Bacon-wrapped anything is good, let alone fried haha.  On top of the shiitake mushroom, is a piece of the garlic trio.  Pretty much just fried garlic.  I liked it since I like garlic but it might be a little too boring for some.

japanese spring roll
Japanese Spring Rolls, with snapper, pickled radish & carrots, Japanese yam, and cabbage.  Forgot what the sauce was... but this was the most forgettable dish though :P 

last set
So after the spring rolls, we wanted more, and instead of ordering from the $1 section, we decided to splurge a bit.  Some of these are around $2.50 per skewer.

soft shell crab
Alice's soft shell crab with tartar sauce.  Sorry for the blurry pic.  I didn't take that good of a picture cause I was too excited to eat what I ordered haha.

shrimp
Calvin's giant shrimp.

shrimp head
He gave me the shrimp head.  Yummy brains.

tuna
Soy marinated tuna.  Tuna is still best raw or rare.  It was a bit tough after it was fried.  The marinade was really tasty though.

croquette
My creamy crab croquette.  Could be without the mayo sauce on the top.

peppers
Ended our meal with some shishito peppers with ponzu sauce.  I like how they add bonito flakes.


Even though it was $1 for most of the skewers, we ended up spending $30 each... Quite expensive but it was a great experience and we had a lot of fun trying out all the different items!  Probably will have to be awhile before I come back.  My heart is probably hating me right now.


Friday, July 6, 2012

San Francisco: San Tung & Nihon

Got some new stuff to talk about!  I haven't done much this summer in terms of food, but I did start off the summer by attending two great music festivals.  Finally, this past weekend, I traveled to San Francisco for a few friend's birthday, and of course, San Francisco is always a top destination for food!

Since I did go up mostly for birthday celebrations, I didn't really plan out what I wanted to eat, but still got to try a few popular places in SF!


San Tung
1031 Irving St
Between 11th Ave & 12th Ave
Inner Sunset
San Francisco, CA 94122
santungrestaurant.com

dry wings
San Tung is this super popular Chinese restaurant with over 2800+ reviews on Yelp and still maintains 4 stars!  Quite amazing.  There's always a wait so rather than heading into Inner Sunset, we ordered take out!  Talk to anybody in SF, and they'll take you that the bread & butter of San Tung is their legendary "dry" chicken wings.

wings
Not really "dry" since it does have a sweet & savory sauce over it.  I'm sure the "dry" refers to the Chinese word "乾炒" which literally means "dry stir fry," and that loosely means frying in the wok.  By the time we got it, the skin wasn't really that crispy anymore but it was still good.  Next time, gotta go there and try the wings hot.

pork & chive
Ordered a few types of dumplings.  Pork & Chive was definitely my favorite.

pork & cabbage
Pork & Cabbage.  Nice subtly sweetness from the cabbage.

string bean
String beans, which is always a favorite dish of mine at Chinese restaurants.  At San Tung, it has a noticeably sweeter flavor to it.  There's also a good amount of preserved mustard tuber.  

combo fried rice
Combo fried rice.  For sure would've been better if we had it at the restaurant.

dumplings
We also got these bigger dumplings.... I liked the other two better :P

sesame noodle
Seafood sesame noodle.  I'm a huge fan of sesame noodles, but at San Tung, it has a really sweet sesame sauce, so I wasn't a big fan of it.  They packed the noodle and sauce separately to prevent it from getting mushy.  Good call. 

black bean noodle (zhajiangmian)
Black bean noodle (zhajiangmian).  I actually liked this one... not what I am used to for zhajiangmian but I like how it is not overly salty like many places!

Glad I finally got to try San Tung, although after the meal, I have decided that I must check out the place for myself to really see if I liked the place or not.  While it is convenient that we did take out, the long drive back from one end of the city to the other probably cooled the food down so it's not as enjoyable!

After lunch, we headed towards Biergarten for some outdoor boozing.  

beer
Cool spot but damn that loooong line just for beer.  Love the litre mugs!


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Afterwards, we walked to Nihon Whisky Lounge, which is another popular place with high ratings on Yelp.  I was told they had the West Coast's biggest whisky collection, and we did have a few whisky drinkers in our group so we were pretty damn excited.

We actually went there for happy hour and during happy hour, they have many of their menu items and drinks at half off!  I did have a bit of reservation about the food at this place.  I was afraid of it being... "washed down" or fusion to suit the taste of people, and I guessed right.

Oh took these with my iPhone since I didn't have my camera at the time... so quality and lighting is gonna suck.  A lot :P


Nihon Whisky Lounge
1779 Folsom St
Between Erie St & 14th St
Mission
San Francisco, CA 94103
www.dajanigroup.net/

potatoes
Oimo no Tempura with mountain potato, taro, and sweet potato with a sweet & sour sauce and pink salt.  Loved the taro!  It's been awhile since I got to have fried taro.  Great tempura batter.

seared kobe
Washu Gyu no Tataki with seared US Kobe beef with yuzu sesame dressing.  There's a nice peppery crust on the Kobe.  Beautiful marbling too.

raw hanger beef
Yukke with raw US Kobe beef (hanger cut) marinated with garlic sesame soy sauce.  Probably my favorite.  It really is raw beef but that marinade is right on and even though it is a hanger cut, which usually means it is really chewy, that Kobe beef was amazingly tender.

stuffed mushroom
This was when it began to feel like the place was just... meh.  Nihon - flash fried breaded walu & tuna with sweet soy sauce & lemon aioli.  

wings
Teba Karaage - Japanese style buffalo wings.  After eating so many wings for lunch.... definitely was not craving more wings haha.  I gotta admit, the seasoned sesame is a nice touch though.

hamachi shitake
Hamachi Shiitake with shiitake mushroom stuffed with hamachi, tempura fried, served with sweet chili & sweet soy sauce.  I loved the shiitake mushroom and the hamachi with the crunchy tempura but c'mon... the sauce is pretty damn generic and ruined the shiitake.

dynamite
Dynamite with baked seafood, sautéed onion & shiitake mushroom in dynamite sauce.  Not a big fan of mayo, and I don't think I ever will be so I've never been a huge fan of dynamite.  Cool presentation though!  They light up the plate so the it can heat the bowl and warm up the dish.

samurai
Samurai Roll with spicy tuna & jalapeño, topped with tuna, avocado & habañero tobiko.  Meh, was hoping for some quick from the spicy tuna and jalapeño, but none.

chicken
Tori - grilled chicken with soy glaze.  The soy glaze, which is just their version of teriyaki sauce, was sorta... fruity?  Something was a bit off about it :P

pork belly
Butabara, which is gilled pork belly.  I wish they had some sesame oil & salt for this hahah.

peat's old fashioned
Funny, the only picture of the drinks there that I took was this one I took on Instagram, Peat's Old Fashioned.  They added sugar to it so it was very sweet, and it seems pretty watered down.  Two rocks only too...

Even though my drink was only so-so, the drinks others ordered were pretty spectacular.  Was not feeling the food since I'm still a fan of more authentic Japanese food.  Our server was a huge fail too.  She was just rude so it did ruin our experience.

Next up, Pizzeria Delfina!