Taipei: Up in the Air

I was lucky enough to leave for Taipei because of a tradeshow two Thursdays ago since my supervisor didn't want to attend the tradeshow. He was just returning from a trip to China, and he offered me the opportunity to check out the tradeshow myself (Taiwan Trade Center offered free flights), and of course, I saw that as an opportunity... to just... eat as much as I can for 4 days so I was pretty excited. Nevertheless the next few posts will be about this trip to Taipei!


The weird thing about booking a flight for this trip was that... China Airline was completely booked. After Chinese New Year, March, April and May is suppose to be pretty light in terms of the amount of travelers and even the booking agent or the ladies at the check-in don't know why. Luckily I had enough mileage to be upgraded to business class. This was going to be my 2nd time flying business so I was pretty damn excited :]

A few dining options at the Tom Bradley International Airport

Usually I end up going to McDonald's, even though it is extremely overpriced (10pcs McNugget meal costs ~$10) since all the options are pretty... horrible, especially Sushi Boy and Hamada's. Daily Grill is somewhat new but more of a sit-down spot. Never had Camacho's Cantina but not a really good idea to eat Mexican before a 15 hour flight...

Luckily I didn't have to pick any of one of those since I could go to the VIP Lounge.

So China Airline and several others share this particular lounge. Typical offerings like sandwiches, cookies, pastries, coffee, cold drinks, chips, fruits, etc

Also free wine, beer, and hard liquor.

Opted for a Shin Ramen, 2 different kinds of smoked salmon sandwiches, a beef pastry, and some shortbread cookies. Salmon sandwiches weren't bad... one had mayo in it while the other had cream cheese. The beef pastry... was interesting. I think it was from a Korean bakery haha. Didn't really taste like anything except for the butter in the pastry.

The two smoked salmon sandwiches, one being kosher.

Of course gotta go with Canada Dry ginger ale when you are traveling and had to take advantage of the free Taiwan Beer.

As soon as the flight took off, China Airline served you dim sum items, a fried waterchestnut mochi and beef pastry again. Not the biggest fan of the waterchestnut. Got a glass of chardonnay to go along with it.

For the 1st meal during flight, they started with a seafood cold plate as appetizer.

Octopus tossed with aromatics, shrimp, frisee salad with lemon vinaigrette, and eggplant salad. I hate eggplant so I didn't touch that at all, but everything else was good.

Also came with one of the best garlic bread I ever had.

Opted for the "Spicy Szechuan Chicken" entree out of the three available. Does it look spicy to you? Yea not really haha.

Fresh fruits and Chocolate Haagen Daz ice cream for dessert

Halfway through the flight they offered more dim sum items if you want, so I decided to try it out.

Shumai, gai-lan (Chinese broccoli), and hagow.

For the 2nd meal, it's usually breakfast and this time I decided to try the Chinese porridge. Comes with porridge, mantou, two hot side dishes, and two cold side dishes. It was weird though since one of the hot side dish was the same as the cold one, just.. one being hot and one being cold haha. Lazy :P

After 15 hours, finally landed at Taoyuan at around 8pm. Had to take the bus to Taipei to stay at my aunt's.

First stop? My favorite tea shop, 清心, for 烏龍清茶 oolong qing tea. Oolong qing tea is essentially oolong tea mixed with qing tea, a kind of green tea. It's an extremely popular mix in Taiwan and unfortunately not many places even serve qing tea in the states.

Had to also stop by 遼寧 Liaoning Night market to grab some food. "Thank for patronize" hahahah.

Popcorn chicken and fried sweet potato!!

Comes with fried garlic as well. F-ing delicious haha.

I would've ate more if I wasn't so tired from the flight but that was a good way to end the night :] Oh and I watched 3 movies on the flight: Ninja Assassin, 2012, and Up in the Air. Wow the Ninja and 2012 were pretty bad but I liked Up in the Air a lot, thus the title. Pretty fitting though I think hahah.

Off to Taipei, be back in a few!

Hola amigos I'll be gone for a few days to Taiwan for work so hopefully... I'll find new stuff this time around to show you guys! If not... then there's always the old favorites ahahah.

Few things on my list to eat this time around:

1. 老王 Beef noodle soup

2. popcorn chicken

3. some good old Taiwanese breakfast

4. 滷味 (braised/marinated cuts of meat)

5. stinky tofy... like 5 times

6. DRINK HELLA MILK TEA!

Culver City: Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken

Eating fried chicken is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine. I know how bad it is for you... BUT I just can't turn away from a good piece of chicken, especially one that's fried to a golden crispy crunchy goodness.

A few of us from the summer abroad Shanghai program decided to have our little reunion there this past Sunday. Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken actually has two locations, one in Compton and one in Culver City. I've been to the one at Culver City once and it's in downtown Culver so it's actually quite nice. The Compton location is the original one and many swear that it is way better than the Culver City location but... for a dinner... Compton is a little too ghetto for us to adventure into haha.

Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken

9537 Culver Boulevard

Culver City, CA 90232

Culver City location's storefront.

The 8pcs family pack for Selwyn and Rose. Comes with 8 pcs of chicken, fries, 2 biscuits, and a side. Fatasses hahaha.

Glorious, crispy fried chicken!

Warm, flaky, buttery biscuits. Add some honey to it... whooooo game overs.

I opted for the chicken & hotcakes combo with a side of biscuit. I love getting waffles or pancakes with fried chicken. You seriously can't beat that sweet and savory combination. The pancakes here were really really thick. Not as fluffy as I remembered but still good!

You can choose between 3 silver dollar wings or one large breast. I opted for the wings since all fried chicken lovers know dark meat is just much more juicy and moist xD

After I took a huge bite out of the biscuit hahaha.

Shot of downtown Culver. Somewhat dead on a Sunday night but still lots of patrons in most restaurants.

Maybe I should go on a fried chicken adventure around LA next time... I can already feel my arteries clogging up ahah.

Facebook rapes photos

Yea, I'm sure a lot of you know that when you upload photos onto Facebook, the quality of the photos dips significantly. I guess it is a way for Facebook to handle all the storage since there is essentially no limit to how many photos you can upload.

It's fine if someone is just uploading pictures so that others can see but for the purpose of this blog, Facebook photos are just horrible...

Facebook

Flickr

Picasa

Can you tell the difference? Haha. Flickr and Picasa are both sharper when compared to Facebook but Flickr and Picasa also differ in that Flickr retains a warmer color temperature when the photos are uploaded. The difference is minimal but I'll probably use either Picasa or Flickr for the purpose of this blog in the future.

OH! Guess where this delicious fried chicken came from??

San Gabriel: Strawberry Cones

Strawberry Cones is this brand new Japanese pizzeria that opened in the Hilton Plaza on Valley Blvd, in San Gabriel, right across from Focus Plaza. It's a fairly big chain in Japan that focuses on Asian-influenced flavors for their pizzas & pastas and their special crust, the Ninja crust. They call it Ninja crust because they add bamboo charcoal to do to give their crust a distinctive flavor and texture. Adding the charcoal also turns the pizza crust into a blackish color, hence the name, Ninja!

Strawberry Cones

227 W Valley Blvd

#118-B

San Gabriel, CA 91776

The box the pizza comes in. So cool! I like the retro look.

You're allowed to do half/half and even quarters so you have different pizzas. So we ordered a medium teriyaki mochi chicken pizza for one half and and the meat paradise for the other!

Teriyaki mochi chicken pizza with Ninja Crust: smoked chicken, mochi, mozzarella & romano cheese, seaweed, red onion, teriyaki sauce, and japanese mayo on a ninja crust. It's their most popular item on the menu. So f-ing good. The mochi is really chewy and just provides excellent texture.

Cheeeese :]

Instead of tomato sauce, there's a real light spread of the Japanese mayo, which is lighter and sweeter.

See how airy the crust is? Sooo good. Asians love that chewiness hahah.

Meat paradise: canadian bacon, pepperoni, sausages, bacon, bell peppers, red onion, romano cheese and mozzarella with tomato sauce on ninja crust.

They don't skimp on ingredients.

Man... Canadian bacon AND bacon.

Also decided to try their buffalo wings, which is just... average. Nothing special about them. Sorta tastes like the ones from Costco haha.

The rest of the Ninja crust pizzas.

Most of the pizzas are on their regular crust but you can upgrade to a Ninja Crust if you want. I think it was $.75 for a small and $1.50 for a medium.

The history of Strawberry Cones. Apparently there's one in Vancouver too!

I gotta come back and try out some of their other pizzas! Their pastas also looks pretty good. It's definitely something new and unique.