Peking Cuisine

8332 Southwest Freeway, 77074.

So… it was Mother’s Day and I made a reservation at Peking Cuisine for lunch.  No, you don’t really need a reservation to eat there, any day, but you do need a reservation for Peking duck.  I’ll get to the duck later, there was a good crowd already feasting inside that day… so that’s a good sign.

The menu items here are authentic items, many of which might scare your average American.  The first appetizer dish is of sichuan origin and called ‘Couple’s Slice of Lung’ or fuqi feipian.  I didn’t know until today that it consists of beef tongue!  I knew that it had beef stomach and I am okay with eating that… but tongue?  Well, it was good… so I can’t say much about tongue.  The texture is slightly softer than regular beef and I think it had some tendons in there somewhere.  Even with the discovery, I think I will continue to eat tongue… but it wasn’t as spicy as it looks.

The legendary pig ears!  Now, this restaurant did it a lot differently… usually its just an orange pile of mess, but this restaurant arranged the ears nicely, compacted it all together quite beautifully.  At first, I was skeptical, because I don’t usually eat pig ears like this (I’m used to this).  But this new way of eating it is even better!  You can really get a feel for the gelatin complexity in between the crunch.  It might sound a little unorthodox, but such is food, and you just can’t knock it until you try it.

This is a particular type of cold noodle dish, very refreshing on a hot summer’s day.  The noodles are very thick and reminds me of jello, but al dente.  It has a pull to it when you chew.  The sauce is a soy sauce garlic, very heavy on the garlic.  Good dish overall, but I think I’ve had better elsewhere.

Stir fry bean sprout leaves, its just that simple.  I love simple, clean Chinese stir fried vegetables, Chinese people tend to eat a lot of leafy greens and that was what I had growing up.

This dish was just wrong.  It came out brown when I was expecting clear sauce.  It was sweet when I didn’t expect it.  The rice cracker was the only thing good in this dish… oh and straw mushrooms!  It was suppose to be shrimp over sizzling rice, where the rice starts to sizzle when the hot shrimp mixture gets poured over it.

This dish was ordered wrong in some sense too.  We thought we ordered crispy pork intestines but instead got stir fried pork large intestine with green peppers.  Sadness was me, until I tasted it.  I have some strange acquired taste for intestine… and I loved this newly discovered dish!  I usually eat intestines fried, or if its not fried, then spicy… this was none of the mentioned, but still dang good!

This is one of the few restaurants in Houston that does Peking duck, it is eaten 2 ways or a 2 course duck meal.  The first to come is the roast duck neatly sliced.  One duck fed 7 people, that’s because we ordered a whole bunch of other stuff too.  How to eat Peking duck?  Take a piece of meat and a piece of crispy skin and place over tortilla.  The Chinese tortilla is a lot thinner than your Mexican tortilla, but not as thin as Vietnamese rice paper.  Put sweet duck or really hoisin sauce over the duck meat and skin.  Garnish with green onion strips, wrap, and eat!  The duck was alright, it was good, but didn’t put me in a food daze.  Something satisfying if you are craving Peking duck.

The second course is the duck soup.  Duck bones are cooked for hours to make soup.  I love duck soup.  It has a nice rich flavor to it.  Inside this soup, they added cabbage, clear vermicelli, and tofu.  It compliments the heavy, greased roast duck because of it’s light, crisp taste.  Something soothing after the duck.

So… overall, I was a teeny weeny bit disappointed.  I was hoping for a wow factor that I just didn’t get.  I remembered the food being better, but that was a long time ago and I might have upgraded my tastes since then.  The best dish of the night was the pig ears, followed by the pork intestines.  The service was horrible, and we waited at least 45 minutes.  Those I kind of just disregard in a traditional Chinese restaurant… because if I factored those in, you would lose the experience of tasting some really authentic dishes!

We’re doing the cooking!

The smell of grease and an open fire was upon me as I lazily sauntered into the kitchen a few afternoons ago. My mom, an avid cook, your typical 5 foot, half an inch Asian lady, was at it again. She really doesn’t know how to relax after years of working non-stop. So, after cleaning the house from top to bottom and tending to her wild herb garden, she decides that it’s time to make her own eggrolls. We usually get this treat after she sees that we’ve eaten healthy for an extended amount of time.

I had the dangerous task of lighting the backyard gas burner which my dad insisted on setting up after incessantly complaining that our regular kitchen range flame was too weak. He is a cook in a Chinese restaraunt so he knows his heat. After about 30 seconds, the entire bottle of vegetable oil I poured into the wok was nice and watery, which is the indication that it’s prime time for some frying!

Here is my mom carefully placing the eggrolls into the piping hot vat of oil. It’s a delicate process.

Here she is manuevering the eggrolls in place for the first fry phase (the second phase is to help keep the crispyness of the outer shell after the eggrolls cool off (I didn’t know that either!).

The finished product: Lean ground pork, thinly sliced carrot strips, fried egg strips, stir fried cabbage (extra pepper), wrapped up in a mouthwatering crispy shell. “Sweet and Sour” glaze drizzled on top (tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, water, cornstarch, bring to a boil) with green onion shavings.

Damn straight!!! I’m a bit biased, but it was obviously delicious. You risk burning your lips on the fresh off the fryer shell to get to the “ham”, which is warm and inviting. The texture was grainy because of the pork but not dry, thanks to the juices from the cabbage and carrots. I ate eight of those rolls of heaven for dinner. And another five the next day. That’s why mom only allows for this every other month. =)

Sarah Place

9968 Bellaire Blvd., 77036.

Okay… here goes to the next few posts by me… a stream of blurs… what do I mean? I am starting to forget bits and pieces of the places I went to go eat at, because, well, life got in the way once again, kept me from blogging as much.

I went to go eat at Sarah Place, a month ago when my brother came into town. My mom took us here and I have never seen this place before. She supposedly claims that the owners of Chinese Cuisine sold their old shop and opened up this new one. The decor inside, I have to say, is nice… solid wood tables and chairs, all brand new. You can tell they spent a little money on the place, however, the table arrangement was odd. It didn’t seem like they filled up the place correctly or planned out an efficient path to all the tables… either way, I’m not writing a ‘Top Design’er review, so there really is no value in what I am saying about furniture placement. Inside, there is also two private rooms for banquets.

The menu was nice and glossy, chocked full of mis-spelled words… much like my articles! So, I was kind of on a little perhaps minor eating restriction that day… and I couldn’t really order what I wanted to (namely the godly crystal dragon eggplant), so I stuck to a pot of broth.

It was a light broth seafood broth with tofu, cuttlefish, fish, scallops, straw mushrooms, bamboo, carrots, bok choy, broccoli, green peas, did I leave anything out? What can you expect from this broth… it taste exactly like how it looks, bland. I knew what I was getting and it wasn’t too bad, because I already know what it would taste like before even trying. I tried to stick to this all night, but I ended up eating bits and pieces of other dishes…

What was order was scallion stir fry beef, but what we got was something along the lines of Mongolian beef. The difference is the use of onion, namely white onion instead of green onion. The dish was alright, nothing spectacular to me, I’ve had better.

This is the spicy chicken stir fry, with lots of dried chili as you can tell. The dish is very colorful, I like the distribution of red throughout, don’t you think red is just such a BAM! color? The chicken pieces resembling nugget strips was fried first, then stir fried again. That process made the chicken extra crispy, the addition of chili gave the dish a kick, but not an extreme one I was expecting, especially from the plethora of color red in the dish. Tasty dish, would definitely order again, the best dish out of the night.

And here we have pork.  Pork leg in special sauce.  What defines pork leg or pork in general for that matter?  Fat.  Yes, it is an acquired taste, best eaten with some lean meat.  This kind of dish goes best with white rice… the pork leg was tender, but I think I have had better.

Whole steamed fish in chili black bean sauce. The dish was not even mildly spicy for something so red… it had a lot of vinegar in it… other than that, it was not memorable to say the least.  I’m not sure what kind of fish this was, tilapia maybe?

All in all, I expected more out of this restaurant, especially if it was the spawn of ‘Chinese Cuisine’… I just don’t know… maybe if I had the eggplant that night, it would have made all the difference.  But I did notice that we did not order our usual affair of dishes, so I can always blame dish symbiosis… the art of complimentary dishing.

Cafe 101

9188 Bellaire Blvd. #101, 77036.

Conveniently located right off of Bellaire on the south side… Cafe 101 plays a spin off of Taipei 101, the newest/tallest building in the world, located in Taipei, Taiwan. So, of course at Cafe 101 you will get a mix of Chinese and Taiwanese food plus what is popular in Taiwan.

The atmosphere inside is definitely chic and the decor, modern. I have to say that this is a secret date place of mines… shhh. The ambiance is rather different than all the other Chinese restaurants on Bellaire. I mean what is Bellaire? Houston’s best for Asian food. To compete, they are going for the hip look more so than the authentic dishes.

Although not really Chinese, this was a Japanese combo platter consisting of chicken katsu and 5 various pieces of sushi. The katsu was mediocre and as long as the sushi was fresh, theres nothing to complain there.

Above we have the stirfry beef in sacha sauce. Now what is sacha? It’s one of my favorite Chinese sauces, it’s mildly spicy and very full of flavor. Sacha is a very common hot pot sauce and is used by mixing with raw eggs… but this is not hot pot. The meal also came with lemon egg pudding and 3 veggie sides.

Next is pork cutlet with black pepper sauce. I like black pepper sauce but I thought that this one in particular was a little bland. The pork therefore just seemed so-so. This meal also came with the lemon egg pudding and 3 veggies, not sure if it was a lunch order or what… I’ve never ordered these two in particular before, so I was not sure.

Although I don’t have a picture, you got to try the fried chicken nuggets. What is special about these chicken nuggets is that it is fried in a famous Taiwanese spice batter, consisting boldly of basil. Very delicious. And if you don’t like chicken, go for the fried tofu which also comes in the same batter.

What else is good about Cafe 101? The drinks of course! Tons of drinks to choose from, even a special menu just for drinks. The one above is egg pudding bubble tea. Bubble tea is all the hype or use to be in Taiwan and it quickly spread to US. Usually people can get tapioca balls in their bubble tea, but I prefer pudding. The egg pudding is great in this drink and top it off with milk and sugar and honey, what’s not to like? And I think they serve alcoholic drinks too, so just request the bartender to spike your special drinks if you are in the mood.

They have happy hour with cheaper snack items that come with a drink each. I say definitely go during that time to get the best of both worlds… but the time that they host happy hour seemed confusing to me because I always ended up missing it… oh well.

Would I go back? Of course. For the drinks and atmosphere really. Great place to show people that Chinatown is not all about filth and cheap good food, you can have mediocre, semi-expensive food too, with a view. Oh yeah, hot waitresses are also included.

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Chinese Cuisine

9888 Bellaire Blvd. #126, 77036

Okay, so I ate with the Grams today… This restaurant is at the corner of the mall and could be quite hard to spot. It serves Northeastern Chinese food… I enjoy several of their dishes quite much. Anyhow, my her eyes had more of an appetite than her stomach.

We ordered three dishes, I guess for appetizer (more like a meal in itself) she asked for 2! orders of fried small pork buns. They were quite tasty, but I only ate one because I knew there were other dishes to come. The presentation was pretty nice, I like the flair of the seasame seeds.

Then we had a dish I would usually get in beef, but since I know this restaurant does it well, I ordered it in fish. Basically its sichuan spicy boiled fish. Its fish fillets swimming, actually sinking, in spicy anesthetical sichuan red hot chili sauce. There is another restaurant a few blocks down that makes sichuan food really really spicy. I eat there too, so the spicy here is acceptable to me, they don’t make it as spicy. But it was still pretty spicy.

Okay, next we have something mild and sweet. Walnut shrimp in special sauce. The special sauce tastes like a sweet mayonnaise. The shrimp is battered then fried then coated with the special sauce. Pretty good, but I’ve had better at another restaurant (Jade Village uses bigger fresher shrimps and less batter). They really need to reduce the batter because I could hardly taste the shrimp.

Lastly, I ordered my most most fav eggplant dish in the whole wide world! Dragon Rolls! Its eggplant in special sichuan spicy sauce. What I believe they do is, they take japanese eggplant, give it a continuous slicing, steam it, then fry it out the wazoo. After the fry bath, they drizzle the lovely sauce on top. Majestic I say. You gotta try it sometime, its a treat.

Keep in mind that there was only 2 people eating, k? We hardly put a dent in the dishes. Well, it was really like I ate most of whatever was gone while my grams nibbled on rice. Plenty of leftovers for another 3 meals. It was good, but the spicy got to me afterwards. I ate so much and most of it spicy that my stomach started to feel bad. Next time I really should follow through with portion control…

Each dish was $9.95, the pork buns was $3.95 per order.  After tax and tip, it came out close to $50… I guess thats a pretty expensive lunch for 2.

Asparagus Beef Stir-fry

So…

I felt really ambitious last Wednesday (3/14/07), so instead of going to the gym… I went home early to cook! I had some beef top round left over in the freezer and I wanted to put it to good use. Kroger had a sale on asparagus ($1.99 per lb) totally awesome and they were pretty tender too, picked that over broccoli. For my stir-fry, I used beef, asparagus, canned straw mushrooms, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, cornstarch, and beef broth. One thing I did differently is I steamed the asparagus first to get them cook and tender, which I found out later that they were so fresh to begin with, they didn’t even need to be steamed first. Using beef broth and cornstarch kinda made the sauce a little gravy like, which I didn’t mind. Some people like to add sugar to asian stir-fry, but not me, sorry.

The rice I believe is Botan Red Rose, short grain rice. THAT is the only kind I keep around at home, the red and yellow label. The stir-fry turned out pretty good, above my expectations… maybe that is due to the fact that I used thick slices of round roast which comes with some fat in between. All of those factors made it taste like steak. Mmmm… steak. So it was like eating stir-fry w/thin steak… yeah, good stuff.

Honestly, I think this dish is pretty healthy too… not bad.

Fung’s Kitchen

7320 S.W. Freeway S115, 77074

Look at the overflow of recent posts!  What a special treat for you all, oh and this will probably be the MEGA post.  Lets see, a few relatives came in over the past week and you know what that means… restaurants!  After they leave, its back to the simple food, and very much non-asian.  I don’t eat asian unless its with family… well, not don’t don’t, but very seldom.

Dim Sum Sunday started around 11:30ish almost no parking in the lot, we had a party of 14 and had to wait about 20 so minutes.  I haven’t been to this restaurant in a long long time… This restaurant is known for good seafood, dim sum, and hefty prices.  I am not a big fan of dim sum, I really don’t care for it much but I don’t hate like I hate Chinese buffets.

Starting off we had beef with duck egg congee, quite a Cantonese delicacy.  It was decent.

This is called deep fried pork puff, I like the fried consistency of this dish.  Its got ground pork inside and an outer layer of fried mochi-like skin.  Crispy and chewy all at the same time, what’s not to love?  Oh and oily too.

Sticky rice with Chinese sausage.  I like sticky rice and short grain rice, I could eat this as a meal… the dish was okay, I think I’ve had better.

Steamed beef rice noodle.  These are good, especially the special soy sauce they lather the rice noodle in.  We ordered all three varieties, shrimp, beef, and bbq.  I think the one pictured is bbq, and bbq to the Chinese does not equal Texan bbq with red bbq sauce.

Dim sum staple numero uno, sui mai.  Tastes just like how it should be.

Steamed shrimp dumplings, staple numero dos.  How could you not order this when you eat dim sum?

Vegetables… I don’t know the English name of this veggie, but it has a sweet thick soy sauce over it, I think the sauce is some form of hoisin/mushroom sauce.  The veggie themselves taste a little bitter, but thats how they are suppose to taste.  I’m not a big fan of this particular green.

Steam pork spare rib with black bean sauce.  I like this dish, I like the fat surrounding the rib… mmm… fatty meat.

Chicken feet, I do not eat.  Rhymin’!  My brother ate one and said it was basically like eating skin.

Steam bean curd roll with vegetable.  I love tofu, and bean curd is tofu, so yeah.  Its got mushrooms and baby corn and green vegetables in it.

Steamed beef tripe.  I specially requested this dish.  Did you notice a theme about cow innards?  Yes, thats me.   It was very chewy… and me = chewy.

This is a dish that we usually order on the side when we eat dim sum because the other 200 bajillion will not fill us up.   Its stir fry beef with rice noodle and bean sprouts.  I remember hating this dish for a while, but we made our peace recently.

Extra dish number 2, seafood and crispy egg noodle.  I don’t think I got any of this… or did I… hmm… must of not been a stellar dish then.

Another veggie dish, Chinese napa?  I don’t know the names of these exotic vegetables… geez, Chinese people and their vegetables.

Curry shrimp, pork, bean sprouts vermicelli.  My mom loves this dish.

A different kind of beef tripe, now this is the bastard child to the other kind of tripe… its just not as good.

Pan fried turnip cake, staple numero tres.  It’s soft on the inside and crispy on the outside, thats done right.

Chicken mushroom rice.  By this time, food was just food… but this dish was bland.

This was either vegetable bun or bbq pork bun… I think the prior.  I didn’t eat this, I was reaching a limit from the 25 before it… heh, not really though.

White sweet rice cake.  I like the sticky and guess what?  Chewy texture of this dessert.

Baked custard sweet lotus, I had half, it wasn’t too sweet.  I like it sweet!

Egg custard, loveee this dessert.  There is a place in Sugar Land that has the best by far.  I don’t usually get it at restaurant because everything else is inferior.

Ma Lai Cake, love love love this too, its a pretty delicious cake if you ask me.  I ate like the whole piece myself.

Okay, so I said I didn’t care for dim sum, but that doesn’t mean I won’t eat it or have favorite for some of the dishes.  Overall, Fung’s Kitchen has pretty good seafood and the dim sum is a little above par, I guess more delicately prepared, not so crude?  But it comes with a steep price;

small dish: 1.95
medium dish: 2.89
large dish: 3.95
sup dish: 4.95
sp dish: 5.75

Think about it this way, for 14 people, we had to order at least 2 of each little dish X how many dishes we had… plus specials… yeah, pricey.

Spicy Sichuan

9188 Bellaire Blvd. #168, 77036

Lots of people have never even seen ‘real’ chinese food, and yeah… sometimes its not for the faint at heart. Many dishes are exotic and require the acquired tastebuds. So folks, I am taking you all into Sichuan (Szechuan, szewuan, whatever the heck) cuisine. Personally, I love it. I have had it since I was young, so I am able to deal with these foreign concepts. Sichuan is spicy. Period. On top of spicy, it also has anesthetic ingredients… hot and numbing, yes.

Disclaimers first, you see, I had to cut the hedges before dinner… with a manual hedge scissor, in the cold… my hands did not stop shaking that whole night. So the picture quality took a big big hit… yeah.

We started off the night with some cold appetizers, customary to this cuisine. I will show you the picture first, then explain what it is.

Sliced pig ear with hot oil. Trust me, it sounds unappetizing but was rather good. Its got some jelly characteristics with crunchiness in the middle.

I thought at first that this was one of those cold jelly noodles, but my dad said that it was pork tendon in garlic sauce. Eh, after that, didn’t care much for it. It however, caused me to choke for 5 mins because I was still recovering from sore throatness… dunno why I agreed to go eat spicy in the first place.

Seaweed salad! Marinated with seasame oil, sugar, garlic, and seasame seeds. It was a light dish to counter the spicy hot ones.

Beef Jerky in chili sauce. This was spicy as heck. I hardly ate any.

Sliced fish with tofu soup. Looks light and healthy and tasty, but I passed it up. I opted for the other dishes first to go with my rice but when I finished my rice, the soup was gone. So I have no clue how it tasted.

Dong-Po Pork Elbow. Basically, its like pig thigh in thick sauce. I have to say, its not for the sweet and sour pork eaters… but I loved it. The best part is when you pair some lean meat with the fatty skin above… mmm… no, its not gross – its Chinese! HA.

Steam pork ribs. It looks like rice doesn’t it? Nope! Its pork ribs covered in this special ingredient to make it look all fluffy and stuff. They steam it in some sort of leaves. The pork ribs were really well prepared, fall off the bone kind. My uncle said it was nicely made, and since he is a food connoisseur himself, I will take his word for it.

Sliced fish with sizzling rice. I love the rice cake (similar to baked rice), normally you can eat it alone, like a munchy snack. You can buy it at grocery stores, its good, so when they put fish on it, its even better. The hot fish and sauce made the rice cakes sizzle, awesome effect. And when the rice cake gets soggy after the sauce bath, its even better. But, thats just me… I love soggy stuff, I like my cereal soggy and my fries too. My brother commented on how this dish tasted much like the soup… so now I know what the soup tastes like.

Feast your eyes on this! This is what I live for in Sichaun cuisine, it is what I consider the only dish, the epitome of sichaun food. I didn’t use to like it, but I think one year when I visited Taiwan back in the day, I had some, and got hooked ever since. Like one of those things that you don’t appreciate until you grow up and get an acquired taste for it. That and eggplant are some of those things for me. This dish is called tsung won, consists of pork blood and intestine. No seriously. I can’t explain the taste, but oh how I love it so.

Fish with hot bean sauce, I think. I don’t really care much for whole fish… it tasted like someone got a little too vinegar happy. Nothing more to say, didn’t have much of this.

House special smoked tea duck. Smoky, it was all right, I didn’t ponder on it too much due to the fact that I was feverously eating the two pork dishes. I have to say, it wasn’t dry and thats a good thing to me.

Overall, this place was PACKED, so I assume the food is delightful. And yes, it was good. But… since my brother cannot eat spicy (not because he can’t but healthwise, not advised) much like how I shouldn’t eat spicy (throat issue), I felt as if we didn’t really test out the restaurant to its full capabilities. I know I would also have wanted to order the boiled beef with spicy sauce and the crispy pork intestine with three chili, oh and try the special crispy spicy chicken or the eggplant cake with garlic sauce… so that means that I will definitely revisit this restaurant in the future.