LA - Day 3 (Din Tai Fung and Zankou Chicken)

[oyceter]

Yesterday I dragged Rachel, canandagirl and knullabulla out to Din Tai Fung, despite the insane hour-long wait. Din Tai Fung is the famous Shanghainese dumpling place from Taiwan; it has katakana next to the store name specifically for the Japanese tourists. Despite the touristy association, it's still one of the best Shanghainese dumpling places that I've been to, and I've been dying to have some for quite a while.

We got Shanghainese pork soup dumplings, which are these little, thinly-wrapped dumplings with tender pork meat, so juicy that they actually produce broth inside of the dumpling (ergo, soup dumpling). You dip them in black vinegar, and the vinegar cuts through some of the velvety meatiness, and eat them very slowly, so as to not burn your tongue. I was very pleased to see that everyone liked them.

We also had vegetable and pork dumplings, which weren't quite as good as the ones in Taiwan (less veggies, more pork), but were still tasty; fish dumplings, which I had for the first time; chicken noodle soup Chinese style, in which the chicken is cooked to pieces so that it flavors the soup; dumplings filled with pork and sticky rice; sticky rice cakes with pork and cabbage; sesame buns, which Rachel and I gobbled up; red bean paste dumplings, which are absolutely delicious and in the incredibly thin skin; red bean paste filled sticky rice things (zhong ze); this red bean cake type thing and.... I think that's it.

Needless to say, we were absolutely stuffed.

After going to another Japanese bookstore (I got a random manga that seemed to feature people from Tang Dynasty China), we ended up vegetating and watching more Escaflowne. Actually, Rachel watched Esca while I apparently dozed off, thanks to the prone position, the heat, and the dark room.

I am amazed that I managed to sleep through all of Dilandau's insane cackling of "MOERO!! MOERO!!" (translation: "Burn! Burn!" though I personally think "Burninate! Burninate!" is much more accurate).

Then Rachel took me to Zankou's Chicken, which is indeed awesome. It looks like a fast-food place, but it has really, really good rotisserie Greek chicken. Unfortunately, we got there about half an hour before closing, which is why I think the breast of my chicken was just a little dry. But I still had tons of dark meat, spread on pitas with their garlic sauce, which is creamy and extremely garlicky and amazingly good, piled on the skin, and pigged out.

We then watched the first episode of Last Exile, which I have already decided that I adore. It is steampunk with airships. Also, just as I commented that it was just like Temerarire/His Majesty's Dragon, except with airships, someone in the anime went, "Oh no! The Temeraire has been hit!"

Awesome.

I've also been reading a metric ton of manga, which I shall soon blog on.

Comments

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

*massive, massive dumpling envy*

[oyceter]

^_____^