153. Bay Area - HK Style Chinese BBQ at Cooking Papa / 好煮意 香港大排檔 (Bay Area: Santa Clara)

If you are in the Bay, and all you want is some Chinese food, Cooking Papa in either Santa Clara or Foster City is a good choice.  This Hong Kong style restaurant is not really an eye-opening surprise of ridiculous deliciousness.  It is just good food.  It is quick.  It's affordable.  It's no fancy restaurant, and it's no hole-in-the-wall either.  And it satisfies when you are hungry.  It was the first place that I stopped at on what seemed like a never ending journey through Bay Area.

Cooking Papa makes some solid Cantonese BBQ, referring to the roasted chicken, duck, and pork on the menu (or hanging in the window).  Juicy and succulent, our combo platter of roasted duck and pork (燒味雙拼) fit the bill just right.  This, by the way, is different from Peking duck, which is northern style BBQ.  Northern or Peking style roast duck focuses on the crisping of the skin; the meat is usually not as succulent.  On the other hand, southern or Cantonese style roast duck focuses on the tenderness of the meat.  It is usually very juicy, and the skin is usually not as crisp.

The house special pan fried noodle (招牌煎麵) is on the money too.  It is an authentic take on a Hong Kong style chow mein, frying up the yellow noodles until they are crisp all around... and then smothering the top with sauced up scallops, shrimp, pork, mushrooms, and bok choy.  This is one of those dishes that everyone at the table dives into, and each individual douses their portion with extra soy and chili.


What is spectacular about Cooking Papa is the dessert... and not just any dessert.  The Hong Kong style egg puff (鬆化沙翁), which should be ordered at least ten minutes in advance of your desire for dessert, is particularly dramatic.  These egg puffs are somewhat like waffles, only that puffed up hemispheres of batter take the place of the square shaped dips in a typical American waffle.  They typically fit into a paper sleeve to be held while eating on the streets of Hong Kong, but it looks like the Papa injected some Godzilla portioned steroids into these overly gargantuan super sized monstrosities.  Oh, and then Papa dusted it with some powdered sugar.  Cray cray.  The egg puffs are a sweet way to end the meal.

Until next time, let's get S.O.F.A.T.

Cooking Papa / 好煮意
2830 Homestead Rd.
Santa Clara, CA 95051

ML - 20130831

Post 26.10: Vancouver - Day 3 (Breakfast)

Twas my third day in Vancouver, and throughout the weekend Amanda had been talking about heading to this popular congee house for some Cantonese homestyle porridge.  Everytime she mentioned it I secretly kept thinking to myself that congee is food that you eat only when you have a cold, flu, or hangover... it's the last item you order at dim sum (if you even remember to order it) to fill you up.  Some people haaaaate congee with a passion.  It's rice + water + gag-inducing items like thousand-year-old egg. 



Okay, so that's what I used to think about congee...

After a quick meal with Amanda and her friend Ian, I have officially changed my policy on congee.  The congee at Congee Noodle King in Vancouver has the best congee/porridge/rice soup I have ever had in my life... way, way, way better than anything I've ever had in America.  And I wasn't even in Hong Kong.  (Those Yelpers are nuts for giving it just three stars.)



The congee I've had in dim sum restaurants are usually served runny.  Water or broth overrun the bowl, and it almost drowns the rice.  Here, though, the congee was thick.  The pureed rice wasn't overtaken by broth or water.  The grains of rice were uniform throughout the porridge, and the porridge, at first glance, even looked... beautiful.  The porcelain bowl arrived with the porcelain-hued porridge, and it almost felt... refined.



The first item on the menu, strangely, is ostrich congee.  There were three simple reasons to order ostrich congee at Congee Noodle King:

(1) The first item on the menu is usually (repeat... usually) the house specialty;
(2) When have you ever come across ostrich meat in your rice porridge?
(3) My manager at work mentioned ostriches last week; it was a sign...

So we ordered it. 

And how does a native African bird taste in traditional Chinese breakfast porridge?

Great.

The ostrich meat looks like beef at first glance.  If you didn't know someone ordered the ostrich congee, you'd probably think the meat floating atop your bowl was beef.  But once you take a bite, you'd change your tune just a bit... you'd probably think it was lamb.  The gamey taste of the ostrich is similar to that from lamb.  And though the scent lingers in your mouth a little bit, it's not anything too insanely pungent.  The roasted peanuts and strings of green onion do a satisfactory job of holding the gamey taste back.

It's something you have to experience at least once in your life.  Not your favorite? At least try it once.   And move onto the house special seafood congee with prawns, scallops, squid, and pieces of fish.  THIS is what I'm talkin' about.  It's got a beautiful, delicate porcelain look... and the same beautiful, delicate porcelain taste.

I really enjoyed all the combination of the ocean's lighter fare.  No rubbery clams, no mushy oysters, no thousand. year. old. egg. to ruin the delicate flavors.

We ordered a wonton soup and the Chinese doughnut wrapped in steamed rice roll too.  I have no idea where my picture of the wonton soup went though... we might've eaten it a bit too fast for my Canon to catch it.

For something that is considered soupy, congee fills you up pretty fast.  But that congee dissipates as quickly as it enters your stomach... it was lunch time before I knew it.

Here is a post on Congee Noodle King from the noshwell duo.

Next post: Some pho and some fun

ML - 20100802/20100704

Post 26.3: Vancouver - Day 1 (Breakfast)

Breakfast: From Doughnuts to Dim Sum

I was set on having some delicious dim sum for breakfast on my first full day in Vancouver, so I woke up bright and early and hopped into the apartment's gym for a workout to motivate my metabolism into a manic mode.  I was ready to eat! But alas, dim sum in Canada apparently doesn't get good until close to noon.  So Amanda took me to two pit-stops to pass the time.

Pit-stop 1: Bank of Montreal for some USD-CAD forex (not that exciting)
Pit-stop 2: Tim Hortons, Canada's largest coffee and doughnut chain (much more exciting)

Warming up.

After stretching my stomach with doughnuts, I planned to capitalize on dim sum.

According to Wikipedia (my flawless source of go-to, get-it-quick information) Tim Hortons surpasses McDonald's in fast food sales and knocks Starbucks out of the ballpark in Canadian coffee sales.  Wow, the Canadians must really not like us that much.

The Canadian maple.  The center is filled with maple-flavored custard.

You can't get anymore Canadian than that.

I had noticed the unexpectedly high number of customers at a brightly-lit Tim Hortons on the way back to Burnaby the night before. Either nothing else was open, or this doughnut store is that good. Turns out, it's both. 

Highly patriotic. 

The sprinkles are in the shapes of maple leaves.

Tim Hortons gets pretty creative when it comes to fashioning their doughnuts.  The sprinkles on the Canadian doughnut, made especially for Canada Day (July 1), screamed patriotism with its bright red maple leaves.  I mean, we've got red, white, and blue doughnuts in America... but I've yet to see an Independence Day doughnut with sprinkles in the shape of stars and red and white striped glaze.  Granted, that doughnut would be a lot more complicated to make, but I'm pretty sure Krispy Kreme can manage.

Tim's tiny bits.  I chose at least one each of...

the apple fritter, dutchie, honey dip, sour cream glazed, and chocolate glazed.

The doughnut holes at Tim Hortons (called Timbits) are pretty frickin' creative too.  They don't only have the simple glazed doughnut hole (a few tossed in with each purchase at the local shop in the USA), but they have over a dozen different flavors.  From the apple fritter to the honey dip to the sour cream glazed, it was tough to choose just 10 for my box.

Pretty and porous. 

Amanda pinches the golden inside of a honey dip Timbit.

No worries.  All I needed was a little snack... just a little something to warm my stomach up for... dim sum! So I moved from doughnut holes to dim sum... from one bite-sized item to the next bite-sized item.  Here's a look at the mass of munchies from East No. 1 Seafood Restaurant (第一樓海鮮酒家) that Amanda and I challenged ourselves to:

Har gow (蝦餃).  Steamed shrimp dumplings.

Three jumbo shrimp are encapsulated inside delicate rice paper wrappers.

Siu mai (燒賣).  Steamed pork and shrimp dumplings.

Mini salmon roe grace the top.

Ngow chang (牛腸).  Thick rice noodles wrapped with beef.

It basks in a sweeter but more oily (yet somehow lighter) soy sauce.

 Wu gok (芋頭角).  Deep-fried taro fritter (also a dumpling).

A thousand flaky crunches surround a sweet taro paste and savory ground pork.

Loh bak goh (蘿蔔糕).  Pan-fried turnip cakes.

Spots of Chinese chorizo are lodged intermittently throughout.

Cha siu soh (叉燒酥).  Baked BBQ pork pastries.

The multi-layered flaky crust covering the sweet pork flies when you take a bite.

Ham sui gok (鹹水角).  Literal trans: salty dumplings.

Ground pork and diced mushrooms fill the interior of the football-shaped mochi dumpling.

Vancouver is quickly becoming the new mecca for Chinese food, especially Cantonese cuisine.  Top restaurants in Vancouver have lured the best Chinese chefs from Hong Kong away from their homeland in order to employ them in the highly competitive market of Cantonese cuisine.  As one of the world's most livable cities, Vancouver can be a good enough reason in itself for the chefs to move.  It's no surprise that dim sum all over Vancouver has to be good... or the restaurant is ruined.  Amanda and I continued to see regulars savor their favorite dim sum dishes as dim sum newbies practiced their Cantonese (and their chopsticks).  It's safe to say that East No. 1 Seafood Restaurant has survived the generations and will continue to do so. 

(7 dishes x about 4 per order) / 2 eaters = approximately 14 super big mouthfuls per person.  I was so stuffed, especially because the doughnuts, which I had previously thought would stretch my stomach out, actually cushioned the dim sum as it landed in my stomach.  Eek.  But a successful dim sum brunch, nonetheless.  How much breakfast can I eat? Quite a bit, I guess.

All Romanizations were translated from Cantonese rather than Mandarin to reflect the Cantonese origin of dim sum.

Next post: Lunch!

ML - 20100713/20100702