“Meats”, Sweet Potato Man, and the Sausage Inferno

Soo…I’ve been really busy. Between school, work, and job-hunting, I haven’t had much free time to keep up here, but I’ll try to start writing more again, it’s good for me. And for you.

Friday night, a bunch of us took Yi’s friend from high school out to dinner at Garden Fresh, the vegan Chinese restaurant. Despite it being Friday night, we managed to get a table for our eight person beast of a group, and after we placed our order, the waitress brought out cups of corn soup. FO’ FREE.

I never complain about anything that’s free, and it was super nice of them to just give us eight soups, so it was too bad the corn soup was about as good as this picture turned out - sort of a lukewarm, bland, corn-starchy soup-ish liquid. The last time we came, I had the hot-and-sour soup, which was actually decent, so if you go for a soup, go for the hot-and-sour. Look at me, dishing knowledge left and right. I’ll learn all of you yet.

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The love of baguettes (and fake meats)

Today, I drove to San Jose to get some recordings for my thesis, which pretty much just involved me playing with adorable Asian children. The little dude who opened the door when I got to the house just went and hugged me right there without even knowing who I was - all together now, AWWWWW. So anyway, that went really well. Yay.

We finished up around 2:30, by which point I was pretty hungry, as the last thing I’d eaten was a freshly baked Milk Pail Market pain au chocolate I’d baked and then burned myself eating at 8:00 that morning, too impatient to wait for it to cool enough to eat safely. Totally worth the burn. (That wasn’t really relevant except as a teaser for the pain au chocolate smackdown post coming soon, in which the awesomeness of the Milk Pail frozen pains aux chocolate will be fully revealed. Get excited.)

Given that I was already in San Jose, home to a huge Vietnamese community, and given that banh mi are one of my favorite things ever (earlier banh mi posts here and here), banh mi for lunch it was. I first went to Than Son Hien Khanh, which I’d read good things about. When I stepped inside, it was packed with hungry Vietnamese people jostling each other to order, which was a good sign, but after several minutes of trying to decipher the menu board (knowing Vietnamese would have come in handy here), it seemed like the main things that they were selling were desserts, and I didn’t see a mention of banh mi anywhere.

Huh.

I am baffled as to why I thought that Than Son Hien Khanh had great banh mi. Reading fail. The desserts looked really good, but all I wanted was a banh mi, so I headed out to find it somewhere else. Right next door was a Lee’s Sandwiches, but, you know, it’s a chain…ehhhh. What to do?? I didn’t have my phone on me to call anyone to give me directions to a new banh mi place, but I figured that if I drove around long enough, I’d find a banh mi shop somewhere. After all, according to a sign on the road, I was in “Little Saigon”. 

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Oh ha, I forgot all about this - Villa 08, Mountain View

Yeah…this is three months late.

I think it was September? My incredibly strenuous summer of research was winding down, and our friends Sam and Ali had just returned from their own busy summers, so we decided to look forward to the new school year by going out to eat, as you do. When we went to Ramen House Ryowa for my birthday, I’d noticed a Chinese seafood buffet next door, and so we thought we’d check the buffet out, remembering the epically delicious battle of mind v. belly that we had waged at Hokkaido, the Chinese seafood palace in San Mateo.

I’m so sorry about the quality of some of these photos. Also, given that I’m writing about Villa 08 three months after the dinner, it’s okay if you don’t listen to me. I do have a wonderful memory, but I’ll understand. And finally, just a warning, but I am going to be HILARIOUS in this post. Just so you’re ready.

Let’s pretend this was my first plate. For my first foray into the buffet, I just had to hit up the oysters. As oysters go, Villa 08’s were definitely better than Hokkaido’s, but they certainly weren’t Oh Boy! oysters. The sushi was also better than Hokkaido’s, but again, they weren’t especially good either. I have no shame in showing that I had two pieces of the General Tso’s chicken - every once in a while, I do enjoy terrible American Chinese food, and so should you! And the frog’s leg tasted like beef.

JUST KIDDING HAHAHA. It tasted like chicken, of course. I thought it was a perfectly adequate leg of frog-chicken, but Sam, who, being Asian, is more picky than I am about Asian food, was not impressed.

For my second plate, I went back for seconds on the oysters, because dammit, I was going to eat my money’s worth in oysters. I also got two pieces of tuna roll, I don’t know why, and a mediocre steamed bun. The walnut shrimp were actually pretty decent, albeit shrimpy (pun) and I’m sure the two fried things on the left side of the plate were okay. I can’t tell if they’re frog legs or something else entirely, but they don’t look terrible, so, you know.

For plato numero tres, I decided to honor my Korean heritage and was all, “yo quiero kimchi,” so I picked up a piece of sad-looking kimchi and three pieces of kimbap, or “Korean sushi”. The kimchi was AWFUL, and that’s all I have to say about that. Absolutely do not eat their kimchi. I also had some cold chicken, and it tasted as nondescript as it looks. The beef piece was just a normal, American Chinese piece of sauced beef. The kimbap actually weren’t terrible, which surprised me given the awfulness of the kimchi. And the leaf-wrapped rice was just okay, and it wasn’t much better than the one they served as Tressider over the summer.

You might have noticed the steamed bun and the leaf-wrapped rice and thought to yourself, “was this a seafood buffet or a dim sum place?” Well, my friend, it was BOTH! HAHAHA. I told you I was going to be hilarious! They had a dim sum cart sitting next to the buffets with a various assortment of dim sum, and they didn’t all look so bad. The fact that I got chicken feet is just evidence that All-You-Can-Eat Challenges just mess with my head, because I don’t especially like chicken feet and was only able to finish one. They were just okay.

I don’t remember exactly how much we paid, but it was on the pricey side, like $18 or $20. Was it worth it? Well, the company was better than the food, and there are definitely better restaurants and better all-you-can-eats where you can spend $18-$20, but if you really want to stuff yourself to the gills (pun) with seafood and dim sum, sally forth to Villa 08. Lunch is probably cheaper.