“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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Chickens Don’t Clap: Jang Su Jang, Back A Yard, and Palace BBQ

Now that I’m working full-time, I get really excited about weekends.

When 6 o’clock rolls around on Friday, I jump up from my desk, shout “WOOHOO! IT’S THE WEEKEND!” then barrel over any co-workers standing between me and the door. I’m extreme like that.

Yeah, weekends are pretty awesome. I finally get to have a good night’s sleep, relax, get some exercise in, have fun times with friends. Oh, and eat.

Last Friday, I’d just gotten home from work when James texted me asking if I wanted to get Korean food. Korean food?! Only always! I sent him back a text telling him what a great idea that was, suggesting that we take our talents to Santa Clara and dine at Jang Su Jang.

I’d been there once before, with my dad, and not only was it one of the nicest-looking Korean restaurants I’d ever been in, but they also had this beast of a bo ssam dish (steamed pork wraps) that I can’t get out of my head. Wanting more of that pork, I later tried going to Jang Su Jang with Yi and Jono, but JSJ’s so popular that when we got there, we found that we’d have to wait for 30 minutes for a table. Darn. We were really hungry, so we ended up just going next door to the Korean food court, which was okay, but I didn’t get that bo ssam.

So, not wanting to drive all the way out to Santa Clara only to be bitterly disappointed once again, this time I called ahead and made a reservation. Had my shit down.

When we got there and checked in, the host was like, “it’ll be just five minutes while they clean off the table.” That’s cool. I could wait five more minutes for my bo ssam. But five minutes stretched into fifteen minutes, and by the time we were seated, it was about 20 minutes after our reservation time. What was the point of even making a reservation? Blergh.

Whatever. We placed our order, had a bunch of banchan set in front of us, and all was good.

Too good.

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Always get the pancakes - Stacks’, Menlo Park

The last time I went to Stacks’, I didn’t order pancakes and ended up with an extremely disappointing order of steak and eggs. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me - I can’t get fooled again. Or so I thought.

This time around, I knew I was going to order some delicious pancakes, and so that’s exactly what I did.

I split a large stack (3 pancakes) of banana macadamia nut coconut pancakes with Sam, and they were as good as I remembered - soft and fluffy, fragrant, and studded with moist banana slices and macadamia nut pieces. Pretty fine pancakes.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t content to just eat those splendid pancakes, and so I ordered up some chicken apple sausage as well, hoping that they’d be the perfect salty and meaty counterpoint to the pancakes. For ~$5-6, I received three small sausages, and while they weren’t terrible, they were definitely not worth $5. Should have bought five more dollars worth of pancakes. Always get pancakes at Stacks’.