Dog: A late night snack

by Gadling Staff on

“I’m going to show you some place hardcore. Some place really Chinese.”

We had already spent a late night at our local hangout and I am more than ready to go to bed. It’s late, but my friend cannot be denied. Grabbing my hand and shoving me into a taxi, I assume that we are going to find a local place to eat nearby, a comforting meal of late night barbecue cooked up to order at virtually any street corner in China.

But as the taximeter counts steadily upward, I realize my friend is serious. A long time resident of China and a fluent Chinese speaker, his exploratory powers far outshine my own. As we pull into a chop shop to ask for directions, he tells me how ridiculous it is when people say that our city is small.

Xiamen is home to over 3 million people and covers an area of 1500 square kilometers. By Chinese standards Xiamen is a small town. But the tendency amongst foreigners (myself included) is to stick the easy-to-reach comfortable areas where foreigners tend to congregate. Bars, cafes, and the university are places that are safe and familiar, where foreign faces are expected if not common.

An intense conversation in Chinese with the laborers results in the bewildered taxi driver dropping us off in what seems like the middle of nowhere. The cab fair reads 50 RMB. 50 RMB! I didn’t even know you COULD pay 50 RMB and stay on the island!

As rain dribbles through my clothes I lurch into motion after my friend in the dark as he barks at a series of sleeping shop owners at 3 in the morning in Chinese.

“What’s open?! Where’s the restaurant!?”

The shopkeepers start, muttering and motioning to keep going down the road, promptly falling back asleep as we pass.

It’s so easy to lean back and rest on your laurels as an expat. After all, we’ve moved, we’ve settled, we’ve found the places of interest in the guidebook or the expat forums online. We’ve plumbed the depths.

But sitting at that restaurant, eating the dog and pan-fried silkworm larvae as my friend chats with the grinning restaurant owners, I realize again that I’m in a new country. There’s no end to the exploration and when you find yourself in a new culture, there are always hidden treasures to uncover.

[Flickr photo via Mike Saechang]

Soul Food: 4 New York places of worship to find an unforgettable meal

by Ori Epstein on

In a city that elevates certain chefs to god-like status and treats their restaurants as shrines for gastronomic worship, how about a more humbling dining experience in an actual house of worship? Several churches, places of worship and temples throughout New York are preparing and serving meals for anybody that drops by that are always delicious, unique, and either inexpensive or free.

The following are not places where you will be taking advantage of a charitable soup kitchen; nor are they places where you would expect to be preached at in exchange for the food. Rather, these are places that happily welcome anybody to share a meal in the spirit of creating community.

Sikh Cultural Society – Worldwide, every Sikh temple, or gurdwara, runs a communal dining hall providing free, vegetarian meals to all visitors, Sikh and non-Sikh alike. The Golden Temple in Amritsar, India demonstrates this most famously, and most spectacularly, marshalling an army of volunteers to serve upwards of 80,000 meals a day. The Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill, Queens may operate on a far more modest scale, but is no different in its approach, providing conversation and tasty home-style Indian cooking with hospitality and camaraderie.
Norwegian Seamen’s Church – Once a month, this Manhattan church provides an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of Nordic treats. With New York’s winters increasingly resembling an Arctic winter, tables overflowing with meatballs, potatoes, and smoked, pickled, and baked fish are especially welcoming. For all of New York’s culinary diversity, there is a definite dearth of Scandinavian restaurants, so why not try this cuisine with a group of friendly Norwegian expats?

Hindu Temple Society – On a quiet, residential street of aluminum-sided, Archie Bunkeresque homes in Flushing, Queens, incongruously sits one of the continent’s largest Hindu temples. In the main sanctuary dedicated to Lord Ganesh, worshippers cleanse and attend to the ornately carved deities. Meanwhile, in the temple’s unassuming basement, a crowded canteen serves some of the city’s most satisfying and inexpensive South Indian fare. Giant spicy dosas spilling over the paper plates, delicious deep-fried samosas, and deceptively flavorful lentil soups serve to remind even the most hardened carnivore that a meat free meal can be immensely enjoyable.

Hare Krishna Temple – Another basement, another filling vegetarian feast. Travelers have long known that Hare Krishna temples provide both budget-friendly and health-friendly meals. This sometimes vegan and always vegetarian downtown Brooklyn outpost features an impressive buffet and the neighborhood’s best lunch deal.

Wing Bowl 2011 eating competition and sex fest results in

by Chris Owen on

The Super Bowl may be this Sunday but first up was the 19th annual Wing Bowl 2011 in Philadelphia which just finished up and the results are in.

20,000 people packed the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia tor radio station WIP’s Wing Bowl 19, a yearly tradition that includes a parade of floats rolling around the arena and a half-time cheesecake eating competition.

All in all, PJ Welihan’s from New Jersey cooked up 9,000 wings to last through two rounds of eating.

26 entrants began the competition but at the end of round on itcame down to only 2 men: 5-time returning champion “El Wingador” with 150 wings eaten; a 3 wing lead over 2-time defending champion “Super Squibb”. At the end of Round 2, the competition had tightened. El Wingador with a total of 237 wings eaten, Super Squibb with a total of 236 wings eaten. In the final round, Super Squibb pulled ahead to retain his crown for the third time, with a total of 255 wings to 254 wings.

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Photos courtesy cbslocal.com


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Called a “wing eating, drinking and sex fest” by myfoxphilly.com, the winner received more than $50,000 in prizes. Among the guest celebrities at the event was adult film legend Ron Jeremy. The event also draws scantily clad women and advertising for local adult entertainment clubs who host post-Wing Bowl entertainment events.

Like events like this but couldn’t make it to Wing Bowl? Maybe you can have one of your own with these tips from Food Network’s Non-Raunchy Kitchen Vixen Paula Deen:


The Wrong Side of the Tracks: The Best Sushi in Suburban Los Angeles

by David Farley on
Getting to the best sushi restaurant in suburban Los Angeles can be easy (when there’s no traffic, of course). From Downtown Los Angeles take highway 60 toward Pomona, driving through East Los Angeles and the fictitious-sounding Avocado Heights, past the green, well-manicured tombstone-studded hill known as Rose Hills cemetery (where gangster rapper Eazy-E is buried). Continue cruising past the endless strip malls of Puente and boxy shopping malls and neon chain store signs, which morph into Chinese language signs about five miles later. After the town of Industry, the butt of many jokes on the TV show Arrested Development, and Diamond Bar, switch over to highway 71 toward Corona.

A few miles down highway 71, get off at Chino Hills Parkway, take a right and pull into the first strip mall you see. Welcome to Chino Hills, home of Hayaci, the best sushi in suburban Los Angeles.

For the uninitiated, this isn’t the California where people come to reach for the stars. It’s the California of commuters; it’s the part of the state, wedged somewhere between Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, where residents have sacrificed location for a bigger house at a more affordable price; the California where the only “mom and pop” shops left are madre y padre shops, selling better-than-average tacos and, on the weekends, menudo. Like, say, coastal California there are a lot of hotel rooms here. But not for tourism: people come to Chino to visit relatives in the California State Prison (or you might find Republicans who have lost their way on a pilgrimage to the nearby Richard Nixon Presidential Library). Chino is the home of character Ryan Atwood on the TV show The O.C., portrayed as the antithesis of heavenly Newport Beach. The wrong side of the tracks.

Unless you’re a teenager who hasn’t reached driving age or a resident of the high-security prison, Chino and its younger sibling, Chino Hills, really isn’t the “wrong side of the tracks,” or hell on earth or anything like that. It’s just a normal suburban greater Los Angeles town.

But it’s not the type of town you’d expect to find Hayaci, a restaurant run by a Korean couple Jay and Stella. There are a gazillion sushi joints tucked away in a strip mall in southern California. But what makes Hayaci special is the price-quality ratio. Lunch for three people at Hayaci usually totals out at $50. The last time I ate about the equivalent quality of sushi in New York (at, say, Next Door Nobu) for three people, the bill was three times as high.


I usually go to Hayaci with Cathy, my sister, who lives in Chino Hills. She’s such a regular that she’s earned her chopsticks; meaning, when we walk in, Jay opens a cabinet door and pulls out a rectangular box that contains her very own pair of sticks. As soon as we sit down, Jay plops two pieces of albacore belly in front of us. But this isn’t just any ordinary piece of raw fish staring back at me–not just because the quality is high grade; but each piece of sushi is topped with sautéed garlic, adding a taste strata that you wouldn’t necessarily find in Japan, but is pure bliss on the taste buds.

After the albacore, we usually plow through a few of the house rolls (I love the “Crazy Rabbit Roll” which looks like a carrot, wrapped in fresh salmon with a stalk of lettuce poking out one side) and then always top off the meal with two more of those garlic-topped albacore sushi pieces.

I’ve been to Hayaci enough times–I was there three times last week–that Jay and Stella recognize me now. I’m the food and travel writing brother from New York. I suspect I’m a long way off from earning my own chopsticks. Which means I have a lot of driving on that stretch of highway 60 ahead of me.

Hayaci, 4200 Chino Hills Pkwy #870, Chino Hills, CA. 909-606-7866.

Fine Dining in Hong Kong: Mandarin Grill + Bar at Mandarin Oriental

by Gadling Staff on

If you keep up on celebrity chef buzz, you might remember hearing something about a certain renowned chef who recently aired his laundry at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong.

Famed chef, Thomas Keller, brought his signature three-Michelin-starred cuisine from The French Laundry in Napa to Hong Kong, wherein lucky diners were able to meet him and witness his culinary talents firsthand. The price for this life-changing experience? It was touted as 2010’s most expensive dinner with guests paying $900 each — not including wine!

Following the dinner, Mandarin Grill + Bar received a lot of attention, leaving some wondering — how did this one-Michelin-star restaurant rate the honor of hosting an esteemed chef like Thomas Keller? Determined to find out firsthand, I convinced my husband to fly out last weekend to check out the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong.The Mandarin Grill stands in the downstairs shadow of the more highly regarded two-Michelin-starred Pierre, and is quite an understated gem in the Hong Kong dining scene. Eager to experience the best of what they have to offer, we opted for a nine course tasting menu paired with five wines.

Our verdict? Mandarin Grill is terribly underrated and offers cuisine you’d expect to find in the world’s finest restaurants, but without prices that rival your monthly mortgage payment. With a flair for progressive cuisine and a hint of molecular gastronomy, Executive Chef Uwe Opocensky prepares dishes designed to delight all the senses. From courses that focus on unique textures, unexpected colors, and bold flavors, to intricate presentations, this is a one-of-a-kind culinary adventure for around $250 a person.

Some of the highlights included the onion consomme infused with herbal tea and served from a teapot and a forest-inspired sirloin course with mashed potatoes poised as mushroom stems and actual mushroom caps hardened with a bright red candy-like coating. The star of the night was definitely the foie gras with black truffles that required a ten minute prep and tableside presentation — including frying a duck egg on the sizzling cast iron plate — all served on what resembled a giant bird’s nest.

Since there is no such thing as too many truffles during a meal, we decided to end on a high with their signature truffle souffle and homemade truffle petit fours served on an edible chocolate cutting board. With culinary treasures like these, it’s no wonder that Thomas Keller chose to pay the Mandarin Grill a visit.