Grandma Nitti's: A Thanksgiving Dinner

We spent Thanksgiving in Taipei at Grandma Nitti's Kitchen in the Shida district, where we had a full Thanksgiving meal, including turkey & gravy, stuffing, soup & salad, pumpkin pie and apple pie. After a week of traveling around Taiwan and eating only Taiwanese food, it actually sort of hit the spot; comforting and reminded us of home.

D'Ange Bakery - Taiwanese Bakery in the SGV

In Taipei, there are cute bakeries on every corner filled with sweet and savory goodies, baked that day. I love freshly baked savory baked goods for breakfast (hot dog? cheese? corn? scallions? Preferably all together!), but I've never been able to find a decent bakery that could replicate the treats that I could get in Taiwan. The best breads are super light and fluffy and slightly sweet, without being too oily and dense with the savory toppings. I was very excited to discover the recently opened D'ange bakery in the San Gabriel Valley. I haven't tried their full range of offerings, but so far I love the hot dog cheese bread (pictured below) and had a delicious cranberry raisin scone this evening. I'm excited to try more of their goods soon!

Substantial and crumbly without being dry or dense with hints of citrus, vanilla. Really good and not too sweet.

 D'ange Sandwich Bakery
800 West Las Tunas
San Gabriel, CA

Tsujita Ramen: More Pork Overload in the Westside

S. & I had a late lunch at Tsujita Ramen on Sawtelle today after running a bunch of errands. Tsujita is a recently opened branch of Tokyo's famous Nidaime Tsujita ramen chain, which only recently started serving its famous ramen and only at lunchtime. I've heard plenty of reports of hour long lines, but fortunately since we were there so late, around 2pm, we were seated in about 5 minutes. I ordered the tsukumen with egg and S. had the regular ramen with egg. The tsukumen comes with a very concentrated porky dipping sauce and fairly thick chewy noodles, while the ramen comes with thin noodles, cooked hard, medium or soft, and a more traditional tonkatsu broth. Even though Jonathan Gold preferred the tsukumen in the LA Weekly review, I actually preferred the regular ramen, both for the relatively lighter broth as well as thinner noodles. The tsukumen was just too much work and I can only take so much pure porkiness. I appreciate the 60 hours of pork bone stewing, but the resulting broth is really strong. Even Yamadaya, which I really like, is too rich for me by the end of the bowl. I've found that I can only really take the shoyu version at Yamadaya. I'd say the ramen broth at Tsujita is slightly lighter with more subtlety than the Yamadaya ramen and the noodles are excellent. I like their soft boiled egg as well, and the bowls weren't huge, but we were stuffed afterwards. I never got the hot water into my concentrated broth as promised when finished, but I was too full anyway. Service was quite slow; we had to work to flag them down to get water refills, the check and they never came to offer to refill my broth. With such a small space and long waits, it's a little unfortunate. Not sure if there was any MSG in the broth, but I was in serious ramen coma afterward. We also drove by Ramen Jinya under construction also on Sawtelle, looks like the Westside is about to be ramen central soon!

Milo & Olive and Seed Bistro: two Wilshire newcomers on the Westside (Updated with Pizza)

Taking a break from the Asia trip recaps, a quick iPhone report on two relatively new openings on Wilshire: Milo & Olive in Santa Monica and Seed Bistro in West LA.

Milo and Olive is run by the team behind Huckleberry, Rustic Canyon, and Sweet Rose Creamery, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, who I believe are native Crossroads graduates. I'm a big fan and frequent customer of Huckleberry and Sweet Rose Creamery. I haven't been to Rustic Canyon in awhile, mostly because I didn't love it the few times that I had dinner there. I was in a breakfast mood when I went to Milo and Olive, but was disappointed to find that they stopped serving breakfast at 11:00am. I ended up getting three pastries to go: two ham and cheese croissants and a blueberry crumble. Both were delicious; the croissant was light, flaky and buttery without being too oily, and also substantial enough with some rich savory goodness from the salty ham and sharp gruyere. The blueberry crumble was moist, with just enough crunch and sugar on the topping and plenty of sweet blueberry goodness in the middle. I really want to go back to Milo and Olive for their pizzas, which I have heard great things about, and I will certainly go back. The place is miniscule however; feels smaller than Huckleberry with 2 communal tables of 8 and bar seating for about 8. It was packed when I was there at 11:30am, it must be a nightmare at peak hours. Since we live so close, we'll probably be resorting to takeout.

We went back to Milo & Olive last night to check out the pizza. We got there around 9:30pm and waited about 5 minutes, the place is still packed even at later than usual dinner hours. We ordered the crispy pepperoni pizza with tomato and mozzarella and the pork belly sausage pizza with braised greens, tomato and mozzarella. I liked both pizzas, probably preferring the salty, crispy pepperoni which reminded me of bacon; Milo & Olive has only been open a few weeks so I suspect it should get even better as time goes by.  Cheese and toppings are still relatively limited; I look forward to them putting out more unique pizzas. The crust is very good, super thin in the middle and puffy and pillowy on the crust. It's quite bread-like Sometimes I prefer a bit of a more rustic crust like with Mozza and Gjelina, but this crust is good too. Everything could use just a little more interesting seasoning and flavors, but I think they are definitely on the right track.

I went to Seed Bistro for lunch about a month or two ago. Seed Bistro is a macrobiotic vegan place opened in the old Bimi space by the owners of Seed Kitchen in Venice. I did enjoy my vegan southwest burger, although I wasn't particularly wowed by it and there's lots of vegan / veggie burgers out there that I really like. I think overall it was just a little too healthy tasting for me. I really like vegan / vegetarian food, but I tend to go for the richer tasting kinds. Because the menu is so limited, I'm not sure there's much that I want to go back to try, but it is a good option for a healthy wholesome meal.

Taiwan Hotel Reviews

Silks Place Taroko

Taipei - Dandy Hotel Da-An: we stayed at the Dandy for two nights, booked through Agoda. The location of this hotel was perfect; right across the street from the Da-An park, a few blocks away from Din Tai Fung and walking distance from my grandparents' apartment. For less than $100 per night, I can't really complain. It did smell a little funky particularly near the bathroom, we were occasionally woken up by hallway noise in the middle of the night, but the room layout was good and it was spacious enough for us and all our luggage (Taipei hotel rooms can be tiny) and free internet worked in our room. The free breakfast was ok; I'm actually glad it wasn't better because there are so many tasty breakfast options in Taipei (ie. here).

Taichung - Hotel One: we stayed at Hotel One for one night. I love this hotel; it's very clean and modern, the staff is young and hip and speaks perfect English, the rooms are huge with amazing views, the beds are super comfortable and the shower is amazing. It didn't hurt that we had an enormous suite for our visit. The breakfast buffet is great with a huge selection and awesome views and we had a celebratory drink in the very hip bar full of trendy people. Free wifi works well in the room and the room is well set-up for work, as it is a business hotel. The location is very convenient as well; walking distance from a Chen Pin (Eslite Bookstore).

Kaohsiung - the Splendor Hotel: we stayed at the Splendor for one night, booked through Agoda. The location is nice, in the iconic 85 Tower, the tallest building in Kaohsiung and second tallest building in Taiwan, also designed by C.Y. Lee. We were very high up, on the 50 something floor, although in the morning, our view was of a giant Ikea. The hotel is somewhat dated; very 80's Trump / Vegas style with lots of gold and mirrors. The HVAC system also gave me the worst allergies and the bed wasn't very comfortable. The free breakfast buffet was pretty extensive and decent and there was internet in the room, but only free if you used the T1 connection. Free wifi in the lobby only.

Taitung - The Chief Spa Hotel: we stayed at the Chief Spa Hotel (Tian Long) in Wulu for one night, booked through Agoda. The location was quite remote; a dark twisty drive that was actually scarier in the daytime when we could see how treacherous the roads were. It had a nice natural outdoor hot spring with two different temperature pools, one that was in the 40s when we got in. It also was across from some nice hiking trails. Very secluded, and a nice break after all the cities we visited. The rooms were a little dingy and the bed was uncomfortable, but at less than $100 a night, it's hard to complain. The free breakfast buffet was extremely limited, but after several days of overstuffing ourselves with breakfast buffets, we were fine.

Taroko - Silks Place Hotel:  we stayed at the Silks Place Hotel in Tianhsiang, right in the middle of Taroko park for one night. The hotel was beautiful; minimalist modern and sleek, and very comfortable. As part of our package, we had an awesome free dinner and breakfast buffet, a really great deal for about $150 a night. I would definitely stay here again, the location can't be beat; it's one of the few hotels actually inside the park, and mostly filled with Western tourists. The free wifi worked well everywhere and service was fantastic; the front desk actually bought train tickets for us and had her colleague pick up the tickets for us at the train station.

Taipei Shopping

Flagship Uniqlo. They've grown from 1 to 6 Uniqlos since my visit last year!

I finally had a chance to do some shopping on my last night in Taipei. We hit up my two favorite boutique streets, Dunhua Alley 161 and Alley 187, near the Dunhua & Zhongxiao MRT stop. I bought 3 dresses and a vest, and then we stopped at the flagship Uniqlo in the Minyao Department store where we picked up some more basics. We also stopped by the weekend Jade Market at Renai Lu and Jianguo Lu, where I bought a little jade dragon necklace. I love Taipei shopping! Taipei at night is the best, its bustling with people and energy, the temps are cooler and even the pollution seems to lighten up.

Milkshake break. You never go hungry or thirsty in Taiwan

Taipei Parks

After our tour around Taiwan, we returned to Taipei for a few days. We did another day trip to Taichung and otherwise spent our time walking around the city and enjoying some of the green parks. Politics aside, I always enjoy spending time at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, which is near my grandparents place. We also visited the new Hakka Cultural Center and park. It's nice to have some green respite from the polluted city.

Falun demonstration

I liked these random bubbly sculptures

Hakka park