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AFF – Dong Ting Noodle

Dec15

Location: 1947 Sawtelle Blvd suite c, Los Angeles, CA 90025. (310) 867-5937

Date: June 28, 2024

Cuisine: Chinese Noodles

Rating: Focused, but good

These days I can only go to AFF (Asian Food Friday) when it’s REALLY close to my house/work — too busy.

Dong Ting is a lake in Hunan and Hubei Provinces and this restaurant features noodles from the region opened recently on Sawtelle.

Very casual noodle bar.

The small menu, mostly variants on 1-2 noodle dishes.

House Special pickled cauliflower. Crunchy.

Fried Egg. Hints of anise.

Wood Ear Mushroom.

Changsha Style Spicy Medley. Mixed vegetables and some tripe.

Crispy Chicken. These were good.

Two kinds of spicy sauce, a dry and wet. I liked the smokey quality of the wet.

House Special Crystal Noodles with Vegetables. These were their house wide noodles. The fresh vegetables, cucumber and tomatoes even, were fresh and quite “un-Chinese” in some ways, but the net effect was very refreshing and delicious.

Crispy Chili Beef Rice Noodles (dry). These were the wider round rice noodles. The beef is like a Chinese beef jerky and quite good. There are preserved vegetables.

Crispy Chili Beef Alkaline Noodle (dry). This is the same toppings but with the wheat based alkaline noodles. I liked these noodles better but the overall flavor was basically the same.

Shredded Chicken Noodle In Golden Soup with rice noodles. A mild chickeny soup with the ticker noodles.

And the thinner noodle version.

Dong Ting was quite good, but is very specific — just Hunan/Hubei style noodles. Basically there are 3 noodle types with about 4 toppings. It’s certainly a good addition to Sawtelle.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: AFF, Asian Food Friday, Chinese Food, Noodle

Tsujita LA – Artisan Noodles

Sep20

Restaurant: Tsujita LA

Location: 2057 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Tel. 310-231-7373 Fax. 310-231-7375

Date: September 5, 2013 (original) and August 8, 2014 (annex)

Cuisine: Japanese Ramen

Rating: Really, really tasty

For a year I’ve been noticing this “artisan noodle” join on Sawtelle with the huge line, so I figured I needed to try it.

At lunch they have a simple menu with basically two dishes (both will be pictured below).

On the table are the condiments. Various pickled ginger and the like.

Char Sui Tsukemen. This is a version of Tsukemen, which is basically noodles with a dipping sauce/soup (below). The noodles above are served along with super fatty (but super tasty) sliced BBQ pork.

Here is the “soup.” It’s a flavorful, almost curry-like pork broth. There is a pickled egg in there too (ajitama). You take the noodles above and dip them in the soup then eat. It coats them thickly. Delicious. You can dip the pork too.

The Tsukemen was a new thing for me, and I have to say I love it. I wrote this 10 days after trying it and I crave it so much I’ve returned at least once a month for over a year!

Or add condiments if you like. Seaweed on the right. Green onion on top. Bamboo shoots and wood ear mushroom on the right.

Spicy tuna don. A bowl of rice with said tuna.

This is Hakata Nagahama Tonkotsu Ramen, the other dish (you can order variants). It’s a rice pork broth slowly simmered for 60 hours. Thin ramen, boiled egg, and various condiments go in. I used to get this stuff at 2am in Fukuoka with my former boss. Yum! One of the best ramen types. I like to jazz it up with the red pickled ginger. It’s excellent on a cold day.

Tsujita is so popular they opened another location right across the street, called the “Annex.” This, somewhat mysteriously, offers a slightly different take on porky ramen.

Two versions of it here. With char sui pork, egg, sprouts, and onions.

And with peppers. This is a good ramen, but it just doesn’t have that incredible luscious porkiness of the dipping noodles (Tsukemen) at the original.

Tsujita really is all about the Tsukemen dipping noodles. This just isn’t quite like regular ramen and has an intense pork quality that is really mind bogglingly good. No wonder there are huge lines! They need to change up the single song they play (loudly) though. It was great the first 3 times, but the 30th?

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Boiled egg, Fukuoka, Japanese cuisine, Noodle, noodles, pork, ramen, Sawtelle Boulevard, Tonkotsu ramen, Tsujita LA, Tsukemen

Hawaiian Noodle Bar

Jan30

Restaurant: Hamura Saimin

Location: 2956 Kress St. Lihue, HI 96766. (808) 245-3271

Date: January 20, 2013

Cuisine: Hawaiian Noodles

Rating: Tasty Noodles

Saimin is a noodle soup dish unique to Hawaii. Inspired by Japanese udon, Chinese mein, and Filipino pancit, saimin was developed during Hawaii’s plantation era. It is a soup dish of soft wheat egg noodles served in hot dashi garnished with green onions. Kamaboko, char siu, sliced Spam, linguiça, and nori may be added, among other additions.

Hamura Saimin is a true hole-in-the-wall joint, but that’s traditional of Asian noodle restaurants.

The menu is focused. They basically make one thing (Saimin) with a few sides.

There was an enormous line out the door and customers pack into the greasy counters for a quick slurp.

Here’s my bowl, the “wonton Saimin” which appeared to be fairly “deluxe.” We have wontons, ham, pork, scallions, and of course, noodles and broth. It was pretty darn tasty, more related to Ramen (as served in Japan) than to udon with it’s thicker noodles. Excellent noodle bowl though. I certainly enjoyed it.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Hamura Saimin, Hawaii, Noodle, noodles, ramen, Saimin

Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

Dec21

Restaurant: Din Tai Fung

Location: 1108 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia,California 91007. (626)574-7068

Date: December 8, 2011 & February 28, 2012

Cuisine: Chinese Dumpling House

Rating: Amazing Taipei spinoff

I love dimsum so much I was willing to drive 45 minutes out into the wilds of Arcadia to try this place. And it was well worth the journey. The “juicy pork dumplings” alone were worth the price of admission.

Classical Arcadia was a place of legendary beauty, filled with bucolic green hills, lazy shepherds, and nubile nymphs. Arcadia Ca features strip malls.

The chefs hard at work in their little glass tank.

Din Tai Fung is so popular we had to wait 30 minutes on a random thursday at 1pm. But they are nothing if not organized. The staff all wear secret service ear pieces and our order was taken before we even sat.

The huge menu. And it has pictures!

Some stuff appears to be take out friendly.

The setup of chopsticks, tea cup, and ginger.

Marinated cucumber in a sort of garlic ponzu type sauce. Nice and crunchy, but I was saving room.

“Hot and Sour Soup (pork).” A well implemented version of the classic.

“Seaweed and Bean Curd in Vinegar dressing.” Interesting “salad”.

Chicken and veggie bits over noodles. Looks bland enough but it tasted great.

“Juicy pork dumplings.” These are sometimes called Shanghai style “soup” dumplings. I’ve had lots of them but these were easily the best ever. These succulent little mouthfuls were superbly balanced.

“Shrimp and Pork Wonton with Spicy Sauce.” This was absolutely delicious. The dumpling could have been almost anything as the sauce made it more about texture than flavor, but they would have been good plain too.

“Pork sticky rice .”

This sticky log of rice contained bonus roast pork. Yum yum. You’ll notice the DTF food is heavy on both the carbs AND the pork.

“Noodle with mince pork sauce.” This was yummy too, although I have had better of this dish — in Xian China.

“Noode with spicy sauce.” This was actually tastier than the pork ones as the sauce had this nice spicy vinegar tang.

“Braised beef soup.” You can’t see them, but the soup is filled with more of the spaghetti-like noodles. The beef tasted like short rib.

“Vegetarian dumplings.” These were some of the better veggie dumplings I’ve had. Still, they don’t hold a candle to the meaty ones.

“Shrimp Fried Noodle.”

“Pork and Shrimp Shu-mai.” Not only did these look great, but they tasted fantastic. These were my second favorite after the straight pork ones.

“Shanghai rice cake with chicken.” This tasted fine (like soy sauce, in a good way). The rice cake has a weird chewy texture, not unlike jellyfish. It was actually kind of fun.

“Pork buns.”

Unlike the typical BBQ pork buns, these just had the slightly spiced (buy yummy) pork balls inside, not the sweet red BBQ pork. Still good.

“Juicy Pork & Crab dumplings.” Like the pork ones, but with a slightly weird crab aftertaste. We all preferred the plain pork ones, but I still happily kicked back about 5 of these.

“Sautéed mustard cabbage with garlic.” Fine for what it was. Boring!

“Sauteed Bok Choy with Garlic.” You’d swear it was the same as the mustard greens, and you’d be wrong!

“Pork Chop Fried Rice.” Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

Yum yum, drown that baby!

“Fish dumplings.” I haven’t had a lot of fish dumplings, but these were superb! Almost as good as the pork. Well not quite, but they were really good.

Now the dessert buns. First the “black sesame.”

This were really good, with a sweet nutty taste. The bun itself is identical to the pork bun.

Then two other experimental types: “sweet taro” and “red bean.” All were pleasant, but the taro was like a bun stuffed with whipped sweet mash potato and the red bean — well like red bean.

Some kind of specialty “sweet rice” with bits of fruit and red bean paste.

I actually enjoyed this dessert. It’s sickly sweet with a peculiar Chinese flavor and very sticky.

Overall, Din Tai Fun was awesome. I’m so hungry just writing up this post and I want to go back right away. I don’t want to drive the better part of an hour just this second, but I want the “juicy pork dumplings.” It’s also a good deal. Four of us completely polished off the above. And yeah we pigged out. And it cost like $65!

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