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Eating Orange – Tram Chim

Jan02

Location: 9455 Bolsa Ave, Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 717-6885

Date: June 22, 2022

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Swimming in tanks!

No parental visit would be complete without a trip down to the OC for some awesome Vietnamese.

Tram Chim has a typical looking frontage.

Big “pseudo fancy” room.

Creatures in the tanks.

They sell all sorts of stuff too.

Phonebook sized menu. Check!

Sauces. It should be noted that the room “reeked” of shrimp paste. Very funky smell.

Vietnamese snails with garlic and butter. Pretty tasty, if chewy.

Large grilled scallops with flying fish eggs. Solid.

Live Santa Barbara Spot Prawns with Tamarind Sauce. Goopy and sweet, but a decent balance of acidity, so a pretty tasty sauce. Possibly the prawns were a tiny bit over cooked.

Free exotic fruit.

Tram Chim was way too hardcore for some of our party. The fermented shrimp paste factor alone — not to mention the whole in-shell creatures — was too much. The food was tasty though as I’m a fermented fan. So I’d rate it as “authentic good.”

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: OC, Orange County, Seafood, Tram Chim Fresh Seafood, Vietnamese cuisine

Paradise Dynasty Costa Mesa

Sep30

Restaurant: Paradise Dynasty

Location: 3333 Bristol Street, BLM, 1 Bloomingdale’s, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. (714) 617-4630

Date: February 17, 2022

Cuisine: Chinese XLB

Rating: Way better than DTF

I went twice to branches of Paradise Dynasty in Shanghai and really enjoyed it. This chain is like a much more interesting Din Tai Fung. Frankly, I don’t exactly get why DTF is so popular except perhaps that it’s a “gateway drug” to more modern Chinese food and is just “easy” for Americans.

Somewhat annoyingly Paradise Dynasty’s first US branch is in Costa Mesa. Well it could be worse, at least it’s in driving distance but I don’t go down there that often. In fact, it’s in the South Coast Plaza mall. I hate malls.

Build out is nice but it’s spoiled by that whole mall atmosphere.

The menu is epic with quite a bit of variety.

Spinach and Vermicelli tossed with Vinaigrette. A “salad” of sorts. Pleasant.

Specialty Dynasty Xiao Long Bao. These are why one comes to PD: the 8 flavored XLB.

Here is the “key” to the flavors.

White is “signature” (classic pork). Delicate and excellent. The skins on all of these are very thin and lovely.

Red is Szechuan Hot Pot and it actually tastes like hot pot broth!

Grey is Garlic pork, and it’s pretty garlicky.

Yellow is Cheese. Interesting.

Green is Luffa Gourd with Chinese Wine (and pork of course). Mellow.

Orange is Crab Roe (and pork). Lovely briney flavor.

Tan is Foie Gras (and pork). Tastes like foie.

Black is Black Truffle (and pork). Probably my least favorite actually, but not truffle oil.

Ginger for the XLB. One adds soy sauce and vinegar to the dish for dipping.

Hot and Sour Soup with Shrimp. Top notch.

Radish Pastry. Lovely flakey (probably from lard) texture.

Prawn and Kurobuta Pork Wonton in Chili Vinaigrette. Classic, light, and delicious.

Noodle with Prawn and Kurobuta Pork Wonton in Signature Pork Bone Soup.

A single portion. The broth was basically like Chinese Tonkotsu.

Stir-fried Shredded Pork in Black Bean Sauce served with Chinese Crepe.

This is the “Crepe” (Spring Pancake). This was an excellent version of this very salty/savory dish.

Ma Po Tofu with Pork. First rate version actually. Not super numbing, but very good.

Scrambled Egg White with Fish and Dried Scallop.

Breaking the egg. I really liked the soft texture and mild but very savory flavor of this dish.

Stir-fried French Bean with Minced Pork and Preserved Olive Vegetable. Nice version of this classic too.

Kung Pao Chicken.

Overall, Paradise Dynasty is very good. I wouldn’t really consider it a dinner restaurant where one would go to get hearty wok classics. Yeah, they have a few, but that’s not their strong point. However, the flavored XLB are unique and absolutely first rate and the noodles and other dimsum like dishes are really good. Only downside is having to walk in a mall. Blech. I haven’t walked inside a mall in years (probably over a decade) to actually shop.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chinese Food, dumplings, OC, Orange County, Paradise Dynasty, Shanghai Cuisine, XLB

Little Saigon Mega Crawl

Sep16

Restaurant: Brodard Restaurant

Location: 16105 Brookhurst St. Fountain Valley, CA 92708. Phone number (657) 247-4401

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Solid

Crawls are usually a lot of fun, and this super far, super extensive Garden Grove / Westminster Vietnamese Food crawl has been months in the planning. I collated several online lists of the best Vietnamese in Little Saigon and narrowed it down to 5 places (plus one coffee shop) and a list of their best dishes. I love Vietnamese food and have written up my full 2014 trip to Vietnam here. Bear in mind that 4 of us completed the entire crawl. Two joined for the 4 middle places.

We started furthest south at Brodard.

Their interior is fairly modern.

And they have a bunch of takeaway and bakery products. French influence in Vietnam I guess.

Vietnamese menus can be very long, and this is no exception.

Grilled Pork Spring Rolls (Nem Nuong Cuon). Heritage Berkshire grilled pork wrapped in rice paper with lettuce, cucumber, carrots, cilantro, chives, daikon and mint served with their house special sauce. These were a great spring roll, pretty much your typical “fresh” (soft, not fried) Vietnamese roll, except for the thick slab of amazing grilled pork. Really made the roll.

Jackfruit Salad (Goi Mit). Young jackfruit and steamed pork tossed with asian herbs, peanuts, shallots, and roasted sesame seeds, accompanied with rice crackers and mom tom (fermented shrimp sauce) dressing on the side. I was interested to get this because I hadn’t had it — can’t say I loved the weird sour and fish taste. It was edible certainly, but a bit odd.

Hue Style Beef Noodle Soup (Bun Bo Hue). A spicy and richly flavorful soup with rice vermicelli, tender beef shank, pork hock, and roasted shallots accompanied by asian herbs and bean sprouts. This was supposed to have liver, can’t say if it did. What it did have was PIG SNOUT. Really obvious snouty snouts. Pretty sketchy. Broth and noodles were great though.

Mixed up a bit to show off the noodles.

Overall, while I anticipated Brodard would be one of my favorites, it just turned out fine. Nice, modern, but I wasn’t blown away. Hard to tell though based on three dishes.

Restaurant: Quan Hop Restaurant

Location: 15640 Brookhurst St. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 689-0555

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Good

On to stop two, just down the street.

Clearly this wasn’t built as a Vietnamese restaurant originally.

The interior made me think it was once a sushi bar or something.

Another big menu.

Some riesling — they even charged us a little corkage!

Rice pancakes (banh beo). These were amazing. You put a little fish sauce on them and slurp ’em like an oyster. Really light, delicate, and exciting flavor.

Shaved filet mignon, stir-fried and tossed with finely shredded banana blossoms (goi bo). Very nice beef salad. Tangy with great textures.

Fried rice cakes topped with pork and shrimp dumplings (banh it ram). Extremely interesting carb on carb dish. Greasy (in a good way) rice cakes with, yeah, a dumpling on them. Kinda a bit breaded, but tasty.

Overall, All three of our dishes were great.

Restaurant: Song Long Restaurant

Location: 9361 Bolsa Ave, Ste 108. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 775-3724

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Old school, but amazing fish

I was wary of place number three, it felt too old school — but it turned out to be great.

Old school.

And not the most updated minimall.

Yeah baby, look at those curtains! This place has much more French influence.

Huge menu.

Rice crackers.

French bread.

Vietnamese style Chicken Wings (Canh Ga Chien Nuoc Mam). The wings were fine, very crispy, but that garlic butter sauce was to die for!

Sizzling fish (Cha Ca Thang Long). Catfish garnished with dill, onions, peanuts, served with pickles and greens and rice vermicelli.

The herbs and noodles. You pile it all together with the fish and add fish sauce. Absolutely amazing. 10/10 dish. Really really great fish with a lovely turmeric/dill flavor. Super addictive.

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by Song Long. Really by the fish dish — which as I had been told was worth the price of admission. Really fabulous. Garlic butter was crazy good too.

Restaurant: Banh Cuon Tay Ho 4

Location: 9822 Bolsa Ave Ste 101H. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 531-5171

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Very casual

Fourth place.

This has more the look of a lunch chain spot.

Interior is new, but bland.

Ice Tea? No, it’s a giant pitcher of fish sauce on the table!

Combo with wide rice noodles (banh cuon) and sweet potato and shrimp fritters (banh tom) and some liverwurst like meat. Interesting, and tasty enough with fish sauce. Almost the entire menu is various combos like this mostly including the same set of rotating items.

Beef noodles. You douse it in fish sauce and…

Mix it up. Surprisingly delicious.

Overall, this was my least favorite of the 5 places as it’s menu was so small (mostly version of the first dish). It would be okay for a quite cheap and tasty lunch by oneself.

Restaurant: Oc & Lau Restaurant

Location: 10130 Garden Grove Blvd, Garden Grove, CA 92843. (714) 636-2000

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Great

I had high expectations for Oc & Lau too, as it was purported to be in the league of Garlic and Chives which we didn’t visit today, but I love.

The exterior, just down the block from Garlic and Chives — there are two locations.

Interior is.

Big menu.

Ruinart never sucks.

Frog legs (Ech Chien Bo). Fried frog legs. Excellent!

Fried quail (Chim Cut Rotti). Much like the Chinese style quail. Great!

Garlic butter queen clams (Nghieu Hoang Hau Chay Toi). Really tasty.

Creamy coconut periwinkle escargot (Oc Gao Dua). This sauce was a 10, rich with curry coconut flavor, but I messed up and got the tiny winkle snails which are impossible to eat. About 1 in 3 times you can pry one out (with some challenge) using the toothpick. Bummer. I just sucked the sauce.

Tamarind Lobster (Tom Hum Range Me). The sauce was too sweet — tangy sweet — but very sweet. Nice lobster though. We would have ordered with a different sauce.

Filet Mignon with udon (Bo Filet Xao Udon). Very tasty beef with onions and great thick udon noodles.

Weird purple yam and sticky milk free dessert.

Restaurant: Cafe Lu

Location: 636 S Harbor Blvd, Santa Ana, CA 92704. (714) 604-6347

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Coffee

Rating: Super weird

With just four of us left — and being very full — someone suggested we sample this oddity of the Orange County Vietnamese cultural scene:

Cafe Lu, a kind of bikini coffee bar.

Imagine a super divey bar where women in bathing suits and stripper heels serve you extremely over-priced Vietnamese coffee (or chicken wings). Very weird. Even weirder clientele. A certain hedonist managed to pound a giant coconut smoothy-shake (after our 5 restaurants) and THEN go to a huge Cantonese banquet in the SGV only 2 hours later. Woah!

In total summary, an amazing 4-5 hour journey through a California landscape not so often explored by the typical white-bread Los Angeles resident. One of the great things about our city (and I include the extended area we visited today) is the incredible wealth of culinary (and cultural) variety brought in by our vast immigrant populations. Keep ’em coming!

In terms of restaurant quality, none of these places blew me away quite as much as Garlic & Chives, but Oc & Lau is close and seems worthy of its own full meal visit.

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