Thanks to everyone who supported more food posts on this blog! To start off, I am introducing you to Da Dong restaurant in Beijing. This is probably the fanciest food post I will ever have on this blog. Be forewarned: the following picture-heavy post may make you very very hungry. Beijing’s roast duck is perhaps the most internationally acclaimed Chinese dish ever created. And so when we went to Beijing, aside from cravings for my favorite childhood dishes from my…
[Taipei] A street food lover’s guide to Taipei cuisine
A couple of weeks ago, D saw this article on Matador Network – 9 Foods You Have to Try in Taipei, Taiwan – and he was infuriated. Really?? Wontons?? Where are the stinky tofu and the pork belly rice? Both quintessential Taiwanese eats. Or even beef noodle soup? Only the dish that Taiwan is known for! Did the author only spend 2 days in Taipei and deemed the few meager snacks she had as must-eats? And seriously half of that list is…
[Taipei] Battle of the beef noodle soups: Chef Hung vs. Lin Dong Fang
You can’t go to Taipei and not eat beef noodle soup. It’s like going to Paris and not eating baguette, Poland and not eating pierogis, Vietnam and not eating pho… okay, you get point. But as with all things where food is concerned, we refuse to settle for anything but the best. And to seek out the best beef noodle soup in the city, we turned to a couple of locals for suggestions. We met up with D’s uncle and cousin one…
A year of travel (in food!)
I had so much fun putting together a massive mosaic of my first year of travel in photos (and you guys loved it too!). One comment threw me off. My friend Kiara, said “I was actually surprised there aren’t more photos of food.” Obviously, there was only one way to remedy the situation: to create a FOOD MOSAIC! Kiara was right of course. How did I neglect such an important part of our life? Before setting off on our adventures, I never…
Vietnam eats, Part 1: 10 dishes to try in Hanoi
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done a food post, huh. Which is really weird considering that our travels are so food-centric. Looking back through my archives, I’ve only written three food posts the entire time we’ve been in Asia. Three! And we’re getting into our seventh month in Asia now! We’ve definitely been eating (and even cooking!) a lot of local foods, so let this be a warning that there may be a barrage of backlogged food-related posts coming up…
[Bangkok] Giant prawns and bird’s nests in Chinatown, Bangkok
Bangkok was not an immediately lovable city to me. In fact, after a few (very short) visits there, I only found one thing to truly love: the malls (seriously, the BEST… I may need to introduce you guys to the awesomeness of Bangkok malls in a future post). But as a whole, it’s just too dirty, noisy, and stressful. And not to mention HOT all the damn time. So on our most recent visit, I didn’t care much to run around town hitting up major tourist…
January 2015 travel re-cap: month of the best food ever!!
If I had to choose one word to describe January, it would be gluttony. This was the month of the best eating ever! Dec 29 – Jan 9: Bangkok, Thailand We rang in the new year in Bangkok. It was actually our fourth time in the city, but our first time to properly explore it. For some reason (and I’m gonna sound like a really bad traveler now), we just weren’t that interested to see the main tourist attractions, like the wats or floating market. We didn’t even go to…
[Thailand] A porky obsession: khao kha moo
Never before on this blog have I devoted an entire post to only one single dish. But the following is completely deserving of this special treatment. After 2 months of traveling through Thailand, this is the single best Thai dish I have ever had. On our first full day in Koh Chang, our AirBnB host, Jum, came around to our cottage to take us on a grocery run in her car. Along the way, we briefly got to know each other…
Chefs for a day with A Lot of Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai
For someone who likes to eat so much, I’m not a cook. Whenever anyone asks me whether I cook, I’d say “I make food, but I don’t cook.” I can whip up a delicious bowl of fried rice and make praise-worthy guacamole, but real cooking? Nah. I don’t have the patience nor a particularly developed palate to know when something needs just an extra pinch of salt or whatever. Of the two of us, D is the chef. He grew his own…
The best of Europe in meals
As I look back on my Europe posts, I feel bad for having slacked on my Foodie Fridays. And it’s really not fair as we did eat a lot of good food. So here, I continue my recap of Europe with the absolute best meal we ate in each city/country. Some are budget and some are more expensive, but each is representative of the local cuisine and worth seeking out. London: English breakfast and tea Ah, the full English breakfast. It’s…