FoodFest For T

A day-long orgy of eating the likes of this hasn't been seen since I lived in SF. I think we consumed over three thousand calories each today.


First, some beloved ACME bread T brought us from SF. One walnut levain and two regular levains. Sadly, they were out of cheese wheels and baguettes by the times she got there, but I love levain too!


We had lunch at Chilbomyunok, since there's not much good Korean in SF.

My #2 cold noodle.



T's bibim neng myun. Neither of our cold noodle dishes was very good. Not enough flavor in the broth, basically. C's bibimbap was just terrible. She said everything in it was tough, there was a ton of lettuce in it, and the rice came on the side. Weird.

Consensus: the one good dish at Chilbomyunok is the #1 cold noodle that J got. It's quite delicious. Just don't get anything else.

Since most of us had an unsatisfying lunch, we doubled up on desserts. Cream puffs from Beard Papa's came first. The vanilla was good as usual, but the strawberry tasted like diluted strawberry ice cream.

Then we went to Pinkberry and shared a large yogurt.

After wandering around Venice a little, we stopped at Jin Patisserie and shared an afternoon tea plate and a few pots of tea. I have to say, the quality of tea at Jin is pretty sad.

The pastries were good, and the place is cute, but nothing to write home about. It's a nice place to stop if you're in the area but I wouldn't make it a destination. But thank you to C, our driver for the afternoon, for treating us ladies to afternoon tea!

Dinner was the winner today. We had quite the marathon at Best Szechuan on Garfield in Monterey Park. First, a cold platter trio: pork ears, marinated beef slices, and cold mung bean noodles.

Garlicked cold pork belly slices.

"Fire toasted" kidney slices.

"Water-cooked" beef slices.

Garlic and chili stir fried a-chai (Taiwanese lettuce).

And a pot of chicken and pork soup to wash down all the spiciness.

We came back to the apartment for gin and tonics and a box of French macaroons I picked up while we were at Jin. My favorites were the pistachio (far right) and caramel (far left).