JJ Bakery has been a standby in my home town since I was a kid. Recently, its owners decided to open a branch with a cafe serving Taiwanese style casual food. I've been for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, and the quality is pretty darned good! I wish a place like that would open in San Francisco (c'mon mind spies, get on it!).
I judge coffee shops by their lattes, and I judge Taiwanese breakfast joints by their savory soy milk. JJ's is really great: not overly salty, mildly tangy with room for one to add black vinegar to taste, lightly sprinkled with green onions and chili oil, with crispy freshly fried crullers on top. They get two very important things right. First, the soy milk is curdled so that it resembles really tender tofu rather than either mush or rubber. Second, the crullers stay crispy as you work your way to the bottom of your bowl of soy milk.
My sister, on the other hand, judges a breakfast joint by its gua bao, or pork belly bun. JJ's is excellent, and far too big for one (that's not a complaint). The photo says it all. This soft white bun is stuffed to overflowing with tender pork belly, pickled mustard greens, cilantro, and peanut powder. I consider it more of a lunch food than a breakfast food, but to each her own!
Here's our breakfast in its entirety. For those who have stopped trying Taiwanese deep fried crullers because they are so often greasy and cold, give JJ a chance. Ours were piping hot, airy, crispy and perfect for dipping in rice milk. $14 is a lot more than what you'd pay for this spread in Taiwan, but given the difficulty of finding a restaurant that achieves across the board success making Taiwanese dishes, I think I'll be back again and again.
5 comments:
Ooh, love that spread, especially the gua bao! Whereabouts in Hacienda Heights is this JJ Bakery?
It's on Gale, in a new food plaza between Azusa and Fullerton. I don't know the exact address, but if you're going from Asuza toward Fullerton it's a huge yellow complex on the right side before you hit where Sam Woo and 99 Ranch are.
JJ Bakery is on Hacienda and Halliburton, but only JJ Cafe has a sit down restaurant.
Flavoring soy milk seems to be a Taiwanese thing to do... however youtiaos are not Taiwanese... they are featured on almost every Chinese breakfast menu. Most likely, they first appeared in the North as the North has a more flour based diet.
Very few foods are really Taiwanese. Taiwanese cuisine is a mix of the cuisines of those who colonized it. So you're going to see culinary influence from almost all parts of China as well as from Japan, Portugal, Holland, and even Spain.
When you look at individual dishes, it's usually possible to trace its origins. However, just as Italian pizza is different from New York pizza, there are usually obvious flavor and/or technique differences. And when you take a meal as a whole, it usually becomes apparent when you're eating Taiwanese vs. something else.
I agree, if you take a meal as a whole, its regional characteristics do become apparent -- Shanghainese v. Northern Chinese v. Cantonese v. Taiwanese etc... I also agree with your comment on pizza. But youtiao is something so common and the technique isn't dissimilar enough to really call it Shanghainese youtiao or Beijin youtiao...
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