Living in San Francisco has really brought out the foodie side of me and I'm blessed to be living in such a food-loving city. And best of all this city has just amazing Asian food. So here is Where to Eat, the SF Asian Edition.
First up is the semi-new Udon Mugizo in Japantown. The noodles are supposedly made in house (they have a fancy machine out front to make the noodles, but we were there on a slow weekday and so the noodles weren't in production). And the noodles were quite good! I like eating udon noodles cold since that way you can really enjoy their texture throughout the meal (no mushy noodles at the end). Portion sizes were pretty small so if you're a big eater, get a set meal with both a rice bowl and a small udon bowl.
The picture up top is from Terra Cotta Warriors (after we've all has a couple bites) and this is one of my top favorite Chinese restaurants in the city. They serve Northern Chinese cuisine so there's a lot of spices and Szechuan peppers (but the nice thing is that they don't overdo it on those tongue-numbing peppers). My favorite dishes are the Shanxi mianpi (signature house made noodles in a spicy sauce, the dish on the right), the pig ears with cucumbers (dish in the middle), and the preserved egg with tofu (the dish in the foreground). Another good dish not pictured here is the spicy noodles with ground pork. I would go every week if I could!
Orenchi is a popular restaurant down in the South Bay and so they recently opened a sister store here in the Mission called Orenchi Beyond. This is the Orenchi bowl, but I prefer the Orenchi Beyond bowl which is a bit richer and garlickier. And the best part of this restaurant? No long lines!! Who knows if it will still be this easy to get into in the future but go while this place is relatively still unknown.
And the most recent place I've eaten at is the sister restaurant to Koi Palance called Dragon Beaux (why Chinese people chose a name with a silent "x" is beyond me. I guess they were trying to be fancy.) Anyway the food was delicious! I'm not a huge dim sum fan, and that's mostly because of the exorbitant wait times at most places. But there is a minimal wait time at this place (so far, and on top of that I went on a weekday lunch so there was zero wait time--even better). So it makes the dim sum taste that much better! My favorite dishes so far were the fish and shrimp dumpling and the juicy pork (xiao long bao).
Turnip mush (not sure what the real name is but thats what it was), not bad actually.
XLB
goji berry and tea jelly, very refreshing
egg custard tart...I loved it!
Anyway I'll be in Japan this week and I'll try to do some real-time (or more like semi-later-time) blogging from my phone when I'm there. Have a good week y'all!