After Nan Xiang, I kept mumbling “I want tong yuan I want tong yuan I want tong yuan.”  This loosely translates to “I want sugar balls I want sugar balls I want sugar balls” or more accurately, in my case, I wanted mochi (rice flour dumplings) filled with black sesame paste.  It’s a treat I had occasionally while growing up – some of us were lucky enough to have parents who made them from scratch, but I’m pretty sure my mom just bought the frozen kind.  In any case, DLS was game, and Noah joined us to wander around to look for them.

***Correction: I actually intended to go get dumplings (really, wontons for the nitpicky) from White Bear, but they were closed at the late hour we went.  I remembered I wanted tong yuan and decided to go search for them. 

Our wandering around brought us to Manna Cafe, whose menu was pretty eclectic but definitely listed some approximation of what I thought I was seeking.  Noah saw “cheese & scallop dumplings” and despite my warning that he was insane, he ordered them.  Well, folks, this is what it was: wonton wrappers around some gooey “cheese” and scallops that were super chewy – the “cheese” is the same kind that, if you ever go to a Chinese buffet, and you see pretty scallop shells topped with a small scallop and some sort of “baked cheese” is in the description – that’s what it was.  It winds up tasting like creamy cooked mayo, and there are people who LOVE this stuff.  I’ve never figured out what it is nor how I actually feel about it – full disclosure, I’ve eaten those weird baked scallops many times over the years – but it isn’t cheese like any other cheese I’ve seen anywhere else.  Noah choked these down and laughed at himself. 

I noticed on the menu something called “momo ja ja” which excited me greatly.  I said “oh my god! Momo jaja is a real thing?!  My dad used to say those words to me all the time and I never knew what he was talking about.”  But then I saw the picture and a dim memory clawed its way to the surface: isn’t there coconut in that?  DLS said no, he didn’t think so.  He ordered it, saying he remembered eating it before and liking it.  And when it came, I peered suspiciously at it.  He took a few spoonfuls and said “I don’t think there’s coconut in here” – and I responded by taking his spoon, sniffing its contents and rolling my eyes hard.  “Dude, this smells like [insert really funny but incredibly offensive comment here] – I’m not eating this.”  My coconut allergy sucks, but it also enhances my senses such that I can always tell when there’s coconut in something. 

Noah chose to order a bowl of the almond milk soup with mochi dumplings, though they forgot the dumplings at first.  His was super thick, and a little odd – while tasty, I couldn’t get past the texture.  It was like… cream of wheat or something? but smoother.  Just… weird.  He seemed to like it fine, once he’d received his mochi dumplings in a clear ginger water that he used to cut the thickness of his almond milk a bit. 

Unfortunately, I really just wanted black sesame mochi dumplings in the clear ginger water, but that wasn’t on the menu.  Black sesame soup was, as were plain mochi dumplings, so I ordered these two in combination to sort of approximate what I wanted.  Again, unfortunately, this didn’t really work.  The ratio of black sesame to mochi dumpling was just off – I wanted to nibble on the edge of the mochi dumpling and have black sesame burst forth, gushing into my mouth.  I wanted the childhood memory I was trying to recreate to at least seem familiar, and this wasn’t it.  I couldn’t eat too much of this – the soup base was super thick (thicker than what I’d expect inside a filled mochi dumpling), and just weird.  I wound up pushing aside most of it, saying “DLS? I don’t want any more. You finish it.” 

Yvo says: I recognize Manna Cafe’s menu as a very specific type of restaurant – Hong Kong Cafe, which I totally adore – and might go back for other items on their menu, or even to try to order the tong yuan the way I wanted them – in a clear ginger soup, despite this choice not being on the menu.  But what we’d ordered that night – aside from DLS, who seemed happy enough with his momojaja – fell very flat for me personally, though I will say this is a matter of personal expectations and personal preferences.  I don’t think they messed up making any of our food. 
I didn’t find what I wanted, but you might…

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Post tags: dessert, DLS, dumplings, mochi

Fortunately for us, the restaurant was pretty quiet since most people were smart enough to stay home. Not only was it cold, but it was raining so hard that umbrellas were rendered pretty much useless. I was happy to see that prices remained the same as last year. $26 for all you can eat hot pot and dim sum including all you can drink Budweiser. Not a bad deal at all.

While they prepared the hot pot, we all went up to the sauce station to make our own dipping sauces. You have the opportunity to make quite a unique sauce with such items as chili oil, sesame sauce, garlic and more.

They even have some fresh chopped cilantro and green onion, if that’s your thing.

CT made two different dipping sauces. One spicy and one not.

I made one sauce to start. It had chili oil and sesame in it. The chili oil had a lot of heat to it, so I used it sparingly.

We decided to get half spicy and half plain hot pot. Although we all like spicy foods, we appreciated having the mild version to cool off with otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to eat as much meat!

You simply order whatever meats, seafood and veggies you want off the menu and the waiter will bring back a HUGE plate.

This was our first seafood and veggie plate. There was fish balls, squid, cabbage, mushrooms and I think beef meatballs.

Our first meat plate had a mix of beef, lamb, and pork. They keep the meat frozen in order to easily slice it so thin. Don’t worry it cooks almost immediately in the hot pot. We never learned which meats were which, but they were all tasty and pretty good quality.

We also got an order of soup dumplings knowing full well they wouldn’t be as good as what I had at Shanghai Cafe Deluxe. They had very little broth inside and were quite sad. I should have stuck exclusively to the hot pot.

Sad innards.

Even though we already tore through a mountain of food, we decided to order one more plate. We made sure to emphasize to the waiter that we did not want a full portion. Fortunately, he obliged. There was some more beef, meatballs and tomato.

There were also some strange pork meatballs on the plate too. They had the texture of dumplings almost. Beer Boor described it as “non-descript ground pork battered and fried, more or less. Very little actual flavor.” I ate a couple anyway, haha.

The waiter cleared away a lot of the empties before we could recreate the beer pyramid. Here is our mini version. Not bad for four people.

All in all, I was pretty impressed by Shanghai Tide for hot pot. I was worried that with AYCE and AYCD for such a low price that the quality of the food would be bad, but it wasn’t. Service was pretty good for Flushing and for a table of non-Chinese. I will definitely return when I have my next hot pot craving. It’s also really close to the 7 train stop, so no complaining Manhattanites.

© TT for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: all you can drink, all you can eat, hot pot

DLS and I have been on quite a soup dumpling kick lately, obviously, and one of the names that comes up any time soup dumplings are mentioned is Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao.  I mean, it has “soup dumpling” (xiao long bao) in the name!  They must be good.  That and every single time I’ve tried to go, the line has been out the door, which means it must be good, right?  One Tuesday night, Hungry, Cheese, TC, Noah, DLS and I headed into Flushing to see what the hype was about (though a few of us had been before). 

An order of crispy pig ears was ordered.  Most of us found these lacking – not really crispy, just chewy bits of cartilage – which, if you’re into that, great.  We weren’t. 

The “spicy” intestines fared much better.  I enjoyed these, though I noted that they weren’t spicy by any means. 

As has become our habit with soup dumplings, DLS and I ordered fried rice cakes as well.  These were pretty good, though the plate was drowning in oil when we finished it.  

Interestingly, where every other places serves their soup dumplings in steamer trays of 8, Nan Xiang does trays of 6.  As such, every single person at our table got our own tray of dumplings.  I ordered the pork & crab ones – that is the type I’ve been ordering everywhere, so for fairness’ sake, I stuck with it – and was both pleased and distraught to see how thin the skin is.  While thin skin encourages one to taste just what’s inside, with less bready outside to interfere with the flavors of porky goodness and soup, it also makes it infinitely harder to pick up without tearing.  I admit I had trouble initially, but got the hang of it and managed to pop no more.  As mentioned, the impossibly thin skin made it easy to focus on what was inside: delicious pork, interspersed with bits of crab roe… yum.  While some people may not like the thinner skin, I enjoyed it very much and thought these were very good – definitely among the best I’d had on this soup dumpling journey…

Yvo says: While the other dishes were hit or miss, the soup dumplings were spot on very good.  We all enjoyed them, though some of us couldn’t eat a single tray without breaking every single dumpling… ahem… won’t name names… hahaha.  If you like soup dumplings, you should definitely try them at least once! 
recommended

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Post tags: DLS, dumplings, rice cakes, Shanghainese, soup dumplings

Since I was in charge of food, DLS made the reservation and joined their loyalty program as well – Select Guest, which offers immediate perks instead of making you earn higher levels.  Don’t get me wrong – there are higher levels of rewards to earn, but even at its most basic, you’re entitled to some benefits that we immediately enjoyed, like free wifi.  Right there – the program is free, so why WOULDN’T you sign up?! – free wifi is something I really take for granted in hotels, until it’s no longer there… like in Hawaii (gripe gripe).  In any case, one of the other perks is complimentary breakfast beverages – they give you door hangers with choices on it, and you hang them on your door by 2am each night.  You can choose from juices, coffee, tea, etc. – and add on some other items if you choose.  I wished they had hot chocolate, but orange juice and grapefruit juice are so much healthier…  One of the other nice things is not only can you choose what time they show up – you can choose between ‘in room service’ – ie, someone knocks and comes in – or you can have them leave it outside your door if you don’t want to be disturbed.  AWESOME.  Fresh fruit is an addition available on there, but for our two weekend mornings, they just gave us apples, while that Monday we only received the juices.  Not that I’m complaining – I really enjoyed this perk. 

As for the room itself – it was neat, well-kept, and they were extremely nice about everything.  Because… umm, well, let’s just say Keywee is getting older and therefore has been prone to some night time accidents lately… There was a one-time pet fee of $50, regardless of how many nights you stay, but that was fine.  (And honestly, that’s cheaper than putting her in a kennel, plus this way she gets to enjoy my trips too!  Well, I don’t think she enjoyed Montreal, but more on that later.) 

The bathroom was pretty big too – you can see the toilet peeking out in the back on the right, but across from it was a bidet.  Interesting, haven’t seen one of those in a hotel in a long time…

The room itself was pretty big, too.  Oh, and see the black box sticking out on the bottom right of the photo?  Our in-room fridge wasn’t working, though we didn’t really need one (it kept our drinks cold, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we didn’t have that), when I called down to check if I was supposed to turn it on somehow (a lot of places I’ve been to keep them unplugged or off, and you just turn it on if you want to use it), they sent someone up to check it for us.  When it was discovered it didn’t work, the maintenance man insisted on bringing a new, better one up for us, which was great. 

As for Keywee… well, the weekend we went was unseasonably cold.  I mean, it averaged -17 degrees Fahrenheit every day.  That’s NEGATIVE 17!  She had a lot of trouble walking around outside because the ground was frozen and super cold, so I took her to a pet store and bought her booties.  While they worked great, they were a pain in the butt to get on properly – and would sometimes fall off as well!  So one night, we walked her, and then went to dinner… and I foolishly decided to leave the boots on her, even though she hates wearing clothes and shoes apparently are no different.  While we were at dinner, she unfortunately started howling and crying because she hated them so much.  The hotel tried to call us, but service was really weird up there for our phones, so we missed the call and didn’t get the message. 

And here’s where excellent customer service comes into play.  The concierge/front desk took matters into their own hands and entered the room, tried to calm her down, and eventually removed her booties, but brought Keywee – and her food/water dish – downstairs to hang out with them at the front desk until we got back.  Of course it helps that she’s not a giant dog with huge teeth, but they basically played with her and talked to her, calmed her down so she’d stop howling/crying.  I appreciated that a lot – I’ve never seen Keywee accept someone that I didn’t introduce her to, so this was pretty surprising – but I liked that they didn’t freak out but instead just figured a course of action to take, then took it.  Also, when we returned from dinner, they recognized us and called out to us as we passed the front desk – I don’t even know how they recognized us, since aside from checking in, we hadn’t really been to the front desk at all – to tell us that our dog was with them.  Because lord knows I’d have FREAKED out if we went back to the room and she was gone (though I suppose upon noticing her food bowl was gone, I’d have figured out to call the front desk). 

In any case, I really enjoyed our stay at the Omni Montreal.  It wasn’t the newest or fanciest hotel by a long shot, but it was comfortable, clean, and I really felt the customer service went above and beyond to make our stay great.  I’m really big on customer service – there are some things that are simply beyond your control, but they did a fantastic job of working with what they had, and just being friendly and awesome. 

Oh, and valet parking was free, which is doubly awesome.  I’ve been charged as much as an additional $40/day in downtown San Francisco for parking… ridiculous.  I recommend the Omni Hotels to anyone looking to travel with their pet hassle & worry free. 

Please note that though I received a voucher for a free night, I was under no obligation to post about my experience, positive or negative, and received no monetary compensation to do so.

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DLS, hotel, keywee, lodging review

Hungry and KC really outdid themselves this year.

Hungry offered up three kinds of cookies: chocochubbies (top), nutter butter (right), and lemon sandwich cookies (left).  While all three were very good, the chocochubbies’ texture was fantastic, and the lemon ones were really nice – a little tang, slightly sweet.  I’m very finicky about peanut butter, so good as the nutter butters were, they didn’t have a shot at making my favorite. 

KC offered up an entire box of goodies – shortbread heart with chocolate, chocolate pretzels, Swedish fish, jujubes, Mexican wedding cookies and jam thumbprint cookies.  I’m super partial to jam thumbprint cookies – the way the center becomes chewy and jammy, just perfect.  LOVED those; the Mexican wedding cookies were also very good – actually, I shared these goodies, and DLS picked those as his favorite.  (Which meant I ate like two and they all disappeared…) 

Another lovely year marked by more lovely cookies!  Thank you to the ladies for the awesome goodies! 

***Yes, I stupidly forgot to photograph my cookies, and I even made FIVE kinds this time, shocking even me.  Thankfully, Hungry didn’t forget… and her post is here! I’m not sure I’ll be sharing my cookie recipes just yet, but know that with the exception of the sandwich cookies, I’ve made the other cookies many times in the past and each time they get better

What kinds of cookies do you like to bring to a cookie swap?

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cookies, FBM Cookie Swap