You might already know that I live in Koreatown.

Well, actually, I don’t. I live in at the outer edges of Koreatown, but it’s (almost) literally a stone’s throw away. I prefer to say I live in Koreatown though, because it’s better known and otherwise I’ll have to get into geographically depth, thus losing the interest of my companions.

These last few days, I’ve been getting to know a little bit more about Koreatown.

(Dude, do you see it? The sign has “Olympic” written in Korean, too!)

You see, I’m writing an article for one of my internships about the new streetscape erected on Olympic Boulevard, which is said to be the artery of Koreatown’s heart because that’s where the first Korean business (a supermarket) in Koreatown opened up in 1968.

Check out the new gorgeous architecture built on the street:

On each end of Koreatown’s Olympic Blvd, a set of gateway structures with the welcome sign: “KOREATOWN” will greet you as you enter:
Anyone with some rudimentary knowledge on East Asian art should recognize the cultural identity of these pillars. The roof tiles, the vermillion color of the pole, the lantern, the stone-studded base…they are all typical Korean architecture.
That little gold-painted bird on top? I asked the landscape architect if it was a rooster, and she burst out laughing. Turns out it was a statue of a Bong Hwang—an ancient, mythical female creature that is said to have the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the mouth of a parrot, the legs of a crane and the wings of a swallow. I hadn’t known there was such a thing as Bong Hwang (aka Chinese Phoenix)…the things I need to learn about my own culture!

For people who don’t really know much about the Koreatown and Korean American history, there’s a peripheral tube of images detailing historical figures and historical events below the post:
Some new aesthetics added to the street is less obvious, but still planned out with meticulate purposes. The new jacaranda trees blooming on the sidewalks and median islands, for example:
The reddish/blueish tones of the flowers are meant to represent the red and blue colors of the Taegukgi, Korea’s national flag. The landscape architect told me it was a practical move too; she had to choose a tree that didn’t need intensive gardening care.

My favorite part of this project (which is formally called the Olympic Boulevard Streetscape Project) is the decorative crosswalks:
Five set of these bright red and lime green patterns are webbed out across major intersections. You can’t miss it—just look at how the colors pop out from the black background.
Again, strong Korean symbolisms: the geometric patterns reflect those on traditional Korean door frames; the flower is mugunghwa, South Korea’s national flower; and the building is an image of the Koreatown pavilion, modeled after a traditional one in the mother country.

It’s really fascinating how so many factors come into play just for a simple aesthetic street construction in a neighborhood. I had no idea how much money, time and effort were needed to create these public amenities.

$4.7 million of public and federal funding for such renovations? And it took five years of planning, petitioning and investing to complete the project? Wow. It just made me appreciate the effort and project even more.

The interesting thing, however, is that as much as it is a signal of cultural pride and identity in a foreign land, the intensive, multi-team project was also economic. When  you beautify the landscape, you jet up the attractive quality of the neighborhood to future tourists, investors and businesses. It’s all a whole package of multiple wins.
But Koreatown’s demographic doesn’t exactly reflect that of its designation. Just like Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia and numerous other ethnic neighborhoods, Koreatown is a wide mix of ethnicities. It’s over 60 percent Latinos and only 20-something percent Asians—which includes Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, North Koreans, etc.

I want to highlight a little portion of Koreatown that I personally call: Little Oaxaca.
It’s on 8th Street, between Western and Vermont Avenues. Okay, the above is a super boring picture, but the nature of my lens refused to let me take a wider shot.

The reason I call it “Little Oaxaca” is because it’s a strip that is short but densely packed with Oaxacan markets, eateries, food trucks and businesses. When you walk it at night, the street is packed. You see and hear crowds of people kind of loitering about as the Mexican music trails out from unknown sources. There are random street vendors on the streets selling trinkets, CDs, clothing, sweets and savory snacks. It’s like a giant Oaxacan flea market, and it’s awesome.

When I walked past, I was the only Korean and people shouted out to me, “An nyeong ha sae yo!” and I smiled back, “Hola!”

It’s a little quieter in the early evenings though. The sun is just setting, and people are trudging back home from work or school, some picking up bolillos from panaderias, some chatting up the food truck vendors.

It was such a day on this particular day when I invited my friend Tracy and her mom to dine Oaxacan food with me. The venue I picked was Sabores Oaxaquenos:
I’ve always wanted to visit this place. Actually, I did once in year 2010, when the place was a Pueblan restaurant called Pal Cabron. I got a big-ass honkin “pizza” that day that was delicious.

Although the management has changed since then, I really wanted to give this place a shot again. I finally did, and I’m glad I did!
The set-up was similar with the light green walls, but I think they got rid of the gary pink tones. There was a flowery altar dedicated to what I think it is the Lady of Guadalupe. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Okay, on to the food. But we started out with drinks first.

Mexican drinks (the non-alcoholic kind) are the BEST. They’re super interesting, wholesome and colorful. Just check this horchata out:
A vibrant, double-layer of pink and ivory, with chunks of fresh fruit and chopped nuts. I think the pink tones are from pear cactus syrup.
Horchata is the most popular Mexican drink, a refreshing blend of rice and other flavorings like cinnamon and brown sugar. This one was with pear cactus syrup. It was cool, milky and refreshing in a hearty way. 

And then we had another drink that I hadn’t heard before until that day: Agua Fresca de Chilacayota.
“Chilacayota” means “spaghetti squash.” How interesting is that? You can actually feel the squash strands gliding up into your mouth and down your throat in husky sweet smoothness.

Apparently it’s a drink special to Oaxaca, a native favorite drink whisked with fresh spaghetti squash, pineapple, lime and a Mexican brown sugar called panela.

They were a great start to our savories. Warm fried tortilla chips…
To crush into our lentil and potato soup:

And then Tracy’s mom got the classic chile rellenos:
It was really good! The chile was stuffed with chicken and other vegetables, battered lightly, fried, then doused with a zingingly spicy salsa.
The chicken was pre-shredded and soaked up all the flavors inside the chile.

Tracy got the tlayuda with vegetarian toppings:
Big-ass tortilla slathered with black mole and topped with mushrooms, grilled cactus, peppers, tomatoes, onions and Oaxacan cheese.
Amazing. I had already written a post about the beautiful, heavenly Mexican sauce called mole. I hope you’ve tried it. It’s the best. Especially topped on a crispy tortilla and topped liberally with stringy, creamy cheese.

My dish was the chicken mole tamales, which was served with rice and beans:
Oh God it was beautiful. Tenderly steamed in a banana leaf. A package filled with luscious cornmeal stuffed with black mole and chicken. You gingerly open up the fragrant leaves, and there’s a little curl of steam unfurling out.
It was super moist and super smoky and brilliantly packed with savory and sweet flavors. Love, love, love.

Even the sides were wonderful.
The beans were just chock-ful of meaty flavors, and so was the rice. I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of pig in there. And I love that the beans were sprinkled with just a touch of tangy cojita cheese or something.

And of course, we all had a basket of warm tortillas to nibble on:
I asked for an extra bowl of mole, just for dipping.
So dark. So sexy.

At the end of the meal, the server surprised us with a complimentary dessert:

It was flan! Not just any flan though—this one of stuffed with real shredded coconut so that there was a bit of texture to each bite.
I love the sheer, sticky coating of caramel dripping all over into a golden pool. I always tell myself I want to make flan at home, but I never do because I just know it won’t measure up to those made by the true experts.

And thus concluded my beautiful gastronomy night at where I call Little Oaxaca. And begins my Koreatown Series. I think I’ve been inspired to write delve a little more and feature the cool cultural gems within my neighborhood.

More cultural gems in and around Koreatown:

• Korean-Chinese restaurant
• Goat meat stew
• Traditional Korean tea house
• Guatemalan bakery/diner

Related posts:

1. Ole Mole!
2. A Day Trip at Koreatown
3. His.Story.

This is the 46th post of my Weekend ED Series. It’s also probably my last.

I’m not entirely sure. There may have been things that I’ve missed. After all, there’s always more story to tell. I might one day have a sudden inspiration and decide to add another post to the series, but for now, this is the last of a consistent weekly write-up.

I’ve actually quite liked writing the series, and I really did appreciate and enjoy reading the different (and sometimes differing) responses and stories from readers. As much as I find it interesting to learn about different experiences, I’m also constantly surprised and chilled by how similar eating disorder symptoms are.

Before I started sinking into this mental and spiritual disease, I had never read up on eating disorders. I first heard about it from my dad, who told me about this crazy illness that makes emaciated girls think they’re fat. I only half-believed him. Then I started watching it in the media, and it sounded like a privileged disease for rich and spoiled girls wanting attention. I caught headlines about so-and-so anorexic celebrity and so-and-so bulimic singer, and then the disease seemed rather glamorous, like a new trend for jutting bones.

I never for once imagined I would be victim to such a disease. And then I realized all the stereotypes, while having bits and bites of truth to them, were inaccurate.

Struggling with an eating disorder is absolute HELL. It’s one of the most humiliating, painful and destructive thing that can happen to a person and his or her loved ones. It can also just about happen to anyone. I don’t believe in having an exact “criteria” for eating disorders. In this society, at this age, anyone can develop an eating disorder. Anything can be a trigger; an innocent diet can lead to binges and bulimic practices. A slight comment can lead to anorexic obsessions. A random period of boredom and upset situations can lead to various forms of EDNOS. Or perhaps you’re already living in a breeding ground for eating disorder due to culture, personality traits or genetics.

Yes, it’s scary. But at the same time, struggling with this have given me tremendous blessings. Without suffering, I don’t think I could have made the personal and spiritual developments I need to be a decent human being. I wouldn’t have formed a secure system for self realization and attained an absolute assurance in my self identity as a weak but beloved, blessed child of God.

Of course, I don’t think every person needs to have to go through such a disease in order to mature and grow.  But everyone has their own set of problems. Battling eating disorders was mine. It was my biggest trial in my 24 years on earth, and because of it, I have stories to tell. Because of it, I have learned humility and empathy. Because of it, I understand the frailty of the human mind and will– and witnessed the awe-striking power and grace of God. Because of it, I appreciate the little things in life just a bit more.

Am I totally recovered now?

I can’t say with 100% conviction. What does “being recovered” mean anyway? That I never feel fat? That I love myself unconditionally and strut around with unwavering confidence? That I can eat two Super Size McDonald’s fries every single day like I used to in middle school?

If that’s it, then no. I still occasionally fight feelings of discomfort with my body. I still avoid the scale because I don’t want to deal with panic attacks. I’m still in the process of letting go the many, many unhealthy habits that I’ve accumulated over 4-5 years of various eating disorders. I still have many insecurities– insecurity about my looks, insecurity about my journalistic skills, insecurity about my personality, insecurity about my past, and all those other silly issues that any 24-year-old college student deals with.

But I’ve changed.

You know what’s the best thing about recovery? Even though your eating disordered periods leaves stains of hideous memories inside you, recovery helps create tons of wonderful ones to alleviate the trauma.

I remember when I first discovered new hair sprouting from my almost bald scalp.
I remember my first four-cheese white pasta, my first time using real full-fat cheese, et cetera, all the little incidents when I spit in ED’s face.
I remember lugging my baggage out of the arrival terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport after five months in Singapore. I remember spotting my dad amidst the crowd, and watching his face light up with tremendous joy when he saw how much better I looked.
I remember receiving my second acceptance letter to the University of Southern California, heart swelling with glee that finally– I can reply with certainty: YES.
And many, many more.

Recovery isn’t a state of being; it’s an active process. It doesn’t mean that you’re returning back to your previous self. Once you’ve suffered with an eating disorder, you’re transformed for life. No, recovery, I think, is a journey to an even better and wiser phase in life. You’re changed, and you continue to change and grow.

Everyone seems to have a different idea of what the attainment of “recovered” means. And honestly, you know what? I have better things to do and think about than worry whether or not I’m “recovered.”

But perhaps that’s a form of recovery. I don’t label myself as eating disordered anymore. That’s somebody else in the past. I’m me. My identity doesn’t belong to ED’s. I am my own unique person.

Where I am right now is free. I feel so incredibly, gloriously free. I’m not saying I’m galloping with unbreakable happiness, unfettered by problems. I have my own set of problems and issues, but they are not circling inside the Eating Disorder Well.

Do you know the frog in the well story? I used to feel like the frog trapped inside a well, but now I’m a frog that has discovered the limitless opportunities and connections in this world. I have dreams that are just waiting to be explored and fulfilled. They are no longer considered with wistful, hopeless longing; instead, they are anticipated with real excitement and curiosity.

I also have a full range of emotions other than fear and self-loathing. I can laugh with spirited mirth, but I can also cry and rage over things that have nothing to do with ED.

And the things I can do in a day! It’s freaking awesome to be able to care about issues and things beyond the ED scope. I can discuss and debate religion, film, music, art, cultures, history, whatever! As much as I still enjoy food, I can enjoy many other activities that aren’t necessarily involved with food (though really, food somehow is inevitable in many activities). I never freak out over a certain food anymore (unless it’s something truly disgusting like placenta or fertilized duck embryo). I can eat anything and everything; I don’t follow any diets or restrictions. And I don’t feel the desire to work out 2-3 hours each day, nor do I have the time for that, thank God.

The best thing is that I’m at the level where I can look back, pinpoint the low moments in my ED days, and thank God for that specific experience. I’m always discovering more and more understandings and realizations on why God let me go through this or that particular situation. As ugly as those days were, recovery has helped me gain more feelings of thanksgiving than bitterness.

How do I know if I’m recovered? I don’t think I can. But if I’m just at– say, 60% into recovery and already I’m receiving this much richness and freedom from life…then wow, I sure don’t mind discovering more of it!

Thoughts to Ponder:

1) How do you think one can know for sure if she or he is recovered?

2) Do you think you’re “recovered”?

3) What’s the BEST thing about recovery that you’ve experienced?

Related posts:

1. Weekend ED Series: You, Me, and Recovery
2. Weekend ED Series: Blessings of Trials
3. Weekend ED Series: Acceptance

When I tell people I have a food blog, the subsequent question is always: So what is your favorite restaurant in Los Angeles?

Well, that is just not a fair question. I don’t think I have ever answered the question directly before, because there are just so many factors to weigh in deciding the “best” restaurant, and some places, you just can’t compare by the same standards.

Even if you divide it by cuisine. Take Korean restaurants, for example.

I am mad about Olympic Noodle’s fresh oyster kimchi, but I love Young King’s black bean noodles better than Olympic Noodle’s kalguksoo. I have such fond memories of late-night, cheap dining with my family at Hodori, but the food was terrible. Chin Go Gae has really amazing fried rice, and although their goat stew is acclaimed, the distinct gaminess of goat meat made me feel a bit sick afterward. I really like So Kong Dong’s soondubu, but I’m not always in the mood for that hot and spicy tofu stew.

So really. If I can’t even decide which is my favorite Korean restaurant, how can I decide my ultimate favorite one?

Not to mention the fact that I’m still heartily in the process of chomping through the myriads of awesome restaurants in the city. My Burp List is outdated and ever-changing.

But. I believe I came close to deciding on my favorite Los Angeles restaurant about a month ago. It was oh, so close.

It was still winter break at the time, so my friend Marilyn and I decided to preserve the holiday gluttony by trekking out west to a restaurant in Culver City that I have been eyeing for quite some time.
It’s called Lukshon—titled after the Yiddish word “lokshen” for “noodles.” It’s a sweet homage to owner and chef Sang Yoon’s surrogate Jewish grandmother. No wonder Sang Yoon is a passionate foodie! I think we all need some kind of Jewish grandma in our lives.
A word on Chef Sang Yoon. He’s known as the avante garde bad-ass chef in Los Angeles because apparently he revolutionized the “no substitution, no changes” restaurant policy that has spread across the culinary field in Los Angeles (and thoroughly pissed off Gordon Ramsay and Victoria Beckham).
At his first restaurant, Father’s Office (which is right next door to Lukshon), the customer isn’t always right. You want ketchup with your fries? Suck it. You want no dressing on your salad? No bun or cheese in your burger? Go to Cheesecake Factory!

The same iron-clad policy holds fast at Lukshon, except for the single permission of sriracha, because even Chef Sang Yoon knows that stuff is holy. But unless you have a severe allergy to something, just trust the chef. He knows best.

And I think…maybe he does.
Lukshon is an upscale Asian fusion restaurant built clean and sleek with tall walls of glass doors, warm wooden tables and open kitchens.

It offers different dining settings: omakase-style seats overlooking the kitchen, communal bar, plush cozy booths or outdoor patio. Since it was a mighty fine day, Marilyn and I opted to dine outdoors:

Despite the name, Lukshon isn’t a noodle house. It offers innovative hybrid dishes of all kinds of cuisines.
As much as I love classic, comfort food, when I dine out, I get the most pleasure out of ordering something exotic and different from what I would ordinarily cook at home.

But it turned out Lukshon isn’t entirely out of the ordinary, at least for me. It was a fun yet sophisticated play on familiar and foreign ingredients, techniques and combinations. You don’t really have to be all-out adventurous to enjoy Lukshon’s dishes. You just need to have a desire to be happy.

Very very happy. Oh man.
First of all, you get a whole chilled bottle of water, sparkling or flat. I thought that was a neat idea because then you can serve yourself water, and not have to wait for the server to refill your glass and interrupt your conversation.

Marilyn and I decided to share two entrees and an appetizer. We started out with a tea leaf salad:
Raw cabbage, crisp-fried chana dal, marcona almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds, dressed lightly in a tea leaf dressing.

I consider ordering a salad out a complete waste of money, time and stomach space. NOT THIS SALAD. It was, hands down, the best salad I’ve ever had the pleasure of crunching.
The cabbage was brilliantly crunchy and hydrating in its natural sweetness, each crispy strand coated with a dressing chockfull of umami flavors. And man, the kitchen was generous with the nuts and fried chickpeas! Every mouthful was loud and juicy.

Our second dish was the Shanghai matzo ball soup:
Yes, the famous Jewish matzo ball soup, bastardized with a Shanton-style consomme, a clarified broth stewed from beef, pork and chicken bones. The soup came with meatball-sized matzo balls, organic vegetables, white sesame, skin-on chicken pieces and schmaltz (chicken fat).
It was my first time trying matzo ball soup, and it was as unauthentic as can be. It was lovely though; I loved the intense broth with the velvety chicken fat and the savory matzo balls, but I didn’t care for the cooked carrots. Can’t stand cooked carrots.

Our third dish was chicken rendang:
A Malaysian dish with red chile lemongrass rempah, spices and coconut cream.

Growing up in Singapore, I’ve had a lot of rendang, but the rendang I’ve tried is mostly made with beef and occasionally, lamb. And it was never this soupy. The rendang I know is a protein-rich dish thickly and densely coated with a paste-like gravy; it is complex in spices and tastes like carnivorous heaven.
Well, this one sure wasn’t like that at all. But you know what? It was wonderful all the same. The chicken pieces in there were plump and tender, practically falling off the bone. The pool of coconut curry was intense, creamy and fiery in a mellow way, if that’s the right way to describe it at all.

But the star of the entire meal? This deck of coconut rice cakes:
No words. Freaking no words. Mind? Blown. Oh my God.

You know what it is? It’s pearly rice, steamed in coconut milk. And then formed into compact disks and deep-fried till the exterior is a fine golden coating, and the insides are all gooey and fragrant with coconut milk.

Okay, I’m back to no words now.

Dear God, when I go to heaven, can my heavenly kingdom be constructed from coconut rice cakes instead of bricks? Amen.

You should have seen us. We were grinning wide as a Cheshire cat as we munched and moaned over these coconut rice cakes. We glanced at each other, and started giggling at each other’s stupid expression, but we just couldn’t stop smiling with glee!
And then, too soon, these golden crunchies were gone.

“I’m so full,” Marilyn said.

”Me too.” I replied.

Pause.

“You want to order another round of that crack?” I asked.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

And so we did. This time we ordered just the coconut rice cakes a la carte, which came with a sambal jam:
Sambal jam is another freaking fantastic concoction Chef Sang Yoon made up. That man is a genius. It’s sambal (Southeast Asian chili sauce) caramelized into a thick, onion-y and savory jam.
We chewed and crunched on our new set of coconut rice cakes and honestly, I think we could have ordered more. But we still had dessert ahead of us, so we resisted. Just barely.

The nice thing about Lukshon is that every patron gets a free “surprise” dessert. There is no dessert menu; the chef periodically creates a new dessert whenever creativity strikes, and what’s in season.

That afternoon’s surprise dessert was a pomegranate gelee and a home-baked fortune cookie:
Yummmm. I’m not a fan of fruity desserts so I thought the pomegranate gelee was good but not stellar.
The fortune cookie, however, puts every generic fortune cookie to bitter shame. It was feather-light, but one crunch and the brittle cracker releases a buttery fragrance into your tongue. It was outstanding. I wanted a bucket of them so I can pop them continuously into my mouth like popcorn.

So there it is. Lukshon, my almost favorite restaurant in Los Angeles. It’s a place I would eagerly return to, though it is certainly a blow to my bank account. That coconut rice cake was perfect, too perfect. It was downright addictive. It haunted my dreams and even now, just the thought of it tugs at my heartstrings.

Be still, my tummy. I shall return.

Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite restaurant?

Related posts:

1. Crapping at the Rain
2. HK Day Four: Missing and Misses
3. Food Bigotry

I miss a lot of things about Singapore, but one thing I’ve been missing, especially during this Chinese New Year season, is the hong baos.

Hong bao—literally, “red package” (红包)— is a little red envelope that relatives and elders give to single people. They are filled with real CASH. In Korea, we call it “sae bae don” (세뱃돈) and though it’s not tucked into a red envelope, it’s still the same brilliant CASH.

It’s awesome! You receive a hong bao from someone, and you bow and say thank you and all those appropriate, respectful mannerisms, but your mind is mentally calculating how stingy/generous this person is. Would it be $5? $10? $50?! Your mind starts equating that envelope to that toy or candy you really wanted.

Chinese New Year is the Christmas of Asian countries.

You pretend you don’t care about the cash. You pretend that you just care about the symbolism of the festivities, the warmth of family love and gratitude and good will for the new year.

Well, every kid knows it’s bullshit. The minute the benefactor turns his or her back, you’re flying off to the corner with your siblings and friends, where you can privately tear open the red envelope with gleaming eyes. The whole day, your brain is like a cashier, ringing cha-ching! each time you receive a hong bao and tallying up the total amount.

Of course, I’m reminiscing this the way I felt back when I was a kid. After I moved to America when I was 14, I have not received a single hong bao.

Well, actually. My Chinese professor gave all her students hong baos last week:

But instead of cash, it was a chocolate coin that felt waxy and tasted like Chinese medicine. It was still sweet though, and I felt my heart aching with nostalgia for the days when the annual Chinese New Year would feed my entire year’s allowance.

That was the only form of celebration I enjoyed during Chinese New Year, though. Since my family was a missionary family stationed in Singapore, we didn’t have relatives with whom to celebrate the traditional 15-day holiday. My total bounty from hong baos was only about 1/5 of the amount my fellow Chinese-Singaporean friends would receive because I didn’t have grandmas and aunts and cousins to give me New Year cash. I only had my church. Still, cash is cash and I was happy to amass all the hong baos I could get.

Anyway. This year, I did the opposite. I got to celebrate Chinese New Year without the hong baos. It wasn’t with my blood family, but my new family here in Los Angeles.

Like my little “sister,” Jordan:

Not only do we share the same last name, we share similar double-majors: Journalism and East Asian Language & Cultures. Difference is that she’s totally white and I’m totally Korean, and she’s in broadcast while I’m in print. Still, ever since Jordan met my parents, she’s been calling them her “spiritual Korean godparents” so to me she’s the closest non-related sister I have.

We met up two other individuals at a teeny northern Chinese diner at Monterey Park:
We were a few minutes late because of traffic so this shot was taken outside the window. I was like the creepy paparazzi. But look at the bespectacled couple. Aren’t they adorable?

That’s my friend Jingjing and her boyfriend, Hao (pronounced “how”).
I met her at one of my internships and introduced her to my church. I was really happy to meet another Christian, a fellow sister in Christ. We sometimes listen to Mandarin gospel songs during our internship. We’re trying to make a weekly dine-out together, and this was one of those days.

The place we decided to celebrate Chinese New Year in was Dean Sin World in Monterey Park.
Dean Sin World is a four-table eatery specializing in Northern Chinese cuisine. It’s so small that I don’t even know if “restaurant” is the right term for it. I imagine that it is really meant for take-outs; in fact, they have a separate menu from which you can buy bags of frozen dumplings and meatballs.
They are celebrated among the Asian community in San Gabriel Valley. That’s because not only are their food authentic and super delicious, it’s also ridiculously CHEAP.

I entered this place trembling with anticipation. For some reason, I had been craving good Chinese food for weeks. I’ve been planning numerous times to make a visit out east to San Gabriel Valley (also known as “Little Taipei” for its huge Taiwanese community), but things just didn’t work out.

But now that I was here, boy was I ready to order!!

Unfortunately, my dining companions didn’t seem to share my appetite. I proposed ordering 20 dishes, and they looked at me like I announced a new-found devotion to veganism. So then I lowered it down significantly to 10 dishes.

We ended up ordering only seven dishes. Seven dishes! Tell me, how is that enough? Does that sound enough to you? I think not! But when I tried to order more, even the lady serving us exclaimed in Mandarin, “Woa! I think this is enough, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” I pouted.

So here’s our first dish, a cold-sliced beef (油牛酱):
Tender and chewy. You eat it dipped in soy sauce.

Second dish, the Shanghai smoked fish (上海熏鱼):

Oooh. I loved this dish!!! I think this would make a brilliant snack during study hours. It’s fillet of white fish that has been cured, marinated, and fried—before being dunked and bathed in another pool of marinate sauce. After the days-long, time-consuming process, it is finally ready to be devoured cold.
It’s so flavorful!! It’s the seafood version of jerky or something. There were lot of little bones you had to spit out while munching, but all the best dishes require a bit of mess!

Third dish, that also requires mess to eat was xiao long bao (小笼馒头), or pork dumplings:
Love these! One of my favorite food in the world for sure. I love biting into that chewy skin and squirting a small, pork-saturated pool of broth into my mouth.

I love these doused with a lot of soy sauce and black vinegar. I just cannot understand how someone could strictly ban all pork from the diet.

Fourth dish featured more carb-wrapped pork with the pan-fried pork buns (上海生煎包):
How cute are they? Sprinkled with toasted black sesame seeds like little spots of hair. They were massive, too. Each bun encased a mound of fatty pork.
I really liked the bun; it was perfectly fried so that the bottom was crunchy but the insides were still fluffy and light. Soaked with pork juices, of course. That’s the best part.

Okay. I guess Chinese people really do love their pork, because here’s another pork-centric dish. The Lion Head Casserole (沙鍋獅子頭)!
Supposedly it’s called lion head because the fatty pork balls look like lion’s heads…a far fetch, but whatever—they’re utterly delicious! The casserole version came with a thickened, soy sauce-infused broth sunken with bunches of tender napa cabbage and glass noodles.
I LOVED this dish!! My favorite of the night. I liked it even better than the version at Mama’s Lu because the broth was soupier and it was easier to slurp up the cabbage and noodles. Um, I might have practically devoured the whole pot by myself.

Sixth dish was yet another porky item, the wonton soup (云吞汤):
Jordan likes to order soup when she dines out so this had to appear in our meal.
I loved the strands of seaweed they added to the broth; it added an extra depth of umami flavors. Hm, that was a wobbly shot, sorry. I guess I was just too eager to start eating by this point.

Okay, last and final dish was the beef pancake roll (牛肉捲餅):
It’s dried beef stuffed inside a flaky pastry with cilantro and sweet-and-savory sauce. It’s really such a nice play of opposing textures and flavors. I remember trying one at 101 Noodle Express with my parents.
Jordan told me this was her favorite dish.

There was no hong baos that night. Instead, I went home $10 lighter (YES! All that for LESS than $40!! I told you it was damn cheap!).

But the gleaming eyes? The excitement and delight? The loud and boisterous festivities? The symbolisms of new beginnings?

They were all still there. And they were yummy, too.

Question of the Day: Happy Lunar New Year, everybody! Did you do anything special?

Related posts:

1. The Parents Service and Fried Sauce Noodles
2. Shamed by Stinky Tofu
3. Our Last Burp and Slurp

If you look at the archive listed by month on my sidebar (peek to the right), you’ll see that I first started blogging December 2008. That was around the time when I had just arrived in Singapore. I was at the uphill of my recovery, and I’ve been blogging ever since.

Blogging has helped my recovery in tremendous ways. I do not think that it started my recovery, or that without it I wouldn’t have made much progress.  But it definitely made the battle somehow more efficient.

As I’ve said before, I never went to a eating disorder-specific treatment center. The only medical and professional help I got was being hospitalized, hooked up to the EKG and being fed hospital food for a few days. I didn’t have a therapist and I didn’t join an eating disorder support group. I craved some kind of community though.

Although my parents were wonderful to me and listened to whatever I had to say without judgment, it still wasn’t quite the same. Even though I tried to explain my fears and ED rationales to my brothers and sisters in church, my bible group and my friends, at some point I just got so tired of trying to explain this disorder. Because  as I was trying to explain it, it just sounded so dumb and crazy even to me– yet the feeling was so real; the obsession griped me every second. Thus I got flustered and frustrated each time I had to try to explain all those complicated and complex workings of the eating disordered mind to someone who had never experienced such mental disorders before.

At some point, I just wanted to be able to talk about my struggles frankly and straight to the point without having to explain them. Or tell the history of how and why I got my eating disorder. I just wanted…to tell. Not explain, not teach, not debate, just comfortably and honestly tell.

I’d actually been blogging even before I started Burp and Slurp. But that blogging was more like a private diary. I used it as an online substitute for a journal and most of the ramblings I recorded down was directed at myself, for my eyes only.

But then I discovered a whole community out there in the World Wide Web. I don’t know how I found it, but I must have been clicking through the healthy living blogs I’ve been perusing daily and somehow stumbled upon a few blogs that were written by eating disordered individuals who were in recovery.

It was like stumbling into a goldmine. I had been searching online for months and years looking for an online chat group or something, where I could make friends with whom I could discuss recovery and motivate each other. I found one and signed up, but I was kicked out and blocked because I stupidly mentioned my current weight at the time and it was deemed pro-Ana and triggering to the other girls.

The niche of eating disorder recovery blogs is a whole new world that was utterly new to me. When I first read one, I wanted to hug the writer for all the honest struggles she published because I felt like she was reading my mind. It was a Wow dude, get outta my head! kind of realization that there are many, many, oh so many people out there struggling with such eerily similar problems as me.  That in itself gave me some kind of comfort to know that I’m not alone. I’m not crazy. It also gave me sufficient reconfirmation that I– Sophia Lee– was not truly a self-absorbed, narcissistic, cruel, conniving, self-pitying wretch. It was the eating disorder who made me– and a whole group of other people– that way.

As someone who has been writing ever since she learned the alphabet, I couldn’t just sit and watch other people’s writings on screen. I had to participate. I had to write! I had so many stories and things to say jumbled and cramped into my mind, pushing against my forehead and buzzing to be released into concrete words.

So I started a blog, too. This blog.

At the beginning, I followed the unofficial template of recording almost everything I ate in a day. I was somewhere at the discovering cooking stage, so most of my food was the usual and similar to many of the other blogs.  I was so excited about having my own blog that I basically just babbled about the happenings in my day. I don’t exactly remember the things I wrote and honestly I don’t really want to because it makes me cringe when I peek into my really old blog posts.

I wanted to record my recovery. One thing I promised myself as I was blogging was to be as true to myself as I could be. I wanted to be honest with my struggles, and the purpose of my blog was to write down my thoughts and feelings and use it as a practical tool to help me through the messy tangles of recovery. I also wanted to make new friends who were in the same boat as me, and I had lofty, shiny dreams of us forming a team of ED conquerors, busting ED’s ass and congratulating each other at the end.

That didn’t happen, as at some point I realized that while being part of the ED recovery community was helpful in the way that it made me feel less alone, it could also turn into a mire that keeps me stuck in a never-ending cycle of “trying” to recover. But before I get into that, I want to talk about how it did help me:

• There is so much power in the written word.
  At least for me, writing something down makes me think so much clearer. Sometimes I wouldn’t even really understand what I’m feeling and why I feel that way until I just write down the things that pop into my mind and then organize them until they become clear to me. Blogging my daily little struggles with ED made it clear to me each day that I’m in a battle, that I am struggling, that I am fighting. That helped me keep in track from losing sight of my goal and getting stuck in limbo.

• It pushed me to challenge myself.
  Okay, when you’re in recovery, and actually making some actions of recovery, there will be many, many little “victories.” Some of them may be big, but most of them are pretty silly, like eating dinner a couple hours later than your self-assigned time, or eating three chocolates instead of two, stuff like that. So. Who are you going to boast about these silly tales of mini-mini-mini successes? Only the eating disorder recovery community can really understand how much they mean to you.By being able to blog all these small triumphs, I felt a rush of real confidence and satisfaction. After all, being able to talk out loud (or type) about your overcomings justify them as a real thing. And having commenters congratulate me and being happy for me…well, it made me want to have another episode of victory to brag about, which pushed me to challenge myself more and more.

• It kept me sane.
  Recovery can be freaking long, and at times, it is boring, especially if you’re stuck in a life where you aren’t really doing anything.  You don’t have much of a social life, and that ends up being a big hindrance to your recovery because you get depressed and even weirder just hanging out by yourself at home. I was blogging daily, and it was almost like a fun homework to me. I liked having work to do, and that kept my brain active. It also kept me engaged to the happenings in other parts of the world, and sort of help me step out of my own little shell.

• It gave me a sense of mission.
  By connecting and reading other blogs, blogging made me realize with a shock just how many people are out there struggling with eating disorders. It made me realize that ED is the 21st century epidemic.That made me MADDER at my eating disorder! I hated it so much! I loathed it for making not just my life miserable, but millions of other girls, even girls as young as 9, hate themselves and treat themselves so horribly. The more I blogged, the more I felt this sense of purpose that– well, if I was going to write, I might as well write a testimony. I would honestly write down all my struggles, but I would strive to end them with victories. I wanted to freaking succeed and thus kick ED in the chin and demonstrate to myself and others that the terrible, evil ED? Not so strong anymore.

Right now, it doesn’t matter to me whether my blog is “great” or not. In the process of writing and living and writing, my blog was definitely a huge blessing to me. It wasn’t the start-all, end-all of my recovery, but it was definitely a brilliant…lubricant. It made the daily battle of recovery much more fun, exciting and efficient for me.

But at the same time, it was a bumpy, learning process of figuring out what kind of blogging works for me.

I stopped photographing and recording everything I ate:
I realized how stupid and frankly, harmful to my recovery it really was to write down my daily diet. It was just another form of calorie-counting and obsessing, even if I didn’t actually work out the math. Taking pictures of all my snacks and meals is not normal, and recovery is all about gaining back a normal life.  Perhaps it helps other individuals, but it just wasn’t for me.

I stopped participating intensely in the ED recovery community:
As much as I liked the camaraderie and the support, at some point…I just got a bit turned off. It bothered me when I saw some people post the same struggles over and over and over yet do nothing except complain about how hard everything is, and it definitely upset me when I saw their meager meals and ultra-healthy snacks. I’m not proud, but it certainly made me hopping-mad when I saw someone in such blatant denial yet get comments of praise and admiration.

And there were many situations in which it almost felt like I was in the kind of tension-high ED treatment center where really eating disordered girls competed to be the sickest, triggering each other, and bad-mouthing/judging each other behind one another’s back. Except because this was a recovery community, it was even more twisted and you were obliged to continuously say lovely things to someone who clearly needed a wake-up call. I can’t really explain it– all I can say is it didn’t make me feel good. At some point the very thing that had drawn me in started becoming the thing that turned me off.

I struggle with classic “blogger” feelings:
I think almost every blogger inevitably deals with a feeling of self-grandeur. As your readership goes up, you start caring about the numbers– the statistics of how many people are reading, how many people are liking, etc.  I hate that I care, but I do. It feels horrible each time I get an unsubscription notice and I wonder what’s wrong with me, the blog, blah blah blah. It hurts especially when I get negative comments. As much as I know I make mistakes and do stupid things, it really hurts to receive attacking comments and I feel like I’m put on a public pedestal for people to judge my imperfections.

It’s stupid, and I have to remind myself why I blog in the first place. At the end, this blog is for me. I’m not earning money from it, I’m not doing it to publish a book, I’m not trying to gain admiration and I’m not even trying to be an inspiration. Because I know I’m not someone to admire. I’m just a simple, weak person who went through ED hell and by the grace of God and the wonderful, loving people He put by my side, I somehow survived. It is an absolute blessing the way my story linked and curled, and I know it was all God’s doing.

So here’s my conclusion to how blogging helped me: At the end, it’s just a tool. It all depends on how I use it, what my attitude and purpose is in using this incredibly utilitarian tool. At the end, I’m still its master. I’m the one holding and using it. The important thing is that I’m still in control of it, and I use it to serve my purposes.

And you know what? I’m still learning to wield it properly. It’s still a learning process. Just like life.

But for now, I love that I have a whole archive of my personal stories and ramblings on file. When I look back to the way I was before, I shudder and thank God I’m not in that condition anymore. It keeps me grounded, and it helps me maintain a sense of empathy for people who may be in that stage right now. It’s a reminder to me that I’m a weak individual, but that I’m a blessed one because I owe my life to God and many, many individuals in my life.

Thoughts to Ponder:

1) Do you have a blog? If not, have you considered having one?

2) If you have a blog, would you recommend others having one and using it for eating disorder recovery purposes?

3) Do you know any other usefulness/pitfalls of blogging that I’ve failed to mention?

Related posts:

1. Weekend ED Series: Blessings of Trials
2. Weekend ED Series: You, Me, and Recovery
3. Weekend ED Series: The Good Recovery

Language is a such a wonderful, ever-evolving thing.

If I were a bit smarter and academic, I would have loved to study linguistics in college. It’s fascinating to see how language reflects the culture and events of a time, place and people. It’s always shifting and advancing to both more complex and simpler structures, with more and more new words being added to the contemporary dictionary.

Take Korean, for example. Every time my parents return to Korea, they get increasingly perplexed by the slews of new words being uttered by the younger generation.

I still remember when the word “wang tta” (왕따) first entered daily vocabulary and my parents telling me about it. “Wang tta” or 왕따 is a term for ostracism that had been running rampant in Korean public schools. The term is used to refer to horrifying mistreatment/ignorance of an individual, but is now a vernacular term that apparently has been extended to people outside of the teen community.

Shakespeare was the ultimate genius in producing new words that are now so readily used that it still surprises me that these words never existed until he inserted them into his plays, all practically out of his ass a whim. You know those balls in your eyes? Shakespeare was the one who named them “eyeballs.”

“Skim milk”? “Puking”? “Red-blooded”? Also Shakespeare. This man would have driven lots of editors mad if he were a reporter!

More recently, the word “Tebowing” has been used widely by the general population and mainstream media as both a form of mockery and reverence.

There are also a lot of self-made words floating around the blog world, words that the majority of people who aren’t part of this niche wouldn’t get. You probably have heard of some of them, like OIAJ, SIAB, Green Monster, xxx-balls (cue in: tee hee hee), Hugh Jass salad, and so on (thanks to my Facebook friends for helping me fill these in!).

Come to think of it, the word “blog” didn’t even appear until 1999. Or Facebook. That feels weird, because what are we going to do with ourselves without them now?

Anyway. There’s a new word that has entered my regular vocab list, and it’s “baco.”

What is baco? If you’re an up-to-date foodie in Los Angeles, you would have heard of Baco Mercat, a restaurant that opened in downtown Los Angeles last October by chef Josef Centeno, who is also an executive chef at Little Tokyo’s Lazy Ox Canteen.
(Picture credit to Eatocracy/CNN)

I’ve met and talked to Josef in person. I was trying to interview him for my broadcast reporting final package on downtown’s new streetcar project. While most of my interviewers were chatty and open, Josef made a particular impression on me for his straightforward terseness. His quiet, tacit answers didn’t come off rude at all, just charmingly shy, and so characteristically…him. I liked him right away.

Josef was a student pursuing anthropology and philosophy degrees in University at Texas at Austin when he realized that he felt the most inspired and happy in the kitchen. Thank you, Lord, for giving him that revelation. A double thank you, Lord, for somehow providing him the wisdom to move out west to Los Angeles to expand his dream after stints in NYC, San Francisco and Los Gatos.

Josef is a godsend to the L.A. culinary scene. He has been consistently bringing fresh and innovative cuisine to Lazy Ox Canteen and now he has his own baby, Baco Mercat, where he can freely mix his own eclectic cultural influences to his classical French culinary experiences.

Baco, the signature dish at Baco Mercat, is a word drawn out from a play on “global tacos,” which turned to “globacos,” and then simply— “bacos.” It’s a hybrid flatbread that is not a sandwich, not a taco, not a pizza but…a baco.
Baco. Doesn’t that word just flow over your tongue and traverse beautifully through your teeth?

I’ve been following the opening of Baco and the raves that followed after, primarily through the excited emails from my friend Daina.

Daina is a regular customer at Lazy Ox Canteen, and she’s become friends with Josef. I don’t know how she does it but she’s the kind of irresistible personality that somehow eases her way into the backstage and makes friends with even the most reserved individuals.
Well, we decided to have lunch together at Baco Mercat on a weekday. Baco Mercat is located at the historic Old Bank district, and from what I could see, there were a lot of downtown lawyers, financial bankers and Los Angeles Times reporters in scene.
I also invited my adorable friend Eva, since she and Daina have become Facebook friends through our shared meal of Korean goat stew.

We met up late afternoon outside of Baco, and though lunch hour was way over, the place was still teeming with downtown-ers chowing down on Josef’s incredible food.
Baco also has a modest bar with six beers on tap, a decent wine list and interesting spirits and even their own line of sodas with curious flavors like black mint, chicha morada and their housemade orange ginger juniper soda. Super cool stuff.

Okay, it’s tough to order at Baco Mercat because everything sounds so good.

There’s the original baco, which is a sandwich/wrap-type thing based off a bread recipe Josef invented as a riff off flatbread. Apparently he created it out of a whim as a snack for late-night cooks in his kitchen, and honed it until it was the perfect balance of chewiness and softness. Each baco in Josef’s menu is named by its dominant protein.

Obviously we had to order bacos with meat. We ordered two kinds of baco.

Here’s the “El Pesco”:
The menu is as tacit as Josef. It just simply states: “Crispy shrimp, sriracha, chive” but what it really is a butterflied shrimp coated lightly with breading and deep-fried to a juicy crunch, stuffed with a refreshing, creamy coleslaw with a dab of spicy sriracha into his baco bread. It was wonderful!!

The second baco we shared was “El Pollo”:
Again, all the menu lists is “chicken escabeche, spiced lebni” but it was a fantabulous package of organic grilled chicken pieces, squished into a lightly toasted carby envelope with luscious, tangy lebni (a Kefir cheese) and piquant greens. OMG-amazing.

Other than the baco, Josef also uses the same bread vessel to make an open-faced flatbread called “coca,” what he calls a Spanish version of pizza. He rolls out the baco dough extra-thin so it flash-bakes in the oven into a crispy, skinny edible plate for handfuls of toppings.

We went basic with the “el cordero” coca:
House-made merguez (sausage), harissa (a spicy salsa) and fresh chevre goat cheese.
It’s a whole pie that one person can devour because of how thin the base is. It’s almost like a cracker! It was light and really delicious especially because the chef wasn’t at all shy with the spice.

To cleanse our palate we also had one of Baco Mercat’s daily offerings, the pickled vegetable salad with olive oil:
It was fresh green tomatoes, grapes and persimmon, lightly pickled to draw out its puckery sweetness. One trait about Josef is that he’s really into simple flavors and ingredients. It’s the quality of the ingredients, coupled with immaculate creativity and brilliant cooking technique that dominates his dishes.

I had a very proud moment with my friends.
Look at them, both totting their cameras along with them to take pictures of food! Daina has a food blog now too, and she’s currently interning at the food blog section on LA Weekly.
I definitely want to be back. If I was still interning at the LA Times, I would be another one of Josef’s regular customers. I would also be broke which is why maybe I’m thinking it’s a blessing in disguise I can’t visit as often as I would like to.

Either way, I think the word “baco” will be spoken more frequently and widespread soon. I hope you get to actually taste it one day though. Finger crossed?

Question of the Day: What is your favorite (or least favorite) “made up” word?

Related posts:

1. Invitation to The Secret Fork
2. Dude, It’s Pal Cabron
3. A Mexican Gingerbread House Discovery

Is there a word as disgusting, taboo and feared as F-A-T?

Not at this age, in this society. I can’t speak for all the women in the world, but the word “fat” isn’t in my daily verbal repertoire. But guess what? That word enters my mind pretty frequently.

It happens mostly when I’m stressed out. Whenever I’m feeling negative emotions like anger or annoyance or insecurity, my mind just somehow equates that with the feeling of FATNESS.

I know I don’t have the right to feel that way. I’m skinny, shaped like an “i” with minimal curves anywhere. That’s why I never, ever voice it out loud. If I did, I’m afraid I might get clawed and slapped. And yes, I feel guilty and stupid for feeling that way. But I can’t help it.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been gaining weight. I haven’t physically weighed myself on a scale in about a year, but the gain is undeniable in the way my clothes feel on me. I know it’s additional weight that I need, and when I’m feeling good and rational, it’s extra pounds that I genuinely welcome.

But because of the mixture of society’s ideals and my own history with an eating disorder, there’s always that immediate flash of irritated displeasure when I feel the pressure of my jean button digging into my abdomen. Or when I sit and feel the rolls folding over my belly in layers. Or when my tank top stretches tight across my stomach, or when the flesh under my arms presses out of my top in bulges. It also sucks because I’m still dealing with disproportionate weight gain–most of the weight is piled to my upper torso while my legs remain bird-skinny.

The good thing is that I don’t act on these feelings. After years of eating disordered hell, one thing I know with absolute certainty is that I never, ever want to go back to those conditions again— no matter how much weight I gain. I’d rather be a free and happy whale than a depressed, secluded skeleton.

But these sudden feelings of fatness enter my head unconsciously at random moments, and when I dwell on them, they just make me miserable because I’m stuck in a frustrating position where I can’t act on them. Which leaves me just stewing in this hot, painful pot of fat-fat-fat-ness.

I used to just berate myself for having these feelings, telling myself I was irrational and crazy. I was ashamed of feeling that way. But recently a few of my friends—women who were in no way “fat”—admitted to me that they struggled with constant feelings of “fatness,” too.

They perform the classic acts of body-checking, flesh-pinching and stomach-sucking. And for some reason, they all told me this with a level of shame, as if they shouldn’t be allowed to be succumb to such feelings.

What a contradiction we’re in. We have been conditioned to feel “fat” by society yet are also programmed to feel shame for it.

I had an especially hard time with this during the few weeks of final exam, when I was under a period of high tension and stress. But I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. I couldn’t tell my parents because I didn’t want them to worry about me relapsing or something crazy like that. I couldn’t tell anyone else because they would likely dismiss it and I didn’t want to offend anybody. So it was wonderful to be able to be free with my own struggles with my friends.

Thankfully, those “fat” feelings dissipated once my finals were over and I focused my attention on enjoying my winter festivities and meditating on the blessings God gave me last year.

It makes sense that my “fat” feeling always comes when I’m weighed down by stress. And it also makes sense to me that when I feel “fat,” I’m not really feeling fat.

It’s such a simple statement, but it breaks down so many murky misunderstandings for me: Fat is just a feeling. It’s just a mental connection my mind makes between negative feelings and the “fat” feeling. It’s my way of dealing with a mental stress by turning it into a physical feeling, something I can touch and see in a corporeal sense.

I don’t think I can completely prevent the infiltration of such thoughts, at least not within this decade. I’m a woman and I care about my looks and right now the ideal “beauty” is, sadly, still to be as slim as possible.

But I can train myself to not stew in those feelings. I’m really thankful to my friends who opened up to me because I could be honest with them as well. And guess what? No one dissed me for feeling the way I did. And by speaking out together, both my friends and I enjoyed a sense of relief, which really helped me in getting over it.

What also helped me was to let go after talking it out with my friends. It helps to speak out once or twice but not if you’re reiterating it every day. I have to protect my mind and heart from getting overwhelmed by negative emotions like stress.

That “fat” feeling may be strong, but the simple wonders and joy in my daily activity is much stronger. After all, I have a lot more important things going on in my life than to waste time sulking over a meaningless, imaginary thing ordained by a superficial society.

I mean, what should I choose between a fulfilling social life and an isolated life of fat obsession? It’s really a no-brainer, is it?

Unfortunately I’m apparently not very smart, because that realization didn’t fully hit me until one night when a couple friends and I went out for a Sangria night at a Spanish tapas bar in the Original Farmers Market.

It was in the middle of final exam week—the prime of stress levels, and the hotbed of “fat” feelings. Truthfully, when I met up with my friends Tracy and Marilyn, I wasn’t feeling all that hot. I was super stressed and thus, I felt freaking FUG-ly (as if that’s the most natural transition).

But these two gals…
They turned my night around. Not only did they give me a mini revelation, they also naturally added burgers and milkshakes to a night meant for Sangria and tapas. See, this is why girlfriends rock.

I had bought a Living Social coupon for Little Spain, a family-owned traditional Spanish restaurant and gourmet market.
Little Spain is tucked at the corner of the farmers market, right next to the Grove. I never really noticed this spot until I bought the Living Social coupon. It’s like a little hidden gem.
I’m surprised I passed by so many times without noticing though. It’s a brightly colored spot. The front area is set up like a bar:
They have a fine selection of Spanish wines, from which I assume they fixed our Sangria.
Walk round the side of the bar, and you enter a mini gourmet market selling all kinds of eclectic Spanish pantry items.:
Walk through this market, and you find a portal that leads you to a lovely outdoor patio glowing by the flickering flames of candlelight.
Mental note: this is a cozy place for a romantic, gooey-eyed date. But for that night, it was strictly girls’ night out.

Our coupon was for two glasses of Sangria, which we shared among the three of us. Look how romantic this looks!
But not at all wasted on the three of us girls.

Our coupon also included a full platter of various tapas:
The server was kind enough to describe each tapas to us. I’ll give a quick run-through of the highlights.

Here’s the patatas bravas:
Fried potato chunks served with homemade spicy tomato sauce and creamy aioli. Nice and crisp with a creamy interior.

One of my favorites, the Croquetas Espanolas Spanish croquetes:
Béchamel fritters (!!) with homemade sauces like aioli, barbeque and romesco. Anything filled with béchamel than fried is an A+ in my book.

Behind it is the Spanish jamon:
Salty and packed full of pork flavor. I ate it on top of a buttered crostini.

Another simple but wonderful dish, the Champinones salteados:
Sautee of fresh mushrooms with garlic and parsley. I love mushrooms in any shape or form.

The Choricitos al Vino:
Small links of Spanish chorizos sautéed with wine and Spanish paprika sauce. Love the char.

Crazy awesome Bombas:
Fried potato balls stuffed with spicy beef crumbles. This one wowed me. Really loved the spicy meat inside, and the outer carby shell was a wonderful double-layer of textures.

Yet another awesome fried carb, the empanadilla:
Deep-fried pastry stuffed with grilled chicken and vegetables. The crust was a gorgeous golden crisp—flaky puffs that dissolved into a savory filling. Why are fried stuff so delicious?

And the star of the tapas night was the tortilla espanola:
Spanish omelet fattened with thin-sliced potato and juiced up with sautéed onions and olive oil. I love that coat of sear on top of the omelet. The sight just makes my mouth water.

This was clearly not enough for three people. Without much debate, the three of us unanimously settled on an after-course at Short Order, a fairly new burger joint opened by food celebrity Nancy Silverton and the late Amy Pressman.
Short Order is classic American fare done the new American way: with organic, sustainable ingredients and homemade, artisanal products. It created quite a buzz when it first opened, and when my friends and I lumbered over to the restaurant after our tapas meal, it was packed despite being late at night.
It’s stuffed into this farmhouse-like building, and there’s a second story where you can dine indoors. But if you’re dining on the first storey, then you’ll be eating under an umbrella.

Marilyn and I shared a Lamb Burger:
Medium-rare Sonoma ground lamb, feta cheese, lamb’s lettuce and salsa verde packed into a buttery bun. Marilyn is crazy and doesn’t like cheese, so I asked for it on the side. Oh well, more for me!
The burger was stuffed into a paper package a la In-N-Out style for easy gripping and less mess, but it was still a messy, juicy affair nonetheless!
The lamb patty was perfectly cooked: juice retained, just the right amount of pinkness to let the meatiness shine through without tasting too bloody.

Tracy, always the more responsible one among us, got the bean salad for some much needed greens to our meal(s):
Haricot verts, red onion and chickpeas dressed in a herby vinaigrette.

I had a couple bites but couldn’t get into it. But I did enjoy our special walnut shortbread cookie milkshake.
Did you get that? WALNUT SHORTBREAD COOKIE MILKSHAKE. When you sip the cool, creamy slush, you feel the crumbly texture of real crushed walnut shortbread as well. It’s freaking fantastic. Just look at the look of ethereal joy on my friends’ faces.

We had a fantastic time together, and that day being close to the end of 2011, I started thanking God on that very spot for bestowing me such wonderful and close friends. (That’s what this post was about).

In the year 2011, I became more and more social. I met many new friends whom with I bonded. I was out several nights a week, sometimes returning home hours past midnight. Okay, obviously as a college student it’s not the academically best thing for me, but it’s exactly the kind of college experience I had been craving since I was in high school. I mean, how can you truly say you’ve experienced college if you haven’t had several late night outs with a group of awesome friends?

2011 was the breakthrough year for me in terms of social life, after years of being extremely private due to my eating disorder. There was nothing holding me back if I suddenly got a text from a friend asking me out for dinner in an hour. I didn’t actively organize and make plans, but my schedule just filled up with activities.

Sure, all these series of meals out and drinking came with weight gain. But it also came with a bunch of super cool, loving friends, fabulous connections and unforgettable experiences that actually mean something lasting.

So the light bulb finally lit up in my slow head that night: You know what? The “fat” feelings can and will shut up, because the festivities of blessings I’ve earned from eating well with my buddies make a heck louder party noises.
So. Bring it on. In time, that “fat” feeling will be nothing but a pitiful squeak of a dying bug.

Question of the Day: What’s your way of drowning that idiotic “fat” feeling?

Related posts:

1. Weekend ED Series Interlude: What’s to blame for eating disorders?
2. Weekend ED Series: Fear About Weight Gain in Recovery
3. Weekend ED Series: Nuts on Bingeing

There are a lot of quotes about laughter.

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter,” said Mark Twain, my American literary hero.

“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., my activist hero.

“A great many people don’t know how to laugh at all. However, there’s nothing to know here: it’s a gift, and it can’t be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one’s character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better,” said Fyodor Dostoyevsky, my Russian literary idol.

And then the age-old “Laughter is the best medicine,” said by every wise person over centuries of generations.

Because of my eating disorder, it had been a long, long time since I laughed. It wasn’t just because my chest constricted and my throat hurt when I laughed. It was because I just had nothing to smile about, let alone laugh. Wrapped in self-pity, anger, bitterness, sadness and fear will do that to you. No matter how hilarious someone or something is, the light-hearted humor just doesn’t tickle you the way it would have before.

Recovery gave me many, many gifts. But one of the best gifts was the ability to genuinely laugh again. And a huge part of it was tied to my gradual willingness to socialize…by eating out.

The biggest clue to whether someone is struggling with disordered eating isn’t just the weight, but his or her unwillingness to dine out with friends. That’s because from then on there’s this Dominoes effect of incrementing disordered thoughts and behaviors as the individual resides deeper and deeper into seclusion.

You can’t socialize and bond with friends if you cannot eat out. Well, maybe you can–but you’ll always be missing out on something. After all, dining together isn’t just about the physical nourishment; it’s a social activity, a time when people break bread together over lively discussions, casual chatter and gossip. And when you take that away…well, you’ll always be the weird one. Some people might keep asking a few times, but after several rejections, most people start leaving you alone and hanging out among themselves. And before you know it, the texts and phone calls stop coming. You end up spending all mealtimes alone– which just worsens the cycle of secrecies, irrationalities and depression.

Eating out was always one of the hardest things for me to get over. If I had to eat out, I had to plan and prepare that event way ahead of time. I needed to schedule it so that is fit precisely into my rigid eating schedule. I needed to have at least some choice in where I was going to dine, and I needed to check out and practically memorize the menu beforehand, from which I would choose the safest (read: lowest calorie) item.

I liked chain restaurants. Chain restaurants were safer than small business eateries because they almost always had the nutrition fact information online for you to peruse. And with the public and government crackdown, I could at least be sure that there would be plenty of “healthy” options. The menu would likely be huge, which also meant that they would have a fine selection of meal-sized salads.

I don’t even know why I needed to examine all the menus beforehand. It was pretty much decided what I would order: carb-less salad–no cheese, no dressing, nuts on the side. That was pretty much my standard, and I never, ever ate out of the bread basket. Occasionally I would eat a tiny bite out of my dining companion’s dish, but mentally freak out over the single nibble of FAT-LADEN PASTA!!! Arrrrgh!

Every Anorexic has his or her worst nightmare dish. Mine was pasta, for some reason. I was insanely terrified of white pasta. After all, a 1/4 cup dry serving of pasta was 200+ calories!!! How crazy! How could that be one serving? I would be famished after that…and I would have used up a huge percentage of calorie quota of the day! For a fist-sized quantity of fiberless, protein-less, simple carbed pasta! Why, I could fill myself up nicely with nice, nutritious oatmeal for that same calorie amount!

And of course, I also convinced myself that I didn’t like pasta, even though ever since young, that was one of my favorite sources of carbohydrates. It was clearly bullshit to everyone except me. I was just so sure that I would not enjoy pasta, thus why should I ever order it?

I’m just exemplifying one of the myriads of self-deceits my eating disorder fed me in order to keep me from progressing in recovery. There were many, many more, but if I were to list them all this would become an ED encyclopedia (hmm…someone should write that).

Anyway. As I wrote on this post, after awhile, cooking started becoming more of an inhibition to my recovery. But my trip to Penang– in which I had to give up pretty much all forms of control– really gave me that final kick in the ass I dearly needed. I went through the worst situation an eating disordered individual could go through, and I survived. After that ordeal, many things that once seemed so scary to me was kiddie pool.

I started eating out a lot more often. Sometimes, even two times a day, several times a week– which would have been unfathomable to me before that Penang trip.

I need to give a special shout-out to Wengang, Liwen and Jingwen, who were my primary dining companions for the rest of the two months I stayed in Singapore. Wengang and Liwen set aside a day out of every week to take me out to eat. Most of the time, I relinquished the choice of venue to them. I did that on purpose so that I wouldn’t be choosing somewhere “safe” for me. It was absolutely, deliciously freeing for me to be able to do that.

Before, I had so many rules about eating out. But I created a rule: FLUSH OUT ALL PREVIOUS RULES. They are crap!!

And then I made a simpler set of rules:

1) I would go eat at wherever my dining companions wanted to go.

2) I would not look up menus beforehand, and even if that place offered nutrition facts, so help me God, I would blind myself if I had to– I shall not peek!

3) I will order what I truly want to eat– not what I think I want to eat. I need to stay real and honest to myself– by deceiving myself into thinking I really want a “safe” item, I am hurting no one but myself.

4) No more effing salads. Those days are gone forever. You want a salad? Go home and eat it as a snack.

5) Have fun. Don’t just concentrate on the food, but focus your attention on the people beside you. Listen to them, talk to them. It’s not about the food– it’s about the wonderful interaction that happens over it.

There were several occasions when I felt clutches of fear and anxiety. I would clench up and feel that oppression in my chest in the face of a certain food, wild thoughts of fat, calories, carbs ravaging my mind. There were times when I would let them overwhelm me, and end up not eating very much.

But there were more times when I would follow “new rule” #5: I would turn my attention away from the food, and to the conversation that was taking place at the table. It certainly helped that I was dining with people who love to eat, who ate real food with gusto, who chatted me up about everything from deep spiritual subjects to random jokes and gossip. These people’s laughter and licking of fingers and lips eased my tension away, and pretty soon I found myself smiling along…and even laughing out loud.

Laughter. Oh, wonderful laughter. Mine doesn’t sound too wonderful, to be honest. I have a slightly high-pitched, louder-than-average laughter. The first time I heard it since my eating disorder, it sounded so foreign to me. I had a flash of Wow, did it actually come out through my own body?  thought before shrugging it away and then laughing some more. While I was eating out. The previous me would have never imagined that the two would go together.

It’s true. Laughter cures so much of the unhappy impurities within you. It’s a precious gift from God. It’s such a beautiful release. To me, it sounds like the bells of freedom. And that was what it was to me. It released all the cluttered, mushed up jumble of crazy and irrational thoughts inside me. It was both the start and the signal of happiness.

After days of eating out, socializing and laughing, there just naturally came a point when nothing seemed scary to me. I didn’t mind eating white pasta drenched in creamy, cheesy sauce. I didn’t mind deep-fried food. I didn’t even mind (well, not too much unless the meal was super expensive) if my meal out wasn’t very good. After all, I learned that eating out isn’t about the food, but the people with whom you dine.

Dining out is a multi-level relationship. It’s a relationship with yourself, of treating yourself to a nice, relaxing experience. It’s a relationship with the food, of realizing that it’s not the centerpiece of your life, but hey, if it tastes good– all the more to enjoy it! And it’s a relationship with the people around you, who share the time and conversation with you over a meal.

After overcoming this one hurdle, I have gained so many more treasures: I can fully experience and enjoy travels. I can learn and immerse myself into a new culture in deeper dimensions. I have bonded with many of the close friends I have now by sharing a meal together. But most of all, I have become free.

Thoughts to Ponder:

1) Are you afraid of eating out? What is the biggest fear for you?

2) What is your “ritual” like when it comes to eating out? What rules and obsessions do you follow?

3) What is your own quote/philosophy on laughter?

Related posts:

1. Weekend ED Series: Why Is Recovery So Bloody Hard?!
2. Weekend ED Series: When cooking becomes a crutch…
3. Weekend ED Series: The 5 Holes

Some people caution parents of young kids never to waste time and money on exotic travels. I think there’s some truth in it.

When I was young, my parents took me, my brother and my cousin (who lived with our family for 10 years) around the countries of Southeast Asia whenever they could afford it. We road tripped to Malaysia. We flew to Jakarta and some other rural regions in Indonesia. We went to Macau and Hong Kong. We also went to Thailand.

There isn’t very much I remember from any of those travels. Take Thailand, for example. I have but faint traces of memories about that mystical Siam kingdom.

I remember walking up the steps to an ancient Buddhist temple, but my focus was mostly on the wild monkeys lumbering about the stairs staring at me with penetrating brown eyes. I remember a few street performers playing acoustic instruments and singing soulfully.

I remember some green pastures littered with pigeons; my mother and I chased them hand-in-hand, sending the birds fluttering up into the sky, making a gentle loop and settling back to where they were.

But most of all, I remember the night my parents made a mistake and took us to a theater featuring drag queens. I was about seven or eight at the time growing up in a conservative country, so I had no idea what transvestites or homosexuality was. I just thought it was just a lurid, flamboyant and fun performance staged by men who happened to dress up as women so that they could tear open their blouses and squeeze water out of their fake boobs without embarrassment.

Other than those few recollections, my visit to Thailand is a fog to me. What a shame, because right now, I would give anything to visit that country again. Especially because I’ve fallen in love with their food.

Thai food reminds me a lot of Singaporean hawker cuisine, presumably because they share similar produce and spices. It’s more than pad thai and sticky mango rice pudding, and I’m going to show you a few other Thai dishes I would love for you to try too (if you haven’t already wisely done so).

Apparently, Los Angeles has the largest Thai population outside of Thailand. I believe it, because our Thai Town— a strip of street mottled with Thai restaurants, markets, bakeries, shops and spas along Hollywood Boulevard between Normandie and Western— is extensive and wonderfully packed.
Apparently it’s been praised even by Anthony Bourdain—my unofficial guide to delicious, bullshit-free traveling.

Bourdain once did an episode of visiting Sapp Coffee Shop. Obviously I had to enter a place that graced the honorable steps of the mighty Bourdain. I called two of my foodie buddies.

Say hi to fellow blogger Marilyn:
And my lovely Hollywood-residing friend Tracy:
Sapp Coffee Shop is not a coffee shop, as one Yelp reviewer sadly discovered. Coffee shops in Southeast Asia takes a different from the cute cafes serving espresso that one might imagine.
First of all, it’s sort of dinky, and totally inconspicuous. It’s advertised by a yellow and red sign in which the English letters are squeezed to the side of big Thai characters. It’s the kind of sign to which you’d likely pay no attention as you pass by.
And then there’s the store. Your eyes might glance at the “B” rating by the health department, and then glance away. But if you get scared off by a less than “A” rating, you’ll be missing out on a lot of awesome food in Los Angeles.
For most of the Thai restaurants I’ve visited, I’ve noticed altars on the wall, just like what I would normally see in casual open-air eateries in Singapore. And like them, Sapp Coffee Shop was not air-conditioned but supplied sufficient natural cooling with a standing fan:
The dining tables were neat and clean with minimal artistic design. I loved seeing the array of chilis—green and pickled, red and vinegared, and powdered—on each table:
I liked the vibe already. It just felt pretty familiar, a hole-in-the-wall type of authenticity.

Sapp Coffee Shop offers an extensive menu, but my heart was set on one dish alone: the boat noodles.
It’s a daring dish, depending on what kind of food you like. Thai boat noodles is a beef noodle soup that got its name because it was traditionally served off boat-eateries that floated through the rivers and canals of Thailand. But beef isn’t the only protein in this dish—it also comes with offal like liver and tripe, and the broth is spiked with a healthy splash of…animal blood.

Yes, that’s why the broth is so dark. It’s bleeding!

I enjoy Korean blood sausages once in a while, so I didn’t feel too creeped out by the idea of drinking blood. But I have very strong negative reactions to liver, so I asked for the liver to be left off my boat noodles.
What I got was an extra-spicy (my request) bowl of rice noodles strewn with beef slices, beef balls, chewy tendons (my favorite!), deep-fried tripe (like Chicharrones!) fried garlic and shallots, fresh cilantro, and blood-infused broth.

There’s definitely a funky odor and taste as I slurped up the springy noodles saturated with savory broth.
It can be a bit disconcerting. At first. But after a slurp or two, I started to really appreciate the depth and intensity of flavors swimming in the broth. It was delicious!

My favorite part was crunching on the soggy tripe soaked with beefy juice.
I just wish they would have slipped an extra handful of golden-crisp tripe in there!

Marilyn opted for a less bloody dish called Jade Noodles:
I imagine more people would enjoy this clean, sprightly dish than my dark, ominous boat noodles. It’s an interesting, fantastic dish of opposing flavors and textures.

The noodles, which taste just like Chinese wonton noodles, are tinted green from pureed spinach, but you won’t taste no spinach in there. It’s really just for the eye-pleasing color.
The noodles come with sliced char siew pork, sliced roast duck, fresh shredded crab, crushed roasted peanuts, scallions, cilantro, red pepper and lime. What you do is squeeze the lime over and give the noodles a good toss. You don’t eat the individual toppings separate—you want it mixed in well so that each bite comes with each of everything.

It’s freaking amazing. Poultry, pork and seafood in one noodle dish? How can you go wrong with such a holy trinity combination?
Tracy, being mostly vegetarian, asked the owner if they had a vegetarian dish. They didn’t on the menu…but they were happy to whip up a separate wholly vegetarian dish just for her. Now that’s service!

Here’s Tracy’s vegetarian dish:
Pan-fried taro cakes with stir-fried bean sprouts, egg and cilantro.

OMG. OMG. OMFG. SO GOOD! I freaking love taro, and this must be one of my favorite ways to eat them: packed densely with rice powder into a cake and pan-fried until the edges are crispy and brown while the insides are chewy and gooey.
I think I practically attacked Tracy’s dish with fevor, pushing taro after taro into my mouth. I would visit Sapp every day just for this dish.

To cleanse our palate, we also had a side dish of som tam, or papaya salad:
This was lovely. Fresh, crisp, brightly-flavored with fish sauce and tons of roasted peanuts.
A lot of som tam I’ve tried barely has any spice in them, even though I painstakingly ask the server to make it as spicy as possible. Sapp’s som tam? They definitely packed the spice in there! Delightful!

After our hot, spicy, sour and savory meal, we craved something sweet so we headed to the next door Thai dessert shop, and was greeted by a young boy running around in his underpants.
He wasn’t too shy to pose for me, either. I didn’t even ask him to, he just went ahead and posed because he saw my camera, even though I wasn’t going to take a picture of him at first. Super cute guy.

I think in Thai you pronounce this dessert shop as Ramsong, but in English it’s just Thai Dessert and Vegetarian Food. I was bedazzled by the cases of colorful dessert and the aroma of frying carbs and boiling eggs.
It’s a simple set-up: an open kitchen/bakery overlooking a counter that presents all its sweet goods. So you know for sure the stuff you’re buying is made fresh in house by hand.
I was most curious by these golden balls stewing in a syrup:
They turned out to be egg yolks! Sweetened egg yolks as dessert? Sounds good to me. Other than balls, they also magically shape them into skinny strands like this:
I  wonder what they do with all the leftover egg whites though?

After much deliberation, we decided on four desserts to munch on while watching the Sex and the City series together:
First up, Khanom Buang, or more easily referred to as Thai tacos:
Indeed, they are light, crunchy crackers shaped into a taco, glazed with a sweet meringue and topped with those egg yolk strands.

Second, oven-dried bananas with honey:
Thai bananas are different from the long Dole bananas we have in America. They are short and stubby and slightly starchier, which is why they make the most amazing dried bananas. These were amber-colored from the caramelized honey, and super sticky and chewy.

Third, mung bean cakes:
These are petite balls of sweetened mung bean paste encased in a flaky, super rich pastry fluffed with lard instead of butter, which is why they are so white in color.

And my favorite of that night, Crispy Noodles:
I’ve spent the last 20 minutes searching and googling for its Thai name, but I can’t find anything! It can’t be Mi Krop, can it? Anyway, it’s this super sticky, super crispy fried noodles that has been coated with a tamarind and vinegar syrup. So it’s kind of sweet, but also amazingly tart. Dangerously addictive…couldn’t stop eating this one!

Okay, I think I need to stop. It’s 10 p.m and I’m feeling this insatiable urge to charge down to East Hollywood and beg a Thai restaurant to feed me noodles and taro and crispy noodles.

I shall be back, Thai Town. And one day, I’ll storm Thailand for real and make lasting memories of that country with the magnificent cuisine.

Question of the Day: Do you remember traveling when you were really young?

Related posts:

1. Yujean Kang’s: A 10-course, 5-hour gastronomical extravaganza
2. Luckiest Brat in the World
3. The Parents Service and Fried Sauce Noodles

I had a flip-flopsy day today.

In the morning, I sent off my friend Joanna (who slept over) in a good mood. I met my other friend Jordan in a good mood. I spent the whole day laughing and joking and feeling awesome and loving to all peoples.

Since we had the day off for Martin Luther King Day, Jordan and I went shopping at Costco. I got back with a box of groceries after dropping Jordan off. I didn’t want to carry all the stuff all the way from my parking structure, so I dropped the box of groceries in front of my apartment gate, parked my car, and hurried back.

To a nearly empty box.

My rotisserie chicken. My deli turkey. My carton of eggs. My cashews. My almonds. My Greek yogurt. They were all gone—over $40 worth of stuff. The only thing left was my second carton of eggs (I eat a lot of eggs) and a half-eaten scone.

What the—?! At first I just couldn’t believe someone would take it. I thought maybe a kind soul helped me move my stuff inside the apartment gate. But no. They were gone. In the 5 minutes I took to park my car, someone had lugged off my groceries.

I was so shocked I just stood there with my mouth open, palms spread in disbelief. A lady and her daughter stood by the gate staring back at me, wondering what was going on.

“Did you see someone take my stuff?” I asked them.

The lady spoke up excitedly in Spanish about seeing una señora lumbering off with piles of stuff up to her chin. I understood her because she demonstrated the posture herself (so cute). Her daughter helped translate, saying that the woman (that freaking THIEF!!!) was wearing a hat and pointed to the direction she had hobbled off. They were both filled with righteous anger for me, and gladly watched the remaining carton of eggs for me while I ran off looking for that thief.

I felt bad making them wait so I ran back, dropped off the eggs and leftover scone into my apartment, then spent an hour and a half wandering around, chasing the thief who somehow disappeared without a trace. I guessed she’s a resident in the neighborhood, so I walked round and round the neighborhood with fists clenched and teeth blared, glaring suspiciously at everyone.

I was seething! It wasn’t just about the money—it was the fact that someone didn’t even hesitate to jack off my stuff in plain sight. This was several notches worse than being punched by a granny. Why—the audacity! The plain bastardity! And what the hell—NOBODY touches my nuts!!!

I called my mother, my voice trembling because I was literally jumping up and down in indignity.

My mother laughed. “Well, take it as a lesson,” she said. “You know God allows things to happen for a reason. What’s gone is already gone. Forget about it, or you’ll just be prolonging the pain.”

She was right. I had just wasted almost two hours running around with hair flying, each strand sending out invisible, electrifying rage.

So I calmed down. I took a hot shower. I finished my scone. I went shopping again at my favorite Latino supermarket.

It all seems silly now. My heart still aches a bit that almost $50 has been gobbled up into the belly of a grocery thief just like that, but it could have been worse. I could have bought that gourmet cheese and organic chicken that I had debated buying at Costco, which would have cost me another $30.

At least that thief left me a carton of eggs. And a half-eaten scone.

And I think I made friends with the lady and her daughter who tried to help me. I’ll remember them for sure, and next time I see them, we’ll be greeting each other more warmly than just a hurried “hello.”

And you know what? I’m still lucky enough to not be in a situation where I have to steal in order to feed myself. Maybe that thief was really hungry and backed up on rent with six kids to feed. Whoever she is, I hope she’s at least enjoying my nuts.

Anyway. Other than today’s woebegone event, my weekend was lovely. Joanna came to visit from San Diego, and she treated me out to a night at Geisha House in Hollywood.
Geisha House…is exactly what the name suggests. Perhaps you have read or watched Memoirs of a Geisha. Then you know what a geisha is: a traditional female entertainer who basically is a high-end prostitute trained in other forms of arts besides sexual services.

This upscale Japanese restaurant was as erotic and sensual as a luxury Japanese brothel, glorifying all Oriental stereotypical images. A man who was taking a picture of Joanna and me in front of a poster of the Tokyo streets asked us, “What are you two Chinese girls doing in front of a poster of China?”

Um, we’re Koreans and the poster is of Japan.

He should really be asking: why are two Christian girls visiting a restaurant like this? Well, Joanna bought a Living Social coupon that gave us $50 worth of food for just $25, thinking that Geisha House was just a fancy-named sushi house. I had written about Geisha House for my internship, so I could have warned her that $50 worth of food at a place like Geisha House is really not much.

But the coupon was already purchased and all that was left to do was show up and dine in a place that was so fantastical and otherworldly to us two Asians.
Geisha House is expensive. Really expensive. But you’re not really paying for the food. You’re paying for the experience. Geisha House offers a sensuous, exotic vibe unlike others.
Even though the name suggests something traditional, Geisha House is ultra-sleek with contemporary decors and photo shots lining the walls. The whole place glows in a stimulating red iridescence. It’s a hip, titillating blend of modern Tokyo city splash and Japan’s rich history of the arts (in all forms).
You walk in a tunnel of red glowing beams…

And you’re then directed to the lounge/bar:
Joanna and I had made reservations, so we only needed to wait for a few minutes before being escorted to our seats.

Geisha House tailors to the urban, sophisticated clientele with deep pockets. We were so out of place, but it was definitely a thrilling experience.
The interior design was definitely stimulating and wondrous; I felt like I was walking into a high-class brothel. Some of the walls glowed out of transcendent pictures of Tokyo, while other areas were covered with floridly patterned cushions.
The downside? It was dark as a brothel as well! Is having reddish skin and red-gleaming eyes supposed to be sexy? I don’t get it.

Apparently Geisha House is trying to bring the eroticism into the food as well. Just take a look at the menu cover:
Raw fish is sexy? The things I learn in random places…Even the names of the dishes had a touch of eroticism. Sushis were named “naked rolls” or “geisha lips” or my personal favorite, the “octopussy.”

Despite the names, the food was good. We ordered three kinds of sushi (*Flash alert!!*):
Red Samurai, Ocean Dragon and Tokyo Breeze.

Red Samurai ($16): spicy tuna and cucumber topped with avocado, tuna, grape tomatoes, serrano peppers and vinaigrette.

Ocean Dragon ($15): shrimp tempura and crab, topped with avocado, fresh water eel, gold tobiko and eel sauce.

Tokyo Breeze ($15): lobster, seaweed salad, avocado and sisho wrapped in cucumber in a serrano sauce.

That meager plate…for almost $60 (plus tax)?! This was not dinner shared between two. It was appetizer! The serving portions was a joke!
Besides the pitiful portion, everything tasted fresh. The rice was cooked and seasoned perfectly, the fish was fresh, and tempura was golden-crisp.

We left still feeling hungry, so we stopped by my favorite Latino supermarket and loaded up on Mexican sweet breads and candies.

Another lesson learned: Don’t return to Geisha House. It was a fun one-time experience, but unless some sugar daddy is paying, I’ll leave it as that.

Question of the Day: If you can’t already tell, I’m really territorial about my nuts. Is there any particular food you get extra-selfish over?

Related posts:

1. A Little Tokyo Day Trip
2. A Super Biased Post by a Brainwashed West Coast Apple-Lover
3. Nothing like Family