Asia Cafe - the Return

Sometime earlier this week we decided to go to one of our old haunts, Asia Cafe in Chollas View (located off 47th and Market). It had been awhile....Bert, TC and I sat down by the wall and seated ourselves. The place is small and can get crowded at times. Here is an older post of mine where we sat at the same place and saw the same unintentionally hilarious poster. Obviously, they hadn't taken it down from last year.

[the following is text and a photo from my February 19, 2009 post]

Check out this poster for a Vietnamese Spring Concert. It was autographed by all of the performers. More specifically, look at the dude on the left...Yayssss!!! He's rockin' the Prince look. The Morris Day eyeliner. The Little Richard moustache. The Spectrum photo hand pose. What a fkn scream! I wonder what he sounds like when he sings? Is he a Prince impersonator? Can he dance? I want to see this guy perform! Let's go to the concert!
In the middle tables sat three Asian gangster looking guys. They all had closely shaved heads, wore white wife beaters and low slung baggy Levi's. Their arms, necks and chests (what I could see of it) were covered in black and white prison style tats. One guy had a large tattoo of a child on his neck. They seemed to be friends with the owner's son (the younger one) and chatted with him a bit at their table. Anyhow, they looked pretty tough and you wouldn't want to mess with them and all. Incidentally, they all ordered pho!

But enough about them! We ordered the fresh spring rolls with shrimp (not pictured) which are not on the menu but they'll make it for ou. The rolls were mainly for TC's benefit since she really likes them. We'd forgotten how huuuge Asia Cafe makes their spring rolls and that is not necessarily a good thing. They are pretty thick and filled with lettuc, shrimp and a thick type of rice noodle. I didn't really like the texture...

To try something different, we ordered the Lard Na with mixed meat and seafood. And by seafood I mean squid, cubes of fish cake (love those) and sticks of fake Krab (hate 'em). I haven't had Lard Nar too often but I think this dish was underseasoned. The thick flat rice noodles (buried under the vegetables and meats) were almost nonexistent. The "gravy" or sauce was really light and bland.
Not on the menu is my favorite, Nem Khao, a crispy fried rice dish that contains chopped peanuts, sliced green onions, dried chili peppers, sour pork sausage, cilantro and I'm sure more ingredients that I can't name at the moment. I really really love this dish becuase of the textures of the rice, herbs and sausage (although if you took the sausage out, I'd still be happy with it). I love the crunchiness of the rice...turns out that balls of rice are fried then broken up with the other ingredients before serving.
Another item we'd never tried was one of the appetizers, the fried Beef Balls. Yes, I said it, but hell, it's really on the menu. How could we NOT order it? Seriously, we didn't know what to expect - but here it is...four skewers with four meat balls each on them. Served with a side of sweet and sour sauce (seemed like it came from a jar)... The texture of the meat was kind of wierd to me...perhaps spongy...Not the feeling I enjoy when biting into a meatball. Bert liked them more than I did and he ended up finishing the leftovers the next few days.

Since we didn't really order a lot of food that day, we only ended up taking the beef balls home as leftovers. I pretty much decimated that Nem Khao. Afterwards, we ended up going to Target to check out some of their sales. We saw this in clearance section of the toy aisle...

Hell yes! It's the RANCOR!!!! Remember that monster from "Return of the Jedi?"
According to Wikepedia's entry on the List of Star Wars Characters:

"Rancors are huge, reptilian creatures found on several worlds throughout the galaxy such as Dathomir, Felucia and Tatooine. The rancor first appears in Return of the Jedi (1983) in crime lord Jabba the Hutt's palace."

and under the Luke Skywalker entry:

"In Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, a year after the events in the previous film, Luke, along with Leia, the droids, and Lando Calrissian, save Han Solo from the gangster Jabba the Hutt, who had acquired the carbonite-encased Solo after the events of The Empire Strikes Back. Luke offers to negotiate with Jabba, but instead is forced to fight a fearsome monster, the Rancor. When Luke kills it, Jabba sentences him to be thrown into The Pit of Carkoon, to be eaten by the Sarlacc. Luke escapes with R2's help, saving his friends and destroying Jabba's barge, with the aid of a new green lightsaber constructed following the loss of his first weapon in his duel with Vader."

I liked that the Luke Skywalker action figure had a little stick just like in the movie!