Return to Nucleus Art Gallery

Since the Vincent Price Art Museum was closed, we thought we could stop by Nucleus in Alhambra...

Like the VPAM, admission is free which is always a plus for me...

NADI Myanmar Cafe

The day's sunny skies were a far cry from the previous night...

where it rained nonstop and then some! En route to Alhambra...

Salju Dessert

Man, we were going back and forth around town that day. We had one more stop, dessert at this new Indonesian place which is located right around the corner from The Hat known for their pastrami sandwiches.

WC had already been here three times. Well, this was our first!

Salju means "snow" in Indonesian and they serve flavored shaved ice with toppings...Still there?

Almansor Park

We made a quick trip to Target to get a few items before heading over to Almansor Park.

WC mentioned that they had a lot of grassy fields, a playground, and a duck pond.

Fosselman's

Seems like we go to an ice cream place every where we travel. Ici in Berkley, Fenton's in Oakland, Polly Ann's in San Franciso and so on. Alhambra was no exception. There was no way we could visit this city and NOT go to Fosselman's, a neighborhood favorite which has been here for decades.

I was curious about their flavors...

Nucleus - Harry Potter Tribute Art Exhibit

Last weekend we made a special trip up to Alhambra to see the Harry Potter Tribute Art Exhibition at Gallery Nucleus...

It was also an excuse to go up to Wandering Chopsticks' 'hood and have lunch with her! By the way, the exhibit closes tomorrow so if you're a Harry Potter fan, you still have some time to see it! Hurry! Put that pedal to the metal!

Indo Kitchen

[Yay! - My last post from our last road trip two weeks ago. That Saturday was jam packed with stuff - watching the Percy Jackson movie, lunch at Tibet Nepal House, chocolates from Mignon, a quick jaunt to the Pacific Asia Museum, cruising around Pasadena, checking out City Hall, picking up quick desserts at Vanille in San Marino and finally dinner...]

Wanting to have Indonesian food again, I searched various places in the area, coming up with this:

The last time we were in Alhambra, we met up with the lovely Wandering Chopsticks and had Malayasian at Yazmin (which was pretty close to this place---see my original post here). While youat it, check out WC's post on Indo Kitchen  becauseshe has an exterior shot as well (I wasn't able to get one because their sign wasn't lit up and since it was night time, you couldn't see it anyways) and a hell of a lot more pix of food than our paltry 3 entrees.  Here are a few other posts that reference Indo Kitchen: Elmo Monster and Pleasure Palate. You can see the yelp reviews here as well as Indo Kitchen's official site.

It's a rather small restaurant; very mom and pop'ish, which is what I like. Who needs fancy ass decorations and what not. I just care about the food! When we got there there was a large party of 10 and couple of tables of just two or three people each. We sat near the front window...

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We perused their appetizers but ended up not getting any. Notice most of them are FRIED!

We also checked out their a la carte section where #61 caught our eye:

More of their menu in full color! Having pictures of the food definitely helps! Check out the "sop buntut" (funny because "buntut" in Tagalog means "tail"; I guess there are similarities with the langauge).

As mentioned earlier, we sat near the front window....Look closely....Do you see it?  By the "Closed" placard? It's a "B" rating sign.

Since our daughter was kind of full from lunch earlier, we ordered a small dessert as a treat for her: Es Campur (in their menu as "Ice Campur"). This is crushed ice mixed with jackfruit, grass jelly cubes and palm seed topped with syrup and condensed milk.  The menu also said it contained avocado, but we didn't find any avocado chunks in here. WTF! But, hey, this was really light and refreshing. The syrup was also quite aromatic (not sure what flavor it was) and jackfruit and palm seed are always a good combination.

Bert's iced coffee (standard, eh):

This was the #39 - The Nasi Goreng Ikan Asin - aka Salted Fish Fried rice - which included chicken and salted fish fried rice topped with a fried egg. I saw this on WC's post and Bert immediately wanted to have it. We really liked this - the salty fish with the egg went really well together. Just don't kiss or breath on anyone after eating this!

We also got the #29 - Nasi Ayam Bumbu & Sayur Asum - Seasoned Fried Chicken and Rice - This was marinated deep fried chicken served with steamed rice and tamarind soup (kind of like Filipino sinigang). The fried chicken skin was quite tasty, but one of the pieces tasted kind of overdone (the meat not the skin) and not as moist as I would have liked it. In any case, we picked at this because we were too excited with the salted fish fried rice.

Here is the #61 from the a la carte menu: Kodok Goreng Mentega - Pan Fried Frog Legs "smoothered" (hmmm, that is a typo on their menu, unless that's a new word nobody ever told me about!) with sweet butter sauce. Holy mfkr - that sauce was so good!!! I wanted to drench that sauce over everything! It was sweet and dark and sticky! Mmmmm, coagulation in the arteries......

The frog logs themselves were pretty good - moist and flavorful. And yes, they did kind of taste like "chicken". My daughter even liked the frog legs - We're so lucky we have a kid who will try anything. No dumbed down kid food for her, I tell you! We ended up taking home the salted rice, the fried chicken and the frog legs as leftovers. Shit, the next day, the butter sauce was all hardened and you could see the fat!!!!

This was Bert's plate - like how he arranged the frog bones? The sliced corn on the cob came from the tamarind soup...

The owner let us sample two kinds of chips - he didn't know what the first ones were  when asked (he couldn't seem to come up with the English equivalent),  but the ones on the right were shrimp chips. I liked both of them - the unnamed chip was thinner and crispier. The shrimp chips were thicker and had a more puffed texture. They also had more flavor.

By the way, I think one of the reasons they got a B rating is because you have to walk through their kitchen to get to the bathroom. I felt so intrusive walking through the tiny kitchen! It's kind of wierd walking through where all their food is prepared. Plus, their bathroom was pretty gross. Ugh! Customers shouldn't have to walk through a kitchen to get to the toilet, but with the way it's set up here, you have no choice. So I suggest to you, hold it in and use the bathroom elsewhere

Kang Kang Food Court - Taiwanese Shaved Ice

[MARATHON POSTING SESSION - Scroll down to read the 4 newest posts! Thank you.]

After our dinner, WC suggested Chinese desserts, specifically the Taiwanese Shaved ice here at Kang Kang Food Court:

It was just a few miles away from Yazmin in a crowded building complex that held a plethora of businesses...Inside, business was brisk. Kang Kang also had steam tables with tons of offerings. For a more detailed post on their food (rather than dessert) offerings, check out this recent post by the man himself, Kirk of Mmm-Yoso. As you can see from my photos and his, the menu offerings are extensive. Check out that huuge wall display. I'm glad we were here for just one item. I would have gone crazy trying to figure out what to get.

Although it was crowded, Bert and I snagged a table while WC and TC ordered our dessert...

This is what we were here for...

The ice was piled really high atop the three ingredients chosen by WC and TC...If you look closely, you can see the condensed milk topping on the shaved ice...looks a bit yellowish.

The three ingredients chosen were: red rice cake, red beans,and longans:

It was like eating halo halo but on a plate...and with less ingredients...and with no ice cream. I really liked how fine the shaved ice was. The red rice cake pieces were kind of big but I liked their chewiness. Don't you just love my lack of Photoshop skills? Ha ha.

There was a refrigerated case behind me that held a lot of food items - sausages, buns, and ingredients for the shaved ice, and some other stuff I didn't have a chance to get a good look at...

It was a really nice way to end our day! I neglected to mention in previous posts that this was the first time that WC and I met. She's super nice and very knowledgable about all kinds of cuisines. She'd given me tons of recommendations for our Portland, Chicago (and Wisconsin) trips. The cool thing about blogging is the friends I've made through the blog whether it's just through comments, emails, or actually meeting in person for lunch and dinner. I think it's always nice to place a face with the name too!

Knowing that I love checking out grocery stores, she offered to take us to her favorite one.  Unfortunately, since our time was tight, I told her one day she'll have to take me grocery shopping at the San Gabriel Superstore next time I'm up. I'm sure I would love it judging from her post. Our evening came to a close as we headed back to her place to retrieve our car so we could head down to my bro-in law's place in Aliso Viejo.

Yazmin Malaysian

After the JANM and our mochi cake fix, we headed over to the city of Alhambra, just 10 minutes away by freeway. We were going to meet the lovely WC of the blog Wandering Chopsticks and have an early dinner! Prior to meeting, she and I exchanged a flurry of emails about restaurant recommendations. What cuisine would we prefer? Anything we hadn't tried yet? We were willing to try anything and when Malaysian came up, our minds were made up!

Dinner ended up being at Yazmin Malaysian.

Sorry for the wonky ass formatting. Blogger changed up how you edit photos and I am still getting used to this. So, the above photo is not centered anymore because I messed with something in the 'edit' mode and I am too lazy to figure it out.

As always, the Yelp reviews are a mixed bag ranging from people who praised how authentic this place was to those who totally hated it. Not having had Malaysian before (other than variations of certain dishes that were Indonesian), I have nothing to compare it to. The restaurant itself was pretty large with huge tables in the midddle and booth seating on each side.

Since we're talking about the interior, check out the purple neon lighting!

The 80's are back. With a killer vengeance.

In the upper left hand corner (photo below), you can see part of a garland. They had these garlands that had "Malaysia"photos on them. It looked like a travel agency threw up all over this place. But that wasn't a big deal to me. I'm used to tacky decorations in Asian restaurants. We got in  before it started to get crowded. We sat in one of the side booths...

This placard had their new new appetizer "specials" . There were a few things we wanted to try.  By the way, I should let you know that I pretty much had WC choose the items since she'd been here before (but hadn't blogged it). I'm sure her blog post about this place is forthcoming...

So this was one of our first appetizers, the Rempang Udang - "Grilled glutinous rice with spicy grounded shrimp and wrapped in a banana leaf. You have to eat this warm; if you let it go cold, the rice will get hard and it won't taste as good.
Next up was the Otak Otak - "Grilled fish paste with coconut milk, chili, spices, and lime leaf wrapped in banana leaves". It was also served with a Sambal which was pretty hot for me. I really like this one - it reminded me of fish cake but with a kick.

This was the Roti Canai - which was a thin flat bread that reminded me of a really really thin and flaky tortilla. ($1.50 each) WC also ordered a side of curry sauce in which you dip the roti canai...

We also had a side of coconut rice ($1.00) - rice flavored with coconut milk. The flavor was really subtle. They also had Hainanese rice (also $1.00) that I was curious about - it's chicken flavored, but maybe next time.

We wanted a rice dish, so we chose the Nyonya Nasi Goreng - "Nyonya fried rice served with shrimp, egg, and grounded dried shrimps, topped with shredded cucumber". I've never had fried rice with cucumber before.By the way,  I don't consider that "shredded" but more like "julienned".

After some deliberation, we chose the Beef Rendang, described in their menu as "tender chunks of beef simmered with coconut and lemongrass in a rich curry sauce". I've had this a few times before at Bali Thai/Indonesian in Mission Valley (see post here). The first time was awesome with the meat being so tender it was like a dream come true. The second and third time, the meat was kind of hard and didn't seem like it simmered long enough. This beef rendang had a combo of chunks and shredded chunks...

Next was a noodle dish - the Char Keui Teow - "Penang style stir fried flat rice noodles with bean sprouts, shrimps, chicken, eggs, and leeks". It can also be served "spicy" or "non spicy". We got it non spicy for TC's sake, but I kind of wish we ordered it spicy. I really like the texture of the rice noodles (so exotic for this Filipina chick) but the sauce was too mild.

Next up - Chinese dessert!