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...

Vincent Price Art Museum fail...

On the campus of East Los Angeles College is a museum and art gallery...

named after the great American actor, Vincent Price...

The Old Grape Vine and the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel

As mentioned earlier, we had to walk off those calories, right...

And since we were in San Gabriel, planned on seeing their local Mission...

Young Dong Tofu

We were able to meet up with Wandering Chopsticks at the Harry Potter Tribute Art Exhibit at Gallery Nucleus. Prior to our trip, she made several suggestions as to where we would go for lunch. Would it be Muslim Chinese? Vietnamese? Middle Eastern/Egyptian? We finally settled on a Korean tofu house, Young Dong Tofu in San Gabriel, just a few miles down the road from the gallery.

WC had never been here before so it was also an opportunity for both of us to "photo document" our experience...

Hwa Ro Korean BBQ

[Originally ate here the day before we went to Yoma...this trip was last month...]

After our long day of having Cambodian food for breakfast, lunch at Long Beach (and experiencing some wind whipping sand in our eyes), as well as sweet in Little Tokyo and checking out historical sights in Hi-Fi, we headed over to our hotel and crashed for a tiny bit before venturing out for dinner. That was a pretty damn long sentence there. Bert wanted Korean so I checked what was around and this place was nearby, Hwa Ro Korean BBQ...It was in this huge Asian business complex. Parking was crazy there.

It ws pretty dark in the restaurant so I didn't take too many photos. It was also getting quite busy (it was around 7:30'ish)...They sat us towards the back near this prep area where we saw the workers getting ettuce and panchan ready for the diners. It was also near the kitchen.

Bert wanted to have meat, so we got the Bulgogi and the Pork Belly for the grill...

We also ordered chapjae...

Bert's Korean beer, Hite (he didn't want the OB this time)...

Here's some of the panchan...they gave us some chapchae noodles, potato salad, bean sprouts and some other slivered pickled vegetable, which we didn't really like.

More of that panchan - kim chee, the potato salad (again), some spicy thing (sorry, don't remember what it was, but it smelled fishy too), and tofu.

Here was our bulgogi which cooked up quite nicely on our tabletop grill.

The pork belly, on the other hand, was kind of a waste. We ended up burning it, but not to a crisp. We should have turned the heat down on the grill. I guess I was thinking it would be like Buga where the servers take care of grilling your stuff for you. Anyhow, it was still kind of palatable, but I didn't particularly care for burnt pork belly.

Green leaf lettuce for our dinner...

We also were served soup...you can see some of the tofu cubes in there and hidden in the murky depths were pieces of seaweed.

Our grill in action. The pork belly pieces before they got burnt.

And here is our chapchae which came super late. We had to remind them about it. I think they forgot about it. So, we were pretty much done with the meat by the time this came around so we bagged it and took it back to the hotel where we ate it for breakfast the next day.

Here's the view while coming up the ramp from the parking structure. You can see some of the other businesses there. On the bottom left, you can kind of make out "Strawberry Cones" (my photo is blurry after all). When I saw this post by Kirbie, I thought it looked familiar. Here's her post and whaddaya know? It's the same complex. I noticed the address too so the Korean place is in the right corner (from this photo's viewpoint). After reading her post, I came to the conclusion that we ate at the wrong place. We should have tried Strawberry Cones' mochi pizzas instead.

That complex was totally busy! People were crowded at most of the businesses here. Ha, you can see our GPS thing on our dashboard! 

The San Gabriel Superstore and Yum Cha Cafe

[Preface - The following four posts occurred last weekend during my road trip to Pasadena with TORC, her husband and the Prof.  Because of this fuckery called "limited photo space on blogger" (yes, I've actually exceeded my limit! After nearly 4 years too!), I am in the midst of learning how to navigate flicker, as well as how to upload photos and use the html code and all this other shit that may be easy for the tecnically savvy. 

However, because I am not quite the technical savant, Bert has the fun job of trying dumb down the instruction to me so I can learn me the ropes.  I am in the process of learning how to transfer my photo files to flicker.  Hence, a couple of posts which should have been included in this marathon post, "Memories of a Forgotten War" and "The Pacific Asia Museum" will have to wait until I learn this newfangled mess! I really wanted to post on those two items since that was the main reason of our trip.  Anyhow, those posts will have to wait.]

After our mini tea & cake snack at Vanille, we headed over to the San Gabriel Superstore which is WC's favorite grocery store. Read up on the store here on one of her older posts. She's got waay better pix and descriptions of the store's offerings and general layout.

It was overwhelming seeing all of the different stalls...selling everything from clothing, knick knacks, electronics, jewelry and handbags...

Dried and sweetened coconut for the Lunar New Year

More dried snack items some of which included lotus seeds, potatoes, carrots, coconut and pineapple:

Pre-packaged ingredients for Vietnamese style sour soup (the long stalks are taro stems):

Lau Dua, also known as pandan leaf:

Knotted seaweed - gosh, someone had to tie a knot in each piece!

Pandan jam:

Durian jam! I wonder if this is any good?

Does this look like a sideways PENIS to you?  Okay, maybe I'm the only one with a dirty mind here.  But I still think it does, so there. 

"Three Ladies" Brand rice paper (WC's preferred brand)...I haven't tried these yet...must do. I still have my old package with the rose on it (Superman's wife's favorite brand):

Can you believe this knife was only $2.50? It was supersharp and highly recommended by WC. Both TORC and the Prof bought one.

Here's a product I'm not too familiar with...

The battle of the sardines - Ligo brand (Philippines) and Smiling Fish brand (Thailand):

Read WC's post on Yum Cha here...there's also a Yum Cha in San Diego inside Thuan Phat (the old Vien Dong III). While the food all around smelled so good, I had my eye on something else...

Which was this new item...the lemon grass roasted chicken!

I bought one of these babies! A whole chicken for $4.99! They chopped it up for me and I ate

several pieces on the way home!

The Prof bought one of the roasted ducks (actually just half). This is just a lone duck. She got a fresh one because they brought out another ring dangling with freshly roasted ducks.

It was a really long day - I didn't get home until 9:30 pm. Pasadena was such a pretty little town and I plan on going there again real soon with Bert and TC. Plus, I'd love to check out the Norton Simon Museum as well as the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) as well as other restaurants and dessert places...Road trip!