Operation HB - Stage Four

I was about ready to give up on finding a good Chinese restaurant near us. U kept talking about two places near his work, but he admitted neither were very good... Then one day he mentioned he had spotted a new place on his drive home.

I wasn't keen about another meal of bad Chinese, but gave in as he seemed so excited. My apprehension deepened when we got to the neighbourhood and parked in a game center - walking between rows of pachinko machines to get back out to the street. I was about ready to turn around and leave when we walked into the restaurant. It was full of older drunk men - the restaurant featured course menus and all-you-can drink sets.

When we walked in a middle-aged woman bustled up to us and then dashed to the back of the restaurant and began clearing off a table in a frenzy. Given the half-drunk glasses of pop and piles of pokemon cards I guessed it was normally where the woman's son sat while his parents worked (a glimpse into the kitchen proved there was a single middle-aged man hard at work).

We ordered our usual - mapo tofu, boiled dumplings, and chicken with cashew nuts. The mapo tofu came out first - in a bowl that would have looked at home in a kitchen just about anywhere. And the contents? Tasted Luke a home cooked meal too. A GOOD home cooked meal. I took one bite and looked at U with a big grin. It was good. Nothing fancy, nothing special, just good (non-Japanese-ized) Chinese food. The chicken with cashews was similarly good, and the dumplings had a meaty skin that screamed hand-made.

Definitely not the place to have a fancy meal, and MILES away from the uber fancy hotel top Chinese restaurants so common here, but finally we had food somewhere for a good Chinese meal.

All of the groups of drunken men had staggered off by the time we finished and the son had reappeared and looked rather annoyed to find his piles of pokemon cards disturbed. The waitress gave us a big smile when she came to gather our plates, however, and I thanked her for such a delicious meal, commenting that we had been having trouble finding good Chinese. She positively beamed at me, and called through to her husband in the kitchen, relaying my comment in rapid-fire Chinese. He poked his head out through the curtain and nodded at me with a smile.

We went back to the game centre and U beat me in a game of table hockey before we, and our very satisfied tummies, headed home.

Operation HB - Stage Three

We drove past an interesting (read packed to the rafters with random stuff) used furniture store a couple of times - always commenting that we should check it out. Then the day we did decide to stop, U spent so long circling the block to find a "better" entrance to the parking lot of the golf mega-store next door (with me repeatedly pointing out the single entrance) that they were closing up as we arrived (and I was more than a little grumpy). A quick look around proved that it was a unique place - but it carried mostly industrial sized cooking equipment.

U tried to make peace with me by suggesting that we have dinner out - and suggested the Chinese restaurant across the street.

I was a little nervous at first as the interior was very stark and severe, and the waiter was almost aggressive in his recommendation of the all-you-can-drink course menu. The large extended family beside us proved that wasn't the only menu option and the antics of their youngest members kept us entertained as it turned out service was slooooow. The first dish to finally arrive was mapo eggplant, which would have been fine except for the fact that eggplant doesn't always agree with my stomach and we had ordered mapo tofu. So, despite how hungry we were, we sent it back.

Next came the boiled dumplings - thick chewy skins, juicy and flavourful fillings - definitely two thumbs up!

Next up was U's favourite - chicken and cashew nuts. Unfortunately there was little flavour, and what flavour there was was oddly similar to the dumplings despite totally different ingredients.

Finally the mapo tofu came, and perhaps it was because they had been rushing due to the mixup over the order, but the dish was burnt. Hidden under the flavour of burnt oil and chilis was what seemed to be a nice dish, but we could barely choke it down.

Unfortunately one excellent dish could not make up for the cold atmosphere, poor service, and expensive prices. So, although we are willing to go back and pig out on dumplings, our search continues...

Operation HB - Stage Two

After having to resort to shopping mall Chinese food to get our fix, both U and I decided we had to do something about our Chinese food craving. I pulled out my iPhone and googled Chinese restaurants in our neighbourhood.

The first place to come up was located above the train station and had pretty bad reviews (bad food, no atmosphere, rude service...) so we quickly continued our search.

Next up was a place that had decently rated food but seemed to have a wide fan base. We knew the area it was in and had no trouble finding the restaurant. The atmosphere was great and we were both very excited about the possibility of having found such a fun place. We ordered our standbys - mapo tofu and hui guo rou (pork and cabbage stir fry).

The mapo tofu came and neither of us knew what to say. The dish had no meat or veggies, just chunks of tofu in a brownish clear sauce that could really only be described as "gloop." It was nearly as bland tasting as it was bland looking. Instead of being rich and spicy it was cloyingly sweet.

The hui guo rou proved to be similarly weakly seasoned - this time the strongest flavor was burnt cabbage and sauce.

The jasmine tea was lovely but at 300 yen each for the pot, that was to be expected!

If the same restaurant listing site hadn't recommended a fabulous little Thai place we now frequent regularly, we'd have given up on Mr. Google. As it was, we were very disappointed to discover the food nowhere measured up to the atmosphere.

The search continues...

Operation H.B. - Stage One

While we were still moving in to the new place but before we had moved everything there were a number of nights when we stayed at the new place but had no fridge or any real kitchen supplies. In the evening we'd climb into the car and head out - pick a direction and drive a round until we found somewhere interesting... or at least that was the idea. Most of the time U would keep driving, turning down restaurant after restaurant for some imagined flaw. I'd get hungrier and hungrier and more and more annoyed, finally snapping at him to stop somewhere ANYWHERE! SOON! GRRRRR!!

One such night, after not finding anything that was up to U's standards, he pulled into the parking lot of a three-story Itoyokado shopping mall (attached to a similar three-story Aeon across the street). Dinner, he announced, would be eaten in the food court. I wasn't terribly impressed that we had driven past loads of restaurants to end up at the food court, but by that point I just wanted dinner. We walked into the mall and the first thing we saw was a Chinese restaurant - with a display case of bowls of plastic ramen and... MAPO TOFU! I walked into the restaurant without looking back at U to see if he was following me.

After ordering I finally looked about the restaurant and noticed that out of the 8 tables occupied five had couples or families, and all but one (us included, of course) were racially mixed couples. I pointed this fact out to U, and smooth character that he is, he immediately craned his neck to look around and stare at all the other customers... Nice...

We ordered hoikoro (my Japanese dictionary is telling me it is "twice cooked pork (Szechuan dish) (chi: hui guo rou)) and mapo tofu. For food that was only a step up from fast food, it was surprisingly good. Although the hoikoro was rather oily, the mapo was flavourful and spicy.

The menu is rather limited, however, so although it offers a good quick hit of mapo, the restaurant is far from becoming our favourite Chinese eatery... Our search would have to continue...

Operation Happy Belly

I remember going to a party in high school held at the house of a new friend. I was rather wary of going at all as I didn't really know (in the sense that teenage girls don't "know" other girls they've spent years in the same classes but never actually shared a conversation) anybody but the hostess. I want to say it was a movie night, but I honestly don't remember. All I remember is that we were going to cook our dinner, or at least part of it. We were going to cook guylan, a Chinese green veggie. The problem was that nobody seemed to know how to cook it properly. Not that we hadn't eaten it before since it is a staple in North American Chinese food, both in restaurants and at home and of the half dozen girls there, a couple had been born in China, a couple had been born in Canada to Chinese parents, and the hostess was half-Chinese.

When I, the lone white girl (and newbie to the group), stepped up and started to cook the guylan (and properly too!) the kitchen fell silent. The other girls suddenly focused their attention on me - and it wasn't friendly. I wondered if I was going to have to start watching my back in the halls at school.

But the hostess dissolved the animosity with a single sentence - "her stepmom is Chinese!" the other girls laughed. Suddenly I was accepted, it was as easy as that.

Nowadays I'll sometimes say that gastronomically I'm half-Chinese. From when I was 13 to my early twenties my father was married to a Chinese-Canadian woman who happens to ne an AMAZING cook (urm... of Chinese food that is... her tofu quiche was significantly less than amazing... less than edible really!!)

Anyways, C makes a mean mapo tofu. And a really good chicken and cashew nuts. And... And... And...

Annnyways. This means that now Chinese food is my comfort food. Whenever I feel over-tired or stressed I get a craving for mapo tofu.

There was a great Chinese food restaurant near where U used to live and we went often. We found a good little Thai restaurant near our new place right away but good Chinese is proving harder to find. We're both committed to finding a good go-to Chinese restaurant, however, so Operation Happy Belly was born.

Stage one to come...