A Tasty Adventure in Los Angeles

Last weekend we headed down to Los Angeles with some friends to see the sights, go to Disneyland, and eat a bunch of food.  We did a hop on hop off bus tour and ate at all kinds of great restaurants like In N Out Burger, Umami Burger, and the Queen Mary.  My favorite part of the whole trip was, of course, our food tour given by my friend's cousin.  Here's a recap of our day.  Enjoy!

Stop 1:  Ricky's Tacos

We got the best fried fish and shrimp tacos from a little tent set up in a parking lot.  Everything was so fresh and flavorful.  Definitely not what I would expect from such a little set up.

Stop 2:  Mae Ting's

This is another tent setup in the same parking lot as Ricky's.  We had a pretty good green papaya salad, but the best was yet to come.  Mae Ting's is known for their coconut cakes.  They're hard to describe in appearance, but are kind of gelatinous and very coconut in flavor.  They top them with corn and sometimes egg yolk.  I have a love/hate relationship with coconut, so I was skeptical.  They were delicious.  I would go back and eat them again anytime.

Stop 3:  Santouka

My friend adores ramen, so our tour guide made sure to include it.  This place is well known for their ramen and is rumored to ship their broth in from Japan.  The ramen did not disappoint, which is not surprising given the number of people waiting in line to obtain it.  The broth had a full flavor and the noodles were cooked just right.

Stop 4:  KyoChon

We've all been on a wing kick lately, so we stopped by KyoChon.  We got a box of spicy and regular wings.  I enjoyed the regular wings, but my spicy tolerance wasn't high enough for the spicy ones.

Stop 5:  Flour + Tea

This is a bakery that has all kinds of tasty looking buns and baked goods.  We came for the mini mochi breads, but also picked up some buns for later in the process.  Everything was delightful.

Stop 6:  Donut Friend

Think of it as a classier Subway or Quizno's for your donut fix.  You choose your base donut (yeast risen or cake) then add fillings, frosting, toppings, etc to get your perfect donut.  We chose a yeast risen coconut donut, chocolate/orange marmalade/bacon cake donut, and speculoos filled caked donut topped with chocolate and crunched up graham cracker.  I wish they had one of these in Seattle.

Stop 7:  Shanghai Dumpling House

This place reminded me of Din Tai Fung.  They had amazing dumplings of all kinds, but my favorite was the xiaolong bao.

Stop 8:  Kang Kang Food Court

We had Shanghai pan fried small bao here, which were essentially steamed buns filled with meat and topped with black sesame and green onion.  I really wanted to like them, but there was a flavor I just couldn't get past and only ended up eating half of one before handing it off to Jeff.

Stop 9:  Half & Half Teahouse

To finish off our long day of eating, we stopped into this teahouse for bubble tea/boba/whatever you'd like to call it.  I couldn't believe how long the line was here.  Thankfully, our tour guide called in our order before we left our previous stop so we didn't have to wait long.  They unfortunately didn't have our usual Thai ice tea, so we went for milk tea with boba.  It was so sweet and tasty that I decided I might like milk tea better than Thai tea!  Who knew?