The rambutan and shrimp salad was a refreshing dish that’s new to me. The tropical sweetness of the rambutan fruit echoed the fresh sweetness of the shrimp. Each shrimp was cooked perfectly, still tender and delicate inside. The thinly sliced onions also added a nice pungent kick to the salad.

As my main, I ordered their namesake noodles with beef. Like other Thai noodle places, the bowls come in two sizes: small and regular. The small size was perfect after polishing off the shrimp salad by myself. The broth was clearer than that of Thai boat noodles, but stronger in flavor than the delicate beefiness of pho broth. Its flavor reminded me a bit of beef bouillon, so maybe they put some of that in there as well as the usual Thai seasonings like lemongrass. I did spot some boxes of pho bouillon on some shelves in the kitchen.

An added bonus to Wat Dong Moon Lek is that they have a decent selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes, which means the BF’s more likely to come here with me. My second time here, we ordered the dish of fried taro cakes, which were crunchy on the outside but soft and savory on the inside. These were really good, but the sweet and sour sauce it came with tasted like it came straight out of a bottle.

Wat Dong Moon Lek may not be Sapp Coffee Shop, but it serves decent Thai food in a pinch, is close to my house, and parking doesn’t seem to be an issue. Those points alone mean I’ll probably be making return visits when I get the craving for Thai but don’t want to drive to Thai town.

Wat Dong Moon Lek
[map]
4356 Fountain Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 666-5993

The drink is served on ice, which may seem like an odd choice for a cold holiday beverage, but one sniff of the spices made me think of pumpkin pie and eggnog. The recipe’s in this month’s issue of Imbibe Magazine on pg 45. I’d post it, but this issue is particularly good and worth getting because of all the holiday drinks it highlights.

Reading this third book re-emphasized one important aspect of Martin’s writing: no one is safe. There were times where I wanted to throw the book down in frustration and just close the cover completely because so many of the characters I was rooting for were dying. Don’t come reading these books if you want a happy go-lucky ending.

Martin does an incredible job of setting up an incredible battle to come as well as tying together some loose strings to keep me satisfied, but there was also a lot of religious back and forth which I’m usually not a fan of. The Lord of Light versus the Lord of Darkness is an obvious parallel to Christianity. The northmen who worship the “old gods” could very well be another name for Pagans. I hope Martin doesn’t take the coward’s way out and have the Lord of Light triumph over the seven gods and the old gods and all the other gods in the end. So far, he’s been doing a decent job of portraying heroes and villains of all sides so let’s hope he sticks to it.

One of the best things that can be said about this third book is the characterization. I began feeling compassion or at least understanding for a lot of the characters whom I thought of as villains in the first book. By no means do they become heroic or anything so drastic, but character motivations come through in a natural and convincing manner thanks to the way Martin writes. It’s true that many more people seem to be varying shades of gray in this book, but there are still those who are quite obviously good or evil.

The only bad thing about this novel is that it’s so long and dense with drama that I had to take a break from reading it after some parts. The treachery, deaths, and general conflicts in the book never get tiresome, but I felt too tense sometimes — thus the break. This is definitely something I’m going to be keeping on my shelves for many more re-reads.

The small eels with yellow chive, a famous dish in Shanghai was okay. It would have been better if it came to our table sizzling hot instead of just hot. The eels were tender, the sauce sticky and slightly sweet, and the dish was decent but lackluster.

Next was the stir fried eggplant with Chinese string beans. When the BF and I usually go to a Chinese restaurant, we either order the eggplant or the string beans, but I think this is the first time we ordered a dish with the two vegetables together. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this sooner. The eggplant was well cooked, hot, and oily. The string beans were the same. The dish was cooked well, but generic tasting.

We also ordered bean curd sheets with snow cabbage and edamame as an extra vegetarian dish. It’s usually a plain and comforting dish so I didn’t have high expectations for it, but it still managed to disappoint. The snow cabbage wasn’t washed well enough so every bite carried a bit of grit. It was not very appetizing.

I had come to this restaurant on the recommendation of an acquaintance that it had good xiao long baos as well as some unusual versions: vegetarian and spicy. The vegetarian version was a misnomer because it was actually pork and vegetable. The spicy, I didn’t try because I wanted just a classic xiao long bao to start with.

When I took the first bite, I was impressed by the skin. It was thin without being too thin and the top wasn’t too doughy. My dad, pointed out that the tops of each dumpling were too perfect and they were surely machine made. He asked about them to the waiter who confirmed that they just bought them elsewhere. What a disappointment! What kind of Shanghai restaurant doesn’t make their own xiao long baos? I was glad I didn’t order the spicy ones.

We also ordered the braised pork pump, one of my dad’s favorite dishes. This came out fall-off-the-bone tender and jiggling. The taste was good, but the meat was just too fatty — even for pork pump. Maybe it was folly for my dad and me to tackle such a filling, rich dish by ourselves because we ended up taking most of it home in a doggy bag.

I was excited to hear of a new Shanghainese restaurant opening in the area, but I was more excited to see vegetarian xiao long baos. The only place I’d seen it before was in Shanghai. Unfortunately, Spring Wave turned out to be a disappointment. No veggie xlb’s and the food wasn’t that good. Maybe it’s just a case of new-restaurant-itis but I hope they step up their game because they’re not going to last long in such a high-rent plaza if they don’t serve good food.

Spring Wave Restaurant
140 W Valley Blvd San Gabriel
CA 91776-3760
(626) 571-1178

Recipe (via Jeffrey Morgenthaler)

In a 16-oz mixing glass, combine:
1 sugar cube
-or-
¼ oz simple syrup
4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters*
Small splash water

Muddle together until sugar cube is dissolved (skip this step if using simple syrup, obviously)

Add:
2 oz rye
Fill mixing glass with ice and stir contents until well-chilled. Strain into Herbsaint-rinsed Old Fashioned glass. Twist lemon peel over drink to express oils, and discard peel.

* The BF used Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas bitters instead of the Angostura ones.

St. Germain is an elderflower liquor which is all the rage now. I’ve never actually had elderflower or smelled it, but this liquor smells a lot like lychee. I’ve noticed it’s good at giving drinks a hint of sweetness without making it too cloyingly sweet because a lot of it comes from the fragrance. In this cocktail, it plays the role of tempering the strong pine tree scent of gin. With the added lemon juice, the drink is refreshing — something that I wouldn’t mind drinking in the morning.

I like that the drink has almost a fluorescent sheen to it.  It’s a nice contrast from the richy, orange hue of the whiskey drinks I’ve been having.  It tastes as different as it looks from them.

Recipe (via LA Times)

1 1/2 ounces Plymouth gin
1/2 ounce St-Germain elderflower liqueur
1/4 ounce (1 1/2 teaspoons) simple syrup
3/4 ounce (1 1/2 tablespoons) fresh lemon juice

Pour the gin, elderflower liqueur, simple syrup and lemon juice into a shaker filled with ice. Shake, then strain into a chilled coupe.

I’m no Lady Randolph Churchill, but the BF made me a delicious one that’s a variation from the classic formula. Instead of using just sweet vermouth, he mixed dry with sweet. He also used a dash of the Boker’s Bitters he picked up over the weekend, which I’ll most likely devote a whole post about soon.  The bitters gave the drink a nice chocolatey after-taste. Using the mixture of dry and sweet vermouth (suggested here) also helped to make this drink taste more balanced (for me anyway) because it wasn’t too sweet.

Recipe (via art of drink):
Take 2 dashes Maraschino.
1 pony of rye whiskey.
1 wine-glass of vermouth.
3 dashes of Boker’s bitters.
2 small lumps of ice.

The BF then made himself another variation of the Manhattan. It was a little too sweet for my tastes, but he enjoyed it.

His recipe:

2 parts rye
1 part sweet vermouth
dash maraschino
dash agnostura bitters

garnish with lemon twist (zested over the chilled glass) or brandied
cherry (wish I had one!) in a cocktail glass or coupe.

The piece of lemon I included with garnish was great — it completely made the drink. Unfortunately, I think I put in too much gin compared to everything else because it tasted like a science project. Next time, maybe I need more dry vermouth. Or maybe I’m just not as big a fan of martinis as I thought.

Recipe:

• 3 oz gin
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz lemon brine
• 1 piece preserved lemon for garnish

Stir the gin and dry vermouth in a mixing glass with some ice cubes for about a minute. Stir in the lemon brine. Strain into a martini glass. Top with garnish.

To start us off is The Martinez, which is supposedly the precursor to the ubiquitous martini.  From just the color of this drink, you’d never guess it was related to 007’s drink of choice at all, would you? Other than the gin, it also tastes completely different from a martini.

While I do like all of the ingredients (maybe not the gin so much), this is certainly the case where the drink is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s thick without being syrupy, warming, slightly sweet, slightly bitter, and complex.

Recipe (via art of drink):
1 oz Plymouth Gin
2 oz Sweet Vermouth
1 Dash Angostura Bitters
2 Dash Maraschino

First off, The Slanted Door is not a cheap place.  Although the waitress had mentioned that they serve family-style where everyone can share everything, the portions were single-portion-sized and the prices were high.  The good news is that most of the food is decent if you’re not too critical of their take on ethnic foods. The BF, our dining companion and I all were fairly pleased with the meal.

We started with rice flour dumplings stuffed with a chopped peanut filling.  The filling tasted like a dry, gritty peanut-butter, which isn’t bad, but is strange.  The skin of the dumplings were sticky, chewy, and satisfying. I’ve had better, but this was pretty good.  I especially liked the citrusy sauce it came with.

clockwise from top left:  oysters, banh xeo, stir fried tofu, turmeric fish

I ordered a half dozen oysters on a half shell, which took longer than I thought it should to arrive.  All of them were fresh and delicious with that wonderful ocean taste. Our dining companion was more of a fan of gulf oysters which I’m told is sweeter but unfortunately weren’t available at The Slanted Door.

Next, we shared the the banh xeo. I believe there’s a vegetarian version, but we ordered the one with pork and shrimp. This was cooked expertly with a hot, crispy outside. The pork was a bit dry and overdone, but the shrimp was okay.  I’ve been so used to eating the vegetarian version that I was surprised when I had a mouthful of meat in one bite.  The meat doesn’t really add much to this dish though, so I’ll probably keep getting the vegetarian variety.

The main for the omnivores was turmeric fish with rice noodles tossed in a pineappple and anchovy sauce.  The fish, halibut, was way overdone, but at least it was spiced well with turmeric and dill.  The sauce was quite tart and sharp, which I really enjoyed.  I just wish that the fish wasn’t so overcooked that it resembled dry chicken breast.  What a waste of a perfectly good piece of fish.

The BF ordered the hodo soy beanery organic tofu.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that it had two different types of tofu: baked and fried.  The dish was bold in flavor with lemongrass and soy, which is great for those who are scared of bland tofu.

We also ordered a dish of stir fried young broccoli, but it was kind of a let down. Anyone can stir fry broccoli with garlic and maggi sauce and charge $10 for it.

Now that I’ve written my thoughts down about the place, maybe it wasn’t as good as I thought.  I do remember leaving it, thinking, “Hey, that was pretty good!” but maybe it was just not as bad as I had feared it would be.  The restaurant is right on the water with large windows everywhere; perhaps the nice ambiance swayed my opinion of the food.  Overall, the restaurant didn’t try too hard to reinvent ethnic dishes but rather just tried to make good food period, which I have to give them credit for.

The Slanted Door
1 Ferry Building #3
San Francisco, CA 94111