Eat. Travel. Eat!

A local Taiwanese restaurant chain specializing in breakfast and pastries, Yi Mei in recent years has also expanded to Monrovia, California, with a revamped, modern look. The Monrovia location takes on a modern, fast-casual concept, with the menu displayed on large television displays and ordering done at the counter. Condiments, like garlic soy sauce, chili oil, and vinegar, and utensils are located on a side table, and frozen items and pastries are located at another wall of the restaurant. Though breakfast is the main attraction--think a pastry, bread item, or rice item with soymilk--Yi Mei also offers a full lunch and dinner menu with various noodles, rice plates, and other Taiwanese specialties--that's the topic for today's post.

Oto-Oto Izayaka Japonaise may be a large chain restaurant, operated by Ramla Inc., the third-largest chain restaurant in Japan, but the food quality was decent enough for a friend to recommend it to us. To thank him for a year's worth of mentoring, we decided to surprise him here, and as expected, the dinner went very well. Holding a corner spot in a strip mall, one may think that Oto-Oto is small, but it is actually quite a decent sized restaurant, with a large number of booth tables and stand alone tables.  They were able to fit our 20+ attendees comfortably that evening along with regular patrons and a birthday party! Throughout the visit, the employees made sure that we all had enough water, although by the end of the visit, they were slightly less enthusiastic as we spent more than three hours in their restaurant. It happened to be happy hour while we were waiting for our special guest, and so I ordered a small appetizer: spicy trio cones. These consisted of sp...

After Macaroni Grill came Pioneer Point, whose existence was so short that I did not even get to write a full review about it . Now, this location houses Zen Buffet, a well-known buffet with multiple locations in Southern California, and it seems to be staying for the long run, with several more additions to the restaurant being made months after its grand opening. On a summer day, we went to check Zen Buffet out instead of visiting Souplantation , which we have been visiting in a much more frequent rotation compared to previous years.

I haven't had much success when looking online for a restaurant that we would end up returning to. Same story with restaurants that we have not visited before. What we always end up with are so-so visits. See these: HERE , HERE , HERE , and HERE for examples. So considering that I was the one who recommended this restaurant to my companions to try out one day for a weekend lunch, I was not expecting awesome results. Even if Yelp reviewers gave very positive results. But guess what? We loved it. And we have been going back since. This location used to be many different restaurants. Having grown up visiting this plaza weekly due to the close proximity to our old home, I've certainly seen it change as I have routinely come back to visit. The last owner of the location was a Korean restaurant. Now, it is a Shanghai restaurant. As for some history with Shanghai Bamboo House, it's been in California for quite a few years already. But, most of those years were spent in...

Focusing back to exactly a year ago: I had just redeemed some airline miles from United for our Boston trip so that we would have some gift certificates to use in Boston. I was able to redeem four certificates (worth 25 dollars) at Restaurant.com with my miles, but I only found three restaurants for our Boston trip. I didn't know what I would do with the last one. Then, I looked at the restaurants near my local area and one restaurant that popped out was Los Gueros Mexican Restaurant. It didn't look familiar (haven't seen it before), but it was right in our area! Months pass, and then I finally notice where it is. The gift certificate is still on the back burner, not used yet. And what does it mean when I am now doing a blog post? It means we visited it. Finally :). After parking at the adjacent parking lot, we went in and were immediately greeted by some of the Los Gueros staff. They seated us and their services came along. Our server came and gave us chips a...

Baja Fresh is well, another different "Fresh Mexican Grill" place. Unlike Chipotle though, the food is not made right in front of your face, but they do prepare it when you order. In addition, another plus is unlimited salsa, which Chipotle doesn't have. Also, there are free warm tortilla chips that come with your meal. It's something nice to munch on while you wait. What is this, you ask? All you see right now is a burrito with a slightly flaky, crisped up flour tortilla on the outside. Cut! Cut! Goes the plastic knife, and this is what greets you after stacking the now 2 piece burrito. What is it? Well, it's the grilled chicken cabo cobb burrito, which although seems like it is gone forever (well, you can't find it online), is still available at the Monrovia location. It is basically a very hearty salad that has well, become into a burrito. Lettuce, black beans, avocado, cojita & jack & cheddar cheeses (used sparingly), pico de gallo, and lots of fla...

***Update June 29, 2009 : Romano's Macaroni Grill is now closed, to the surprise of me and other people. It always was pretty busy, with plenty of customers, but yet now it is closed. All the signage is gone, and it feels very empty at the intersection. There's also a huge dumpster right next to it. What will happen? We do not know.*** It stands out from the other places in its block- an oddball perhaps. No other building uses exposed brick in the block, and none look that fancy either. It catches your eye, as you pass by Huntington and Fifth. Yes, there may be other restaurants in the area which are just as fancy, but none are comparable to this for the outside architecture. The interior is just as fancy. It seems almost if you were dining outside at a fair with the dangling lights. Each table is equipped with a huge piece of butcher paper which by the end of the meal, has been drawed all at, as well as a fine bottle of olive oil. Near the entrance, there is a kitchen, where ...