Eat. Travel. Eat!

Kobunga Korean Grill, a fast-casual Korean barbecue restaurant, is opening its first brick-and-mortar outlet at the USC Village, a multi-use residential, dining, and shopping complex located adjacent to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus. Funded by Kickstarter , Kobunga aims to make Korean barbecue accessible to the larger population. They recently soft-opened (this Wednesday) and will be having their grand opening this Saturday. Housed in a small storefront, no seating is available inside the restaurant, although ample outside seating is available. Ordering is done at the counter, and one can wait on the side for their order. Menu options include a "Build Your Own Plate" option as well as a salad driven option where two types of greens can be paired with a choice of dressing and protein. The Build Your Own Plate option includes a choice of protein (Short Ribs, Bulgogi, Pork Belly, Marinated Chicken, and Soft Tofu), base (brown rice, white...

Mercado La Paloma, a local community gathering place, is also home to a fine hodgepodge of quality restaurants--Thai, Ethiopian, American, Mexican, and Yucatecan cuisine can be found here. Chichen Itza, the restaurant that consistently has the longest queue of all the restaurants, specializes in Yucatecan cuisine (southeastern Mexican cuisine)-- the menu is filled with unique regional specialties . After ordering in person at Chichen Itza's counter, one receives a wooden stand with a number (for the employees to keep track of where to bring food to). Prior to the arrival of the food, an employee will bring over beverages as well as Chichen Itza's house Habanero Hot Sauce. It's a potent, fruity, extremely spicy, and slightly acidic hot sauce.

Alongside the Chinese Food Truck , the University Park neighborhood now has another authentic Chinese food truck-- Bamboo Wheel. Bamboo Wheel is actually a food truck version of Bamboo Creek, which is located Monterey Park, CA, and offers a regular menu of entrees and rice dishes (curry, beef stew, pork stir fries), noodles, a chinese burrito (aka jian bing ), homemade wontons, and stewed eggs and preserved vegetables. Like the Chinese Food Truck, the menu is mostly written in Chinese, with smaller English subtitles. Daily specials are also offered by the food truck, although these are only written in Mandarin (ask the employees for the translation)--these change, but items like da pan ji (spicy chicken), dou hua yu (tofu fish), hui guo rou (twice cooked pork), and stir fried rice cakes have been featured when I've visited in the past. Apt for the primarily USC student customer base, payment can be done by cash, but also credit card through their Square application. For ...

Last Saturday, the first Southern California branch of CREAM (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me) opened in University Gateway, an apartment/shopping complex located adjacent to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus in Los Angeles, California. Based out of Northern California , CREAM aims to provide reasonably cost, proprietary and high quality products with friendly service in a "fun and relaxed atmosphere," and is an extremely popular dessert outlet in Northern California. CREAM happened to offer free ice cream sandwiches (normally 2.99 USD) to all customers on their opening day, so I decided to I checked it out. There was quite a queue outside during opening night (took around 30 minutes!), but music from KXSC radio, a raffle for more free CREAM sandwiches, cheerful and motivated employees, and a complimentary drink holder made the wait doable. Inside , CREAM was bustling, with lots of employees running around, scooping ice cream...

Previously, authentic chinese food options were quite limited in the University Park neighborhood. Bamboo Express in the former University Village food court offered some authentic options if you knew how to read the chinese only menu, as well as how to pick options from the steam tray that were not geared for the typical Americanized Chinese palate. However, now Bamboo Express no longer exists, with the demolition of the University Village for the new USC Village. Thankfully, this fall, a new food truck offered some authentic Chinese options: the Chinese Food Truck. The Chinese Food Truck offers quite a lot of authentic Chinese options previously unavailable in the area, from potstickers, dumplings, and wontons to noodle dishes, like the spicy and sour rice noodles and sesame sauce cold chicken noodles. Some options are also only written in Chinese, so it would probably be best to translate them yourself or bring a friend who can read Chinese for some assistance. Most of the ...