Ok, before everything else, I’d just like to put it out there that I’m not a fan of Chinese cuisine. That is to say it’s not something I’d ever imagine myself craving for. As far as my food preferences goes, it’d be [Filipino] native, then Japanese, then European ¹ Italian, etc., then Western … and lastly would be the “Oriental” ² Vietnamese, Chinese, etc. variety.

But for some reason, I was feeling adventurous this weekend – and I was intrigued by all this Chinese/Taiwanese hullabaloo surrounding the “new-ish” restos being mentioned by friends and in blogs.

First order of business was to have lunch @ Lugang and get some Happy Lemon afterwards. I was able to get Bok and Pao onboard on short notice, but due to some scheduling/parking concerns, we ended up eating in Shi Lin, Podium instead.

Shi Lin

Of course Xiao Long Bao is all the rage right now, and this would be the first time I’d get to taste it. And to make a long story short, I’m not a fan, honestly, given the choice, I’d take your run of the mill Shrimp Hakao (did I spell that right?) over it anyday.

I don’t know if this opinion is due to what was mentioned at the start of the post, or if the Xiao-Long-Bao-specific popularity is similar to the surge in milk-tea popularity (the latter, I am totally with hehehe) – in short, it may just be all hype as of the moment.

Moving right along – thanks to some blog which said something along the lines of “if there’s one thing you should do, is to try their rice bowls” we ordered the two most popular rice bowls. I guess they were ok. And I’m pretty sure the reason they didn’t do it for me was because of my aversion to some “chinese-specific” tastes – in the case of these two dishes, it was some kind of flavor that I could swear came from that powder they put on top of them. Kinda like a sweet, peppery flavor – which I never liked.

If I were you, I’d just order the fried rice with egg separately, as that tasted good 🙂

Dumplings were ok I guess, a dumpling is a dumpling is a dumpling 🙂

I am a fan of century eggs however, and really, how can you go wrong with them? They’ve got one taste that’s pretty consistent no matter where you eat them 🙂

Now this was a surprise; something I actually am craving for as we speak. Their Noodles w/ Sesame & Peanut Sauce was great! I’m going out on a limb and say that it was bit on the sweet side, but I though that richness of flavor really made it as appealing to me. Your mileage may vary, as not everyone likes really sweet stuff.

Erwin also bought some excellent Red Velvet cake from the stalls in the floor below… good thing they didn’t charge us any corkage fee 🙂

Sebastian’s

Another reason I didn’t mind the change in venue from our original plan was that it’s been ages since I last got some Sebastian’s ice cream. I just love that [local] brand, which I truly believe has got Cookie Dough flavored ice cream that can easily trump even the famous [imported] brands.

Pictured above is the Cookie Dough, Yakult, and Espresso – all of which in my opinion proves one thing I’ve always suspected with the brand: that its flavors are actually very accurate to the real deal. We even tried their Bleu Cheese and it was disturbingly accurate (it was salty instead of sweet, and I personally wouldn’t classify it as ice cream… more of cold cheese is more I like it) ³ Which is BAD for ice cream, but I guess is very good as far as “accurately getting the essence of a flavor” goes

Buffalo Wings and Things

Let’s now temporarily depart from Asian food and go Western, as Erwin mentioned this restaurant very close to my place… which Cris and I decided to have dinner at. Most of their Buffalo Wing flavors were of the spicy kind, so we were limited to choosing between two non-spicy flavors: Garlic Parmesan and Honey BBQ.

Cris and I decided to order a pound and split it between the two flavors and the results were surprising. We both expected the Honey BBQ to win since Garlic Parmesan sounded pretty simple and straightforward. But in reality, the latter won by a landslide, it was unbelievable how good it was – I’d literally choose to eat Garlic Parmesan from BW&T instead of say, Bon Chon or Chicken Charlie (both of which are of the Double-fried Country Chicken style that’s very popular as well)

Also make sure to get a side-order of Bleu Cheese (goes really well with the chicken, as they put a touch of sweetness on it) – and their iced tea is great!

Lugang

The next day, I decided to make good on my original plan and eat @ Lugang with Cris.

The experience was good; ambience, service, etc. But the food, given the price, I would have to say was a bit disappointing.

Again, I’m not sure if it’s because of my inability to properly “analyze” Chinese/Taiwanese food ⁴ as I’m not keen to their cuisine, or perhaps the quality has deteriorated from the time it opened. But I’ll explain anyways.

After checking in w/ Foursquare, all the tips I’m seeing form the app ⁵ And a friend also recommending it were to try the Xiao Long Bao – so fine, we order it. ⁶ Even after I kinda wasn’t impressed from the Shi Lin experience People say they make the best XLBs, so I thought maybe this time It’ll be different.

And I guess this is where I was sure that I really wasn’t a fan of it. For one, I couldn’t tell the difference between that and what we ate in Shi Lin – I had imagined that if this place was supposed to have the best Xiao Long Bao, there’d be something I would notice regardless if I was a fan of the dish or not… no such luck. In fact, even Cris said that given the choice… she’d choose the Xiao Long Bao from Mien San over this – and Mien San is ridiculously cheap compared to Lugang – so make of it as you will.

We spotted that they also had that “Noodle with Peanut Thingie” which I enjoyed from Shi Lin so we obviously ordered that. Long story short, I liked Shi Lin’s version better… much better.

Now, to be fair, Lugang’s noodles were good (the actual noodle consistency was superior, in fact) but as far as taste went, I guess it would just depend on what you prefer: sweetened (Shi Lin) or non-sweetened (Lugang). I personally preferred a sweet version because Lugang’s “non-sweet” version was bordering on bland to me.

The Hainanese chicken was good. But again, I didn’t notice anything “stellar” from it.

Then I was able to check out what their milk tea had to offer – it was ok… reminded me of Tokyo Cafe Milk Tea. The funny thing though, is that it had some similarities as well to the el-cheapo Nai-cha you could order from Chowking. But I guess it’s unreasonable to expect them to have awesome milk tea. If you’re after Milk Tea, go to a real Milk Tea place, simple as that 🙂

Which brings me to my conclusion of Lugang so far. The food is good, but not stellar – which is what you’d expect given the price. I personally don’t think the taste commensurates the price – especially if you could readily compare it to other, cheaper restaurants – and worse, actually pick the others over it. Go back to our Shi Lin orders; 3 dishes (4 if you count the Milk Tea) from Lugang cost us 1.4k whereas you can get double the amount for less from Shi Lin (and take note, the Xiao Long Bao tasted pretty much the same, and the noodles of Shi Lin were better tasting IMHO)

The good thing about this whole comparison is that I got to eat in these restaurants within a fairly small timeframe – so I can say with confidence that the “memories” of the “tastes” I’m comparing are legit; when I say the Xiao Long Bao tastes the same, or the noodles in Shi Lin are better, it’s because I just ate there, quite literally, the day before

But again, to be fair; we are entertaining the the possibility of having ordered the wrong dishes from Lugang as well. I mean if it’s Hainanese chicken were after, we might as well have eaten in Wee Nam Kee (which we intend to do) right?

So I guess we’ll give Lugang another chance someday, but I think I’ve been honest and transparent enough to give my opinion based on my exhaustively explained preference of food – so judge my assesment accordingly 🙂

Happy Lemon

Cris and I decided not to have dinner that night as we should be dieting, and God knows I’ve been eating like a motherfucker [these past few days]() – so we just had some Happy Lemon to finish the night 🙂