Cantonese Seafood in Quincy

Happy Thanksgiving, foodies! A special Thanksgiving edition: if you are seafood lover, maybe you often enjoy lobsters, but have you tried the lobsters cooked in the Cantonese way?

Here is the Steamed Twin Lobsters we ordered at East Chinatown Restaurant, located at 415 Hancock, Quincy, MA 02171. Fresh lobsters are steamed perfectly with minced garlic and scallion on top, and silk noodle under. I specially love the silk noodle, which is smooth and juicy because it absorbs the essence from the lobsters. Yum!

Steamed Twin Lobsters

Another seafood dish we tried was Sautéed Sliced Sea Whelks with Chinese chives. The sea whelks are sliced to the right thickness, not too thin and not too thick.  The sliced sea whelks tasted fresh and crunchy. Love it!

Sautéed Sliced Sea Whelks with Chinese chives

Taiwanese food in Allston

One really good Taiwanese restaurant in Allston is Jo Jo Taipei (I had a post about its lunch special earlier). Today, let's explore some of its best authentic Taiwanese dishes. Hope you are excited like me!! :)

“Three Cups” Chicken is a very popular dish in Taiwan, and the name “Three Cups” is originally from the three cups of required sauce for this dish, including soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. It comes in small portion, but still a small pot of delicious chicken. Recommend it!

“Three Cups” Chicken

Pork Chops with Sweet and Sour Sauce is a typical dish from Southern China, tender pork chops perfectly seasoned with homemade sweet and sour sauce, yum!

Pork Chops with Sweet and Sour Sauce

Sauteed Pig’s Kidney with Chili Sauce: I know I know, it is pig’s kidney, but if you wanna try something new and authentic like several of my friends, I think there is a good chance that you’d love the perfectly cooked dish with onion, green and red pepper. It is mild spicy though.

Sauteed Pig’s Kidney with Chili Sauce

Salted Fried Jumbo Crab: the flavor and the seasoning were great, but the crab was not that jumbo… The crab was so skinny, and honestly I could get much meat from the crab… It should be a perfect dish during the crab season though!

Salted Fried Jumbo Crab

Bow Bin: snowy-like crushed ice with fresh, homemade, sweet toppings (including red bean, jelly, etc.), and dressed with corn syrup and condensed milk. It is just a perfect refreshing dessert to finish off a big and satisfying meal!

Bow Bin

Cantonese Noodle in Newton

Today, my badminton teammies and I really craved for Cantonese noodles, and really wanted to explore one new restaurant that we have never been to, so we decided to try this noodle house—No.1 Noodle House, located at 51 Langley Road, Newton Center, MA 02459.

It is petite noodle house, nothing fancy about it. Like in a fast-food place, we ordered our noodles at the counter, and grabbed chopsticks and napkins by ourselves, but the only difference was that our waitress brought the dishes to our table. The owner and most of the staff are friendly Cantonese people.

I really recommend their Laksa, which is coconut milk and curry noodle soup. We ordered two Laksa—Seafood Laksa and B.B.Q. Pork Laksa. The noodle soup is a perfect combination of slightly sweet coconut milk and mild spicy curry. Yummy!

Seafood Laksa

B.B.Q. Pork Laksa

I don’t recommend any of their Stir Fried Noodles. We order two of them—Beef Stir Fried Noodle and Seafood Stir Fried Noodle, both of which were dry and had plain flavors…

Beef Stir Fried Noodle

Seafood Stir Fried Noodle

Sichuan Food in Cambridge

After the Sichuan intro in last post, now let's taste some real authentic Sichuan cuisine!!

Thailand Café, located at 302 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, is actually a Sichuan cuisine restaurant, despite its name—I am still confused why it is called that way. It is not a spacious and fancy decorated restaurant, but it is close to Harvard and MIT, and it has some good dishes (not every dish is great though). Here are the dishes we ordered:

Roast beef, tongue & tripe with chili-peanut vinaigrette: it is a hot appetizer. It is one of the best house special dishes. Tender beef with flavorful chili-peanut vinaigrette. Yummy! Strongly recommend it if you are into spicy food.

Roast beef, tongue & tripe with chili-peanut vinaigrette

Poached chicken with chili sauce: it is a hot appetizer. Tender chicken with authentic Sichuan chili sauce, and a mixed flavor if you eat it with the peanut on the top. Another dish I'd recommend :)

Poached chicken with chili sauce

Double cooked Chinese style bacon: it is not a spicy dish, so you might want to try it if you are not a big fan of spicy food. But I’ve had better in other restaurants which I’ll write about later.

Double cooked Chinese style bacon

Chong Tsing dry hot chicken: not recommend—it is supposed to be a hot dish, but to me, it is neither dry nor hot enough.

Chong Tsing dry hot chicken

Braised whole fish with Sichuan chili sauce: not recommend—it is supposed to be a spicy dish, but still, it is not spicy enough, and it even tasted a little bit sweet…

Braised whole fish with Sichuan chili sauce

Szechuan Beef

Chinese Lunch Special in Allston

For Chinese food lovers, one advantage of living in Allston is that you can easily find a decent, authentic and inexpensive Chinese lunch special around the neighborhood.

Jo Jo Taipei, located at 103 Brighton Ave, Allston, MA 02134, is one of my roomies’ and my favorite places when we crave for good Chinese food for lunch but don’t wanna spend too much money and time.

From Monday to Friday, each lunch special combo costs $6.99, including a soup, dish and rice. Pretty good deal! Here are four combos that my roomies and I had for lunch today. Yum yum :)

Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce

Beef Sauteed with Long Horn Peper

Fish Fillet with Sweet and Sour Sauce

Spicy Szechuan Twice-cooked Pork

Cantonese Food in Brighton

Let’s have some deeelicious Cantonese food! Joyful Garden, located at 1234 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton, MA 02135, is one of my favorite Cantonese/Hong Kong restaurants. Not only its food, but also its setting is very Cantonese. And I have to say that it is more spacious and cleaner than the restaurants in Chinatown.

We had jellyfish salad for appetizer. It is a refreshing cold dish with jellyfish, carrot and radish.

Jellyfish Salad

One of their Chef’s specialties is Hainan Chicken, which is a local specialty from the island of Hainan in China. Hainan was part of Canton before it became a province itself, so Hainan Chicken is still largely considered as a Cantonese cuisine. I looove the poached chicken served with fresh ginger and green onion sauce!

Hainan Chicken

We also had fried silvery fish with spliced salt and pepper. It is crispy and fried to perfection. Definitely recommend it if you are a fan of fried dish!

Fried Silvery Fish with Spliced Salt and Pepper

Any traditional Cantonese meal at least has one vegetable dish. We had sautéed bean seedlings with garlic. As I mentioned in the last blog post, we Cantonese like vegetables to be cooked as fast as possible, because in this way we could have better natural nutrition and flavor from the dish.

Sautéed Bean Seedlings with Garlic

As for fried-rice-lover, I strongly recommend their salted fish with chicken fried rice, which is a popular fried rice back in Canton and Hong Kong. Savory salted fish + tender chicken + fragrant jasmine rice = addictive yummy!

Salted Fish with Chicken Fried Rice