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

Cantonese Food Intro

Cantonese food is one of the most popular Chinese cuisine styles outside China. It is originally from the region of Canton (which is in Chinese Cantonese, and is called Guangdong in Chinese mandarin), a province in southern China.

Short Video About Deeelicious Cantonese Food!!

Canton (Guangdong) is at the lower right corner of the map, near Hong Kong :)

We can enjoy a huge variety of Cantonese dish besides dim sum. Cantonese food is typically and traditionally steamed, boiled or stir-fried. It is healthier because it uses less oil than other cuisines. The Cantonese believe that the less time vegetables are cooked, the better natural nutrition and flavor they can retain from the dish. Also, soup (which is usually a clear broth cooked with meat and other ingredients on mild fire for hours) is served before a meal, and white rice is usually accompanied with meals.

I will introduce some good Cantonese restaurants around Boston, as well as some of my favorite dishes in the next post. Please stay tuned!

Dim Sum in Chinatown

Hei La Moon, located at 88 Beach Street, Boston, MA 02111, is one of my favorite dim sum places in Boston. It has huge space with big tables, sometimes filled with people chatting loud, all of which remind me of home. For our family, we get together once or twice a week, share stories and often laugh out loud at dim sum tables.

Here are some of my favorite dim sum.

Shrimp Hargow: it is large and the shrimp and vegetable in it are quite flesh, a must-order dim sum :)

Shrimp Hargow

Pork Shiu Mai: it has tender pork and moist shrimp, packed with flavor and tightly wrapped.

Pork Shiu Mai

Steam Chicken Feet: steamed marinated chicken feet with black bean sauce, personal favorite! Strongly recommend it if you haven’t tried chicken feet and are adventurous like many of my American friends :)

Steam Chicken Feet

Sweet Egg Cake: soft and lightly sweet, and it will melt immediately when you take a bite, giving you a luxurious taste of egg cake

Sweet Egg Cake

Dim Sum First!

I think before introducing all the different kinds of Chinese cuisines beyond dim sum, I should probably talk about dim sum first—one of the most popular Cantonese food.

In my lovely hometown Toishan, a small city of Canton in southeast China, the lifestyle is kinda laid back. On weekends, I’d wake up at around 11 a.m. and then go with my family to enjoy dim sum for brunch till 2p.m., which starts one relaxing day.

Here are two simple tips when you go to a Chinese restaurant for dim sum. One is that dim sum is traditionally served with tea. So please try not order iced water unless you really need it. The other is that the whole theme of dim sum is steamed food. So you could stick to the carts and don’t order fried rice if you really want to try some authentic dim sum.

I will introduce some good dim sum places in Boston, as well as some of my favorite dim sum in the next post. Please stay tuned!

Welcome to my blog!

This blog is dedicated to introducing real traditional Chinese food to people in Massachusetts who are interested in this cuisine but have little knowledge about it.

Why did I start this blog? A simple reason: I have many friends from other countries and cultures who do not know what to order in at a Chinese restaurant. It happened to my friend Shweta. After she ordered her food at Island Hopper, the waitress, who  served the dish, asked, “Why did you guys order this dish? It’s Americanized Chinese cuisine.” This happened to my other friends too. So, I decided that I, a native Chinese (Cantonese), could start a blog with tips on what to order in a Chinese restaurant.

Every week, my badminton teammates and I usually eat out in a Chinese restaurant that we have never been to before. So I’m going to continue trying and reviewing one Chinese restaurant every week.

Speaking of Chinese food, many friends only know dim sum—a famous Cantonese food, but in fact, there are many other different regional cuisines from China, such as Sichuan food (actually it is misspelled as Szechuan food in many American Chinese restaurants), Shanghai food, etc. Chinese food is really MORE THAN JUST DIM SUM!

Please stay tuned and join me in this tasty journey with delicious authentic Chinese food that you can enjoy around our lovely Bean Town! :)