Bob's Shanghai 66

In a previous post, I talked about how there are a couple of Shanghainese restaurants in Rockville.  Well, I'm now going to talk about the other one.  This is the sister restaurant of Bob's Noodle 66, which relocated to its own space across the street.

After having here been here twice for dinner, I will list out some of the dishes that I liked and which I recommend.  Some items here are on the main menu, which the restaurant calls Shanghainese tapas.  These don't come with rice, for some reason.  There are also some off menu items as well, which do come with rice.  So here it goes.

Spicy Lamb

I had this dish during my first visit to the restaurant and stood out out of every dish I had.  The lamb is cooked with two kinds of chili peppers and garlic, making the dish very fragrant.  To my surprise, it's not as spicy as it looks.  Even my parents, who are afraid of spicy food, really enjoyed this.

Double Cooked Pork (Twice Cooked Pork)

Like the lamb, this dish is also spicy, as you can probably tell from the chili oil.  The pork is cooked by itself first, then cooked again with napa cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, and bell peppers, hence the named twice cooked pork.

AA Choy (Arden Lettuce)

Something strange about the menu is that there are no exclusively vegetable dishes.  They are only listed off menu and are usually steamed and sautéed with garlic.  I strongly suggest getting one of these dishes to provide some balance to the meal.  I like this vegetable because this is probably the only restaurant in the area that serves this vegetable.

Rockfish

I'm a big seafood fan.  And any restaurant that serves steamed whole fish always impresses me.  This is off the menu as well and is listed in a back corner of the restaurant.  It's cooked with leeks, scallions, cilantro, and oil then finished with soy sauce.  There are other ways it can be prepared, such as spicy with a chili garlic sauce.  But for a clean white fish like rockfish, steamed is the way to go.

Taiwanese Shaved Ice

Although it is not Shangainese per se, it is a popular dish back when it was still a Taiwanese restaurant. This is commonly eaten in Northern China during the summer when it can get very hot, and I know from experience having been to Beijing.  It's basically a mountain of finely shaved ice topped with a  choice of toppings.  This one has adzuki (red) beans, two kinds of jelly, and honey.  

Now they also serve soup dumplings as well.  There are two kinds: pork and pork with crabmeat.  But I find that the dumplings are not authentic.  The skin is much thicker and darker than the ones at Shanghai Taste.  

Bob's Shanghai 66
305 N Washington St.
Rockville, MD 20850

Lotte Plaza: A Hidden Spot for Korean Food

If there is one thing that Ellicott City is known for, its the Korean community and the businesses that they operate along Baltimore National Pike.  There are many Korean owned eating establishments, like restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores.  One of these markets is Lotte Plaza, a nationwide chain that began in Silver Spring, MD.

This post is not about the supermarket; its about the food court inside the market.  This place is really a hidden gem when you consider that most people only know about the barbecue joint Honey Pig, which isn't all that great in my opinion.  This is an excellent place to get good food made with ingredients from  the market at affordable prices.

There are four main stalls here, serving a variety of Korean and Japanese fare, and a bakery.

Ikkyu

Basic Japanese fare is served here.  Curry rice, tonkatsu, soba, and tempura are just some of the offerings available.

Au Rang Sushi

As the name suggests, this place serves sushi rolls.  They can be purchased individually or as part of a bento box.  There is also a variety of spicy seafood soups available.

Seoul Soondae

Also as the name suggests, this place serves soondae, Korean style blood sausage with rice.  This is the more adventurous stall here.  The signature dish is the soondae platter with boiled pig's blood, tongue, and intestines.  They also have something called jukbal, which is broiled pig's feet that is served sliced.

Manna

This is my go-to place when I'm in the market.  Manna has stall has two parts: A main stall and a satellite stall.  The main stall serves traditional Korean soups, noodles,  and ramen.  The 20+ variety of soups here show how Koreans are absolute soupholics.  The cost will be around $6-$11.  My favorite is the soondooboo, which is a spicy tofu soup with clam, shrimp, and baby octopus.  The satellite stall serves Korean snack foods like mandu (dumplings), fried rice, and dok bokki (spicy rice cakes).

SB Bakery

This is a typical East Asian bakery serving a variety of breads.  There's a variety of sweet breads, breads with fillings, and cookies.  My personal favorites are the butter cream and sweet cream buns.

Shanghai Taste

This may be a shock to some people, but there is much larger variety of Chinese cuisine.  Shanghai cuisine is quite different from its Cantonese counterpart, which is served in most Chinese restaurants.  And I was so happy to hear that there is a couple of places that served this kind of food in Rockville.  One of them is Shanghai Taste.

I actually have driven past the location of this restaurant many times before during high school to my club swimming practice at the Rockville pool at the end of the road.  But it was only in 2012 that this placed opened, replacing an old Chinese takeout.  This is another example of a hole in the wall as there are at most 20 seats in this restaurant.  There are two menus here: one with takeout style food and the other with 

This food isn’t new to me or my family.  My mom likes to order certain dishes to gauge the quality of the restaurant, such as Shanghai chow mien, hau fu, rice cake, and soup dumplings, if offered.  I don't know why she does it that way, but I went with it.  

To start, we had hau fu and smoked fish.  Both are cold dishes.

Hau fu is a vegetarian dish.  It contains gluten, wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and bamboo shoots.  It’s amazing and apparently labor intensive to make.  My mom tells me of how her aunt or my grandaunt, originally from Shanghai, used to make the greatest hau fu ever.  Mom never knew how it was made.  My guess is that the ingredients are cooked down, marinated, and chilled in the savory sauce for about a couple of days.  

The smoked fish is fried, cut up into steaks, and then covered in a savory brown sauce.  The fish was really good with all of that sauce, but filled with a lot of little bones.  I ended spitting out the bones while eating this.  This dish isn't for everybody, but if you can tolerate fish bones, it's a must have.

Next came the Shanghai chow mien and stir fried rice cakes.

 

Personally, I didn’t find anything special about the noodles.  It was just egg noodles stir fried with Chinese broccoli and beef.  But the rice cakes were actually quite good, albeit very greasy.  It's served with bean sprouts and pork.  Cooking this requires precision and skill.  The cakes are very sticky, so they must be soaked well or else it will be impossible to cook them.  The wok is then well oiled to ensure that the cakes won't stick.

The main event was the soup dumplings served with ginger infused vinegar, the quintessential food of Shanghai.  They are filled with pork and gelatinous soup, which liquefies during steaming.  Wow, this was just unbelievably good.  The dumpling skin is thin, but is still able to hold the pork and liquid soup.  The soup is light and aromatic.  Although this may look simple, eating it is an art form that requires specific directions to be followed:

1.     Place the dumpling in spoon.

2.     Pour the vinegar into the spoon with the ginger.

3.     Nibble the side of the dumpling and suck out the soup.  If you take a big bite, the soup will splatter all over you.

4.     Eat the rest of the dumpling with the vinegar and ginger.

To my surprise, my dad ordered a special dish, Hainan Chicken Rice.  It’s half a deboned fresh, not frozen, chicken in soy sauce, served with rice cooked in chicken broth and fat, ginger and chili sauces, and seaweed soup.  The chicken was absolutely fresh and delicious.  The skin very loose and quite gelatinous, which is caused by the chicken being shocked in ice water after cooking.  It was so good that my dad got another order for carryout.  To me, this is one of my favorite dishes ever, along with the soup dumplings.

They only prepare 5 chickens a day, or 10 orders.  This is not on the regular menu.  It’s on a red sign written in Chinese near the front door. 

Our dessert was a pastry filled with red bean paste and pine nuts.  I was really amazed by how flaky the pastry was.  The bird's nest texture of the outside is really cool.  The pine nuts did surprise me since I didn't realize that pine nuts were used in Chinese cooking.  Or that there were any pine trees in the Shanghai area.  

Personally, I would come here just for the soup dumplings and the chicken rice in the future.  It’s very authentic, just like the way they make it in Shanghai.  I don't know how many people order the chicken rice, but there's a reason why it's the national dish of Singapore.  There are many more dishes that are good as well.  Shanghai is also known for noodles in soup, which this restaurant has plenty of. 

Shanghai Taste
1121 Nelson St 
Rockville, MD 20850

Lunch Specials: La Limena

Now it's time for the second installment of Lunch Specials!

For this special, I go to another Peruvian restaurant in Rockville.  Who knew that there is a significant Peruvian presence in the area?  Well, that's good for me and anyone that likes good food.

Tucked away in strip mall covered up by IHOP (cue the vomit) when driving down Rockville Pike is La Limeña.  Not only is it in the strip mall, it's located in a far corner, so it took a bit of a walk from the main parking lot.

I came here for something that they have on Fridays.  And it's only $9.50!  So what is it exactly?  It's a bowl of whatever soup they make that day and a big plate of arroz con pollo (rice with chicken).  And I do mean BIG.

 

The rice cooked with cilantro, giving it its green color.  The chicken varies week to week.  In my previous visit, the white meat was cooked in cilantro while the dark meat was used in the soup.  In my first visit, it was rotisserie chicken or pollo a la brasa, which is divine by the way.  It's made fresh everyday and you see it when you first walk into the place.  

 Everything you get also comes with a little plate of two sauces: ají verde (spicy) on the left and huancaína (mild) on the right.  Great for the dipping the chicken.

So next time on your Friday lunch, head on down to 765 Rockville Pike and start your weekend off with a nice big lunch.  I mean, its Friday after all, what could go wrong...

Dinner at Yuraku: A Oceanic Feast

When I posted on my time at Yuraku's lunch buffet, I said that I would talk about what it's like to have dinner there.  This is no ordinary dinner.  This is a gorgefest of oceanic proportions.  A dent to the world's supply of seafood.  Well, sort of.  But I can say that the sushi overall is of better quality during this time.  

As my family and I look through the menu, we receive a bowl of carrot, celery, and cucumber sticks with a dipping sauce.  The one thing I always get here is the platters of sushi, sashimi, or a combination of both, which come in a variety of sizes.  The one my family got consists of 4 rolls and 66 pieces of nigiri sushi and sashimi.  The one thing I always get here is the platters of sushi, which come in a variety of sizes.  But I will get to that in a bit.  

Before we get our sushi, we get additional complementary items.  First, a small egg custard called chawan mushi, with fish cake slices.  

Then, a plate of grilled salmon head and collar, which I absolutely love.  They only serve half of a head.  Since we were all excited about it, we devoured it like a pack of wolves before a picture could be taken.  So here's one from a previous visit.

Finally, the house salad of lettuce and cabbage served with a peanut dressing.

Now on to the main course.  The combo platter: it's massive, colorful, and diverse.  A barrage of seafood such as squid, octopus, mackerel, tuna, white (albacore) tuna, toro, salmon, salmon belly, red snapper, flounder, yellowtail, and clam.  Dragon, tempura, eel, and masago rolls round out the platter.  As a sushi purist, I just eat the sashimi and nigiri, which was all good for me.

Somehow we managed to finish every single piece.  As we got our check, the dessert arrives to our table.  This time, it's hand rolls, or temaki, filled with salmon and masago.  At this point,  none of us could bare to eat anymore.  But we managed to anyways, overwhelmed by how amazing the service was.  

Disclaimer:  We were only able to get all of the complementary items by spending a substantial amount of money on the platter ($100).  And I believe they only give the fish heads to Asian clientele.  Finally, since my family and I have been coming to this place for years, I have to admit we do get some special treatment.