The Noodle Loft In Beijing

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China, Chinese, Food, Fruit, Meat, Noodle Loft, Noodles, Restaurant, Review, Soup, Sweets, Vegetables

On our final night in Beijing, we went to the Noodle Loft, a wonderful, stylish and definitely pricy restaurant focused entirely on many types of noodle, especially Shaanxi-Province-style noodles. Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations show visited the restaurant, which is how we’d found out about it.

The interior is very sleek and modern, with a nice color palette supported by chrome and elegantly clad waiters:

The menu was huge, and we decided to start with a napa cabbage soup before the noodle courses:

The broth was light and vinegary, perfect as a starter.

Now to tackle the many noodle options! Noodle Loft offers knife-cut noodles that are thick and chewy in texture, sort of like udon, “cat’s ears” noodles which are small, shaped like cat ears and reminiscent of gnocchi in texture, hand-pulled noodles, and “noodles made with one single chopstick,” which are extremely long.

My friend went with a buckwheat version of the cat’s ears noodles (a Shaanxi specialty) stir fried with vegetables and sauce. These had  lovely bite to them and were quite different from any other Chinese noodle dish I’ve seen.

My wife opted for the hand-pulled noodles with a spicy beef dipping sauce. These noodles tasted essentially like udon, but weren’t eaten in a soup:

Personally, I ordered vegetable noodles made with a single chopstick, which were green from the vegetables and so long, I felt like I gave half my plate away when I let the others at the table taste one noodle! I chose a typical Shaanxi-style dipping sauce consisting of a lot of vinegar with some dried spices. These noodles were wonderful, filling and just luxurious to bite into!

Now for dessert, Noodle Loft offers a variety of Western-style cakes (cheesecake, chocolate torte, etc), which my friend and wife went for. I on the other hand was determined to have a Chinese dessert on our last night in China, which left many obscure herbal jelly options (one had the character for turtle in the name…), as well as cooked birdsnests (outrageously expensive delicacy). I had initially settled for double-boiled hashima served in a papaya cup, because I love papaya:

The menu depicted it like this:

I figured hashima might be some fruit mash, or glutinous rice meal, but became slightly nervous. My friend’s smart phone and Google rescued me, as we quickly found out that hashima are frog fallopian tubes. Yes. Frog fallopian tubes. They are supposed to cure anything from a headache to tuberculosis in Chinese medicine, and they are a popular dessert.

Let’s just say I quickly regrouped and went with steamed Chinese yam, or hui shan yao, the air root of a climbing vine, with a sea-buckthorn, or sha ji, berry sauce.

I can’t even begin to describe how delicious this warm dessert was! The yam was buttery soft and sweet, melting in your mouth, and its starchiness was wonderfully contrasted bu the almost gelee-like consistency of the sweet but refreshing buckthorn sauce. I was already very full, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a single bite behind. I would do anything to get my hands on the ingredients and a recipe!

Bottom line? While somewhat difficult to find, Noodle Loft is definitely worth the trip. The noodles are amazing, and a special treat you won’t find many places outside Shaanxi province, and all other dishes we tasted were simply wonderful as well. On the downside it is certainly pricey, and we had some misunderstandings with the wait staff despite my Chinese-speaking friend doing the ordering. Meat in the sauces/noodle dishes is very sparsely used, so don’t expect Italian meatball sized amounts! I would say it’s a great treat for a special night – 4/5 from me.

Dim And Den Sum – The Original Cleveland Food Truck

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Asian, Food, food truck, Meat, Review

The first ever food truck to hit the streets of (Greater) Cleveland was Dim and Den Sum, run by chef Chris Hodge. That name seem familiar? That would be because his second food truck is none other than the Hodge Podge Truck of The Great Food Truck Race of Food Network fame. Dim and Den Sum launched in may 2010 and was an instant success, paving the road for some of the other trucks I’ve already reviewed.

And as mentioned before, my wife’s work does a great job recruiting food trucks, and so we managed to catch Dim and Den Sum right before they shut down for the cruel Cleveland Winter.

Dim and Den Sum offers an eclectic menu of interesting choices with an Asian twist that usually is announced ahead of time online, on Twitter and on Facebook. My wife chose pork pot stickers that were so tasty, they were gone before I had a chance to take a picture. However, they were also a bit steeply priced. I, on the other hand, settled on the PBLT sandwich:

Pulled pork, bacon (missing in this photo, sorry!), lettuce and tomato with a Sriracha aioli that had a pleasant kick. (Though my wife points out that that’s spinach, not lettuce…) The sandwich was huge, and in those bites where all flavor components came together it was delicious. Unfortunately the pulled pork was heaped on so generously that you had to separate the halves of bread, and only one side had the aioli, so the other side came off a bit bland.

The food was great, and would have deserved a pretty high rating, but unfortunately I witnessed a rather unfriendly rebuff to a customer ahead of me in line, and bad service has always been a pet peeve of mine. The other people manning the truck were very friendly though.

Bottom line? Well, it’s the original Cleveland food truck, don’t miss it! Great Dim with really interesting Sum, but due to the service issue mentioned above I’ll rate the experience a 3.75/5. Nevertheless, I’ll definitely give it another try come Spring!

Pitaya Plus – Dragonfruit In A Bottle!

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Dragonfruit, Fruit, Juice, Pitaya Plus, Review

Remember how I was saying I’d pay outrageous amounts to have dragonfruit again? Turns out I don’t have to!

I was kindly provided with promotional samples by Pitaya Plus, a brand-new company offering dragonfruit Super Juice with a bit of coconut water and other dragonfruit products to the American market.

(Image from Pitaya Plus website)

Pitaya Plus has a solar-powered facility in Nicaragua, where red-fleshed dragonfruit are grown and harvested for them by local single mothers from poverty-stricken communities in an effort to support these families. The fruit are then directly shipped to Pitaya Plus’ Californian headquarters and made into delicious juice.

The juice is all-natural, contains zero added sugar, 25% of your daily recommended fiber, plenty of antioxidants and more than your daily need of Vitamin D3, all courtesy of the lovely dragonfruit. It also contains coconut water, and comes labelled with a warning: “Don’t drink our juice if you are looking for that sugar tooth feeling that you get from every other juice in existence. Prepare yourself for a juice that will taste so refreshing and different, you will actually want to drink more of it!” Naturally, I couldn’t wait to crack a bottle open and see whether I would really be able to re-experience that dragonfruit flavor I’ve been craving.

First thoughts: Yep, definitely dragonfruit! Rejoice! The coconut flavor is definitely detectable, and I’m not sure I need it in there, but then I’m usually a fruit flavor purist and eat my fruit salads in groups of fruit rather than mixed. The warning also definitely holds true when it comes to sweetness – it’s pleasantly tart, or, as my wife put it, it “tastes like juice from a fruit, not juice from a bottle.”

Pitaya Plus juice is available online, or at Whole Foods and some select health stores in California.

(Image from Pitaya Plus website)

Bottom line? I love the flavor, it’s as close as I can get here to a fresh dragonfruit. (I am extremely excited to try out their dried fruit and smoothie packs, once those become available). The nutritional stats are stellar at 70kcal per 10.5oz bottle, and clearly it’s healthy juice for you! On the down side, $2.50 for a (small) bottle is pricey, but many comparable products in terms of health (and especially at Whole Foods), are. I’d probably leave out the coconut water component, but even with it, I love it. I’d say definitely, definitely give it a try, you won’t regret it! 4.5/5 from me.

Disclaimer: Pitaya Plus Super Juice was kindly provided by Pitaya Plus, LLC. This blog receives no payment or other compensation for reviews of products or services.

StrEAT Mobile Bistro – A Gourmet Food Truck Set On Feeding You!

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Food, food truck, Local, Review, Soup, StrEAT Mobile Bistro

Have I recently mentioned that my wife’s work is awesome? Yes, well, it is even more so, now that a second weekly food truck visitor has been established: the StrEAT Mobile Bistro.

There are actually two food trucks run by a team (Manager Izzy Schachner, Chef Kelly McGlathery and Daniel Talty) that came together to launch this enterprise in early Spring 2011 and have been serving ravenous (Greater) Clevelanders faithfully come rain come shine. They offer a variety of dishes inspired by locally produced ingredients, which is always a plus!
So today I braved the rain as well and made the trek to meet for lunch.

We were welcomed by Dan and a most promising menu, which had been made available online one day in advance on Facebook and Twitter.

My wife zeroed in on the four cheese Mac-n-Cheese, a pretty tasty dish topped with breadcrumbs. Maybe our expectations were too high – it was a very solid, creamy Mac-n-Cheese dish, but not necessarily a revelation as to what all other Mac-n-Cheese should aspire to be.

I could not make up my mind between the two soups offered, and Dan immediately accommodated me and offered me a sample menu of both. And am I glad he did – because both dishes were absolutely delicious.
I started off with the harvest stew (winter squash, white beans, sweet potatoes, chickpeas, & Moroccan spices), a slightly sweet, hearty stew topped with golden couscous. It was wonderful! With the couscous stirred in, it had just the right amount of bite.

But I think my favorite dish of the day was the spicy, creamy, perfectly balanced tomato lentil soup. I could have consumed buckets and buckets! The only way to improve upon this dish would have been warm flat bread to dip into it. Oh wait! That was supplied as well. Literally one of the best things I’ve eaten since our China trip in May.

The dishes left me very sated and kept me warm and cozy all the way back to work through the rain. Perfect rainy Cleveland Fall weather food! And very portable as a “to go” meal.

Bottom line? Find them so they can feed you! Good to amazing food, fair prices, beautiful use of produce and an incredibly friendly and gracious crew. 4.5/5 from me.

Thank you so much again to Dan and Kelly for the treat and the eye-opening lentil soup! Man, I wish I even knew where to start on trying to make it myself…                      

Umami Moto – An Asian-Inspired Foodtruck on a Mission!

Tags

Asian, Fish & Seafood, Food, food truck, Poultry, Review, UmamiMoto, Vegetables

My wife’s work is awesome. Why? Because once a week, Umami Moto rolls in during lunchtime and feeds the hungry masses!

Umami Moto, owned by Jae Stulock and Sandy Madachick, is an aptly named foodtruck (loosely translated from the Japanese as “savory car”) that has been on the prowl in Cleveland, OH and surroundings since last winter, bravely weathering lake effect snow (which lasts a good 5 months a year) without a hitch. As you might guess from the name, most of their offerings are Asian-inspired, with an emphasis on Thai and Vietnamese cuisines. Obviously I had my wife treat me, no?

We actually went on two different occasions (yes, it was that tasty!), and here’s what a menu will look like:

The menu varies daily, and gets posted on facebook and twitter in the morning, messing with my poor little head and making it hard to focus on my work rather than which dish to try.

On our first vist I ended up going with fish tacos (not on the pictured menu) with a lime aioli that was absolutely divine and changed my world view concerning all things fish taco. Co-owner Jae Stulock informed me that the secret ingredient is lime simple syrup!

My wife chose a Vietnamese chicken curry served over rice (see the menu above), that reduced her to repeated “Man, this chicken is great. No, it’s so good!” comments in between bites.

So when I returned today (armed with a camera rather than an iPad), I decided to give the vegan snap pea and mushroom stir-fry served over white rice a try, and it was wonderful. The seasoning was spot-on and complemented the earthy mushroom flavor perfectly. I could have easily left the rice for a few more servings of the veggies alone!

I tip my hat to the chefs! Another great thing about Umami Moto is their efforts to use locally produced ingredients, plus all their food containers are made from recycled materials. A+ for responsible business.

Bottom line? When in Cleveland, try to catch Umami Moto. Great flavors, creative dishes, friendly personnel and fair prices. 5/5 from me.

I’ll leave you with a picture co-owner Stulock, who was gracious enough to pose for me with his tasty, tasty vehicle.