Lemongrass and Hotcakes

Charlottesville has a number of Thai restaurants: Thai 99, Lime Leaf Café, Tara Thai, Lemongrass, Downtown Thai, etc. I have only been to Lemongrass and Tara Thai. And since I haven’t tried them all yet, I can’t say that I have a favorite. However, I can say that I LOVE Lemongrass. It is this tiny little restaurant on the Corner with beautiful décor and delicious food. They advertise themselves as a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant, but it’s basically Thai with a couple Vietnamese appetizers thrown in there.

Thai Spicy Pork Belly

This time, I decided to try the Thai Spicy Pork Belly. They will ask you how spicy you want it on a scale of 1 to 10. However, I have found that this so-called scale of theirs is rather…iffy. One time, I ordered a 5 while my mom ordered an 8, and mine was definitely spicier than hers. Maybe they got our orders messed up? But anyways, this time I got a 5, which was pretty good. I could have gone a little higher. The dish was yummy. The pork belly had a good mix of lean meat and the juicy fatty fat that I love. My main complaint would be that it wasn’t as tender as I would have liked. I had to chew really really hard on some of the pieces, which should not happen.

Annnnnnddd….here’s what the other girls ordered!

Lemongrass and Lime with Chicken

CM had the Lemongrass and Lime with Chicken. Oh my goodness. I just realized that JW and JW have the same initials. Shoot. Now how am I supposed to distinguish between you two? Arg!

Thai Spicy Chicken

Well one of the JWs had Thai Spicy Chicken.

Spicy Lemongrass Tofu

XXL and the other JW had Spicy Lemongrass Tofu.

There was also fried ice cream on the menu, but I was too full to order it. I do want to try that sometime though. I heard from other people that it’s pretty good.

Side Note: I went home for my birthday on the weekend, and my mom cooked me this amazing, delicious, humongous feast. We had at least 10 different dishes. Our big dining table was filled! But I was a pig and promptly sat down to stuff my face without taking a single picture. So, that’s why there won’t be a post of the birthday dinner. Hahaha. You can probably tell that my family has had a HUGE influence on my love of food.

I came back to school on Sunday and was surprised by some of the most wonderful friends in the world who covered my wall with birthday post-its and waited 2 hours for my late self to show up (Sorry!). AND they got this “Chocolate Sin” cake from Hotcakes!! I’ve always wanted to try Hotcakes, which is this gourmet bakery/cafe/coffeeshop that makes delicious cake.

Chocolate Sin

It was so scrumptious! This cake was perfect because not only was it a rich, fudgy texture, but there was no frosting. There was whipped cream instead. I cannot stand frosting because it is way too heavy and sweet for me.

Fudgy and Whipped

Perfect cake! As was my birthday. Yay for family and friends! Muah! Thank you thank you thank you!

Lemongrass

104 14th St NW
Charlottesville, VA 22903-2715

Hotcakes

1137 Emmet St N # A
Charlottesville, VA 22903-4837

 

Bangkok Garden

I’m so behind! I have had so many food adventures but no time to blog about them yet. Sorry!

Yummy Thai food! SS and I went to Bangkok Garden the other day. We were actually trying to find a different restaurant, but the address somehow led us here instead of what we were initially looking for. It was all very weird and confusing. But we’ve never tried this place before, so we decided to give it a try. Plus, we arrived there pretty late in the evening, and the place was still packed, so that must be a good sign.

Here’s the deliciousness that we ate! First, each entrée came with a salad, which was really nothing special at all. Then, SS had the coconut soup, which is a soup of coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass, tofu, tomatoes, and lime juice. I had the Pad Kee Mao, which is rice noodles with chicken, chili sauce, basil, and vegetables. It was really really spicy, and I loved it for its spiciness!

Salad

Coconut Soup

Pad Mee Kao

Addresss

Bangkok Garden

4000 Virginia Beach Blvd # 5
Virginia Beach, VA 23452

 

You are the Dancing Queen! Young and Sweet! Only Seventeen! (NYC Part 3)

We went to meet CS in Chinatown today, so we had breakfast there as well, trying a different bakery. Unfortunately, I was so hungry that I devoured the food before realizing that I didn’t take a single picture. Stupid me. But I can tell you that the pork and preserved egg congee and the sticky rice bun were both heavenly. I’ve never had a sticky rice bun before, but I really liked it. The sticky rice was like how it would taste in a zong zi, so it had a great savory flavor to complement the slightly sweet tang of the bun.

I was watching the Travel Channel one day, and they did a program on the weirdest bathrooms around the world. One of the places was Peep, a Thai restaurant in Soho, where the bathroom walls are all 2-way mirrors, so that they look like mirrors on the outside, but from the inside, everything’s transparent. You can “peep” at all the people in the restaurant from inside the bathroom! I thought this was hilarious, and I was determined to find this place while I’m in NYC. Goal accomplished. We went there for lunch, and I had a blast. It’s kind of ridiculous how excited I was to eat here. Not only were the bathrooms just as I imagined, but the food was delicious.

Thai Ice Tea

Grilled Teriyaki Calamari

My first plate was Grilled Teriyaki Calamari. It was very tasty with just the right amount of chewy-ness. I loved it!

Panang with Tofu

My second plate was the Panang with Tofu. The spices took some getting used to, but it’s one of those dishes that taste better as you eat more of it. I was very satisfied.

Peppered Spinach Dumplings (AN's first plate)

Turmeric Saffron Fried Rice with Chicken (AN’s 2nd plate)

Horseradish Caesar Salad (SS’s 1st plate)

Grilled Vegetables Salad (CS’s 1st plate)

Chicken Pad Thai (both SS and CS’s 2nd plate)

I loved the atmosphere of the place. It was very trendy and hip and looked way more expensive than it actually was. The service was great, which cannot be said for any of the previous restaurants that we’ve been to this weekend. Plus, I was extremely entertained by the bathrooms…I love this place so much!

It's Peep!

View from inside the bathroom!

For dinner, we went exploring in Koreatown and went to Shilla Korean BBQ. They had an extensive menu, and I had such a hard time deciding. I really wanted to try their barbeque since they actually cook it in front of you, but I wasn’t in the mood for so much meat. Many of the soups looked delicious as well, but my poor stomach could only hold so much. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had bottomless stomachs and could just eat and eat and eat and never have to worry about getting full and getting fat?

Gol Dop

Gol Dop – I loved it. It reminded me of the Chinese bao zai fan (clay hot pot rice). I only got a picture of it after I mixed all the parts together because I was too eager to dig in and completely forgot about my camera until CS reminded me. I only wished that the sides of the bowl had more of the crispy, burnt rice. That would have made it perfect. Also, it seems to me that the spicy sauces often used in Korean cuisine are never as spicy as they look. The spicy sauce and the kimchi are all such a bright red but really not that spicy. Here is what everyone else ordered:

Bulgogi Gol Dop (AN's order)

Vegetable Fried Rice (CS's order)

Side Dishes

More Side Dishes

We went to Red Mango, which was right next door, afterwards. I’ve never had Red Mango before, but AN positively raved about it, so I had to try it. Red Mango is basically fro-yo using real yogurt, and they have a ton of different toppings. I thought it was adorable how they had the calorie count next to every topping. We got the original with mochi and kiwi. I discovered that I really like mochi, but the yogurt was not my favorite. The sourer, less sweet taste was really different. Maybe it’s one of those things that’ll grow on me. Sadly, I have no picture of the yogurt because we just stood on the side of the street and demolished it within 5 minutes.

Addresses

Peep

SoHo
177 Prince Street
(between Thompson St & Sullivan St)
New York, NY 10012

Shilla Korean Barbeque

Murray Hill
37 W 32nd St
(between 5th Ave & Broadway)
New York, NY 10001-3804

Red Mango

Murray Hill
39 W 32nd St
(between 5th Ave & Broadway)
New York, NY 10001