A couple of revisits from Mira Mesa-land.
Lavang Restaurant:
**** Lavang has closed
I hadn't been back to Lavang in nearly two years and I had been wondering how the place was doing. I had also gotten a couple of emails mentioning the Bun Cha here, so I dropped by to check things out.
Man, the place was empty when I arrived, with no other customers during my entire visit. The folks here are very nice though.
I had "some reservations" (no pun intended) when I saw a sheet of paper with a photo of Anthony Bourdain and President Obama having Bun Cha in one of those episodes of Parts Unknown. Another sheet explained what Bun Cha was.......hmmm.....not sure about this one, but I went ahead and ordered the Bun Cha.
As always, the presentation here is always quite nice.
Now, to be perfectly honest; I didn't expect anything close to what we had in Hanoi or even Westminster. But this was pretty bland; especially the sauce which was really watered down and really bland. The meatballs were hard and dry as well. The grilled pork was fine, on the chewy side which is fine for this dish.
The bun was really done well, exceptionally good stretch to them, but were chopped into short pieces. The herbs were fine; the pickled papaya was given a nice little flower presentation.
Overall, I was underwhelmed with this dish. I'll stick with the version from Nhu Y.
Lavang Restaurant
6755 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92121
R & B Filipino Cuisine:
It had been over two years since I'd been to R&B, so I decided to drop by and get my entire days worth of fat and calories in one meal. I actually had this at 10am and didn't eat again until dinner which was a salad.
I'm rarely able to resist sisig, so I got that. On previous visits, the sisig here had been decent. It still is, except for a few things; it's kept on the side and when served is ice cold. The sour flavors were quite good, but for some reason this time around it was missing spice. There were some really hard bits of lechon kawale in this as well.
I also saw something different this time around; the Paksiw na Pata, basically braised pork leg...it looks deceivingly like adobo. The flavor was interesting, I liked the vinegar tones and unlike adobo this doesn't have much soy sauce and wasn't very salty. I saw a lot of garlic, but strangely the flavor didn't come through. I also enjoy the gelatinous pieces, but not much of that and man, there was this huge slice of pork and fat. Some of the pieces of pork were on the dry side and the overall mouthfeel was a bit on the greasy side. Just a few strands of banana blossom.
The sinigang was pretty good, nice and bracingly sour.
The rice was on the mushy side, but in total, this wasn't bad at all.
R & B Filipino Cuisine
11257 Camino Ruiz
San Diego, CA 92126
Tim Ky Noodle:
Driving aimlessly on Christmas Day, I decided to stop in to have a bowl of noodle soup Tim Ky. While what I had on my last visit wasn't particularly good, I'd had some pretty good bowls here in the past.
Deciding on turning a new leaf and all, I went with something totally different. The Hu Tieu My Tho, which besides the BBQ Pork is a bowl of offal.
This really didn't look very inspiring when it arrived....but how often does a bowl of guts and porcine organs really want you to break into song?
Loved the hu tieu which were robustly elastic. The broth started fairly flat, but as it soaked up the flavor from the offal, started tasting quite good. The best of the lot was the intestines, clean and chewy...the thin slices of offal were nice, just enough earthy, bitter tones, but the pig liver tasted a bit off, and not being a big fan of pig liver, unless it's really fresh, it was not my cup of tea. There were two small, rubbery shrimp in the soup.
Not bad. I was surprised at the large groups of customers, most of which weren't Asian! Folks gotta eat on Xmas Day I guess.
Tim Ky Noodle
9330 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126
Wish there were more turo turo places here in Seattle.
Posted by: Kyle | Friday, 30 December 2016 at 10:44 AM
Bummer that you don't have more turo-turo joints in SEA Kyle. I know my coworkers have family in Beacon Hill, so I'm a bit surprised there aren't more of those type of shops.
Posted by: Kirk | Friday, 30 December 2016 at 12:53 PM
Those meatballs look incinerated. :(
Posted by: caninecologne | Friday, 30 December 2016 at 01:36 PM
Theres more Vietnamese turo turo type places here. Not bad but I would prefer turo turo for the stuff I don't usually cook.
Posted by: Kyle | Friday, 30 December 2016 at 04:04 PM
We ate "Mandarin and Szechuan" cuisine with relatives in Vacaville for Xmas dinner. Wonton soup, sweet and sour pork, fried shrimp, almond chicken, mongolian beef, and moo shu pork. The tastes of our youth decently prepared.
Posted by: Ed (from Yuma) | Saturday, 31 December 2016 at 07:13 PM
They were pretty bad CC!
That's a bummer Kyle. Hopefully they'll be more variety in the future.
Happy New Year Ed! That's a major ABCDE meal.
Posted by: Kirk | Saturday, 31 December 2016 at 07:36 PM