Ladies and gentlemen, I hang my head in shame. I don’t know how long Dim Sum Garden has been around, but I know I’ve passed the place dozens of times without giving it a second thought. And can you blame me? It’s literally in an underpass and next to the scary chinatown bus station. It’s not exactly what I consider location, location, location. As far as locations go, it’s positively unsavory. And the place itself also is partially to blame. It’s completely uninviting and has tons of neon signs. And they have pictures of their supposed dishes on the walls at the counter, you know, like the ones you see at your neighborhood shady chinese takeout joint. But I finally saw the light and am now a believer. I found out that this place had soup dumplings, so I had to go and try it. Damn, we went gaga over these. I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without ever having had a soup dumpling. There’s meat and stuffing inside, but there’s also some soupy liquid too, and that’s the beauty of it. You’re supposed to put a little hole in it with your teeth so the inside can cool off a bit. Then you’re supposed to sip the soup from it a little at a time. Oh who cares what you’re supposed to do. You’ll figure out how to eat it, and you won’t want to stop.
There are a few options of sauce that come on every table. The one that is crudely labeled as “Dumpling Sauce”, that’s the one to go for. I think I could drink this plain if I had to. But it’s absolutely divine with any of the dumplings. It’s sweet and savory. The other one tasted like it had turned. And there’s also some hot chili oil if you like things a bit spicier.
The scallion pancakes. These are pretty good, but they are a little bit greasy.
The shrimp dumplings. So simple, so pretty, so delicious. And these are  probably somewhat healthy too.
These are the pan fried pork and chive dumplings. You know, because sometimes, steamed is simply not enough. You want a bit of the extra grease and the crunchy char of a pan fry. These little puppies were good too.
But one of our favorite dishes of the night was the beef brisket noodles. There are thick egg noodles and a healthy helping of baby bok choy. And then there’s a heap of beef brisket. Ooh yeah baby. And everything was drenched in a chinese five spice laden sauce. I’m not the biggest chinese five spice fan, but it totally worked here. It worked so well that I wanted to eat all of this but on top of the dumplings, my belly just was not having it. But I did enjoy the little leftovers the next day. I heard that Dim Sum Garden had good noodles too, and darn it, I heard right. In fact, they have good everything. So please, pretty please, don’t let the sketchy location or the uninviting flourescent lighting ambiance deter you. Go! And eat! And enjoy! And be amused by the strangely androgynous server. You’ll be scratching your head too!

Ok, so Sky Cafe has become one of my most favorite places. It’s just the best. Deep, deep, deep in south philly, it is an Indonesian BYOB. It’s small, it’s adorable, it’s lovely, it’s cheap, and it serves some motherf’in delicious food. And the “best of the 80′s” music that they play? That’s just the cherry on top. Who doesn’t want to eat delicious Indonesian food while listening to classic Peter Cetera and Lionel Richie? I found out about this place awhile back from a friend’s yelp review. Why did I wait so long to check it out? I am still kicking myself. When you approach it, you would never guess that there would be an Indonesian restaurant in the neighborhood. It’s just hoagie shops and italian bakeries. But do go in. I implore you! It’s so cute and warm inside!

The menu is simple. There are rice dishes, noodle dishes, and then some appetizers. So here we have the salad with tofu and a peanut sauce. Oh. My. Word. This peanut sauce is like my dream! It’s not thick and goopy, it’s thinner, spicy but not too much so, and definitely peanut-y, but not overly so. It’s just amazing. And it was perfect for this salad. Along with lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, and peanuts, there was tons of perfect tofu in there. I’m not sure how this tofu is prepared, perhaps it’s deep fried? No idea, I just know that I love it. I want to drizzle this peanut sauce on everything. It doesn’t even have to be food, I just want it. And I want these little tofu puffs all over the place too.
We also got some fried dough. It looks like a big fat churro without all the delicious cinnamon and sugar. It’s good for dipping into soups. I think we also got this at the cambodian restaurant nearby.
E got one of the rijstafel plates with beef rendang. There are a few choices of what main meat you can pick, and she went with the beef rendang. Also on the plate are some eggs, fried shrimp chips, rice and veggies, and all the way in the back, which you can barely see, some deep fried anchovies and peanuts. Everything was delicious and the beef was nice and tender. We were fascinated by the anchovy dish, because at first, we couldn’t tell what the heck it was. It didn’t taste like fish. It actually tasted like candy. And it didn’t have little eyes like fish, so we were convinced it wasn’t. Then we just asked and they told us it was little fish. Fascinating!
I got the Emie, which is a noodle soup with egg noodles and a whole bunch of other delicious things.
Along with the noodles we have tons of tofu, some hard boiled eggs, shrimp, veggies, shrimp chips, and some shrimp cake type of things, all in a pungent and thick shrimp-based sauce. Uh, so yeah, if you don’t like shrimp, then this is not the bowl of food for you! As for me, I loved every minute of it. This is not a watery soup people, this is like a thick gravy soup. It is not bland. It kicks you in the face with shrimp flavor with every chopstick full. It is just lovely. I want some right now!

Our server was sooooooo nice. Like too nice. She was helpful when we were deciding, exceedingly patient in describing, and dealt with all of our questions with grace. Plus she was just nice and happy that we liked the food, and that we came in at all. While there were some take-out orders that night, we were the only people dining in. Plus, we just sat around talking, past closing time, and they didn’t even kick us out! We eventually realized that it was past closing time and finally left, but they would have totally let us stay! Just another reason why I love this place so. E actually lives in the neighborhood, so she’s already been back for take-out. And let me just say how inexpensive this food was. It was almost just wrong how little it cost. So really, if you want some deliciously authentic and overly affordable indonesian food, then make your way down here.

My company isn’t located in Seattle proper, sadly, we’re way up north in the burbs. Some of my colleagues wanted to go eat at Bonefish Grill, but I was not interested. I mean really though, there’s nothing wrong with Bonefish Grill, I have eaten there and liked it, but I’m in Seattle. I’m not going to go eat somewhere I can go to at home. So I roamed around a little bit and drove to nearby Mill Creek to N’Joy Sushi & Roll. It’s in one of those newer fancy stripmalls. The place is pretty sizeable and has a big sushi bar in the middle. It’s also a korean-run sushi spot.
I started with a sunomono salad. I don’t know why I love this so much, but I just do. It’s just thinly sliced cucumbers with a little vinegar based marinade along with some imitation crab meat and a shrimp. It’s just one of my favorite things to order. I like vinegary things and this sunomono was particularly good. And I love how sesame seeds add that little bit of nuttiness. Having a good fresh cucumber helps. There’s nothing worse than an old soggy mushy cucumber, or one with a thick waxy peel. This cucumber was just perfect.
Even though it was fairly hot out, I was still wanting some noodles. So I got the nabeyaki udon, which is served in this nabe, or metal cauldron like thing. It had some random seafood and veggies inside. I was so surprised by the excellent broth. The broth is key and sometimes you get really bland broth and sometimes you just get ok broth. This broth was great! It had enough flavor and I could tell it was made from scratch. I actually found some bonito flakes inside the broth so I was happy to know it wasn’t powdered. Overall, the udon was surprisingly good.
This seems like a place where crazy rolls rule the joint. Their menu has an extensive list, complete with pictures, of the many wacky and creative sushi rolls they serve. I wanted to at least try one so I got the mango roll, which was a special of the day. This thing was just way too much. I think it had shrimp tempura and avocado on the inside, and was topped with salmon, mango, mango sauce, tobiko, poppy seeds (!?!?), and a bunch of squirts of random sauces. Whoa. It was actually too sweet and there was just way too much going on. I think if they just left the mango sauce out and just went with the slice mango, it would have been much more tolerable. But all of the stuff slopped on top was just overkill. Sweet, sweet, overkill. Service was good and everyone was friendly. I didn’t have to wait very long for my food at all. The proprietors are quite friendly and it seems like there are lots of regulars here. I think it’s a nice spot in the northern burbs for some affordable japanese fare.