Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

Mom prefers Chinese food to anything else, so last weekend, J and I brought her to Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in San Francisco to eat dim sum. This branch is much smaller in size compared to the one in Milpitas, CA. The restaurant opens at 10am, but there were already a group of hungry vultures waiting outside the restaurant’s un-opened doors before 10am.

The restaurant was too small to accommodate the typical dim sum carts, so all the dim sum were served by non-smiling, Cantonese speaking waiters/waitresses. Mom said there used to be a Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in Singapore too (located in Shenton Way area?) but they were knocked out by strong contenders like the Tung Luk Group and the Crystal Jade chain of restaurants.

We had a friend join us for dim sum. She works as a pediatrician in San Francisco so we needed to bribe her to give us free pediatrics consultation after the baby is born. After all, the dim sum bill for the 4 of us only amounted to US$42 with taxes and tips included, so it was a good deal.

Of course we didn’t drive all the way up to San Francisco (are you nuts?!) just to eat dim sum. This was just part of the one-day San Francisco “tour itinerary” for mom. We also brought her down the curvy wurvy Lombard Street, Chinatown and took pictures with her at the Golden Gate Bridge.

All these pictures below are not current. San Francisco last Sunday was pretty windy, so we did a “car tour” to save mom from the gusty winds that she was not used to.

Lombard Street (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Lombard Street is America’s crookedest street. Cars can only drive down Lombard Street at 5 miles/hour.

San Francisco Chinatown (Picture taken in Sept 04)

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside Asia. There was some sort of festival (Mooncake Festival??) at the time this picture was taken, that’s why the road was closed and there were throngs of people. Sept 04! - that was how long ago I was in SF Chinatown! We brought mom to Chinatown to show her how difficult it is to get parking and so that she will never ever ask me to go there again when I tell her I cannot find a particular ingredient in Ranch 99.)

Golden Gate Bridge (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Everybody who has been to San Francisco would at least have a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, wouldn’t you? BUT… is yours as picturesque as mine? Bwahahahaa… ok… I confess. All the above pictures were taken by J, not me. It was only late last year that I started using his camera cos he moved on to a new hobby.

I did not have a chance to take many meal pictures when I was in Cancun because my small, cute Canon IXUS i’s battery failed me and I was shy about showing off a big, fat Canon 20D camera.

It was such a lazy holiday that we only ate out of the hotel only four times - Cambalache, a local Mexican restaurant, Burger King and a lunch buffet that was part of a day trip to the ruins.

I think my taste buds protested against Mexican breakfast. Eggs done sunny side up were placed over tortillas and that kind of made the tortilla soggy. I didn’t like the look of refried beans. And one thing about the hot and spicy nacho dips was that the hot sauce stung the tongue (hey, that rhymes) but there was no flavor whatsoever (hey that rhymes again!)

So I exchanged my Mexican breakfast for an American breakfast from you-know-who.

Then we proceeded to (pork) roast in the sun. It was very much like a process of roasting suckling pig. First you apply oil on the back, then after half an hour of roasting in the sun, you apply oil to front. You do this a few times after each turn so as to ensure that the skin does not burn. After slow cooking for about 2 hours under a morning sun, you get a nice brown on the skin.

I also had a taste of chicken pizza … oops I meant Chichen Itza in Cancun. This is an archaeological ruins site that is slated to become one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It was so hot I felt faint so I recommend anyone going there to bring along an umbrella.

A lunch buffet was part of the day trip. The Lime Soup was nice - tasted a bit like Chicken Tom Yum Soup, luckily I took the bowl without the tortilla strips or I would have gotten soggy tortilla. I wonder why would anyone like tortillas soaked in soup?

The only other nice dish was spaghetti with garlic sauce. Oh… that is non-Mexican.

So much for Mexican food and I. Guess I’d be sticking to just my Flat Fajitas or my Chinese home-cooked food for a while. :)