Killen STQ

Good friend of mine and I are so far behind on birthday, Xmas, new year that we finally decided to sit down for a proper meal.

 She picked Killen STQ on Voss by San Felipe.  It was at the same space as the former Bramble.

 For starter, we got the smoked pork belly with cherry habanero bbq.  All I can say is that, you've never had pork belly this delicious with texture, mix with good portion of fat and meat ever... OMG, to die for.

 For my entree, I ordered the true Wagyu beef, not the one that called themselves one, but a true one from Japan.  I've never had that before, so got a 4oz.  Don't think 4oz is nothing, that was super filling. So much so that I didn't want to eat the next day.  If you have a bite, the fat is melting in your mouth before you even need to chew anything.  On top of that, the medium rare is perfect for this type of meat.  If you were to eat one bite of this, and one bite of American steak, you would come to realized that the difference between texture, quality, and feel is night and day.

 One cannot live on beef alone, so we got couple of sides to share.  Got the brussels sprouts, not bad, there are bits that are crunchy, I can stand for it to be a tad more salty, but some of the bitter did came thru.

 Traditionally, I get the potato au gratin when I do steak, even though we were eyeing that mac and cheese pretty hard, but figured that's a lot of food.  The au gratin has a nice layer of cheese crusted on top, the potato is in a creamy sauce in the middle.  Nice and cheese when you take it out.

For dessert, we ordered the bacon tres leches bread pudding.  So decadent.  The bacon is more like butter on top of the bread pudding, the tres leches helped make it creamy and soft.  It was delicious.  

Entire meal, did not have anything that's not good.  Everything is awesome, of course the spot light, Wagyu beef was the highlight of the night.  But the Bread Pudding delivered a great and pleasant surprise.  A lot of people stayed away because they think bacon, but really, just added some fat to the dessert, it's not at all bacon over takes the dish.  Even though we were filled up to the rim, we still have to order the dessert, just in case they change the menu before we come back.  

Service is great, attentive but not pretentious.  Our reservation was at 5:30p and they did say, they do not hold tables.  If you're 5mins late, they'll accommodate, but 15mins late, they may ask you to try another night.  By 6:30p the entire place was packed, so do make a reservation.

Killen STQ

2231 S. Voss Rd

Houston, TX 77057

713-586-0223

Revelry

Went to a trivia night event at Revelry.  

 Haven't been here before, was excited to do some drinking and some trivia plus food, of course.

 I got the Seared Ahi Tuna salad.  The tuna steak is done well, pretty delicious with the balsamic on the side.  The arugula salad with edamame beans and bell pepper goes nicely with it.  I didn't really touched the ginger vinaigrette, just tried it for taste.  Surprisingly the entire salad was very filling, I was pleasantly surprised.

Since we were there for a trivia night, and a very popular one at that, the service was not bad, given how big the crowd was.  They did forget to put my order in, and how I know this is that my friends all got a burger and got it before I got my salad.... As soon as they discovered it, they were pretty quick to making sure I got my food, so no harm no foul.  I do like that they have a wide array of craft beer and broken down by categories, which is always appreciated, as more and more craft brew pops up.

Like I said, that night the event was huge, so there are limit parking or valet available.  But if you go caddy corner, the open lot across from the firehouse, that is open for patron parking.  If  you park at the residential street, make sure you read the signs, as we saw a few towing happening.

Revelry on Richmond

1613 Richmond Ave

Houston, TX 77006

http://revelryonrichmond.com/index.html

Forced to take a break

Yep, mean people suck.  

My car was broken into, and they took my phone... so nothing to report until I can get my backup going.  Figured might as well take a week hiatus, and regroup next week.  Check back then!

Ragin' Cajun

Today's Desktop Cafe is Ragin' Cajun'

I don't work out of downtown much anymore after being in downtown for 15 years.  So, when I do work out of there, there's a sense of excitement because of the tunnels and a sense of confusion, because all the stuff I used to know that are located in the tunnels have either changed over, renovated, moved or gone.  So, it was nice to see Ragin' Cajun' still in their spot.

Got the chicken and sausage jambalaya  looked good.  It's all mushed into a small container, but don't let that fool you.  It's pack with punch on spice.  I had to have my water with me at all times.  Ok, I'm also a weakling, but still. 

Their service is super quick in the tunnels.  I haven't had Treebeards for a while, wonder how that fair in comparison.

Ragin' Cajun

930 Main Street

T-230

Houston, TX 77002

713-571-2422

http://ragin-cajun.com/restaurant/menu/menu-downtown-tunnel/

The Torero

I have been watching a lot of Korean Drama (kdrama) and inevitably, made me want to have some Korean food.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone, I had to go to H-Mart anyway, so stopped to get some chicken.

This is their Kimchi fries with Bulgogi, so delicious.  But what made it awesome is the mix of spicy sauce and mayo sauce together.  So bad for you, but so good.  What you don't see is that in the middle between the layers of fries, there is a layer of bulgogi meat, so delicious.

They also have bubble tea, except that day, they ran out of bubbles, so I just got a Honeydew Smoothie.  

Got the Original -small no spicy fried chicken.  It came with a side of pickled turnip.  I love the Korean fried chicken.  First of all, it's fried chicken.  Second, it's never dried, and it's crunchy, and never greasy.  They even give you plastic gloves for your handy use.  No more feeling greasy or oily after eating.  Super thoughtful of them.  We basically could not finish all the food and took the chicken home.

The ToreOre

inside H-Mart

1302 Blalock Road

Houston, TX 77055

832-808-9888

Azuma

Went to Happy Hour with a friend before a show downtown.

Haven't been back to Azuma for a while.  Not on purpose, but I'm not close to the Sugarland location where you get that nice view of the lake.  The parking in the Village location can be hectic, and since I don't work downtown anymore, there's no reason for me to head to that location either.  Just that it's a quick and good bite before a show, and it worked out perfectly.

Unagi roll - eel, cucumber and eel sauce.

Spicy salmon roll

Sashimi sampler which had tuna, salmon, and white fish, with a soy based spicy sauce, sweet and sour sauce, and forgot the last sauce.

Was super curious with the curry fries, and amazingly, it was delicious.  It is the Japanese style curry and it has the crispy fries, and you dip it.  It is much like the potato you get from the curry over rice, except with a crunch.  It was delicious!  

Entire meal didn't cost too much because it was happy hour.  My friend knows everyone there, this was practically her 'Cheers', where everybody knows your name.  I did have a glass of wine, and the happy hour wine list is not bad either, I just happen to get someone off of the regular wine list.  Totally worth going.

Azuma Susah & Robata Bar

909 Texas Street

Houston, TX 77002

713-223-0909

http://azumarestaurant.com/downtown/locations.php

Flo Paris Bakery

Went to grab a quick bite.  Ended up at Flo in Village.

 At that location, they have salads, quiche, sandwiches for a quick lunch.  I got the salmon salad.  It has nice pieces laid on top of a bed of arugula with a lemony vinaigarette.

 Got a cup of the French Onion soup.  Don't be deceived, it is cheese on top of a toast.  So you have to carefully break your piece of toast into your soup.  It's delicious nonetheless.

To top it off, I got a piece of dessert to top it off.  I got the 3 mousse chocolat and delicious that it was.  The bottom has this cookie crust and have dark chocolate with cocoa powder on top and it really put me over.  I couldn't even finished it.  One regret, I should've gotten coffee with my dessert to help.  Haha... shouldn't be too greedy, eh?

The format is like the Flo on Wertheimer, you order at the counter and they give you a number and you take a seat.  The place is small but spacious and on a good day, you can sit outside at the sidewalk.  Almost everyone there speaks French, and maybe that's one of the hiring requirement, but it does add to the European feel to the place.  The difference between this location and the Wertheimer one is that they do not have crepes here, not certain about breakfast.

Flo Paris

5407 Morningside

Houston, TX 77005

346-980-6800

http://www.floparisbakery.com

Six Ping Bakery

My mom was in Chinatown and got couple pieces of cakes.

 If you buy a few, they just give you these cute little boxes, one per piece.

This is a Montblanc, which is a chestnut cake more or less.  This one is pretty and at the bottom is cheesecake type filling inside the tart shell.  It was pretty tasty, of course I was eating it more for the chestnut than anything else.  

We usually go there for bread, they have different type of fillings in various type of bread.  They of course have big cakes, but these little ones are cute too.

Six Ping

9889 Belliare Blvd

#D246

Houston, TX 77036

713-774-0325

http://www.sixping.com/

NAO Ramen House

Went back to NAO for a mommy's dinner.  I thoroughly enjoy the company, and just wish the food would match.

 This time I went on a weekday night, and had hope that my experience would be different from the last.

 We ordered starters with edamame and Kyoto Fries, which has eel sauce, mayo, bacon, scallion, and seaweed flakes.  That was pretty much the highlight of my night, it was delicious, and really addictive.  It was that good.

For ramen dish, I ordered beef shoyu this time.  Beef broth, steak, veggie, 63 degree egg and I added fish cake.   Sadly, the food experience was not good either.  Everything is 'cooked' per se, the steak (as you can see here) it's a tad red still.  The noodle is cooked fine, nothing special to it.  Sadly the broth has no taste, I mean, you can barely taste the salt and that's about it.  Once you've had Agu's & Ninja's broth and how rich it tastes, you can tell the fakes quickly.

While I enjoyed the fries tremendously, it's not enough for me to come back after 2 attempts of bad experience on the food.  I know the place will work for a while despite of the quality, mainly due to location.  But, don't let them fool you.  There are great ramen out there.  Just because it's convenient in the Rice Village, doesn't mean you have to suffer subpar quality.

NAO Ramen House

5510 Morningside

Ste 120

Houston, TX 77005

713-526-1669

http://www.naoramen.com/

Five Guys

After a playdate, we went for lunch at Five guys.

 Since I know the little guy would hord my milkshake, I ordered small portion of the others just in case he fit in any other food groups in there.  I got a small hot dog, small fries and a small milkshake. As you can see above, he can't wait for me to take a pic and already aiming for the shake.

Anyway, the hot dog has cheese in it, and I forgot to tell them to skip it.  For some reason, I get weirded out by that, don't even know why.  But the fries is just a small portion of what the real size is.  There's a lot of overflow in the bag itself, basically, it's 2.5 portion of the cup for fries.  If you go with other people, consider sharing.

Five Guys

1150 W. Fry Road

Suite A

Houston, TX 77084

281-647-6555

http://www.fiveguys.com/

Osaka

It's been a while since I've been back to Osaka, not by design, and I've actually been back since, just didn't post about it.

As usual, they give you complimentary starters.  This is tempura bell pepper and fish cake.

Shumai - pretty sure it's from frozen.

Dragon roll - spicy tuna inside, topped with salmon and avocado.  Yum, yum!

Chopped scallop and tuna.  The Tuna was actually pretty fresh, which I can always appreciate.

Unagi - which you can't really go wrong.  It's nicely cooked all hot and sweet.  Just how I like it.

At first, when I walked in, I was a wee tad worried because the sushi chef is not the same guy I know.  And you don't know if both of the sushi chefs are veterans or not.  Luckily, looks like one guys is the ringer and the other can do the basic rolls and still learning a few things.  Totally rest easy on that.  Since it was super cold, we forego the complimentary ice cream after the meal.  Plus, we were super stuffed by the time we ate all that, can't even fit in the ice cream if we wanted to.

Osaka

4001 Bellaire Blvd

Suite J

Houston, TX 77025

713-838-9812

http://osakahouston.com

Sweet

Ended up walking around in City Centre and nice to stop in for some drinks.

Got the Milk Tea Bubble Tea, it wasn't too sweet and that's alright by me.  Too much sugar already... :)

Got couple chocolate macarons, it's been a while.  The ones they have here, basically fell apart.  Not sure if it's been sitting too long or been thawed a bit, but it cracked.  I was sad.  Luckily, my 3 year old, didn't noticed and shoved it all into his mouth in one bite.  At least he enjoyed it quite a bit.

Sweet

801 Town and Country Way

Ste A120

Houston, TX 77024

713-64-SWEET

http://ilovesweet.com

E-Tao

Was running around the Galleria mall for some errands, and stopped by to grab a quick dinner. 

Ordered the Beef Stew Noodles.  The noodles were the typical egg noodles, but the soup and the meat were quite nice.  The meat was nice and soft, you use chopsticks to pick it up and it falls apart.  The veggie balances out the soup and meat quite nice.  Good for the cool nights, since we don't have many of those, but should you need one to warm you up, this will do the trick.

E-Tao

5135 W. Alabama St

Ste 7295

Houston, TX 77056

713-965-0888

Singapore Cafe

We were down in Sugar Land and needed a place with noodles for the little guy, so we yelped the place.

Turn out not to disappoint, though small and not easy to spot if you're not looking for it. It was amazingly good.

 Singapore ice milk tea, not sweet at all, as a matter of fact, you can taste the chai/ceylon tea.

 Got the salted fish fried rice, you can really see little chunks of dried fish.  Back in the day, dried fish is the poor people's food.  They can't afford fresh fish, and before days of refrigeration they would salt it and sun dried.  It comes with a stink and rich people used to snub them to be poor people's delicacy.  Nowadays, it's hard to find dried fish, mostly due to supply and demand.  Also, it can last longer for the busy lives we are now.  So, salted fish is actually pretty expensive to get.

 Combination fried rice noodle.  Not quite like the Singaporean street stir fry noodles, but it's pretty decent.  It has shrimp, ham, egg, bean sprout, green onion and of course, vermicelli noodles.  It was nice and hot, and you can taste the heat from the wok.  It was nice.

It's very unassuming type of place, mostly nearby office and doctor office workers that come here.  To them, this is a hole in the wall type place and I agree.  The place look to be run by family members and there are a few 'regulars' that stop by, but mostly people that work in the area.  The lunch menu offers decent pricing of $6.95 per dish.  Definitely worth coming back.

Singapore Cafe

3149 Hwy 6

Sugar Land, TX 77478

832-532-6277

New Year Meal - Chinese style

So, heard about a special meal for the holidays... 

 Plus, my mom has a nostalgia for the meal, so figured we'd make a trip.

 It's a 3 course meal, you start with cream of mushroom soup with dinner roll.

 There were 3 choices to choose from: salmon steak, pheasant, or mix meat.  I got the pheasant, it's baked and the skin is super crispy with the meat just right and not dried out.  It comes with veggie sides, carrots, broccoli, corn and a scoop of egg white fried rice.  Not sure what's the significant of egg white fried rice is, but it's pretty darn good on its own.

For dessert, it's coconut milk pudding with jelly mixed in there.  The pudding is thick enough that it's good on its own, but when you add jelly in there, it makes it richer and sweeter.  I basically was able to handle a few bites and had to wave the white flag to give up.

The meal was $13.98 (plus tax & tip), it has all of the above and included a drink.  My mom said, back in her day, her dad would buy the kids a meal like this for $5, and that's their holiday meals, which in her day, that was the fancy meal an average family can afford.  It really brought back some childhood memories for her.  For that price, I can buy a bit of memory for her, it's well worth it.

Hong Kong's Cafe

9108 Bellaire Blvd

Suite A

Houston, TX 77036

713-772-9633

Cash Only