Gong Cha

When you're at Stay Home order, you still wants Bubble Tea, why not try something new?

Gong Cha is new to me.  Heard a lot about them, and because they're so popular that I don't usually go into a crowded place.  Since I happened to snag a window where it's not packed, ordered me a drink.

I got a Brown Sugar milk tea.  It didn't drip as pretty as some other's pictures, but hey... girl gotta try.

Gong Cha

23119 Colonial Pkwy

Katy, TX 77449

832-913-8578

https://www.gongchausa.com/texas-katy

Takumi-Ichi Ramen

Drove by and out of curiosity (and hunger), decided to give this new spot a try.

It's in the shopping center on Westheimer & Fountainview.

Ordered the pan-fried dumpling, you can tell it was home made, that's a great start.  

Chashu Bun - it's ok, I still like Fat Bao's better.  I feel that for that price point, there should be more filling to the bao. 

Tonkotsu Ramen, sadly, there was no taste to the broth.  The egg came out nicely, the bamboo came out from the can.  The pork does taste good, and the mushroom is .... well, mushroom.  Again for that price point, its competitors pack a lot of punch into a little bowl.  To say it was a sad visit is an understatement.  I hope they will improve and thrive, they have a good location and I think the area can use a ramen joint, but they really have a lot of points that needed to be worked on.

The place has nice decor and atmosphere, sadly beyond the dumpling is where the impression stops.  Later found out other ramen-enthusiasts also have similar issues.  Not that I listen to what other critics' opinion, as much as it validates my own.  I hope they will turn the corner from here.

Takumi Ichi Ramen

5901 H Westheimer Rd

Houston, TX 77056

713-993-6105

One Dim Sum

In the Covid lockdown world... we do what we can.  One thing you can do is to order take out from your regular restaurants.

This time, I ordered from One Dim Sum.  

I got Cheung Fun with BBQ Pork, Turnip Cake, Black Caviar Mushroom Dumpling, and Singapore Rice Noodle.  

So couple of things I've noticed.  

1, they are still doing happy hour, and have special pricing for certain dishes and alcohol.  

2, if you order online via ChowNow, the selections are more limited than what's posted on the menu.  When I call them and place the order by phone, I was able to get several items that are not listed on the ChowNow menu.  So, if you know what you want, phone it in.  

3, Definitely call in advance, they have to steam the dishes, does take some time. 

4, when they tell you 40 mins, they really do mean 40 mins.  Not sure how they got it down so tight, but take heed on the time the person on the phone tells you.

5, Be smart, when pick up, they set up the tables by the door, I would bring my own pen and sanitizer to sign for your payment.

One Dim Sum

510 Gray Street

Houston, TX 77002

346-293-9188

Migo Street Food

Located at the new Food Strip Center at Bellaire.  Been curious about Migo Street Food

The menu looks simple enough, but the add-ons and small dish is really what I love here.

Got a Migo Ca Phe Suda - not too sweet, but definitely pack the punch.

Mi Ga, chicken noodles with chicken broth.  I like that it is tasty but not complicate and simple.  Free range chicken, vermicelli, sprouts, scallions, and crispy onion in chicken broth.  Very straight forward, very tasty.

Fried Fish Balls with dipping sauces.  Their side dish menu is really what made the Street Food part for me.  They have wonton, gizzard, corn, wonton, pork bones.  Everything would've been too much. Just for a easy going lunch, fish balls with my noodles is enough.

The decor is cute, like as though you're eating at the streets of Vietnam.  Which, of course, you're not, but its casual too.  The folks there are nice and serve food very quickly.  

Migo Street Food

9393 Bellaire Blvd 

Ste H

Houston, TX 77036

https://migosaigonfoodstreet.com

Bam Bam

If and when you get back to traveling for fun... I recommend stopping by Bam Bam.

It's a Vietnamese - Cajun fusion.  But super nifty to order via your kiosk and then your server brings your food.

Since I was going light on my pre-flight meal.  Just because I knew we'll be eating well when we land.  So, just iced tea and eggrolls.

It's super nifty, while you wait for your food, you can read the news, play some games.  Most importantly, charge your phone.  At the end of it you can pay your bill on the kiosk too.  No more trying to catch the eye contact of your server while trying to not miss boarding.  They get it!

Bam Bam 

IAH Terminal C

2800 N. Terminal Rd

Houston, TX 77036

https://www.fly2houston.com/iah/dine/bam-bam-C5/

Amy's Ice Cream

Who says that quarantine doesn't allow for ice cream?

We can go in and get 'to-go' order.  I will say, there were no one in the shop, because they think that the shop is not open.

What did I get?  I got the Belgian Chocolate with mixed nuts.  Of course, with the current state of things, they cannot mix up the mixin' due to health reasonings.  Since we cannot dine in, we ate ice cream in our car.  But it's the little things that add some joy in the lockdown days.

Amy's Ice Cream

3816 Farnham St

Houston, TX 77098

https://amysicecreams.com

713-526-2697

One Dragon Restaurant

One of the best Xiao Long Bao in town is One Dragon.

They kept the English name of the previous restaurant, but that had seemed to help their business.  Well, having good, legit dishes helped too.

Braised Pork Belly, they always put an egg and some veggie at the bottom.  Honestly, beside the sauce, which I love, I like that they don't give you all fatty meat.  It goes very well with plain white rice.

Had to have some veggie to balance things out.  Just their stir fried bean sprouts.  Love that.  One of my favorite growing up.  Even though it is stir fried, sometimes they put garlic in to boost up the flavor.

La Piece de Resistance: XLB.  I like theirs because there's a nice balance between the soup per dumpling ratio.  You may have eaten this at places that juices are flowing out as you bit into it.  Or you burn your tongue trying to eat and drink the soup at the same time.  This has a nice balance somehow.  Then!  The skin they used is just right, not too thick and not too thin.  The filling is delicious too.  Like I said, one of my favorites in town.

Usually when we go, there's a 30-40 minute wait.  Due to the false rumors about Chinatown, we literally went in, they cleared the table, we were sat down.  Food came out in less than 10 minutes.  It has definitely harmed businesses due to false information.  I hope folks will go back and support them.  Don't forget they are closed Mondays.

One Dragon Restaurant

9310 Bellaire Blvd

Houston, TX 77036

713-995-6545

Tres Market Foods

I had driven by and saw this cute little house.  

Then got a chance to meet a friend for coffee, and perfect time to check them out.

This is their coffee/wine bar.  In the morning, they serve all sorts of coffee, with baked goods and some hot foods.

I got a Cafe Latte and a slice of Quiche Lorraine.  As far as quiche goes, it's not bad.  But you can tell they had to reheat something frozen because it was not warm all the way.

Since we had to ask them to re-heat the re-heat.  They gave us a scone on the house.  It is a Cranberry Scone, it's served warm with butter.  It's not bad. 

Over all, this is really a pantry/market more than a sit down place to eat.  They have fridge upon fridge of prepared foods.  Mostly geared towards family of 4.  Servings are large.  They have appetizers, soups, salad, entrees and dessert.  For individual meals, they have TV dinners.  I had tried their Spaghetti & Meatballs before and it's very nostalgic to have them.  The TV dinners cost between $10-12 each and it does have sides of veggies like a good o' TV dinner tray.

Tres Market Foods

2620 Joanel St

Houston, TX 77027

713-640-5103

https://www.tresmarketfoods.com

Snowy Village

I just love the atmosphere at Snowy Village.

It's light, grammable and yummy food.  Of course, the constant run of Kpop that kinda made you wonder if they're playing songs from the same group or not.

Anyway, this is my go-to drink: Red Dragon.  It's really grenadine, Topo Chico, strawberries and all shaken together.  I love that every slurp you get some fresh fruit.

This is another favorite, it's Taiyaki with red bean.  And it's not the waffle type, the dough they use is so flaky that every bite it's like a light pie, especially when it's warm.  Such a great comfort food.

Snowy Village

9600 Bellaire Blvd

Houston, TX 77036

832-740-4182

http://www.snowyvillages.com/

Hu's Cooking

As we enter the take-out era of Foodiehood, here's one of mine.

Went to Hu's Cooking.  They were pretty fast on the whole process.  I ordered pork dumplings, Scallion Pancake, and Beef Fried Noodles with cabbage and onion.

I will say eating at home is not like you're there in person.  But for safety that's what we have to all do.

Even so, the food is good.  Took them 15 minutes to make, and they have a pick up window on the side of the place.  In and out very quickly and easily.  First online order gets 10% offf.

Hu's Cooking

2502 W. Holcomb Blvd

Houston, TX 77030

713-660-0020

https://www.huscooking.com

Aka Sushi House

One of my favorite hole in the wall sushi places: Aka Sushi.

Also, if you go on weekend, they have Happy Hour prices all day.  

One of my favs: agadeshi tofu.  Just love the ponzu sauce for dipping, the bonito flakes are great too. 

Also go the Hamachi & Tuna Sampler.  Each Sampler has 2 pieces of sashimi and 2 pieces of nigiri sushi.  Nice and fresh, yum!

The other weakness I have here is their Pork Belly (Buta Kakuni).  Slow braised pork belly that falls off the meat as you pick it up, cooked with bok choy, little bit of mustard you see on the side, and egg.  The whole thing is so fattening but it's so darn good.  Highly recommend you share this.  It's really a lot for one person.

Aka Sushi House

2390 W. Alabama St

Houston, TX 77098

713-807-7875

http://www.akasushi.net

Dough by Mo

For Easter, I love the individual touches that we an do, especially when all of us are staying at home.

Found Dough by Mo on Social Media and she's doing these cute cards + cookies.  Great favors!

And these decorate yourself customized cookies.

The kit comes with the cookie.  A color palette, and a tiny brush, just right for the cookie.

Here's my final product.  Color is not my strong suit, but it was fun doing that for Easter.

Go check out what she has to offer.  This young entrepreneur: besides cookies by order with awesome art work, she's also been doing kits and these special items for holidays.  So, follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Dough by Mo

https://www.doughbymo.com

60 Vines

Saw a lot of buzz about Sixty Vines, and happy to finally get a chance to check it out.

In case you're wondering, it is a wine bar with nice food.

This is a Shared Dish: Wood-Fire Cauliflower.

Up close, it is pretty cool for the gram.  But giving you the whole head made it hard to cut and eat.  It's decent and I do wonder how hard is it to make it at home.

Burrata - not exactly shareable.  It is yummy, but it's too big for one person, but too small to split with another person.  The tomatoes are awesome, love the pesto sauce, but again size was my issue.

Bacon Wrapped Dates.  I mean... it has bacon, what else is there to say?!

Fregola - risotto with wild mushroom, pretty yummy.

Fig and Prosciutto Pizza.  Very generous with the greens, one of my favorite dish for the night. 

Asparagus with cheese onto.

Waygu steak.  The meat was way chewy than a true, honest to goodness Waygu from Japan.  For that price point, however, I did expect decent slab of meat.  Super crazy, none of us were impressed with the steak, however, we finished up the side pasta.  That was delicious.

Sorry for the lighting.  This is the Deviled Affogato.  It's Deviled because it's Devil's Food Cake at the bottom, Salted Caramel Ice Cream with coffee caramel sauce on top.  And as a true affogato, a shot of expresso to pour over the ice cram.   That as delicious.

Overall the dishes were mixed for me.  Some of them were excellent, and some were meh.  There were no in between.  Our service that night was also interesting.  At the beginning, our server were attentive, checking on us, answering questions.  As the night progress, not sure if he was having a bad night.  Threw a utensil, plates were put down kinda rough.  Just overall vibe was weird.  Beautiful spot, has a huge selection of wine, lots of seatings.  Hope that was a one-off type of off night.

Sixty Vines

2540 University Blvd

Houston, TX 77005

281-800-8808

https://www.sixtyvines.com/location/rice-village-tx/

Purple Kow

One new Boba Place I found was Purple Kow.

It's kitchy and took a little spin on the well loved drink.

The spin is that it comes in 4 sizes.  You get 25 oz, 20oz, 16oz, and 12oz.  

Just curious at the largest size, so I got one just for kicks.  It is definitely a lot of boba and tea.  They have the lids that you can drink out of to spare a straw.  But as you know the fun of boba is to do it thru the straw.  It is pretty fresh, and definitely worth a try.

Besides the variety of sizes, they also have snacks too.  Not only that, they also have a lot of variety of drinks flavors and mix.  There's a lot of choices to be made there.

Purple Kow

2531 University Blvd

Houston, TX 

346-319-2317

https://www.facebook.com/purplekowhou/

Pronto Cucinino

Went to a quick lunch at Pronto.

It's very rare to have a long wait, as they move the customers along pretty quickly.

I love their Rigatoni Rustica.  Honestly, I just really like to drizzle the Parm on my pasta and sauce.  Of course the spicy sausage takes it to the next level.  The cream of tomato sauce definitely thicken things up.  Afterwards you feel so satisfied.  Of course, you have no room for desserts but it still one of their best dish!

Pronto Cucinino

3191 W. Holcomb Blvd

Houston, TX 77025

713-592-8040

https://pronto-2-go.com

Corner Bakery

Every so often, I go have breakfast with my mom, who ever so proud to use her senior discount.  

But first, coffee!

I got the Banana Foster Cinnamon Roll French Toast.  I would say it's not very French Toast-y, it's more like they popped in the toaster kinda toast instead of French Toast with egg batter and what not. The syrup and the toasted pecan does add an ump to it.  Over all it's to bad, but can be better.

I love how they bring the dishes to you and you feel like you're getting a full service.  Of course, having friendly staff helped too.

Corner Bakery

2615 Southwest Fwy

Ste 100

Houston, TX 77098

713-520-8211

https://www.cornerbakerycafe.com/location/west-university