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