Din Tai Fung is a world famous restaurant that has many branches all over the world. It is originated from Taiwan and is well known for its Xiao Long Bao or soup dumpling. There are many Din Tai Fung restaurants on the west coast of United States. Whenever we go to Din Tai Fung, we always have to wait in line for at least 2 hours to get our seat! This is how popular this restaurant is! During the Chinese New Year of 2017, we decided to do a 3 hour road trip to Bellevue and have lunch at Din Tai Fung!
This time we left Portland extremely early at 6:30AM so that we can get to Din Tai Fung around 9:30 and be the first in line. When we got there, we were surprised that there weren't that many people there! We figure that it is probably because of the second Din Tai Fung restaurant that recently opened in Seattle which have diverged some traffic to there. This is good news for the customers so that customers don't have to wait in line for so long! While waiting in line, we could see the employees making Xiao Long Bao through the clear glass wall. Each employee is assigned to a particular task and all the work were streamlined. By 10AM, the restaurant opened and the waitress led us to one of the best seat beside the windows! This time we ordered Pork Xiao Long Bao, Shanghai Pork Fried Rice Cake, Pork Vegetable Dumpling, Port Shrimp Pot Stickers, Red Bean/Taro Xiao Long Bat for dessert, and a pot of Jasmin tea of course.
Few minutes later, our first serving of food is here! Pork Xiao Long Bao is here! This is quite fast! The kitchen is probably constantly streaming Pork Xiao Long Bao since each table will at least order one! The waitress also brought over shredded ginger for each of us. One thing I don't like is that if we want more ginger, it actually cost extra. Pork Xiao Long Bao at Din Tai Fung is known for having 18 folds. I have actually counted myself and every single Xiao Long Bao does have 18 folds on them! This Xiao Long Baa's skin is also very thin and can break easily. So we have to pick them up gently so that it does not break. There are 2 ways to eat Xiao Long Bao. You can take a small bite first, then suck out all the soup in there. Be careful that the soup is hot! The second way is to do what I did. I simply put the whole thing in my mouth to make sure the soup does not drip out.
The next dish coming up is Shanghai Pork Fried Rice Cake. The rice cake is a well known dish that people must have for Chinese New Year. It is chewy and has a lot of textured flavor when it is stir fried with soy sauce and other meat and vegetables. The one at Din Tai Fung is not different. It is extremely chewy and has absorbed all the flavors from the stir fry. We really loved it!
Now here comes the traditional Pork Vegetable Dumpling! One must have dumpling during Chinese New Year because eating dumplings symbolizes having the good fortune for the coming year! Dumpling may look different when you order them at different restaurant. The one at Din Tai Fung is a bit bigger in size but still flavorful. The skin of the dumpling is not thick either, which I really like.
The Shrimp Pork Pot Stickers are very similar to dumplings but different. Instead of streaming it, it is being pan fried. Pot stickers are usually longer as well. Before I can take a good picture at it, other people have already took two pot stickers and ate it unfortunately. The pot stickers at Din Tai Fung is fried perfectly. I really love it because of its crunchiness on the skin. It also comes with dipping sauce. The dipping sauce is a mix of soy sauce and peanut sauce. So if you are allergic to peanut, be sure to pay attention to this.
After all the main course meal, here comes our final dessert dish! This is Red Bean/Taro Xiao Long Bao! It usually only comes with 1 flavor with 10 for each serving, but we asked to have 2 flavors with 5 of each flavor in a serving. In the photo above, the one with darker color is red bean and lighter color is taro. You can see how thin the skin is and each Xiao Long Bao is full of fillings! I would say I like the Red Bean Xiao Long Bao more because it is more flavorful. Din Tai Fung also offers Sesame Xiao Long Bao and Chocolate Mochi Xiao Long Bao. I have tried Sesame Xiao Long Bao before and it is probably my favorite! I have not tried Chocolate Mochi Xiao Long Bao because is is twice as more expensive! Overall, this is an amazing meal. Din Tai Fung definitely offers the best Xiao Long Bao in the world! We can only hope that one day Din Tai Fung will have a restaurant in Portland as well so that we don't have to travel so far just for lunch!
Besaw's is definitely one of the best brunch place located in Northwest Portland. It used to be on the 23rd Street, but it has moved to its brand new location located on 21st street at the main floor of a brand new condominium complex. The parking in the area is not too bad. There is a lot of street parking available. However, there is quite a few new construction in the area building new luxury condo, so make sure to only park at allowed area.
We got to Besaw's around noon and there was a small waiting list. We put down our name and were given a free coffee coupon to its sister restaurant just beside Besaw's. This is quite nice of them. Its sister restaurant is Solo Club and we chilled at Solo Club while waiting for our seats at Besaw's to be ready. You can read more about our Solo Club experience here. After 20 minutes, Besaw's sent a text to inform us that the seats are ready. Besaw's offers various type of seating arrangement. Customers can sit at the bar, at the regular dining table, or at the chef's table. We got the seats at the chef's table. The experience at the chef's table was quite unique. We were able to see the chefs preparing the food since Besaw's has open kitchen concept. Since we were sitting so close to the chefs, we were also able to ask the chef some questions about the food and the recommendations that he has for the day. This time we ordered a Lychee Tickle drink, Avocado Toast, and a 2 Egg Breakfast Meal.
The Lychee Tickle drink is a non-alcoholic drink. It tastes like lemonade soda with some spicy taste. The spicy taste is most likely coming from the ginger beer. Thus it has this ginger-like spiciness to it. In addition, instead of using regular maple syrup or honey, lychee syrup is used for making this drink. We were trying to figure out the uniqueness of lychee syrup in the drink, but we could not tell the difference. We didn't really find any lychee taste in this drink. Also, we find the drink to have too much ice in it. About 80% of the glass was filled with ice cubes. Thus this was a bit disappointing to us.
After the drink is served, here comes the main course of the meal. Avocado Toast was one of the recommended dish. We loved this dish! The softness of avocado combined with the crunchiness of walnut just makes a perfect texture. With horseradish creme glazed over the toast makes this dish to have a slight spiciness but fits perfectly into this dish. The smoked trout is also cooked perfectly and chewy.
The 2 Egg Breakfast meal comes with 2 egg at your choice, whole grain toast, baked potatoes, and beef brisket. Baked potatoes and beef brisket can be swapped with other stuff at your choice. I chose to have my egg done as scrambled egg. Besaw's did a great job to the scrambled egg. The egg was not over cooked at all. It was tender and juicy. The toast is just toast and comes with creme cheese and blueberry jam. We had high expectation to beef brisket. The beef brisket has a lot of flavor, but it is just not my type of taste. The best part of this dish is the baked potatoes. This baked potatoes is amazing. We think that the baked potatoes were baked twice or something like that. The baked potatoes were both soft and crunchy with a lot of flavor. Overall, this was an amazing brunch and Besaw's definitely has a lot to offer to brunch lovers. We highly recommend this place to people who have not been to Besaw's.
Solo Club is one of the best Cafe I have been to that has indoor balcony seating area. Solo Club is located in Northwest Portland in Rose Quarter. It is located on 21st street, just 2 blocks away from 23rd street. It is also a sister restaurant of Besaw's and you can read more about Besaw's in this article. I went to Solo Club in the early afternoon after lunch and there were plenty of parking on the street. Currently there are many new condo constructions in the surrounding area, so make sure you don't park at the wrong place. In addition, do not park at the New Season's parking lot since that is only meant for the customers going to New Season's.
When I walked into Solo Club, I was amazed by how bright it is inside. The Cafe is filled with natural light and gives a very comfort feeling. The Cafe is also decorated with bright paint color which also lightens the mood. The seating area in the Cafe also offer different type of seats such as sofa and hanging chairs like the ones you see at Pier 1 Import. The tall shelve behind the bar is also filled with bottles that hold different flavor of drinks.
One of the best thing is that Solo Club Cafe has a second floor balcony. I always loved to have a second floor balcony. From the balcony, you have the view of the entire Cafe from the top. I can imagine myself to spend the entire afternoon here with a cup of coffee or tea, and perhaps writing blogs or work here. The only thing that surprised me is that I was the only one sitting at the balcony. Everyone else was sitting on the first floor. When I was there, I just ordered coffee with milk. It came with a special looking cup with snake pattern on it. The snake pattern was quite unique, but I forgot to take a picture of it. The milk came in a metal container. The taste of coffee was great as well. To me, it tastes like Starbuck coffee. I am not very picky on the coffee that I drink. When I go to a Cafe to drink coffee, the atmosphere is the most important thing. Thus I really enjoy drinking coffee here at Solo Club. It is probably one of the best experience that I have for drinking coffee since I love this indoor balcony so much, especially in the afternoon of a raining day in Portland. If you have not been to Solo Club yet, I highly recommend you to pay a visit to Solo Club. Currently there are more and more luxury condos being built around the area, I can just imagine that there will be more people to come here. Moreover, since it is a sister restaurant of Besaw's, Besaw's sometimes give you a free drink coupon to Solo Club if the wait time at Besaw's takes too long. Lastly, Solo Club cafe itself does not have a washroom in there. The washroom is in the apartment complex, but you have to walk out of the Cafe first.
Syun Izakaya is an authentic Japanese bar restaurant. Every evening after work, you can always see a lot of people dining here to relieve all the stress from the day. The restaurant is located at the heart of downtown Hillsboro, Oregon. It is located at the intersection of Lincoln Street and 2nd street. It is just on the opposite corner of Hillsboro City Hall. There are plenty of free street parkings around the location of the restaurant. The restaurant also have around 6 tables on the patio and offers patio dining when weather permits. During some evenings, there is also live guitar performance at the restaurant. The restaurant is located on the first floor of a 2 stories building. It may not be easy to spot the restaurant at first, but eventually you will see it.
It has been a while since the last time we were here. It has probably been more than a year. We got here around 6:30pm and there were already people waiting in line. The good thing is that it wasn't because there wasn't any table available, it was just that they didn't have time to clean up the tables. Thus we only waited for about 5 minutes to get a table. The bad thing is that I had to wait for 5 minutes just to get the food menu because they were out of menu. We were very surprised that the restaurant does not have enough menu for every table.
We were quite hungry tonight and ordered quite a lot of food. This time we ordered a Tempura Soba, Yaki Onigiri, Salmon Roll and Alaskan Roll. Both Tempura Soba and Yaki Onigiri came rather fast. Tempura Soba came with 2 shrimp tempuras and onion tempura. The shrimp tempura is.a good size shrimp, but the onion tempura is average. The soup base of the tempura soba is quite good. It is a clear fish based soup base. The noodle itself is Soba instead of Ramen since the item is called Tempura Soba. It felt a bit weird to have Soba in the soup for me. I would rather to eat Soba with dipping soy sauce. Yaki Onigiri is my favorite part of the dinner. The grilled rice texture is really tasty and smells so good! I like the taste of hard and crunchy rice ball. After taking a bite at it, there is actually salmon inside Onigiri. That was a nice surprise to us. The dish also came with 2 pieces of reddish, which we really like as well.
Salmon Roll and Alaskan Roll had finally arrived 10 minutes later. We were not tool thrilled when we saw the sushi rolls. Each sushi roll came with 8 pieces, which is fine. However; each piece is cut into different size! Some pieces are small and some are quite large! Besides the size inconsistency, the sushi roll still taste pretty good. We really like Alaskan Roll with Tobiko on top of it. It provides crunchy texture. On the other hand, Salmon Roll is just amazing as we always loved to have salmon in my sushi. We have always preferred to have salmon sushi over tuna. Overall, the food is great at Syun Izakaya and the price is reasonable. The only downside is the service. The service is a little slow at times even though there are already 4-5 servers in the restaurant.
There are many amazing Japanese restaurants in Portland and Kale Japanese Restaurant is one of them. Unlike other Japanese restaurants, Kale does not sells sushi or ramen. The only thing that Kale sells is curry! As a Japanese curry lover, this is a must try restaurant to me. If you love Indian curry, then this may not be the right place for you. Unlike Indian curry, Japanese curry is not as spicy. Instead of being spicy, it has some kind of sweetness in it. I am not a big fan of spicy curry, so I enjoy Japanese curry more than Indian curry.
Kale is located downtown Portland. It is at the intersection of 9th Street and Morrison Street. We took MAX train down to Pioneer Square first and walked to there. It was a sunny and freezing day. We were really hungry from the hike we did in the morning. When we walked to the address of the restaurant, we did not find it at first. The front door of the restaurant is difficult to spot if you are walking on Morrison street because the restaurant is blocked by a column. It is easier to spot the restaurant on 9th Street.
The restaurant itself only has 1 person at the desk, but the restaurant itself is quite large and has a lot of tables of customers. When we entered the restaurant, we ordered first before we find a table to sit down. As I mentioned before, the only thing on the menu is curry. First we ordered the type of Katsu we want first (chicken or pork), then we select the type of curry we want. It has various curry options such as beef, chicken, or vegetable. After we placed our orders, we went to find a table. I was surprised to see few traditional Japanese Tatami like seating area. This is refreshing and new for us. There are also many Japanese books on the side for customers to read or just to flip through it. The water is also self-served in front of the kitchen counter.
After 5-10 minutes, the server called our them to pick up our order from the kitchen. The curry smells really nice and it is just how I imagined it. The rice is a bit different from what I expected however. The rice tasted more like sticky rice to me. It is small, round, and a bit sticky. The dish also has Kale leafs bit placed on top of the ride and Katsu. I am guessing the is where the restaurant got the name from. The smell of Kale is rather refreshing. The Katsu on the dish is also juicy and tender. When mixing the Katsu with curry, it is just magnificent. After we finished our dish, we brought the tray and the dish to the dish collecting area for the restaurant to clean. Overall, the restaurant offers magnificent Japanese curry. The only down side is that the meal is a bit expensive. Each dish is around $13.
Hoyt Arboretum provides several hiking trails within the Washington Park of Portland. It is a popular location for Portlanders to spend the weekend. Oregon Zoo and Rose Garden are also just within the walking distance inside Washington Park. Just about 3 days ago, Portland has experienced the largest snow storm in the past 10 years and Hoyt Arboretum at Washington has since become a winter wonderland.
This crazy snow storm has left about 10 inches of snow on the ground in Washington Park. Originally we wanted to drive our car to Hoyt Arboretum because we thought that all the roads should be cleared of snow. This was a big mistake. We forgot that this is Portland and Portland City does not plow snow if it does not have to. Although all the main streets and high ways have been plowed and is cleared of snow, the winding road in Washington Park is full of snow. It was very dangerous and difficult to drive. However, this did not stop us from going to Hoyt Arboretum. We decided to park the car at MAX station and took the MAX train to Hoyt Arboretum.
When we got to Hoyt Arboretum, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. The scenery is just so beautiful. It was lovely to see the snow on the pine trees with sun lights shinning through the forest. We took the marked 2 hour trail while we were there. Note that even though it says 2 hours trail, it is only 1.25 miles and takes less than an hour. When there is snow on the ground, it is a bit more difficult to follow the trail. Instead, you can choose to check out the colored markers on the trees to stay on the trail. Every several hundred feet, there are also man made posts showing you the direction. There is also a larger 5 miles hike around Hoyt Arboretum, but it goes over several trails. Since there is a lot of snow on the ground and hard to follow the trail, we did not choose to do the 5 miles hike.
During our hike at Hoyt Arboretum, we also saw cross country skiers. There were also people doing mountain biking with snow tires and that was pretty awesome. It was amazing to see them ride down the hill through the deep snow! In addition, near the Vietnam Veterans of Oregon Memorial, it has a big hill that is perfect for tobogganing. If you or your kids have never done tobogganing before, this is the perfect opportunity to do it and enjoy the fun! Moreover, there were some snowboarders built a ramp to do some acrobatic moves and having some fun. Just make sure to pay extra attention and not run into them. Overall, this was an amazing experience since Portland rarely gets this much snow at once. Thus when it snows next time in Portland, make sure you visit Hoyt Arboretum and enjoy the outdoor!
Sunriver Resort is located in central Oregon and it is about 20 minutes South of Bend. Sunriver Resort got its name from Sun River that runs through the resort. Sunriver resort is a very popular place for people in Oregon since it is close to Mount Bachelor's and also provide numerous activities. For people from Portland, it takes about 4 hours of drive. It could take longer during the winter season due to the road condition.
We left around 10am in the morning to head to Sunriver Resort. It is a partially cloudy day, but at least it is not snowing. When we got to Mount Hood, the snow was not completely removed and there were still snow and ice on the road. For some part of the road, the road was completed covered by snow and ice. We brought the snow chain but chose to not to put it on since the road condition was still fine; however, we did drive slower than usual. When we go to Sunriver Resort, it was around 2pm and we were not able to check in yet. We went to Sunriver Village to walk around and shop around there. Sunriver Village is very close to the resort and it is within the walking distance. 30 minutes later, the resort texted us to tell us that the room is ready.
Each room is located at the first floor or second floor of the cabin. Each cabin has around 6 rooms. Every room has an outdoor balcony and a fire place. I really like the fire place because it has a timer on it. So if you want, you can set the timer and leave the fire place on when you go sleep. One thing that I really don't like is the free Wi-Fi that the resort offered. The Wi-Fi is extremely slow and sometimes you cannot even connect to it. When I wanted to check on important emails, I had to go to Sunriver Village to use the Wi-Fi there. This is really something that the resort needs to improve on. On the second day, we drove to Mount Bachelors. It is only about 20 minutes away. We did not ski this time and we chose to do snow tubing. Snow tubing at Mount Bachelors is amazing. The tubing hill is way larger than the ones that I have been to! When we were there, there were not that many people doing snow tubing. Thus we were able to do multiple snow tubing runs. In the afternoon, we went to do some snow shoeing around Mount Bachelor. This was our first time doing snow shoeing and were not very experienced with it. We originally wanted to walk to Lake Todd, but it was still few miles away and we decided to head back before the sun goes down. When we got back to the resort, we went to the back side of the resort and had a walk there. The back side of the resort is a golf course during the summer. People at resort and play golf and rent bike to bike around. The sun set scenery is really amazing here. At night, the resort turned on the Christmas lights and it was awesome. The Christmas light was essentially on every single tree in front of the main resort building. The resort also had several big pine trees with Christmas lights on. Although the weather is freezing at night, it was an amazing experience to have a walk among the trees with Christmas lights on. On the third day when we head back to Portland, it was snowing on Mount Hood and the road condition was bad. Fresh snow has covered the road and snow chain is required. As we tried to put on the snow chain, we found out that the snow chain we have does not fit for the tire of my car! It was too small! We had a drive through the snowy mountain road without the chain for about an hour. Fortunately we had an SUV with four wheel drive and made it out safely. In general, it was a great experience! Just make sure you wear warm clothing and make sure you have snow chain with you!
