Quan Hy

Ten Great Salads in Orange County

Salads get a bad rap. It's the name: salad. We tend to associate the word with lettuce, usually iceberg, which is flavorless, bland--the antithesis of a steak. For those on a diet, salad is punishment. But perhaps the comedian John Pinette put it best when he said this about salad: "Salad isn't foo ... More >>

Hue Oi: Boiling Down to the Basics

This Hue-style joint is one of Little Saigon's best places for bánh bèo and bún bò hue

Thanh Ha's Crepe Expectations

The Vietnamese crepes at this Westminster restaurant are a worthy challenger to those at the venerable Van's Restaurant

10 Things You Must Eat in Little Saigon

In creating this list, I asked myself this question: Where would I take out-of-town visitors to explore the wonders of our Little Saigon? And what would I have them eat? In all honesty, I came up with more than you see below. My notepad is filled with at least a dozen more tasty bits I didn't have r ... More >>

The Mein Event: OC's Best Noodles

Noodles, noodles everywhere, from pho to pad Thai and everything else

10 Great Chicken Dishes in Orange County (and Long Beach)

There are lot of chicken dishes out there and I have only ten slots on this list. So I picked out my faves using my own unscientific criteria of what constitutes a chicken dish, ruling out others because chicken wasn't the star. What remains are dishes where I felt America's favorite poultry got top ... More >>

Ten Great Vietnamese Restaurants in Orange County

​Pity the other publications in the stable o' stallions that is Village Voice Media, because they have to come up with a list like this, too--and they don't have Little Saigon sitting smack dab in the middle of their publication area. How do we choose from the hundreds--yes, multiple hundreds--of ... More >>

On the Line: Jeff Armstrong of Splashes, Part One

​Jeff Armstrong sat at the bar just after conducting a tasting of next season's selections at Splashes. His egg-centric answers were amusing, just like the rest of his tattooed self. A man of few words, it took a Red Bull and view of the Pacific to get our conversation going. What are six words th ... More >>

No. 20: Chicken Pie at La Palma Chicken Pie Shop

ProfessorSalt.comChicken pie dinner at La Palma Chicken Pie Shop​This 100 Favorites Dishes feature is all about comfort foods for this writer. Granted, I  include tacos de tripas and fish pho in that category, but it also embraces American classics like chicken pie. In Orange County, old-scho ... More >>

No. 21: Mac and Cheese at Ecco

ProfessorSalt.comFontina, gorgonzola and pancetta mac and cheese​You'd think a mac and cheese would be simple to pull off for a restaurant kitchen, but you'd be wrong. Never mind the technical difficulties of making a cheese sauce creamy-smooth,  balancing the flavor profiles and so on, we're ... More >>

No. 23: ABC Burger at Peter's Gourmade Grill

​When Peter's Gourmade Grill opened last year, they staked a sign into the lawn across the off-ramp of the 55 freeway. The sign steered you toward a gas station, which just happens to host a terrific, if oddball, take-out restaurant.The first thing I ever tried in the early days of the restaurant, ... More >>

No. 56: Bacon Hash Dog at Berkeley Dog

ProfessorSalt.comBacon. Hashbrown. Dog.​Some things sell themselves: sex and bacon, to name two. The most savvy marketers know you just need to whisper those words, or show a well-shot photo, and the mere mention will hook into your brain like a stainless steel gaff-hook.  The less you talk a ... More >>

No. 57: Blueberry Donut at M & M Donuts

ProfessorSalt.comM&M's blueberry donuts​Every now and then, I'll overhear (accidentally, of course!) a great food tip while I'm eating at a place I love. One day, I'm lulled into a happy trance by the phenomenal nem nuong cuon at Dat Thanh when my ears perk up. One of the owners is raving abou ... More >>

No. 58: Tempura Fried Poached Egg at Break of Dawn

ProfessorSalt.comEggstatic!​The tempura-fried poached egg at Break of Dawn isn't normally an item served by itself -- it's the star of whatever ensemble it's cast with. It most often shows up in a dish of barbecue pulled pork piled onto jalapeno cornbread and served with an Asian slaw, but it migh ... More >>

No. 59: Mulitas from Tacos & Mulitas Ruben

ProfessorSalt.comMulita de suadero at Tacos Ruben​When a restaurant names their business after their specialty, it's a no-brainer that you should order that thing. This time, it's a mulita from the Ruben truck of Santa Ana. The Ruben truck specializes in hand-patted masa, which you should always f ... More >>

#81: Quesadilla Chilanga at Alebrije's Grill

ProfessorSalt.com​Since nobody could guess the exact name of last week's Guess Where dish, I'll tell you now. It's a quesadilla chilanga from the pink Alebrije's lonchera parked on Cubbon and Main Street in  Santa Ana. Some of you guessed almost right, but a quesadilla is not a taco,  no ... More >>

#82: Lobster Roll at Lobsta Truck

ProfessorSalt.comSummertime in Maine. But in So Cal.​Few foods better capture the flavor of the New England shore better than the lobster roll. It's simply steamed, chilled lobster meat in a butter-grilled New England-style split-top roll. Portable, chilled, light-yet-substantial, it's the perfect ... More >>

New Hue Restaurant Opens in Garden Grove

Edwin GoeiPhoto is of Ngu Binh's Hue dishes​You know what OC needs more of? Restaurants that serve banh beo, those button-cute mini Jell-O shots of steamed rice flour batter from the Hue region of Vietnam. 

No. 92: Sticky Rice With Chicken at Quan Hy

Edwin Goei​Welcome to the Weekly's list of our 100 Favorite Dishes for 2011! Tune in every day until we get to número uno! Now, on to the latest entry. . . .Xoi ga is sticky rice with chicken, a Vietnamese street dish that, if I wanted to oversimplify, closely mirrors Hainan chicken--boiled or ... More >>

Go Around the World In 50 States (or Cities, or Regions, or Styles, or Whatever)

Letters

'Normally, writers of your muckracking calibur would drop the context out of a quote, but you actually left it in. Thanks for doing half the job for me'

Sunday's Headlines & Surprises: Pipe Bomb Rocks Long Beach

Bud Light No More, You Pick Again: My-Thuan Tran reports this morning that the “Starbucks generation” of Vietnamese Americans “couldn’t stand dingy” Little Saigon restaurants and is building “stylish and spotless . . . swank” restaurants in response. Bao Tran, 34, quit a job in insura ... More >>

Westminster

The Asian Persuasion

Great Asian restaurants, and the Asians (and Chuck Devore) who love them