I didn't know much when the shell of a space that was working its way to becoming Chef Kitchen in Irvine appeared a few months ago. Now the restaurant has opened and it appears to be a Taiwanese restaurant much like the others in this 99 Ranch-anchored plaza on Walnut and Jeffrey.
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But a friend had even better news. He said that the big
poster they've plastered on the window advertises that they specialize on Taiwanese
night market snacks, but particularly the infamous “sausage in a sausage.”
I
won't bore you with the Chinese characters here, because there's really no
ambiguity when you describe something as “sausage in a sausage.” And according to my buddy, it's as literal as they come: a large rice-filled sausage is split
open like a hot dog bun to receive a thinner pork sausage, the whole thing served with
pickles and eaten with your hands. (There's a bad joke in here somewhere that I'm purposely avoiding.)
The picture below was taken by my Taiwanese compadre on his
last trip to Taiwan. How will Chef Kitchen's version measure up? Stay tuned.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.