Sha-lin Noodles

My dad's been telling me about this place for a while, and though I've heard of it and seen it, I never thought to go in.  I was sort of reluctant to try it, but my dad said give it a shot, so I agreed.  Either I was really hungry, or the food was pretty good.  We started off with a cold plate of what might have been beef.  My mom makes this stuff all the time, so it had a real home-made taste to it.  I'll have to remember not to order this next time because I could get this at home.

Haha, my dad thinking the exact same thing as me.  It wasn't bad.  No, it was actually quite good, but when I go out to eat, I want to eat stuff that I don't usually eat at home.....

...like this.  Lamb stew/soup.  My parents never cook lamb, and I've never tried it myself except when I eat out.  They say that when it's cold, you should eat lamb, but I have no idea if that's true or not.  Anyway, you want a gamey soup, this is it.  It tastes like lamb, mixed with some veg.  I'd probably order this again on a cold day.  It's soup, so it'll warm you up.  Not sure how lamb is supposed to get your body temperature up, just because it's lamb.

Green onion pancake, you can never go wrong with this.  What drives me up the wall are places that under cook it, the dough is still raw in the middle, or they don't use enough oil, or it's just not seasoned right and needs salt.  This place was none of those - it was done right and tasted great.  It didn't seem to match everything else we had, but I still liked it.

Zha Jiang Mien, I have no idea how to say this in English, so just trust me when I say it tastes good and you should try it.  No weird meats in it, in fact I'm pretty sure it was pork.

Would I go back?  Well, the food that I tried at Sha Lin wasn't particularly exciting, just like this post, but it tasted good, so yeah, I'd probably, if I were in the area and I was hungry.


 

Ramen Jinya with two clowns

Ah, not much going on here except two clowns fighting over a bowl of ramen.  My buddy Eric was in town and since he's been really into ramen lately, we took him to Ramen Jinya.  The last time I had ramen with Eric was at the now defunct G-Men Ramen where he ordered TWO bowls of miso ramen.  This time, he just ordered extra noodles, but Jay took on the challenge of two consecutive bowls of ramen.

I really have no idea how they did it.  I love ramen, and I'm a particularly big fan of the very unhealthy variety where the broth is so thick, you could walk across it, where the chashu is so fatty, you'd swear you bit into a whale belly, where it's slightly on the salty side and you're screaming for a glass of water after you're done.  And that is why I love Ramen Jinya.  It's got nice, thick broth, it's well seasoned, and they are not shy about serving some really fatty chashu.  If you want health food, go eat a salad.

Old Country Buffet - Bellingham

I started going down to Washington occasionally and there was this one place that always stuck out in my mind, but I never visited - Old Country Buffet.  I heard about it, saw it on Urban Spoon, but never went so I took the plunge and paid a visit.  Haha, definitely not fine dining, but you know what, it got the job done.  I was full of tasty food (translation - comfort food) for cheap.  It reminded me of Uncle Willy's but more variety for about the same price.

I piled on all the stuff that looked tasty including fried chicken, pork rib, mashed potato with gravy, quiche, and a bunch of other stuff I can't identify by memory.

They had some sort of penne in a white cream sauce that actually didn't taste half-bad.

That's the pork rib, and to tell the truth, it wasn't all that bad.

Haha, mac and cheese, I couldn't resist.  I had to try it.  Once was enough.

This was some sort of cream soup.  It might have been clam chowder?  I had the cheese and broccoli here once and I felt really guilty after.

The prime rib was most often medium to medium well, and they only have creamy horse radish.  I'm personally not a big fan of creamy horse radish, but hey, I only paid 10 bucks for this lunch.

Popcorn shrimp.

The deserts were on par with Uncle Willy's.

Would I go back to Old Country Buffet?  Haha, I have to admit, I've been back a few times already.  Like I said, it's not fine dining, much of the menu isn't particularly healthy (well, I bypass the salad section, which is actually quite large), but you're not paying an arm an a leg, so if you think about how much it costs nowadays to eat at Rotten Ronnie's or Burger Thing, then this ain't such a bad deal.