About 80% of a vacation for Joanna and me is spent seeking out new foods to eat. The other 20% is time in between meals until we get hungry again or find another tasty thing to try. Today was no exception.
We got to the airport at 5:30 for our 7am flight to LA, which was 4 hours. I felt slightly conflicted when I booked our tickets on United airlines but in all honesty, I can’t afford an extra $200 to protest when that’s more than half of our total hostel budget for the trip.
I rented a car for our day in the city just to make things easier for ourselves. Since it was Sunday, the worst traffic could be comparable with a regular traffic jam at home.
First location on our list was Paris Baguette. They’re a French style bakery but mostly found in Asian countries. I’ve been to ones in Korea, HK, Japan, and Singapore in the past and they’re all delicious.
Joanna wanted to check out the Jins and do some window shopping so we drove to the Westfield Santa Ana. Jins is a store that we discovered on our last trip to Japan. You can get a free glasses prescription done in store and a pair of frames and lenses around $60. What’s special about the store is that the frames are designed for Asian faces, which means there is additional support on the nose pads because Asians don’t have a nose bridge.
To my surprise, this mall was packed with stores I’m used to seeing in Asia: Uniqlo, Muji, and the make up stores that Joanna went to all had Japanese and Korean brands. One subtle thing I noticed also was that the billboards and in store posters mostly featured Asian models which was really cool to me since I’m not used to seeing that at home.
Lucky for us, there was a Din Tai Fung right across the hall from Jins, which is a popular chain restaurant that I think started in Taiwan.
We were planning on meeting my friend Bob in about an hour but couldn’t resist getting some dumplings. These guys are the experts at pork soup dumplings, I tried making my own at home and they just can’t compare.
After our pre-dinner snack, we drove to Little Tokyo to meet up with Bob for ramen. He picked a good place as the broth was thick and creamy, noodles were chewy, and pork belly was tender and juicy. Joanna thought about getting dessert at Honey Mee, an ice cream shop where they drizzle honey on top of ice cream, but then we decided to go back to Paris Baguette in Korea Town to get breakfast for the next day. What greeted us when we arrived was a Gong Cha bubble tea chain right across the street.
Seriously, I can’t move here because not only will I go broke from the general cost of living but there is never-ending Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food here. I’ll just have to limit myself to 4 visits to LA a year 😀
