Adventures in Asian Cuisine

Jp and I took a little trip to Richmond to visit the Japanese Dollar store called Daiso because I needed to get something from there that I haven't been able to find elsewhere. It's a little over an hour to drive there and so we decided to enjoy the food court in the mall, Aberdeen Center.  This area has a large population of Asian people and there are many 'authentic' restaurants to choose from. Many store signs in this area are written in Chinese or Korean (or other) languages and is almost like a very large "chinatown' that is common is many large cities.

At the food court I decided to try a rice dish with beef  and Jp tried a bowl of congee (it's like a rice porridge). He had heard people refer to congee many times as comfort food.

Unfortunately my dish came with the parts of beef I don't like to eat - tripe, lung, liver etc. And Jp's bowl of  congee tasted like a big bowl of wall paper paste - we have no idea how that can be comfort food for anyone. Usually we are pretty open to new foods and do like a wide range of food but I suppose  this was just too "authentic" for us. I had to throw my bowl  away and bought a bowl of lemongrass chicken soup from the Vietnamese restaurant which was absolutely yummy.  We were both disappointed  that we chose so badly on the Chinese foods.

We did have a successful shopping trip at Daiso and then went home to have some good old fashioned American hot dogs - that's our comfort food.

Photo credit: congee