Last Thursday, I desperately needed the motivation to help me study for MCAT, so Andrew & I met up once again at the library to study.. only this time, David wasn't around to surpervise us ;) While studying, Andrew's amazing eyesight caught glimpse of this book:

Let's Find Pokemon!


Can you find them? Hahaha

So cute & fun, and it brought back childhood memories trying to find the pokemon in the midst of all the colour on the page!

For dinner, we met up with Crystal and headed over to one of my favourite Korean joints, Lee House. With the heat wave hitting the city, it was impossible to order my favourite jjam pong without feeling like an absolute fool! Therefore, we agreed to order some other classic Korean foods - jap chae, gam poong ki, kal bi and something different, mul nam yeong.


Banchan side dishes on left, followed by jap chae and gam poong ki

Traditionally, Korean restaurants and typical Korean families serve small side dishes with their meals to accompany the food, or to be paired with rice. On this particular night, Lee House chose to serve kimchi radish, kimchi cabbage, and a seaweed salad. All three were great, and I love that they were bottomless! The jap chae at Lee House is my favourite in our city, because it has a unique flavour to it. It's almost like they use a lot of ground black pepper in it to give the noodles some heat, and the noodles never get dry, sticky and clumped together like the jap chae found at other restaurants. Definitely a keeper! Gam poong ki (technically kung pao chicken) is also very unique to lee house. The chicken here is formed into a ball and deep fried before being tossed in the sauce. It's the perfect combination of sweet, salty and sour - but if you ever order this dish, make sure to have a couple people with you because the portion is quite big!


Kal bi - BBQ Short Ribs

Kal bi, otherwise known as BBQ beef short ribs is another favourite of mine when it comes to Korean food. The beef is nice and tender, and I'm a big fan of the tendon/connective tissue that is found right around the bone (I know it might sound gross, but hey, I'm Asian :P). The ones at Lee house are good, but in my opinion definitely not worth the price! After cutting up the pieces according to the number of bones, we counted a total of 8 pieces for $17.00 - I'd rather buy my own and fire up the barbeque at home!


Mul Nam Yeong

And last of all, we ordered Mul nam yeong from Lee House's summer menu (available from June - August). This dish was basically buckwheat noodles served with pickled radish, egg, and beef slices in an ice cold beef broth. This was PERFECT for the summer heat! It wasn't spicy at all, but rather refreshing and cleansing to the palate. The buckwheat noodles remained nice and chewy since they were sitting in a cold broth, preventing them from being cooked any further. Yummy!


Lemonade, HK Style milk tea, lemon tea

To finish off the night, we picked up some drinks from Tasty Choice on the way home. Great night!


Andrew with his stack of chairs @ Tasty Choice!

One thing I love about the end of a work day? Having the time to eat away troubles that happen at work (aka the craziness kids put me through!) Despite the summer heat, Vince & I chose to stop by our favourite pho joint, Pho Tau Bay, to have a delicious bowl of beef noodles!

such a nice summer day :)

The only way to keep cool while eating the noodles was of course by ordering my favourite jackfruit shake :) I find that the jackfruit shake at Tau Bay is quite different from the others found around the city. The one here is mostly just jackfruit blended with ice, almost into a slush-like consistency. Other places such as Pho Hoa make a smoothie-based jackfruit shake, with less (and more chunky) jackfruit content and milk/cream in it. Either way, it's still jackfruit & I'll take it anyday! Yum yum.

best pho in Edmonton!

I had my usual, pho tai sach, loaded with the raw beef & tripe. It was delicious as usual, served in the nice clear broth. Can't wait til I hit it up again!!

Pho Tau Bay
10660 98 Street NW
Edmonton AB

Yesterday to boost my motivation to study for MCAT, I booked a lunch & study date with Andrew - Our choice for lunch? Maki Maki! Vince and I had visited this location for lunch once before, but we were definitely on the fence about this one..

"Maki maki means roll roll" as quoted from their menu, and right they were. They had approximately 60 different options for sushi rolls ranging from your everyday california roll to the ecstacy roll (which Vince did not enjoy on our first visit), and a locally named Oilers roll. We met up Vince to have lunch and give this mix of Vietnamese and Chinese food a second try.

For lunchtime, they had some specials, like bento boxes ranging from $8 - $11, filled with various sushi rolls and sashimi options. I myself opted for the lunch special pho, which was a HUGE bowl of pho dac diet (and yes, I picked out everything except the beef & tripe.. mmm)

For me, beef tataki is a must, so we obviously ordered that, and gave their dragon eyes a try as well. Andrew chose the tuna bowl, and a yam roll, while Vince like his usual self tried to be adventurous, but settled on the BC roll and the spicy scallop roll.

Pho Dac Biet
The pho itself was GINORMOUS. I felt like it was an extra (extra extra, perhaps?) large bowl of pho, loaded with the works that you usually find in the pho dac biet. The meat offered inside was mediocre, in some bites I felt the beef was a bit on the tough side, but otherwise it was good, especially for the lunch special price of $7.25. Of course, it's pretty difficult to find very good pho in this city, especially when Tau Bay downtown is one of my favourites :)

Beef Tataki
For the beef tataki, we ordered the small plate at $8.95 rather than the large for $18.95 because we had no idea what we were getting into. However, the beef tataki was a decent size, and could almost be argued to be my favourite dish from this meal! The beef was nice and tender, not hard to chew, and there was a more than generous amount of seaweed and onion to compliment the beef in the ponzu sauce.

Dragon Eyes
Dragon Eyes, another one of my favourite sushi dishes was a big disappointment for me here at Maki Maki. Perhaps it is because it has been so perfected by Mikado that it's untouchable? Does anyone know anywhere else that makes Dragon Eyes in this city? Let me know! Anyways, the salmon in the Dragon Eyes was way overcooked, and very dry. If it weren't for the big bowl of sauce served with the Dragon eyes to compensate for the dryness, I don't think we would've been able to finish this sushi dish.

I guess I'm interesting when it comes to sushi.. I love the raw beef tataki, and tobiko and masago (fish roe) I would eat anyday, anytime, anywhere. But when it comes to raw fish? Gross! No thanks! So I had to leave it up to Vince & Andrew to review the raw seafood sushi for me.

Tuna Bowl
The tuna bowl came with 5 big chunks of tuna sitting on top of rice. Thats it. Just 5 pieces of tuna and rice. For the price point of $10.95, you're better off ordering the tuna nigiri priced at $1.60 each so you're not forcing yourself to eat all that rice!

6 pc BC Roll
Like the Dragon Eyes, Vince's BC roll had overcooked salmon, making the sushi extremely dry. The boys didn't complain about the spicy scallop or yam rolls, so I'm guessing those were pretty tasty! All in all, it was a decent lunch, but not somewhere I would prefer to go for sushi or pho by themselves.. but it's always a fun place to go when you have people in your group craving either or!

Yam Roll

Spicy Scallop Roll

After hitting up the local Second Cup in Riverbend, Andrew and I studied for MCAT at the library.. or did we? Ask David.

Hi David - thanks for supervising us at the library over skype :)

Maki Maki Japanese & Vietnamese Restaurant
8109 101 Street NW
Edmonton, Alberta