Bali Laguna

Delicious Indonesian restaurant with fantastic ambiance inside of Jing'an Park.

The location is lovely, a stand alone house on a lake surrounded by trees and stone walkways. This also makes it quite difficult to find. My only advice is if you see any lion statues, walk through them, and you're probably on the right track.

We had the starter sampler with satays, crab balls, and spring rolls, as well as papaya salad. I loved the mushroom cream soup with coconut. The prawns were fantastic, as were chili crab (though messy as usual). Fried chicken in coconut soup was good as well.

They also have fantastic juices and desserty drinks -- I had a coconut (enormous).

Not inexpensive, roughly 850 RMB for three of us.

1649 Nanjing West Rd (inside Jing'an Park)
南京西路1649号（静安公园内）
+86 21 6248-6970

Betelnut

Dinner and drinks

Great cocktails (bloody mary if you are in the mood), great food, a lot of scene, gets super crowded though

http://www.betelnutrestaurant.com/

2030 Union St, San Francisco, CA 94123
(415) 929-8855

Lingba

August 2008
Sunday brunch

Interesting Asian fusion-y menu at this cute place in Richmond (maybe? I have no idea where this really is).

Really yummy bloody mary's with an entire stick of bacon in it, pretty amazing. They had some great appetizers that we split - a corn fritatta kind of thing, fried egg rolls with risotto inside, taro chips with mango and tuna tartar, and ribs. My meal was kurobuta pork hash with roasted potatoes, kabocha pumpkin and poached eggs.

http://www.lingba.com/

1469 18th Street (and Connecticut), San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 355-0001

Maru Ichi

July 2008
Lunch

Pretty good ramen place in the Asian Fast Food Mall (Ranch 99 shopping center in Milpitas). It gets super crowded at lunch time so try before 11:45pm. After that they put your name down and you wait outside. I actually like their traditional ramen (miso, shoyu, etc) rather than their specialty black ramen.

Looks like they have another location in Mountain View on Castro as well.

530 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 434-5991

Hot Pot City

Lunch wtih Becky
June 2008

So we came across Hot Pot City as we walked around the Asian fast food mall (otherwise known as Ranch 99 shopping center). Looked a little bit dark and not so many people, but intrigued and we went in.

We asked for a table and they asked us - spicy or normal soup? We were a little confused. So the way this place works is each table has a grill with a hot pot that you can fill with all normal, all spicy, or half and half soup. Around the pot is a flat surface that you can cook meat on (like Korean BBQ). And best part? Buffet. Sweet.

I was SO excited for this place, and totally psyched that it turns out Becky is a huge foodie too :) We went to the buffet bar - I loaded up a plate with marinated chicken, pork and beef spare ribs, and Becky got stuff for the soup - thin sliced beef, lamb, some veggies, noodles, dumplings, and two squids. Yup whole squid. Awesome. And we went back for more.

We later discovered they also have kimchi (alot of heat) and shaved ice for dessert.

And all for $9.99 per person.

*I am also a huge fan of their $3 charge for wasting food. All buffets should do that. As my water polo coach used to say, "get what you eat, eat what you get"

*Friendly waitress kindly told us that they are open from 11am til like 1am or something like that, and they have late night specials

http://www.hotpotcitymilpitas.com/

500 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035
(409) 428-0988

Red Lantern

Dinner with Jon and Tris
May 2008

Right next to the Redwood City train station, this super trendy looking Asian restaurant was surprisingly speedy and reasonably priced ($15 per person, stuffed, without alcohol).

www.redlanternrwc.com

808 Winslow Street, Redwood City, CA 94063
(650) 369-5483

Longrain

April 2008
Dinner with Tristen and Beck

Wonderful Asian restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney. They don't take reservations so unless you get in at 6:30pm, expect to wait at least an hour at the bar. But they have incredible cocktails and you can be seated (and fed) in the waiting bar area so not a bad deal.

DELICIOUS Thai Bloody Mary, best I have ever had I think -- perfect amount of spicy and vegetable and alcohol. Yummy lychee drink also. Expensive, drinks are about $20 each, though totally worth it.

Definitely get the beetle leaf with shrimp, delicious. As are their speciality egg nets, very light and tasty. Also got a wonderful wagyu beef stir fry.

http://www.longrain.com/

85 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills, NSW Australia 2010
+61 2 9280 2888

Banana Leaf

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Cisco MBA Lunch

YUM, super good and often spicy Malay and Thai cuisine. Had some Rothi bread to start, and they brought us all this spicy broth with celery. I had red curry with prawns with rice. All in $12 per person including tax & tip, good lunch specials. You can make a reservation online if you have more than six in the party, and they are pretty militant about it. Loong lines if you go for lunch otherwise.

182 Ranch Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 719-9811

Osha Thai

Friday, October 26, 2007
Birthday dinner with Lowell, Nadim, Eric, Shan and Karen

Osha Thai was a nice accidental find in SoMa before the birthday party at Mr Smiths. We called an hour before for a reservation and showed up 15m late. Only with Nadim's magic did they let us sit down -- highly recommend reservations and showing up on time. Super trendy fusion Asian Thai place.

Great cocktails, I loved the lycheetini myself. Appetizers of spring rolls and seared wasabi ahi tuna were quite good. We went family style on the rest of the meal -- ginger chicken, pineapple fried rice which was one of my favorites, curry dish, spicy eggplant with beef, and a shrimp dish.

149 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 278-9991