Asian brunch at Thai Noodle Jump, Inner Richmond, SF.

Deep Fried Chicken Fried Rice?!! Whaaaat?! Out of control!

21. Tom Yum Gai Soup Hot and sour soup with chicken, shrimp, lemon grass, galangal, tomato, and mushrooms.

Mmmmmm. We ordered it with the flat vermicelli noodles.

63. Thai Hot Basil Choice of chicken, pork, or beef with bamboo strips and basil.

Yummy.

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Vietnamese cold noodle salad from Turtle Tower, Tenderloin, SF.

Vietnamese cold noodle salad. The meat--pork and meatballs--was very good, but the sauce was only okay. I've only ever had this dish in a bowl, usually with some imperial rolls as well, but Turtle Tower serves it on a plate. I definitely prefer the bowl, as it is easier to eat, but the meat in this dish was really nice.

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Ending Girls Night at Osha Thai, Tenderloin, SF.

Spring rolls with tofu.

Like!
Pad see ew with tofu.

Like!

Pumpkin curry with chicken.

Dislike and like! I dislike this because it wasn't pumpkin curry--it was red curry with a few bits of pumpkin... definitely not what I was expecting. It was a nice, mild red curry though.

The girls and I went for a little pub crawl along Polk and, after debating between thai and pizza, we ended up getting a late night bite at Osha--of course! It's apparently the spot I go for late night bites!

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Korean style ramen with dumplings.

Shin Ramyun with egg, green onion and dumplings. I don't like my ramen with too much broth and I don't like my noodles overcooked so I rarely go out for ramen, but I enjoy making my own. :)

It was chilly and gray out so ramen sounded SO nice after a long day at work. It definitely hit the spot. :)

Super simple wasabi cilantro lime soba noodles.

I used the cilantro lime sauce I made the other day as the base for this, but mixed in sesame oil, soy sauce and wasabi.

Soba noodles, rinsed cold.

Mixed. Simple. Delicious!

Korean noodle salad with sausage.

Buckwheat noodles with a Korean dressing (that I'm also going to use to marinade some meat for Korean tacos!). Yums.

Jessica's Bachelorette Part 1: Vietnamese at Bodega Bistro, SF.

The bachelorette crew road tripped up to SF from LA! I was excited to meet up with them and take them around a little! They wanted Vietnamese so I thought we'd try Bodega Bistro...

Vietnamese crepe. Yummy, but not the best Vietnamese crepe I've had.

Vermicelli noodle salad with pork and imperial rolls! This is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. I could eat this every day! This once had great, flavorful pork and nice imperial rolls, BUT they didn't have enough imperial roll. Also, they only gave fish sauce with this. I decided to use the sauce from the Vietnamese crepe dish with this and it was lovely.

Shaking beef. Definitely not my favorite shaking beef.

The bachelorette gang! Woohoo!!

The service here was pretty slow, and the prices were a little bit high, but the dirty little secret here is to order off the lunch menu, always! It'll definitely bring down your cost. ;) I shared the above three meals with two girls. Paying for those + tax & tip was $13, and for SO much food!

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Buckwheat noodle salad with fresh tomatoes and couscous.

Nice and light and delicious. :)

Pho Au Sen, Oakland, CA.

My amazing vermicelli noodles with imperial rolls! This is my favorite Vietnamese dish and the one here was HUGE! The biggest portion I think I've ever been served, but the sauce wasn't the best I've had. The rolls were a generous portion and very tasty though. I was super happy with this dish and had leftovers--yay!

Meatball pho. Again, very generous with the meat! The broth here is beef based and they used thinner noodles for their pho.

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Greasy Chinese Vietnamese at Tu Lan, SoMa, SF.

Photo from ji k on Yelp.

What we ordered:

#20. Mi Xao Don - Shrimp, Pork, Chicken

#39. Veg. & Crispy Noodle, Bo Luc Lac - Beef Cubes VN Style.

I didn't get a shot of the food because I didn't have my camera, but this place is a gem!! A gem, I say!!! Haha. It's definitely a hole-in-the-wall, but I love it so.

#39. Oh my goodness!! It was AMAZING. I'm craving it right now as I write this. Haha. It's not really like shaking beef because it has this sauce, but the sauce is oh so good!

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Cold somen noodles in a special Asian sauce, with shrimp.

Special Asian sauce! Haha. Vinegar, Rice vinegar, olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, wasabi, garlic, red onion, cilantro, Korean seasoning packet.

I cooked the shrimp in this sauce and then let it cool.

I cooked the somen noodles quickly, rinsed them in cold water and then mixed them with the sauce. I topped them with shrimp and cilantro. Very tasty!

Great Souther Thai at Jitlada, Hollywood, LA.

We have a wonderful Jitlada Thai restaurant in SF (no affiliation), too, but this was cooler because of their special Souther Thai menu. :)

Morning glory salad. Fried morning glory flowers. Seriously yummy. They had a fried spinach salad on their menu, too. I wonder if it's anything like the amazing palak chaat from Rasika in DC!?

Their famous green mussels! They were on the Top 10 Dishes from LA Weekly.

They are the biggest mussels I've seen! They were very good too, with a delicious, fragrant lemongrass broth. There was a spicy sauce for the mussels, too--excellent!

Basil eggplant. Not the best I've had, but I always love a good, soft eggplant. :)

Phad see-ew. My father looooves the big flat noodles, so I knew he'd like this dish! It was very good.

Duck fried rice. I really wanted some duck. Whenever I get Thai I want eggplant and duck--they just do both so well! The duck is always hit or miss though and here it was a bit of a miss. The dish wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't necessary. I was too full to have much of it by the time it came out.

The entire dinner was really great and the restaurant is kitschy and cute. I love how LA is just one huge, never-ending suburb and these great restaurants are just parts of strip malls--that cracks me up. I guess the Simpsons guy comes here a lot so they have all of these little drawings from him of Homer eating and whatnot! That's pretty cool about LA. :)

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Crazy good naeng-myun (냉면) at , Koreatown, LA.

We love Yu-chun!

The banchan. The moo-kimchi was nice, but other than that everything was just eh.

김치 왕만두! Kimchi king dumplings. Yummy. I loooove Korean dumplings!

냉면 / naeng-myun.

I had some of my dad's and it was really good. I love the bi-bim naeng-myun though. :)

비빔냉면 / spicy mixed naeng-myun.

This is one of my favorite Korean dishes and it's very hard to find a really good dish outside of Korea. I have to say though, with the noodle quality and the sauce, I think this is the best I've ever had. So so so so so amazing. I could have gone for a bit more spice, but it was soo yummy. They give you SO much, too! Way more than I could finish, although I wanted to eat more! :)

순두부 / Soon-doo-boo spicy tofu soup.

My mom doesn't like nang-myun so she got her favorite, soon-doo-boo. It was good, but not as good as the naeng-myun.

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My take on Vietnamese imperial roll cold noodle salad.

Soba noodles. Not quite vermicelli, but still, it works! ;)

So not quite imperial rolls either, but i went for some chicken. Haha! Hey--you've gotta improvise. ;) So here are the noodles, carrots, bean sprouts, mint, cilantro and chicken. Oh, and the sauce of course: fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, water, rice vinegar, sugar, red pepper flakes.

This was really yummy! :) I'm going to make my own imperial rolls soon though and then remake this dish. Yay.

Late night Thai at Osha, Tenderloin, SF.

Fresh rolls.

These were super interesting! I thought they were going to be like Vietnamese fresh rolls, but these were wrapped in a huge noodle!! I really liked them.

Pad Khee Mao with chicken.

This is like Pad See Ew, but with more veggies, which is great. Pretty awesome. I love these wide, soft noodles.

Lemongrass Sauce with tofu.

Lemongrass is a very interesting flavor. I don't love when I get a piece of lemongrass though--too much too chew on. The tofu, veggies and sauce were nice, but this wasn't my favorite Thai dish.

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Awesome Vietnamese from Vietnam Too, Tenderloin, SF.

My classic--vermicelli noodles with imperial rolls. The imperial rolls here were huge! They were awesome, but sliced too thickly! The noodles were cooked perfectly, the sauce was just right and I was very happy with this meal! :) My only other complaint though would be that there was no cilantro!!?? I was shocked and I loooove cilantro so I was pretty disappointed by that. Strange for a Vietnamese place, but maybe they ran out?? Hmm..

The special make-your-own wrap meal. This was very good and came with nice wrap paper, tons of fresh veggies and a three different sauces! Again though--no cilantro to be found! :(

This is definitely one of the best Vietnamese meals I've had in SF.

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Cold soba at Mifune, Japantown Center, SF.

Soba and California rolls. I think quality is important with soba noodles and I don't think this place has the best noodles. The California roll was fine, but I think they were sliced too thickly--could have made 8 or 9 rolls instead of 6.

Soba, udon and tempura.

I really wanted some light, cold, refreshing noodles! Soba sounded nice, but I just don't like soba as much as Korean or Vietnamese cold noodles. Nothing I'd come crawling back for.

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Lunch at Sai Jai Thai, Tenderloin, SF.

The better Pork Shoulder (left) and Phad Thai.

This pork shoulder was so much better than this one. The Phad Thai was red, which means I didn't like it because it was tomato based and not authentic! Sad. My friend Lena though, who is Thai, really likes this place--they apparently make many authentic dishes, some that are very hard to find at other restaurants!

Peanut sauce veggies and noodle boxed lunch.

Peanuty sauce with diced onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and cauliflower.

Tossed with al dente spaghetti noodles. Mmmmm mmmmm mmmm! I had already eaten, so I made this for my roommates and my lunch tomorrow.

Seafood curry with udon noodles.

My roommate made this great Japanese style seafood curry. I'm not the biggest fan of udon noodles, but it was good. Later I had some sauce with rice and it was really great.