Spring Wave: Braised Pork with Deep Fried Stewed Eggs

I didn't have anything to do for lunch on Independence Day. When my friend Christine texted me that morning to see what I was doing before the BBQ I had at my friend's place later in the evening, I decided to hang out with her. Of course our definition of hanging out in San Gabriel is basically eat.


Spring Wave had a new owner, who was a friend of her boss. Christine had to pick up a to-go order for her boss, so we decided we may as well eat there out of convenience.

The owner happened to be in today because she forgot it was a holiday and was understaffed. She was kind to give us suggestions to eat. She eventually recommended me to try the Braised Pork with Deep Fried Stewed Eggs. This was a very Shanghainese dish, which I don't eat on a regular basis unlike my friend. So I said why not, let's give it a go.

(Braised Pork with Deep Fried Stewed Eggs - $9.95)

The pork was fatty pork, beautifully marinated and braised. Each piece was diced into small square chunks and the five layers of color of the pork were very clearly defined. The sauce as sweet. The little bits of chive garnishing gave what would be an all brown dish some brightness and color. The stewed eggs were deep fried and covered with the same sauce.

I'm not a big fan of sweet entrees, but fortunately the braised pork was well marinated and not overtly sweet. When eaten with white rice, the pork had just the right amount of flavors and a good balance between the fat and the meat. Certainly this is not the healthiest dish around, but it was the forth of July, and my system deserved a bit of indulgence.

I was good to only eat a few pieces of the pork since I knew I had a BBQ coming at night. I also only ate one egg since egg yolks are so high in cholesterol. The eggs had a slightly chewy skin from having been deep fried then braised with sauce. The marinate did penetrate the egg lightly and reached into the whites and even the yolk. I personally like my eggs just a tad bit more flavored on the inside, but the heavy sauce on the outside more than compensated in flavor for the inside.

It's really a dish I wouldn't mind having again, but only on special occasions if I happened to be around here. In the end there's no avoiding the fact that this is a heart attack on a plate. So oncein a full moon a year, it's ok to indulge into so much fat and cholesterol.

Posted from my Taste SGV Blog

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An Institution Known As Sam Woo

For as long as I have been living in San Gabriel, Sam Woo was here. It was never one of my favorite, but I never disliked anything they made. Perhaps it was the long lines from the hordes of people that hovers around the restaurant almost all the time, or perhaps it's the tight space the tables and chairs occupy. A few years back, maybe even more then ten years ago or so, Sam Woo opened a second store near my home. This one was far less crowded then the original. Somehow it also feels just a bit less desirable than the original.

(Wonton and Duck Egg Noodle Soup)

Sam Woo to me is synonymous to wontons. If anything, I must give them credit to make the most authentic Hong Kong style wontons with a special dried fish ingredient. Without those itty bitty dried fish (daai dei jyu 大地魚) the wontons are just a clump of meat.

Of course Sam Woo also has one of the best siu lap (roasted poutry) around, as that really is their specialty. Their ducks are especially well made, nicely seasoned and perfectly roasted. The only problem is their soup and noodle tends to be a little bit on the salty side, especially when the already intensely flavored ducks are added.

(Triple Shreds)

I don't actually remember the name for this dish at Sam Woo, at least not the English name. I don't recall there was actually an English name since it was on one of their special menus. It was my father who decided to order something different today. There were shreds of pork and veggies and seafood in a very nicely blended flavor that was very palatable when eaten with some rice. I'm a rice person, I eat everything with rice. The better the food is, the faster the rice goes in my family.

(Lemon Iced Tea)

The Lemon Iced Tea in Sam Woo is definitely not up to par compared to most Cantonese cafes, mostly because Sam Woo really isn't a Cantonese cafe. It does have its own unique, but still rather light flavor. If you ended up ordering it with sugar, they tend to be over-the-top sweet, where it's almost like drinking syrup water. So I have to opt for the sugarless, which is actually what I prefer these days anyways. They have their own house blend of tea which I personally find not strong enough.

(Pineapple Satay Beef with Rice)

I love Satay. I love Pineapple. Put the two together, it really should be my favorite dish. I just don't remember to order it as much as I like it, and I do like Sam Woo's version of this flavorful dish. The pineapple really contrast with the satay, giving it a nice sweetness to the saltiness. The bell peppers accentuate the sweetness even more while the satay really brings out the beef. Over rice, it's heaven.

(Dried Vegetable Soup)

I'm not a big fan of Sam Woo for some odd reason. I think it's really the environment. I just don't feel relaxed. I feel rushed, and I sense the disconnect with the waiters. It almost reminds me of a street side restaurant in Hong Kong where I would literally sit down for ten minutes to gobble down a bowl of noodles and then be on my way. That really isn't what I'm looking for in a restaurant and I certainly don't want to dine at one that makes me feel this way. I suppose I could always just come back to Sam Woo for take out whenever I don't feel like cooking, and go elsewhere for a more laid back dinning experience.






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Guppy House with Guppy Showmanship

It isn't everyday where I venture down to Irvine to have a meal. It is even rarely that I would have Asian food so far south. But this last Wednesday afternoon, I happened to have a little bit of free time, so I hoped onto my car with a friend and went down to the OC to meet up with a third friend and had a little mini OC adventure.

We started off the afternoon actually exploring the various parts of the OC. We ventured off to the Korean Friendship Bell down in San Pedro. Following we stopped by Long Beach and spent a little time on the boardwalk. We then stopped by Signal Hill to see the lights of greater Los Angeles. Finally we ended up in Irvine in the plaza where Guppy House was at. There were plenty of other restaurants to choose from ranging from a Thai restaurant, to a Korean tofu house, to a Chinese seafood palace, and even the famous 85c bakery.

(Pineapple Fried Rice)

Immediately after walking into the room, I knew exactly what I wanted. Nearly every other table had an order of their pineapple fried rice. The fried rice is fried with ham, pineapple, peas, corn and carrots with pork sung and raisins on top. The whole thing is served on half of a pineapple shell. The presentation alone sells this dish easily. It just looks like it's a lot of work and very elaborately made. But the truth is it's just decently fried rice served in a pineapple shell. The fried rice was flavorful and the sweetness of the pineapple did come through. The raisins after mixing it into the rice gave it a little bit of a surprising contrast in the rice. But the pork sung just didn't go well with the rest of it. The pork sung never really blended into the rice. Whenever it entered my mouth, it was distinct and distracting from the rest of the blend. This had a lot to do with the fact that pork sung is just too dry to blend in a dry plate of fried rice. Perhaps it's just because I'm more used to eating pork sung with congee.

(Kimchi Dumplings)

The kimchi dumplings came after the fried rice. I suppose the fried rice is so popular that they have it all ready and made and just a matter of plating. So it took nearly no time at all to get to our table. The dumplings came with two different sauces, a sweetened soy sauce and a vinger sauce. The word kimchi in the name may be a little misleading since these are not fermented at all. It really is just normal Taiwanese cabbage dumplings. Kimchi by definition is fermented vegetables and the vegetables inside are not fermented at all. I did actually liked the texture of the dumplings. The skin was nice and soft at the correct thickness. It held the dumpling in place when it's picked up by a chopstick while after entering mouth, it didn't feel like I was eating flour. The balance between the cabbage and the pork was also very good. I always hate dumpling houses that jam pack their dumpling with meat. It too hard and too heavy to eat. These were very well done. The two flavors of dipping sauces was a bonus, giving my taste buds a little bit of contrast between each dumpling.

(Sweet And Sour Popcorn Chicken)

Finally the sweet and sour popcorn chicken arrived at our table after most of the other dishes were devoured. I suppose one should never expect a Chinese restaurant to actually serve an appetizer in the beginning of a course. It's servered whenever it's ready to be served is really the trademark of every Chinese restaurant. I have yet to dine at a Chinese restaurant where appetizers and entree were served in order except during a formal banquet. As my mother always say, it all ends up blended up in our stomach anyways.

The sweet and sour popcorn chicken were pretty standard for a Taiwanese joint. The chicken and the batter didn't particularly stand out to me. I've had plenty of better popcorn chicken in my life all around the San Gabriel Valley. The sauce however did make this one stand out just a tad bit. It was a bit more sweet than sour, which I have come to expect when it comes to Taiwanese dishes. They tend to be on the sugary side. I have to watch out for diabetes since it runs in my family so I tend think negatively on sugary foods. But once in a while, I do indulge myself on a deep fried sweet and sour indulgence lik this sweet and sour popcorn chicken.

Guppy House is pretty clean for the most part, after they wiped the dirty chair that I pointed out. The foods were mediocre but we were hungry. The presentation of the food was clean and crisp and I can't complain. I just wonder where do they get all those half pineapple shells. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if they recycle them. I certainly hope not. I have really no reason to suspect something like that, but I've seen some horrific things in my past what some Chinese restaurants would do to save money. Nonetheless I doubt I will ever revisit Guppy House only because it's way too far from where I live, and not good enough for me to ever warrant that drive. I really have no real reason to visit that plaza, maybe except for 85c bakery. But if I did live closer, I may come back once in a while for a little bit of that pineapple fried rice without the pork sung.

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What's up with all the island restaurants? Revisiting Gourmet Island

A friend of mine did a project a year ago that consisted of taking pictures of food from a bunch of restaurants down Valley Blvd. in the San Gabriel Valley. While she was doing her research, she discovered the enormous amount of restaurants being named with the word Garden and Happy. Lately I discovered a few places being named with the word island. I initially thought it was a Taiwanese thing to do since Taiwan is an island. But then when I discovered Gourmet Island, I couldn't figure out what island had to do with their Chiu Chow style cuisine.

I personally have a Chiu Chow heritage. I am seven-eighth Chiu Chow and one-eighth Hakka. I'm no stranger to Chiu Chow style foods. Gourmet Island had a barely adequate selection of authentic fChiu Chow foods, mixed with some other general Asian style foods. I had been here once previously and enjoyed the foods a little bit. The last time I visited there I experienced a major issue; the taro mud dessert was spoiled. My family loves taro mud, a quintessential Chiu Chow dessert. It's only offered at a very few of the Chiu Chow seafood restaurants around town, and only a few make them well. Generally they are served with a sweet wet dressing with lotus seeds and cloud ears. The mud paste itself like most Chinese desserts should be lightly sweetened. It's actually hard and takes a lot of work to make taro mud and so we always get it whenever we visit a Chiu Chow style restaurant. But since we had a bad experience with it the first time around, we opted out of it the second time around.

Nevertheless my family and I decided to return to this place to check out more of what they had to offer. We do generally give restaurants revisits if it's decent enough, if only to give ourselves a variety. The rest of the original dinner was enjoyable so we didn't want to let one spoiled dish ruin the restaurant.

(Beef Stew with Light Broth)

We love a good beef stew. Most people are familiar with the Taiwanese version of beef stew, which has a heavy dark colored soup base. It's extremely rich and generally served with noodles. Sometimes beef stew is served dry over rich or in curry. But if you are in for a slightly lighter in flavors version of beef stew, I would recommend the Beef Stew with Light Broth. This dish is actually commonly found in a lot of Cantonese restaurants around town.

The beef this night was cooked thoroughly to a very nice and soft texture. The soup was very flavorful with a fair amount of spices. The black pepper really added a little sting to the soup. This was also a great way to save some money by not having to order an actual soup. It was kept hot the entire time with a little fire from a small portable stove that came with the dish. It was a bit strong in the beginning so we had to turn it down to keep the water from being boiled off and evaporate. It was certainly a juicy and delicious dish. The truth is all it took to make this dish good was time and enough spices. It's very hard to get it wrong.

(Fried Rice)

A lot of restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley recently had been doing promotions by giving away free food. Gourmet Island gave away a free plate of fried rice served in their sizzling plate. I believe Green Island was the first restaurant around the area that started using this wooden framed metal sizzling plate to serve their fried rice. It's a great way to keep the food continuously warm. However the rice tonight was a bit bland and I wouldn't order it if it wasn't free. Even as a free dish, it wasn't all that interesting to eat. It was basically a filler, a replacement for just plain steamed rice.

(Combination Appetizer: Roasted Suckling Pig, Fun Tai and Jelly Fish)

This was the best dish of the night. Although it's an appetizer, I never really think appetizer meant much in Chinese food except during banquets. Ultimately for most meals, things are all served and eaten together. The roasted suckling pig skin was perfectly crunchy while the meat was flavorful and retained some juiciness. The jelly fish was well marinated without it being overly sauteed. The Fun Tai was fine, but I suppose it's just a cold cut so it's hard to go wrong and hard to be impressive.

(Stir Fried String Beans)

I am a big fan of string beans, and stir fried string beans generally is among my favorite. I did find their string beans a bit on the oily side despite being flavorful. I seem to be coming across more and more oily string beans. I really prefer them to be less oily and drier. The garlic also wasn't as strong as I prefer and I generally like it with just a bit of stir fried ground beef in the dish which this was lacking. It would had given it that little bite to the dish that pulls out the crunch in the string beans. It wasn't my favorite version of string beans, but it filled my stomach with enough flavor that neither impressed me nor disgusted me.

The meal was finished off with a sweet soup free of charge. We didn't order the taro mud fearing it may turn out sour again. The sweet soup had some water chestnuts, lotus seeds and an assortment of other goodies inside. However it was way too sweet for my entire family. I never understood why any restaurant would inject their desserts that full of sugar. Fortunately most drinks in the San Gabriel Valley can now be ordered with half sugar or no sugar. But unfortunately the same cannot be said about the desserts. My mother has diabetes and both my brother and I are extremely weary about this since it seems to run on my mother side of the family. So we all basically took a couple sips and decided it was probably best not to finish it. 

Gourmet Island was a nice break from some of our usual joints. It wasn't amazingly prepared but it was still good enough to visit once in a while, very long while. Personally if I were to pick a Chiu Chow restaurant of my choosing, it would be Seafood Village. Their food is much more true to the Chiu Chow culinary style with a few more selections of ethnic dishes. Gourmet Island seemed to be a Cantonese restaurant with a few specifically Chiu Chow dishes added onto the menu.

By the way, Chiu Chow isn't located on any form or Island. It's not even on or near a peninsula.

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Geoduck Saved My Christmas Dinner

My parents dragged me out to dinner tonight with some friends. To be honest, I wasn't in the best of mood today because of some personal things. It wasn't a big deal, just was a bummer. But I decided to go just to get out of the house and have a good dinner. Fortunately the friends had a kid who is possibly the happiest and most talkative kid I have ever met who managed to make me laugh and cheered me up. The kid was non-stop laughter. Laughter is truly contagious.

(East Gourmet Seafood Restaurant)

The restaurant was pretty busy on this Christmas Eve night. I suppose a lot of families like to do Christmas Eve dinner at home, but we ended up doing it at at East Gourmet Seafood Restaurant in Rosemead. My family's doing our big family dinner tomorrow night at home with everyone. I'm definitely going to blog about that one. We came here because we had Dim Sum here yesterday and got a coupon for a free lobster.

(Ginger and Chive Lobster)

The lobster was small given the fact that it was free. But it was still fresh and the meat came right off the shell. You can tell if a lobster is fresh when they are cooked in this style by their meat coming right off the shell. It wasn't a spectacular dish, but I can't complain since it's free. The quality is pretty much what you would expect your cut-of-the-mill seafood restaurant. Good but not memorable.

Lobster was one of the deals they had tonight. They also had a special for geoduck for $4.99 a pound. Geoducks are clams with a giant trunk that looks like the trunk of an elephant. They are the largest burrowing clams in the world. Naturally the shell was weighted as a part of it so we had to order about 5 pounds worth to be enough. But geoduck is usually over $10 per pound so this is definitely a deal not to be passed. There are a couple ways geoducks are usually served: stir fried, boiled or sashimi. I recommend either the boiled option or the sashimi option to retain its original flavor. We ordered the boiled version since my father doesn't eat sashimi. Actually my mother doesn't like geoduck served as sashimi despite the fact that she likes a lot of other kinds of sashimi. I always worry about eating sashimi in second rated restaurants because of freshness anyways. The head of the geoduck is typically served deep fried, otherwise it would be much more difficult to chew.

The geoduck that was served was actually pretty sweet and had a good crunch to it. It was topped with a little bit of chilly pepper, parsley, green onions, all of which is placed over a plate of sprouts. The sprouts complemented the rest of the dish since it's served sort of like a cold appetizer even though it was just freshly cooked. Even though I had better quality geoduck before, this was still well worth the money, especially since we get two plates for one item.

(Boiled Geoduck)

The meal actually started off with a soup like most Chinese meals. We ordered the corn and egg flower soup. It's a thick starchy soup. The flavor was decent and edible. I'm not a big fan of corn based soup. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the fact that nearly half of the things we eat have some sort of corn in them. I will eat corn, I just don't find them all that interesting. But my mother ordered it so I wasn't going to object.

(Corn and Egg Flower Soup)

We did order one of my favorite dishes at a Chinese Seafood Restaurant: walnut shrimp. This is also one of those items that is almost a guarantee at most Chinese wedding banquets. I don't think I've ever had a plate of bad walnut shrimp, but it's hard to make them amazing. This wasn't amazing. This was your average walnut shrimp. I think the temperature was just not hot enough for it to be amazing. For me, the shrimp needs to be much hotter so that the dressing feels like it's melting when you eat it. When the dressing just taste like paste, it's just that. It's not bad as it is, but it isn't a version that I would say I have to come back to this restaurant to have. I can't recall where I had a really good version of walnut shrimp. I'm just hoping one day I'll stumble across an amazing version again.

(Walnut Shrimp)

We also had the Egg Plant with Cod Clay Pot and the Filet Mignon French Style. I'm not a big fan of eggplant so I actually managed to forget to even taste it tonight. Some food critique I am. Actually by the time I got to it, the kid ate all the egg plants. Kudos to him for eating his veggies, but then of all things he ate eggplant. We did also have an order of sprout leaf too on the table which was devoured pretty quickly. The cod that I did manage to get a bite of was descent. The Filet Mignon was mediocre at best and simply forgettable. It's not even worth my time blogging about it.

(Eggplant with Cod Clay Pot)

(Filet Mignon French Style)

Dinner ended with a complimentary Red Bean Sweet Soup. This one was more gooey whereas I prefer mine to be more grainy. That's just a matter of preference. However it was on the sweet side so my diabetic mother had to pass and I only ate half a bowl.

(Red Bean Sweet Soup)

Honestly the dinner food here was just average. I was hoping for more on Christmas Eve but I didn't pick the restaurant. We came because of the free lobster and that some of the items at Dim Sum were pretty good. Dinner however wasn't spectacular enough to warrant me to come back except for the price point of the geoduck. The competition is tough for these Chinese Seafood Restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. There are quite a few of them and they are all very good; some better then others.

So if you are looking just to get the geoduck while the special is still going, I say go, go now. Having had that geoduck did brighten what would otherwise be a bummer of a day. But if you are looking for a really good Chinese meal, I would say pass this one up and try Newport Tan Cang Seafood Restaurant in San Gabriel instead. I had an amazing but more expensive meal there in October of this year.

Well Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are all having an amazing time with amazing foods.

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The Textures of Dim Sum

Can you hear the sleigh bells ring? All I can hear are the dishes clanging at Dim Sum.

It's December and the holiday spirit fills the air. Here at Dim Sum on a Wednesday afternoon, a huge crowd swarms the place making us forget that we are still in a recession. With a crowd this excited, you would almost think they are giving the food away. At $2.09 a plate, it may as well be.

(Steamed Pork Ribs in Black Bean Sauce)

Top Island Seafood Restaurant serves most of the traditionally popular Dim Sum items. Truth be told, this is not my favorite Dim Sum restaurant. A lot of it really has to do with one dish, the vermicelli shrimp wraps. Vermicelli wraps are very difficult to get right. Ideally the texture should be smooth and silky. It should go down nice and smooth almost like vodka. But I can see how some people, as a friend I have once brought to Dim Sum, would think this texture disgusting. In some ways it may even feel like eating a slurp of slimy gunk. This reminds me of the episode of Futurama when Fry couldn't stop drinking Slurm, even though he found out it came out of the back end of a giant queen slug. Alright, I'm not doing my vermicelli wraps justice, but I do love this dish; just not at Top Island. New Capital Seafood Restaurant does it much better a few blocks away.

(Vermicelli Shrimp Wraps)

Dim Sum is full of textures, and another one that a lot of even my Chinese friends can't handle is the infamous Phoenix Claws, which is just a fancy name for chicken feet. It's all in the branding right? Give it a nice name and you may actually give it a try. Top Island serves Phoenix Claws three different ways. There's the steamed version that's marinated in a black bean sauce. This is the softest version of Phoenix Claws where the skin and cartilage comes right off the bones. Then there's the White Cloud version dipped in a vinegar sauce. This is the chewiest version and there's no way around not feeling like you are chewing on claws. If you've ever chewed on your own fingers out of nervousness, it taste even more rubbery than that. Then there's a version where it's served in a soup. It's in-between the two in terms of chewiness. The soup has a lot of condiments flavoring it. The chicken feet themselves really doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. It's just skin, cartilage and bones. So in the end, it's a matter of texture as you are just chewing on bones. It's definitely an acquired taste; well fine, an acquired texture. Scared? Chew at your own peril.

(Steamed Phoenix Claws)

Before I completely scare you off from Dim Sum, most of the items that are pushed around by middle aged female servers in metal carts are pretty normal stuff. I'm not being sexist or being ageist here. I have never seen a young female cart pusher nor have I seen any male cart pusher at any Dim Sum restaurants I've ever been to around the world. Occasionally I see men walking around the room with dishes of food on a serving platter, just never behind a cart. I have no idea why this is so, but it just is and no one has ever complained: I'm not complaining.

Today we also had Lor Mai Gai - Lotus leaf wrapped sweet rice and chicken. The Chinese name has the word chicken in it, but it doesn't actually always have chicken inside. I suppose we are used to buying things that doesn't really have anything to do with its name. Blackberry doesn't actually have black berries inside: Apple computer has nothing to do with apples. Even an iPhone is hardly a phone, and I can't live without mine. Top Island's version doesn't have chicken, instead it has minced pork, mushroom and salted egg yolk inside. I prefer them without chicken anyways, they tend to be too dry. I think Top Island does a good job with this and I wouldn't mind having one occasionally. Just don't eat them everyday, they are extremely fattening and pretty bad for diabetics. I don't let my mother have any of the sweet rice.

(Lotus Leaf Wrapped Sweet Rice and Chicken)

Another favorite of mine at Dim Sum are the stuffed tofus. But as with all things Dim Sum, every restaurant does it differently. Top Island stuffs, well more like tops, their tofu with a giant fish ball. I almost rather eat just the tofu as the fish balls were just too big. Bigger may look better. It looks like we are getting a better deal cause we are getting more, but it's no longer stuffed tofu. I basically have to eat the tofu and the fish ball separately. So no, bigger isn't always better.

(Steamed Stuffed Tofu)

I don't eat a lot of fried foods, and I generally avoid donuts. I don't even remember the last time I actually went to a donut shop to buy a donut, though I had one a couple days ago because my parents visited a friend who worked at a donut shop. The irony is that my family co-owns a donut shop in Thailand. But I do like the Chinese salted donut, which are basically deep fried dough stuffed with pork. It's really hard to go wrong with this dish. You just can't go wrong with deep fried anything. The only real thing one can do wrong with this dish is either over stuff or under stuff them. Top Island is pretty consistent with a fair amount of tasty stuffing. The dough is also a very good consistency; a little crunchy on the outside and a little mushy on the inside.

(Salted Water Corner - a.k.a. Chinese Deep Fried Salty Donuts)

Generally speaking, I don't order anything off the menu at Dim Sum. But I went with my family today, and my mother couldn't pass up on their deal on squabs. The king squabs were $3.99 each and the smaller squabs were $6.99 each. If you go to the supermarket to buy the small squabs raw, they would cost $10 each. We have absolutely no idea how they can serve them at such a low price. It's so cheap it's almost scary. I mean are these squabs legit? Did they go out to some town square and took down a ton of pigeons and passed it off as squabs. Alright I'm letting my imagination run wild, but I do wonder.

Cheap as it may be, the quality of the squabs were actually good. the problem though was the marinate. It needed to be marinated longer. The flavor just never penetrated enough through the skin and into the meat, so the meat was a bit bland, though it was tender. I understand the fact that every other table in the restaurant is ordering squabs, so they simply don't have the luxury to marinate them for a prolonged period of time. It's the classic increase in demand yielding a decrease in quality. Well it does give my mother her squab fix, but as for me I much prefer my Dad's recipe. If only raw squabs cost less.

(Deep Fried Squabs)

Dim Sum is loud. The food is loud and the atmosphere is even louder. The best and most popular Dim Sum places is like a symphony of sounds and tastes with people crossing non-stop in front of your eyes. The dishes banging together as waiters clean the tables: the people talking over the noise in the room: the sound being trapped in a non-dampened room; the waiters and waitresses zig-zagging across the room unendingly to keep up with the demands of the customers. All these adds together to bring the whole place to life, which really is a great way to feel alive in a time when the rest of the world can seem like all gloom and doom.

So this holiday season instead of hearing sleigh bells, maybe it's time to hear some dishes clang.

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