[Food] Southern Californian Food Adventures

Disclaimer: this will be a photo heavy post with few words. You can assume that everything was ridiculously delicious (it was). Enjoy.

Tacos Tamix in LA

Al pastor

Al pastor alambres

Al pastor tacos

Al pastor quesadilla

Buche, cabeza, al pastor

Buche

Al pastor burrito

George's breakfast burritos in Fullerton

Photo by my sister at www.janetcho.wordpress.com.

Soondooboo at BCD

Original Pancake House in Anaheim

Corned beef hash and eggs

Blueberry pancakes

Some home cooking

Bacon wrapped rice cakes

Beef wrapped spicy rice cakes

In-n-Out

[Food] Nation's Giant Hamburgers

I'm a bit backed up on blog posts right now and have been rather busy lately, but today I bring to you my review on Nation's Giant Hamburgers.

After last week's Nehemiah Band concert (see previous post), a bunch of us headed over to Nation's for a post game meal. The restaurant has a very nice old school diner feel to it. I love restaurants like that.

I got a cheeseburger because that's just the standard item to judge any burger joint by. If they can't make a proper cheeseburger, they probably won't be able to pull other things off. The burger took a bit of time and wasn't very cheap (close to $5). However, when I got my order and unwrapped the little gift, a little grin snuck its way onto my face. The first thing I noticed was they oily sheen on the bun. YES! That's one of the indicators of a good burger. It's gotta have that greasy shine all over it. The burger comes with standard fixins: lettuce, tomato, raw white onion (you can get grilled if you want), and albiet, a lot of mayo.

The burger itself was pretty awesome as foreshadowed by the grease. None of the toppings interfered with the flavor of the burger itself, which is very important to me. You have to be able to taste the beef. The cheese and other condiments only bolstered the flavor of the burger. I gotta say, I was extremely hungry, so that might have skewed my thoughts, but oh well, it was delicious. The buns were very soft, which I oddly enjoyed. I normally like a bit of crunch in my buns (I always get x-tra toast on my buns at In-n-Out). Overall, the burger just worked for me. It was simple and delicious. No need for any exotic mushroom or foie gras nonsense here.

We all got a chocolate creme pie to share. Awesome. Nation's is known for their pies. The one inch thick layer of whipped cream on top with a custardy, chocolatey cream filling, and a flakey pie crust. Sweet (it was). Must I say more?

Oh yeah, I love pie.

Nation's Giant Hamburgers 1800 University Ave Berkeley, CA 94703 (510) 843-7326 www.nationsrestaurants.com

[Music] The Nehemiah Band and Mickey Cho at Cal

The Nehemiah Band and Mickey Cho played at New Church here in Berkeley, CA on Saturday, Feb. 5. Knowing that the Nehemiah Band boys were coming up, I contacted Ki, their manager, to see if I could take photos. In the back of my head I was hoping that they would have their own photographer so that I could just second shoot and not have so much pressure...but of course their in house photographer couldn't make it. Fantastic! I got to the venue surprisingly early and met some awesome people that were helping out. The guys were a bit surprised to see me. I am a LA native and they probably didn't expect to see me in Norcal of all places.

This was my first time actually hearing Mickey's music. I had heard of him before, but wow, this guy can spit. His songs are powerful and flow so well. "Not For Sale" was especially moving. It's a song about modern day human sex trafficking. His friends Hanna Baek and "The Legend" were also amazing. Check him out at www.mickeycho.com and support him by buying his music.

The Nehemiah Band put on an energetic live show as always. Every time I see them play, I'm blown away. You don't always see a band with stage presence like these guys. Oh yeah, and they're Korean. Say whattttttttt!? They played some of their standard meat and potatoes songs, which you can't ever go wrong with. However, they also threw in "Chinese Girl," which is their version of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan, and "Rice, Kimchi, and Eggs" with their new Power Rangers intro. Pure greatness.

After the show, some of us went to Nation's for burgers and pies with Mickey and TNB. Expect a (favorable) review of Nation's in the near future.

Some notes on the photos: The lighting conditions weren't the best, but I was able to work around it. When TNB came on, there was almost no light on John (the drummer) and Gilbert (the bassist), so there are far fewer photos of them. I shot with my D7000 and 35mm f1.8 between ISO 4000 and 6400, f/1.8-2.2, and 1/100 and 1/200 shutter speeds. There's quite a bit of noise in some of the photos, but I did what I could to clean most of them up (e.g. go black and white).

[slideshow]

[Music] Hieroglyphics at UC Berkeley

The smell of weed permeates the air. Wisps of cigarette smoke rise from the crowd. The bass kicks in and you feel it in your body.

The Hieroglyphics Crew came to Cal on February 2 thanks to SUPERB Productions. Sproul was packed, but then again, I did get there about 10 minutes late. As I walked around before the show started, people came up to me and asked "who are these people?" and "are they a new group?" Obviously, the majority of the people watch were just rolling through and decided to watch. To answer your questions, Hieroglyphics is an underground rap group that started in 1991 in Oakland, CA. Why they asked some random Asian kid about the group, I'll never know.

The group was scheduled to come on at 5 pm, but of course they didn't start playing until later. I only stayed for an hour or so because there were too many people, so I didn't get to witness the greatness of the whole show. However, while I was there, it was excellent.

Quick note on the last photo. Notice the symbolism of three here? Three lights, three doors, three eyes. (This sentence would have been at the end, but it was acting glitchy and now showing up.)

[Food] Bette's Oceanview Diner

Last week a few of my suite mates wanted to grab breakfast, so we headed over to Bette's Oceanview Diner. Like most places here in Berkeley, it was a small place. We waited for 45 minutes or so before we were seated. The host was a rather interesting character, I'm not going to say much more about him. The place had a very nice classic diner feel to it with counter seats and booths. Don't expect to take a big party here, unless you want to sit outside; the booths will seat 4 people. There's also a giant slice of pie hanging of the ceiling. Awesome. Onto the food. Note: I sadly didn't have my camera with me (great forward thinking, Edwin!) so these photos were taken on my friend's phone. Sorry for the image quality, hopefully this won't happen again.

Roommate #1 got the two eggs with ham, toast, and homefries.

Roommate #2 got the Philadelphia Breakfast, which was scrapple, poached eggs, grilled tomatoes, and a scone.

We were seated around 11, so got to choose from either the breakfast or lunch menu. The suite mate got a sandwich (sorry, I can't remember which one he got) with potato salad.

I was obligated to get the Mexican Scramble because of my Southern Californian roots...and it came with house made chorizo. The Mexican Scramble was scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa, chorizo, flour tortilla, and I substituted some homefries for the black beans. The eggs were nice, fluffy, and a bit runny, which is perfect. Who eats fully cooked scrambled eggs anyway? The chorizo was well seasoned, but it was not greasy enough. Chorizo has to be swimming in a pool of orange nectar; the whole plate should have been orange. But it was still very good. You health nuts would probably prefer this breed of chorizo over the pure bred Mexican variety. The flour tortilla was nothing special, definitely a good receptacle for delivering the contents of my plate to my mouth. Finally, those homefries were pretty magical. Cooked just right, soft on the inside with an ever so slight crust on the outside, then topped with cold sour cream. Wizzow! They must have been sprinkled with crack.

Bette's is a great, cute breakfast place. If you are ever in the area, you should definitely check it out. Prices are a bit high for college students, but it's worth at least one visit. Oh, and be prepared to wait for a seat. During your wait, you could walk around the area, which is very nice and is full of furniture stores if you are into that kind of thing.

Bette's Oceanview Diner 1807 4th St Berkeley, CA 94710 (510) 644-3230 www.worldpantry.com/bettes

Hours Mon-Fri: 6:30am - 2:30pm Sat-Sun: 6:30am - 4:00pm

[Food] Kirala

Before my family headed back home, we had lunch at Kirala. Upon entering, we were greeted by the friendly waitstaff. It's a small, popular restaurant, so it was crowded. The complementary hot matcha was definitely a plus.

We started off with the Rock'n Roll (eel, yellow tail, avocado, with tobiko outside) and the Spicy Scallop roll. The Rock'n Roll was flavorful and had a great mix of texture. I wish the spicy scallop roll had bigger pieces of scallops, but it was still a good roll.

My mother got the kitchen special, which consisted of fried oysters and shrimp, chicken teriyaki, udon, and rice. I tried some of the chicken and it had a nice kick to it once the sweet faded out. I really enjoyed that mix of flavors.

My sister had the sushi special Chirashi, which had salmon, tuna, shrimp, tamago, ikura, tobiko, and another kind of fish I can't recall. I tried a bit and the sushi was excellent. Better than most of the sushi places I've been to down south.

I had the katsu-don. It was good, but pretty standard, nothing too special going on here. In fact, I think I prefer the katsu-don at Koraku in Torrance better. The katsu itself was very good. It was a thick cut of flavorful pork, but overall, the dish was just run of the mill.

My father had the tonkatsu entree, which was great. Same katsu that went into my donburi.

Overall, Kirala was awesome. Definitely not somewhere I would go every day because I'm a poor college student.

Kirala 2100 Ward St Berkeley, CA 94705 (510) 549-3486 www.kiralaberkeley.com

Hours Mon-Fri: 11:30am - 2pm Mon-Sat: 5:30pm - 9:30pm Sun: 5pm - 9pm

[Food] My First Week Up North

My lack of posts as of late has been a result of moving up to college! I'm up North now and wanted to do a quick post about the food I've been eating outside of the dining commons. My comments on the food will probably be very concise and general. Upon arrival, we stopped by the Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant.

We had some dim sum, honestly, I don't know what everything is called, but that's how it usually is at dim sum places. We had the pork and shrimp shumai, various dumplings, rice paper rolls in XO sauce, and the taro cakes.

This was the amazing view out of the window that we were seated next to.

The food was good, pretty much on par with the other dim sum that I've had in the past; there was nothing that really stood out, minus the view. The rice paper rolls in XO sauce were fairly new to me, I've never had that dish at a dim sum restaurant before, but my mother had made it at home once, so I was familiar with it.

Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant 3199 Powell St Emeryville, CA 94608 (510) 655-3388 www.hkeo.us

On our visit to San Francisco, we went to the Pier Market on Pier 39.

We started off with some calamari. I've had better calamari in the past, but it was definitely good.

The rest of my family had their famous clam chowder. I tried a little bit and wow, it really was good. Definitely different from the chowdah that I had at the Black Pearl in Rhode Island (which was also great).

I had the fish and chips. The fish was pretty good, but a tab bit over-battered. I definitely got full fast. The fries (or chips) were reminiscent of Burger King fries, not a bad thing at all.

Pier Market Seafood Market Pier 39 San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 989-7437 www.piermarket.com

More posts to come. I still have to cover two more restaurants.

[Food] George's Breakfast Burritos

Earlier this week, I celebrated the end of finals with some good ole comfort food for breakfast. George's makes the fattest breakfast burritos around this area and their chili cheese fries are pretty top notch around here as well.

You have to douse these things in their homemade ranch crack sauce. They call it ranch, but it's not thick enough to be ranch. I'm not a fan of regular ranch, but this stuff is straight up addicting. You can put it on almost anything and it will bring happiness back into your life. My sister isn't a fan of breakfast burritos or ranch, but she loved it. The reason why this baby (it weighs more than your average newborn) so big is the massive amounts of hashbrowns they throw in here. Some people hate that, but I love it. Besides the potatoes, you get eggs, salsa, bacon, and cheese all wrapped up in a large flour tortilla that is just slightly crisp.

Now these are some glorious chili cheese fries. There are many, many little burger joints in my area that make some good chili cheese fries, but I must say, these are a notch above the rest. I can't really put my finger on what it is, but the fries, chili, cheese, and onions work together so well.

My sister and I shared this and we couldn't finish it; I'm not a weak eater either. Not to mention, I was full all day. Best of all, it only cost around $8. Talk about a deal.

George's Hamburgers is located on 815 W Commonwealth Ave. Fullerton, CA 92832. Check it out for yourself and feel free to leave your thoughts here.

"After the jump"

Just a heads up for everyone that's been visiting my blog as of late. I've been noticing that the majority of you have been visiting my homepage and not clicking the "Read the rest of this entry »." Now, I'm pretty sure most of you have been visiting to see the photos from concerts I've shot. I only put one picture on the homepage to keep any slowdown of your computers to an absolute minimum (see how considerate I am? ^_^). You have to click through to see the rest of the photos. Okay, that was just a friendly reminder/lesson so that all of you could enjoy the photos to their fullest potential. Thanks again for reading.

[Photo] Wiguna Project Album Release Concert Preview

Here's a little preview of the most recent show I shot for my friends over at the Wiguna Project. They just released their debut album, Give Us the Weekend. I'll have the full album up soon, I just need to figure out how to process the RAW files from my D7000, which I used as a second camera during the show. That might take a couple days.

Ben Clement opening up

Frontman Jeff

Little brother Justin playing a song for his girl

Anthony Chatman, frontman from their old band

Contest Entry and Updates

Hey guys, I just entered a Think Tank contest and I need your help. Please vote for my photo here. I will put up more details about the shot at a later time. I'm also in the process of going through and making minor changes on the photos from the Wiguna Project album release concert, so expect those in the next couple days.

Thanks for reading and have a fantastic day.

[Photo] All Day with the Nehemiah Band

I had a glorious opportunity this past Saturday to spend all day with my favorite local band, The Nehemiah Band. For one low price, you got a concert, seminars, a Clippers game, AND hang out time with the band. Now, I have never met a band that works so hard to build relationships with their fan base. It's pretty cool when the band knows you by first name. Sweet. The Nehemiah Band is probably one of the most creative groups out there. For one, their music. Wow. I don't know how to categorize it, but simply put, its pure, passionate sonic bliss. And then, what other band out there throws an event like this one? Spending ALL DAY with the band?

[EDIT] Seems like I forgot to add that the sans facial hair Alex Hwang emceed the event and Stephen from Feats in Inches ran sound. They are both wonderful musicians as well. Make sure you check out Alex Hwang and Feats in Inches!

Back to the actual event now. My good buddy, Ben Bae, opened up with his friend accompanying him on vocals and keys. Ben was great as always.

The Nehemiah Band played their set next. It was filled with energy and awesomeness.

They included plenty of crowd interaction and free merch as well.

After the concert portion of the event, we were able to attend 2 seminars of our choice. Each member of the band taught in their fields of specialty. Mike Whang did one on Acoustic Guitar and another on Songwriting, Gilbert did one on Bass and the History of Music in the Church, DJ Descry, the married man, did one on Dating, Kevin Kim did one on Electric Guitar, and John Chong did one on the Music Industry. I attended the latter two, but I wanted to go to all of them.

We grabbed dinner, then it was off to the Clippers game. I'm not the biggest sports fan in general, but wow, that was one heck of a game to go to. Even though the beloved Clippers lost to the Knicks, we witnessed Blake Griffin in all of his blazing greatness. 44 points and some monster dunks. Holy shmoly that was a fun game to watch. I don't have any photos from the game because I realized I was shooting JPEGs the whole day and switched to RAW. My software doesn't support the D7000's RAW files quite yet, so those photos are just sitting on my disk waiting to be converted. Good thing I accidentally shot JPEG!

Raffles were held throughout the day and I won a ticket to tonight's Clippers game against the Hornets as well as play time on the Staples Center floor, but I couldn't make it, so I gave the ticket to one of my friends. Hopefully he'll use it well.

Well that was All Day with the Nehemiah Band in a nutshell.

For all you photo geeks out there like me, I shot most of the show between ISO 800 and 1600. I started out at 800 on Ben's performance and slowly crept up to 1600 during TNB's set. I was shooting on a Nikon D7000 with a 35mm f1.8 at around f2.8 for most of the show.