Tag Archives: #Mesa

A Little Taste of Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House in Mesa AZ

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Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House is located in Mesa Arizona. Should you happen to find yourself in Philadelphia Pennsylvania there is another Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle by the same family there. The Mesa Arizona location is small but clean.

It isn’t a fancy place but they do offer wait service.

I saw Chinese Herbal Tea on the menu so I gave it a try.

I wasn’t expecting it to come in a can……It’s a little perfume-e and a little sweet.

We started out by sharing the fried peanuts.

The peanuts aren’t hot or anything….they are just peanuts. (orange colors on plate is design on plate)

Next we try some noodles.

One plate that we tried was the beef stir fried with xo sauce noodle.

The other was hot pepper chicken dry noodle.

Both dishes were made with fresh tasting proteins that was very tender. Both entrees were made with chewy perfect noodles. Neither dish is bad but we both enjoyed the hot pepper dry noodle dish more. To us it was more delicious! It had good flavors and a nice heat to it.

Besides what we tried there are plenty of other things to try.

You can try appetizers like marinated pig ear, dumpling or marinated duck. They also offer chef’s specials like tomato sauce swai, stir fried beef stomach, and spicy cray fish. They offer rice dishes, stir fried noodle dishes, dry noodle dishes. They also offer a variety of soups and soups with noodles called hand drawn noodle soups where you pick the type of noodle that you want in your soup. The noodles they offer are rice, shaved, sweet potato, or the hand drawn varieties of thick, wide, regular, or thin.

Service was friendly and efficient. Parking was close.

That was a little taste of Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House in Mesa AZ.

www.NanZhouNoodleMesaAZ.com

111 S. Dobson Rd Mesa AZ

480-275-5352

Everything is subject to change.

The Forking Truth

A Little Taste of Shaanxi Garden in Mesa AZ – Shaanxi Style Chinese Food – Worth a Fork!

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Shaanxi Garden is a Chinese Restaurant located in Mesa Arizona. They specialize in serving Chinese Dishes from the desert Shaanxi region of China. Most dishes are large and are meant to be shared. Some of the dishes do run spicy and some dishes might contain mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns but the dishes are not fiery hot like Szechuan dishes. They serve hand made noodles here so you might want to give them a try.

It’s casual.

The word biang is the sound of making noodles……(hint hint…get the handmade noodles)

During the day they tell us to seat ourselves.

There is a small bar in the restaurant indicating that some alcohol is available.

The current menu is broken down into cold dishes like coming called mixing cucumber, spicy beef tripe, and pork in garlic sauce. You can find appetizers such as egg rolls, potstickers, and dumplings. Soups like seaweed and egg, congee with pork and century eggs. They offer various chicken, beef, pork, lamb, seafood, and vegetable dishes. Some of the dishes offer are American Chinese style like orange chicken and beef and broccoli. However you can also find the seldom found at other restaurants like toothpick lamb, twice cooked pork with Shaanxi buns, and Talchi squirrel shaped fish.

We always order way more food than we need and always bring home the leftovers.

Our last food critic raved about the crispy chicken Shaanxi Style so we tried it.

It’s fried chicken breast with a crispy coating with the seasoning on the side. The seasoning has all kinds of flavors and sesame seeds and heat in it. It is tasty. Most people would like the taste of it. Today this dish ran a bit dry.

I’m not entirely sure what they served us as our main this time. I asked for the water boiled fish filet because I’ve had this dish at several other places and knew what to expect. I think the waiter repeated back water boiled fish with pickled cabbage and chili? On my receipt it reads, pickled fish. Whatever it was……. it was REALLY GREAT!

It doesn’t look like water boiled fish because it doesn’t have all the oil, chilies, and mouth numbing peppercorns on the top. This is actually better than water boiled fish. It has more flavors and more textures than other water boiled fish dishes that I have tried.

This dish also has rice noodles in it.

It has heat in it but not a crazy amount of heat. The fish is mild and melt in your mouth soft. The broth is well made. The pickled peppers in this dish make it interesting. There is a lot of fish in this dish. I think that this dish can feed 3-4 people.

Last time we had a plate called the house special braised chicken with noodle.

This plate is very special. It is more well known in Shaanxi Cuisine as Big Plate Chicken.

It’s like Chinese Thanksgiving in a bowl. It’s full of chunks of marinated chicken, peppers, onions, potatoes, garlic, chestnuts, chili peppers, and maybe cumin, star anise, soy sauce, and chewy long noodles. Actually I thought this dish was even better the next day when I had it again.

We also tried a few vegetable dishes that were very good!

Below is a- choy in garlic sauce. (I don’t recall seeing it on the current menu?)

On my last visit we tried the sautéed potato, pepper, and eggplant dish.

It was delicious anyone would like it.

That was a little taste of Shaanxi Garden in Mesa.

Shaanxi Garden is Worth a Fork!

Worth A Fork!

www.ShaanxiBiangBiang.com

The Forking Truth

My Trip To H Mart Korean American Supermarket in Mesa AZ

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H Mart is the largest Korean/American Supermarket Chain in America. They have around 85 locations nationwide and also have a few locations in Canada and London. We took a trip to our closest H Mart in Mesa Arizona and these are only a few of things we came across.

Interesting melons

fresh durian fruit

red skinned passion fruit

jujube crunch

fresh wood ear mushrooms and lots of other interesting mushrooms

fresh lily bulb

ginseng

The largest scallions

wagyu beef

yellow chives

garlic stems

green radish

salted egg salmon skin

wasabi pea crackers

live fish …actually the fish section was very large and didn’t smell either. They also offered a lot of frozen fish too..

dried fish

wafu dressing

After we shopping we decided to have lunch in the Market Eatery also known as the H Mart Food Court.

Here is Paris Baguette. Lots of baked goods.

Food Garden

Sogongoong Tofu & BBQ – This was my first choice but they were out of the mackerel I wanted to try.

Jeong’s Noodle

Meisen Katsu – breaded cutlet meals

Korean Fried Chicken

Da Pan …This one seemed interesting to me. I thought I’d like the spicy chicken topaki and my husband thought he’d like the bulgogi Risotto. They also have some weird sounding dishes like Dorito Mac and Cheese here.

This is pretty weird…..It looks like a pizza but it is without crust. I didn’t know that they would sprinkle cheese on it. It’s made of chicken, chewy rice cakes, fish cakes, cabbage, carrots in a sweet but medium spicy sauce….The sauce taste something like that sweet sauce that goes on cabbage rolls. This is weird to me…….It’s a lot of sweet sauce….It came radish kimchi with a soup that frightened me….because I thought looked like urine so I didn’t even try it. Good thing this chicken dish was a big portion because me and my husband ate this because the other dish we both couldn’t stomach.

We thought we would be getting something like this because it is the picture of the dish from the business posted as menu on www.Yelp.com It looks good doesn’t it? I also remember our last food critic from our local newspaper wrote about how great this dish was…..I guess Da Pan made him this version.

www.Yelp.com menu

But we got this instead.

I tell The FORKING Truth so I have to say that……..It’s really grosser than it looks. Honest to GOD!>>>It’s like they took a brick of cream cheese and put the bulgogi in a blender with the cream cheese with not much else and mixed it with rice.

It’s like vomit on a skillet.

I did better with some of the vegetables that I picked up at H Mart.

Endives fried in chicken fat with lime, peanuts, basil, mint, yellow chives

Bok Choy Garlic Stems & Chestnuts in Banchan Sauce

That was my trip to H Mart in Mesa AZ

www.HMart.com

The Forking Truth

Bad Food I got from Mostly NEW Restaurants in Metro Phoenix AZ

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I was thinking even with the pandemic going on that the food I get out has been better than from previous years. Usually I hit a few really BAD ONES once or twice a year. The other thing that is different is that I am rarely going to restaurants that are new to me. I’ve been not entirely but mostly only going to restaurants that I know. Anyway I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the food I didn’t enjoy from mostly New Restaurants in Metro Phoenix.

Up top was the worst taco I ever had served to me in my life. The taco shell expired on it’s way to me. It was filled with the driest unseasoned chicken that you can ever imagine. It seemed like they just chopped off raw chicken and without seasoning or anything heated it up in the microwave until it got hard and dry. Don’t worry this restaurant that was located in Scottsdale is no longer in business. I wonder why?….

These falafels were very dry and lacked fresh herbs. This falafel place was written up as serving some of the best falafels in metro Phoenix. IDK what’s going on here…Did they get a new chef? Maybe they made better falafels for a professional critic? I’ll never know what happed here but honest… these were horrible falafels. This small restaurant is still in business so I am guessing some sort of recipe change has occurred. A great falafel has a crispy exterior and is moist and fluffy with lots of fresh herbs incase you were wondering.

What is this?

It’s a polenta tower that is unusually stiff and bread-like texture. It’s not very good and it looks like it’s happy to see me…..Or maybe that is the chef’s way of saying that he is pissed off and is trying to say f*** you? Don’t worry…this particular popular restaurant has changed chefs a few times since I had this plate.

I went to a new BBQ place and the brisket was tough with hard fat. I will say that the brisket might have been delicious if it was cooked maybe two hours more……..But the cheesy grits were even worst. They served them to me raw.

I can’t believe they served me this. We even told someone about this and instead of saying something like “I’m sorry” or “I’ll take it off your bill she just walked away.

We visited a restaurant that is no longer in business that was somewhere ion Scottsdale.

I don’t understand why they opened a restaurant before they learned how to cook. The sauce was bitter and acidic with harsh flavors. The meatballs contained hard crunchy carrots. Maybe they were hoping to just sell lots of drinks?

Went to a new sandwich shop somewhere in metro Phoenix.

Looks like my sandwich threw up on itself. My husband sort of liked his sandwich that didn’t look as bad. We did go back and this place did improve.

This time I went to a new Asian Chicken restaurant somewhere in Metro Phoenix.

They gave me the half good half bad plate. Chicken on the left was moist and edible. Chicken on the right was all dried out and very stringy.

Even pizza can be screwed up!

Imagine getting an individual pizza with part of it that doesn’t come with any topping……No topping on a pizza is like getting empty presents on your birthday…BAH!

This next restaurant was already in business but was sold to new owners and opened with a new menu. It used to be ok so I thought we’d give it another try. I was thinking that maybe it got better………Well I was wrong it got worst.

WOW this chicken salad was awful. It came with these processed tasting COLD chicken fingers that seemed like they previously exploded in the microwave and were served chilled to me on a mediocre salad. The chicken finger were sort of hallow in the middle and were crunchy in a microwave kind of way. WOW this was bad beyond all expectations.

Many people will not order fish in Phoenix for these reasons.

I’m thinking one of the worst plates I was served was the trout plate from somewhere in Metro Phoenix.

Wow this was bad on all kinds of levels. Mediocre questionably edible fish. I got lovely boiled from frozen vegetables. I got green mashed potatoes. I asked the waitress why the mashed potatoes were green. She runs back to talk with the chef. He said mashed potatoes turn green when you add black pepper. WOW I guess his pepper was green and moldy. This restaurant is still in business…..maybe some people like this kind of food?

The next one might not look as bad but something very strange was wrong with it.

I got this whole fish from a restaurant that I enjoyed before. This time the fish seemed like it was made out of rubber, We couldn’t eat it. I think they served us an embalmed fish.

Well The Forking Truth is that there is GOOD and BAD everywhere out there!

Be CAREFUL!

Everything is subject to change and we hope it does for the better.

The Forking Truth

My Trip to Mekong Asian Plaza in Mesa AZ

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The Mekong Plaza is an Asian Shopping Center that is a mall with a dozen Asian restaurants, an Asian/International Grocery Super Market gift shops and more. Today we thought we’d do some exploring here and mostly tasting.

We started with a full service Vietnamese Restaurant called Com Tam Thuan Kieu.

We shared a dish that is seldom found at most Metro Phoenix Vietnamese Restaurants called Com Do Ga Roti (fried Cornish hen with tomato paste red rice). Today they were out of Cornish hen so chicken was offered.

First came out a cup of broth and chunks of very developed soft pork.

Next we moved on to the main event.

We received a generously sized plate of very moist tender delicious bbq chicken thigh made with house made bbq sauce. I picked fish sauce as the dipping sauce and it went together to make something mighty tasty. The plate also came with pickled vegetables, a fried over easy egg and tomato paste red rice. I’ve had Vietnamese red rice before and this differed as they do from home to home or restaurant to restaurant. Here the rice was on the dry side and contained very little tomato.

Below is com do ga roti from Thao Sandwiches now closed for business. You can see the texture and tomato and seasoning does differ.

Thao Sandwiches (now closed for business)

Moving on next stop was suppose to be a Filipino Restaurant called Wholly Grill for Grilled Tuna with Eggplant Salad but that wasn’t on the menu today so we stopped at Heng’s Kitchen in the food court instead to share a Szechuan Spicy Boiled Fish.

Soon we are served and they are nice enough to split the rice plates for us. The fish is very tender and mild and cooked to perfection. We receive a good amount of bean sprouts and fresh chopped cilantro. There is some heat from hot chili and some Sichuan peppercorns but this is the least spicy Szechuan Spicy Boiled Fish that I’ve ever had…….I saw the chef looking at me when I ordered it……..It’s possible that he thought I looked like someone that can’t handle spicy foods and it’s a possibility that he was trying to spare me too much mouth numbing painful heat?????? I don’t know…..but that’s what I thought. This dish was still very good but super mild for the kind of dish that it is.

The last time I had Szechuan Spicy boiled fish it looked like this from Szechuan Cosine in Glendale.

from Szechuan Cusine in Glendale

See all the peppers…..now this was ultra spicy and mouth numbing.

Now we take a break and walk around Mekong Market. Lets see what we see.

Chestnut Kit Kats!

WOW Sake KitKats too!

Boiled corn with colorful kernels.

Faux fish.

LOTS of real fish. (near the middle is rabbit fish…..rabbit fish?……does it hop?)

Much more fish..thought the moon fish look attractive…..they shine much more than the photo shows.

Lay’s tomato and cucumber flavor chips.

Togarashi

Lay’s Spicy Hot Pot flavored potato chips that actually DO contain Szechuan pepper.

Asian gefilte fish…..who knew?

Fermented mudfish in rice……….?

Best Wild Jelly Fish Head.

Yellow Rock sugar…….I don’t know about yellow sugar??????? Makes me think of a Frank Zappa song.

A whole world of produce and herbs.

We decide we can hit one more restaurant and go to Happy Baos.

They are packed and we have to wait outside.

In reasonable time we are called in to sit at a table.

This is a tiny restaurant that is very packed with tables close together.

I don’t know if they are short on help or just very unorganized today. We’ve had ordering problems and waited abnormally long for our food while others around that came in latter had multiple plates. But this restaurant was written about in the Arizona Republic recently and might be busier than usual????? We finally get served.

Chicken Cabbage Dumplings and a Tofu Vegetable Bao.

The Bao is ok….

There is a possibility we waited so long because they rushed out a batch of dumplings for us. These dumplings seemed rushed because they lack seasoning and the cabbage they were suppose to contain.

That was my trip to Mekong Plaza in Mesa.

www.MekongPlaza.com

Every FORKING Thing is subject to change and your experience may or may not differ.

The Forking Truth

My Trip to Po Chicken in Mesa AZ

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Po Chicken is a casual Korean Restaurant in Mesa Arizona that specializes in Korean Porridge and Korean Fried Chicken. They also serve other Korean Dishes and Beer. This isn’t a fancy place and the atmosphere is a mix of new and worn.

I noticed something odd and saw something I’ve never seen in a restaurant before.

Each table had it’s own call button to ring a server.

We ordered and soon a few plates of side dishes arrive that are referred to as banchan.

The pickles were very unusual tasting to me…..sort of like regular pickles but mixed with Asian Flavors. We received crunchy salad with sweet thousand Island type dressing, fish cakes, kimchi, pickled radish, pickles, miso soup and a condiment for our hot pot.

We shared the Hot Pot with Flying Fish Roe.

We were told that this dish was meatless except for the fish roe. This was a rice dish with nori, shrimp, fine chopped vegetables, onions and fish roe. We mixed the condiment into the dish. It’s a mild but tasty dish. I like the texture of the onions. They are cooked but sort of crispy in a different way.

We also shared a split order of Korean Fried Chicken. We picked Sweet and Spicy and Soy Garlic. They serve a very large portion that might be enough to share between four people.

On the left is the Yang Nyum (the Sweet and Spicy). The Chicken is hot and very juicy……The sauce runs very sweet for my taste and I am a big fan of sweets but this is too sweet for me with very little heat. It’s like eating a warmed up jar of duck sauce. But the chicken on the left would be good if I liked the sauce. It would be my luck that I hit this restaurant when the “B” crew was on because the Ganjang (Soy Garlic) Chicken on the right was almost cold and was very dry……………..very VERY dry…stringy dry and almost cold…..If this chicken could talk what would it tell me?………Clearly this chicken wasn’t fresh made for us…..it was cooked…..chilled….possibly re-heated again for a long time so it could get all dried out (and awful)…and possibly chilled again……and slightly reheated to below a safe serving temperature for us… I tried to eat one piece and the piece I tried was a back bone that hardly had any meat and should have been saved for a stew …….but hey it did have an ultra crispy skin! We had a great deal of leftover chicken that we didn’t box up.

If you need service or the check you have to walk to the front desk or hit the button on the wall.

Every thing is subject to change and your experience may or may not differ.

That was my trip to Po Chicken in Mesa.

1/2 a Fork…

www.Po-Chicken.Business.site

The Forking Truth

Big Plate Chicken – Glendale AZ Szechuan Cuisine VS Mesa AZ Shaanxi Garden

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Spicy Chicken Noodle from Szechuan Cuisine in Glendale AZ

Ever since I tried this dish called Spicy Chicken Noodle at Szechuan Cuisine in Glendale AZ my thoughts and expectations on Chinese Food have changed forever. This was maybe the most delicious Chinese Dish I ever tasted. It was like Asian Thanksgiving. This dish was basically an Asian Chicken Stew with bell pepper, potato, onion, garlic, chili, maybe cumin, maybe star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, soy sauce and chewy noodles. It was full of different textures and many exciting different flavors. It was mouth numbing spicy but not crazy stingingly spicy like Sichuan water boiled dishes. This dish was so interesting. Even the onions turned magically super sweet when you ate them and cooled things off. I never had anything like it before. This dish was spicy but delicious and exciting to eat.

I have read that in China this dish is called Big Plate Chicken or Da Pan Ji or Dapanji. By one Asian Person I met I was told that this is a Shaanxi Dish but I read that this dish is Chinese/Uyghur Fusion but originally came from Xinjiang China.

I read that Shaanxi Garden in Mesa AZ is considered to be an outstanding Chinese Restaurant. It just so happens that Shaanxi Garden also offers their variation of this dish and they call it #22. Braised Chicken with Noodle and Chestnuts.

#22. Braised Chicken with Noodle and Chestnuts

A very similar dish. The chicken is the same bone on leg but it’s darker in color and flavored from marination or something. In this dish the sauce is hot from jalapeños and dried chili pods but doesn’t have Sichuan Peppercorns. The sauce does have a slightly different flavor. This one is much heavier with star anise. This plate has delicious chestnuts in it and I get that sweet going on in it that breaks up the rest (like the way the onions are sweet in the dish from the other place). The last difference was the noodles used. The Shaanxi Garden had a super long wide noodle that was delicate and not as chewy as what the Glendale restaurant used.

This one from from Shaanxi Garden I did get to eat a second time. On my second taste the jalapeños and star anise calmed down so the flavors seemed more balanced. I also got the bottom of the dish stuff I didn’t get before and pulled out unusual spices that I’m not familiar with. One spice used was a very thin small twig. I pulled out some twigs.  Another spice was some sort of black bark. There also were small black pods that looked similar to black cardamon but they were smaller. Second time around this dish was more delicious to me but it was strange to pull out twigs and several pieces of bark.

BOTH DISHES WERE GREAT!  I can’t really say that one is really better than the other……

But…….

Both were great but for me the Szechwan Cuisine’s take on the Big Plate Chicken had a slight edge for my personal taste………..I am partial to Sichuan Peppercorns and taste of the stew (first time tastings). The Sichuan Peppercorns maybe added sensations that were so interesting like the way the sweet onions hit me. Jalapeños just don’t do that for me. The Szechwan Cuisine’s dish also had a richer developed Chicken flavor that was delicious. I think the Sichuan Peppercorns just added that magic factor that made the dish so exciting. Like I said before this dish wasn’t crazy super hot spicy like Szechwan water boiled dishes…….but it was hot…but delicious. It was better than just right…It was magical. …………………………………………………………………………… I also note that I don’t know if I will ever get that dish prepared the same way again….. I’ve experienced at Szechuan Cuisine that communication can be an issue….that is when I tried to order food made with Sichuan peppercorns on more than one occasion.

Two versions of a very similar dish that is very difficult to come by in Metro Phoenix.

The Forking Truth is that EVERY FORKING THING is subject to change….(repeat)……..EVERY FORKING THING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE and your experience may or may not differ.

www.SzechuanCuisine.org

www.ShaanxiBiangBiang.com

The Forking Truth