Boba Loca

Tea Rush
2759 S. Diamond Bar Blvd.
Diamond Bar, CA 91765
(909) 598-5190

Boba and tea shops are everywhere. You can find them at nearly every shopping plaza in the greater Los Angeles area. They've become the Asian Starbucks, a hangout spot for local teenagers to text each other on their Sidekicks about crappy music and who's taking who to the prom. There's so many to choose from: Ten Ren's, Quickly's, Lollicup, Tea Zone, Tealicious, Tapioca Express. But despite all this variety in name, they all taste alike and offer the same menu of greasy pork chops and unpredictably spicy popcorn chicken (where "medium" could mean either bland or set your tongue on fire). I went on a quest to find a tea house that offered high quality drinks and a unique menu. This quest lasted less than a week, because I found said place in my own hometown of Diamond Bar.

Tea Rush is located in the brand spanking new Super H Mart plaza, right next to the hip yogurt store Cherry On Top. It's a short walking distance from the high school, so the normally dead hours of 3-5 pm in the restaurant world are the rush hours for Tea Rush. The atmosphere is different from your typical cold and brightly lit boba shop. When you enter, you feel surrounded by a comforting warmth complimented by the dark mahogany furniture and the scent of incense burning in the corner. They always leave the door open to allow a gentle breeze to brush by. The baristas and cooks are friendly and willing to help you find the perfect drink.

The drinks are carefully handcrafted and named after different birthstones like "Ruby" and "Sapphire". Many of their creations include soy creamer, which balances out the strong fruit taste in the drinks and goes perfectly with boba. My personal favorites are "Topaz" (green tea, peach, and soy creamer) and "Amethyst" (black tea, blueberry, and soy creamer). They also offer the option of creating your own drink from their variety of teas (green, black, rose vanilla, masala chai, or herb chai) and fruit flavors (strawberry, blueberry, peach, pineapple, passion fruit, honey, among many others).

What truly amazed me about Tea Rush was their food menu, which offered a great variety of delicious and healthy meals such as ginger chicken salad, shrimp rice bowls (with brown rice available as an option), miso soup, even dim sum! I just had to try one of the dim sum items, so I got shrimp potstickers. I was blown away: the dough was soft and fluffy, not at all greasy, and the filling was so full of flavor I barely used any chili sauce. No more popcorn chicken for me! (Although they do have that too.)

Everything at Tea Rush runs at the same price as any other boba shop, so you can easily get a great meal and drink for under $10. And for dessert, you can just stroll next door to the fabulous Cherry On Top...but I'll save that for another blog.

Hot off the griddle

Original Pancake House
18453 Yorba Linda Boulevard
Yorba Linda, California 92686
714-693-1390

1418 East Lincoln Avenue
Anaheim, California 92805
714-535-9815

1756 South Pacific Coast Hwy.
Redondo Beach, California 90277
310-543-9875

No, do NOT get this place confused with IHOP. It's the Original Pancake House, a small chain of restaurants that offer a wide variety of pancakes and other breakfast items with an emphasis on homestyle cooking. I'm not sure which location is the real OG (there are over 100 locations across the US, I just listed a few SoCal locations), but I'm sure all of them are as good as the one I frequent in Yorba Linda.

The place itself is nothing spectacular, a very simple dining room with an open kitchen in the corner. The servers don't try to veil their impatience with fake cheer, and at times borderline the "rude waitress" stereotype you see in movies. This is not an insult to their service, because I much prefer keepin' it real. But what really brings me back to the place is their pancakes.

At the Original Pancake House, pancakes taste like how they should taste. They don't try to lure people in with gigantic portions or mounds of sugary fruit-like toppings; their perfectly fluffy buttermilk pancakes do all the talking. Their menu is truly international, offering French crepes, Alaskan sourdough flap jacks, lacy Swedish pancakes with lingonberry sauce, Dutch babies, and of course, good ole fashioned American hotcakes in every variety you can think of. Everything tastes like it came from Ma's kitchen because it did; all of the recipes come from housewives of the nationality represented in the dish. So their Danish Kijafa crepes is the creation of a Danish housewife, their Dutch baby is the spawn of a German housewife, these are all authentic cultural dishes. Take that IHOP.

My taste preference gravitates towards sweet, so I usually order banana and chocolate chip pancakes (a half stack of each, I'm not a heffer). The combination of chocolate melting over bananas is perfect! Although I've tried a few others, I tend go back to my usual. However, I have made it a goal to try all of the varieties. This task has been very difficult for me because they're only open for breakfast (6am-2pm) and my biological alarm clock doesn't go off till noon.

Besides pancakes, OPH offers all your other typical breakfast items like eggs, bacon, and waffles. But who goes to a pancake house without getting pancakes? That's like going to Cheesecake Factory and not ordering cheesecake...it's just wrong.

I miss Saigon

Saigon Noodle House
1136 S Diamond Bar Blvd
Diamond Bar, CA 91765
(909) 861-5020

Picture one of those cozy Mom-n-Pop diners you would find in a small town in Kansas, where all the waiters have warm smiles and you would order the "usual".

Now picture that diner serves Vietnamese food.

Saigon is a local favorite for the natives of Diamond Bar, known for its delicious and filling meals that all cost under $10. The atmosphere is very casual, almost lackadaisical; perhaps this is due to the heavy coma induced by their food, or the fact that most of the clientele consists of regulars that frequent the place on a weekly (or even daily) basis. I myself am one of those regulars; my friends and I would eat there ritually every Saturday afternoon, followed by a wonderful nap. My sister even has a tab there!

The atmosphere is not the only comforting thing there. The food, although foreign to many non-Vietnamese, is wonderfully filling with a hint of nostalgia. My personal favorite, and their most popular dish, is the pho (pronounced "fuh", not "foe"). Pho is a beef broth based soup made with vermicelli (thin rice noodles) and slices of raw beef that's cooked by the heat of the soup. There are variations of the dish that include chicken, meatballs, tendon, or tripe. Don't be fooled by the "regular" and "large" options; the regular size is big enough to feed two! The dish is customizable too; you add the basil leaves, lime, bean sprouts, hoisin, and sriracha (spicy chili sauce) yourself, so you can make it as outrageously spicy (like how I do) or mild or tangy or sweet as you like.

Other recommended dishes are vermicelli (which is just rice noodles with your choice of meat on top), Vietnamese sandwiches (served on a French roll, one of the remaining influences from the French occupation of Vietnam - a little history lesson for you!), spring rolls, and eggrolls. And all of these, including the pho, range from $3-8 in price. The beverages are great compliments to the meal. They have bittersweet Vietnamese coffee, creamy Thai iced tea, and my absolute favorite, fresh squeezed lemonade (the sweet tartness compliments my spicy pho perfectly).

So if you're ever rolling through Diamond Bar, which is highly unlikely since most people have never even heard of DB...ok, if you're ever on the 60 where it meets the 57, hop off on Grand and make a stop by Saigon Noodle House. You can put it on my sister's tab.

Allow myself to introduce...myself

First off, let me state that I am not fat just because I am going by the pseudonym "McFatty". I am a fatty as I am so affectionately called by my friends and family, aka a "foodie". I love, I repeat, love to eat. But not the kind of love that would have you finding me at the local buffet, shoveling piles of mashed potatoes and biscuits down my throat (I save that for special occassions). I'm a food connoisseur, so I appreciate and enjoy all kinds of food in every form.

This blog will be dedicated to my passion for the culinary arts. I will be reviewing various local restaurants in the Southern California areas, focusing on places that offer something different from your run-of-the-mill corporate chains (although I'll have to give my occasional shout-outs to my favorites). Restaurants are great places for people to meet and mingle, find love, be entertained, bring back old memories, or make new ones. Food is more than just a necessity for survival; it's a cultural touchstone and a form of art. I hope that my blog will help you discover that...or find a really good meal.