Formerly Underground+Illegal Restaurant/Kitchen gone legit?!? ;p
DAMN that’s one nice looking CRISPY TOFU BALL! LOL
(Beautifully taken by kevinEATS and his INCREDIBLY thorough Plate-by-Plate coverage… HERE)
So, it’s Tuesday, I’m late (as usual) and my favorite-st dish of all is on the menu (Braised Coconut Pork)…
I don’t feel like I need to say anymore than that today (because I can’t give you anymore ;p) ^_^
Toodles,
TEAM SK
New SK lesson: “CONSISTENCY IS.. NICE?!?!”
What does that mean exactly since it’s one of those weirdly posed half-question/statements, right? (<- that’s one of those too LOL) Well, let’s put it this way before we get into the slumber inducing details, shall we:
The BAD (you can casually skip this part and/or get bored enough to click on YouTube now if you would like ^_^): today, and there’s a possibility I could be speaking/posting TOO soon, we WILL NOT be serving the VN BRAISED COCONUT PORK.
The GOOD #1: We haven’t been running out of sides this week, and not one threat of someone kicking me in my “sensitive child-making area” has been sighted. (whew)
The GOOD #2: Assuming the Kitchen Ninja confirms the pork is NO GOOD today, we will be bringing back (in limited quantity) KOREAN SHORT-RIBS (“K/Galbi”) today to fill the void left by the pork (damn you pork!)
(FYI- my “sensitive” area is on guard again!)
WHY? (AGAIN!)
Like the first time when we took it off the menu for a day, the pork was/is “no bueno!” Or to be specific, we found this last batch to be TOO FRICKIN’ DRY! (why JEEBUS! WHYYYY)
So WHAT’S the lesson with all this again?
Well, we gotta serve you food as consistent in quality as we can get it (aka don’t be a greedy and cheap-O “D-Bag” and serve CRAP ^_^) And you know what, we can’t serve ya food we wouldn’t eat ourselves. (even though SOME of you push us to anyway, we can’t have that.. FOO’S)
The pork is quite tender, but still very dry. Not to go into too much detail, but we’ve been dealing with different vendors, different and yet similar cuts of pork and also working a non-fire based range (electric induction) which adds a lot of variables (which we think we’ve isolated in a very “qualitative” aka “boring” scientific way… FINALLY)
So TEAM SK, watcha gonna do?
I’m glad you asked oh mysterious internet reader: for every day we’ve MISSED serving the BRAISED COCONUT PORK, we’re going make up for those days next week!
So as of today, the total tally is kinda/sorta/IS: 2 DAYS! So we’ll serve that for the first 2 days of next week.
And since it’s on us (double DOH!), I’ll go ahead and tell you the dish we’re thinking of replacing it with (which we’ll start up RIGHT after the lost Coconut Pork time is made up ^^):
TAIWANESE FRIED PORK! (w/ some crispy-tastic pics below… *droooooool*)
We just tried these last night, and they’re SO good! Oh man, we can’t wait to serve these up to ya guys. :)
Well, I think that kind of sums it up for today kiddos. We ain’t perfect, and we never profess to be (or did I…hmmmmm). If you have any suggestions, wanna send me not-so-nice messages because you’re not happy, or found my money in that bank in Nigeria I’ve been lookin’ for (it’s about $20,000,000 USD or so if I remember correctly): just e-mail me or post on our Facebook wall.
Toodles (and hoping you don’t hate us… yet),
TEAM SK
So let’s jump into the time machine and look back at… ummm… Wednesday. Remember that fateful day? No? Well we did (and here’s a LINK for ya just in case - http://bit.ly/1826JA). FOREVER (until the next biggest day) 11/11/09 will be remember as the most HECTIC day of food service in the short 7-month history that is… STARRY KITCHEN
The reason why we bring it up is because of the dish, what we called VN BAKED GROUND GARLIC PORK otherwise known as NEM NUONG in the Vietnamese circles of yesteryear… and maybe present day too, but that doesn’t matter.
WELL, that was really long winded BUT I mention all of this because we are an OFFICIAL (how official can one be serving food outta the back of your apartment???) SPONSOR of our friends at the theater ensemble group-tacular, LODESTONE, and their last and final show opening of GRACE KIM & THE SPIDERS FROM MARS! This marks an INCREDIBLE ending after 10 years as a predominantly Asian-American theater group in LA.
WHY should you care? Well, if you want to see some good theater and laugh (because it’s a comedy not at them foo’s), this show goes on for the next month. UNFORTUNATELY, tomorrow night’s opening is sold out. But if you are one of the fortunate entities to have a ticket, you get to enjoy some of our food… for free (but isn’t $5 ALMOST like it’s free, right???). And that INCLUDES traditional Vietnamese Springrolls with…. (tongue/drum rolll please)… NEM NUONG! And that is what the hoopla is ALL about.
For more information about the show, check out THIS link: http://bit.ly/2ur575
Hope to see you at the theater,
TEAM SK
PS - And if we don’t see you at the theater… hope to see you this Sunday (12-3p) for our signature VN BRAISED COCONUT PORK (aka THIT KHO)… oh man, oh man I cannot WAIT! This dish is actually this blogger’s (am I officially a blogger now???) FAVORITE of our 15 meat dishes (that I’ll compile into one post ONE day)
F’ING A! Let me tell you guys something. Yesterday’s THIT KHO TACOS mutha frackin’ delicious! Out of the 10 dishes we’ve served you suckas (you know we LOVE you suckas!), this has to be my (Nguyen Tran) FAVORITE!!! (I just noticed out of four sentences, I’ve used exclamation marks in 75% of them… oh well ^^). While it’s not only a super-duper familiar dish to me and EVERY Vietnamese kid in the world (and also Gene Lee, the consumate Korean kid who hung out in the Vietnamese hood of ummm… Houston ^^), I’ll go out on an “internet limb” (and that’s a BIG and LONG limb too with how many readers do we have again?? ummm… let’s re-visit that answer later LOL) and say the KITCHEN NINJA has perfected this dish in all it’s delightfully delectible and juicy-licious glory.
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I mean, as a foodie, if you didn’t make it… I wish you owned a time machine ‘cause it was THAT good. You could be like that girl in one of my recent favorite Japanese-anime films, THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME. She gains the power to time travel, but instead of doing anything important she time travels to eat her favorite yogurt, or to sing karaoke for 10 hrs in a row (it’s cheaper that way when they charge per hour!) and other fun stuff. Yeah, you should be like her and try these out. They were divine! (pssst) I embedded the trailer for your YouTube watching glory below, but don’t be fooled… this film is SOOOOO charming.
WHY ALL THE JIBBA JABBA… WHAT ARE YOU SERVING ON WED???
I’m glad you asked mid-80’s era Mr. T. Well, with another Sunday done, our minds are already racing for what we’re serving this Wednesday. For all the n00bs, here’s the deal. If it’s a NEW dish, we don’t tell ya until the day of (or a little earlier if we feel so kind or drunk) to whet your appetites and your curiosity to get you to come back out and visit us (because we MISS you!) If it’s an OLD classic (because in three months of service ALL of ‘em are “classics”), we tell ya straight up ‘cause we cool like that. ^^
Alrighty. Enjoy the pix, and “You stay classy“… ummm… North Hollywood, the Valley and all of greater Los Angeles including the parts that no one pays attention to. Until then, enjoy the smooth stylin’s of my friend, Randy George, and his incredible ability to re-create a song (in this case Gnarls Barkley’s CRAZY) on what looks like an antennae… but is actually an INSTRUMENT called a Theremin! Simply…yup… AMAZING! What does this have to do with food and STARRY KITCHEN? “Nada.” It’s just us and who we are. :p Enjoy!
TEAM STARRY KITCHEN
HAPPY FRIDAY! Oh man- it’s been a crazy week, and we’re so sorry we haven’t been able to update the blog very regularly this week. Are you enjoying the pics? Well, we’re enjoying the food in the pics we take.
You might look at all these pics and wonder, “What is all this stuff, and why are you teasing me with all these culinary delights?” The quick answer to the last half of that question is “because we can CHUCK… because we can!”
The answer to the first part is that the soupy stuff you’re seeing is also a Vietnamese regular, bo kho! It’s basically a Vietnamese beef stew made with a lot of spices that give it that thick red tint, and it’s oh so delish with the beef tenderly stewed with carrots and potatoes in this pic. And it’s most commonly eaten with french bread dipped into the soup. I like to add a tad bit of tobasco (YUP) to the soup to add a nice little kick, and a ton of basil to balance the flavors. THere’s also a chinese cilantro chicken fried dumpling in those pics too!
And of course, the rest of the pics are from our Wed nite service where we served THIT KHO. Me thinks we have this dish down. Especially with that hard boiled and thit kho flavored egg…YUUUUUMMY
SUNDAY SERVICE UPDATE
KALBI CHIM
“What is THAT?” you might also ask (what’s with all the questions anyway? be resourceful… you have the internet… it’s YOURS!) - well, the QUICK answer to that is braised Korean Beef short-ribs. We made these once before, and it’s time to bring it back out and refine the flavors of this dish to make it not only better… but UNSTOPPABLE! ^^
So come out this Sunday, from 12 - 3p. And if you don’t know where we’re at, check out our Yelp review HERE for more info.
Have you ever seen the White Stripes video for the song, ‘Fell in Love with a Girl’? No or you don’t remember… man, this is friggin’ sweet. No relation to anything here. It’s just cool. Have a great weekend!
TEAM STARRY KITCHEN
Haaaaappy AUGUST 16th!!!
(I know, *yawn* it’s August but we’ll get through this together, m’kay? ^_^)
First off, I want to thank Project by Project for inviting us to work their Plate by Plate tasting benefit this Saturday. We had a lot of fun, and thankfully it gave us the opportunity to expose us to even more people that didn’t know about us… AND continue on with the “BALLS” jokes (because we of course served our Crispy Tofu Balls) as demonstrated here by our volunteers and booth (yup, THE booth!) YAY!
Awww yes… I think that’s enough “Crispy Tofu Ball-foolery” for today. Let’s continue, shall we? (Doh, you left the blog already didn’t you… why Jebus… WHHHHY!)
So another week, another rotation, right? WRONG! (but still “technically” right LOL).
Let’s start w/ the “BYE-BYE” first:
Otherwise known by it’s horribly anglicized (by ‘moi’) name: Japanese Popcorn Chicken (but it’s still KARA-GE in my chockos!). This one has proved to be very popular especially with its yum-tacular Housemade Ponzu + shredded Ginger sauce-liciousness. Thanks guys! (but it’s still gotta GO ;p)
Hello… HELLO!
“Don’t call it a come back son” (even though again “technically” it IS a come back) because my favorite-st dish of all of ‘em is back after a near 6 MONTH hiatus!! We didn’t plan it that way, but that’s just the way it happened!
(SK disclaimer: even though it’s MY favorite dish… it doesn’t have to be yours.. and I think most of “us” here understand that.. I just want to make sure to let you know “it’s COOL kiddies… it’s COOL!”)
Maybe it’s ‘cuz I’m Vietnamese (I’d probably say it’s not JUST a maybe), but I love me some of this. You don’t know how LONG I’ve been asking the Kitchen Ninja to bring this back (so you see, she DOES make the decisions), and now we have it in all it’s PORKY and sliced HARD-BOILED EGG deliciousness. Either way, I know some of ya’ll will agree with me on this (especially one by the name of JAMES who ordered this almost EVERY DAY when we first had it… WOW).
On top of that, we’ve brought in a special rice combo just for this dish:
Now, even though BOTH have coconut in the names, I assure you that BOTH do NOT have coconut flavors so they can actually compliment each other with each bite and juicy morsel in your mouth!
Alrighty, I think that’s enough for now. Have at it, and… PURDY PLEASE come back in and see us! ;)
Xoxo,
TEAM SK
Happy Sunday everyone,
WOW, we’ve come along way in about 7 months! For those that lurk on the mailing list and just look at all the pictures and haven’t stopped by in a while (or those I have voluntarily added, feel free to ask me to take you off ^_^), there has been a TREMENDOUS wave of AWESOME newcomers mainly from our favorite friend, YELP! Thanks to you guys for supporting our “underground covert culinary…kitchen” which now has NINETEEN 5-star reviews. HOLY CRAP! ^_^
Also, if you guys didn’t know, TODAY (11/15) is our ONE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. It’s not a gimmick, it’s not a joke, and is this real??? Either way, just thought we’d let you know. Here’s a cheesy wedding photo from US above. And of course, the only thing we ask is that you stop by and enjoy our food. ^_^
THE DISHES
NOW onto the food. This time we’ll start FIRST w/ the KOSHER/VEGGIE dish. I’ve told MANY of you guys about this and the miracles of Young Green Jackfruit, but if you haven’t heard it here’s what I always say,
“it’s not like it’s yellow exotic counterpart because it has NO flavor. So in order to cook it, you HAVE to braise it and infuse the flavor into it. But something miraculous happens when you do this: it takes the texture of pulled pork. And many of my vegetarian friends get mad at me when they first try this because they think it’s pork!”
With that said, the veggie is VN BRAISED COCONUT JACKFRUIT. Be warned that THIS is SUPER limited if you want to try it. And because I’ve been pretty bad (sorry guys!) at holding stuff in limited quantity back successfully THIS is going to be first come, first served. For those that are curious, you can always do the half/half order on the taco. ;)
And like the subject says, the MEAT is one of our “signature” dishes: VN BRAISED COCONUT PORK (aka THIT KHO) served w/ sliced hardboiled eggs boiled in the coconut stew. Is this good? You bet your bottom dollar it is sucka! It’s this blogger/eater’s favorite dish of the 15 dishes we’ve served thus far. You may not agree, but we thinks you may like it regardless.
Lastly, the SIDE. Well, as of this email the KITCHEN NINJA doesn’t know exactly what it will be… but she does know it will be a form of fried rice. If you’re like me, we’ll just trust her to make something amazing and try it once it’s served. :)
11/21 Saturday Service Downtown
Okay, this post’s getting long, so if you want more details go HERE for more info: http://bit.ly/aQiNL
Or just email me, call me, Facebook wall post us, PM me, tweet me OR just show up to service and ask us about it. If you can come, PLEASE come. :)
Thanks everyone, and we’ll see ya from 12-3p.
Xoxo,
TEAM SK
“DAAAAANG!”
That’s all I gotta say about yesterday’s service. Well that and “HOLY MOLY!”
It was the absolute BUSIEST food service we’ve had since the inception of our… and I’ll use it again… “covert culinary operation!”
Btw, I just wanted to take a moment to apologize if the food was coming out a little bit slowly and how we ran out. WOW, we just didn’t anticipate it. We even made MORE than usual to try to anticipate it, but you guys still surprised us. Goes to show you, don’t underestimate the power of the internet… that and great tastebuds wanting more (if we don’t say so ourselves ^_^).
Above are some pics from last night’s service. Check ‘em out on our Facebook Fan Page, and check out more including our fun R&D pics (Research & Development for the non-geeks out there) too. I talked to some of you last night about our idea, but wait and see kiddies. We’re going to actually offer opportunities to a select few of you to try some of these elusive dishes “R&D” dishes… FINALLY! I think we’re going to start in December. Keep on the look out.
Alrighty, I’m typing this up at 3.30a and I’m tired. I’ll leave you with this…
SUNDAY SERVICE: I would say this is one of our signature dishes, VN BRAISED COCONUT PORK (aka “thit kho”) served with sliced hard boiled eggs BOILED in the coconut stew (and it’s GOOD!)
We got lots more to tell ya… but I’ve gots little more energy left before i pass out and drool on my keyboard (from looking at all the food pics that are making me oh so hungry…. WHY didn’t I keep a stash of food from service??? ^_^)
Nite nite (or good morning I guess ^_^)
TEAM SK
WHEW! Last week was some excruciatingly hard work for us folks at STARRY KITCHEN (almost every link in this paragraph is a craptacular pic taken from my bberry… enjoy): trying some awesome italian chicken cordon bleu concoction in old town Tustin, trying some of the biggest and tastiest mutha f’ing Portugese Egg Tarts (one my F’ing FAVORITE desserts) at a new super duper busy pan-asian strip mall in Irvine, exposing my sister to Japanese Ceviche, watching pandas lunchie munchies at the San Diego Zoo, perusing through Westminster for great Vietnamese food (sorry suckas, no pic for that, you’ll just need to use your imagination or finally show up at our door step and stop flaking), hanging out at the Getty Museum, serving THIT KHO on Wed, eating ramen our favorit-est joint in ALL of LA- Santouka (Thanks Rameniac!), trying out a new cupcake shop w/ a red-velvet sandwich thing in this whole LA cupcake craze, and making and eating Vietnamese beef stew (bo kho). Hot diggity DAMN it’s been a long week…
But at least we ate well! ^^
So THIS week, I’m finally going to bust out this proposal for our latest and greatest food concept business plan. I have to admit, with all the food, guests, service, films and FOOD… it’s been a little distracting. I will say a LOT of competition has sprung up, but we’re pretty confident in our quality and unpredicatble nature that we can hold our own against the onslaught of Asian taco trucks roaming and grazing the new frontier that is…ummm… Los Angeles. For all -3 of you readers, I’ll even open it up to you guys if you want to invest in a great and tasty opportunity. Why you ask? Why not! If you’ve eating our fine foods, then you know what we’re all about!
UPDATE
So this Wednesday night (July 22nd) from 6-9p we are serving LEMONGRASS PORK and a Veggie+Jewish friendly SPICY LEMONGRASS TOFU.
Okay, let me let you in on a teeny tiny secret, and if you tell anyone else GQ the Wonderdog will come over and howl incessantly on your doorstep until admit your fault, do two hail marys and then hand him a Sara Lee brand pound cake (so damn buttery!!!)…(pssst) This LEMONGRASS PORK is not only good, but it’s also improved and reinforced with the spices for the GODS and is also the MUTHA F’ING SH’ZNIT!!! It’s juicy, succulent and tasty. Everything a young Jedi with a highly mediocre mitichlorian count needs to take over the empire one Sith Lord at a time. :)
Alrighty! Now that everyone’s gone, we can get back to some more non-sensical commentary and…. MORE AWESOME-TASTIC VIDEOS… woo hoo!
Btw, did someone say… SASSY?
Or did anyone say… 80’s Sexy-time Symbol… SAMANTHA FOX? I thought you did you Crafty Barnardo you! OOOhhh “touch me, touch me… I WANNA FEEL YOUR BODY! You’re heart beat next to miiiiine!”
TEAM STARRY KITCHEN
