My Top 5 Favorite Restaurants: Crispy House - Artesia

To start the new year and a new chapter of Monster Munching, I am counting down my top five favorite restaurants in the next few posts. And when I say "favorite", I mean it. Over the last year, I ate at these restaurants more than I can count. In fact, not only are they in my regular rotation, I visited all five again within the last two weeks of 2019. The next on the alphabetical list:

Crispy House

If you're keeping up with my Top 5, you might be thinking, "Wait, if this is an alphabetical list, shouldn't Crispy House come before Din Tai Fung?"

Well, yes, it should. But apart from my own incompetence at keeping track of my own list, I will always and still refer to this place as Magic Wok. The truth is, despite the new name--which is more aligned to its signature dish of crispy pata--this Filipino restaurant is still the same restaurant it always was and has been: a restaurant formerly known as Magic Wok.

It was Magic Wok when it suffered a devastating fire that closed it for nearly a year. And when it suddenly closed again and reemerged as Crispy House after a few staff changes, to me, it's still Magic Wok.

The food remains consistently the best and most authentic rendition of Filipino cuisine I've had in Southern California. This isn't the type of restaurant that gets featured on BuzzFeed. It's not designed to mainstream Pinoy food to the masses. It's not meant for social media influencers who want to hail it as the next big thing, because, well, it's been around before they were born.

Look around the room and you see whole Filipino families with Titas, Titos, Ates and Kuyas passing around steaming pots of sinigang, plates of pinakbet, and crispy platters of sisig. This is not Filipino food for the fashionable. This is Filipino food for actual Filipinos.

Crispy House
11869 Artesia Blvd
Artesia, CA 90701
(562) 865-7340

My Top 5 Favorite Restaurants: Din Tai Fung - Costa Mesa

To start the new year and a new chapter of Monster Munching, I am counting down my top five favorite restaurants in the next few posts. And when I say "favorite", I mean it. Over the last year, I ate at these restaurants more than I can count. In fact, not only are they in my regular rotation, I visited all five again within the last two weeks of 2019. The next on the alphabetical list:

Din Tai Fung

When South Coast Plaza's management enticed Din Tai Fung to open at the mall, they knew it would attract its huge fan-base, some of whom belong to a growing class of affluent Chinese spenders (most of whom live in Costa Mesa-adjacent Irvine). In the new Riviera, the rich don't eat caviar; they eat dumplings — these dumplings. And what's a better waiting area for those Din Tai Fung-loving whales than a mall with thousand-dollar purses and Jimmy Choo shoes for sale.

Din Tai Fung isn't even an expensive restaurant by South Coast Plaza standards. But in the Asian world, Din Tai Fung has as sterling a reputation as Louis Vuitton.

The good news is the dumplings are just as good here as they are at the Arcadia branch — the skin thinner, more delicate and elastic than those at Mei Long Village and Mama Lu's, two of the most venerable Monterey Park xiaolongbao purveyors. And because Din Tai Fung is known for its consistency as much as its lines, the oil-blanched green beans are still crisp-tender and the pickled cucumbers garlicky and brisk. The pork chop fried rice is particularly perfect, a treatise on the clean, simple flavors that are hallmarks of Taiwanese cooking.

If you don't have kids in tow, the bar is where you want to sit. With a separate line that bypasses the hours-long wait, it’s where you’ll usually find me. Now that they’ve expanded the bar area to double the size it used to be, sometimes there's no wait at all. And to me that's important because instant gratification is just as good a condiment to the dumplings as the black vinegar and ginger.

Din Tai Fung
3333 Bristol St. Ste. 2071
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 549-3388

My Top 5 Favorite Restaurants: Cafe Hiro - Cypress

To start the new year and a new chapter of Monster Munching, I am counting down my top five favorite restaurants in the next few posts. And when I say "favorite", I mean it. Over the last year, I ate at these restaurants more than I can count. In fact, not only are they in my regular rotation, I visited all five again within the last two weeks of 2019. The next on the alphabetical list:

Cafe Hiro

Between Christmas Eve and the time I write this post today on January 13, we ate at Cafe Hiro three times. The first time was for their Christmas Eve prix fixe dinner, an annual tradition that we never miss. The second was for a weekday lunch when the restaurant offers free dessert if you get there and put your meal order between 11:30 a.m. and noon—a very narrow window of time that rewards you with $6 savings on the dessert on top of the discount you get on the blackboard lunch specials.



The third visit? It was this past weekend. It was a dinner decision made at the spur of the moment—one of the many times when one of us asks "What do you feel like eating tonight?" but we both knew the answer: Cafe Hiro.

To us, this restaurant is what Monk’s is to Seinfeld; what Central Perk is to the Friends gang.

So what more can I say about Cafe Hiro that I haven’t already said in countless posts on this blog? How else I can I convey to you, dear reader, that Cafe Hiro is the answer I give when people ask me “What’s your favorite restaurant?” (As a food critic, I get asked that question a lot). Do I need to write poetry? I already did that. Twice.

Cafe Hiro
10509 Valley View St
Cypress, CA 90630
(714) 527-6090

My Top 5 Favorite Restaurants: Alberta's - Tustin

To start the new year and a new chapter of Monster Munching, I am counting down my top five favorite restaurants in the next few posts. And when I say "favorite", I mean it. Over the last year, I ate at these restaurants more than I can count. In fact, not only are they in my regular rotation, I visited all five again within the last two weeks of 2019. So in alphabetical order, let's start the list with:

Alberta's

Back in the early nineties, the Alberto's empire stretched far and wide, built on the heavy-as-bricks burritos filled with nothing but carne asada steak and guacamole. Then something happened. The chain fractured into factions. Some Alberto's turned rogue, cleverly redubbing themselves as Albertito's, Alerto's, Rigoberto's, even Albatros, to avoid being sued by the original entity, but still getting the message across that the burritos haven't changed.

It's not clear whether Alberta's in Tustin is a defector or a copy-cat. The mascot they've chosen is a blonde chick who wears no trace of a sombrero. What I get at Alberta's are two things: the fish burritos when it's Lent and the half-order of the super nachos the rest of the year.

While other Alber-clones are content to serve anemic scraps that are more batter than meat in their fish burritos, Alberta's stuffs its torpedoes with flavorful, big nuggets of crisp-fried white fish all wrapped in a giant tortilla that can be used to tuck you in at night.

And the super nachos are always a decadent treat. Two weeks ago, we munched them as we wrapped gifts. It occured to me as I did that nachos are the perfect food with which to do so. I would argue that they are more Christmas-y than ham and stuffing.

Think about it: the triangular shape of the tortilla chips evoke a Christmas tree. The sour cream, the snow. The pico de gallo and guacamole, the red and green colors of the season. And the carne asada and refried beans...um, the reindeer and their...okay, maybe I need to work on that part of the metaphor.

Alberta's
765 El Camino Real
Tustin, CA 92780
(714) 838-8226

Yet Another Apology for Unposted Comments

Well, it's happened again. An overzealous SPAM filter and my own ineptitude at this blogging software has resulted in lots of comments being stuck in Comment Moderation purgatory. I just published them and will reply to them all soon.

But I would like to apologize and say thank you to everyone starting with KirkK, NP, dumplings, Greg Hao, Gilbert M., joanh, Ernie Y., OC Paul, Oblio, Mike H., Karrie, Greg, and all those who wish to remain Anonymous for posting those comments in the first place.

Thank you for reading!

Now, back our regularly scheduled program!