Good Chicago Eats

One of my favorite things about traveling is tasting my way through the city I am visiting, and in Chicago there are definitely lots of good eats! My sister and her family loves this restaurant called Joy Yee Noodle. It's a Pan Asian restaurant that serves up Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai dishes. Their menu is pretty detailed and amazing!  There are literally hundreds of choices.  Here is their page on Bubble Tea and Shaved Ice Drinks.  Oh my, I was in heaven.  If you've never had Bubble Tea or Shaved Ice Drinks before, it's a Chinese / Taiwanese tea based drink that usually has a combination of some type of syrup or fruit and tapioca or grass jelly balls known as "pearls" found at the bottom of the drink.  I'm not a fan of tapioca so I usually go for the shaved ice Bubble Tea drinks which are kinda like an Asian slushie topped with real fruit. I love how they had pictures of every Bubble Tea drink on the menu, since the ingredients can be pretty elaborate, it helps to visualize what the drinks look like.  It really helps with choosing the flavor!

I ended up choosing Watermelon / Lychee Bing, which is a shaved ice drink with sweet red cherry syrup, condensed milk, and watermelon and lychee fruit.  I grew up drinking this shaved ice concoction as a kid and it's still one of my favorites.  So refreshing!

Not to be outdone, the entree menu also had these amazing photos!  The menu is so elaborate and there is so much deliciousness to choose from.  I get overwhelmed when I see a menu like this because I want to taste everything on it.  I love that they had pictures of everything on the menu!  If only every restaurant could do that!

I couldn't decide between a few dishes.  So I went with the combination of Pho soup and a Bánh mì Vietnamese Brisket Sandwich.  If you haven't had Pho soup before, if you ever see it on the menu, get it.  It is wonderful goodness.  Pho is a rice noodle and the soup I ordered had a beef broth and sliced beef, and it traditionally comes with bean sprouts, cilantro, mint, scallions and basil.  All the fresh herbs makes this soup really tasty.  The Bánh mì sandwich traditionally is on a crusty French loaf bread and has meat with julienned pickled daikon radish, pickled carrots, pickled cucumbers, cilantro and mint.  These sandwiches are addictively good.

My brother-in-law ordered a Korean sliced beef dish in a hot pot.  If I didn't go for the Pho / Sandwich combo, I would have ordered this.  Korean style beef is delicious.  These are thinly sliced beef with a teriyaki style marinade.  Accompanied with rice and kimchi.  YUM.  If you are ever in Chicago, look for Joy Yee Noodle, you will not be sorry!

Birthday Dinner

My mom's birthday was 4 days before Christmas.  We took her out to dinner to celebrate. Since we knew that we would be doing a lot of cooking for Christmas, going to a restaurant was an easy choice for us.  The family decided on a Chinese birthday dinner, and we went to our favorite restaurant.  Here are all the dishes on the lazy susan turntable.  I love lazy susan's because it's like food roulette. Hahaha.  Does anyone know how the name "lazy susan" came into existence, I've always wondered that.  We had a feast, consisting of pepper steak, sweet and sour pork chops, snails in black bean sauce, Chinese crispy chicken with prawn chips, chicken and beef with Chinese broccoli, and fish and tofu casserole.

Here's a close-up of the pepper steak, it came to the table sizzling hot.  The steak was so tender and literally melts in your mouth.  Delicious!

Here's a closeup of my favorite dish, Chinese crispy chicken with prawn chips.  The skin of the chicken is super crispy, while the meat is juicy and flavorful.  Traditionally, you squeeze lemon juice over the chicken just before eating it.  Yummy goodness!  Behind it is the plate of snails.  I love seafood, and snails are one of my favorites and are a special treat.  Surprisingly, many people I know hate seafood and would never try snails.  However, having a dad that is a chef, we grew up eating and trying everything.  I owe my diverse palate to him, and he's taught me at an early age to always try new foods.  So if you are adventurous with seafood, definitely get an order of snail in black bean sauce the next time you go to an authentic Chinese restaurant.  It's heavenly.

We had a fantastic meal, and mom was very happy that we were all so full!