We start out our dinner with a yogurt drink. My coworker insists that I coat my stomach to prepare for the fire that will be in my stomach after eating the spicy and sour fish stew. It makes sense right? But I think she just likes yogurt drink because we went for garlic crab earlier in the week and she ordered the same drink and the garlic carb was nowhere near spicy.

After serveral weeks in China, I oftentimes crave raw things like salad and sushi because everything Chinese is usually cooked. So coworker orders some sort of raw veggie side dish for me lightly coated with salt and vinegar. I really don’t remember what vegetable it was but it had a like scent like a cross between shiso and basil. All I know that it was very refreshing.

We ordered a variety of other traditional Chinese side dishes. Chinese pickled vegetables, cucumbers topped with roasted peanuts

Boiled napa

Sauteed bean curd strips

And one of the main attraction, spicy sour fish pot. From the picture, the pot looks mighty spicy with all the chili peppers but it was not an in-your-face hot but more of a slow burn. Very savory, very sour, very delicious. The pot was also twice the size of our torsos and we could not finish it.

Then came the next attraction of the night.duck heads. I did a double take when the plate was set down in front of us. For some reason, I imagined the heads to be half that size but it was the size of my palm. I’ve funky duck parts before such as the tongue with the connectors attached and etc but I was a little wary of eating the heads. The restaurant graciously pre-chopped the heads in half for easier access.I regret not taking a picture of all the glory of the insides.  I ate half of a head and just couldn’t go on anymore. From what I remember, there wasn’t much meat. There was something that had the consistency of egg yolk, maybe the brains? There wasn’t that much taste to it. For those of you wandering, I left the beak alone and just didn’t go there. When I started having gag reflexes, I knew it was my body telling me no more.

Later that night, I felt really nauseated and felt like throwing up the entire night. This lasted until the next morning. I’m not sure what caused that bout of slight food poisoning. Could have been my lunch, could have been the salad or the spicy & sour fish stew but I blame it on the duck heads. To this day, I still gag when I look at this picture. So yeah, gotta go.

I had the pleasure of meeting sinosoul, nakedsushi, resforthree and wanderingchopsticks that night. It was such an amazing thing to have a whole bunch of people get together and just talk nonstop about food food and more food.

I have had my share of Thai food in LA, in Asia and in Germany.Everywhere I go, the taste is consistently the same. However, Jitlada changed my perception of Thai food. I didn’t realize that Thai food can be so dimensional. There were 13 of us total and I brought Hubs, Sis and Bro to dinner too! Yeah I like to travel with an entourage. Between the introductions, pleasant exchanges about favorite foods and comparisons of the nastiest food ever touched our tongues, we somehow got our order in. Amidst of the mini madness, I tried to take pictures of the food but I was too concerned with eating it then shooting it. However, nakedsushi has already blogged about her side of the experience along with some incredible pictures. So go check it out!

I’ll try and recap some of the food we had.

Some sort of salad:

Oxtail soup (which I didn’t have because it was beef):

Yellow curry with clams.the BEST Thai curry I’ve ever tasted.

Another curry with balls made from fish paste. This one is off menu and another great dish. If I recall correctly, there were thin rice noodles in the curry as well. This was my favorite dish of the night. This curry and the previous yellow curry tasted completely different. This had a little more body to it.

Brown sugar chicken. I actually remembered the name of this dish because many of us made a hoopla about ordering this since we were all too curious. In my mind, I was envisioning something similar to Kyochon fried chicken but with not so much batter. Instead we got this. It was a little disappointing because it just tasted like something from Panda Express would have..bland and not even sweet at all.

This was some sort of stinky bamboo and salted fish curry. Although I could smell the stench across the table, I had to give it a try. I had something similar when I visited Ningbo China  and yeap, it was the same, extremely salty and taste like the smell of a squat toilet.

Lamb hot pot. Very lamby, very good.

Surprisingly and fortunately, I could handle the spicy factor on all the dishes. Some folks who have frequented Jitlada in the past said that it was definitely less heat in the dishes. I’m okay with that since I like actually being able to taste my food instead of trying to put out the fire in my mouth.

We finished off the meal with some Morning Glory peanut brittle and caramel that resforthree generously brought for everyone. I LOVE PEANUT BRITTLE. Hubs and I almost missed a flight because I NEEDED to get some brittle from the See’s candy cart at the Burbank airport. Morning Glory brittle is not overly sweet and has the perfect crunch to it. I was coveting the entire bag of brittle and I volunteered to bring the remaining brittle and caramel home. You can get your own Morning Glory brittle here!

Jitlada and meeting fellow food lovers was such a treat. Thank you everyone for an enjoyable night. Looking forward to the next get together.

Tel:(323) 663-3104

Hama Sushi is my new favorite restaurant. It’s a tiny sushi joint located in Little Tokyo, right next to Sushi Komasa. I use to frequent Komasa quite a bit. However, sometime last year, I developed an aversion to sashimi. Every time I saw a piece of raw fish, I wanted to gag. It was truly a dark time in my life…..I was horrified at my distaste for one of my favorite foods. But now, my love for sushi came rushing back at me when we visited Hama Sushi and I want to eat sushi any chance I get.

Hama Sushi serves traditional sushi, sashimi type items only. There are no teriyaki chicken, curry udon or mabo tofu ramen etc. There are no dymanite rolls or Aladdin rolls or Jafar rolls and the like. Just good old sushi bar items.

This is my second time there and both times we sat at the bar. There is only about 18-20 seats at the sushi bar and a side room that has 2 tables, seating 4 people and 6 people. So yeah…very cozy. My favorite so far is the spicy tuna hand roll. Just plain rice and delicious spicy tuna.  The spiciness doesn’t overpower the roll so you don’t have to make that too-much-wasabi or Sricha sauce face. I love that the chef just hands the roll to us as soon as he is done. No stands, no pretty plates. Just….here ya go!

We also ordered saba (mackerel), uni, and tuna albacore.

My sister ordered the clam miso soup. It was delicious. Not too salty and not too clammy. The soup was written on the whiteboard outside the restaurant so I’m not sure if they have this everyday. We saw a whole bunch of people ordering the soup so we had to jump on the bandwagon.

The Hubs saw yellowtail collar on the whiteboard as well and wanted to try it. This took me completely by surprise because he is a chicken-strips-criss-cut-fries type of lad. But boy am I glad that we ordered it because it was out of this world. There is so much succulent meat in that thing and none of it was fatty. It was just lightly seasoned with ponzu, green onions and daikon.

Next up is the spider roll. I saw our neighbor’s plate and just had to have some. Usually the spider roll that I get from other sushi restaurants have to much batter, making it too crunchy. But this one was just the opposite. The crab shell was just slightly crunchy on the outside and the meat inside was nice and juicy. I saw the chef create it, he just took the crab, put it in the sushi roll while it was flat, added some maguro, cucumber, rolled it up and voila!

By this time the Hubs and my sister was getting full. But the spider roll was so good that I had to order the soft shell crab by itself. I could have eaten another dozen.

We had some sake and Sapporo with our meal and the damage came to around $95 including tax and tip for 3 people. Not bad for some world class sushi. Hama Sushi is currently on my top 5 right now. Try it, you won’t regret it.