Coconut Bay Bar & Grill

It was a Saturday, my friend Shawn and I decided to meet up to shop for airline tickets to New York. We spent 2 hours at the Auto Club and we were hungry, so we decided to take a drive to Rowland Heights area, where I used to live for college, for I know for sure we can get some exceptional Thai food. There’s a particular restaurant by the name Banana Bay, which is my all time favorite restaurant for Thai Food. One of these days I will do a review for them, but on this particular day we decided to go with Coconut Bay instead. In terms of food wise, it is very similar to Banana Bay. The décor of both restaurants are just really neat in its own way, and yet manages to be very inviting.

Now let’s talk food. I decided to go with the Cha Po, which is a combination of BBQ pork, boneless roasted duck, roasted pork, steamed on choy, and pickle ginger over steamed rice. While Shawn wanted to all time favorite Pad See Ew, which is stir fried soft rice noodles with egg, Chinese broccoli, black sweet soy sauce and chicken. We both wanted to try to Hand rolls (which is fresh hard tofu, Chinese sausages, crab meat, cucumbers, and sprouts hand-wrapped in egg roll skin, then topped with traditional hand roll sauce) to start the whole meal off. The first thing that arrives at our table was of course the Hand rolls, it tasted as I would expected it to taste. It looked very similar to the Vietnamese Banh Cuon (consists of very thin rice flour cake with meat and vegetables), which was one of the main reasons why I wanted to try it. It turns out they both have their own special taste, it tasted nothing like the Vietnamese Banh Cuon mainly because of the special sauce, instead of flavored fish sauce, different in a good way of course. When the Cha Po arrived, we both dug right in, the duck meat and the BBQ pork was awesome, the roasted pork was a bit on the too hard side for me, but overall the dish was pretty tasty. Lastly, the Pad See Ew arrived and like always it tasted perfect, no need for any additional sauces or dressing. It’s a very simple and yet tasty dish. Overall, the experience was what I would expect it to be; our expectations of this restaurant were met and our bellies were very pleased. I would highly recommend this place.

Hand rolls

Cho Po

Pad See Ew

Coconut Bay Bar & Grill

18922 Gale Ave

Rowland Heights, CA 91748

626.913.9933

Hours:

M-Wed: 11am-11pm

Thursday: 11am-12pm

Fri-Sat: 11am-2am

Sunday: 11am-12am

Western Soondae

This past Sunday, May 17, 2009, we ventured out to Venice Beach hoping to find as much junk food as we could possibly eat, and provide our readers with many different choices on some of the best spots to eat while in Venice Beach.

Our first stop, upon arrival to Venice, was “The Wings- Famous Chicken Wings” place, which we have never heard off , but we decided to give it a try and start our eating adventure from this point. We asked for the 12 piece mild wings which took about 10 minutes to be served , service is ok, nothing really fancy so don’t expect much from this place. The wings were nice and crisp but not mild enough, which is good because you won’t get that awful heartburn from spicy wings sauce.

After the wings, our day took a completely different spin to what we had planned. I won’t go into details as to why or how our day took a spin because this spin is now available by clicking on the link Nature guy

We left Venice Beach around six pm hungry, and eager to try something new, and something that I’ve wanted to try for a long time. We drove over to Korea Town in search of “Western Soondae”, a Korean restaurant that serves, (from what I’ve heard,) the best Korean sausage in town.

Soondae is a typical Korean sausage made from fresh pork blood, sweet rice sweet potato noodles, several types of finely chopped vegetables, garlic and some other spices. This mixture is stuffed inside an intestinal casing and steamed until fully cooked.

I’ve tried many different types of sausages and have noticed the ones that are made from blood, have this irony taste to them, and are more solid in structure. I was expecting the same from soondae, but I was completely surprised to find the taste very pleasant, not irony at all, and the whole texture of it, was very different from all other sausages I’ve tried.

We asked for the Soondae platter, which includes a whole variety of pork internal organs, such as the kidney, stomach, some sort of head cheese and some other cuts that I was not able to distinguish. The plate is served with traditional kimchi with big chunks of cured radish. In addition to the kimchi, they also brought a plate of garlic chives, I might be wrong, but they felt and looked like garlic chives, rock salt with chili powder, a sauce composed of brine shrimp and fish sauce, and a sauce that looked more like a fermented paste with a strong flavor but it blent in really good with the assorted meats.

If you eat the pieces of pork alone, they have a simple taste, and that’s where all those side compliments come in handy and add a whole different taste to the soondae and all the assorted pork meats. Overall, we enjoyed the food very much, the Soondae, was full of flavor and the other cuts of pork go really well with the various sauces that were brought out to our table. I must also add that we really loved the tea. The tea served at this place, has a rice taste that blends with the tea just perfect. I would definitely recommend Soondae for anyone who is looking for something out of the ordinary.

Western Soondae, also serves different types of soups, including a soondae soup which was very much enjoyed by many of the customers around us. The Soondae plate is very big, and it might feed up to five people. Prices are reasonable for the amount of food you get, so don't worry about a budget because the food is worth every single bite of it.

We had a funny incident when my friend Thomas was trying to cut a piece of radish in half; as he pinched the small piece with his chopsticks and tried to split in half with a spoon, an older gentlemen sitting to the right of Natalie, kept telling Thomas, as he shooked his head, “no, no, no”, when all of the sudden, the piece of radish flew off the table landing on the floor. All three of us started to laugh as the older men continued to shake his head. This was a funny experience and one that will continue to bring us laughter for as long as we can remember that piece of radish.

543 S Western Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90189

(213) 389-5288