Wei Wei’s, Toledo,OH 07.21.10

Things have been BUSY, so I’m backtracking to July and going to try to “report” as much as I can remember with the help of a few photos we took along the way.

We decided one day to visit Wei Wei’s in Toledo based on a friend’s suggestion, who is conveniently a restaurant reviewer. We were pleasantly surprised by the delicious food we tasted in the middle of… Toledo, Ohio. Yeah, Toledo. Not exactly the food mecca of anything, really, but as we drove down the main boulevard looking for Wei Wei’s restaurant among run down gas stations, and boarded up vacant buildings reminiscent of downtown Detroit, Ji Hye and I got distracted at exactly the same time by a donut shop and a row of adult video stores.  I’ll let you guess who got distracted at what as we both exclaimed “DONUTS!”/”ADULT VIDEO STORE!”. We were immediately disappointed- again at exactly the same time- that they were both closed and boarded up as we pulled into a parking lot to turn around when we  drove past the restaurant.

Not to fear though, the market is saturated in a 2 mile radius of the restaurant’s location and you can get your fair share right across the street:

Like we always do, we ordered a variety of dumpling and noodle soup dishes to share and talk about while enjoying. The first dish that came out was a sze-chuan style dumpling/won-ton. These were amazingly good- the skin of the wrapper was the perfect thickness, the filling was tasty and an enjoyable proportion, and most of all the sze-chuan pepper sauce was REALLY good.  It’s hard to find an all-around good dumpling and THEN have it topped off with an amazing house-made sauce.

Urban Belly

After many recommendations by several people to visit Urban Belly, I finally made it [to Chicago, in general]. Yes, this is also in a “strip mall”, but it’s in the city, so it’s cooler. They also covered up the storefront with a trendy facade, which I should’ve gotten a picture of, and a make-shift breeze-way. The flow of the restaurant is like the deli. It’s not full table service. You order at the counter after getting a table, and the food is delivered out to your table, labeled with a number. You do have a “waitress” that checks in with you and gets anything you may need.

We met up with the lovely Adrienne, and ordered half the menu. No, I’m not joking, half the menu. They should’ve paid US since everyone else in line after us kept asking what we ordered.

Katy’s Dumplings

Ji Hye and I tried to taste as much as possible during my 28 hour visit to Chicago.  A lot has surfaced since my last trip about 4 years ago, or maybe I just have a really good personal restaurant locator (Ji Hye).

The first place we visited was in a suburb called Westmont, about an hour train ride from the city.  Katy’s dumplings is a hole in a wall- well, a strip mall- and run by a chef from Hong Kong. The menu was small, and what I’d expect to get in a good neighborhood shop in Taipei (I’ve never been to mainland China).  They hand pull their noodles daily, sometimes twice a day. The chef makes everything in-house and prides himself on the authenticity and making everything from scratch- even the chili oil. This solidifies my theory that the untapped, good Asian restaurants with almost no advertisement (or English for that matter) will 1. be in a strip mall in suburban America 2. have really good authentic food from an immigrant chef that speaks minimal English, and really doesn’t care what you think because he works his ASS off 20 hours a day.

Dumplings, dumplings

Every January and February, I sit down and make big batches of dumplings.

Not that they are not any good other times of the year but the beginning of the year I especially crave dumplings.  I have very fond memories of making dumplings with the whole family, every New Year’s celebration: everyone sitting around a large table, talking and laughing, with every surface of the house covered with trays of dumplings.  We would make hundreds of them, eating plates and plates of dumplings as we are making more of them.  It’s not that hard, I can make 50 in about 15 minutes once the filling and the wraps are made.