Review: Cafe Ori @ Bellevue WA

Store: Cafe Ori
Location: 14339 NE 20th St, Bellevue, WA

Last week was our second time dining at Cafe Ori.  I have to say I was so excited to go back after our first try there.  We had pork chop noodle (in Taiwanese Style) and Portuguese Chicken Rice.  They gave us 2 pork chop and there's some pickled veg on top of the noodle, which was tasty.  The portuguese chicken was very yummy, it's a bit spicy with the nice coconut sauce.  I haven't been able to find another restaurant that serves portuguese chicken around the area yet and both dishes were so delicious.  Come the second time, the experience was very different :S  Not sure if we ordered the wrong dishes.

1. Pan Fried Rice Noodle Singapore Style ($7.75)
For someone who never tried this dish before, it's not bad.  However, I was expecting a dry rice noodle dish with curry sauce.  This was not the case when I tried this dish, it's a bit wet and I definitely did not taste any curry sauce in this dish.  Overall, this dish tasted more like pan fried rice noodle with soy sauce, which was nothing wrong, just what not I expected.

2. Baked Pork Chop Rice ($8.25)
Baked Pork Chop rice was my childhood favorite dish in Hong Kong.  I knew this dish was hard to please me, there's only one restaurant in Toronto where I think it's done right and I was hoping Cafe Ori can do the same.  Ok, wrong... or I just had high expectations. The color of the sauce was an orange-red color, not tomato red. The taste of the sauce was just soso, I prefer the tomato sauce to be a little bit stronger. Also, there's only 1 piece of pork chop instead of 2 large pieces we had in the pork chop noodle.  I definitely prefer the pork chop noodle much more and may want to try the pork chop rice in Taiwanese Style instead. However, I want to give credit to the egg fried rice. It was nicely done and goes well with the pork chop.

3. Taiwanese Shaved Ice ($3.30 + $0.5 (milk))
The picture can't do the justice for this dish. This dish was delicious and cheap.  It wasn't very colorful because of our choice of topping. It's red bean, coconut jello and some black jello (sorry, not sure what's the proper name for this, it tasted like herbal jello) I really like the coconut jello, it's soft and chewy. Also, I am happy that we ordered it with milk, so the ice on the top has more taste.  As usual, half way of eating this, I need to wear my jacket as I was getting too old. :)

Based on the dining experience this time, the food score is definitely lower.  However, if I rated my food experience last time, I will give it a 5. The environment score is a bit low as the restaurant is getting old.  It looks like an aged Chinese restaurant.
Food: 3.5/5
Price: $$
Environment: 3.5/5
Recommend to friends: Yes (It's still decent food at the end. Also, it's hard to find a HK style cafe like Cafe Ori!)

Tips: Safeway Shopping Trip

I was so happy shopping at Safeway this weekend.  I did an impressive 59% savings. Here are the items I got:
a) Ruffles Potato Chips x 2
b) Neuro Sleep drink
c) Bounce Sheet -105 sheets  
d) Stouffers Lasagna - Family Size
e) Banquet Sausage Links
f) Banquet Sausage patty
g) Sara Lee Lemon Cake
h) Texas Garlic Toast
i) Banana (~1.5lb)
j) Green Bell Pepper
k) Mushroom x 2
l) Safeway Brussel Sprout
m) Chicken Corn Chowder soup
n) Gap $25 Gift Card

In total, I spent $47.16 included tax.

I highly recommend signing up for Safeway's membership as Just 4 U discounts were amazing for me in March. I believe each person's Just 4 U offers are different because it depends on your shopping habits at Safeway.  I didn't really shop in Safeway until March when I saw these amazing deals.  For your reference, I spent $20 or so in January and February at Safeway and I am not sure if Safeway gave me extra incentives this month or their deals are always amazing.  Here are some of the discounts that I got. All of these were unlimited use for me this month, except indicated.  Also, they were stackable, meaning I was able to combine these with manufacture coupons, which makes it extra amazing.

- 10% off any refrigerated juice

- $1 off on your purchase of $6 or more in the Bakery Department

- 10% off any candy

- 10% off any potato chips

- 10% off any frozen entrees/ items in the frozen aisle

- 10% off any bagged salad

- 10% off any dried fruits

- Bananas $0.54/lb

- Safeway Farms - peeled baby cut carrots 1lb $0.99

- Safeway Farms - white mushrooms 8oz $1.29

- Buy $25 Gap Gift Card, take $5 off

- Purchase over $25, get $5 off

We shall see if I get anything better in April or they just do this so I will start shopping there.  In general though, if it's not for these discounts, I found Fred Meyer has better pricing.

Details of the transaction, as follows:

Grocery
a) Ruffles Potato Chips x 2
    Reg Price: $4.29 each
    Card Savings Buy 1 get 1 free @ $4.29 each
    Just 4 U Personalized 10% off on chips
    Total: $3.86 

b) Neuro Sleep drink      
    Reg Price: $2,69
    Card Savings                            - $0.19
    Just 4 U Manufacture Coupon FREE
    Total: - $0.19
    Notice, this is a money back!  As Safeway applied the Card Savings first, then when they apply
    the free coupon, it's on the original price. 

c) Bounce Sheet -105 sheets  
    Reg Price: $4.28         
    Card Savings                           -$1.50
    Just 4 U Personalized              -$0.21
    Just 4 U Manufacture Coupon -$0.50
    Total: $4.28

Frozen Food
d) Stouffers Lasagna - Family Size
    Reg Price: $8.49
    Card Savings                           -$1.50
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$0.70
    Just 4 U Frozen Food 10% off
    Manufacturer Coupon              -$1.00
    Total: $5.66

e) Banquet Sausage Links  
    Reg Price: $1.99      
    Just 4 U Frozen Food 10% off
    Total: $1.79

f) Banquet Sausage patty
    Reg Price: $1.99
    Card Savings                           -$0.99
    Just 4 U Frozen Food 10% off
    Total: $0.9

g) Sara Lee Lemon Cake
    Reg Price: $4.99
    Card Savings                           -$1.00
    Just 4 U Frozen Food 10% off
    Total: $3.59

h) Texas Garlic Toast
    Reg Price: $3.49
    Card Savings                           -$0.99
    Just 4 U Frozen Food 10% off
    Total: $2.25

Produce
i) Banana (~1.5lb)
    Reg Price: $1.87/lb
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$0.28
    Total: $1.01

j) Green Bell Pepper
    Reg Price: $1.00
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$0.40
    Total: $0.60

k) Mushroom x 2
    Reg Price: $3.98
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$1.40
    Total: $2.58

l) Safeway Brussel Sprout
    Reg Price: $2.99
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$0.50
    Total: $2.49

Deli
m) Chicken Corn Chowder soup
    Reg Price: $4.99
    Card Savings                           -$1.00
    Just 4 U Personalized             -$0.34
    Total: $3.65

Misc
n) Gap $25 Gift Card
    Reg Price: $25

    Just 4 U Personalized             -$5
    Total: $20

* With my $20 purchase, $5 off bonus!

   

Review: Haiku Sushi & Seafood Buffet @ Redmond, WA

Store: Haiku Sushi & Seafood Buffet
Location: 7548 164th Ave NE, Redmond WA

Price (Dinner Buffet) weekend: $24.95
Price (Lunch Buffet) weekend: $18.95
* They have discounts for birthday celebration, senior and certain employees! (Check their website for details)

As mentioned in my previous post, we went to buffet... Daniel said this after dinner "Go to Haiku, equals suicide"... lol...  you can tell we ate too much!!!

I always have these questions in my head when going to buffet:
1. Do people go on diet prior to buffet?
2. How much does buffet owner earn?
3. How full do people eat from buffet?  80%? 100%? 110%?

For us, we may make the mistake on eating too much that night, when we got up from our chairs, we almost can't walk. When we were on the ride home, I just hope it was a smooth ride. Afterwards, we need to rest at home for about an hour in order to get back to normal.  Never had this experience before, guess we were getting old??

The meal was delicious though, this just proves that if we want sashimi or rolls, it's much more worth it if we eat at buffet, just make sure we don't eat way beyond our means!

So here are the things I picked from the buffet table.  (Note: This is only my portion and I finished them all)  Daniel had his too, but he didn't plate it as nice as me.  :)

First, I started off with some sushi and sashimi, I didn't know the sashimi were at the end; otherwise, I will get less rolls.  There were at least 10 types of sushi roll to choose from and I was picky on my selections.  The scallop you see at the top was raw!  It's delicious but the stock was low. When I asked Daniel why you didn't pick one up, he said where... oops.. he didn't see it.  So we kept going back to the sashimi section and looked for it, we at least went back there 3 times, and he was able to get it once.  And when I went right after him, it's already all gone.  Daniel clearly saw them having more, but they didn't place them out :S  I think those scallops were expensive, maybe that's why??  My favorite on this plate is the spicy tuna sashimi, guess they were mixed with the non-spicy ones on the top left corner.

After the sashimi, I started to get some hot food.  One of the noticeable item is the raw oyster... I am not really a fan of raw oyster but I usually get one to try.  This one really surprise me, there's no fishy smell or taste at all and this thing was huge!  Guess you can tell from the picture.  Another of my favorite is the top scallop shell, it's cream sauce with lots of tiny scallops, that was pretty good.

After all the cold food, I had some hot seafood,  I had calms, oysters, lobsters and soft crabs.  They had cold snow crab too, but I didn't pick any... I did't really want to eat any seafood from shells but I could handle these lobster pieces without using my hands touching them.  We also had some soups and noodles, including miso soup, udon and sweet and sour soup.  The one on the picture was their special soup, which was seafood with radish soup.

Finally, it's dessert time, they don't have a lot of cakes, maybe 4-5 to choose from, but all of them were cut tiny, like the cheesecake in this picture.  The desserts in this buffet were just soso... The ice cream flavors on the picture were vanilla, butter pecan and green tea.  The green tea flavor wasn't very green tea, ok... maybe I had high expectations, it's very similar to the Haagen Dazs green tea.  I like the butter pecan most, it's basically vanilla with pecans.  They also serve creme brûlée.  The sugar coating was good, but the pudding was a bit thick for me.

In general, you can tell I really enjoy my meal here.  I love their environment too, it's the clean and modern look I like.  Also, I may recommend dinner over lunch as they serve more seafoods during dinner.  If I recall, I don't think they serve sashimi during lunch as well.


Food: 5/5
Price: $$
Environment: 5/5
Recommend to friends? Yes, but I will only recommend if you are hungry.  If you are not very hungry, maybe better to head to Oto Sushi.

Review: Belle Pastry @ Redmond, WA

Store: Belle Pastry
Location: 8918 161st Ave NE, WA 98052

Belle Pastry has 2 locations, their original location is at downtown Bellevue, the one I went was in Redmond.  I haven't been to the Bellevue location, so can't compare their quality.  All I know is their Redmond location has a lot of desserts!!  They have at least 5 tables and have plenty of enough room for people to have a coffee or enjoy some desserts.

Daniel and I went there for a light breakfast because we were planning having an empty stomach for buffet, I will write the review for that later.

We had croissant, chocolate croissant and macaron.  Sorry, the chocolate croissant is not in the picture, guess Daniel just finished it without taking the pic.. :S  The croissant is fluffy, had a good texture, I just wish it was warmed when it's served though.  The macaron is a good deal, $1 each, it's actually pretty cheap... I remember paying more than $2 for something like that in Toronto easily.  They also sold the macarons in a bag, but they are pretty much the same price, so I suggest buying individual macarons instead.  My favorite flavor is the orange, it's very refreshing.  The biscuit is very fragile and it's best to eat it with one bite.  The filling inside has the right texture too.  I forgot what's the flavor in the yellow one, but it's not lemon and it's chocolate inside.

Food: 4.5/5
Price: $ (This is cheap but for the type of food you are paying, it's pretty expensive)
Environment: 4/5
Recommend to friends: Yes

Review: Kukai Ramen @ Bellevue, WA

Store: Kukai Ramen
Location: 14845 Main St, Bellevue

Daniel and I wanting to have ramen for a few weeks, but he told me that he never really had a perfect ramen in Seattle before.  I got a bit turn down on that so didn't want to try ramen.  However, I accidentally came across Kukai ramen online and knew that it's a chain in Japan.  I thought... this should be good.  Also, based on their menu, you can choose their thickness of their ramen and saltness of the soup base.  I believe this place was new as it's nicely decorate and looks very modern inside.

I know a lot of reviewers online said that their service was not very good.  I disagree with that.  First of all, when I went into the store, the hostess asked whether I want some hot tea to wait, it's cold outside.  The wait was actually short, maybe 5-10minutes and outside wasn't really that cold.  Also, after the server knew we were first timer, he proposed us to have full soup base and can offer us compliemntary regular soup to dilute the soup if required.  We loved the soup base though, so we didn't get the extra soup. But I know if we order the extra soup, Daniel will just drink it all. lol.

Here are the dishes we tried:
1. Takoyaki ($5)
This dish is best to eat when it first arrives.  It was very fresh, there's a hint of crispness on the outside, but if you wait, that crispness will be gone!

Takoyaki

2. Tonkotsu ($11)
Pork bone soup base is my favorite.  That's my go-to for ramen.  I loved this soup base, but yea.. there's definitely a lot of salt in this as I need to drink a lot of water afterwards.  Regardless, I loved this ramen as I loved the soup.  I didn't put any extra add-ons on this, but there were a lot of add-ons options, i.e. corn, extra meat, etc.. The pork slice had less fat compare with other ramen shops, and was more marinated.  The egg wasn't fully cooked inside, as expected but it wasn't cut in half either.  Overall, I highly recommend this!

Tonkotsu

3. Spicy Ramen ($10)
Daniel ordered spicy ramen (medium spicy).  I wasn't sure why he ordered spicy ramen, this was not the usual him, he will normally go with miso... I will be bias as tonkotsu is my favorite ramen.  However, Daniel loved his spicy ramen too.  There's veg but no egg in this ramen.  Also, even though he ordered medium spicy, the ramen was pretty spicy.  We think that the soup base was the same as tonkotsu but they may have added the extra spice in it to make it spicy.  

Spicy Ramen

P.S. I waited for 5-10 minutes in order to get a table on Friday evening around 6:30pm.  However, when I leave around 7pm, there were at least 10 people waiting in line.  So best to go early to avoid the wait.

Food: 5/5
Price: $$
Environment: 5/5
Recommend to friends? Yes

Review: Oto Sushi @ Redmond, WA

Store: Oto Sushi
Location: 8015 161st Ave NE, Redmond WA

This week was Japanese food centric, guess we can't handle the spice anymore!  Umm, or maybe not... will show you in the next post.

Oto Sushi is an authentic Japanese restaurant and it looks big.  The restaurant uses a lot of wood as decor and had a Japanese feel to it.  They also had a Japanese bar if anyone is interested to watch the sushi chef make sushi. Depending on what you order and how much food you order, this can be more expensive than a Japanese buffet.  So if you are really hungry, you may want to go across the street and have Haiku buffet instead.  Otherwise, Oto seems to serve decent food.

Here are the items we had:
1. Edamame (complimentary)
They placed this after we ordered.  Nice gesture of them.  Normally, this may cost anywhere from $3-5.

Edamame

2. Music Roll ($12.95)
Sushi with lightly cooked salmon on the outside, avocado and tempera shrimp in the side.  Not quite sure what's the sauce on the plate, but it made the sushi quite wet, so I didn't prefer it, or I shouldn't  dip the sushi into the soy sauce.  I was just ok with this roll.

Music Roll

3. Yakitori ($5.95)
Very flavorful teriyaki chicken on a skew. I don't see this dish often so ordered this.  Not bad, it's a nice change from gyoza :)

Yakitori

4. Ton-Katsu ($12.95)
Not sure if the best was saved for last, or we didn't order the right things.  I liked Ton-Katsu the most.  Ok, before the dish came, I thought it was the other don, i.e. the one with onion and egg... sorry, wrong.. didn't read the menu properly.  I still love this dish though, and the salad on the side was quite good, it's simple and the salad dressing was light.

Ton-Katsu

Overall, I like the plate presentation of Oto Sushi, that seems to impress me.


Food: 4/5 (a bit disappoint with the music roll, will try something else next time)
Price: $$
Environment: 5/5
Recommend to friends? Yes

Tips: Asian grocery shopping in Seattle

By far, I think the cleanest Asian grocery store around town is Hmart. I can't go to Hmart alone to get all my groceries, so I will tell you the path/ stores I will go nearby the area and get everything done.  This maybe a bit excessive, but I only target this once a month; otherwise, our living space will run out fast if I do this weekly. Here's what happen after a crazy grocery trip, Daniel will remove the grocery bags once we got home and let me fit everything into the freezer.  Every time, we barely make it and feel so proud if I can make the freezer close.  Maybe that's a hint I need to get a mini freezer.

Anyways, back to my route:

1. Dollar Tree 
13233 Aurora Ave N, Seattle WA

Who doesn't like dollar store.  This is a true dollar store.  Everything is a dollar.  They have lots of snacks and grocery products for a dollar. I love Daiso too, which is a bit fancier but at the same time they are charging $1.50. So if Dollar Tree has the same product, I may want to get it in Dollar Tree instead.

2. Grocery Outlet
13201 Aurora Ave N, Seattle WA

Grocery Outlet is located right next to Dollar Tree, so you don't need to re-park your car if you go to both.  And if I can't find any kitchen stuff I want in Dollar Tree/ Grocery Outlet, I can go to Ross, which is right next door.  Nice, I can park once and go to three stores here!  I was really impressed by Grocery Outlet's price but I wasn't sure whether I will purchase produce or anything I can consume from this place.  However, based on reviews online, I just need to make sure they don't expire and I am probably safe.  Anyways, the deal I found last week was $11 for 105 counts of Cascade ActionPacs Dishwasher Detergent.  Normally, $11 will only get you 60 counts from a grocery store, meaning I got this almost half price!!  Well, I also compared with Sam's Club, it's $15 for 105 counts.  So yes... Grocery Outlet beats bulk prices too :)  Since last week was my first visit, I will do more price comparison in the future, likely at a closer location to home if possible.

3. Sam's Club
13550 Aurora Ave N, Seattle WA

So back in November, I got this membership deal from Sam's Club and I practically got their membership for free as I received a $25 gift card and 3 food coupons for free. At this time, I am not sure if I want to renew their membership this year as they don't normally have sales and it's a bit of a drive from home. Their prices are not always cheaper than a regular grocery store either so I really need to do my math and research before I shop there. I may want to try Costco next year when I see a deal in Costco membership. But a worthy mention is Sam's Club's gas prices is usually 10% off compare with other gas stations.  And whenever Daniel want to fuel up, we normally go to Sam's Club and combine with this extreme grocery shopping trip.  Mind you, driving to Sam's Club alone is $5 for us, that's why I want to get my money worth and get all Asian groceries and deals at the same time.

4. Boo Han Market?
22618 Hwy 99, Edmonds WA
I haven't been here. I just discovered this on Google Map and its right next to 99 Ranch, maybe I will give this a try next time, likely next month!

5. 99 Ranch Market 
22511 Washington 99 Ste 1092, Edmonds, WA

Uwaijimawa is my go to Asian grocery store, but they don't have everything I need, like some of the Chinese green leaf veg and Chinese snacks.  Therefore, I go to 99 Ranch if I want Chinese snacks and Uwaijimawa if I want Japanese snacks.  Also, I like 99 Ranch because they always have items on sale that I can stock up; for example, dumplings or fish balls for hot pot or certain sauces for cooking.

6. H-Mart
3301 184th St SW, Lynnwood WA

Last weekend was my first time in H-Mart Lynnwood but H-Mart was not new to us as they exist in Toronto.  H-Mart here is different compare with the one in Toronto as they sell household stuff here.  Also, not sure if we went there at a bad timing, I didn't see any cooked food in Lynnwood, I only see different kinds of kimchi.  H-Mart is my go-to place to get fancy meat and frozen products (i.e. buns, dumplings) and other Korean snacks.  Guess what I found last weekend, a mountain of chips!

Also, not sure how good this is.. but you can get real candies from Candy Crush!

P.S. This is a super long post, likely not the next one.