So many noms.

Warning: so much food to come. Do not read if you are hungry or are mildly ambivalent about food.

The food adventure began on Sunday night. A bunch of people from the house headed out to Left Bank, a French restaurant near to campus, where we had a beautiful table set for 18 of us on the second floor of the restaurant, overlooking the rest of the dining room.

And now, on to my courses:

Salut, soupe à l'oignon! Delicious cheese melted/baked on top of a "crouton" soaked in a beef-based onion broth. So good, not too salty, even a little sweet from the onions. The cheese just dripped from my spoon, with each bite. Mmm. Definitely one of my favorites: French onion soup.

Bon soir, moules frites! Mussels in a white wine sauce, with shallots, and delicious fries. This is also one of my favorite classically French dishes. Dip the fries in the wine broth, and you can't go wrong. The mussels were nice and meaty. On top were little toasts, but I definitely preferred the perfect fries: not too salty, not too oily... parfait.

Et finalement, steak tartare. Raw, chopped beef, in mustard and some other goodness that I'm forgetting at the moment. As if it couldn't get raw enough, the yolk of a quail egg topped this beauty. By the time I got to this course, I was so stuffed and could hardly finish it. But, it was a nice way to finish. The mustard was great, but a little strong to end my meal.

Monday night, I was finished with finals. Naturally, I celebrated by...

Best hamburger ever: double-meat, single-cheese, grilled onions, extra-tomato, extra-lettuce.

Tuesday, nothing particularly special.

Wednesday, I drove home. And my arrival before 5pm only means one thing: Sushi Ike.

This was a beautiful baby abalone. It was pre-cooked and marinated for a looong time in a delicious, sweet/savory sauce. He put it back in the shell and served it sliced.

Oh, hai oysters! In delicious ponzu sauce (I've definitely posted about this before)... sour and pungent in a flavor packed bite, contrasting with the creamy sweet smoothness of the oysters. Mmmm.

Let's move on, shall we?

Today, I went to visit with my aunt, cousin and grandmother in Pasadena... and only one of the best dumpling places ever happens to be close by: Din Tai Fung Dumpling House!

Cute little dumpling about to be devoured.

This dumpling was a juicy pork/shrimp. Each person gets a little bowl of shredded ginger, in which you put vinegar. You put your soup dumpling (xiao long bao) in your soup spoon, bite into it and drink some of the soup, put in vinegared-ginger, and NOM.

This was only part of the meal: noodles in spicy sauce (yum), juicy pork dumplings (yum), fried noodles with shrimp (yum). It was all. so. good.

So, yay! I'm home! Lots of stuff to get done, including relaxing and more noms :) I got up early with my mom this morning to go to the gym-- ran on the treadmill... Needless to say, I'll be sleeping in tomorrow morning.