Friday, December 18, 2015

Korean Food and Downtown Disney


On Friday morning, I headed out of the hotel to look for some interesting breakfast. The only actual breakfast food I found was Denny's and they had a huge line running down the sidewalk. Too many people and it didn't qualify as interesting.

After a bit of wandering, I went into BCD Tofu House on Wilshire. No breakfast but definitely interesting food. I ordered the small mackerel and tofu-vegetable stew (medium hot). It came with all of the side dishes above including the small fried fish. I think I would've been happy with just that. If you look carefully, you'll notice the raw egg on the left. The soup came bubbling hot meaning it was still rapidly boiling at the table. I cracked the egg into the stew and it cooked and cooled the broth down enough to try. It was really good.

They also brought a sizzling hot stone bowl of rice and it developed a nice crispy crust when served. Very tasty.

This is the mackerel and it was deep fried and really good. Most of the bones were nice and crunchy as was the skin. It was as good as expected. I passed on most of the pickled jalapeno peppers and the hot pickled garlic. but the fried tofu, kimchi and pickles went really well with the hot rice.
After breakfast, we picked up David and Alexa and headed for Downtown Disney. I have been here a couple of years ago and had written this post. This is a Lego creation outside of the Lego store as is the dragon in the next picture. We spent a couple of hours walking around and I managed to not purchase a single thing except lunch for the group. I'd call that a win.


It was another beautiful day with clear blue skies and very pleasant temperatures of ~70°F. What we did find surprising is how early sunset was. Something like 4:30 or so. The building is a Build-A-Bear store. We didn't even go in there but I liked the contrast with the sky.

After lunch, we finished off Downtown Disney at the huge Disney store. I really like this sculpture above the entrance and had taken a similar picture two years ago.

We then headed for Dave's Island Instruments, a steel drum/ukulele shop in Lakewood where Bridget picked up a ukulele after playing around with the hand pans that he makes. It was a slow slog back to the hotel in downtown L.A. with way too much traffic for me. The 20 mile drive took over an hour.

We had a late dinner at a Korean BBQ place called Ahgassi Gopchang. It was right next to the hotel and had a lot of positive reviews on Yelp!. The food was fantastic and your meal gets cooked in the middle of the table. And just like this morning, there was a great selection of side dishes.

And no PBC videos for a change...

6 comments:

  1. Nice choice of food stuff, Richard. Unfortunately we have no such thing in the vicinity. I certainly miss the culinary diversity...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since we are staying in the middle of Koreatown, it made sense to try some of the local dishes. We don't have anything like this in Fairbanks and I was really looking forward to the Korean BBQ.

      Delete
  2. Mmm... Few meals put a smile on my face like Korean BBQ: bulgogi; crunchy, cooked rice; soft tofu soup with ramen; and all the delightful banchan.

    Now to find something for a late dinner. Sadly, I have nothing so appealing in my cupboards or fridge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a real treat for me as there are no Korean BBQ places in Fairbanks. This place wasn't one of the all-you-can-eat places so the quality of the ingredient was high. The crunchy rice and soft tofu soup was with breakfast. Banchan, I was trying to remember the word, thank you!

      Delete
  3. You must really be enjoying the weather; the crowds of people, not so much.

    The whole mackerel looks frightening, but I am glad you enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The weather isn't bad though we got rained on yesterday evening as we waited for the bus.

      The mackerel was pretty good as it was deep fried.

      Delete