Restaurant Review
13 Jul 2009

Manna Korean BBQ – Kailua Kona

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There is nothing sexier on this planet than a woman wearing a bikini after she has downed a Hawaiian plate lunch.  Well, that’s sort of a lie, but I kept repeating it to myself like a mantra during my week-long trip to The Big Island. It takes a real woman to eat local-style grindz and then hit the beach two shakes of a lamb’s tail later.

After picking up my Honolulu-dwelling friend Luscious Liana from Kona International, we drove to Kailua Kona in search of lunchtime grindz. [Warning: ‘Grindz’ is my current favorite word and will be used and abused excessively for the next couple of posts.] Plan A was to hit up Kona Mixed Plate, but unfortunately it was closed due to the Fourth of July holiday. Plan B entailed driving from strip mall to strip mall until proper grindz were located. Manna Korean BBQ fit the bill.

From my haole point of view, local-style grindz are a fusion of Asian cuisines with processed American fare—an Asian-American amalgam, if you will. Manna’s menu is heavy on Korean offerings and includes Hawaiian standbys like macaroni salad, loco moco, and Spam.

Luscious Liana navigated Manna’s menu like a true local. Unlike her clueless tourist companions, who were hemming and hawing over the available options, she knew exactly what she wanted—Meat Jun ($8.49).  Meat jun, also known as Chen-Ya in Korean, consists of thinly sliced pieces of “teri” beef dredged in a flour and egg mixture and fried. It was served with a sweet shoyu sauce on the side. Lush’s Manna Plate also included four vegetables and two scoops of rice. For her veggies, she chose kimchi, shoyu potatoes, steamed greens, and japchae.

Being the generous friend that she is, Lush allowed me try everything in her box. I went for the meat jun first, which had a very homey, sweet, and satisfying quality to it. I was surprised by how thinly sliced the meat was and how the batter didn’t adhere to the meat at all. The tastiest side item were the potatoes, followed by the japchae.

My cousin Brian ordered the Kal Bi Manna Plate with canned corn, mac salad, japchae, and kimchi on the side ($9.60).

My cousin Andrew ordered a mini-plate with spicy pork, japchae, and canned corn ($6.99). Both the spicy pork and the kalbi were very well-seasoned, not too fatty, and arrived fresh off the grill.

Although I was tempted by the loco moco, I decided to ease my way into Hawaiian food with a Spam Plate ($4.99). In addition to the four slices of grilled spam, the plate included a scoop of mac salad, a scoop of rice, a fried egg, and two fried mandu (Korean dumplings).

From afar, this plate may look like a big ‘ol confusing mess, but I can assure you that every element tasted great and made perfect sense at the time. The salty Spam and creamy mac salad paired extraordinarily well together, while the oily mandu ruled when dipped in gochujang (Korean fermented hot pepper paste). I have a special place in my heart for plate lunches.

Who loves grindz? We love GRINDZ—Luscious (left), Brian and Andrew (top, right), and yours truly (bottom, right).

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Manna Korean BBQ
75-1027 Henry Street, Ste. 104
Kailua Kona, HI 96740
Phone: 808-334-0880

Restaurant Review
10 Jul 2009

Lee’s Sandwiches – Alhambra

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Lee’s Sandwiches wants to bring banh mi to the masses and in the process, redefine the concept of fast-food. All franchised locations are outfitted with Krispy Kreme-esque fluorescent signs, automated ordering systems, and full-color bilingual menus. With 37 operations in California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and a handful of international locations, for better or worse, Lee’s Sandwiches is the face of fast-food Vietnamese cuisine. This ain’t no Mom and Pop shop op.

Prior to my recent trip to The Aloha State, I swung by Lee’s Sandwiches in Alhambra to pick up some banh mi for my in-flight dinner. The store’s interior reminded me a bit of the air-con street food shops in Vietnam, but slightly less polished.

Ordering took longer than usual due to the bilingual menu—it was boggling to see photos of banh mi accompanied by English descriptors. The menu featured Vietnamese text as well, but the font was so small that squinting was required. Even though “banh mi dac biet” and “combination” are one in the same, the Vietnamese name is more familiar, and thus makes more sense.

While automated ordering systems and fluorescent signs add nice touches of modernity to Lee’s Sandwiches, the innovation that impressed me the most were the wrappers the sandwiches arrived in. Usually, banh mi comes wrapped in plain white butcher paper. If a vendor is especially mindful, she’ll scribble the sandwich’s name sloppily on the paper.

The sheets of butcher paper at Lee’s Sandwiches have the name of each sandwich neatly printed on them, which makes the process of figuring out which sandwich is which a breeze.

I picked up three sandwiches to sample; each one was priced at $2.45. From left to right—banh mi dac biet (cold cuts, forcemeats, pate), banh mi thit nuong (grilled pork), and banh mi xa xiu (sweet Chinese barbecued pork).

Firstly, an assessment of the bread. The baguettes at Lee’s Sandwiches aren’t a thick mess like some, but were so chewy that my jaws ached after a few bites. I’m not sure if I was served particularly old loaves, but dang, chew, chew, chew!

As far as fillings go, the “combination” banh mi was smeared with a great pate that moistened and seasoned the entire sandwich. The thit nuong was a major disappointment due to its saccharine-like sweetness, odd texture, and lack of charcoal essence. The xa xiu was solid.

The banh mi at Lee’s Sandwiches aren’t especially awesome, but compared to other fast-food options on the market, their product is easily tops. If there was a Lee’s Sandwiches for every McDonald’s, the world would be a better place.

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Lee’s Sandwiches
1289 East Valley Boulevard
Alhambra, CA 91801
Phone: 626-282-5589

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Lee's Sandwiches in Los Angeles

Now Closed
09 Jul 2009

Lee's Garden – San Diego

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Chinese banquet facilities are notorious for their gaudy decor. With gold-accented trimmings, velvet-lined walls, and a forest of shimmery chandeliers, the atmosphere tends to be so ghastly that only The Real Housewives of New Jersey could find it appealing.

During its heyday in the late-eighties, Lee’s Garden was one of San Diego’s most popular Chinese banquets, as evident by the bevy of weddings booked each weekend. These days, the restaurant’s aging facade and dated interior make it difficult for it to compete with newer and more lavish restaurants. Even though Lee’s Garden isn’t as shiny as it used to be, it has remained a favorite of my family’s because the kitchen continues to churn out high-quality food.

With The Astronomer and I in San Diego the week after his 25th birthday, my mom invited my large extended family to Lee’s Garden for a belated birthday celebration. I haven’t feasted at Lee’s Garden since the day I graduated from high school, so I was beyond stoked to not only reacquaint myself with their wares, but to introduce The Astronomer to the goodness as well.

The Saturday evening of our party unfortunately coincided with a large gathering featuring loud music and God-awful singing. With full reign over the microphone, speakers, and amps, the dangerously unselfconscious herd went to town all evening long. The reveling was so obnoxious that The Astronomer and I swore we were back in Asia again. Nope, just Lee’s Garden.

Lee’s Garden has an extensive a la carte menu, but my family almost always orders one of the multi-course banquets. Our favorite is the seven-course feast ($120) that easily feeds twelve to fifteen eaters but is intended only for ten.

The concept of a properly paced meal is completely foreign when it comes to Chinese banquets. As soon as a dish has finished cooking in the kitchen, it’s haphazardly plopped onto the crowded Lazy Susan.

Minutes after placing our order, the first course arrived. Tom rang muoi, prawns with garlic and salt, arrived toasty from the deep-fryer. Brushed with umami-fied seasonings and heaps of garlic, the enticingly crisp shrimps were a delight. One bite of the shrimp’s juicy head and I was instantly reminded of why I adore Lee’s Garden.

My all-time favorite dish at Lee’s Garden is canh chua—sour soup with fillets of fish, upright elephant ears, tomatoes, pineapples, and chilies. Canh chua is a fairly standard Vietnamese dish, but Lee’s Garden rendition tastes extra special due to the abundance of fresh basil (and MSG). One of these days I’m going to ask Mr. Lee if I can hangout in his garden and learn how this soup is made.

The crab course (cua rang muoi) was prepared in a similar fashion to the shrimp one. I love crab meat but dislike how fussy it is to extract. After struggling with one leg, I abandoned it and ate the bits of fried garlic with rice. This simple combination was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, and it still holds up after all these years.

Morning glory sauteed with garlic was the lone vegetable course of the evening. This dish was a substitution; the normal banquet menu lists bok choy in oyster sauce in its place.

Following the canh chua, the steamed clams are my second favorite dish at Lee’s Garden. Scallions, dried chili pods, and the clams’ natural goodness are the dish’s major flavoring components. The meaty clams and their flavorful sauce rarely fail to please.

My fellow diners really enjoyed the chicken course, but I didn’t waste any precious space on it because the white meat usually bores me. Pass the clams!

And last but not least, tender slices of beef sauteed with broccoli, carrots, and bamboo shoots. This dish was a hair underseasoned, but still very pleasant nosh.

If Lee’s Garden weren’t so hideous, I’d so have my wedding there.

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Lee’s Garden
4055 54th Street
San Diego, CA 92105
Phone: 619-583-8208

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