All You Can Eat Hotpot

We celebrated a friend's birthday with an All You Can Eat Hotpot meal. The gathering was at Nine Ting (926 Race Street). The restaurant offered ayce hotpot and ayce Korean BBQ. There were grills and stove tops on the tables for you to cook your own food. Our table had one six mini electric stove tops, one big electric stove top, and one grill. We, of course, didn't use the grill.  There were 7 of us so we had the options of utilizing all of the six mini stoves or 4 mini stoves and one large stove. We decided on 4 mini stoves and one large stove.

For the little stoves, you get your own pot. For the big stove you get the big pot. Four of us got our own soups and three of us share a big pot with two different soup bases. There were five soup bases available- original, spicy, tomato, Chinese Herbal, and kimchi. You get to pick the soup bases and then you select the items on the menu you want. There was a selection of raw ingredients you can choose from ---meat, seafood, vegetables, and noodles. We ordered a whole bunch of items on the menu to share. Along with the meal were complimentary appetizers- peanuts, kimchi, edamame, and seaweed. 

Next to the kitchen and refrigerator with drinks, there was a sauce station with clean bowls and a number of sauces and garnishes you can mix together for your hotpot sauce. To be honest, I put a number of things in my sauce which some of it I didn't really know what they were. My sauce turned out hot and okay tasting. Shortly after getting our sauces, the soup as well was the other things we ordered came out. This made sense because they probably have a big pot of soup in the back they scoop from and the ingredients are raw so all they had to do was gather them up. The soup I ordered was Chinese Herb soup. I thought the soup had a neutral and tame taste which I liked. Everything looked fresh. Since I am a pescatarian, I primarily ate the veggies and seafood. Overall, I had a good experience and enjoyed the food. One of the perks of this place is that on your birthday you get to eat for free if you show your ID and write a yelp review. See below for the appetizers, my own personal pot, and the group shot of our table's orders.

Comp Appetizers

Chinese Herbal Soup Hotpot

Mood Cafe- Lassi and Chaat

Mood Cafe (4618 Baltimore Ave) is small establishment with very few seating. It appears its business comes from mostly take-outs. They offer over 100 flavors of lassi. Lassis are a popular yogurt based Indian drink. You can even customized your lassi if you don't like the flavors they have. The food items are mostly chaats and listed on a large chalk board located on the upper wall to the right of the counter.

I ordered a ginger mango lassi.  It was delicious. It was more on the liquidy side. Also, the flavors were not over powering.

Mango Ginger Lassi

I got the Paneer Chaat and my friend got the Samosa Chaat. Everything was basically the same in the chaats. There were raisins, mango, dates, yogurt, crispy wonton, and other goodies. The only difference is that my chaat had yellow crumbly things which were the paneer and my friend's had a samosa in hers. I thought the different texture tasted good together. The samosa wasn't good though. It was not fresh and it tasted funny. The paneer tasted like cheese, but it was not a very strong flavor. Overall, the chaats were okay. I preferred the lassi more. 

Samosa Chaat

Paneer Chaat

Sate Kampur- Malaysian Food

My friends and I went to try out Sate Kampur (1837 E. Eastyunk St) after sampling some of their food at an Southeast Asia cultural event. The restaurant had a good number of seating, a bar in the middle, and an open kitchen in the back where you can watch the employees cook the sates. Although our meal came with spoons and forks, we asked for chopsticks. During our dinner, the owner stopped by our table to talk to us. She told us that Sate Kampur wanted to give its customers authentic experiences. The items on the menu are street foods you will find in Malaysia and Malaysians eat with their hands. Since it is really not considered sanitary, they eat with a spoon and fork here. They used the fork to shovel food into the spoon to eat. She seemed very disappointed that we used chopsticks. She wanted us to have the most authentic experience. What can we say? We are Chinese. We can't help it:) See below for reviews of the foods.

I got Nasi Ulam (a hearty salad of rice and aromatic Malaysian herbs, shredded fish with toasted coconut and bean sprouts, served with sambai). I think this is what I sampled the event. I remember the sample having more of a coconut flavor; however, the dish at the establishment was definitely alot hotter. The components of the plate came segmented. The waitressed instructed me to mix all the ingredients together before eating. I thought the rice salad was very flavorful and had a little crunchy to it from the bean sprouts which I liked, but it was little to hot for me.

Unmixed Nasi Ulam

Mixed Nasi Ulam

I also got the warm Teh-Tarik (pulled milk tea with condense milk). My friend who arrived before me got the milk tea, too but she complained it was too sweet. So I asked for them to make the milk tea not too sweet. I tasted my friend's milk tea and it was indeed incredibly sweet. My tea was sweet but not as intensely sweet like hers. The milk tea reminded my of milk tea you can get in Chinatown for a much cheaper price. You can get like 16 oz cup of milk tea for $2. The price of the milk tea here was $3 for a cup.

My friends and I shared Ku-Mah's Achat (spicy nyanya pickled vegetables, auntie's recipe). It was my favorite. It was mostly carrots and cucumbers. The sauce tasted like peanut butter with fish sauce. It was refreshing and delicious.

Ku-Mah's Achat

My friends got Nasi Lemak Bungkus (ecoconut cream soaked rice topped with sambal, roasted peanuts, crispy anchovies and hard- boiled egg, all neatly wrapped in a fresh banana leaf) and
Mee Hoon Goreng Bungkus (stir-fried rice vermicelli, serviced bungkus-style in a fresh banana leaf). They also got Rendang daging (braised beef in a paste of mixed spices and coconut cream) to share amongst themselves since I didn't eat meat. According to them the Nasi Lemak Bungkus was very hot too. The Mee Hoon Goreng Bungkus was similar to stir fried rice noodles you can find in Chinatown, but it wasn't hot though. It had more of sweet tomatoey flavor. The Rendang dagind was good, but they wished the pieces were more whole and not shredded. See below for everything our table ordered.

Race Street Cafe- Gardenburger

Race Street Cafe (208 Race Street) contrary to its name is more of a bar. When you enter, you walk up the stairs. The bar is in the front and curves around and to the right of the bar is the seating area. In the middle of the room, there were tall tables and chairs. Against the wall are normal height tables and chairs.

Gardenburger

I ordered the Gardenburger. It came on a pita with lettuce, tomato, red onion, and pickles with ketchup and spicy honey mustard. It is suppose to come with French Fries but for extra, you can substitute the regular fries with sweet potatoes fries or a side salad. I decided to get the sweet potatoes fries. Everything was delicious. The sweet potatoes fries were very crispy on the outside and tender in the inside. I ate the gardenburger with spicy mustard sauce. Although I am not sure what the burger was made out of, the texture can be passed as meat. I am assuming it was seitan. It was very tasty on the soft and fluffy puff bread with the fresh vegetables and pickles. I practically engulfed the dish within a few minutes aka I finished eating first than everyone else. Honestly, I was surprised by how much I would liked this place because it only had a 3.5 star on yelp and the place was less packed than I expected to be on a Friday evening. I am glad I came here and would definitely like to come back.