Delicious Chinese Food

Last week, I had some of the best Chinese food I've had here in Austin. The place: Din Ho Chinese BBQ. It's cheap, it's awesome, it's a butcher's. When I walked in with Jeff, the fellow from Xilinx, I looked to my left and saw nearly a dozen roast duck and a whole roast pig hanging in the window by the butcher's area. My favorite was the sign that told you to let the cashier know if you want your chicken with its head. Who can get that image out of their head? Not just getting a whole roast barbecue chicken with its head intact, but actually asking your friendly neighborhood butcher to leave the head intact and on your whole roast barbecue chicken.

We ordered a bowl of hot and sour soup, barbecue pork, and chicken with black bean sauce (my all time most favorite Chinese dish). The single bowl of soup was about as big as my head and I do not exaggerate when I say that we got five personal-real-sized bowls of soup out of it and we had enough left for a sixth. The pork was very tender and sweet with a nice glaze of sauce. The chicken rocked equally hard with very crisp onions and bell peppers, and a fantastic secret Chinese black bean sauce. We totally didn't have leftovers.

Today, John and Jennifer took Cat and I out to Dim Sum brunch at Tien Hong to celebrate my new job. I've never had Dim Sum before, but it's very tasty. The whole idea is like tapas; many many tiny dishes ranging all over the spectrum of meat and vegetables and rice and sweet and sour and salty; steamed and fried and baked and even dessert all wheeled round on many carts for a la carte choices like a mobile automat. We had chicken and peanut dumpling, Chinese broccoli, steamed sweet sticky rice, curried squid, wonton soup, hot Chinese tea, chicken wraps, sliced barbecue pork, and shrimp-stuffed jalapenos. I can't remember all the rest of everything that we had- but I tried little fried baby octopuses. Cat and I have ordered take-out or delivery several times from this place, as they're not too far from us, and very good for dinner. As odd as it was eating Chinese food at 10:30 in the morning, we still had a grand old time.

After brunch, the four of us went to Great Hall and played games. More on that in the next post.