Los Angeles Coliseum Adventures

Yesterday was an exciting day for us at the Los Angeles Coliseum as UCLA drubbed crosstown rival USC by the unprecedented score of 62-33.  Even though both teams were mediocre this year, for Bruin fans any victory over the Trojans is a treasure.  I have been to around 50 of these games, including the past 45 UCLA-USC games, except of course for last year's fanless game.  Overall, I'm a little under .500 in these games, so there have been both many happy and unhappy moments since my first in-person attendance in the early 1960s.  

For most UCLA fans, going to the Coliseum to play USC every other year is not a desirable thing, since the neighborhood is unfamiliar to most of them, so they don't bother to attend.  That hasn't been a problem for me since I attended dozens of UCLA football games in the years where the Coliseum also served as UCLA's home stadium.  In addition for many years I lived only 15 minutes away from the Coliseum so getting there was convenient.

However particularly after moving further away from the Coliseum, getting to the Coliseum on Big Game day became problematical due both to traffic and parking issues.  In my younger years I was willing to put up with it, but I became less tolerant with the hassle.  It did help that Metro Line construction did provide an alternate method to get to the game, though still troublesome, which allowed me to continue my streak of attendance at UCLA-USC games.  But with the COVID 2020 season where fans were not allowed at any of the games, breaking my attendance streak, I felt no compulsion to attend yesterday's game.  I had no intention of attending yesterday's game until my son said last week that he wanted to take my grandson to his first football game.   So Mrs. Chandavkl and I decided to tag along and make it a family outing.  And obviously it was well worth it with such a big and satisfying victory.

But there was one sour moment for me before the game started.  In attending all of the UCLA home games at the Rose Bowl this year, while a smartphone ticket was the default option, there was the option of printing out a scanable ticket.  However when we bought 4 tickets for the USC game, the mobile phone ticket was the only option.  I had no idea how that worked since, while I had used mobile airline boarding passes before, the mobile football tickets required a download to a smartphone wallet, which was a totally foreign concept for me.  However my son told me how to download one ticket to my wallet, one ticket to Mrs. Chandavkl's wallet, and send the remaining tickets to him.  

When we got to the Coliseum things went smoothly at first, with no problem passing vaccine inspection, and at the entrance gate itself with the first three entry attempts being successful.  But with everybody else making it through the entrance, my ticket failed to work, generating a "Ticket Unknown" message, leaving three already inside the gates and me outside.  The gate attendant tried various things to no avail, telling me I had to go to the nearby customer service window.  While the line was short, it did take a while for my turn to come.  And when I showed them my mobile phone, after fiddling around with a bunch of things, they told me that because I had bought the tickets through UCLA, that even though these were USC tickets I would have to go to the UCLA customer service booth, which while completely on the other side of the Coliseum, was essentially where I was sitting.  So I messaged my family to go to their seats while I tried to gain entry.

Of course, kickoff time was approaching, so I literally ran half the circumference of the Coliseum and found the UCLA customer service booth.  After explaining what had happened, the clerk went to some kind of machine and came back with a physical ticket to get me into the Coliseum.  Of course I then had to go back through vaccination check, and my physical ticket scanned fine.  I then ran over towards my seat, Section 202, row 11, seat 35.  An usher pointed me to take the steps down from Tunnel 2 to row 11.  Except that there was no row 11.  I grabbed another usher who told me I was in Section 102, and that Section 202 was up from Tunnel 2.  However when I got to row 11, I didn't see my family at first.  I finally realized that the seat by the stairway was seat 1, such that seat 35 was, well, 35 seats away at the other end.   Fortunately I was able to cross over a walkway around row 8, and made it to my seat at the same time as the opening kickoff. c

I also need to comment on how trouble free getting to the Coliseum was from my son's house in Culver City, though obviously aided by the small crowd going to see two mediocre teams clash.  It was a five minute drive from my son's house to the Culver City Expo Line Station with ample underground parking and few other passengers waiting to board.  15 minutes later we alighted at the Vermont Ave. stop.  The trip back after the game is typically difficult since fans leave the game in a more compressed time frame than arriving, but it helped that many USC fans bailed out early.  And though it was a crowded hike back to the Exposition Park station, we were all able to squeeze onto the first train back to Culver City.

 

On The Road Again For Chinese Food

There was nothing unusual about our trip up to San Francisco in September of 2019, my 90th trip to the Bay Area.   Who knew it would be more than two years before I made my 91st trip last month?  And not only did the pandemic keep us at home, and for a while almost completely away from Chinese restaurants, but also left us in the dark as to what Chinese restaurants may have closed, and what new ones might have opened up in the Bay Area.  Arriving after dark on a Monday, I was fortunate to find the bright, newly opened Taishanese Cuisine on Broadway.  It was so busy we had to wait for them to clear a table before we could sit down.  Looking at the menu, Taishanese Cuisine was something new under the sun, with modern Taishanese food including Cantonese hot pot dishes, seldom if ever seen before in the United States.  Unfortunately, these and other dishes were all family sized, and indeed looking at the table setup the restaurant was clearly designed for large family gatherings, so we were stuck with the relatively small a la carte entree portion of the menu.  

The curry chicken was a real surprise, as it was the first time I had ever seen that dish with fried, breaded chicken. 

 

We also had a large dish of white ong choy.

 

By the time we finished up it was almost closing time and the restaurant staff was getting ready for their meal.  I got a chance to get a peek at their clam and taro hotpot, something I had never encountered in a Chinese restaurant.

The highlight of the trip was our visit to the San Mateo branch of Palette Tea House.  The San Mateo branch of Palette was just as interesting as the Ghirardelli Square location with an array of interesting and delicious dim sum.  The restaurant was also visually quite striking with the biggest video display I’ve ever seen dwarfing the open kitchen below.  One scene on the video display was a mountaintop view.

Then that view would change to an underwater vista.

The food itself was just as good as at the San Francisco branch.  Like in San Francisco they had the black swan taro puff, except that for some reason the edible portion of the puff was the customary brownish color, unlike the black ones we saw in San Francisco.

However the San Mateo branch had a sibling creation that San Francisco doesn't have, the golden durian swan puff.

The most colorful dish was the multicolored xiaolongbao, with paprika chicken, turmeric crab, squid ink truffle, beet minced beef and spinach kale varieties.

 

The Peking duck was top notch.

 

Here's the blueberry mochi balls.

 

But the culinary highlight was the plainest looking dish we had, the cruller wrapped eel rice noodle roll.  Indescribably delicious!

 

And certainly there was no mistaking the path to the restroom with these changing ceiling lights pointing the way.  Here are some samples of the display.

After lunch we walked around the recenyly expanded Hillsdale Mall.  There were almost no customers in the mall, and many of the storefronts were vacant.   However, there was a Sharetea that was open and doing business, so I had this taro ice with pudding.

 

Of course particularly after a two year absence from San Francisco Chinatown, I was eager to see what other new Chinese restaurants had opened.  No surprise that there wasn't a lot of turnover, and indeed I was just glad to see that a lot of the restaurants had managed to survive the pandemic.  The most interesting opening was Empress by Boon in the old Empress of China location, but there were no reservations available during sensible dinner hours even weeks in advance of our trip.  This left Osmanthus Dim Sum lounge as the next most interesting opening, particularly since they carried my absolute favorite dish, the crispy bbq pork bun.  Besides being happy to see this dish, I thought it was an indication that Osmanthus might be a legitimate new dining option in Chinatown, where we typically find lodging but normally don't eat lunch or dinner.  But while the crispy buns were fine, the price ($9 for this regular order), the clientele and the vibe screamed "hipster."

Beyond these the only new places I discovered were Yu Cafe, replacing iCafe on Walter U. Lum P where I had this pineapple watermelon smoothie.

 

And New Love Tea Cafe on Broadway replacing T & T Cafe with its array of Taiwanese influenced snackies like these lobster balls.

 

To complete the Chinatown portion of the trip we then headed out to Lai Hong Lounge, one of the few good dinner places in Chinatown, but  the sign said “Closed For Remodeling” (uh oh).  So it was on to  V & J Café, which has a three item $28.50 special, an extremely high QPR for both quality and value, large portions and very tasty.  This is the bitter melon with beef.

A few of the dishes have a surcharge, like this fish with wine and ginger sauce which is a dollar or so extra.

 

This is the curry potato fish casserole.

 

The other highlight of the trip was the visit to Sifu Wong Kitchen in Sunnyvale.  For many years one of our most favorite Bay Area restaurants was the Hong Kong style specialist Cooking Papa, with locations in Foster City, Santa Clara and Mountain View.  Always a crowd and always great food.  But then the individual stores were sold off and everything went downhill, so much so that we received warnings for Bay Area friends not to bother with the new operations.  So it was great news when Cooking Papa's original head chef decided to open his own Hong Kong style restaurant in the Sunnyvale Ramada Inn, called Sifu Wong's Kitchen.  In a way Sifu Wong was a disappointment since we loved Cooking Papa’s Hong Kong style entrees.  However, with his own restaurant, the chef decided to serve dim sum at lunch time, which was not what we had been anticipating.  The dim sum was very good, though, as demonstrated by people lining up every morning before the restaurant opens, as well as the premium prices charged.  I have to say that while it doesn't look like much, their traditional baked bbq pork buns are the best I've ever eaten.

 

Similarly their egg tarts are as good as any from a sit down dim sum restaurant.

 

A real specialty is their herbal chicken feet, brimming with flavor.

 

 One of their signature items is their black gold lava bun.

 

Another different item is the combination shrimp and chicken egg roll.

 

This is their bbq pork pastry.

 

Topped off by a different and refreshing mango pomelo sago dessert.

While in Sunnyvale we also revisited a nearby shopping center that we had patronized a few times in the past.  At Hotpot First, I grabbed this order of popcorn chicken.

While at Ming Tasty, this wonderful combination of a number of my favorite ingredients, including bean curd sticks, egg tofu, and bamboo pith.

But not to say it was all Chinese food on the trip.  (Well, barely.)   A trip to the original Fisherman's Wharf area netted our absolutely favorite clam chowder in a bread bowl at Sabella and Latorre.