Chicken Chop Suey At Seree Coffee Shop Is More Than A Blast From The Past.

 

My visit to Seree Coffee Shop was more than a blast from the past, but also an adventure and a visit into my own childhood, though not in the way you would imagine.  Seree Coffee Shop on Grand Ave. in the shadow of downtown Los Angeles has been on my radar for over a decade, but not high enough for me to visit until now.  Seree serves American breakfasts plus old style Chinese  food like chop suey, fried rice, and other rice dishes.  It’s been open over 50 years with the same owner-chef, Kenny.  You could probably drive by it every day and not realize there’s a restaurant inside.  

 

And the inside is as spartan as they come.  Just a small window into the kitchen where you could place your order with the owner/chef.  

 

Talk about walking into a time warp!  It took forever to get my food because there were two large orders ahead of me, but I really didn’t mind.

 

The closest thing I could find to a menu had pictures but no prices.   This chicken chop suey on a bed of fried rice weighed over 2 pounds and cost $11.50.  And everyone gets a brownie in the end.  

 

Now while I said that this trip brought back childhood memories, I don't mean memories of chop suey.  I really don't remember eating chop suey as a kid and I’m not sure if I’ve had it more than a handful of times in my life. I don’t remember the last time I had chop suey.  Maybe Fargo, North Dakota in the late 1970s, not counting the Princess Cruise chop suey that wasn’t.  

Where the childhood memories come in is as I was plotting Seree’s location I noted that the junior high school my mom attended in the 1930s was just two blocks away.  When I saw that I had thought I had never been by John Adams Junior High before, but I did recognize it as I drove by.  

 

I also noted that the house I lived at as a 3 year old was just 3 blocks away from there. As I slowly drove down the street checking addresses, I thought I recognized where I lived. But the address was off by 2, 213 instead of 215.  Then I saw the building next door, a newly built multi unit monstrosity with unit addresses like 215½ and 215¾.  What had they done to my house?  

And as I looked past where my house used to stand, there was another old house, in pristine condition.  Why did they have to tear down mine?  Oh, and it's for sale for $900,000.

Oh well.

John Wooden Predicts Ohio State over Notre Dame in BCS Championship

 

Of course not really, since John Wooden passed away in 2010.  However this blog has posted predictions several times based on the principles of John Wooden which have in fact come to pass.  John Wooden has articulated a truism of sports which strangely has never been acknowledged by the sporting public, yet keeps proving itself over and over again.  That truism is that a long winning streak can turn into a heavy and potentially insurmountable burden, with the burden increasing as the winning streak continues on. Time and time again there have been stunning upsets in sports, with the only common denominator being the fact that the losing team was a long winning streak.  In this regard, Wooden stated that a loss at the right time can be a good thing that actually insures a team's success as it acts like a reset button.  

 

Playoff history is replete with examples of this, perhaps the best example being Kentucky’s unbeaten basketball super team a decade ago.  This has often been the case in the BCS championship, with undefeated Alabama, Georgia, LSU, and recently Oregon teams not prevailing. In all of these cases, the postgame analyses were strictly limited to the discussion of the X's and O's, without a hint that maybe the losing team was burdened by a losing streak.  Consequqently, with its 13 game winning streak, and Ohio State's regular season ending loss to Michigan, Notre Dame's streak appears to be in jeopardy.

 

It also seems strange to see this idea from Wooden, whose basketball teams had some epic winning streaks. Those streaks can be explained by the fact that those Bruin teams were so superior to their opposition that even a lessened performance was enough to keep winning.  But in the context of a single elimination tournament like the BCS championship, the chances of running into a clearly inferior opponent is not very great.

Umi Buffet In Industry Restores My Faith in Chinese Buffets

Barely six months after bemoaning the disappearance of all the good Chinese buffets in Los Angeles in my recent retrospective, we once again have a local Chinese buffet worth talking about, Umi Hotpot and Seafood Buffet (yes, another Chinese buffet with a Japanese sounding name).  Not surprisingly it's located in the space once occupied by one of my all time favorite buffets, Kome Buffet, which closed down several years ago.  However, the space has been totally remodeled with sleek new lines and compartmentalization.  There is the obligatory sushi section, justifying the Japanese sounding name.

 

What I like about Umi is it introduces so many new elements.  For example it offers hotpot via portable table hotpot units, and a dedicated hotpot ingredient section.  Yes, a few all you can eat hotpot restaurants may have a table of prepared food, but those are clearly incidentals.  In contrast, at Umi you can make the hotpot a major portion of your meal.

 

Umi also includes drinks in the price of admission.  A few buffets do include soda fountain drinks, but here the fridge is full of things like milk tea, grapefruit tea, and mango coolers, as well as cold desserts.  Plus a separate ice cream freezer.

Not to mention a ramen station.  Yeah, I've seen this in buffets before, but not on top of all the other extras.

Plus lots of seafood and goodies on ice.

 But what I liked best was the items that I had never seen before at a Chinese buffet.  How about fish with pickled mustard green soup or perhaps spicy pig feet?

Sichuan style saliva chicken.  No, not made with the saliva from a chicken.  Rather an unfortunate, but common translation of chicken-that-makes-you-salivate.

Lamb chops???

Pineapple fried rice.

 

The dim sum section is small, with only four varieties.  But three of which I've never seen in a buffet.  First the semi-mochi bun with a mystery green cream filling.  I say semi-mochi because only the top of the bun has mochi.

This wonderful mango cream filled bun.

And these date topped cornbread.  I've seen these in Dongbei restaurants and I never would have classified them as dim sum.

And best of all, there's no mistaking where the restrooms are.

About $25 for weekday lunch, $35 for dinner and $50 for weekends with senior discounts.  My faith in Chinese buffets has been restored.