I have to apologize for some of these posts, I am posting pictures from meals months ago at times so my details on these meals may be minimal. I preface this post with that because…this is one of those posts. This was my first time trying Thank Q Pocha and I think to rally up business, they started offering half-off menus during the weekdays. This may have changed since then but this is the deal we got! Here are some pictures:

Kimchee Fried Rice with Cheese

If you’ve been following Korean food trends, cheese is huge. It’s pretty cool to see the melted cheese surround the fried rice, it’s a nice way to offset the spiciness of the kimchee fried rice. Do I still make better fried rice? Yes. (hahaha)

Thank Q Bulgogi Plate

I think? Nothing special, it’s just a stirfry.

Kalbi Ssam

It’s the wraps you make when you go eat Korean BBQ, only they do it for you and you don’t have to smell like Korean BBQ smoke after eating this. It was good!

Braised Pork Belly Stew

I think? Lol, sorry for this post…I’m pretty sure this is what it was. Pretty good, I love anything served in a stone pot.

Chicken Wings

Meh – I didn’t eat these. Just wanted to show you how they are served up.

I have my first paper due on Tuesday and I haven’t worked on it. I started it but I am nowhere near where I would like to be on a Sunday night. This paper is a bit more loose and introspective which I assume is why I haven’t had the motivation to finish, my procrastination was in full gear this weekend. Wait, I’ll back up on that. I did head out to the library yesterday (on a Saturday!) to start researching for hopefully my research for my master’s. It didn’t go well. I did borrow two books but dread the smell of moldy books, sorry if I’m in the minority on that one.

I also worked on my chapter notes for Tuesday’s class and somehow didn’t fall asleep until past 3 am last night. And! I got up at a very reasonable hour to do my laundry. The weather was crazy this weekend, pouring cats and dogs one minute and then sunny the next. We live in Hawaii for sure. Anyhow, fast forward to tomorrow night where I’m rushing to finish my paper. Ah, the life of a procrastinator.

Anyhoo, I’d like to share a special picnic meal I got recently from Red Stand. Red Stand is a cute little Korean shop that opened up in the Samsung Plaza lot on Keeaumoku. Small and super cute place. They open at 7am to serve up cute musubis and breakfast sets. I thought for the quality of the food, the prices were okay. The staff there were very nice. They also serve up food in the restaurant but it is a very small place and they share parking with 4 other crazy popular restaurants. Good luck on that one. It was so cute to see a little cart stationed at every table with the portable gas grill ready to go. They basically serve up Korean street food at your table, I’m looking forward to coming back here again for dine in. For this post, I’ll be sharing the Red Box Deluxe for $9.00.

Their very very high quality bento takeaway box. Very. I don’t know how long they can sustain serving their sets in these great boxes. I still can’t bring myself to throw it away.

They seem to enjoy eggs and seem to include it in almost all their sets. Isn’t this such a cute little set? Perfect for an outing. I like that they wrapped up the soup so well – leak proof! You can choose miso, kimchee or corn soup. I went for miso soup.

I wasn’t looking forward to the eggs initially but was pleasantly surprised by them. They weren’t as overcooked as they look here and were perfectly salted. The salad was good, it was a basic mix but they threw in some bacon bits and sliced nuts. The dressing was your basic vinaigrette.

The tuna kimchee triangle musubi. Fresh made by them – nice furikake rice. Very good.

TTEOK KALBI RICE BURGER – you can choose from bulgogi or tteok kalbi. If you are given those choices, ALWAYS CHOOSE TTEOK KALBI.

I apologize for the caps. I just wanted my point to be clear. This is definitely best warm so if you have it later, try to nuke it a bit if you can. The patty is so delicious and juicy. It’s exactly what it sounds, rice serves as your “bread” and they add a mayonnaise type sauce, burger patty and lettuce. The lettuce isn’t really needed but it’s okay. If you have a chance, check them out! It’s a very cute store and the food is pretty good.

Hello readers! Ah, I was out this past week. We had a three day weekend and here I thought I was going to be super on it and get things done. Well Monday came along and I got really sick. Like, really really sick. It started with a headache (might have been the vog) and led to me (sorry for sharing) vomiting all day. And I didn’t eat anything so I don’t know how it was possible to throw up so much, must have been all the acid in my stomach coming out. It was TERRIBLE. I even had to call in sick on Tuesday to rest up. Glad I did. In fact, I probably could have taken more time off but I have a lot of stuff at work to do. I think I’m still getting over the after effects of Monday.

I hope everyone is doing well! School started again as well and I really do want to be proactive and do things early. I haven’t achieved that yet, but I’ll just make sure I remain timely with my assignments. I also plan to take a trip this Spring so I really really need to plan that out. I’m getting pretty excited about it too!

Anyhow, I’ll try to get some posts up this weekend and get some up for next week too! I had to push this post up because Sara’s Cafe is a brand spanking new restaurant so I wanted to share my experience with everyone. This restaurant replaces Jun Cafe. If you ever head towards Don Quijote on Beretania, I think you’ve seen Jun Cafe’s sign. In fact, the Jun Cafe sign is still up but the restaurant is now Sara’s Cafe. This is a very cute and small restaurant run by ONE woman. It’s very similar to the Angry Korean Lady but also the complete opposite. Sara is a sweetheart and works FAST and she serves you…and you don’t have to fear being yelled at. Hahaha so would I recommend this restaurant over Ah Lang? Um, yes.

When I came to this restaurant, there was a man in front of the garage who told me to park in this 30 minute guest spot. I only spotted two spots! Super tight. This guy parked next to me in a porsche and he was all freaked out that I would hit his car. No worries bra. Nah, I would probably worry if I had one expensive car too. Anyway, I’m not sure how the parking works for this place. When I was leaving, the guy was gone so maybe you can park anywhere in the structure? We were the first customers in the restaurant so we received fast and attentive service. Really small restaurant, big screen TV with a Karaoke set located in the front. When no one is singing, the TV is playing random music videos. While the videos were super random and from different decades, the music was quite enjoyable. Ahhh…enough babbling! Get to the food Jenny! Okay, I will.

Korean Chives Pancake – $7.99

Okay, so there isn’t as much chives as Ah Lang. It’s still good! I wouldn’t say it’s great though because I felt like it could have been fried a bit crispier. I also felt that maybe the oil was not hot enough yet so the pancake tasted a bit greasy. Overall, I wouldn’t order this again.

Korean Style Hamburger Steak – $11.99

I was looking forward to this very much! I really like meatballs and these are prepared exactly like meatballs. Meatballs are great because they are so luscious and delicious. Well usually. These were good! I would definitely order them again.

Steamed Egg – $5.99

I’m a sucker for eggs steamed like this. It’s a homestyle Chinese dish as well so I was glad to see a Korean version. Some may try to compare it to Chawan Mushi but other than it being steamed and containing eggs, they are not at all similar. Chawan mushi is silky while this egg dish is not. This is prepared very similar to the way I’m used to, only there is sesame oil. What Korean dish is complete without sesame oil? It was a pretty good price for this dish so I would order it again!

Spicy Soft Tofu Stew (Soondubu) – $9.99

Ahhh..this soup was so good. There were three of us so all the food was shared family style. If I was by myself, I’d eat that soup all by myself. She cracks an egg right at the end of cooking so it was perfectly poached with the most perfect yolk. Sara is also very generous with the seafood in this soup! Delicious.

Here’s the banchan! It came with our food, very delicious. I’m not sure how she determines how to give banchan. Her menu is made up of plate lunches, ala carte items and then soup sets. So depending on what you order, you will get rice or banchan. If you don’t order these sets, she does offer her banchan and rice for ala carte ordering.

So I showed you exactly what we ordered and based on that, she did serve us this platter of banchan and a rice bowl for each of us. I didn’t want to ask how it would work, figured I would let her decide how to serve. Sara is very sweet, I felt very comfortable in this restaurant. I likened it to eating some good home cooked Korean food. Nothing fancy which is what made the experience nice. I gotta tell you, Sarah was FAST. She served up our dishes in no time. Really great food, I’d love to give this place a try again…soon!

I always pass by Frog House Restaurant on my way to and from Don Quijote and wondered how this restaurant was. It’s located in a bit of a sketch area so I just figured they were like some sort of Korean bar. Recently, I couldn’t get into Do-ne so we decided to give Frog House a try, it was definitely better than I expected. The prices were pretty good and there wasn’t much other customers so we received our food fairly quick. The biggest plus? I finally found agu jjim and decided to give it a try. If you like monk fish, you will like this dish. I learned that I don’t like monk fish…lol. Anyway, on to the pictures and review!

Ban-chan

My favorite in all restaurants. I know it’s probably just steamed eggs with dashi but I just love it so much. Sometimes the simple dishes are the best!

Eggplant – deliciously savory

Choy Sum

Potato Salad – not great also kind of sweet. It was a bit weird.

Bean Sprouts – hard to screw this one up.

Another favorite ban chan of mine, fish cake.

Kimchee, pretty good! They serve up the entire leaf.

Extra Spicy Chicken – $7.95 (Happy Hour)
This was very good! Definitely a favorite.

Mini Agu Jjim – $14.95 (Happy Hour)

Agu jjim is a very popular Korean dish. I’ve watched many videos of people eating it and I just had to try it for myself. What’s funny is that I crave the bean sprouts the most. I wish they made this in a mixed seafood version because I am not a fan of monk fish.

Kimchee Jigae – $9.95

Kalbi Jjim – $25.95

PRICEY – worth it? I don’t think so for this one. I feel like they just laced it in teriyaki sauce, the meat was pretty tender though. I think you can get better kalbi jjim elsewhere.