chores: another hmart excursion

I so wanted to eat rabokki at the Jeong (or Danny’s)Kitchen at HMart in San Francisco, but Helen and I had our bimonthly hair appointment in Mountain View yesterday. Before I left, I photographed my halfway completed assignment.                     

And after our haircuts, Helen brilliantly said let's go to HMart in San Jose, but alas there was no Jeong's K-Food stall. However, HMart was located in an Asian strip mall, and so we stepped into the restaurant that was not hotpot-themed because we didn’t have that kind of time and that seemed to have the shortest line. And we were utterly bewildered when we got inside. There were two waiters/bus persons, whom I finally got the nerve to ask for how to seat ourselves and they pointed to this table below. Umm, okay and I looked at the remnants of the plates and thought oh boy, how spicy is their food? I love chilies in my noodles, but knew Helen could not tolerate a lot of heat.

Ordering food was even more confusing. You went to a QR code that was on the table in order to read the menu. Even when we clicked on the English version of the menu, there was still a lot of Chinese and NO description of other ingredients and level of spiciness. I also noticed that the dishes seemed to include ingredients you would find on the steppes of Mongolia and Middle Eastern ingredients like pita.

Definitely, not your typical Cantonese American fare, nor even Taiwanese. Finally I chose the stir fried noodles with lamb, and Helen the quick fried beef with scallion.

 

After we clicked our orders on our phones, I got the nerve to ask the waiter if we go up to pick up our food, using hand gestures and little English, but no he said in Chinese, they bring the food over. And I said to Helen, Oh! They know which dishes to bring to which table because our phone indicated that we were at table 15 (and not that there were 15 items in our cart). I also thought I accidentally ordered a fried rice dish, which actually would've been good with the beef. When our dishes came, we dug in with chopsticks and told Helen, no forks or knives available here.

 

And the food was delicious. The noodles were long, thick and chewy, obviously hand pulled and stir fried with cabbage and scallions, redolent with cumin and white pepper and a hint of chili pepper. Helen's grilled beef was smoky and very flavorful with lots of white onion and scallion. And unlike at most Chinese restaurants, the dishes were not doused heavily in sauce though yeah they were deliciously oily. Totally different style of Chinese cooking that we enjoyed. Helen even had leftover beef to bring home while I polished off the noodle lamb dish.