crafty maya: Three Meals!

On Friday we went to Bui Contemporary Vietnamese Restaurant in Berkeley. We saw it before and decided to try it. We ordered the fried calamari with alioli sauce for appetizer. It was good. It had a light panko crust and the calamari itself was cooked so perfectly. It was soft; not chewy. So the meal started out alright. Then our entrees came. Hubby ordered a hotpot of Chilean Sea Bass in carmelized sauce. It was so overly sweet. There were no other ingredients in there. No onions or anything. Just a few chunks of fish. And I ordered roasted eggplant with minced chicken sauce. Yup, it sounds like that dish I made, right? Yeah, I decided to order it to compare. It had the basil in it for color and taste. It was pretty tasty. On the salty side. And the eggplant had a nice roasted flavor but there was only one small eggplant in there. The portion was ridiculous. The rice we got was $1.50 a bowl, and the bowl was so tiny. It was a little bigger than a teacup. Maybe I exaggerate, but there was definitely not enough to eat with that flavorful entree I got. The total bill came out close to $60. It was so not worth it there.

So when we decided to eat out on Saturday, we made sure to pick a cheap but yummy place to make up for Friday's dinner. Hubby looked at the 2007 Bargain Bite that the SF Chronicle puts out every year and found a Chinese place in Oakland Chinatown called Shan Dong. It was a grungy place with red Chinese lanterns. What was a little shock for me was that we were greeted by a smile and taken to our table. And what I noticed was that the language I heard spoken there be the guests was mainly English. There a lot of young cool people like us of different backgrounds eating there. So, immediately I felt comfortable there. We ordered the 5 dishes for $31.50. There are about 35 dishes you can choose from. The one thing I was disappointed with that deal was that there were no noodle dishes there. We read that they make the noodles themselves. The photos below are what we ordered. Everything was really good. The deal even came with a bowl of soup. It was hot and sour soup, not just a cabbage soup, but a real soup! We decided that since all the dishes were so yummy, we'll come back to order their noodle dishes next time. This place will definitely be one of regular places to eat. We loved the fact that this meal lasted us for two more meals. We had the leftovers for lunch and dinner. So for $31.50 plus tax and tip, we got three good meals from it. We tipped a little more because they actually poured tea for us when they came to our table. Oh! And this place actually takes cards and delivers for free to our area! This place made up for Bui and then some.