Food of Boston

by   •   Food, Travel
 

Today was my final full day in Boston. I have some miscellaneous photographs from attending PAX East and exploring the city, but I have so many food pictures that I figured it would be worth doing a blog post dedicated strictly to some of what I ate while traveling.

I landed in Boston at 9:16 PM EDT, and by the time I had made it to my hotel and got unpacked and washed up after my flight, it was already really late. I didn’t want to walk in the cold, so I checked some food delivery apps and found Lucky’s Lounge open late. I ordered salmon with roasted potatoes, as­par­a­gus, and salad. The salmon was underwhelming, the salad was way too sour, and the vegetables were passable.

My friends arrived in Boston the following night, and funny enough, the restaurant they picked to meet up… was Lucky’s Lounge again. This time I went in-person.

My dine-in order was a triple smash burger. It was strange, because smash burgers are usually supposed to be wide and thin, but this one was ag­gres­sive­ly tall. The burger lacked juiciness and tenderness and was overall underwhelming. The French fries were passable.

For one of the meals I had delivered to my hotel room after one of the convention days, I ordered a sashimi bowl and a sushi roll from Tora Japanese Res­tau­rant. It was pricey, but the fish variety and quality made it worth it. This was also the best shrimp head I’ve ever had.

Prior to my friends Dan and Jay’s first panel at PAX East, we went to Gyu-Kaku. Gyu-Kaku is a chain and has been a hit-or-miss in the Southern Cali­for­nia area, but this one near Boston was great. We all got the premium all-you-can-eat option and were very satisfied.

Beef tongue is one of my favorite cuts of meat at grill-your-own BBQ restaurants. Gyu-Kaku limits the number of orders of beef tongue you can put in because they label it as an extra premium dish, but luckily for me, none of my three friends I went with were a fan of beef tongue, so I got eat everyone’s portion on my own.

I got matcha ice cream for my dessert. This was the greenest and roundest scoop of green tea ice cream I’d ever seen.

Here is a takeout order of fish and chips from Stubbys that I got as a late night snack after one of the convention days.

After Dan and Jay’s second panel at PAX East, they had a meet-and-greet; while they were occupied, my friend Aidan (who runs the Skip the Tutorial You­Tube channel) and I left to get some lunch. I didn’t notice this until after I ordered, but coincidentally, the restaurant that Aidan picked was the same one from which I had ordered sushi a few nights prior—Tora.

I got a salmon bowl with three variants of salmon—regular, belly, and minced. The quality of the fish was fantastic. Considering that salmon belly is my second favorite type of sushi, I enjoyed it a lot.

Aidan is not a big fan of fish, so he got one pork and one beef dish.

I wasn’t too hungry so I didn’t get any dessert, but Aidan got some green tea ice cream.

For another one of my late night snacks near the end of my trip, I ordered a lengua burrito bowl from Chilacates Mexican Street Food. The portion size of meat was extremely small, which detracted from the overall flavor balance of the dish.

And for my final meal of Boston, and upon recommendation of one of my foodie friends, I ordered braised beef noodle soup, signature pork soup dump­lings, crispy-bottom pork buns, and iced soy milk from Nan Xiang Express. This tasted great, and eating it gave me a warm, cozy, homey feel.

When people online found out I was going to PAX East, I got a lot of recommendations of places to try out. Unfortunately, my breadth of exposure to res­tau­rants ended up being fairly limited, not only because I did not rent a vehicle, but also because it was very cold outside and it sapped away a lot of my motivation for going out.

I heard that PAX East 2025 is going to take place during the summer, so I’m guessing I’m going to end up checking out a lot more restaurants next year.

 

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Photo dump from February 2024

by   •   General, Travel
 

I don’t have a wide breadth of spare photos from February that didn’t make the cut in other blog posts, but my friend Dani was visiting Southern Cali­fornia, so I also made my way over from Las Vegas to coordinate trips. We spent a good chunk of Saturday the 17th, Sunday the 18th, and Monday the 19th together, so most of these photos are from us adventuring around Los Angeles County.

On the night she arrived, we got dinner at Sushi Enya Pasadena. For my main entrée, I ordered a chirashi bowl.

Dani and I each also got a signature Enya special hand roll with seared scallop, chopped toro, sea urchin, and fresh truffle. As you can see from the pho­to­graph, it was not a real hand roll, but rather, just an oversized piece of lavish nigiri.

We also ordered two cut rolls.

The food was delicious, but wildly overpriced. The chirashi bowl was $36.80, each signature hand roll was $34.80, the first cut roll was $22.80, and the second cut roll was $26.80. After 18% gratuity on the subtotal and a tax of $15.99, the final total was US$200.07.

The quality of everything met the bar for that price point, but the amount of food did not. I’d actually be flexible enough to say that the price on the rolls were justified, but the fact that a single bite of “hand roll” was almost $35, and the chirashi bowl only had ten medium-sized slices of sashimi with tamago and roe, made those two dishes absolutely not worth it.

For some reason, Sushi Enya had a poster advertising Shrek the Musical on the window to their storefront. Here is Dani excitedly pointing it out. (Dani prefers for her face to not be on my blog due to the volume of visitors my website receives.)

Here is a random intersection at Old Pasadena. I like the diagonal crosswalks; they are very efficient.

Here is a random arcade we stumbled upon that Dani wanted to check out.

Dani also wanted to check out Miniso. It was very visually stimulating.

The next day, we went to Ramen Tatsunoya for lunch. I wasn’t that hungry, so I decided to get a small yuzu chashu bowl instead of ramen.

After touring the La Brea Tar Pits, we continued walking westbound to check out what else was on that block.

Apparently this is an art piece titled Levitated Mass and is literally a huge boulder held up in the air.

We then looped down to the front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

We then stumbled across another public art piece called Urban Light.

I’ve seen people do photo shoots in front of this a lot on social media, but I did not realize that it was just on a random block in Central Los Angeles near giant pits of bubbling asphalt. I usually see pictures of this from nighttime, so it was interesting to see how different it looks during the day.

 

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Hello, Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California

by   •   Travel
 

My friend Dani is still in town, and for our next tourist activity, she picked the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena of Los Angeles County, California.

There was a phase during my two-year road trip during which I was intrigued by art museums and art galleries, but I think that period has ended, be­cause I found the Norton Simon Museum to be fairly understimulating.

It was also extremely packed and congested inside—probably be­cause Los Angeles has been going through a rainy phase so people probably thought an art museum would be a good indoor activity for a gloomy day—so it was difficult for me to stand still and read the placards without feeling like I was ob­structing the view of a row of people walking assembly-line style past me.

The downstairs area had a spotlight called “Benevolent Beings: Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from South and Southeast Asia,” which I found to be a bit more interesting.

Unfortunately, the Sculpture Garden in the outdoor area was closed due to heavy rain.

Even though this wasn’t personally my thing, it was nice to see that Dani seemed to enjoy it. We paid US$20.00 each for admission, which is not bad for an art museum of this size in Southern California. I’m still glad that I went, because I like to broaden my breadth of knowledge and understanding on var­i­ous topics, and even though I’m probably not creative or attuned to artistic themes enough to be able to get the most out of this experience, it was still nice to look at everything.

 

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Hello, La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California

by   •   Travel
 

My friend Dani, who you may remember as the owner of Mina the cat, was making a trip to Los Angeles, so I headed over from Las Vegas to visit her while she was in town. For one of our tourist activities, we visited the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California.

When Dani first told me she wanted to visit the Tar Pits, I was a bit confused as to why she would want to go look at a bunch of asphalt. But, when she ex­plained more about the story behind it, it became a lot more interesting.

Apparently, the tar pits are a naturally-occurring phenomenon that would trap animals in them a long time ago. Small animals would get stuck in there first, then some medium animals that were predators of the small animals would see them in there, think it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get some free food, and also go into the tar pits and get stuck. Then some larger animals that were predators of the medium animals would see them in there, think it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to get some free food, and also go into the tar pits and get stuck. This process would continue until many different animals of many dif­fer­ent sizes ended up getting stuck in the tar.

The tar is still active and was bubbling up while we were there. There were also many cones set up by staff and sparingly spread out across the entire plot of land—this was to warn people about locations where even more tar was randomly coming up where it didn’t used to be, so that visitors wouldn’t end up stepping in it.

There was also an indoor portion of the museum. It was very stereotypical of a regular museum, but one portion of it I liked was the laboratory section where we could watch scientists clean fossils found in the tar pits.

There was also an interactive section where you could test your strength and see whether you would be able to pull yourself out of tar, if you had gotten stuck.

Remember how I said the tar sort of just erupted from random locations throughout the plot of land? When we had wrapped up and was walking back to the spot I had parked, we saw a section that was coned off in the parking lot because tar was coming onto the surface even through the pavement. It made me wonder how damaged the vehicle above the leak was, if there was one parked above it when the tar first came out, as well as how long it would take for the entire parking lot to eventually be covered in cones.

The La Brea Tar Pits are in the same block as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, so if you’re going to either of those two, I think it’s worth a visit just to see something so unique and different in the middle of a city.

If you’re interested in learning more about the fossils, admission to the museum was US$15.00 per person for me, but if you just want to see the tar pits, that is free and open to the public.

 

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Hello, Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California

by   •   Face, Travel
 

Yesterday, I was invited to Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California for a tour by an acquaintance who works as a software engineer in the an­i­ma­tion department of the company. Unfortunately, a lot of it was private so I wasn’t able to take my photographs, but I was able to capture some of the more public areas.

Our tour started in the museum area. I don’t really watch movies or television shows, so a lot of this didn’t really have much meaning to me.

The tour continued outdoors.

These large tan buildings are where movie sets are created and scenes are filmed.

These facilities used to be on-site housing for actors, but now they’re just offices. Apparently that golf cart is manufactured by Cadillac and is owned by someone famous, but I didn’t really recognize the name so I don’t remember whose it is.

Apparently there’s a new Ghostbusters movie coming out. They had the Ghostbusters car parked outside.

We were then led through an outdoor set.

I don’t remember the significance of this building, but there were some awards sitting inside (which I was not permitted to photograph).

After a tour of that campus, I met up with my acquaintance, who had finished working, and we got a tour of her work area. An overwhelming majority of it was confidential, so the only photograph I have of it is this Spider-Man mural.

As part of our tour, there was a photo opportunity where my friend Doug Wreden and I were supposed to stand in front of a green screen and we would be chromakeyed into an episode of Jeopardy. The prompt was to act like we had won, but while I was thinking about how I would react if I won Jeop­ard­y, the photographer already captured the shot.

As someone who is not really a fan of movies, this wasn’t really the best tour for me. Sony also has a music division, and I discovered throughout the tour by way of random posters that some of my favorite artists are signed to Sony Music, but the tour itself focused almost entirely on film and not on music. I am a lot more interested in music than film and television, so if there was a more music-oriented tour, I think I would have enjoyed that a lot more.

The highlight of my visit was, by sheer luck and coincidence because that was just the walking route we happened to take, overhearing Olivia Rodrigo in one of those tan buildings rehearsing for her performance at Coachella 2024. My second favorite part of the visit was eating a free Rice Krispy Treat. I think that might put into perspective how disinterested I am in movies and movie stars.

With that being said, if you are a big movie nut, this could potentially be a good tour for you to take. You don’t need a special invitation to go on it like I did—apparently you can just go on Sony’s website and purchase tickets (at least for the first portion on the main campus, though it wouldn’t grant access to the animations building). If you like celebrities, you might even see some famous people during the tour.

 

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Photo dump from fall 2023

by   •   General, Travel
 

I usually do seasonal photo dumps upon the conclusion of each three-month period, but I decided to do this one early because I haven’t been blogging much lately, and because the Season of Discovery releases on World of Warcraft: Classic on November 30, 2023 so I might be occupied playing that with a group of friends. Here are some photographs from the last three months that didn’t make it on my blog on other posts, but are still interesting enough to share.

The beginning of September for me involved taking a trip to Southern California to help my friend Doug Wreden begin his move from the Seattle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area to Los Angeles County. Because he was driving a much longer distance while I was coming from Las Vegas, it was easier for me to co­or­di­nate timing for his move-in logistics. I headed over to LA, spent a night in a hotel, then met up with the property manager to collect the keys.

This is the view I had from my hotel room:

Doug’s first event he ran after arriving in Los Angeles was the stretch goal stream from a prior fundraising event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. One of the rewards for reaching a certain threshold of donations was for me to appear on his channel and do a “hot tub stream,” the concept of which has be­come notorious on Twitch and many people saying it is inappropriate for the platform due to basically being one step away from softcore por­nog­ra­phy.

Of course, I would never actually do a hot tub stream; instead, I dressed up in full business attire with a suit and tie, and while in the hot tub that was actually a cold tub because apparently it didn’t have a heater, I answered some of Twitch chat’s business-related questions. This photograph below shows the aftermath at the end of the broadcast.

Previously, I posted about going to Bubble World and Dinos Alive at the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub. In between those two tourist activities, my friend and I went to O’Sushi in the city of Rosemead. It was a small and cozy spot with good food and a friendly waitress.

We had fried squid rings as our appetizer.

My main entrée was a chirashi bowl.

The waitress suggested that we try a limited-time dish with salmon and mushrooms, so we ordered one of those too.

My friend got a couple sushi rolls as her entrée.

A few days later, we went exploring in downtown Los Angeles. I saw an interesting trolley lift system, and when I pulled out my camera to take a picture, Doug let me know that he also wanted to be in the photograph. I’m not sure if this is exactly what he was anticipating… but you cannot deny that he is definitely in the photograph.

Hello, Douglas Douglas.

Fast forward a week and a half, and it’s the end of October and I’m back in Las Vegas. A lot of my friends, including Doug, came in for a con­ven­tion. During non-convention hours, we went on an adventure exploring the Las Vegas Strip, which included the M&M’s Store. This was definitely one of the more visually overstimulating ex­pe­riences I’ve had.

The convention I alluded to above was TwitchCon. Although I’m still not a fan of it, it was a lot better last year. I imagine Twitch learned from their mis­takes from last year, and this year, they probably got a decent amount of help from the Las Vegas Convention Center staff, which is going to be much more experienced at running large-scale and logistically smooth events.

Doug had a meet-and-greet scheduled on one of the days, and upon his insistence, I joined him for it. I was mainly off to the side chatting with the Twitch staff members who were supervising the event, but once in a while, I would be requested by fans to pop in, autograph various different things, and stand in photos. Doug’s meet-and-greet went over the expected two-hour time slot by about an additional hour, and he still had fans lined up long after every other streamer had left.

After TwitchCon, we went to Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen and Bar. The food was horrid; I ordered a chicken sandwich and it tasted like a sandwich you’d find at a grocery store in one of those plastic containers sitting chilled in an open-top refrigeration unit. However, as a consolation prize, at least I got a pic­ture of my friend Eric Morino taking a sip of a drink using 5 adjoined straws.

A month later, I joined some friends and friends-of-friends in a Friendsgiving gathering in celebration of Thanksgiving. Of course, in traditional Thanks­giv­ing fashion, we had to prepare a turkey. Apparently there is a way to remove and/or snap the turkey’s sternum and/or spine in order to lay it flatter and allow it to cook faster and more evenly. Our chef was having a little bit of difficulty snapping the seemingly invincible bone, so Doug decided to help.

For Friendsgiving, participants usually bring their own dishes to aggregate them together and enjoy a full feast. This year, we were given a considerable amount of freedom to decide what we want to contribute.

In a move that surprised absolutely nobody, Doug’s dishes he brought were a large Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza, four different kinds of ube-flavored snacks, and a whole coconut. Luckily, Doug was well-versed at wielding a convenient hammer we found in a cabinet under the kitchen island, so we were able to actually consume the coconut.

I’m not the biggest fan of large gatherings, so it’s rare to see me at a party this densely populated. However, the good news is that the hosts had a great cat I was able to pet instead of having to socialize.

 

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