Dining Out: Taiwanese Style Popcorn Chicken and Stewed Beef Noodle Soup at Mabu Generation

Went for a casual Lunar New Year dinner with Carmen at Mabu Generation:

Taiwanese-style popcorn chicken
Taiwanese-style stewed beef noodle soup

Everything was... mediocre. I'd been to Mabu Generation a couple times before a few years ago and now I remember why I never bothered to go back. It's not that the food was bad, it's just that there's so many better iterations of both Taiwanese popcorn chicken and stewed beef noodle soup out there that they're just not worth the price here. I'm not going to write Mabu off entirely yet because they do have an extensive menu that might be worth checking out, but this visit didn't leave me any more impressed than it did before. I'm just determined to find out why it still gets so busy here.

Mabu Generation

First Markham Place

3235 Highway 7, Unit 23-26

Markham, ON L3R 3P3

Dining Out: Asian Street Foods at Night It Up! Night Market

Went to check out Night It Up! this evening with my co-worker, Carmen, and her cousin, Jenny. If you've never been before, Night It Up! is a three-day outdoor Asian street food festival where dozens of vendors from around the city sell a variety of food and drink in stalls, and you practice the art of eating and walking. We'd been talking about it all week since we haven't been to an Asian night market in so long (for me, it's been over a decade). Over the course of two hours, we had:

Grilled lamb skewers from Zao Men Kan
Stinky tofu from Zhanan Stinky Tofu
Taiwanese spicy fried chicken cutlet from Top Fried Chicken
Pork and chicken skewers from Lert Thai Skewer
Homemade Wuhan sui mai
BBQ pork skewers from Juicy Meat Skewers
Chashu Japadog from Japas
Deep-fried mochi balls (black sesame, mango, and red bean) from One Dog Toronto
Fresh passion fruit lime tea with coconut jelly from TasteT House
Strawberry milk mochi kakigōri from Japas
We probably had room for one more dessert, but then it got insanely busy and the line-ups were getting way too ridiculous, so we decided that that was our cue to leave. Still, we had a pretty good variety of Asian street food tonight. Despite having to immediately shower and put your clothing in the washing machine the moment you get home, it was still worth checking out this year. If you're in the downtown Markham area and want to make a visit, Night It Up! is open until Sunday night.

Night It Up! Night Market

179 Enterprise Boulevard

East Parking Lot

Markham, ON L6G 1B3

Snack Haul: August 2022 Edition

So while I was doing some grocery shopping at T&T yesterday, I may have gotten even more snacks since I was already on a snack high (e.g. I'm PMS-ing). I know I was talking shit about subscription boxes that only offered junk food, but that's only because I couldn't pick my own junk food and therefore was left with junk food that was quite literally junk. That having been said, my (stellar) choices this month are:

Japanese Mini KitKat Bars in Peach and Melon
Pocky in Choco Banana and Mango + Sakura Yuzu Oreo Cookies 
HBAF Honey Butter Almonds and HHC Corn Chips
T&T was having a huge sale on Japanese KitKats, so each bag ended up being $3.99 (!!!) instead of $10+, which is definitely the cheapest I've ever seen them. Frankly, it would've been churlish not to get any. And the Honey Butter Almonds were on sale for $7.99 instead of $14! You know, picking my own junk food is incredibly satisfying, but getting my own junk food on sale is a whole different kind of joy.