This week’s food highlight is lunch at Monsoon in Bellevue this Saturday:



It’s modernized Vietnamese food, in a cleaner environment, and friendlier, yet slightly slower, service. Standard Vietnamese places used to feel like the cutlery still had some leftover fish oil, and the food would come out within 5 minutes of ordering, since all they really had to do was pour soup into the bowl of noodles. While the service was slower at Monsoon (it took a while for them to bring all the food out), I’m sure it was because we had a 17 people group. The food tasted good, but I’m sure they used plenty of MSG, as we were parched for the rest of the day. I had the pho bo, so basic beef noodle. Look how pretty the onion garnish was:



All the other dishes were very aesthetically pleasing, as well. They also have a duck congee, which seemed pretty gourmet, if you ask me… I also had the ice coffee with condense milk, which ended up being a bit too diluted. Either the coffee wasn’t strong enough, or they gave us a bit too much ice to pour the coffee over. I am a bit picky with coffee though.



Oh right, why was I in Bellevue?

Just surprising a friend for his birthday, and some wedding shopping.

All in all, a very good, productive week and weekend! It feels like I barely had any time to sit down and relax, what with all the wedding planning and driving around, but I am working on taking it slower. Is it normal to feel short of breath, even just sitting down in front of a computer?

 1. EATING:



Came to Pho Lan for dinner with P and J, in the quest for large amounts of Vietnamese food. Pho is one of my favourite foods. This place was pretty dark and dingy, so I couldn’t really tell how clean everything was, but the pho was great. Not too salty, came with lots of toppings, and a large pile of noodles. I finished the XL bowl by myself! Achievement unlocked. I didn’t care too much for the spring rolls here, tasted like it was refried, but maybe if I weren’t so full from the noodles I would’ve liked it more.



2. ANSWERING QUESTIONS - Customer said that I’m good at this I did not make this up.
Customer: When will you have this in stock?
Me: *tells him the date*
Customer: But how soon will you find out if the date will get better?
Me: Sometime between today and above date. *SECRETLY DYING FROM LAUGHTER*
Customer: You’re very good at answering questions.

3. BEING HONEST – I suck at games that require lying, like Coup and Werewolf. I absolutely hate these games. Another game I hate… Legendary. Can’t wait till Cayman Islands at the end of this month, where I’m sure I will not be playing any of those.

That’s about it, I guess.