Welcome to the Weekly's list of our 100 Favorite Dishes for 2011! Tune in every day until we get to número uno! Now, on to the latest entry. . . .
Of all the food trucks to come into the scene, Chomp Chomp was the first to play into the flavors I grew up with.
My favorite dish, however, turned out to be something I am pretty sure is an original, not really Singaporean or Indonesian as it is just playing off the familiar flavors of the region. Here is a dish that knows that coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk, and fruit is used in a lot of South East Asian desserts and repurposes them on something distinctly un-Asian: French toast ($5).
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The base is the same as all French toasts, which is to say, it's French toast. But even this is done well: butter-soaked, eggy, griddled to caramel. Then the toppings go on.
I liked how the coconut-flavored frothy whipped cream dollops the top, tasting more naturally fit
for the task than maple syrup. And I liked how, even as the toast already
works by itself, the medley of cubed star fruit, lychee, mango,
jackfruit, pears and papaya brings it home…in both senses of the
word.
Follow Chomp Chomp at their website http://www.chompchompnation.com/ or http://twitter.com/#!/chompchomptruck
Click here for our 100 faves from 2010! The list so far this time around:
No. 91: Egg Breakfast at Rick's Atomic Kitchen
No. 92: Sticky Rice With Chicken at Quan Hy
No. 93: Beef Koobideh at Hen House Grill
No. 94: $5 Fish Bento at Bentoss
No. 95: Milanesa Sandwich at Piaggio's Gourmet on Wheels
No. 96: Samurai Burrito at Wafu of Japan
No. 97: Carnitas Gordita at Bodega R Ranch Market
No. 98: Spam Musubi at k'ya Street Fare
No. 99: Tortilla Andorra at Anepalco's
No. 100: Lemongrass Chicken, Extra Spicy at Vietnam's Pearl
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.