Home for the Holidays

Back at home-home with the family. This means Christmas fun but more importantly: Eating Fest. Home visits usually consist of Grandma making too much good Korean food and going out to eat at my favorite places around town. (This is usually hard to do around Thanksgiving since I have a short amount of time at home and there's too many leftovers from Turkey Day). 

Today's adventure: Jjajjangmyun (Noodles with Black Bean Sauce) at Assi Plaza.

Sistas and I always make sure we eat here at least a few times a year when we are actually at home. It's always amazing and never a let down. 

Jjajjangmyun is actually a hard-to-find item in most cities and then even harder to find really good jjajjangmyun. It's found in Korean/Chinese restaurants and I usually just leave it up to my parents to find out where to go. 

About five years ago, Assi Plaza opened up in the Northern Burbs of Chicago and a lil gem was born inside its Food Court: Lai Lai. Assi Plaza is a humungo Asian grocery store plus other Asian stores inside making it the site of a Lil Asia. (There's clothing stores, hair salons, bakeries, etc). Lai Lai is a lil counter-service stand that has tasty, inexpensive food. Everything I've had on the menu has been delicious. 

located at: 8901 N Milwaukee Ave, Niles, IL (inside Assi Plaza)

Today, I decided on ordering half noodles and half sweet and sour beef (Tang Soo Yook-the Korean/Chinese version). You can also have a half and half order of the noodles and Spicy Seafood Noodle Soup (Cham Pong). Jjajjangmyun is a messy meal so it's a def tuck-a-napkin-into-your-shirt kind of food.

i had to save my white shirt from brown sauce

Sistas Min and Twin decided as an appetizer to our meal, we would try out a Korean Corn Dog at another food stand in Assi, DooRae, which also sells Fried Chicken.

There are two options of hotdogs: regular (in the pic on the right) and potato (the one in the middle of the pic). We decided on the regular but one day I'll try out the potato one. (Those cubes around the hotdog are chunks of potato. Kind of looks like apple though...haha). The batter is topped with panko but I'm not so sure what was in the batter but it was pretty yummy. You can't go wrong with a hotdog on a stick. The lady drizzled ketchup AND dijon mustard but next time we'll stick with just mustard. 

Sista Min + Korean Corn Dog