There are so many Chinese-Americans in Los Angeles that this weekend, there were COMPETING Moon Festivals on the east side of town, over there in communities like Monterrey Park and Arcadia, where a ton of Taiwanese folks live. I only know this because Eva has joined a Chinese Children’s Chorus and had to perform at two of these festivals, back to back.
While it’s about 14 degrees hotter on that side of LA, the boba teas and other Taiwanese street foods are also about 14 times better. So I left Eva with her choir teacher and went off exploring the street food vendors. I got the moon cakes, natch, plus dim sum standards of xiao long bao and char siu bao because, low hanging fruit.
But then I wandered into the world of vegan meat pies (which are cooked on a griddle and flattened, so, the Chinese equivalent of quesadillas), and the crazier milk tea creations, like “dirty milk tea” (not sure what makes it dirty), the Hokkaido Taro slush (Eva tried this and liked it) and the big mystery item that I was too full to consume was KOREAN-TAIWANESE FUSION NOODLES. I felt seen.
