#21 Pa Pa Walk
Posted on May 18, 2007
Filed Under Chinese, Taiwanese | 6 Comments
A slightly different sort of Taiwanese food today. Today we’re going to do “small eats,” meaning dishes you might order at a stall or from a cart on the streets of Taiwan. Night market food, more or less. These dishes tend to be fairly inexpensive, and typically the servings are small, so you can mix and match from stall to stall as you walk through the market. This is a lot of fun if you’re a tourist in Taiwan, you can mix in with the crowd and really get a good feel of the local food.
Pa Pa Walk is hidden behind the staircase in the plaza next to the Hilton in San Gabriel, so don’t be alarmed if you pull in and don’t immediately see it. Look for it behind the staircase.
Pa Pa colloquially means “all over” in Taiwanese, so “Pa Pa Walk” means to get out around town. The giant feet are a nice touch.
Like a Taiwanese mom and pop shop, half the menu is on the wall.
I saw Malaysian / Indian style bread and curry and just had to get it. The curry is sweeter than I’d imagined and doesn’t have the kick that you’d expect if you were at a Malaysian place. Ok, it’s more like a chinese leek pancake than Indian naan, but it was still good comfort food.
Matt’s a big beef noodle guy, and beef noodles is one of Pa Pa Walk’s specialties. This is spicy dry beef noodles, which came without a soup base but with a little dish of spicy hot chili oil. We dumped the whole thing in, it was delicious and had a good kick.
Taiwanese excels at seafood. Deep fried oysters with Basil really hits the spot.
If they had it, we had to try it. The Xiao Long Bao (Small pork buns) weren’t bad at all, it was nice to have since I haven’t had it in a LONG time.
This is interesting, it’s a creamy soup baked in a big chunk of bread. Kind of a Taiwanese answer to San Francisco’s clam chowder in a bread bowl. Fun thing is, the name in Chinese sounds just like “coffin cover” but they purposely wrote the wrong words so that it loosely translates to say “power & money.” Order this if you’re looking for a promotion.
This was the surprise hit of the night, the bread was perfectly toasted to be a bit crispy, the soup was thick and rich, and once you drank a good amount of it, you can start taking apart the bread to eat with the soup. Creamy soup, toasty bread, it’s a great combination, just like Apple Pie and Ice Cream. It’s wonderful comfort food.
This was a great little restaurant to get your Taiwanese groove back. They also had a ridiculous looking mango shaved ice, it was literally shaved ice, mango, and condensed milk piled a foot and a half high on a big plate. We were stuffed and couldn’t eat another bite, so we passed. I’m saving room for it next time. Or maybe you can try it. The place is great for small to medium groups, definitely try the noodles and the soup in the bread box.
Pa Pa Walk
227 W. Valley Blvd,
Suite 148-B
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 281-3889