Taste of Formosa

Two days ago after eating instant noodles for the final exam week, I decided to eat out with my friends. Then I chose to have Taiwanese food. This place is much larger than you first see, with a cool upstairs dining room that features a flat screen tv looping chinese music videos. dining here, it kinda does feel like you're in a different place...

I walked in with a party of 3 and was greated nicely by the hostess. Then we ordered oyster vermicelli noodle soup and braise beef with noodle soup, salt &pepper chicken tender and fish in hot special cause. For drink, we all have the Beijing Sour Mill. This is the only restaurant I can have Beijing Sour Mill in bay area. I had never seen it in anywhere before. I love this kind of mill very much.

The waiting time for food was quick. Even the house is quit full, but still very fast. The oyster noodle is so good. It tasted just like the one I had in Taiwan before. I had been to try this noodle in several Taiwanese restaurant before, But I do not like that. Since those restaurant changed the original favor. The salt & pepper chicken was not so special. It just like any other store has. When the Braise beef noodle came, I love the smell. That smell brings up my memery. That was the exactly smeel of the braise beef noodle when I offen had in China before. When you smell it, you want to finish the whole bowl immedely. The fish  in hot special cause, I do not expect to have a good experience. Because that meal is not original from Taiwan, it was a traditional Sichuan food from China. Not all the restaurant can do it well. However, when I taste it, it suprises me. I think it was good. At least the flavor is very simmilar to the original taste.

Asking if I would come back to this place? Yes. And I would give a 4 star to this restaurant.

Happy hour at Schmidt's

This is my first time at Schmidt's in SF. The address is 2400 Folsom St (between 20th St & 21st St)
San Francisco, CA 94110. Business Hour: Mon-Sun 5 pm - 11 pm, Sat-Sun 10 am - 3 pmMy friend told me that Schmidt's has great looking happy hour and affordable beer and entrees. However their appetizers are a little small. We ordered the pea pancakes ($9) and there were three of them. Not three flapjack-sized pancakes, but three little saltine-sized things. That's like $1.25 per square inch of pancake, man! So yeah, my suggestion is to avoid those...

Beer was tasty and they have a respectable tap selection. We actually received different beer than we ordered (2 of X and 1 of Y instead of 2 of Y and 1 of X) and the waitress just gave the extra one to us. Nice service indeed. :) And the best part is that a 'large' portion is just $6, compared to $7 and up at Suppenkuche.

Two of us got the wiener schnitzel, one got the pork sausage, and one got the pork chop, which I think kind of stole the show as something delicious that no one had really ever had before. The wiener schnitzel was good but nothing mindblowing in the grand scheme of wienerschnitzels. Entrees, again, were pricey but not Suppenkuche level pricey. Schnitzel was $16 and other entrees were around that range.

I think I would definitely come here for happy hour but I'd hesitate to come here for dinner unless I was ordering very carefully to avoid the landmines of bad value.