For the holiday yesterday (July 1st), my mom, little brother (8), and I went to East Lansing to take a look around and get the feel of things. Since I've only been to visit the campus once (during their quiz bowl tournament for four hours my junior year), I was pretty excited to go and check out what the city had to offer.
My parents own a restaurant in my hometown, so any time we close (major holidays), we like to go to Chinese restaurants and have yum cha. I googled some restaurants in EL before we went and, based on reviews, though Golden Wok would be a good choice.
We left at around 9, expecting the journey to take an hour and a half, maybe two hours if we got lost. (Heh. Both of us are bad at directions, even with a GPS). Instead, the route that the GPS took us on was sweet and simple, and we made it there in about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Unfortunately, that meant that Golden Wok didn't open until 11AM, so we decided to check out the much-raved about Oriental Mart.
Now, I had planned carefully for this trip to avoid any hitches. That included calling Oriental Mart the day before to see if they'd be open on the fourth. The man who answered the phone said yes, they would be open, from 10-6.
So! We got there, parked, and got out. An older man in front of the store told my mother in Chinese that the store was closed because they were doing inventory. He then hurried into the store and locked up before we could say anything else. That was extremely disappointing, as that was the largest and most-recommended Asian/Chinese market in the area.
Thankfully, I had written down the address for another store in East Lansing, and we crossed our fingers and headed over there. It was the Great China Market on Trowbridge Road, which was slightly hidden behind another small strip mall, but we made it there without a problem. The store was extremely small and cramped, but the man (owner?) who worked there was very friendly. We browsed for a little while, and picked up some snacks. They had a huge assortment of snacks (love that!) and a lot of them were on sale. It had a small selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, and freezers full of frozen dim sum, ice cream, and frozen seafood. The prices were a little higher than I was used to, but it was really convenient and a good time killer, so if I get a chance in the fall, I might stop by there to pick up some snacks (since I have a meal plan. Otherwise I would search elsewhere to buy rice/other food staples).
We went back to Golden Wok and met up with my sister and her friend, who is a Lansing-native, so altogether, we had a table of five. We were seated really quickly as they weren't busy (probably because they had just opened). The service was amazing. At all times, we had no less than three servers waiting on us. They refilled our waters constantly, took away our plates after we'd had a couple of dishes, and kept coming by to check on us. The decor of the restaurant was very nice, it seemed to be a place where you could go for a classy dinner with your friends or a birthday party or something, and it was really big. We came for dim sum, which we had to special order, but they apparently have the carts on weekends. Also, half of the restaurant was closed off, which was a side full of big tables with lazy susans on them, so I assume that is the dim sum side on weekends.
So, Golden Wok scored an A+ on service and atmosphere. But on the food, I'd probably give them a C or B-. We ordered congee with sliced pork and thousand eggs, which is my favorite meal anytime of the day. The pork didn't taste fresh at all, and the flavoring was a bit weird, but still consumable. Next we got a lot of food, because my mom loves to take it home and eat it as leftovers and stuff. First, we got two orders of Har gow (the names will take you to a picture/description of the foods, courtesy of Wikipedia). Immediately, my mom (a chef) noticed that the har gow had a strange smell to it, and, after a bite, a strange taste to it, so she sent it back. It turned out that the refrigerator had gotten too hot, and the shrimp went bad. This is a common problem in restaurants, but they still should have checked first before serving it to customers. They made us two new servings of it, tasting much more fresh and better.
Only the congee and har gow were nearly inedible. We also ordered char siu bao, shu mai (although I didn't actually eat that... I'm not a big fan of it, anywhere), chicken feet (I also don't eat that... I'm not good at eating anything with bones. My mom loves it though, and she said it was pretty good), pai gu, lo mai gai, mango pudding, and... lots more things that I cannot find on Wikipedia. Overall though, everything was pretty good, although my mother (who was born and raised in Hong Kong, as well as being a chef and dim sum cook) said that a lot of it wasn't fresh made to order for us. Very true, as some of it tasted just like the reheatable dim sum that is available at the Chinese market.
While we were going from Grand Avenue (where Golden Wok was located) to Trowbridge (where Great China Market was), we got to drive a little bit around Michigan State campus. I love it! I just saw it from the car, but it looks really nice, although huge and spread out.
So next, we went to Meridian Mall to shop. It was big, bigger than Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, but it is mostly department stores, like Macy's, Younkers, JCPenney, Deb, Charlotte Russe, Victoria's Secret, The Body Shop, Bath and Body Works, and such. The only stores that really stood out to me were the Oriental Accent Arts, that sold a lot of incense and jade items, as well as Pokemon figurines (a huge hit with my little brother... and the lady who was working (maybe the owner?) definitely knew what she was talking about. So refreshing, since many times he's asked about pokemon or something and the workers have no idea what he's talking about. But she knew their whole inventory of figurines, and knew exactly what he was asking for. I will definitely be going back!).
We mostly window shopped for the rest of the time, until we got hungry and decided to stop by the food court, which had little restaurants like Lou & Harry's gyros (which I was craving since I hadn't eaten any since last year, when I was in Greece), Yum! Japan, Chicken now, Panda Express, A&W, Sbarro, a smoothie stand (their mango-banana was delicious!), and an Aunt Annie's pretzel stand. He chose Sbarro, and ordered the spaghetti with meatballs. It only came with two meatballs, but they were massive and he could finish one and a half of them. The portion of spaghetti was also pretty big. I ordered a pepperoni and cheese stromboli, which was kind of like a calzone (and now you see where my small-town, small-restaurant background has led me), that came with a breadstick. The portion was huge, and pretty good. Sadly, it ended up costing me about $14 for those two meals and a bottle of diet green tea. Which, I suppose, isn't too bad, but still...
Overall, my trip to East Lansing was a success. I got to see a little bit of the campus, which was beautiful, and scope out some of the Asian scene in the area. I'll have more to post in two weeks, when I return for my AOP (academic orientation program). Even if I don't drive myself, I hope that I'll have enough time to go around East Lansing and see what they have to offer. Otherwise, I'll get to do a post on dorm food, Case Hall, the advisors, and an inside look at campus!
-Rakuzen
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