Saturday, January 30, 2010

California: Ichimiann Bamboo Garden (Torrance)

Back Blogging Post #3:

After having dessert at Patisserie Chantilly, we needed to find somewhere to have a proper lunch since Gaja Moc was closed until the evening. I suggested that we go to Ichimiann Bamboo Garden in Torrance since it was semi-close by, about a 15 minute drive away.

If it wasn’t for reading about this place from other food bloggers and seeing pictures of the front of the restaurant, we would have passed right by without noticing it was there. There was only a few spaces to parallel park on the street, thankfully we found a spot relatively close by.

Photobucket

Ichimiann has such a cute store front, it’s so quaint, simple, and welcoming. Nothing pretentious at all about this eatery about it’s exterior or its food. The noodles are made fresh every day (the real selling point for me)! I was shutter bug happy at the time, so I took a picture of the mini-menu at the seating area against the wall.

Photobucket

There’s not a whole lot of room to sit here. You can sit at the few tables outside or along the wall on one of these stools. There’s one or two more tables inside the restaurant, but when we went they were already taken. =)

Photobucket

There was one waiter manning the register and one cook in the kitchen. We were pointed to a menu and picked out our meal. To be honest, I had a bit of a rough time explaining what I wanted since I didn’t speak Japanese and the waiter didn’t speak much English. I felt like such a gaijin (foreigner) to have to resort to pointing at the picture menu.

Photobucket

Maybe this sign written as an informative flow chart was meant to help…but since it’s in Japanese hiragana/katakana, it didn’t help me at all. My boyfriend could make out some of the words though. This just served to remind me that I really need to start learning Japanese in my spare time…

Photobucket

My boyfriend ordered a bowl of curry udon and I ordered udon in a hot broth (I forgot what it’s called… *le sigh*) along with a bowl of rice with some mentaiko on top.

Photobucket

Photobucket

So once you’ve ordered and paid, you can take a seat wherever you find room. After about 5 minutes our food was ready and the waiter kindly brought it to us. My mentaiko bowl came out with my boyfriend’s curry udon. XD

The food was so simple, yet so full of flavor. Sometimes the best things are simply served, no fancy frills or anything; just good simple food. The servings were pretty generous too! We were pleasantly full after we left, I even had some of my rice bowl packed to go.

There’s not a lot of small “mom and pop” type of restaurants in Boynton Beach, Florida so I really enjoyed the experience. I wish that there were more of these types of places in Florida, but as my boyfriend so aptly put it, they wouldn’t survive out in Florida. It’s true, most of the time if you aren’t a franchise then you aren’t making it out here. *sigh* It’s sad too, because I had some of the best food I’ve ever tasted in my life in these small out of the way restaurants in California.

Ichimiann Bamboo Garden
1618 Cravens Ave
Torrance, California
(310) 328-1323
Ichimiann Bamboo Garden on Urbanspoon

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails