Pad Thai Delight

Well folks, I’ve found it - my new favorite restaurant. It’s called Galanga by Cozy Thai, and it’s on College Avenue right next to Subway. I’ve lived in State College for eighteen years and never knew it existed until this weekend.

Accompanied by a new friend, I entered Galanga a slightly nervous outlook because I had never tried Thai food before. Because I was a novice to the world of Thai, I asked the waiter what he recommended. I've found that this is the best technique when trying something new because most waiters at restaurants have a pretty good idea of what's good and what to stay away from. The waiter chose the Chicken Pad Thai for me, which he said was a good beginner meal. Here’s what my plate looked like when it first arrived:

I promise this looked better in person.

In reality it looked more like this - yum!

I won’t lie, the cabbage on the top sort of scared me, and so I took a tentative first bite. But thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised! It turned out to taste very similar to Chicken Lo Mein, which is lucky because that’s one of the only kinds of Chinese food I like, seeing as I usually don't branch out much with different kinds of food.

The Chicken Pad Thai I had consisted of noodles, cabbage, chicken, onions, garlic, what I believe were bean sprouts, and peanuts. As I continued eating, the peanuts became a little overbearing for me, because they were not evenly mixed throughout the dish. But this was not enough of a deterrent for me to stop eating!

I eventually did stop eating simply because the portion they gave me was too big to finish. I would definitely recommend trying Pad Thai, and I would especially recommend bringing a new friend with you to try it. It was certainly a bonding moment for both of us to taste something so different from what we're used to. I know I will be heading back to Galanga to branch out from their "beginner meals" soon!

Name This Dish

This week I tried a new dish, but please don’t ask me what it was called. I rushed in to Pollock Dining Hall, my stomach was growling, my mouth was watering, and the first thing I saw was a pasta-looking Chinese dish, so I grabbed it. I glanced up at the labels of each food, but all I saw was “brown rice”, “white rice”, and “egg roll”, so I chose to call this dish “mystery pasta”. (It sounds better than mystery meat, right?)

The mystery pasta consisted of what I believe may be called rice noodles (correct me if I’m wrong please!), red peppers, and snap peas. The rice noodles were a surprise for me. I expected to taste what I would consider to be normal noodles, but these were thinner, and not as soft as most pasta dishes, although maybe that was an error in the preparation and not how they were actually supposed to taste. The snap peas also startled me because they weren’t crunchy, like you would expect when you eat them raw, but they also weren’t soft, as you would expect when they are cooked. Again, this may have been the chef’s fault. The red peppers, as usual, simply added a bit of color and texture to mix. I rarely find red peppers to have much flavor when cooked with other food.

I’ll admit, I was in somewhat of a rush today during dinner, so I did not get the chance to fully appreciate my newfound food. Overall, I’d give this dish an A-. It certainly expanded my horizons on Chinese food, and it was more than just my go-to egg roll or brown rice that I would usually get. And, it tasted pretty good too! No longer will I opt for the regular pasta with olive oil and cheese that I usually get at the dining hall. If I see this mystery pasta, I’ll be sure to try it again!

Crepes Galore

This week I decided to try something that had been suggested to me countless times during my daily trips to Pollock Dining Hall. I had been feeling kind of off this week, so I knew I needed something chocolate-y and sweet to cheer me up. Thankfully, the Nutella crepe I had for dessert did the job.

Before I left for dinner, I did some research so I knew what to expect. Here’s what I found through Google Images.

 



Is your mouth watering yet?



While the crepe at Pollock did not look nearly as gourmet as some of the pictures above do, it certainly tasted just as I expected. A thin layer of dough, with creamy Nutella spilling out of the sides, garnished with strawberry sauce and whipped cream. Yum!

The only problem with trying this crepe this week was that I now have an entire semester left (which will surely include a few more bad days or weeks), in which I can eat my feelings through this chocolate haven. It was all I could do today to refrain from getting a second one!

Perhaps what I’ve learned about myself this week is that while it may be easy to gorge myself on comfort food at the end of a bad day, it won’t help in the long run. There was really no reason for my feeling bad this week; it was just one of those weeks. It was a week with too much work, a week without enough sleep, and a week sufficiently lacking any “me time”. The only way I can fix my attitude in those kinds of weeks is to take a deep breath and plow through it. So, although I certainly don’t regret having that calorie and sugar filled treat, the delectable taste of this crepe made me realize I am at a high risk of becoming one of the “girls who eat their feelings” in the cafeteria.

The Bison Burger

See this burger? Looks like a regular old cheeseburger, right? WRONG. It’s a bison burger from the one and only Corner Room. I know I know, I’m supposed to be trying new and exciting foods, but in my defense, the thought of a bison burger sort of intrigued me.

I went to The Corner Room for dinner tonight with two of my cousins who also go to Penn State. I had high hopes for my bison burger. I expected an explosion of new flavor. Maybe they’d put new seasonings on it that you wouldn’t really put on a regular burger, making it spicy and savory. Maybe it would be a different texture than what you’d expect from the old beef cow. Hey, maybe it would even be presented on a gold platter with a dancing waitress and chorus!

But no. Not at all. While the waitress was pleasant and certainly deserved her 18% tip, she did not dance, nor did her coworkers sing to me as I received my meal. The burger satisfied my rumbling tummy, but did not send my taste buds into a frenzy. And my wallet wasn’t too pleased with the deal either. The taste may have been a little stronger than the average restaurant-cooked burger, but I think my dad makes better burgers than what I had tonight.

The upside, and why I still may choose to order a bison burger at The Corner Room in the future? It is so much healthier than a regular burger! Compared to a regular hamburger, the patty itself on average has 76 less calories and 7.73 less grams of fat. That being said, if I go to The Corner Room I probably won’t order any type of burger at all, because I am a huge beef snob from growing up on a farm, and I can probably get a better burger at home than anywhere else.

So the final verdict: If you’re at The Corner Room and are dying to have a burger, you might as well have the healthier version and get a bison burger for the few extra dollars. Just don’t expect it to come on a gold platter.