My mom took me to a new Asian-themed mini-mall in the city of Pleasanton, CA, where I grew up. I was blown away with all of the cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, and boutiques featuring goods from Vietnam, Korea, China and Japan. I still remember when Pleasanton had one terrible Chinese restaurant that we ate at all the time.
But nothing prepared me for the wonderful weirdness of the "Phoenix cookie" at the Kee Wah chinese bakery. The ingredients are hard to see with my crappy iPhone camera, but they are:
- preserved bean curd
- crystallized pork
- melon seed, olive seed and sesame seed!
I asked the young clerk how he felt about the cookies. "I tried to like them," he admitted. "But they are too much for me."
The first bite I have to say was not pleasant, with the preserved tofu taste dominating. But it kind of grew on me after the second cookie. Definitely worth the two bucks.