The Empress's Chicken Saga Debuts

Tsing Tsao, Chinese food, Des Moines

This is another old review but I might as well do it anyway to honor the Cyclones that were playing the Hawkeyes the weekend we went to this restaurant. So I think it was on a Friday. It was show your team spirit day at our school so that is why me and my brother and sister are all wearing Iowa State Cyclones clothes. That night we decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant, which I was happy about because one of my favorite dishes was at that restaurant -- Empress Chicken. It's something I get at a lot of Chinese/Asian restaurants.

Empress Chicken is breaded chicken with a sweet sauce on it. It is served with rice. It also has veggie in it. I like it because the sweetness goes good with the rice. I like the vegetables because they are stir-fried. They're good that way because they give off a different kind of taste and they're not mushy. They're crunchy.

We like Tsing Tsao because it is not the most expensive restaurant. With your meal, you get an egg roll, a crab rangoon and soup of your choice.

Pho All Seasons, Especially Spring!

Pho All Seasons, Des Moines

On Friday, me, my brother and my mom went to Pho All Seaons, a Vietnamese restaurant that we had never been to before. It turned out to be a very good restaurant serving great appetizers, such as pot stickers and calamari.

I ate three of the pot stickers. They were so good! A pot sticker is like a noodle shell with meat and vegetables on the inside. It feels smooth and it's not crunchy.

Here I am by my meal. I got the Korean short ribs. And they tasted really, really good! Part of that was the sauce on the ribs that made it taste good. It was kind of sweet, tangy and it was a little bit spicy. At a barbecue restaurant, the ribs are like baby back ribs -- you get the entire rib bone. But at this restaurant, they cut the ribs differently so each piece of rib had just a little bone circle and the rest was meat. 

 The other things on my plate was a salad, which was sweet. It had carrots and zuchinni cut really thin. There was also rice. And in this bowl was a spicy sauce that went good with the calamari that my brother ordered.

 The restaurant is a smaller restaurant. It was authentic with cool lights from the ceiling. It was pretty busy on a Friday night. Many people were ordering big bowls of soup, like the one that my mom got.

My mom ordered the pho soup that had brisket, noodles, green onions and broth. It was served with a plate of fresh basil, sprouts and a lime wedge. When I tried it, it tasted good with the noodles and the broth. But I was not a huge fan after eating lots of spoonfuls of just the broth. The meat tasted a lot like roast beef and I really liked it. I think the addition of the fresh vegetables made that soup taste fresher and better than other soups.

My brother wasn't that hungry so he just ordered an appetizer of calamari for his meal. Calamari is squid breaded and fried. I like it because it has a unique taste that I think is really good. I'm not a huge fan of raw calamari with no breading because it's really rubbery and chewy. This calamari tasted tender and not really chewy. It was served with a sweet sauce, and fried onions and carrots. The calamari tasted great! It was one of the best I've had. 

We will go to Pho All Seasons more often now that we know it is a good restaurant. I recommend it!