Looking for Chai Milk tea with grass jelly: There’s a Taiwanese restaurant In Bellevue named Looking for Chai where everyone speaks Mandarin, photographs of Taipei 101 line the wall, and they have a handwritten menu of about 30 tea drinks written in traditional Chinese before their English translations. When I ordered a milk tea with grass jelly, I realized I had forgotten to specify the sweetness. But the tea was perfect, with an deep herbal flavor barely sweetened and slippery grass jelly that verges on medicinal but exactly as you ... (read more) 5.0/5.0
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Lopez Island Mint chocolate ice cream: We’ve had some hot weekends in Seattle and I had a sudden craving for mint ice cream the other day, so I decided to treat myself to a new brand I hadn’t tried before. Lopez Island Creamery is based in Anacortes, WA, which I only know from PW Elverum & Sun, and makes, according to the packaging “handmade ice cream one batch at a time.” The ice cream is pure white in color and features bite sized chocolate chips (not the shaved chocolate you sometimes get with this classic flavor). It was exa... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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Happy Lemon Dragonfruit slush with salted cheese cream: A seasonal drink from Happy Lemon featuring a caffeine-free fruit slush topped with salted cheese foam. The dragon fruit has a refreshingly tart flavor, like berries and kiwi combined, and the slight savor ones of the cream gives it a great balance, like salted whipped cream. One of my favorite fruit slush drinks of recent memory. 4.5/5.0
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Daybird Strawberry Lemonade: This strawberry lemonade is exceptional on its own but even more so as a companion to spicy foods. I had it alongside the fried chicken sandwich at Daybird (which is definitely worth seeking out), and as amazing as the sandwich was, I was actually left most impressed with the freshness of this drink, which captures perfectly the tart and sweet flavor of fresh strawberries. You can see the quality just in the color of the drink itself, with it's striking red-orange hue. I can't think of any w... (read more) 5.0/5.0
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Nezu No Pan Lemon Poppy Seed Bread: The other flavored bread that I received from the bakery Nezu No Pan, located close to Nezu Station in Tokyo, is a lemon poppy seed loaf. It's pleasantly acidic, with a lemon flavor that's both sweet and sharp but not overly so, as the flavor is mellowed out by the pillowy, chewy bread. The texture somehow combines the best of mochi-like chewiness with the moist, soft consistency of freshly baked bread. A standout combination – the flavor alone is definitely one of the best lemon breads I... (read more) 4.5/5.0
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Nezu No Pan Mugwort Bread with Red Beans: My friend purchased two different mini loafs from Nezu bakery Nezu No Pan, whose bread has a texture unlike any I've had before. The outside of the loaf is a normal thin crust, but the inside is stretch and chewy, a bit like mochi but definitely lighter (for example, you can easily break off a piece). This bread has a vivid green color and slightly bitter herbal flavor from mugwort, a plant used to flavor some Asian desserts (the only other time I had it was also in Japan, and it was used ... (read more) 4.5/5.0
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