Fooding: NBC Seafood, Half and Half, Lenzini's Pizza, and Red Rock

Fooding

NBC, Half and Half, Lenzini's, Red Rock

Pork blood nom nom.

The spread.

Kristina needed her deep fried shrimp ball on a sugarcane stick.

Add in pai gut and ngau paak yip (pork spareribs and ginger beef tripe).

Christine updating the group on her crazy social life.

Carts everywhere.

Crowded.

Shiny new Nissan Z (RZ34).

Fkn asian drivers. BMW X3 driver was nowhere to be found for several minutes as he blocked me in.

Half and Half. It's been a long time.

Fall promotion.

Inside hasn't changed much.

Large oolong fresh milk tea, 25% sweet, with honey boba.

Close-up.

Getting my butt kicked at Terraforming Mars.

Lenzini's Pizza is okay. Utility. Greek salad was a good choice, needed veggies.

And getting my butt kicked again, this time in Wingspan.

Butt kicked a third time. Getting better at Wingspan tho, now usually closer to 70 points than 50 points.

Red Rock's sole US location as of this visit, Torrance.

Lunch box sounds tasty.

Salad. Again utility.

Soup. Potato, onion, not sure what else?

Large steak-don, medium rare, with egg added.

Steak was a bit lower in quality than I remembered. Maybe try the sliced beef don next visit?

NBC Seafood is an old standby for dim sum, especially for fans of carts. t'was fun for the group to catch up with Christine's crazy social life over ngau paak yip (ginger beef tripe) and deep fried shrimp balls, and getting there early was clearly a good idea to get seated right away. Had some pork blood eaters too so was able to do almost a reasonable spread of the actual (American) dim sum experience-- just missed feng zhao (chicken feet).

Board games afterwards. Getting better at both Terraforming Mars and Wingspan, although Sue is still kicking everyone's butts in both. Not quite sure what the evolution of strategy has been; in Terraforming Mars you basically need to maximize all opportunities to earn points/money/resources and adapt/optimize appropriately. Such as if you need a particular tag on a card, or a certain amount/production of a particular resource, go ahead and aim for that, but be flexible if those take longer to come out than you expect, and be ready to take advantage of other options in the meantime.

Wingspan, being much less action-rich than Terraforming Mars (in fact, actions increase in scarcity as the game goes on), is a bit less elaborate in strategy, but you still have to maximize points earning and your card/deck/resource building engine. Paying attention to how those build out is easier than Terraforming Mars but the balance there is still tough, feels like I've been doing a better balance of/usage of both high-bird-point cards and bonus cards. The recent release of the Nesting Box along with the Asia Expansion has significantly increased the number of bonus cards and added a new end-of-game power (yellow power) to certain birds. More playing is definitely necessary.

Dinner during board games was Lenzini's Pizza. Nothing special, especially with the recent explosion in trendy pizza places, but for a local restaurant they do the job, and it's nice to support small businesses.

Last interesting meal of the weekend was Red Rock's sliced beef don and cut steak don down in Torrance the next day. Sadly the Sawtelle location closed a few years ago and has yet to return, as the Torrance location is not convenient. Went with the large cut steak don, as that's a slightly bigger portion than the large cut steak don, plus paid for the soup and salad combo. Add a raw Jidori egg for the full experience, mix it all together, and it's pretty decent, even if the quality of the steak seems to be lower than what I remembered. Perhaps the actual sliced beef don on the next visit as that's their claim to fame?