King Hua- Los Angeles Dim Sum with Sku's recent eats

SKU is a Los Angeles food and Whiskey blogger that I met through youtube. He does blogs about restaurants and food in LA and every Wednesday he writes about whiskey. Sku is a food explorer and he drives all over to find new places to eat. Yesterday, he took me to a place called the San Gabriel Valley. It's about 15 miles east of LA and has a very big population of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants. There are thousands of Chinese restaurants everywhere. Sku took me to a very nice dimsum (ヤムチャ）restaurant called King Hua.


The dimsum was very yummy and I am a little sad that I am not eating it right now. They also have lots of sea animals in tanks. You get to choose which animal you want to eat and they take it out for you.

I only ate three of these shrimps, but I named them all.

From left to right, they are.
Tabitha, Jacob, Shintaroo, Junpei, Mia, Eric, Toby, Nathaniel, Naomi, Leah, Carl Jr, Steve, Ichiro, Kenta, Nokko, Bruce, Perry, Jonathan, Linda, Pedro, Mandy and Candy (twins), Penelope, Todd, Yurie, Yuki, Jean Bobo, Pierre, Fatima, Gogo, Bobo, Jojo, Momo, Mimi, Mokomoko, Yokopoko, Macchupicchu, Chappuchappu, and Jim.





I think it's nice to be able to make friends with an abalone before you eat him. Shown here is Bobby.





This duck is very tasty, but you don't get to choose him. Maybe it's hard to keep a lot of ducks in the middle of a big city. I would have like to have met this duck before I tasted him.




This friendly clam is called mirugai in Japanese. In America he is called a Geo Duck. I try to explain that he is not a duck, but nobody listens. He is very sweet, crunchy and tasty. I like to eat him raw or cooked in butter and garlics. His foot looks like an elephant's trunk but it tastes very different(and less tough).





These are called chicken knuckles. They are fried pieces of chicken's cartilage. I'm not sure where chicken's have knuckles, but I'm glad they do. I have one wish to ask all the chickens of the world, and this is it "Keep on being tasty. "



You can meet sku on youtube where he does videos about whiskey. If you want to know what the difference is between bourbon, scotch, Tennessee whiskey and rye, his videos can help you. I joined him in this one where he talks about Japanese whiskey.

Rainy Day Foods

The biggest storm in five years is hitting Los Angeles. Today slushy hail fell down and it looked like snow. It almost reminded me of being home in Shimane with snowy winters.

Lots of rain means lots of days inside so I have been cooking. I went to the rainy farmers market and bought some turnips. I roasted them in the oven with olive oil until they got soft and shriveled and looked like a baby bears toes.
It can be dangerous to eat real baby bear toes because the mother can get aggressive, so this is a safer way and you don't have to hike around looking for the bear.

The radishes came with big green leaves stuck to them. I cut of the leaves and cooked them with garlic and a potato. Then I put them in a blender with some dashi and made a very green soup.


Yesterday I made one of my favorite things. Tarako spaghetti. Tarako is the eggs of a cod fish. You can buy egg sacks at a Japanese supermarket. Then all you have to do is take the eggs out of the sack and cook them in butter till they turn pale colored. Then you mix in some spaghetti and stir it. You can put a little nori on top. It's so easy and full of yum.




You can see some video of Tarako spaghetti in Tokyo at the end of the video below, and also yummy Kobe beef in Kobe.

Hawaii, and dogs drinking beer

On my recent trip to Hawaii I saw and ate many nice things. I ate some of the things I saw, but not most of them.

One of my favorite things about Hawaii is Fish. At the FoodLand store on Kapahulu and Kapiolani Blvd you can get many kinds of fresh fish that is very cheap. I got Ono, Ahi, Opah, Shark, and some other kinds for just a few dollars. I cooked them with shoyu (soy sauce) and garlic and ate them over rice every day. The tuna belly shown in this video was TORO fatty tuna. I ate it as sashimi and it tasted like eating a beautiful underwater dream where happy fish float into your mouth and stomach. If you buy this amount of toro at MItsuwa or Marukai in Los Angeles, it will cost $15-20.

I was sad to learn about the problem of canine alcoholism in Japan. Some dogs get depressed and restless from island life and they become abusers of American lite beers. I have tasted the beer this dog is drinking. It's called "Coors LIte". I'm pretty sure that the company designs the taste to appeal to dogs.

Giovanni's shrimp truck is the name of the truck shown at the end of the video. It's a famous shrimp truck in the town of Haleiwa in the North Shore of Oahu. You can get shrimp in butter and garlic, lemon butter, or spicy.
I hope that when I die, I don't find out that God is a vengeful salt water shrimp.




I have many videos about Hawaii. Here are some of the most popular ones.

How to speak Pidgin



Ken Tanaka eats S&*T


Ken Tanaka Lost Parody



Hawiian STrip Club


Ken Tanaka meets a nice Tarot farmer

"I am Robot" won the 2009 Youtube Video Awards , thanks everybody.

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Thank you all for voting for my video "I am Robot". The video (shown above) won the 2009 Youtube Japan awards for its category. You can seeall the winners here at my friend Hikosaemon's blog.


I am very excited because I will be getting a youtube trophy. I already have a pair of youtube socks, so they will go nicely with my trophy.


I want to say thanks to everybody who took the time to vote for my video. It was very kind of you.

Ken Tanaka Loves You.

KFC= Kentucky Fried Cannabis?

I got hungry earlier today and decided to get some friend chicken at the nearest KFC.

But, this West Los Angeles Kentucky Fried Chicken has been turned into a different kind of KFC. It's called Kind For Cures and is now a medical marijuana dispensary. I stopped by hoping to get some ordinary KFC fried chicken, but I noticed that the smell of the smoke coming out of this KFC didn't smell very chickeny.

When I asked the shop keeper if they still served fried chicken he said "We only have nuggets now".

The Los Angeles city government is trying to limit these medical marijuana dispensaries because some of them are located near churches (including this KFC) and schools. This KFC may be gone soon. I think they are going to move into an old Chick-Fil-A shop next.


AFter you watch this video, you will understand what I meant in yesterday's blog post when I talked about trying to make a video after having an eye exam. My pupils were dilated from the eye drops and I didn't want it to look like I had been eating some special chickens while making this video.