Comments (0) BEST TAIWANESE STREET FOOD - 2009
Pa Pa Walk
The bright yellow walls and Hello Kitty décor at Pa Pa Walk might make you think for a moment that you'd wandered off-course and stumbled into yet another mini-mall trinket shop. In fact, you've just entered one of Southern California's foremost bastions of Taiwanese street food. The top sellers here are dishes like the cold cuts platter of marinated pig's ears, seaweed, bean curd and boiled egg, and the oyster omelet, apparently classics in Taiwan. The restaurant's young, well-dressed clientele also drops in for less exotic hits, like popcorn chicken ($4.50), Taiwanese sausage and egg fried rice ($6.75), and especially the cream soup in fried toast ($6.75), which is served in a "bread coffin." Dessert may be Pa Pa's biggest draw: Make sure to save room for the mango shaved ice, which is basically an enormous snow cone doused with condensed milk and smothered in deliciously ripe cubes of fruit. Simple and especially satisfying on a sweltering San Gabriel Valley day, the large version, which goes for $10, is big enough for four and comes with a scoop of homemade mango ice cream on top. 227 W. Valley Blvd., Suite 148-B, San Gabriel. (626) 281-3889.
—Nicolas Taborek
