The Tastiest Road - Raohe Night Market in Taipei Taiwan

Bring comfortable walking shoes!

Some nice takoyaki we found

Night markets are often what people think of when they think of Taiwan - long narrow streets filled with people bustling around trying to get their hands on whatever grub the stands are peddling. But what no one tells you is how much you walk because yes, it might seem obvious because it’s a night market on a street but the feeling of being stuck in foot traffic and your ankles begging and whining for mercy really put things into perspective. Luckily I wasn’t alone and brought my friend Nathan, who was in the neighboring city of Taoyuan for a mission trip (he went back to the US early after fracturing his arm in some serious street ball).

Ditch Day! Let's go get some boba, guys! - San Francisco, CA

Classic

BOBA!!!

Every year, around 400 Saint Francis seniors are blessed with an official "Ditch Day" where they go off to the beach to have fun or fish at a nearby lake. But because I run a food blog, I went to eat food in San Francisco. Our plan was for the South Bay people to meet up at the Mountain View station and head up to San Francisco by Caltrain (with Jennifer, the lone East Bay person, heading up by BART), but things kind of went wrong as soon as we started. Our great friend William woke up an hour after we got on the train, so we decided to check the the Museum of Modern Art without him. One of the main purposes of this trip was to get Jennifer some more photos for her Instagram, but the other big one was to check out some great bubble tea. The boba shop we decided to go to was Boba Guys - regarded as one of the best in the city. I just knew I had to check it out.

Indian Pizza! - Tasty Subs and Pizzas in Sunnyvale, CA

Nice and spicy

Have your friends ever agreed to meet up at a place then decide to pull out and move the entire group to another place? Well, that's how this food adventure started out. I was out with my friends after watching Alien: Covenant (spoiler alert: it's scary) and Paras, Athena and I were literally about to order at Teanado (maybe I'll write an article about this place sometime) when Shlok gives me a call and tries to convince me to go get pizza instead of some good bento. I had never heard of "Indian pizza" before, and I wasn't too keen on getting my mouth burned because of how spicy it was, but I decided to trust him and we went off to the next plaza. Just a word of caution: parking in the plaza is pretty rough. It took a slightly shady parking lot move for us to get a spot for Shlok and Nihar but it did the trick (Please note that this blog does not endorse the use of shady parking lot tricks).

Grill Talk - Sumika Grill in Los Altos, CA

Miles P. Olson (2017, color)

Smoky

Actually, before we move on to the next parts of Vegas, I have to write about a stellar dining experience I had in my hometown Los Altos, CA. This place is better known as "Steve Job's Hometown", or even "small town next to Mountain View", but the downtown has some restaurants that can definitely hold its own. I'm here this time with Miles P. Olson at Sumika Grill, one of the higher rated restaurants in the town. Miles and I talk often on Snapchat and Messenger, but we only really make the commute to hang out when someone is visiting from outside of the Bay Area. That being said, I was really excited to see Miles again, since we had quite a bit to catch up on since our last time out for food.

We Died Today - Spiciest Ramen Challenge

I think I almost died today

Confident Kristi, the cook

Sometimes you have good ideas with friends. We have fun together, see cool things, do fun things. Sometimes you make wrong decisions. The right wrong decisions. We make mistakes. But these mistakes bring us closer as friends as we realize our mistakes.

Three months ago, my friend Kristi persuaded me to eat the world's spiciest instant noodles.

I Got Baked in San Francisco - The Sequel

So is it habit forming?

Erika!!!

So Erika lets the Carleton GroupSnap (is that a thing) know that she's going to be in San Francisco on January 28th, so guess what happened: Miles and I roll out through BART and CalTrain and meet up with her at Montgomery. So Erika, Miles and I were pretty close friends during the SCSI, and the main thing that brought us together was our shared love of music. Miles likes more underground and new artists, so when he played music off his phone it was always an adventure for me (and probably Erika, I don't really know). But anyway, we're all good friends, and of course Miles and I agree to go to Erika's top choice location: Mr. Holmes Bakehouse. That's right folks, we're back. Let's get baked in San Francisco

Torchy's Tacos - Pure Bliss and Pain in Houston, TX

*Continuing my story from last post*
So I eventually made my way to Houston by Megabus (super cheap guys, it's worth it!) and ate at this fabulous restaurant that I'll talk about later. Anyway I toured Rice while I was there and found that it was amazing. The neighborhood Rice is in is right at the border of shiny high rise buildings and a quaint suburban area that really reminds me of Palo Alto and Los Altos. I got a new AirBnb that was actually closer to Rice than my other one, and boy am I glad for that. In the morning, I got to go for a run around the rice campus (~3.3 miles if anyone is curious) and that really helped me get a sense of the campus. Also, being able to walk to my information session from my AirBnb helped me acquaint myself with the campus and surrounding area before my tour. Back to the school though: rice is amazing.My tour guide was filled with energy and led my group through the surprisingly big campus located right in Houston. For my friends from Carleton, the campus was easily two or three times the size of Carleton even when you put in the big grassy patch with the hill and tree.