| rev:text
| - "It kinda pisses me off how much I liked this place" was a comment made by my husband shortly after our dinner at Paid in Full. It hit exactly on the nose what I was feeling, but could not verbalize.
To give some back story, a couple years ago I had an extremely disappointing meal at another Japanese tapas place in town that shall remain nameless. I was so disappointed, in fact, that I swore off Asian tapas altogether; believing the cuisine to be overrated, overpriced, and underwhelming as a whole. To this day, that meal still qualifies for my list of top 5 worst dining experiences.
This all said, I heard great things about Paid in Full; at least enough from the reviews on Yelp and texts from my sister and Ghia G to pique my interest. To be honest, what convinced me and my husband to give it a shot was not so much the food as it was the promise of hip hop playing in the restaurant and a drink on the menu called "Wu Tang Punch". I'm not kidding. My husband, our friend, and I were sold on Wu Tang Punch *THROWS UP THE W*.
As a quick aside, hip hop playlist was on point, save for the one Will Smith song that came on. Also, unfortunately, delicious as it was, Wu Tang Punch is not alcoholic. Not a dealbreaker though because the food far exceeded our expectations.
So, let's talk food. Here's what we ate, in order of how it was received:
UDON FRIES
French fries cut spiral-style in long, udon noodle-esue strips and topped with animal-style sauce. I was advised that it can be challenging to eat this with chopsticks. Naturally, I decided to only eat these with chopsticks. The long strands of fries were fun. However, since they are udon-esque, keep in mind that they're "softer" than they are crispy. But the sauce. Oh my goodness, the sauce. They nailed it so well that one might suspect they just stole a bunch of In-N-Out sauce packets and hid them in the kitchen somewhere.
KARAAGE
Just delicious. All the pieces were juicy and crisp; perfect with the maggi ranch dressing
SWEETBREAD KATSU
I love me some sweetbreads. These were great. That is all.
TRADITIONAL TAKOYAKI
The only place I've had that I would consider "better" are the ones in Little Tokyo in Downtown LA. But that's also partly because the ones in Little Tokyo are $2 and eaten while waiting for Daikokuya. There's levels there.
KUROBOTA CORN DOGS
I'm having a bit of a rebirth in that I've suddenly decided I like corn dogs. I hated these as a kid. These are great; sausage was juicy and paired well with the nicely fried cornmeal exterior.
SEA OKONOMIYAKI
Yo, this is bomb, dude. So good. So full of seafood. So good.
(The above concluded our initial order for 3 people. This was plenty of food. However, because everything was so good and we learned that the foie okonomiyaki was on the way off the menu, we got greedy and ordered more food.)
CLAMS WITH UNAGI DUMPLINGS
If I wasn't about to reach max capacity, I would have drank all the broth. Let's just say my husband dislikes clams, but was sopping those suckers up.
FOIE OKONOMIYAKI
Fall on a plate, man. So warm and rich. *INSERT HEART EYES*
The service was great. We were immediately greeted upon entering. Once a table was cleared for us, Brian came over, introduced himself and Karen, and welcomed us. Both were warm and attentive; I don't think I ever ran out of water to drink! I enjoyed conversing with them and discussing their thoughts on the menu items.
I think the best indicator of my feelings about a new place is when I start compiling lists of things to order next time. I have such a list here. And, perhaps, a list for a visit after that. I basically just want to eat everything they make here. Paid in Full resurrected my faith in Asian tapas.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)