Tasty Stuff I Ate in 2014

I don't post details of every meal I eat, as I don't want to sound too obnoxious about my foodie adventures and don't have pictures of everything I ate.  However, there were a few dishes that really stood out to me this year as delicious.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of all of them.  In no particular order, these are dishes/food I found particularly good and tasty that I ate in 2014 that hasn't been mentioned on my blog yet.

1) Beef Tendon Puffs from Alta CA, San Francisco

I don't even know how to describe this.  Deep fried beef tendon, it's puffed up, it's salty goodness.

2) Mapo Tofu from Z&Y Restaurant, San Francisco

After consuming this, I couldn't believe I'd been eating such horrible mapo tofu at other places for so long.  After eating this mapo tofu, I began a half-serious hunt to find the best mapo tofu in the Bay Area.  The mapo tofu at Mission Chinese was the closest competitor, and the one from Yiping in San Ramon was also quite good, but this is still the best mapo tofu I've found.

3) lamb w/ squid ink pasta, yogurt, cumin, harissa from Mission Chinese, San Francisco

Although the tiger salad is perhaps more famous from Mission Chinese, and was good, I thought this was the best dish there.

4) beef grilled in a bed of hay from Saison, San Francisco

I literally put this 1-2 ounce of steak in my mouth and couldn't believe what I was eating.  It was single handedly the greatest piece of steak I'd ever tasted in my life.

5) squid fried rice from Ramen Shop, Oakland

I ate this and thought, "Who would have thought perhaps the best fried rice I've ever eaten in my life would come from a ramen place."