We slept well after our dinner at Mountain House, we thought our room at the renovated Best Western wasn't bad, except for the terrible WiFi, but heck, we were here to relax, right?
We got up rather early (for a Saturday) since we had three stops in mind. The first being Porto's in West Covina, we used to go to the Buena Park location when I was doing work in OC and you can read all about Cathy's visits in her Rose Parade float posts. We just basically stop for two things the Missus wants, the dulce de leche cookies.
Next stop was a place we used to drive the 90 mile round trip to almost every Saturday when we lived in LA, the Torrance Farmers Market, which I've posted on several times already. Though it had been over ten years since our last visit! Sheesh, time sure does fly! We found parking where we've always have and was surprised to see that the Farmer's Market has grown a bit since the last time we were here!
We ended up buying quite a bit of produce and stuffs! Which was great since I was missing my usual Saturday shopping.
Torrance Certified Farmers' Market
2200 Crenshaw Blvd.
Torrance, CA 90501
Saturday 8am – 1pm 
As for our last stop?
I mentioned that I had another place for Cha Ca Thang Long in my last post on Song Long. I had done a bit of research and the name Canton Restaurant – Cháo Cá Chợ Cũ kept appearing.
The restaurant is located in a strip mall on Westminster Boulevard along with Stater Brothers, Seafood Paradise, a Shabu Shabu place, a Pho Shop, and a score of other businesses and homeless folk.
The place is known for their Cha Ca Thang Long and Chao (rice porridge).
It opens at 930am. We arrived at 945 and there was already a large party seated in the place.
An older couple run the place, the gentleman the front of house and the woman swings between the kitchen and the dining room.
We placed our orders and soon enough a large plate of herbs and veggies to accompany our Cha Ca arrived. The gentleman placed the plate on our table and I took a look noticing that there was a lot of brown and wilted produce on the plate.
This didn't seem like a good start. But a minute later, the woman came out of the kitchen and did her "rounds", quickly noticing the state of our plate, swooping in, and replacing it immediately. We didn't have to say a word! Good save!
Soon enough, all the other accoutrements made their way to our table.
And good lord, that mam nem was serious business…..whoa was did it smell potent.
The Cha Ca was quite lovely……
The portion sizes are quite generous, the fish very moist and tender. The seasoning is on point and that mam nem takes it to another level. Wish the onions were a bit more caramelized, but I didn't order this for the onions. The dill just helps to restore the palate while adding a citrusy-anise flavor to things.
We had seen another table order the Cha Gio, so we ordered that as well.
Man, these were super stuffed, full of porky goodness, hint of sweet- savory tones, and wrapped with rice paper. It was slightly more chewy than I prefer, but man, the overall package was much better than anything here is San Diego. This also heated up well in the air fryer!
As we walked out the Missus said to me, "looks like we have a new place for Cha Ca, huh? I think I want to come back here next week!" Whoa……
Canton Restaurant – Cháo Cá Chợ Cũ (Cash only)
8550 Westminster Blvd.
Westminster, CA 92683
Well, we were two for two on this overnighter. As for returning the following week….well, we'd have to wait an additional week for returning!
Thanks for stopping by!
Again the greens and frites were quite good. That Andouillette was quite, well, rotund, literally bursting at the seams. This was quite funky, shades of 
The Laundry" hangs over a bowl with a smoky-mildly spicy chili oil, with a large dollop of garlic paste in the middle. We quickly noticed that fat was dripping off the slices of pork belly enhancing the concoction.
This was an interesting Liang Cai (cold dishes) trio; the Duck Tongue in a chili oil was interesting. Usually, when we've had duck tongue, there's a hard inedible piece of bone in the center making eating it somewhat ponderous. The center of the tongue in this dish was cartilaginous, reminding us of 
And just wandered around. I ended up buying more Tarbais beans in the shop/deli above….yep, 35€ a kilo and I bought another half kilo.
The pig tongue was as expected, fairly chewy and very porky. Quite typical.
We quickly noticed that on this visit, the dumpling wrappers were very soft, lacking in the slight "pull" that we enjoy in jiaozi wrappers. The filling of the shrimp, pork, and leek was very moist and actually had a good amount of "soup" in them…very nicely flavored, though a bit short in the shrimp department.
But man, that filling was so gamy, moist, juice just poured out of it when I took a bite.
We did notice that the dish has changed since our last visit. The shrimp shells and the shrimp seems to have some coating; like the tofu skin, the portion size is smaller. The shrimp is not quite as delicate as it used to be. But the flavor is still there and the shells and tail are a pleasure to eat.
Soon enough the large plate of bun, herbs, and veggies. And of course the Missus enjoys the Banh Trang Me dipping it into the mam nem. As for the Mam Nem, we noticed that it's not quite as potent as it used to be.
As you can see, the Missus was all about the tamago on this day. This bowl had a lot of "stuffs"; scallion, spinach, bean sprouts, cabbage. The best item in the entire bowl was the menma which had a wonderful texture and the earthy-soy sauce tones were on point. The two slices of "chashu", I use the quotation marks because the two thin slices were not pork belly, it was lean and tough. 