Real 真饌 Taiwanese Cuisine
9292 Warren Pkwy ste 200, Frisco, TX 75035
Google: 4.9 Stars (38 Reviews)
Habibi-san’s rating:
My flight home was delayed six hours the Sunday after my Bachelor Party weekend. Perhaps the universe required a karmic correction to balance out one of the best weekends of my life by marooning me in the Chicago Midway airport. Or, more likely, booking Frontier to save a few bucks (despite incessant warnings from my brothers) played out exactly according to plan. I could practically hear their voices shouting “I told you so” upon learning that my plane had somehow been “decommissioned” and was no longer “fit for travel.” Mind you they announced this over the PA system as the previous flight was disembarking. Neck pillow laden Floridians looked up inquisitively at the mention of their near casting in a LOST reboot before shrugging and moving on to baggage claim. Head pinned solemnly to my chest, I followed in their direction to my own personal Purgatory, the local airport food court.
What comes to your mind when you hear “food court?” For me, it is eating Sbarro with my mom at LaGuardia, too young and innocent to realize I have essentially just eaten HEB hummus at the Baghdad International Airport. It is a lukewarm, soggy, and delicious Chicago dog bought with my $15 Frontier food voucher since I was profoundly incapable of ordering one at Wrigley Field the day before.
It is Dallas elites choosing Cava on a Sunday at Northpark Mall as a healthy alternative to a closed Chick-Fil-A.
TANGENT: My family’s weekend indulgence was Chinese lunch buffets after 11 AM Mass. The build your own stir fry stand, crawfish bucket, and always gastronomically dangerous oysters on the half shell were family favorites. Not once did our love of waffle fries distract from our Sunday buffet vocation. Better said, even if Chick-Fil-A were open, in my opinion all Sunday lunches should involve 80 mislabeled buffet stations of varying sodium levels.
A lot of these associations were pinging around in my head as I gorged on my “hot” dog with a hodgepodge of Dallas locals in the Chicago Midway food court. It was somewhat eerie learning about the lives of my fellow passengers. Several of them frequented the same bars and breweries as myself, one couple insinuating that they may recognize my curly hair from last year’s Oktoberfest at Peticolas Brewery in Dallas’ Design District. I was shocked, maybe the coincidences in LOST were not as far fetched as I thought as a teenager. Maybe our island was the Chicago Midway food court.
More likely, we were creating a modern adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit.” Even within the first delayed hour, I grew tired of Passenger #1’s explanation of why he was a Chiefs fan despite living in Flower Mound his entire life. My patience was wearing thin. Are all food courts this punitive?
Now, consider the “food hall.” Do you want a high-end alternative to Sbarro? How about pizza by the slice at “Taste of Tuscany” made by a guido who looks exactly like Hayden Christensen in Little Italy?
How about a live performance on Thursday night from an Eagles cover band, which you can watch from the brewery on the second floor? Sounds like an urbanite’s gentrified wet dream, right? To be honest, it is pretty great. Eating a 7/10 caterpillar roll, a side of tabouli, and a wagyu slider for dinner is the type of variety that would make a Costco gold member very jealous. But, nothing comes close in terms of flavor and quality to the food courts at Asian supermarkets.
The H Mart in Carrollton sells almost anything. You can buy Kevin Malone’s foot bath, a stainless steel cookware set, live crab from a bucket, and grab a twenty minute back massage on the way out. However, what the Carrollton H Mart does not sell is Real 真饌 Taiwanese Cuisine’s mapo tofu omurice at their food court.
So, while I may feel like a father choosing between two sons, I must admit that the food court at 99 Ranch Market in Frisco is the best food court in DFW thanks to the good folks at Real 真饌 Taiwanese Cuisine.
Firstly, the egg drop/miso soup hybrid was heartier and gloopier than the picture can adequately demonstrate. It was an appropriate appetizer for what was about to come next: Habibi-san’s Holy Grail. OK, not exactly, but this is absolutely a top ten dish for me. The red-hot roasted chili oil in the dish was perfectly balanced, the pork and tofu portions were generous, and the Sichuan peppercorn numbing agent was flavorful but subtle.
Now, if you want an inundation of peppercorns to make you feel like you just got a root canal, make sure to order the mapo tofu from the good people at Sichuan Folk. That mapo tofu is LIGHTS OUT in a “you will have to eat this over the course of three days to allow your taste buds to grow back” type of way.
The omurice, or “omelet over rice,” must have been made using at least three eggs and the best non stick pan from H Mart. You may have seen the viral fluffy homestyle omelet from Kyoto’s Kichi Kichi Omurice on your For You Page, but I hesitate to see how much better it could be than the one at Real 真饌 Taiwanese Cuisine. For lunch next Sunday, do yourself a favor, eat this.
Ma al salama (さようなら ),
Habibi-san
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