While the typical milieu of street food by definition is a small stand or cart in a crowded bustling street or alleyway, in larger U.S. urban centers such as Dallas one can often find a strip-mall restaurant serving its take on this culinary adventure.
We are always on the lookout for such places because while we adore the Petra and the Beasts of the world, sometimes you just want to feast on an unpretentious fried something or other that doesn’t even pretend to be farm-to-market sourced, and pay for it using the spare change you manage to scrounge from under the cushions of your couch or the floorboards of your car.
With that in mind, we visited HOJA Bubble Tea & Asian Street Food in Plano, which promises Taiwanese street food freshly and affordably prepared. “Hoja” apparently means “delicious” in Taiwanese, and we’ll take Google’s word for it. Etymology aside, it was worth the trip.
As the name implies, they serve a bunch of teas in the form of latte, milk foam, slush, milk, original and fruit tea, all with the requisite toppings we’ve all come to expect in this boba era such as jelly, boba, ice cream, popping boba, jam and chia, to name a few As usual you specify the ice and sugar level as a percentage. We were here for the food, but for those who want their boba, you’re covered.
We started with an order of crispy king oyster mushrooms, which arrived golden-brown and hot on a larger plate than we were expecting. The thick and substantial oyster mushrooms were a welcome take on the more common white button mushroom, possessing more umami and texture that made for a pleasant bite.
Our mains were a Taiwanese bento box and a G-pie. The G-pie is a crispy fried chicken steak of flattened breast that one eats straight out of the paper wrapper in true street food style. It was about $10 and was a lot of food — cooked just right, moist and tender, with just a hint of Chinese five-spice flavor bringing it all together.
The braised pork rice with pork belly bento box comes with a stewed egg, sweet corn and vegetables. It was served on a plate rather than in a traditional bento box, which added to its home-cooked feel. The large serving of rice was topped with minced pork, and the braised pork belly was plentiful as well. Half an egg as well as some really good cabbage completed the overflowing plate for around $12.
Our dessert was some boba cream foam, brioche toast topped with boba and served with a little cup of cream that you pour over yourself to complete the dish.
This is one of those places where there are so many things on the menu that sound yummy and wonderful that it can be a bit overwhelming. Multiple visits are in order so we can try things such as the crispy pork chop bento box, ginger duck soup, yachun noodles with braised pork, bawan meat balls, crispy popcorn chicken, a sausage with sticky rice sandwich that looks like a really interesting hot dog, a dried pork sandwich, peanut toast, matcha and moon cakes. Oh, you can also get frozen entrees to go.
In short, if you enjoy some delicious munchies simply prepared without the need for reservations, a coat and tie or dipping into your savings account, then this place is definitely worth checking out.
