Flavor Boulevard

The True Deluxe: cheese, medium-cooked quarter-pound hamburger on toasted egg buns, lettuce, tomato, garlic mayo (no mustard, thank god), and a crispy portobello mushroom stuffed with smoked mozzarella. When I eyed it, Eric was like, “it’s BIG. Maybe you two can share one.” You two being me and Cheryl. Now that I think about it, Eric hadn’t seen me with burgers before.

Luckily, Cheryl was also hungry and wanted her own burger. Hers was pretty small compared to the Deluxe, but she’s a skinny girl who thinks a regular In ‘n Out is sufficient. For Mai, there’s no burger too big.

The most prominent plus side of True Burger is that it’s ready in less than 5 minutes. It satisfies our imagination of what a burger should be. It smells of fast food (but not of McDonalds, how does McDonalds maintain that distinctive McDonalds smell all these years?!) and of industrialized America. I don’t even know why I’m writing about True Burger when nothing about it really screams significance, even its name. It’s just that, somehow, sitting in a classic, simplistic orange-colored fastfood joint in the middle of a modernizing city, chomping on a messy burger while staring at the wall art is oddly utopian, as if we were cut-out pieces of that messy Richard Hamilton’s collage.

Address: True Burger
146 Grand Ave.
Oakland, CA, 94612
(510) 208-5678
True Deluxe: $9, normal cheese burger: $5.65, fries: $2.60

In less than a month since its opening, everybody I know on 4th Street has been to Iyasare, from the regular shoppers to the shop owners, and everybody praises it. The restaurant, operated by former Yoshi’s executive chef Shotaro Kamio, replaces the equally cute and also Japanese O Chame. The two restaurants have different concepts, of course, and experiencing both in the same space – reminiscing on O Chame’s menu and atmosphere while savoring Iyasare’s – was like tasting the fleeting grandeur of ukiyo-e aesthetics in the most delicious way possible.

A beautiful arrangement: ikura (salmon roe), ankimo (monkfish liver), hotate (scallop, the white thing that is barely visible next to razor-thin slices of radish), mackerel (silvery grey, also almost invisible under the radish), and 4 beautiful sweet lobes of uni (sea urchin roe, on the maple leaf) ($22). The ankimo has a thick and dried rind, its flavors were a tad salty and smokey for my taste.(*) The uni was extra-creamy but a little too soft. The ikura was some lovely bubbles.

You can order a side of sushi rice with the sashimi. Or just sushi rice. Actually, I ate every single last grain of rice in that bowl, and I’d be happy to skip the sashimi.

Apple seaweed salad with fennel, pickled daikon and carrots, shaved bonito, citrus brown rice vinaigrette with fresh bits of blood orange, and two silken tofu cubes ($9). Nothing to complain here.

Wagyu beef tataki ($13), slightly seared; the best way to eat them, we found, is:
1. Place a tuft of green stringy stuff (julienned wasabi leaves, wasabi sprout, chicory, whatever leafy things) and a sliver of crispy garlic on a slice of beef,
2. Daintily use your chopsticks to roll the beef to enclose the greens and the tangerine bits,
3. Still using the chopsticks, turn the beef roll 2 times around to soak in the ponzu (the brown sauce).
4. Stuff it in your mouth (if you manage to keep it together this far). Delicious.

It was a Wednesday night, Iyasare was pretty peaceful and devoid of people, but only until about 7. Then, everybody in town poured in, the waitresses started to lose track of things, brought us things we didn’t order and simply couldn’t see us anymore.

Miso-glazed Maple Leaf duck confit ($20). Embarassingly, we thought the “Maple Leaf” was part of the dish (but no, it’s the name of the duck farm). In our defense, the maple leaf in the sashimi plate led us astray. 😛

I wasn’t too thrilled by the Tokyo turnip, the green beans and the gobo (burdock) in this dish. A length-wise-cut gobo would have been crunchier, and the turnip was cooked a hair too long. On the bright side, very rarely does a duck dish go wrong, and when it’s glazed with miso like this? Heavenly.

The BEST of the night: gyutan (grilled beef tongue) ($17). Well, I always love beef tongue, so I’m biased. Maybe the duck was better. But this beef tongue dish was perfect as a whole, from the quick-pickled cucumber to the trio of miso (the black akamiso had the deepest, richest flavor among the three). When you cut into a slice of gyutan, you could feel through your knife how tender it was. I even ate a fourth of the grilled lemon (under the right piles of gyutan).

We skipped desserts.

Address: Iyasare
1830 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 845-8100

FOODNOTE:
(*) For comparison, B-dama’s ankimo is still the champion on the East Bay, and Musashi’s ankimo is surprisingly satisfactory for its price mark.

A more comprehensive “map” of what we shared is on Ponga.

I met Judy in early November. I happened to sit down next to her at Teance, when she was just about to leave and I had just arrived. For some reason, Judy offered me a small, homemade cookie to try. The cookie was interesting, and so is Judy. We exchanged business cards.

With this post, I’m going to risk sounding like a sarong-wearing 62-year-old white-male yoga preacher [there are many of them in Berkeley, sometimes they start talking to you on the street and make everybody uncomfortable], because you know what, some philosophies are beautiful and there’s nothing wrong with appreciating them. With that said, if your patience runs low on the subjects of philosophy, spiritual growth or simply good feelings in general, skip ahead to Part II.

Part I – The Story behind the Treats

After September 11, 2001, Judy Fleischman moved from Oregon to New York, began training as a healthcare chaplain.

“I was on the go a lot,” said Judy. “I needed to bring food with me so that I wouldn’t go broke. In Oregon I got introduced to raw foods, so I started experimenting with making raw healthy snacks to keep me going… Snacks that weren’t just a sugar crash.”

After making batches of these raw, vegan treats with sprouted seeds for herself, she began sharing them with family and friends and began to feel what she called “the gift of giving”.

“Now when I think of the word ‘healthy’, it’s not just the food but the relationship with the people and the ingredients,” Judy said.

Judy’s inspiration stemmed from wagashi – petite, graceful Japanese sweets for tea ceremony that appeal to all five senses, and the philosophy of “mindful eating” in zen training, which she explains as knowing “the difference between a craving and real nourishment”.(*)

In the midst of working as a healthcare chaplain and interacting with stressed people, Judy felt that the treats she made were “wholesome”, and that she “had the urge to share and give to others”, so she started making single packagings to give them out to people at farmers’ markets. As part of the Sensing Wonder group, she was also giving out cups of iced jasmine tea at the Imagine Circle. The more she gave, the more fulfilling she felt.

Loving Live Treats “sprouted from this personal transformation and interaction with the community” to become what Judy hopes to be a mean to sustain her livelihood. Economically, we all need to make a living; spiritually, Judy appreciates and finds it enriching to be able to share what she makes with others – a way of life that she wants to pursue and believes that many others do. That’s why the cookies are wrapped in packages of three – one can surprisingly satiate your hunger (I was amazed myself, considering each is only 0.6 oz [about 17 grams]!), and there are two more to share with friends.

Or share with strangers. Over a month ago, Judy randomly shared it with me, a complete stranger. Somehow, we create new friendships that way, however temporary. Loving Live Treats from start to finish revolves around friendship, whether it was momentarily like the interaction with people at the Imagine Circle, or long-term like with Rodney Alan Greenblat, the artist who designed the label. Perhaps partly because it revolves around friendship, that Judy is happy when she makes them. That happiness shows in the treats, from the playful, childlike label inwards.

Part II – The Treats

Sprouted sunflower and golden flax seeds, coconut, agave nectar, Himalayan salt, low-temperature dehydrated and compressed into circular cubes (if you know a better word for this shape – not “cylinder”!, please tell me ^_^). There are three different flavors: lemon-vanilla-nutmeg, spirulina-vanilla, and cacao-cardamom. My personal favorites are the Coco Cardamom and the Spirulina (sorry, Nutmeg!), but they’re all precious actually, and the differences are about as pronounced as those between Chinese oolongs and Taiwanese oolongs. That’s the point – nothing too sweet, nothing too strong, just little seeds cozily nudged together. Satisfying on their own and a delicate but reassuring accompaniment to tea.

They’re the opposite of a chocolate chip cookie, which gives you instant satisfaction and an even bigger craving five seconds later. Recently, I watched this Japanese movie “I Wish” by director Hirokazu Koreeda (the Japanese title is Kiseki (奇跡)**), there’s a small detail that I can’t forget: the boys’ grandfather made karukan (a sweet rice-flour sponge cake), at first the older brother thought it wasn’t sweet enough, but Grandfather wouldn’t change his way. Near the end of the movie, the older brother gave a piece to his younger brother. The younger boy also found it “mellow”, i.e., a little bland. Afterwards, when the grandfather asked the older brother what his younger brother thought of the karukan, he smiled and replied “he’s still young”.

When I have an ice cream craving, and I have it ALL the time, admittedly I don’t always reach for an LLT Lemonilla Nutmeg. Like the younger brother in Kiseki, I’m still wet behind the ears when it comes to appreciating the finer things. But when I do reach for an LLT, I get surprised every time – it gratifies in the most pleasant way possible.

–/–

Loving Live Treats by Judy Fleischman: can be ordered for home delivery from GratefulGreens.com, found at the monthly Bay Area Homemade Market, and soon to be served at Teance and Asha Tea House (Berkeley).

–/–

FOODNOTES:

(*) According to the philosophy of mindful eating, there are six types of hunger – eye hunger, mouth hunger, nose hunger, stomach hunger, cellular hunger mind hunger and heart hunger. My guess is to satisfy a craving means you satisfy only one type of hunger, whereas real nourishment satisfies all six.

(**) For now, you can watch Kiseki here. You know how after watching some movie, someone would ask “did you like it?”, and all you can honestly say is “hmmm…”? Well, Kiseki is that kind of movie. It’s not loaded with laughters or gunshots or flying dragons or tear-jerking moments, but let it sit for a few days and the sweetness slowly steeps throughout your veins. Like the grandfather’s mellow karukan.

Technically four shots total, not one, but it’s not a meal, and it’s just a quick shout-out to what Kristen called “the best dessert she’s had” (“in a while”, I think?).

We first went to Revival a year and a half ago. Just like that time, we re-confirm this time that Revival excels at food jellies/sorbet/basically anything fruit and sweet.

The best dessert in Kristen’s opinion – Baked Alaska. (My heart died the day I knew Ippuku stopped serving black sesame ice cream, and I refuse to get attached to any other dessert.) The baked alaska is a layered ice cream and sponge cake (or whatever you can layer) in a meringue shell. In Revival’s case, from top down, it’s huckleberry sorbet, lemon-thyme ice cream and almond shortbread. If this is not Refreshing, nothing is. (Well, Ippuku’s black sesame ice cream was.)

Chocolate Tres Leches Cake with ginger sabayon, quince sorbet and ginger-chocolate crémeaux. Now it’s up to you to decide which on the plate is which. I have no idea. (We suspect the fruit slices are poached pear/quince, and the crispy looking things are ginger, but sabayon is a sauce)

It’s a pretty drink with a pretty-sounding name: Cotillion, like the French fluffy merry dance in the 18th century. Square One botanical vodka, Dolin Blanc vermouth, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, and creme de violette. Smell fantastically flowery but is actually quite strong – I can still see Kristen, Alice and Kendra cringing at every sip. 😀

Address: Revival Bar & Kitchen
2102 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 549-9950
Dessert for four: $8 per dessert, $10 for the Cotillion. A great chat with the friendly chefs if you’re sitting at the kitchen counter (or whatever it’s called).

UPDATE (2 days later)

The black sesame ice cream was too mealy and not cold enough, it tasted more like mooncake filling than ice cream. But the persimmon sorbet was perfect. (Again, Revival has a way with fruits 😉 )

Partly because of my busy schedule, partly because of the lack of good Vietnamese food in Berkeley, I haven’t had Vietnamese food for months. I miss it, of course. Luckily, the neighboring cuisines share so much similarities that my “comfort food” category has steadily expanded to enclose most of East Asia. If for some reason America and I don’t get along, I think I can happily merge into Taiwan and Japan (not sure about Korea – their food is too spicy…).

So when I crave comfort food, if it’s Sunday or Monday and Musashi is closed, I go down University Avenue to the Taiwan Restaurant. It’s the purple building next to Anh Hong, and it’s another case of generic-names-hence-don’t-go-there type of restaurant. However, two Taiwanese told me that it was “good enough” – the owner of Asha Tea House across the street, and Kristen. As with any Asian eating establishment, you have to know what to get at the Taiwan Restaurant, otherwise you end up with oily overload. I haven’t strayed once out of the usuals. It’s comfort food, there’s no need to change it. In fact, I come here just for one type of soup: the pickled cabbage soup with tripe.

Currently, this is my favorite soup in the whole Bay Area (not counting noodle soups, of course!). Nowhere else serves it. (The second time I ordered it, the waiter skeptically asked me if I knew what it was.) The pickled cabbage (Chinese pickled cabbage, similar to Vietnamese dưa muối) makes the broth sour and clear, the pork tripe is chewy and smooth. I would drink it to the last drop, and it delights even a grumpy stomach.

I’ve never seen such a spoon before.

Much to Mom’s chargrin, I pay no heed to the cleanliness behind the scene when I order at restaurants. Pig ears are crunchy and not so fatty – good enough for me (^_^).

Kristen introduced me to this dish – fried pork cutlet on rice with sweet pickled greens. It’s actually pretty oily, but the rice is soaked with the sweet and savory pork sauce… I intended to save half for the next day but in the end I cleaned up the bowl.

The last time I went, I paid a little more attention to the decoration (because the server forgot to bring me my pork, and I was just sitting there nibbling on the pig ears pretending to be cool). It looks rather classically Chinese – red lanterns and red table-clothed tables, all faded into a shade of cerise – hinting at some forgotten intention of being on the higher end. At the very least, it was set up to be a restaurant, not a simple food shack. Yet the food is cheap (these 3 dishes plus tip cost a meager $20.66), the atmosphere is utterly casual, and customers like me don’t ever think of its food as more than comfort food. The Taiwan Restaurant is, as its website claims, “the first restaurant in this country to serve Taiwan’s version of China’s epicurean delights”. I felt somewhat sad thinking that it has lost the glory that it might have once had.

The most pleasant surprise that prompted me to write about it was actually its tea. You know how all Chinese restaurants serve some kind of watered down “tea”, usually jasmine-flavored? The Taiwan restaurant actually serves Baochong. Watered down, but it’s still a legitimate Taiwanese oolong. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before, but now that I have, I have enough reasons to recommend this restaurant to everyone. It is indeed “good enough”.

Address: Taiwan Restaurant
2071 University Avenue,
Berkeley, California
(510) 845-1456

Through words of mouth (from a kid that comes to my office hour, to be precise), I learned that the ramen burger is here in Berkeley. Hah, you don’t have to be in LA or NY or SF to eat this (relatively) new craze(*). Mashable has a guide to make it yourself, but why go through the trouble when you can buy it?

Unlike all other hypes that turn out to be various degrees of meh (in no order, truffles, caviar, foie gras, Cheeseboard, M.Y. China, Fentons, et cetera), the ramen burger is delicious. I gorged it down, completely defeated. Farewell, my hype-bashing days.

So Oishi in Berkeley dishes out 3 types of ramen burgers ($9 each): pulled pork (with wasabi mayo), grilled chicken (with ginger miso sauce), and the usual beef patty (with teriyaki sauce). (You can ask them to swap the sauce.) We had enough sense to avoid the chicken burger (who wouldn’t?!), and were split between pork and beef. Both types contain sauteed mushroom and come with “Japanese fries” (katsuobushi and Japanese mayo). Both sides finished with complete satisfaction.

They give you fork and knife, too, because unless you’re very skilled (or just take mousy bites), the burger will fall apart sooner or later and you get a sort of yakisoba with meat. Still delicious, just harder to eat by hand.

A personal plus: So Oishi sprouted from the same spot that used to house my old favorite (albeit barely average) Berkel Berkel.
A not-so-personal minus: they claim to be “the very first authentic Japanese ramen soup, ramen bun burger and sushi burrito restaurant… in Berkeley, CA”. Well if you want to be authentic, make sure you can spell. “Oishii” (おいしい、which means “delicious”) has two i’s, not one.

Good fries, though!

Address: So Oishi
2428 Telegraph Ave (next to Thai Noodle 2 and across the street from Rasputin Music)
Berkeley, CA
(510) 644-8278

Foodnote: (*) Keizo Shimamoto first invented it in NY late July – it’s been that long already?!

The luxury of cold noodles on colder days. Everything was perfect, from the taste of wasabi in the noodle dipping sauce to the tail end of those shrimps. So perfect that I couldn’t properly focus my camera phone.

Too bad Chef Koichi Ishii only makes the soba on Friday and Saturday from 11 am to 1 pm.

Pictured: Ten zaru soba (soba with tempura shrimps and vegetables) – $18. More details on what’s in the picture are here.

For dessert, we had soba tofu (tofu made from buckwheat instead of soy) with white sesame and kinako (roasted soybean flour), drenched in melted brown sugar. (^_^)

Shanghai Dumpling King is hands down the best value dimsum restaurant in the Bay Area – affordable price, great dumplings (especially the xiao long bao (Shanghai soup dumplings)), friendly staff (the man remembers me from over a year ago!). Click on the image below to see what we got this time around.

Not pictured is the Hung Zhou crab and pork dumplings, but we’ve covered them last time. (They are basically xiao long bao with crab meat, and this time they were even juicier than the xiao long bao. Mmmmmmm)

On a side note, I recently discovered Ponga, which is still in beta phase but has lots of potential to become a great tool to visually tell a story – every detail in the picture can be tagged, described, linked to more info, and further attached with an image or a video. This post is my first experiment to blog using Ponga. What do you think? Do you like it? Hate it? Find it cumbersome? Let me know your feedback in the comments!

In summer 2011, I ate at China Village once per a friend’s recommendation and was not super impressed (like I ever). Then it burned down in early 2012 (so did Intermezzo and a few other restaurants on Telegraph which I also visited in summer 2011…) and I hardly missed it. A few days ago, Cheryl and Eric called me up, “We’re going to that restaurant on Solano I told you about, wanna come?” I thought Cheryl told me about some dimsum place in Albany… “Sure!” Turns out it was China Village. (Now I wonder if she ever mentioned a dimsum place at all…)

Although China Village does have dimsum, it’s not a place to order dimsum. It is known for Szechuan food – spicy, oily, rich and usually a combination of all three. The menu has a gazillion items, and your experience definitely depends on what you order. Not everything is a wow (as clearly indicated by my first visit, and by names such as “classic sweet and sour pork with pineapple”[*]). Ask the waiter for recommendation.

Usually, I ask the waiters just for kicks, because 9 times out of 10 their recommendations turn out disappointing (most memorable examples: here and here). But China Village does surprise me with its service – the restaurant is fully operated by family members, the waiters remember Cheryl and Eric from their previous visits, and the chef[**] personally came out to tell us to switch order because what we wanted would be too spicy. That’s sweet. 🙂

Item #206 – 川式牛腩面 Szechuan beef stew noodle soup ($8.95). The beef is similar to the beef in niu ro mien but the broth is spicy.

Item #71 – 东坡烧鸭 Dong Bo braised duck ($16.95). Not spicy, super tender. This is what we switched into per Chef John Yao’s warning. (At the beginning, we asked for a mild #69 – 砂锅啤酒鸭 clay pot duck with beer-infused sauce – but Chef Yao said it can’t be made mild.)

Item #175 – Sauteed bitter melon with eggs ($9.95). Definitely not “restaurant-worthy item” in Asia but it’s hard to find bitter melon here (except in Vietnamese and Chinese markets) and we love bitter melons too much to pass.

Item #72 – 家常肘子 Five spice hot and spicy pork shoulder ($18.95). This one can be made not spicy. And LOOK AT THAT SIZE!!!!! The three of us could barely make a dent! SUPER tender, SUPER flavorful. I can eat it for days (and I do, with the leftovers…)

With the bill, the restaurant also gave each of us a small bowl/cup of sweet red bean soup with tapioca pearls (not the tapioca in bubble teas. These are “bot bang” in Vietnamese, but what are they called in Chinese?). It was so simple and so soothing.

This time, I can see why my friends keep going back here.

Address: China Village
1335 Solano Avenue,
Albany, CA 94706
chinavillagealbany.com

Footnote:
[*] In Vietnam (and I suspect throughout Asia), not every eating establishment can be called a “restaurant”, and not every dish is worthy of being served as a restaurant item. Sweet and sour pork can be good, but it’s nowhere complex and luxurious enough to be in the same menu with, say, “five spice pork shoulder”. The chefs know that, the Chinese customers know that, and sweet and sour pork is just there for the people who don’t stray from what they have at Panda Express. So, if you go to a Chinese restaurant worthy of being called a restaurant, don’t order sweet and sour pork.

[**] The chef is quite established. I like that the “five spice” sauce for the pork shoulder actually has over 8 ingredients.

These pictures needed no editing at all, the shine and glory of the meat are their actual shine and glory. And I still can’t get over how tender that pork shoulder was. (T_T)

This ramen shop in the Financial district looks cute. Black walls with Japanese writings, a clock with numbers spelled out in hiragana, and a t-shirt that (I assume) sells for 3000 yen (~30 USD). The owners seem to try keeping it as hole-in-the-wall as possible (to make it appear authentic?). Of course, despite what the name might suggest, it’s not actually underground, nor do you need any special thing to get in.

All basic ramens are $8 with $1 toppings. The basic ramen contains your choice of broth, pork (chashu), scallion and mushroom.

My miso ramen with extra kakuni (braised pork belly). The mushroom is raw (not only is that just wrong – think about cold mushroom in a luke warm broth! bleh!, enoki would have made a MUCH better ramen companion than portobello T_T). There’s ONE puny slice of chashu. The broth is fine but it’s missing something… (more pork, probably!!!) At least the noodle is chewy.

If you’re curious, this is what disappointment tastes like.

(Actually we later realized that we should have asked for an egg, that’s what missing. But still, we could really use another slice of pork…)

Address: Ramen Underground
355 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

It’s packed when we went for dinner and online reviews suggest that there’s always a line at lunch, but San Francisco, when will you stop hyping up every. single. thing!