Flavor Boulevard

Hull and Surendranath examine the inscription on a spoon at Bombay Cuisine.

What do grad students do? Some of us write, some of us teach, most of us don’t sleep, all of us eat. For Astronomy PhD student Chat Hull and his friend Yogesh Surendranath, a Chemistry postdoctoral fellow, eating at every single Indian restaurant in Berkeley and writing about it is high on the priority list.

Berkeley has no shortage of Indian restaurants for the duo to review. “We stay within the city limit”, said Surendranath. Their blog, Masala Chaat, has been regularly updated for roughly a year. When I meet them in the office, they seem like the normal physicists: friendly, calm and full of physics. When I joined them in a trip to Bombay Cuisine, the restaurant-reviewing mode was turned on full-force. The inner comedians were revealed.

In their blog posts about each dining experience, they take notes from the smallest detail in the surroundings, such as the film of grease on the wall mirrors, to the viscosity of the mango lassi. They have a couple of “eigendishes”, items that they always order after reaching the conclusion that these dishes best reflect the skill of the chef. They tell stories of glass shards in their food and how the owner reacted “with little remorse”.

When asked “why Indian restaurants?”, Hull and Surendranath looked at each other, “Did we ever have anything non-Indian together?” The answer was “Maybe a coffee?”. They’ve been friends since college. During the lifetime of the blog Masala Chaat, some restaurants were closed down and others opened, and Hull made sure to update Google on those listings.

Now nearing the end of their quest, with fewer than 5 restaurants remain, Hull and Surendranath are considering expanding the scope to the East Coast, as Surendranath will soon start his professorship at MIT.

Why don’t I like spicy food? For the same reason I don’t like cupcakes, Chicago pizza or anything that has too much of something for me to taste anything else. For the same reason I shunned sushi for almost 10 years: the first time I had sushi I scooped a spoonful of the lovely green paste into my mouth.

Those were 10 years that I could have enjoyed so many hamachi nigiri. It’s sad. But that aside, for the same reason that I dislike spicy food, I like B-Dama so much more than I expected. It’s a tiny tiny Japanese restaurant in Piedmont. Its menu doesn’t boast anything particularly breath-taking to draw me out of the comfort of my home, except that I once saw Kristen post on Facebook a picture of the ankimo (monkfish liver) from B-Dama, and Kristen and I have had more than two failed attempts to eat there together just because the restaurant was either closed or too busy when we popped in. When you can’t have something, you want it more.

Then the day finally arrived. My friend and I tried the ridiculously popular Geta that serves possibly the cheapest sushi and fried chicken bits in the East Bay, were thoroughly impressed by how cheap it was ($35.30 for 7 items), and felt compelled to try its posher sister B-Dama. This time, we made reservation.

Let’s talk about the dish that implanted the name B-Dama in me from the very beginning: the monkfish liver.

This wasn’t the first time I had monkfish liver, or liver, or monkfish. I’m neither a fan nor an antifan of monkfish, but I love livers, so it’s a make-or-break deal for me. At B-Dama, the liver was so creamy yet maintained the smooth, bouncy resilience of freshness, and above all, the taste was so clean! If I didn’t know that it came from a fish, I would think that it’s just soft tofu flavored with cream and a pinch of salt, slightly chilled to shape into such medallion-scallop size. Considering the steps to prepare ankimo (the liver must be rubbed with salt, then rinsed with sake, then de-veined, then rolled, steamed and served in ponzu sauce), this dish requires such precise treatment to rid of the ocean smell and preserve the creamy nature. I think steaming is the most unadulterated cooking method, and this ankimo is the most unadulterated, freshest ankimo I’ve ever had.

The same theme resonates throughout the rest of the meal. The housho maki (raw tuna and salmon with sliced cucumber wrapped in daikon), the hamachi nigiri and even the nabe taste crystal clear. Daikon naturally has the daikon taste (a bitter, somewhat piercing pungency that sometimes reminds me of sake), but the daikon at B-Dama, in whatever form it’s served from grated to sheet, does not have that daikon taste. Its crunchy texture and cooling freshness are well preserved, only the pungency is gone.

The cold openings:

Hamachi nigiri sushi ($6.5)
My must-order item at every sushi restaurant. This version sets the highest bar so far.

Housho maki ($6) – raw fish and cucumber wrapped in daikon.
So fresh, so suitable for spring.

Ankimo ($8) – steamed monkfish liver served in ponzu sauce
My most recent must-order. I find it offensive that I have to pay so little for something this good.

The fried and grilled dishes:

Tsukune – chicken “meatball”

Ika karaage ($6) – deep-fried squid.
I like it. A lot.

Hotate – scallop

Gyutan – grilled beef tongue
Another must-order of mine. A little bit too thick (and therefore, too chewy) for me, I still prefer Musashi’s gyutan.

Kani korokke ($8.5) – crab croquette
Creamy inside, crunchy outside, not too overwhelming but yet to be the ideal croquette I’m looking for.

The finish:

Oxtail stew ($10) in soy-based soup.
There’s no way around ordering a serving of rice for this one, that sauce demands to be soaked up with rice.

Yosenabe ($12) – seafood, tofu, and vegatable soup with glass noodle (harusame)

For reason unknown, the host gave us one of the specials of the day, the asari sakamushi – steamed clams cooked in butter and sake broth ($9.5). At this point, I was too busy chowing to remember taking pictures. I feel obliged to mention this because the host was so nice, but I should clarify offhand that the clams did not alter my perception of B-Dama.

So, at the restaurant, we ran into my friend’s colleague, who also works at another great Japanese restaurant in the East Bay, and after the meal we briefly mentioned how good we thought B-Dama was. I said that I was surprised that the food here did not have any strong taste, and my friend’s colleague commented that Japanese food in principal are not supposed to be overwhelmed with spices anyway. I knew that before, and that’s why I like Japanese food, but my comment might have failed to explain my thoughts properly. B-Dama especially succeeds in delivering that clean-tasting aspect of Japanese food more than any other Japanese restaurant in the East Bay.

Address: B-Dama
4301A Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 420-1578
www.b-dama-geta.com

Sake sampler – ($11)
The Yamahai Junmai is the sweetest, least stringent and best-tasting to me, and I’m not just saying that because it’s listed as the “connoisseur’s junmai”. (I didn’t the description when I tasted it.)

Like many small businesses in the so-called “Little Saigon”s throughout the states, Hai Ky Mi Gia is operated by Chinese immigrants. Originally, Hai Ky Mi Gia is a popular noodle soup joint in District 5, Saigon – the Chinatown of Saigon – before 1975, and it remains popular today. When Saigon fell, the Chinese immigrants in Vietnam left the country with the Vietnamese and became associated with Vietnamese political refugees in foreign lands such as America. These Chinese Vietnamese immigrants continue speaking both languages, opening businesses under the established names(*) in Saigon and catering to the homesick Chinese Vietnamese and Vietnamese alike. Whether this Hai Ky Mi Gia is in any way related to the Hai Ky Mi Gia in District 5 or other Hai Ky Mi Gia’s scattering across the US, its patronage doesn’t seem to care either way. To the Chinese Vietnamese and Vietnamese immigrants, it’s a name they’re familiar with, so they feel at home. To the rest of the patronage… well, I can’t speak from their point of view, but I guess the low price and the popularity raved by Yelp, InsideScoop SF, SF Chronicle, SF Weekly, etc., do have an effect.

Does its food live up to the expectation that these websites have built for it? I’m afraid not, but then again, I would be very surprised if those reviews are ever different from your online zodiac personality description: nothing bad is described.

Do I feel like a jerk for pointing this out? Yes, especially since this place IS popular, my dining companions enjoyed it, the other customers enjoyed it (to some extent, otherwise they wouldn’t come back), and it’s really not the restaurant’s fault that they get hyped up. Noodle soup is comfort food, so it’s meant to be popular. If it’s any consolation, I think of this type of restaurant as the Asian version of McDonalds, or burgers in general.

Because I believe in saving the best for last, I start with what I don’t like.

Braised duck leg noodle soup with wonton ($7.59) – #4 on the menu
Score: 12/30

Like a McDonald’s burger, the braised duck in Hai Ky Mi Gia’s popular choice “braised duck leg noodle soup” has a distinctive smell. The swampy smell of duck. My mom has told me for as long as I can remember that although ducks bathe often, they have a strong smell, possibly from the preening oil that they spread on their feathers. This smell would go away with enough washing before the duck is cooked. There are several possible reasons that this smell was particularly prominent to me and didn’t seem to bother anyone else:

1. Only my piece of duck happened to be washed less or kept out longer than the other pieces of duck.
2. My olfactory system has become more sensitive as a result of studying tea.
3. Everyone else doctors up their soup with jalapenos, chili paste, soy sauce, hoisin sauce. (The jalapenos at the tables are very green, very fresh, and very strong.) I believe in experiencing the true taste of the soup as the chef makes it.
4. Everyone else is used to this smell because they’re used to eating this noodle soup at this noodle joint.

Whatever the reason, I grade my food based on smell, taste and texture. For this duck leg noodle soup with wonton, 0 for smell, 5/10 for taste, and 7/10 for texture.

But Hai Ky Mi Gia is not all disappointment. They serve big portions. Their warm homemade soymilk ($2.30) tastes of real soy, rich and soothing (better than store-bought cartons, of course). The seafood noodle soup, which we ordered with thin rice noodle, has a light, mildly sweet broth and enough fish balls, fish cake, squid and shrimp to entertain the diner. The dry noodle with broth on the side makes up for its less-than-deal cousin (the duck noodle soup) mainly because of its well-seasoned, tender charsiu pork.

Seafood noodle soup ($7.36) – #13 on the menu
Score: 5 for smell + 6 for taste + 7 for texture = 18/30

Dry wheat noodle with pork (charsiu pork, ground pork, boiled pork) and broth on the side – Not on the menu but you can order by asking the hostess.
Score: 5 for smell + 7 for taste + 7 for texture = 19/30

For out-of-town guests, I wouldn’t recommend this place, but the Hua family who opened this Hai Ky Mi Gia did not open it to attract tourists anyway. It’s meant to serve affordable comfort food with no frills, and I found comfort at least in its soymilk, so the restaurant fulfills its purpose.

Address: Hai Ky Mi Gia
707 Ellis Street (in the Tenderloin)
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-2577
Closed on Wednesdays. Cash only.

(*) If a restaurant/bakery/cafe/any food establishment has “Ky” or “Ki” in its name, it is 100% run by a Chinese immigrant who lived in Vietnam. “Ky” or “Ki” (pronounced |kee|) is the vietnamization of 計 (as in “生計” – |Sheng Kee|, which means “measure”, “plan”, “calculation”, etc).

Above is our table at 10 a.m. (after we have cleared the first few dishes).

To your right is Hong Kong Lounge at 9:31 a.m., exactly 1 minute after the doors opened.

Every seat was filled. When we arrived at Hong Kong Lounge at 9:10, 20 minutes before the restaurant opens, a line had already formed. While we were eating, the line formed again outside and kids were pressing their face against the frosted windows to peak at people’s plates. I’d imagine it’d feel a bit weird if you’re seated by the window.

Luckily, we were safely tucked in by the back wall, and as common practice in every dining experience with Nancy (for example, here, here, and here), we brewed our own tea. Taiwan Beauty – citrusy and light; aged Baochong – plumy and coffee, subsequently smoky; Yushan High Mountain oolong – just light, Nancy detected a fantastic smell that I couldn’t because I was already in a food-induced stupor when we steeped this tea.

The food came out too fast for us to really sample the teas with everything. We had to focus on not oversteeping while clearing the plates for more table space. But some combinations stood out memorably: Taiwan Beauty + porridge (so floral), Baochong + egg custard (the Baochong brings out the pastry), and Yushan + egg custard (the Yushan makes it more eggy)

Marinated chicken “paws” ($6.50) – served cold with boiled peanuts. I like the texture but Kristen didn’t. And why serve it cold?

Baked pork buns ($3.95) – The winner of the day. These baked buns are better than the usual steamed BBQ pork bun. They look dry but didn’t taste dry. Minor setback: the inside is a bit too sweet and completely overwhelmed the Taiwan Beauty and the Baochong.

Egg tarts ($3.75) – very eggy.

Clockwise from top: Chiu Zhou dumpling ($3.95), steamed clam ($6.95), curry chicken samosas ($3.25) – The Chiu Zhou dumplings with their thick clear skin are extremely heavy and coated in oil, but their redeeming point is the actual big plump shrimps inside, instead of the usual dried shrimps in cheap dumplings. Steamed clam is flavorful, and I usually have fond memories of chewy things. Samosas are just samosa.

Pan-fried turnip cake ($2.95) – Much better than any turnip I’ve had. That said, turnip cakes aren’t my favs because of their oily, pulverizable mushiness.

Salted “meat porridge” ($6.50) – I don’t remember seeing any meat, but there were pieces of pidan (thousand-year egg). The porridge tastes very mild, the accompanying yau ja gwai are crisp and not too oily. Overall, a pleasantly light note in the middle of this butyraceous meal.

Shrimp chive dumpling ($4.95)

Pan-fried shrimp-and-chive dumpling ($3.95)

Lo mai gai ($4.25) – sticky rice with chicken wrapped in lotus leaf. The rice, surprisingly, did taste and smell like lotus. I liked it, but again, I’m not a fan of the sweet meat stuffing.

Coffee pork ribs ($6.50) – The ribs didn’t fall off the bone but their coating sauce made up for the toughness. Not visible in this picture is a dollop of whipped cream to spread onto the ribs. It’s weird, but it made the ribs creamy and milky, and strangely tasty.

Two setbacks at Hong Kong Lounge: they charge us for hot water (we needed hot water to make tea), and the xiao long bao didn’t contain enough soup (Shanghai Dumpling King’s xiao long bao are soupier than these). But if you don’t mind either getting up at an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning or waiting in line for forever, Hong Kong Lounge doesn’t disappoint.

Address: Hong Kong Lounge
5322 Geary Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94121
(415) 668-8836
hongkonglounge.net
(They don’t take reservation, though)

None of the secondi struck our fancy, but we did order a substantial number of dishes. So substantial that instead of ordering by the names, I curled my index finger and thumb into a square bracket and pointed on the menu “we’ll take these four and these four, and the potato, and the asparagus please.”

That was 10 out of 25 “dishes” on the menu, if olives and salads could count as dishes at all.

Three years ago, I had a bite of pork belly sandwich from Corso. I remember nothing of it, except that it was memorably good. I vowed to come back, but my cravings are always either rice noodle or pancakes (although every time I get pancakes, their texture is gravely disappointing), so for these three years, the vow stayed as a vow and didn’t happen. I kept hearing from multiple sources near and far about how good Corso was, though, so my confidence for this Italian restaurant increased. When I picked Corso for dinner last Friday, I didn’t expect the restaurant to wow us, but I felt confident that the meal would be solid and comforting, that we would be well fed by the end.

The high note: the server replaced our plates and utensils after each course, yay for a clean platform to taste new dishes.

The low note: how low would you like to hear?

In general, this Asian does not have paramount hope for Italian food (to me, Italian food is pasta and cheese, both of which I find to be comforting yet boring), but there’s a reason Italian food is comfort food: assuming that you start from boiling dried pasta and that you have any sense of taste at all, it’s easy to cook an edible plate of pasta. Not perfect, but edible. Guess what, the tagliatelle al sugo at Corso was NOT even edible: it was pungent, muddy and in dire need of more tomato sauce and minced carrots. Each of us took one single bite, then a drink of water and that was it. The plate looked untouched when the server later cleaned up the table.

As far as bad restaurant experiences go, Corso had set a new record the moment they managed to screw up pasta and ground meat.

Were we well fed by the end? Well, we were fed up for sure. Why am I not trying to be nice with this review? Because I decided on this restaurant for dinner. I feel responsible when my friends couldn’t enjoy the meal, thus a positive review would be akin to lame excuses to sugar coat my poor decision. In fact, Corso left such a disappointing taste that it doesn’t even deserve a longer title in this post.

Bonus story: the table next to us ordered the butter-roasted chicken. The lady, who appeared to be in her 70s, looked over when our pastas had just arrived and said to her husband, who was signing the bill, “Look, they got the tagliatelle and the cavatelli. It looks good”. So I turned around, smiled with her and asked how was her chicken. She said it was laden with so much butter and cooked perfectly. I replied “It looked ah-may-zing.” (Chicken breasts never excite me, but I figured the situation called for a diplomatic comment.) In hindsight, did we just order the wrong dishes? Nah, it’s much harder to make white meat succulent than to make pasta edible. But I’m glad that at least one customer was happy with her meal.

The APPETIZERS (antipasti)

Marinated carrots – $5
Tasty level: banal (in any decent banh mi can you find equivalent carrots, with less oil)

Tuscan chicken liver pate – $8 – with sage, anchovy and capers.
Tasty level: Mud (I blame it on the overtone of anchovy)

Crostini – $8 – mussel ragu on toast
Tasty level: Good.
Why is it yellow? Beat me.

Grilled shrimp – $11 – in chili oil and parsley
Tasty level: Horrid.
The shrimps taste metallic. Was it overgrilled on open gas flames?

Salumi – $14 – spicy coppa, sweet coppa, toscano, ciccioli on toast, finocchiona.
Tasty level: Meh.
There’s no difference between the spicy coppa and the sweet coppa, or anything on that plate for that matter.

The SIDES (contorni)

Asparagus – $6
Tasty level: banal
I like the asparagus and I would have ranked it higher, but the sauce… They call it “fontina-tartufo fonduta”, which sounds like a chant to me, is so pungent because of the truffle.

Fries – $6 – One of the few edible items.

The first MAIN COURSES (primi)

Cavatelli – $14 – pasta with garlic pork sausage, kale, olives and parmigiano
Tasty level: Good
It’s not all that different from your homemade macaroni and cheese, but we could eat it happily.

Funghi e polenta – $15 – wild mushroom and polenta.
Tasty level: Meh
The polenta seriously needs more salt. There’s no taste in this dish at all. (The mushroom was faintly sour actually.)

Trippa alla Florentina – $9 – tripe stew with pancetta, spicy tomato, parmigiano and mint.
Tasty level: Okay. But it is too monotonic with the tomato sauce.

Tagliatelle al sugo – $15 – pasta with braised beef and pork.
Tasty level: Inedible.
What did they braise the meat with? Mud?

The DESSERTS (dolce)

Panna cotta – $6 – vanilla custard with spiced vino Lambrusco and Mission fig sauce.
Tasty level: Meh. (The custard is tasteless. The fig sauce is okay, though, it was neither too sweet nor too tangy)

Affogato – $6 – gelato with espresso
Tasty level: Good
If they had screwed up ice cream too, I don’t know what I would have done.

I like the vertical theme

Kristen studying Corso menu.

Kristen also reviewed Corso on her blog, Put It on Kristen’s Plate. We shared the same meal, and her review shows the same grave disappointment but with more thorough consideration than mine.

She also raised a good point: when the server approaches you with the question “Is everything okay?”, how do you respond when the food, in fact, is not okay? Do you say the common “yes” to just send the server away from the table? Do you explain what tastes bad? Do you ask to speak to the chef?

Address: Trattoria Corso
1788 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 704-8003
Dinner for 4: $172.77
Reservation is advisable. Despite its surprisingly horrible food, Corso continues to thrive in North Berkeley. All tables later than 5:30 pm on Friday were booked.

In 2008, nobody knew what I talked about when I said “pate chaud“ (pronounced |pah-teh-sho|), unless that person was Vietnamese. Not even Wikipedia. But it’s French, how can wikipedia not know about a french pastry, I felt desperate. Now Wikipedia has a page for it, first created on Nov 3, 2011. So it came from an obsolete French word for hot (chaud) meat pie (pâté), but the pastry itself is far from obsolete.

Until now, the only place where I can get patechaud has been Vietnamese sandwich shops, which Berkeley doesn’t have. Then UCafe opened, and one day, I saw the patechauds at the counter. UCafe also has banh mi. Although I’ve been to the new Sheng Kee Bakery on Telegraph that everybody raves about, although Sheng Kee does have an artificial-tasting but really satisfying taro bubble tea, and although UCafe doesn’t have taro bubble tea (yet), I’ll be loyal to UCafe.

The nitty gritty: UCafe labels it “puff chicken” on the receipt. I don’t know what they call it per se because they’re not Vietnamese and I do the classic point-and-get thing. The filling: pretty different from the normal Vietnamese ground pork meatball filling, this one has chicken, woodear mushroom and some kind of fatty yellow mush that my best guest is something of plant origin (potato or bean paste?) soaked in gravy, or maybe it’s just gravy. But it’s satisfying, like all things with salt and fat. Worth its $1.50 and I don’t remember getting sick last time I ate it, so I got it again today. 😉

Kinoko harusame (~$8) – potato starch glass noodle soup with mushroom (shimeji, eryngii, enoki, hiratake (oyster mushroom), portobello mushroom and shiitake.

Japanese glass noodle (harusame 春雨) is different from Vietnamese glass noodle: it’s made from potato starch (instead of mung bean starch or canna starch), it’s much thicker (like a spaghetti, whereas Vietnamese glass noodle is like a capellini), and it has a softer chew.

With that vegan broth sweetened by mushroom, it was comforting.

Until you finish that monster of a bowl, and you feel so full that it’s no longer comfy unless you unbutton a button or two.

Sansai harusame (~$8) – potato starch glass noodle soup with bracken, bamboo shoots, carrots and woodear mushroom

I don’t think I’ll ever get hungry thinking about Cha-Ya (does anyone ever get hungry for vegan food?), but I’d never turn it down when someone suggests Cha-Ya either. I get full and feel healthy when I go there. What more can I ask for from this little place?

P.S.: My previous experience at Cha-Ya was a little more elaborate than a bowl of noodle soup, and was just as comforting. 😉

It was 1 AM Wednesday night when I saw the text message from Chris, “hey Mai, do you expect you’ll have another review ready by tomorrow?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh good. When can you have it in? It’ll have to be sort of early if we want to get it in Friday’s paper.” Chris is the editor of Eating Berkeley, and all of my publications with them so far are online, so it’d be pretty exciting to see my name in print. The problem: it was 1 AM and I had to finish a few scripts for my research the next day. The good thing: I just had dinner at Burma Superstar (the Oakland one) earlier that evening, followed by a LOT of puer, so my eyes were opening as wide as the Pacific Ocean and ready for no sleep. I started typing away about Burma Superstar.

This morning I picked up a copy of the Daily Cal at the bus stop. It IS good to see my piece in print, although it’s on a B&W page and I don’t feel like they chose the best photo there. Later in the day I checked the online section, where it’s also published. Below is what I wrote:

A full bar and a wildly successful sister establishment in San Francisco could be the reason for the huge line outside Burma Superstar in Oakland’s Temescal District on a Wednesday night. But for me, the restaurant’s main draw is its fresh coconut, for which they charge a whopping $5. It brings back childhood flavors from the tropics, though, and that justifies everything.

It wasn’t a young coconut, and I didn’t expect it to be given that we can’t grow coconuts in most of this country. But this middle-aged coconut had such rich water and a sweet fragrant from the husk that I thought I was drinking sugar cane juice, so it was doubly nostalgic. The rest of my meal at Burma Superstar followed smoothly through every sip of that coconut water.

Burmese food is a cross between Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines, with some dishes showing the influence of one culture more than the others. For example, the curry pork with potato has a strong Indian touch of cumin and shines with chili oil like Szechuan mapo tofu, but it isn’t sweetened by coconut milk like other Southeast Asian curries. Thus, its perfect match is the sweetened coconut rice topped with fried shallots. In fact, the coconut rice is so fluffy and flavorful that it stands well on its own and it enhances everything. In hindsight, the curry pork was the weakest link in the meal for several reasons. The description said that there was pickled mango, but we detected neither mango nor pickle. It had too little potato and too much pork, and the big chunks of pork could have used some more cooking time or fared better in smaller pieces to reduce the fibrousness of the cut.

But whatever slight disappointment we had with the curry was quickly drowned in the dense, confident garlic and chili sauce of the sauteed eggplant. The shrimp served their purpose of keeping the name of the dish not so simple as “sauteed eggplant”, but they were hardly noticeable next to the perfect eggplant — tender but not mushy, and firm but not rubbery. The nan gyi dok was a pleasant surprise. I expected thin rice noodle like in pho, served warm, but Burmese rice noodle is thick, smooth and so fragile. It was also served cold as a noodle salad with fried shallots, boiled egg, cilantro, chickpea flour and coconut chicken curry, tossed together at the table after a squeeze of fresh lemon.

As if to reward the customers for the long wait, the kitchen turns out dishes very quickly and in big enough portions that my friend and I had to ask for three to-go boxes at the end. However, that did not deter us from dessert. We hurriedly drank up the coconut water and asked the server to chop off the tops so that we could scrape off the coconut meat inside, a joy I hadn’t had for years. Meanwhile, we ordered another nostalgic comfort food — warm black rice pudding with coconut ice cream. Well, sliced almond isn’t exactly authentic Southeast Asian, but its toasty crunch earns it a home with the creamy ice cream and the gooey rice.

In the end, I wouldn’t say that Burma Superstar shines as bright as its name suggests, but the food was just as pleasant as the staff. We were full and happy when we walked out, a little slowly so not to burst. Our jackets also smelled like sauteed onion for the rest of the night, but that’s never a bad thing.

EDIT: to adhere to the Daily Cal policy, I’ve removed the quote of the commenter on Eating Berkeley. This post is not a respond to the commenter, but a reflection on my style.

When I reread my review though, I realize the depth of reviewing ethnic restaurants that I should explore. It’s not as simple as saying whether a dish is good or bad because each dish has a complex culture behind it. That makes reviewing ethnic restaurants more challenging but more enjoyable. Burma Superstar was only my second time trying Burmese cuisine, and the first time barely left any impression. Of course, my review needs a lot more research if I was reviewing Burmese cuisine as a whole, but for now, as a single restaurant review, did I do it justice?

Curry pork with potato ($13.95) – description on menu: “specialty curry cooked with pickled mango, potatoes and tender pork”. I think I’ve said enough about this pork in my review…

Nan gyi dok ($9.95) – Burmese rice noodle salad with coconut chicken curry, boiled egg, fried shallots, cilantro, onion, chickpea flour and lemon juice. Complex in flavors and satisfying.

Eggplant and shrimp in garlic sauce ($13.95) – well, it’s eggplant and shrimp in garlic sauce. We asked for mild, so although there was chili in the sauce, it was actually mild. Really good. The shrimp doesn’t need to be there, though.

Black rice pudding with coconut ice cream and sliced almond ($9) – Worth the money. Besides, I always LOVE coconut ice cream.

Dungeness crab season is on. It was delayed twice in the Pacific Northwest because the crabs there weren’t big enough, but not here in the Bay Area. What my companions and I got a few weeks ago were 2-pound crabs, roughly one-fourth of which were meat, tossed in garlic and butter to perfection. More on that in a second.

First, what defines good crab? It has to be fresh. Its flesh should be tender and sweet, which are also defining characteristics of Dungeness crab. You also want the flesh to be firm, somewhat springy, and easily pulled off from the shell. If the meat sticks to the shell and if the shell is too hard, the crab is old. Dungeness crab is best enjoyed steamed then tossed in garlic, butter, salt and pepper, as to maximally preserve the sweetness of its meat. It’s not hard to turn a good fresh crab into a good cooked crab, but it can be messy to cook, eat and clean up after. So if you dislike cleaning as much as I do, the place to satisfy your Dungeness craving is Thanh Long in San Francisco.

The restaurant is three blocks away from the waterfront in the Sunset District. Be sure to make a reservation because the line gets long, and waiting outside in a cold foggy evening while entranced by the smell of butter and garlic is torture. Even with a reservation, it still takes roughly 30 minutes to be seated. And forget about sending half of your party to the restaurant first to place an order. The restaurant is so packed that they refuse to seat you unless the whole party is there.

The wait is the best time to study the menu. Once you’re seated, you should know immediately what to order, given that Thanh Long is known for its crab: the Roast Crab (one whole Dungeness “roasted with An’s garlic sauce and secret spices”) and the Garlic Noodle (noodle tossed in, you guessed it, An’s “garlic sauce and secret spices”). The garlic noodle is a good starch base to give you the pretense of a healthful, balanced meal. There are other crab options on the menu for the same price, such as Drunken Crab (whole Dungeness simmered in Chardonnay, sake and brandy, seasoned with scallions, chives and black pepper) and Tamarind Crab (whole Dungeness simmered in a tomato and tamarind mélange, seasoned with dill and green onions and flambéed with cognac), but fresh crab is best when it’s simple. Garlic, butter, salt and pepper bring out the crab’s flavors more than any other combination. In fact, I found the Drunken Crab lackluster.

Fried calamari and the broiled New Zealand green-lipped mussels are sensible choices to start off the meal before cracking crabs. The former is served with superb grilled green onion bulbs while the latter, drowned in a sweet Asian pesto, is already cut so that it can easily slide off the shell onto a baguette crostini.

After we ooh-ed and ah-ed and wiped the appetizer plates clean, the waiter arrived with big plastic bibs and carefully put them on everyone — one of those moments that justifies eating crab at a restaurant instead of eating crabs at home. The conversation stalled when the crabs came, as everyone became focused on taking every last piece of meat out of those legs. These crabs were so young that some of the leg shells could be broken by hand. Several bowls were placed and replaced for the crab shells.

Once we were done, we were also given hot wet towels to clean our hands. This is not the ideal first-date dinner because you just have to get downright messy., But who knows, that might be the perfect first date for some.

Address: Thanh long
4101 Judah Street
San Francisco, CA 94122
(415) 665-1146
www.anfamily.com‎

NOTE: the above section was published on the Daily Cal food blog. However, there are a few points I didn’t mention there because they’re more personal and/or not that relevant to the main topic:

– The kanimiso in the Dungeness is not as sweet as the kanimiso in other crabs, rather it has a bitter hint, but still, who would NOT eat kanimiso?
– The Vegetarian Delight (soft tofu sauteed with tomatoes, shiitake, green onion and broccoli) was not delightful. It tasted old and sad. But you don’t go to a crab restaurant to get vegetables. 😉
– The crab cost $40 each.
– The restaurant is red-themed. It enhances the crab, but my camera is not happy.
– We were too full to handle any more than 2 scoops of ice cream at Bi-Rite. 😉 By the way, their Orange Cardamom is heavenly.

A few years ago, things were rough at school and I was a bittermelon*. I got upset easily, turned people away from me, was critical of everything and mostly found faults in mankind. Long story short, I became a misanthrope and immersed myself in two things: anime and foreign language. Ironically, the former taught me to think more positively, and the latter brought me new friends. Then I realized that when I suppress my negative thoughts, eventually they dissipate on their own and I would feel so much better without bothering anyone with my complaints. In America, we are encouraged to express our negative feelings. People like to see and hear about problems (that’s why the daily news are mostly bad news and the reality shows are full of anger). Some people say that it’s good to let it out. That’s true, but it’s only temporary. Complaining is like eating chips, it’s impossible to stop**. Anger multiplies when it’s let loose. The more cynical I feel about a situation, the more depressing scenarios I envision, and it only goes downhill from there.

These days I try to appreciate everything more, and when some incident doesn’t seem so appreciable at first, I find it funny, which clears my mind and then I can see something to appreciate. But sometimes I lapse back into the critical mode, especially when it’s about food. It’s easy to lower my expectations and like everything. It’s also easy to write a very bad review. But it’s hard to find the good points while maintaining my high expectation. A bad review gives the temporary satisfaction of being in the position to judge. A good review for a not-so-good experience makes me appear goody-two-shoes and lose my credibility. One solution is that I only write about the good experiences. But I think that defeats the meaning of a blog. A diary doesn’t have only happy entries, why should a food blog talk only about the good food?

Every bad experience at a restaurant puts me into this dilemma. Cafe Rouge is the most recent one. Here’s my first draft when I sat down to write about it:

On my birthday, we went for drinks at Teance and then we got famished. Drinks for me are not alcohol but a few pots of tea. That’s the great thing about tea: it gives you an appetite. If you ever feel like you ought to eat something but just don’t feel hungry, drink some tea on an empty stomach, the next thing you know is that all you can think about is food. So we were famished, and we headed over to Cafe Rouge next door.

I should stress again that I was famished. Everything tastes better when you’re hungry, that’s a known fact. I could hardly wait to spread the velvety duck liver flan on my tongue and sink my teeth into a succulent slab of steak. The good thing is I didn’t have to wait too long. The problem, though, is that neither of my dreams came true. The duck liver flan was underseasoned and not smooth enough. The steak was so tough I thought I was chewing on a coil of rope.

Would a rare sear make it better? The full story goes like this: on the menu it said “Grilled bavette steak with sweet potatoes, broccoli, red wine cippolini onions and herb butter 24.” — I didn’t know what bavette steak was. The waitress asked me how I’d like my steak, I told her somewhere between medium and medium rare, she said let’s do the medium rare and if it’s too rare I can send it back to the kitchen for more sear. Turned out the cut was extremely sinewy. Even in the middle, where it’s still bright red. I told the waitress, and she said yeah well this is not like New York steak so hmm too bad…

So I gave up halfway and grudgingly waited for desserts.

We narrowed it down to 4 choices: vanilla panna cotta, chocolate streusel cake, granitas, and chocolate ice cream profiteroles, then we asked the waitress what she thought. She highly recommended the panna cotta, and said the following about the granitas: “it’s like a sorbet, if you’re into that kind of thing then it’s good”. We’re into sorbet, so we got the granitas. But granitas ain’t no sorbet, it’s water ice. Seven dollars for a tiny cup of water ice is too much. And not even very flavorful water ice at that. Huge disappointment.

So that’s my luck with Cafe Rouge. The seafood cioppino and the cassoulet that my friends chose turned out a little too seasoned for my taste, but a hundred times better than my steak.

I’ll file Cafe Rouge under “Won’t go out of my way to revisit”, although it’s really on the way every time I go to Teance.

The view from upstairs.

Here’s what I should think:

The restaurant is well-designed, I enjoyed looking from the upstairs at the people’s plates down below. My friends enjoyed their seafood and stew. Today Cafe Rouge’s dinner menu has “Grilled hanger steak with flageolet beans, radicchio and almond bread sauce”, so I wiki-ed “hanger steak”. This cut is “prized for its flavor”, which means its texture is tough. Then I clicked around and read about the other beef cuts. In the end, the steak taught me something new.

We should have listened to the waitress in the matter of desserts. Again, we went in not knowing what “granitas” was and went out knowing exactly what it was, so we got wiser by paying 7 dollars. That’s a cheap price for information.

Most customers around us ordered the burger ($14). While fancy burgers are like Rothko’s paintings to me, some people appreciate them. Maybe the rest of the menu also connects to people at such levels, which I simply couldn’t comprehend.

I probably won’t go out of my way to revisit Cafe Rouge, but its menu changes often and I go out of my way to Teance all the time anyway. When I have a more forgiving heart, and maybe a lot of hunger, I’ll stop by.

I prefer the mild, more positive view, although it’s like steamed rice. Next, I need to figure out how to make it funny. 😉

FOOTNOTE:
(*) Actually, I LOVE bittermelon! Bittermelon soup, bittermelon stir fried with egg, stuffed bittermelon. I love it so much that the first word I could think of that contains “bitter” was “bittermelon”.
(**) In high school health class, the teacher showed us a video about two anorexic twin sisters. When asked how they became anorexic, the surviving sister said that they were chubby when they were little, so one day they decided to lose weight and competed with each other to see who could lose more weight. The only detail that I remembered is that they would eat only 2 potato chips when they ate any chips at all. The interviewer asked her “How could you eat only TWO chips?!” With a lot of willpower.

Housemade charcuterie plate ($15) – rabbit pate: ok; duck liver flan: I’ve had better’s; air dried beef: well, it’s dried meat… Good pickled onion though.

Cafe Rouge bar ribs ($7) – Not fall-off-the-bone tender, but I liked the sauce.

Cioppino ($27) — dungeness crab, rock fish, mussels and clams in red wine tomato sauce. Good but too spicy for me.

Cassoulet of duck confit, garlic sausage, pork, baked beans and bread crumbs ($24) – good beans, tender duck, the sausage was too grainy (and doughy(?!)). Read more about it from Kristen’s point of view.

Blood orange and grapefruit granitas with shortbread cookie ($7) – The flavor wasn’t there.