Flavor Boulevard

There are a few unexpected things for me about Koi Palace. I didn’t expect it to be in the middle of PetSmart, Ross, 24 Hour Fitness, Outback, and CVS. Nor could I fathom why it was completely full at noon time on a Wednesday. People in Daly City don’t have to work on weekdays? What about schools? (plenty of school-age glanced at me mid-bites when I tried to spy the food on their table…) Inexplicable.

Perhaps the food here is really so good that work is meaningless without it? Among the things we got, a few really gave us that instant burst of satisfaction like when you pop a bubble-wrap bubble and made me forget work for a second. Such as the grilled chive and shrimp dumplings. Each ball plops into your mouth and fills the void so perfectly, you sink into a plump piece of shrimp every time you move your jaw. It takes some time to chew, and you kind of wish it would last even longer.

The espresso coffee ribs are another. You can definitely taste the coffee in that succulent, rich piece of meat. This is one of those examples of candied meat, an odd-sounding but undeniably addictive entanglements. If Koi Palace were a buffet, this would be what people pile on their plates.

Not all items were unanimously favorites, however. Most were oily, regrettably but not unexpectedly, such as the roast duck with the perfect-looking burnt orange glaze, the lo mai gai (sticky rice with dried scallop and lap cheong wrapped in lotus leaves), and the cheong fun with BBQ pork and crispy rice.

This cheong fun is interesting, though. The crispy rice part is some type of crispy rice noodle made into a mesh and deep-fried, then rolled next to typical Chinese red-and-sweet BBQ pork cubes inside thick sheets of rice noodle. Finally, the rolls are doused in a sweet soy sauce. We see that they’re trying to go for a soft-versus-crispy-versus-meaty (?) texture harmony thing, but the crispy rice couldn’t stay crispy very long. I like them still, but had I not been Vietnamese and a fan of the much-thinner-rice-roll banh cuon, I would have liked these more.

We always order xiao long bao as a standard measure of how good the dumplings are at dimsum houses. Unfortunately, the xiao long baos here are a bit of a disappointment compared to Shanghai Dumpling King’s (I’m convinced that Shanghai Dumpling King actually has the best Shanghai dumpling aka xiao long bao aka soup dumpling in the Bay Area). They’re not juicy enough. The stuffing is lackluster. They won’t be ordered again.

The remaining fares were neither dream nor embarrassment. There were the fairly commendable congee with pork and pidan, although I would prefer it 30% less thick, sliced jellyfish and green seaweed salad that got stuck in my teeth forever, really nutty gailan in oyster sauce, which was a nice break from all the meat, some Sichuan spicy seafood dumplings in red peanut sauce that looked like little green aliens but thankfully weren’t too spicy, and the unassuming but lovely Peking-style steamed chive and pork dumplings, which never go wrong.

Although the porridge was brought out near the beginning as it should be, the rest of the food arrived in no predictable order. Lo mai gai came first. Deep-fried sesame balls for desserts came at the same time as the green aliens, then they kept pouring in and dangerously took over our table. I stopped taking pictures at one point to start eating so that we could get rid of the plates…

Speaking of desserts, if there is one thing you should never get at Koi Palace, it’s Number 501 under “Sweet Heart” – “Grilled Black Sesame Filled Glutinous Cake”. They are deceptively cute – each is a little squishy ball coated with sesame seeds and contains a gooey black sesame core, kinda like the Sno Balls(*). They are death. Not in a good way, because they are so oily that you are afraid of swallowing, so you have to chew them to death. The problem is that the core is too little and the skin is too thick. If you want black-sesame dessert balls, go to Shanghai Dumpling King, they serve it boiled and full of sesame. On the other hand, the deep-fried balls with lotus and bean paste inside are actually good.

The take-away message: when you’re at Koi Palace, order “espresso coffee ribs” and “grilled chive & shrimp dumpling”. Do NOT order “Grilled Black Sesame Filled Glutinous Cake”.

Address: Koi Palace in Serramonte Plaza
365 Gellert Blvd, Daly City, CA 94015
koipalace.com

Foodnote:
(*) Sno Balls are the best American sweets ever invented.
(**) Photo credit: some photos were taken by bnibroc.

While turkey, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole (which I haven’t had in years and REALLY want some) make up the traditional Thanksgiving feast, I will keep up the tradition of posting something different for Thanksgiving (like duck and avocado pie). Not necessarily better, just something different, because no Thanksgiving dinner is the same, right? 🙂

So here it is: the fried chicken stuffed with fried sweet rice at Yum’s Bistro in Fremont.

Known on the menu as “crispy chicken with flavored sweet rice”. The sweet rice (sticky rice) with diced bits of Chinese sausage, chicken, shrimp and mushroom are made into fried rice the normal way, then stuffed into the chicken skin – a fully intact continuous chicken skin from head to leg – which is then fried or broiled. How they skin the chicken, I’m not too sure, this dish may only be feasible to make at home if you’re a chef… but it looks interesting, and it tastes GREAT.

Like the Thanksgiving dinner, this chicken fools you into thinking you can eat more than you actually can. Two of those sections (any section) on the chicken would be plenty in one sitting because that fried sticky rice is compact steel.

When Oanh and Dang took me to Yum’s Bistro, there was a middle-aged man (presumably a regular customer) standing outside (presumably to wait for someone), who cheerily told us in the typical friendly way of old Chinese men that everything’s good at Yum’s. Oanh readily agreed, she has been here several times, each time trying a few new dishes AND the stuffed chicken. I agreed soon after I tasted the squab.

Of course, when did I ever say no to grilled game?

Beef claypot (12.50), Western China style, I believe, because of the prominent cumin flavor.

Hong Kong Spicy Crab (seasonal and no price was listed). It says “spicy” and looks spicy but it really isn’t anything more than a hint of pepper. The salt and spice mixed with which they generously coated the crab makes you want to lick the shell more than actually eating the meat.

Almond milk and egg white dessert (Chef’s special and pre-order is recommended, also no price was listed?!). Oanh wasn’t a fan because she’s sensitive to bitterness – there’s a faint bitter aftertaste at the back of your tongue if you really search for it, but I like some types of bitter when it’s also sweet (hello, bitter melon and tea! 😀 ), so I’m a fan.

Near the end, the chef walked out to each table to greet the customers. We thanked him and smiled to our ears, he smiled back and nodded, I don’t think he knows much English. That’s all good, of course, he’s happy to make food, we’re happy to eat it, we understood each other just fine. 🙂

Address: Yum’s Bistro
4906 Paseo Padre Parkway
Fremont, CA 94555
(510) 745-8866 (if you want to pre-order the Chef’s specials)
website and menu

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

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)

The restaurant is big, clean and convenient. It’s in Westfield San Francisco, a big chunk of the fourth floor of the shopping mall is restaurants, and M.Y. China is one of them. Sitting 50 feet from the kitchen and you can smell the intoxicating fumes of dumplings. We order two Chinese classics: xiao long bao (pork & crab juicy dumplings) and niu ro mien (beef hand-pulled egg noodle soup).

The niu ro mien is good. Fourteen dollars. Melting tender beef, chewy noodle (not as chewy as I would like, but I’m not a fan of egg noodle anyway), dark, flavor-packed broth (which gets a bit too salty after a while and sends you drinking water like mad).

The xiao long bao‘s are dry. Twelve dollars for five. There’s not enough broth in them. The dumpling skin is dried up on top, the carrot slice at the bottom, which supposedly helps preventing the dumpling from sticking to the spoon, disrupts the harmony in texture. The pork filling? This is where my friend and I disagree.

The filling has ginger. My friend insists that: 1. xiao long bao should have a lot of ginger (to mask the flavor of the pork); 2. she has eaten a lot of xiao long bao over the years to know that it should have a lot of ginger; 3. she doesn’t notice the ginger in these xiao long bao, in fact, she added extra ginger to the dumplings to make them taste gingery.

I insist that: 1. these xiao long bao are too gingery (the pork and the crab are completely masked); 2. even with the pre-equipped knowledge that xiao long bao are supposed to have a lot of ginger, I don’t like these xiao long bao because they have too much ginger.

Ice cream ($4 each) – toasted rice (left) and chinese walnut (right) – both remind me of grocery rice milk and walnut milk, which are sweeter than I would have liked.

Of course, the natural question comes up: should you review food based on your knowledge of the food (how it should be) or based on your taste of the food (how it is)? Food reviews have both objective facts and subjective preferences, and as a reviewer, I don’t mix those two categories together. If I know with all certainty how it should be, I’ll include that statement in my review, otherwise, all of my reviews are about how it is (with respect to my taste buds). Is that too subjective? Sure. Are my preferences peculiar? Maybe. I don’t drink coffee and alcoholic beverages, and I don’t eat spicy foods. In general, I don’t like anything too strong. If a dish has one overwhelming flavor that masks everything else, I call it “one-dimensional”. I want to taste different flavor profiles in a dish, especially the natural flavors of the ingredients, which is why I’ve grown increasingly fond of raw seafood sushi and increasingly intolerating of cakes. So if you like strong flavors, the things that I like would be almost water to you, and the things that I say are too this or too that would taste just fine. 🙂

But surely, there must be others who share my preferences?

Logistics: M.Y. China is a new restaurant by Martin Yan and the owners of Koi Palace. It opened early this year, and it locates on the 4th floor of Westfield San Francisco Center, 845 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103 – (415) 580-3001

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)

One of The Clog‘s editors said: “Let’s do a cafe crawl around campus.” I happened to have tried almost everything at UCafe and been going there forever these days, so I took up that part of the crawl. I sent a 466-word essay to the editor, right before  I saw her email from 5 minutes earlier: “hey guys, cuz we’ll do 5 cafes total, let’s make it 100-150 words each”. Haha oops. Cutting time. Here’s the finished product.

Here’s my original 466 words. With pictures. 😉

“Since its grand opening last fall, UCafe on the South side has proved to be a reliable supplier of the Spanish bun (ham, cheese and sausage in a roll), the perfect $1.95 filler for those 10 minutes between classes.

Convenience:

It takes 1 minute to walk from Hearst Gym to UCafe, which is next to the post office at the Durant-Bowditch corner (yes, the post office with the most terrible customer service ever!). In UCafe, most of the pastries are placed in glass cabinets, you walk in, grab a tray at the front, a sheet of bakery paper and a pair of tongs, and start choosing. Even during the lunch rush, it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to walk in and out of UCafe with your lunch if you already know what you want from the cabinets. If you have more time, a banh mi is worth the wait, and watching the kitchen staff rolling the dough into batches of ready-to-bake sausage rolls or the pâté getting spread inside your sandwich makes time go by faster.

There is enough seating for three by the window ledge, but almost nobody ever sits there.

Variety:

Clockwise from top left: pork bun, mango mousse, pork-and-green-onion roll, macadamia black devil (basically, rectangular chocolate muffin with nuts)

Clockwise from top left: patechaud (brioche with minced pork, $1.50), mini chocolate mousse ($3.95), cold cut banh mi ($3.25), lychee green tea (with lychee jelly, $3.50)

For the moment, only two kinds of banh mi are available: cold cuts ($3.25) and grilled pork ($2.75). However, the pastry selection is huge: several kinds of bread loaves, savory buns with sausage, beef, pork and chicken fillings, sweet buns with bean paste, berry and pineapple fillings, mooncakes, shortcakes, cookies, chocolate-muffin-like “butter bread”, etc. They also have a colorful assortment of macaroons, $1.25 each and “buy 4 get 1 free”.

To add to the young, chic but casual look of the café, the cake assortment and a multitude of milk tea and smoothie flavors are pleasing to the eyes and affordable for a student budget.

Price:

The cabinet pastries are all under $3, the mini cakes and regular-size drinks are under $4. One time they only accepted credit card for purchase over $15, I struggled to get up to $14.95 and the guy took pity on me and swiped my card anyway. Thank goodness they have no credit card limit now.

Taste:

Of course, you get what you pay for. Their cakes tend to be too sweet, the macaroons don’t appear with the best texture, and the banh mi is not made with the correct type of airy, scrumptious Vietnamese bread it’s supposed to be. But the overall taste is satisfactory, at least with the savory sausage buns.

To sum it up, UCafe is not a café where you sit and study while stylishly savoring your croissant with a cup of latte-art cappuccino. You can’t meet someone there for coffee either. But from there you can pick up a satisfying 2-minute lunch to go. It’s honest and no frills.”

Address: UCafe
2550 Durant Ave (between Bowditch St & Telegraph Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 981-1853

Bánh bía from Tường Ký Fast Food. Filling: taro paste with salted egg yolk, would have been perfect without bits of candied winter melon. $13 per box of 4.

I’m having writer’s block. Don’t know if that’s true (I once met an Ivy League law school professor who said, as diplomatically as she could, that scientists can’t write), but that’s how my friend put it when I told him that I’ve been sitting around all day producing nothing worth mentioning and munching Vietnamese snacks. As incredibly lazy as that sounds, I think of myself as savoring the cultural assets of my people. (Somehow that sounds even worse…) There’s this Taiwanese movie, Eat Drink Man Woman, I found it a little indelicate and got weirded out (the food looks great though!), but one line from the second sister in the movie stuck in my head: “Dad said that for a person who lives up to 80, he would have consumed 80 tons of food. People who enjoy food and people who eat without savoring it don’t experience the same level of happiness.”

I used to think for sure that what he meant was the people who enjoy food experience more happiness than people who eat without savoring it. But today I thought again.

I’m eating this bánh bía from Tường Ký Fast Food. I can’t help but notice the tiny tiny bits of candied winter melon (mứt bí) in my bánh bía, and I know I like my bánh bía with only taro paste and salted egg yolk, so I’m a bit turned off. When I don’t update Flavor Blvd, I’m happy with teriyaki pork chops from the Chinese family downstairs for weeks. More examples of “ignorance is bliss”: I can’t tell the difference between HDTV and normal TV, so I enjoy any TV with colors. I don’t know shrimps about music, so my friends may think that the drum work of some musician I like is a total fluke, but I still like it all the same. Then again, knowing teas makes me appreciate high-quality teas on a whole different level, and I can still enjoy tea bags with the right company. So I don’t know. The two types of people may not experience the same level of happiness, but that doesn’t mean one level is higher than the other.

Physically speaking, the two types of people probably don’t obtain the same level of energy either. Savoring food means analyzing food. Before I really buckled down and recorded everything I ate, I just ate. Now I think about ingredients. What did they put in there? How did they make it? What could be changed? Why do I prefer my mom’s bánh bao (and Vietnamese bánh bao in general) to jibaozi, family relation aside?

So, food savoring is a brain workout(*), unlikely on the same level as debugging my code, but I think now I have a reply to my mom’s question: “Why can everyone gain weight but you? Eat more!” 😀

Address: Tường Ký Fast Food
8200 Wilcrest Dr., Suite 14
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 988-4888

(*) I typed “how much energy does thinking require” into Google, and the answers seem inconclusive at best, but at least computer work burns 41 calories in 30 minutes for a 125-lb person, and blogging requires computer. Surely more thinking wouldn’t make you gain weight. 😉