Even if you don’t like anything at Cafe Rabelais (I didn’t), this mini-mountain of profiteroles loaded with ice cream is still as resistible as a pool in the summer, and worth every second you spend with it too.
To top, it’s HUGE. THREE orange-size puffs, for only $6.50! We thought it was going to be just one cream puff, you know, like how desserts are usually portioned… but no, the pastry chef has a heart of gold. Next time I’m at Rive Village, I’ll swing by for a profiterole recharge. 😉
Sidney and the cream puffs. See how big this dessert is?
Address: Cafe Rabelais
2442 Times Blvd (West University, steps away from the big shopping mall of Rice Village)
Houston, TX 77005
(713) 520-8841 (They don’t take reservation though)
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Now… a few more shots of Rabelais’ foods, but the menu varies daily and is only written on the blackboard so we might never see these dishes again:
Pate de campagne – meaty and well seasoned.
Salmon salad with raspberry vinaigrette.
“Roasted leg of lamb with raspberry demi” – Well, I don’t like the smell of lamb and this one didn’t change that.
Bavette steaks with caramelized onion.
The above steak, in bread. Looks tough.
Lemon sole meuniere – too much lemongrass, lemon and salt, but so much more edible than the lamb.
Creme brulee. Too sweet, of course.
Chocolate mousse – I might as well swim in sugar. I like the chocolate stick though!
“Fondant au Chocolat sur Croute de Noix” – basically the chocolate mousse on a nut crust.
By the way, the service is just plain negligence. But if you come only for the profiteroles, you won’t see the waitress enough to notice the service anyway. 😉
I googled, but found only “10 signs of a bad macaron“. My pâtissière friend Hanna Lim told me a few criteria: a good macaron should look smooth on the surface, crunchy (but not crumbly) on the outside and a little chewy(*) inside, it should not fall apart when you take a bite, it should be a clean bite – no crumbs, no cream spewing out on the side. Looking through the Facebook page of The Pastry of Dreams, I see gliding smooth macarons and beautiful cookie-to-cream ratio. Visually, they are perfect.
But what impresses me most is their taste. These almond cookies reflect what real fruits and nuts taste like in a cookie. Instead of being masked by sugar, the flavors that each cookie is supposed to contain shine through. “There are no shortcuts in our pastries,” says Liz Laval, the chemist-turn-pastry-chef who started The Pastry of Dreams. For something as simple as vanilla, she uses special vanilla beans imported from Madagascar to France and shipped to her by family living in France. “The one from here and the one that people import here is useless, you have to use 2 vanilla beans to get the amount that one of mine would produce,” she explained as I took a bite.
It’s true. Her vanilla butter cream has the richest and sweetest aroma of any vanilla-flavored things I’ve ever eaten, and there was the nuttiness of vanilla beans that the extract simply cannot have. It was more vanilla-y.
The same principle applies for other flavors too, lemon zest and juice for lemon macarons, real lavenders in the cream and cookie shell of lavender macarons… Except for the chocolate macarons, Liz goes as far as avoiding using ganache as a shortcut to stabilize the cream, relying instead on a technique she learned from France which she asked me not to reveal. Of course, I have no intention of making macaron myself either. After tasting Liz’s macarons and learning about her 3 years of studying, including macaron classes at Le Notre and l’Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse in Paris, and her 6 months experimenting in the kitchen, I figure it’s best to simply enjoy the work of the professional.
—————— The Pastry of Dreams is based in Houston, Texas. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Laval
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(*) In macaron language, as Liz told me, “chewy” is like tootsie roll chewy, which is of course not what I mean here at all. Because macaron are meringue-based sweets, macaron chefs want the macarons to be melt-in-your-mouth. As you bite into the macaron though, “melt in your mouth” is not how I would describe the sensation, in fact, you go from something dry to something moist, and that moistness is what I call chewy. 😉
Isn’t there always some restaurant that you pass by a thousand times, think about trying it every of those thousand times, and just never do? For me, that restaurant is Bistro Liaison. Its rustic red awning shines brightly at the corner of Shattuck and Hearst, draws my attention enough to remember that from there I’ve sampled a cup of quenelle souffle – salmon and scallop mousse in a shrimp sauce (think clam chowder but fishier and cheesier, and surprisingly good!) – almost three years ago during a North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto event. But the timing was just never right for an all-out dinner, until a few weeks ago.
We walked in without reservation, half worried that there wouldn’t be a table for us, and half worried that there would be a table for us, which might imply that the restaurant wasn’t good enough to fill up on a Friday night. But we were a party of two, perfect to squeeze in a table at the end of the room. When the hostess at the front desk offered to take my friend’s coat, we began feeling the warmth of old-fashioned restaurant service. And it only got warmer[…]
Read the rest of the review here. Starting from this post, I’ve joined the staff at the Daily Californian. Some of my posts are still in the editing tube. My editor seems easy-going at first but no sloppy writing goes unnoticed. He keeps things quite professional. And my new food-loving friends are so much more knowledgeable than me in the food news area. I hope to learn a lot (^.^)
A short note on Bistro Liaison that I didn’t include in my Daily Cal post: so I liked their seared pork loin a lot, and I emailed them to ask about it in details (what’s in the sauce, what’s the mini pasta thing, etc.). They NEVER replied! Such is the treatment you get when you’re just a blogger. I’m slightly, very slightly, vexed.
July 06, 2012By: Mai Truong Category: French, Houston
Little Mom likes Houston because it’s big, I’ve grown to like Berkeley because it’s so tiny I can get around without a car. Little Mom likes our big garden where she can grow 20 trees and who knows how many rose bushes, I’m content with my little dried-plum-container-turned-flower-pot in which I grow my onion. Point is, Little Mom likes big things, and I, well, sometimes like and most of the time don’t mind small things. But as often as she likes big restaurants, Little Mom likes little Cafe Du Bois in Kingwood.
It makes me feel better than if I had liked Cafe Du Bois myself. The joy when you pick out a place and your company likes it, the more important the company to you the bigger the joy, and to top that with a company of people with sensitive, rarely pleased tastebuds, it feels like winning the lottery. And here my mom suggested that we should go to Cafe Du Bois again.
She likes it for the roasted red snapper on rice with a light cream and tomato basil sauce, for being a mere 10 minutes from our house, for the slow, peaceful air of a little French restaurant way in the back of Kingwood Town Center – two old men finished eating before us, us, and another old man who was about to get his order after sipping wine for 30 minutes as we were waiting for our check seemed to be the only customers at lunch that Sunday. The carrot sauce was not too impressive, but she likes the fried yucca. She likes some of many paintings for sale on the walls. The bread was great. She likes the peach carnations on the white table cloths. She loves the creme brulee.
I remember the spinach and strawberry salad being a hair too sweet, the crab cake sandwich a bit dry, the shrimp primavera pretty cheesy. But you know what, Little Mom’s red snapper was good. So I like Cafe Du Bois.
Address: Cafe Du Bois
2845A Town Center Circle West
(Kingwood Town Center)
Kingwood, Texas 77339
(281) 360-2530
Stephen’s marinated grilled house-made seitan with apricot compote & arugula on grilled wheat bread ($7). Guess I’m attracted to savories with fruits.
The best part is, this month’s menu will be changed tomorrow. Today’s the last day of June. My seitan sandwich and I were destined for each other today.
Every year just after the winter holiday hustle and bustle, Mom and Dad let me choose a restaurant for my early birthday dinner. Last year it was Martin’s Place for barbecue. Dad never tells me no, but let’s just say that Mom didn’t feel too confident of my aesthetics since then. This year she gently insists on French. But I manage to sneak in a twist of Texas. 😉
“The Moroccan”, beef tartare with raisin, almond and the Tunisian hot sauce harrisa served with flat bread, rings amazingly close to Mexican flavors.
The roasted duck magret is drowned in a rich clementine-Cognac sauce and accompanied by one crispy fried duck confit ravioli on a lustrous carrot flan.
The four monkfish medallions topped with sun-dried tomato tapenade are pleasing. Although their texture errs on the dry side, the supple artichoke confit makes a fine complement.
The most pleasant surprise must be the garlic-butter escargots, listed among the “contained decadence”, served in a jar with airy brioche toast on the side. On one hand, my Vietnamese friends have chastised me many times for not having eaten snails ever; on the other hand, Little Mom isn’t a snail advocate. Today, the snails win. In Mom’s words: these snails have the fragrance of the roots of rice plants, the earthy but comforting hint of mud and grass. To me, they’re like chubby shiitake smothered in fennel puree and a “tipsy mushroom” paste. It’s a good first impression.
And finally, the deciding factor in my choice of restaurants: the desserts.
A smooth tonka bean creme brulee. The lime scent in the chantilly is a bit too faint for me, and the liqueur taste in the griottines is a bit too strong that I almost felt drunk (guess I’m not cut out for Western alcohol); besides, I’ve never fancied whipped cream and candied cherries. But Little Mom likes this one. And I like that there are three cherries for our family of three bears. 😀
The second dessert, plated like the setting sun on a mountain range, is much richer than the first, as it’s whimsically named the “Texas Millionaires tart”. Decadent chocolate and lace cookies are tempered by the super sour grapefruit. To top it off, the jasmine ice cream is a sweet lullaby.
As we get to the desserts, the dinner rush starts, the patrons fill the room, but the atmosphere remains easy. A waiter, tall and slouching, whose bushy Abraham Lincoln’s goatee makes him look like a toothbrush, leisurely takes a gander into the bright night cityscape. Through the voluptuous portions and the rich sauces, Philippe the Restaurant embodies Houston: bountiful, down-to-earth, wittily romantic. And above all, it is wholeheartedly welcoming.
Address: Philippe Restaurant and Lounge
1800 Post Oak Blvd, Suite 6110
Houston, TX 77056
(713) 439-1000 www.philippehouston.com
Two dollars for every three of them. A square, fluffy pillow of dough deep fried to flakiness and powder-sugared. Gripping each donut with two fingertips, I bend as close to the tiny plate as I can and hold my breath, the anticipation mounts as to not blow away the sweet white dust (and to avoid unwanted makeup powder on my face).
We confectioner the year end with beignets from Cafe Du Monde in Metairie, Louisiana.
And the six-hour drive just spirals off in the invisible gust of some unjustifiable self-indulgent joy. We’ve had beignets before, but these strike us differently: refreshing, comfortable, and better. They offer nothing more than a combination of leavened, fried and sweetened, but also nothing less than an immersion into the food itself, skillfully and quickly enough to make you forget your whereabouts.
With all that said, they’re products of a chain. Eight Cafe Du Monde’s spread both sides of Lake Ponchartrain, the first in 1862 on Decatur Street (formerly Camino Real in 1762-1803, just FYI for no apparent reason) down at the French Quarter, and the second in 1985 in the now Kenner. There is nothing bistroesque or vaguely French about the modern shiny seats in the cafe, the only reminiscence of old days is that they take cash only. But it’s charming, like all simplicity done well.
Just as the donut has many ways to savor, the beignet, according to Blake, is best without sugar and dipped in coffee.
So here, a Happily Sugar-coated New Year to all and an Aromatic Coffee-soaked one to Blake!
Address: Cafe Du Monde
4700 Veterans Blvd
(504) 888-9770
When I was little, I built this little toy settlement with animal figurines that I collected over the years. One of my ladies, an inch-tall cat with apron and yellow dress, was a baker, and I would  gather water droplets on the garden leaves each morning so that she could bake cakes for the village. Apparently the best thing my imagination could come up with was a “soil cake”. Yep, I said my baker would collect the best dirt in her backyard, wash and knead it with morning dew, then make pastry out of it. Crazy, you say? Well, apparently a group of Indonesian villagers agree with my cat patisseur. Have you heard of ampo cake? I did just last night.
ampo snack at Tuban village, East Java Province, Indonesia - Image courtesy of OddityCentral.com
Why do the Tuban villagers eat soil? Some of us may quickly reason that they are poor, uneducated, or have malnutrition. Fair enough, since this ancient town of East Java preserves its land and culture rather than going industrialized, even if it hosts Indonesia’s largest cement factory, a petrochemical plant, two universities, and frequent Western tourists.
But what about Pearls of the Undergrowth (la Perle des sous-bois) from De Jaeger snail farm? If simple soil snacks are sold for cheap among villagers of the Far East, snail eggs are considered a delicacy with black truffle and fine wine among new French restaurateurs. Each 30 grams costs a whopping $109 base value.
“It has a sensation of fresh dew, beaming pearls. Your mouth will experience the sensation of a walk in the forest after the rain, mushrooms and oak leaf flavours, a journey through autumn aromas.”
Though I don’t understand French, the lady’s expression in this video confirms it all.
Think about it, the snail eggs are slimy babies of slimy parents. Go ahead, say ew. My mom did. She has a morbid fear of land snails and slimy things. Of course, snail caviar is pasteurized and no longer slimy, just like the ampo snack is baked and no longer muddy. But somehow we instinctively slip out an “ew” or two upon hearing of some food we have not yet associated with food.
I’ve heard people say “ew” to food items many times, especially in America. Liver? Ew. Chicken gizzard? Ew. Bone marrow? Ew. Rabbit? Ew. Duck egg? Ew. Soy milk? Ew. Then I’ve heard sympathetic comments such as “I guess it’s good not to waste anything”. I’m afraid to disappoint you, but the point isn’t to waste or not to waste. Soup stock doesn’t taste good without the sweetness from the bones, unless you add MSG. Offals have unique textures and flavors irreplaceable  by meat, just like cheese cannot be replaced by bread. How is soy milk gross when peanut butter is yummy? We eat mushroom, sometimes raw, without thinking about it as fungus, and yogurt without thinking about the bacterial fermentation, so why do we think about the slime when we are offered escargot?
The answer is simple: we are content with the taste we’ve grown up with, and believe that the other things must be gross. The first part is understandable, the latter is a huge mistake. Matthew Amster-Burton, author of Hungry Monkey, talks about his toddler daughter’s pickiness with food and how all children would say “ew” to food even before trying them, just because they’ve formed some preconception of that food in mind. Then one day the kids see their friends eat those things, and come home to question their parents about not feeding them those things earlier. Toddlers’ eating preferences are inexplicable, and we sometimes have reverted to the toddler stage when presented with new food.
So I’m not going to touch the subject of respecting cultures and whatnot, because we all (should) know how you make someone feel when you express disgust about their food to their face. But Everything deserves at least one try before you say ew, or, like a toddler I know who refused meatball when she had spaghetti, you’d miss out on some serious good eats.
Summer has rolled around, and it’s time for the restaurants to get flocked with new college graduates and families. We didn’t make reservation last time we went to La Note, and we thought we would have had to wait for 55 minutes. Luckily somebody cancelled theirs, so we only waited for 10 minutes to be seated at a little table near an old piano and a giant fly, looking out to the beaming afternoon on Shattuck Avenue.
I’ve heard many good things about this cozy corner. I’ve walked past what I thought to be its main door countless times, wondering why the sign “Ferme” is always there and if La Note is ever opened. Finally, we’ve gotten behind those doors. We heard the girls giggling and commenting on its “cuteness”. We read the two-paged menu and saw the chalk board of daily specials. It feels bistroesque.
Somehow we ended up ordering lasagna at a French restaurant, but it was one of the specials. I’ve had some boring moments with lasagna before, so I didn’t expect much from this Lasagna Bolognese. However, the creamy layers of pasta made it gateau-like, there was very little tomato sauce, the finely grounded meat went unnoticed, and this Lasagna Bolognese sang a harmonious tune at $13.95.
The Ratatouille Borghetti was a different story. From a Vietnamese viewpoint, vegetable stew over couscous felt like broken rice (cÆ¡m tấm) with tomato sauce overload. It was fresh, healthy, vegan if we hadn’t added two runny eggs for extra buttery glueyness. It was tongue-catching at the first few bites, then kinda fell into flat land. Well, we contented ourselves on paying $16.50 to feel good about eating vegetarian.
Overall, the lovely La Note didn’t pull out the oomph from me. Did I not pick the right dish? Should we have asked for the croques, the bagnats, or the meat du jour? Maybe next time.
Money matters: dinner for two + tax: $33.42
Address: La Note Restaurant (since 1997)
2377 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 843-1535
My cravings fluctuate from time to time, and it’s not always rational. One time I bought two kilos of prunes, ate some for a few days, now the rest are sitting patiently in my pantry. Then I used to have a crush on chocolate bars, the result is an almost complete collection of Endangered Species Chocolate wrappers, but a few bars have been on my desk for over six months. As of late, I’ve grown a crepe tooth. A matchbox kitchen fifteen-minute leisure walk from Sather Tower, called Crepes A-Go-Go, is to blame.
A quick drop of sound sizzles when the spatula folds and presses the fluffy layer. The oversize pancake lies supine. The heat is low. The quiet, stout chef casually sprinkles some Swiss cheese and some pineapple; he seems bored, or maybe I’m just too excited. I like my crepe soft and thick. Heck, I even like my banh xeo soft and thick, no matter how many people tell me that a qualified Vietnamese sizzling crepe should be crispy and paper thin. I watch the cheese melt. The chef lets the doughy pancake rest a minute or two, then deftly folds it again into one sixth of a disc, sweeps and swings it into a clear plastic container. My five-buck-and-a-quarter dinner to go seems sluggish and content like a well-fed baby pig.
And soon I am one happy hog myself. The cheese-turkey-pineapple crepe is a rich and chewy mess. The first bite is so good I ditch the plastic fork (which doesn’t do much at cutting anyway). Pineapple juice streams out at the tip as I scramble to bite sideway, and when the crepe reduces to a sizable conic chunk I use it to wipe clean the juice. The last mouthful is as rewarding and lingering as it can be, my fingers wet with butter and cheese. But my embarrassing story doesn’t just end here.
I feel full, yet still want more, but I know better than letting the tongue fool the tummy. So I save the luke warm sweet crepe for later. And I forget about it. It sits in my fridge for over a day. The next morning, filled with guilt, I microwave my sweet crepe. Cut-up fruits don’t behave really well with refrigerating and microwaving, the banana turns overripe, the kiwi and the strawberry taste zealously sour. But the crepe still has its fleece-like texture, buttery, thick, and snuggly. The squirt of lemon juice gives a refreshing fragrant. I scrape off the fruit chunks, sink my teeth, and sheepishly smile.
Seven years and counting: Crepes A-Go-Go near UC Berkeley campus
2334 Telegraph Avenue (between Durant and Bancroft)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 486-2310
Borrowed from the receipt: Bon Appetit, Bon Journee
