Flavor Boulevard

Category: French

  • Cafe Grillades – Crepe a bite after a long flight


      The San Francisco airport is a great excuse to eat out on the other side of the bay. Catching a morning flight? Breakfast at Milbrae Pancake House. Picking up parents and wanting to show them around at mid day? Lunch at La Boheme in Burlingame. Arriving in a lazy afternoon after four hours confined in the airplane’s seat with a neck cramp and in the mood for something nice, light but hearty? A crepe at Cafe Grillades of San Bruno sounds just right.

      It’s one of those homey places where you can nibble a panini while reading the chronicles, sit by the window and gaze at a quiet parking lot, or meet someone for a casual interview. It has the boureks and the Algerian couscous if you want to impress old friends with an interesting order, but it also serves classic ham and cheese on toast all day. It will satisfy both the burger hunger and the vegan healtheist. It has the West European facade, the Mediterranean sum up, the North Saharan novelty, the San Franciscan appeal. In plain view, Cafe Grillades has a pretty good all-inclusive menu.

      But we came here for crepes, and get crepes we did. Somehow the herbivore in Mudpie and the carnivore in me switched place that day. Mudpie decidedly took on the Algiers Merguez, spicy lamb and beef sausage mingled with chunky potatoes,  mushy tomatoes, and slabs of onions in crème fraiche (first picture). I, feeling betrayed by the chicken burrito on the plane, went down the defiant path with a ratatouille flat square hot pocket.

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    • Want a late-19th-century Parisian afternoon? Go to La Boheme

        La_Boheme_interiorWhen Mother is a good cook, too often she’s also a dainty diner. Her standard of a good outie consists of a spotless floor, a high ceiling, white table cloth, classy customers, and fine china. So when it comes to taking Mother out for dinner, I have to be extra careful. French is always a safe choice. A French restaurant in the City of Trees is even better, as the rows of Eucalyptus loftily overlooked us driving through, bringing her back to memories of Saigon’s Duy Tan Street. The good mood was set. We arrived at La Boheme in the midst of a sun-bathed afternoon Farmers’ Market, white tents made the variegated crowd all the more picturesque. A step into the open-doored restaurant and the ambience transformed into cool air, quietude, and refined elegance.

        Seeing that it was past noon, we skipped the appetizers. The benefit of having company is the ease of trying out different categories in a menu: from land to sea to bakery, from duck confit stew to pan-roasted salmon to sandwich la Bohème.
        It would be almost contrived to go about describing the taste. The look says it all. Tenderness shows on the lustrous russet hue of the duck skin, succulence is embedded in the creamy tone of “ground apple” purée, garden’s and oven’s crisps join harmonically in vibrant colors. Perhaps the only setback was the acrid zest of dijon mustard on the sandwich, a taste I have yet to acquaint.

        Like a palette with no fixed sets of color patches, this pâtisserie does not have a fixed dessert menu all year round. The business goes by daily creations, but the mousse and the mille-feuille are as irresistible to the chefs as they are enticing to the diners: the window counter cannot lack their beauty, nor can the palates refuse their luscious embrace. Just this once I actually let go of the wicked craving for chocolate and chose the fruity mousse, every morsel of which I adored. Indeed, nothing can beat the citric acid’s touch of delight.

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      • Frosting all the way – La buche de Noel

          The French colonizers brought many things to Vietnam – Catholic churches, potatoes, veston, coffee and rubber tree plantations, to name a few – but perhaps their baking recipes have left the sweetest memories. Some of those recipes were modified, like the baguette with extra leavening became the crisp and light banh mi, or the croissant with extra butter which is crisp at the two horns (to match its Vietnamese name – “water buffalo’s horn”), golden and shiny at the bottom, more substantial inside, subtly salty, and smells delicious from several feet away. Some names have mysteriously disappeared from the world wide web of delicacies and can only be found in Vietnamese conversations, Vietnamese bakeries, and Vietnamese food blogs – the pâte chaud falls into this category. But many stay true to their origin, like the choux à la crème, the gâteau, and the buche de Noel.

          There’s the frosting. It can be white chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, even durian flavor, but the traditional dark chocolate ganache is best in my opinion. There’s the middle layer to resemble tree rings, chocolate again is great but pineapple jam if you like it fruity but not too sweet. There’s the layer of spongy génoise, soft, light, plain, a levee to keep the palates from a sugar flood. As for decoration, powder sugar would make a good snow, meringue mushroom to look more botanical, a couple of icing roses, branches, or pine trees to be Christmasy, some fresh raspberries for a little tart.

          The Vietnamese keep the tradition of a strictly European réveillon even after the French left, no member of spring rolls, rice noodle, sticky rice, sweet bean paste and the gang are allowed, but goose is extremely welcome and buche de Noel is a must. Then we crossed the sea and here in America although Christmas desserts are overwhelming – fruitcakes, gingerbread, pumpkin pies, mince pies, banana bread, candies and cookies – la buche de Noel doesn’t exist. Why is that? We brought over the turkey, the ham, the Christmas tree, even the actual Yule log to be burnt in the fireplace, why is the edible and delicious Yule log left behind?

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        • At Shokolaat, dine slowly the French way

            pate-chaud-stuffed-with-quail-shokolaatI was going to name this post “Dark dining,” but thought I should continue the French theme. We had French lunch, and here’s French dinner on the same day (we should have gotten a croissant for breakfast that morning for completeness, but oh well…). Sorry for the invisible pictures, didn’t want to disturb other customers around with the flash, and like an idiot I didn’t remember to switch my camera to candle light mode. I don’t know if that would have helped any though, the candle you see in the picture above is the only light source on the table. They meant to make a dreamy romantic setting, not one for inspection.

            Let’s go straight to the food: 1. they were tasty, 2. they were small. Actually the girl next to our table couldn’t help but cried out the second remark when the food was brought to her, she also made a quick approximation that you could get 20 cheeseburgers from McDonald for the price of one of these dishes. That is true, but I don’t think I would enjoy 20 cheeseburgers as much as I enjoyed my pate chaud stuffed with quail (pictured), which appeared on the menu as “quail stuffed with brioche and foie gras pithivier, black truffle ice cream, tarragon veal jus.” Don’t get turned off by all the fancy names, (as unattractive as they may sound), because the most undesirable flavor in the bundle, which is the black truffle, is on the side thus easily avoidable. If you have not tried black truffle, it’s recommended that you try so that you know it’s very much the antonym of “good”, “pleasant”, or “alright”. Just gently move your brioche to a safe area outside the reach of the melting skunk, and eat. The brioche and the quail is simply excellent. Normally a pastry of that size would take me at most 4 bites, roughly 5 minutes, to finish. But in a restaurant like this, one oughta at least try to show some manner, so I cut the poor thing into tiny little bites and mostly licked the tip of my fork. I managed to finish in 15 minutes, with long breaks in between. The brioche kinda just melted in your mouth, and the quail was so tender you don’t really need to chew a whole lot. What slows you down is your tongue wanting to savour the sweet, buttery, slightly salty juice. Eating slowly also helps your tummy feel full, so that the modest size of the meal becomes reasonable.

            We also ordered Australian lamb (it could be Californian lamb, who knows, right?). The picture didn’t come out very nicely, though. There is no weirdo in that dish, so it’s safe to enjoy everything and leave nothing left but the bones. Different taste, same deliciousness. The portion is also slightly more generous than the quail. 😉 If you’re still hungry, the bread brought out earlier while you were waiting for your entree is a good filler, albeit not a spectacular one.

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          • Crêpes Café – another home for the French curl

              With vision unstoppable by foliage, Mudpie saw the sign above hidden behind rows of trees as we were roaming Menlo Park for a lunch spot on a Friday afternoon one month ago. Question asked, “should we go there or keep looking for something else?”, as we drove past another block. It should be noted that we missed a turn once, chose direction by random illogical preference (as I had no idea where which direction led to). We also passed a bunch of places with clarity and apparent popularity, or places that Mudpie has tried before. But we were out for a food hunt, not chicken shopping at grocery stores, and this place fits the adventure. Answer made, “let’s go there.” So turn we did, a parking spot was not too hard to find on the side of the place, passing by the nonchalant gaze of customers sitting outdoor and in we went.

              I can’t quite call it a restaurant. Some call every eating stop with chairs and tables a restaurant, but this is an example of one that doesn’t fit into the category. A restaurant is brisk. The bistro is relaxing. Paintings on the wall for sale, empty wooden seats painted blue, wooden tables with a filled glass water jug to help yourself and a trifling vase of fresh flowers. The usual small box of sweetener and salt, which I play with while waiting. I can’t remember if there was AC, but it was comfortable. The menu says it’s a family business, and it sure looks like it. A friendly but quiet young lady greeted us at the counter, and as we stumbled around the menu overhead, a stocky man in his 30s, who turned out to be the chef, cordially invited us to seat ourselves and gave us two menus in print. We felt better as we were no longer blocking the narrow entrance to the counter. There was no customer inside.
              Normally I like to plunge right into something weird catchy on the menu, but since I had such a hot wonderful savourastic chicken crepe one wintry night on the street right outside the WSCTC, I couldn’t resist the memory and ordered Chicken & Creamy Dijon Sauce savory crepe this time. With a little persuasion, Mudpie overcame the American disgust distrust for pâté, and ordered Duck Rillettes (duck meat pate with cornichon on baguette). (I felt elevated as if I could speak French.)

              A peek inside.
              It is so simple, just like the atmosphere of the bistro itself. A layer of rillettes, a few cornichons (pickled gherkins), sandwiched between two pieces of bread. As Mudpie noted, it’s something you can make at home, if you know where to get or how to make rillettes. The additional quirky cornichons were perhaps supposed to be a contrast to the smooth, tender, savory rillettes, but sometimes contradiction doesn’t really enhance things. I took them out and nibbled them by themselves. (Had to drink a lot of water after each nibble). Meat pate is a little different from liver pate and a little similar to spam. It is not at all bitter, a little crumblier than spam, and far tastier. I’m getting hungry… For me pate is ranked right up there with marinated cha lua and a real brown crispy cha gio. I never grow tired of them. I even had rice mixed with pate. Mudpie, once muttered “… gross pate…”, also agreed that the sandwich was good.

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            • French flakie

                It’s a Sunday night and I have a little more than 12 hours until my first class of a new week. If I make sure I have 8 hours of sleep as they recommend for everyone, and an hour of scurrying around to get ready in the morning, then I’d have only 3 hours left to tend my homework, make a plot to show my advisor, write my thesis (and hope one day I will finish), study for the GRE, and blog. (One would say blogging is a waste of time, but I personally think it’s a better use of time than hanging out at clubs and bars. Anyway, maybe that’s just me.) Of those activities blogging isn’t the easiest one, I kid you not. You got bored from working, took out a piece of pastry your mom got you from Lee’s Sandwiches. You thought, since it’s not popular where you live and you haven’t had it since donkeys ago and couldn’t find it on Wikipedia, maybe you should blog about it. Then you took pictures of it. You even took out a knife to cut it up nicely.

                Then you ate it. Then you washed your greasy hand and wiped away the flakes and tossed the napkin into the trash can. Then you took the memory card out of your camera and slid it into the slot on the side of your computer. Nothing showed up. You opened Computer, but no form of external drive was in sight to click on. Windows Vista gives you surprises. Deterred? Nah. A USB cable came in handy, you got your images transferred. Uploaded too. Then you have nothing to write. The pictures are there. The names are there. Just no words in mind. It oddly resembles doing homework.

                The pate chaud is a common pastry at any bakery in Saigon, and although I haven’t been to other parts of the country, I’d say it’s common everywhere in Vietnam. It’s not quite common here. This is the second time I’ve had it in America, the first time was at Shokolaat downtown Palo Alto, but Shokolaat serves it as an entree, not a snack, and the stuffing at Shokolaat is not seasoned ground pork. The ground pork clump in Lee’s pate chaud is similar to what I’ve had in Vietnam and the pork stuffing in banh bao (minus the peas and all). Unlike other Americanized Vietnamese dishes loaded with meat, this chap actually has a skim amount of meat inside. If the pate chaud in Saigon is Sarah Palin, fluffy, flaky, and shiny, then the pate chaud in Houston is Vladimir Putin, a charred, compact, powerful settlement in your tummy.

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