Flavor Boulevard

Category: Japanese

  • Roe, roe, roe your boat


      I’ve finally had it. Le pâté des mers. A sandy lustrous texture and a briny air of the ocean compactified in bright orange lobes.


      It’s my first time, at a sushi house in Berkeley in early May, so I’m not gonna pretend like I had the faintest idea about uni. I’m not sure if it’s raw or cooked, but from the taste alone it’s too seashore-breeze-like to be cooked. It could be a paste from a tube for all I know. But now it’s decided. Sea urchin roe? Count me in.

      Thanks to noodlepie for writing about it. Really helps if you know what to expect before you try, as always.

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    • A Haiku in College Station

        Afternoon leaves fall,
        family of three gathers
        by hot noodle soups.


        How d’ya like my first ever haiku, inspired by a linner (lunch/dinner) at Haiku? 😀 5-7-5 syllables (not on, though), with kigo (seasonal reference) and kireji (cutting word) too… You can’t say I didn’t try.


        This was the easiest Japanese/Korean restaurant we could get to while driving on University. It’s more Japanese than Korean, evident from the short section of bibimbaps and whutnot among everything sushi. Seeing how this weather cries for soups, Mom decides on some piping kalbi tang (갈비탕). It’s not as oomphing good as the one I had at Bi Won in Santa Clara, just how many Koreans live in College station after all (*), but it sure is satisfying with loads of egg in a beef bone stock.

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      • Show me the meaning of sashimi


          I don’t like the Backstreet Boys but when an apt title comes you gotta grab it. Last Sunday we were out celebrating ZuChu‘s birthday with her favorite: sashimi. I was fully expecting a glamorous meal since I’ve come to like smoked salmon and figured all thinly sliced raw fish must have that silky springiness too. Besides, there are those pictures of translucent peony and phoenix made out of fugu sashimi. The Japanese get you by the eye.


          This modest stop on Shattuck has the biggest selection of fishy cold cuts in South Berkeley, with 13 individual kinds and 2 combo plates. Word of mouth is it also slices up the freshest, gruesomest sashimi around.


          For $18.95 we preempt 16 chunks of maguro (tuna), shiro maguro (albacore, or “white tuna”), sake (salmon), and hamachi (yellowtail, but red meat). The salmon is best (just like La Bedaine’s smoked salmon, but thick). The tunas slide down my throat with some stickiness, as if stuff were crawling up… The hamachi fans apart into a string of cubes, each as bland and bare as the next. Suddenly I understand the presence of wasabi, but I don’t use it.
          In the end, I don’t understand the thickness. It’s like eating a blob of gooey rubber, the more you chew the more you realize it’s not cooked, but once you try to swallow it it clings to your tongue. Soy sauce makes it twenty times better.

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        • Anzu-shi


          I was first deceived by its genteel green color to taste a spoonful all at once. Ever since, the wasabi has been a turnoff. Ever since, I also scoff at sushi, “pieces of overpriced cold rice, cold veggie and tasteless seafood” I labeled them. Well, they’re still overpriced, still cold, but definitely not tasteless. Be it the oksusu cha, the small salad with Korean mayo dressing, the creative rolls, or my infatuation with anything Korean (even when it’s just Korean-made Japanese food), the sushi at Anzu taste wonderful to me.


          I’ve blogged about Anzu twice already, but it would be incomplete to talk about Anzu without talking about their sushi menu. The selection is countless: nigiri/maki, vegan/non-vegan, normal/fried/baked/crunchy, etc. Yah yah yah, this is uramaki (Westernized sushi) with the nori inside, avocado, cream cheese, names like Avatar and Golden Gate. But the point is they’re good. They also give you free soup, salad, and either edamame, fried tofu, or gyoza for appetizer. This would be one of the first places I’d take my little sister out to eat, had the US Embassy granted her a travel visa to enter the States (they wouldn’t do it unless she were married and had her husband stay in Vietnam). But since it’s so difficult to come here legally, guess we’ll have to celebrate Sou‘s birthday with pictures of sushi. 🙂


          Calamari tempura roll ($4.99)- calamari, cucumber, avocado, kamaboko, roll over with spicy mayo and mango sauce.

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        • Satsuki Bazaar on Channing Way


            One blue-sky Sunday in May. A section of Channing Way, between Shattuck and Fulton, was blocked. Two girls draped in summery garments danced to joyous Hawaiian tunes on a sunlit wooden stage, surrounded by a small crowd of both familiar spectators and curious passing pedestrians. The seductive smell of grill beef got caught in the wind here and there.


            So it was the street front of the 61st annual Satsuki Bazaar and Arts Festival at the Berkeley Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temple on Channing Way. Inside the temple, a multitude of items displayed for silent auction held visitors’ footsteps, starting with orchids, matted photos and paintings, gift cards to sushi bars and diving lessons…


            …to porcelain sets, stuffed toys, a wooden sculpture of Daruma, and Shichi Fukujin in a glass box.

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          • Nicky’s Week: RA Sushi’s fundraiser for St. Jude Children Research Hospital

              Tootsy Maki – RA Sushi's signature plate and guests' favorite, with crab mix, shrimp, and cucumber rolled and topped with crunchy tempura bits, and drizzled with sweet eel sauce

              St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance.

              In the first week of June, from May 30 to June 5, all 25 locations of RA Sushi in Southern California, Arizona, East Texas, Florida, and five other states will host a fundraiser for St. Jude. Diners can choose any item on the Nicky’s Week Special menu, such as Shrimp Nigiri, Chicken Yakitori, the signature plates Tuna Tataki and Tootsy Maki. All sale profits from the Nicky’s Week menu will be donated to St. Jude.

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            • When the blossoms bloom


                One Saturday we shove our homework into a corner and make a dash for San Francisco before another spring storm takes over the bay. Parking is as easy as hiking with a twisted ankle, but all that matters is we find a spot, then stroll a mile to the food bazaar on Webster street, Japan Town, arriving just a little bit before noon. Up from the steep sidewalk we see rows of white tents and white chairs, smoke rolling above the grills covered with beef and pork riblets, a line getting long on one side of the conglomeration. It is still early in the first morning of the Cherry Blossom Festival.


                The carnivore instinct leads me right to the grill. It’s never too early to eat meat. The first booth whips out rice bowls with either ribs or unagi, braised eel cut into palm long chunks. We don’t feel like filling up with a rice bowl just yet, so we walk further down the row eying signs, then back track to the Nihonmachi Little Friends’ booth for three skewers of grilled beef at a mere five bucks.


                Crispy-charred-edge marinated beef, though erring a little on the chewy side, delight my feet after that hike from our parking spot. The downright old school meatiness would have well enhanced the kiddie dollar snack omusubi, wedges of plain white rice mixed with nori bits, which Mudpie buys way after we finished the skewers. Waste not want not, the musubi will find its place in my lunch this week, after I wrap it up in nori sheets and maybe with a slice of fried spam. My idea sprouts from seeing at least three booths selling spam musubi and dozens of family walking around with golden brown sauce at the corner of their mouths. I, however, fall victim to the facile yakisoba, soft stir fry noodle with crunchy cabbage dressed only with soy sauce and seaweed sprinkles. The noodle tastes flatter than it looks, and certainly flatter than the wad of six dollar bills we pay for it, but it is a good pacifier for the empty stomach.

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              • Izumiya – Get busy and get yaki

                  If you go to Nihonmachi Mall during Christmas season, visit the Kinokuniya bookstore for some soothingly aesthetic greeting cards and folding snow globes, then walk around the bench and feed your gaze on the delicious window display of Sophie’s Crepes. Then glance to your right, oh… what is this? Winter Toy Land? No, it’s this teeny beehive resto called Izumiya with their frontal lit up like a runway for Santa’s helicopter, reminding me of Prep and Landing.

                  Intrigued, we snugged in. Believe me, even if the weather outside were in the negatives, it couldn’t get any warmer in this packed place. The waitresses skillfully whizzed back and forth and sidestepped through single-person-wide aisles, heat radiated from the grill, the platters and the chatters, faces glowed under the reddish hue of dim light. Paper signs on the sliding door said “Karaoke 9 pm – 2 am”. How would they arrange enough room? Where did they hide the screen? I couldn’t imagine a larger crowd within those walls. Ever since college days I usually feel a bit tighten up if I have to practice my munching three feet away from some strangers, but what the heck, if it’s busy it must be good, the flies wouldn’t call people here otherwise (*).


                  There were the bentos and the sushis like usual, but the house focus was strings and strands. Yakisoba (fried noodle – $8.50) with squid, beef, shrimp, egg, and a pinch of ruby pickled radish (that I’ve had at Anzu but have no idea what it’s called or what it is. Help, anyone?). There was hardly any remnant of oil. Tonkatsu sauce lent the bundle a sour and salty whiff, which subtly forced you to take one small twirl at a time to fully savor its hidden strength.

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                • Anzu revisited

                    Anzu_Berkeley_interiorAlthough we try to be objective, numerous factors always manage to skew our view in one way or another. Surely there are objective facts, like the restaurant is small or the fries are spicy, but generally the taste can be affected by the conversation of a nearby dining couple, the window seats looking out to a blazing sun, an unusual day at work, or sometimes just the unwillingness to compliment. The mood makes the food. My mood wasn’t particularly bad last time I was at Anzu, but it was particularly good this time I was there, as we were seated in this half-hidden corner. The bamboo curtain half obscured the view, the brown and green room was half sedative. The oksusu cha was half surprising, but fully pleasant.


                    We didn’t expect to be seated in such nice seclusion, nor did we anticipate an appetizer. But now that it came, two small cubes of fried tofu with honey,we seemed to recall that last time they also gave us something small for taste opening – a couple of gyozas it was. The tofu beats the gyoza. A thin crunchy crust contrasts yet complements the soft-almost-to-creamy inside, same with the bean blandness and the honey sweetness. Tofu can really do wonders sometimes.


                    For the main course, Anzu offers some good deals with combinations, such as a bento-box meal – like what we ordered last time – or the sushi-udon pair which we got today. The sushi comes in a full roll (6 pieces), with thinly sliced ginger and wasabi for kicks. But really, you don’t need kicks with California rolls, the nori’s salty streaks and avocado’s buttery dollop suffice. I also believe that what we have here was real crab meat, not surimi, because it wasn’t rubbery. It was good.

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                  • Anzu – Where food is plainfully natural


                      Back then we used to take a break from Fortran coding, cross the street from the old Physics building to McDonald’s to refuel at midnight. Now having moved up the ladder, we have little unpretentious Chinese and Japanese down the block, though certainly they don’t open 24/7. A vegetable tempura is much lighter and less savory than a chicken nugget, but many of them would do. The batter is a mere coat for earthy cuts of sweet potato, squash, onion rings, and broccoli. The flavor does not go beyond steam pockets eagerly exploding and crumbled flakes scattering like confetti. Like sushi, Japanese tempura standing alone sans sauce is food for the eye, not quite the taste buds.

                      The same thing holds for beef teriyaki. Dark red grilled complexion topped with sesame seeds beautifully masks a rather dry and sinewy texture. The clear, thin dipping sauce needs some more ingredients to balance its salty lonesomeness. If you order teriyaki at Anzu, don’t expect the commercialized, Americanized, sauce-logged beef and chicken teriyaki in a Subway sandwich, it’s simply not the same.


                      The katsudon saved the day. Short for tonkatsu donburi (deep fried pork cutlet rice bowl), the concoction has the sweetness of egg-coated onions, the tenderness of breaded lean pork, the moist of gooey white rice. Each spoon was filling and satisfactory. Maybe I’ll eat this again before my next exam.

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