Flavor Boulevard

This ramen shop in the Financial district looks cute. Black walls with Japanese writings, a clock with numbers spelled out in hiragana, and a t-shirt that (I assume) sells for 3000 yen (~30 USD). The owners seem to try keeping it as hole-in-the-wall as possible (to make it appear authentic?). Of course, despite what the name might suggest, it’s not actually underground, nor do you need any special thing to get in.

All basic ramens are $8 with $1 toppings. The basic ramen contains your choice of broth, pork (chashu), scallion and mushroom.

My miso ramen with extra kakuni (braised pork belly). The mushroom is raw (not only is that just wrong – think about cold mushroom in a luke warm broth! bleh!, enoki would have made a MUCH better ramen companion than portobello T_T). There’s ONE puny slice of chashu. The broth is fine but it’s missing something… (more pork, probably!!!) At least the noodle is chewy.

If you’re curious, this is what disappointment tastes like.

(Actually we later realized that we should have asked for an egg, that’s what missing. But still, we could really use another slice of pork…)

Address: Ramen Underground
355 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

It’s packed when we went for dinner and online reviews suggest that there’s always a line at lunch, but San Francisco, when will you stop hyping up every. single. thing!

Hokkaido butter corn miso ramen with smoked king salmon, pork belly, soy-marinated egg, snap peas, chrysanthemum greens, and shiitake. ($16)

Okay so, The Ramen Shop is not a place I would go alone. I think eating there alone would be particularly wonderful because ramen is the type of food to be eaten alone, and although the lighting might be too low for reading, it’s hard to read while slurping noodles anyway. BUT, the wait is just too horrible. This place has been hyped up since its opening in January, and it stays hyped. No sensical lone diner should wait an hour for a bowl of ramen.

It’s good ramen, though. I didn’t expect too much, and I was satisfied.

The broth was rich, although not hot enough (maybe I remember more than I should from the movie Tampopo, but they say the ramen broth should be boiling hot when arriving at the table). By American standard though, this is fine. I like that they keep the menu simple: 3 kinds of ramen – shio ramen with manila clams, veggie shoyu ramen with mushroom and salt-cured egg (yeah, ramen ain’t no place for vegan 🙁 ), and miso ramen with salmon. The only complaint: why no simple ramen with just pork belly? I understand that you want to make the $15 price tag seems more reasonable by adding some extra stuff, but the salmon really doesn’t belong.

Black sesame ice cream sandwich ($6) – The ice cream part is okay, but I’m not a fan of the sugar cookie.

The Ramen Shop is at 5812 College Avenue, Oakland, CA 94618 – (510)788-6370.

On the left is a Hass avocado from Peru, on the right is a Hass avocado from California.

Hass avocado is a cultivar of avocado, and it has a cute history. In 1925, Mr. Rudolph Hass, an amateur horticulturist, bought a small 1.5 acre avocado grove in La Habra Heights, Southern California. His plan was to graft old Fuerte avocado branches – at the time, Fuerte was the best avocado cultivar – with young saplings grown from some avocado seeds, which were sold at a local nursery. Those seeds were cross-pollinated many times by nature, and the grafting did not go well for one of the young trees [little stubborn sapling!], but per his grafter’s advice, Mr. Hass kept that sapling to see what would happen anyway. When the sapling was only over a foot tall (some time in 1926), it bore three fruits [d’awww!].

Normally, the Fuerte cultivar would take at least five years to produce fruits. Not only the odd stubborn young tree grew faster than the Fuerte, it also grew straight up and did not spread as wide, so it was more land-efficient (more trees per acre). Most importantly, its fruits tasted the same, if not better than the Fuerte. Hence, the Hass avocado became the most popular varietal, making up 95% of all today commercially grown avocados. [Moral of the story: don’t cut down your tree even if it refuses to do what you want at first. 🙂 ]

Back to California vs. Peru.

Both of these are Hass avocados, and they’re roughly the same size (the Peruvian ones are slightly bigger). At Berkeley Bowl, the Peruvian Hass avocados were sold for 89 cents each. This is insanely cheap, considering the Californian ones (labelled “XX Large Hass avocado”) go for 1.69 dollars each. [How can imported produce be so cheap? I feel bad for the Peruvian farmers!] While I’m loyal to the Cali ones, I also love cheap things to try new things. I bought four of each type.

Appearance: Cali: smooth skin, Peru: bumpy skin.
(Now I understand why avocados are also called “alligator pear” – although I’ve never heard anyone say that myself).

Convenience: Cali: knife easily cuts through the skin, Peru: I basically had to saw it open [same knife, in case you wonder]. So yes, the Peruvian skin is much thicker.

Taste: Cali: normal buttery, Peru: quite bland.
More concrete comparison: I always mash avocado, add some sugar and chill it in the fridge –> instant dessert (like ice cream). For the Cali avocado, 1 teaspoon of sugar is enough. For the Peru one, I add 2 teaspoons of sugar and it’s still bland (like a potato).

Texture: Cali: soft, Peru: hardy and stringy.
I couldn’t even mash the Peru one. Not because it’s not ripe. It was actually so ripe that the meat already darkened, but it was somewhat unyielding like a waxy potato. I also had to pull strings out of my “ice cream”, this avocado was so old a tree would grow out of it the next day.

I’m not going to preach locavorism or anything, but it’s clear which one is the better choice. (Supermarket fruits are always picked unripe to survive the transportation, so I have doubts that the Peruvian avocados are actually inferior to the Californian ones, it’s just that they were transported from much further away, it’s a wonder they managed to preserve any flavor at all.)

Mai has written quite favorably about Musashi in a past post but I have to write about a particular dish that has been about the best thing I’ve eaten in a restaurant lately.

That dish would be the chirashi sushi ($20) listed under the donburi menu items. This is by far the freshest, tastiest, and best-valued chirashi bowl that I have ever eaten. A win-win-win!

The bowl generously comes with at least 2 slices (some fish came with 3 or 4 slices) of tuna (two different types that were raw and one type that was slightly seared), salmon, mackerel, hamachi, raw scallops, octopus, shrimp (not pictured since the chef forgot to put it in the bowl but gave us the order on the side), a glorious piece of uni, squid-wrapped cucumber, tamago, and a dollop of salmon roe. All of this came on top of a huge mound of sushi rice, which was perfectly cooked. I would definitely recommend sharing, as this is way too big of a dish for one person to eat alone. Each piece of fish was so fresh that it was hard for me to pick one that I liked over the others. However, the true standout of the bowl for me would definitely be the uni. So rich, so creamy, and it just melts in your mouth with just the slightest hint of the ocean. This is the perfect example of how fresh uni should taste like and besides, how often is it that a chirashi bowl actually gives you a big fresh piece of uni?

For only $20, this is a dish that is well-worth the piece. I recommend getting one to share with someone else in order to make room for all of the other yummy dishes that Mai already covered in-depth. This is by far the best chirashi bowl I have ever had and the next time that I crave sashimi, I’ll head over to Musashi!

Juicy, tender duck packed with sweet-savory marinade, you know, the typical red roasted duck that you see hanging by the neck at cleanliness-questionable Chinese eateries in Chinatown. But in this case, we don’t see the hanging ducks, the restaurant is Thai, and at least from where we’re sitting, everything looks clean(*).

The noodle, too, is flavorful. The same sweet-savory vibe. Chewy and not soaking wet.

I was doing well until the last maybe 3-4 bites and I could feel the part under my diaphragm harden, like a water balloon. I can’t ask for a box for 3-4 bites, so I stuffed it in. To the very last noodle.

The nice thing about this restaurant: you can get roasted duck (or mock duck, which is made with seitan) with pretty much every dish. So my friend asked for Veggie Delight with roasted duck. I asked her if it was delightful, she said yes. 🙂

Address: Nara Thai Dining
18445 W Lake Houston Pkwy
Humble, TX 77346
(281) 812-0291
www.narathaidining.com

(*) The restroom is also clean and flavorful. Raspberry air freshener with black-raspberry-and-vanilla hand soap. As soon as we walked in, we could smell the overflowing raspberry. However, the floor of the hallway leading to the restroom is sticky, so I guess they only keep it clean where it matters?

Veggie Delight with roasted duck – $14.95

Tofu fried rice – $8.95

Good ol’ tomato and crab noodle soup from Southern Vietnam: bún riêu (pronounced |boon rhee-oo|). The broth looks alarmingly spicy but this soup is actually never spicy. The orange red color comes from tomato and annatto seeds, and if you’re lucky, crab roe (if fresh crabs are used for the soup).

The sweetness of the broth comes from freshwater paddy crabs, where the whole crab (meat and shell) is ground to a paste and strained for the juice. It’s a delicate, distinctive sweetness that can’t be reproduced with dashi no moto, meat bones or mushroom. To deepen the flavor, the cook adds some mắm ruốc, fermented krill paste, to the broth.

Traditionally, bun rieu has crab meat and tofu for the protein part, but bun rieu at Ba Le Sandwich is ladened with cha lua, pork and shrimp.

Traditionally, it’s one of those commoner’s noodle soups that every other street stall sells in Vietnam, nutritious, filling, unrefined, a richness of everyday life and earthy pleasures. Somehow I grew up not thinking much of it and was never impressed by it. In the bustle of North Cali, bun rieu is still nothing more than a commoner’s noodle soup, never elevated to the level of party food, but the more I think about it, the more I find it romantic. In one bowl, I was tasting the unctuous harmony of wetland and freshwater, of simple vegetables and grains and crustaceans that grow up together in one environment and end up together in one pot, or at least that’s how the noodle soup was originally designed. Do things taste best in the company of what they grow up with? I’m inclined to think so.

Back to a matter-of-fact viewpoint, the inside of Ba Le Sandwich in East Oakland, has been renovated earlier this year into a neat little diner enough to sit 12-14 people, since most customers come for to-go banh mi and on-the-counter goodies such as mungbean milk and sesame beignet. They have hand down the best banh mi in the East Bay north, but everything else tastes good because they know how to season things.

Address: Banh Mi Ba Le (Ba Le Sandwich)
1909 International Blvd
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 261-9800

One bowl of delta romanticism: $6.50. Another awesome thing about this place: they open at 6:30 am.

Banh cuon – steamed rice rolls stuffed with pork and mushroom (the white things), and accessories.

Banh canh – It’s supposed to be tapioca noodle soup with short fat noodle made from tapioca and rice flour, but Ba Le uses Japanese udon instead. The broth is kept original, though.

This post is for the Vietnamese expats in particular and anyone who thinks of the avocado as a fruit (to be eaten as a fruit, not a vegetable). In America, people tend to think of avocado in guacamole terms or as a meat substitute in sandwiches. If you think avocado for dessert is weird, shall we talk about your pumpkin pie? 😉

Ever since the day I saw the option of “avocado smoothie” at UCafe, I’ve had 3-5 avocado smoothies every week. Drinking each smoothie with boba was like looking through old photographs and reliving the beautiful days. The avocado is healthy, but that’s not why I like it. It’s the best option when I’m too tired to chew, want something mildly sweet and cold, and when the weather is too hot for meat and carbs. It replenishes my soul and keeps me alive through the summer humidity that accumulates in my tin-roof office building. I regret that I had not eaten more avocados in Vietnam, where the fruit is as big as my whole hand from wrist to middle finger tip and as luscious as molten chocolate cake.

I love the avocado smoothie at UCafe, but after a while it proves too expensive: a regular 12-oz cup, which costs nearly $4, contains only half an avocado. Berkeley Bowl sells palm-sized avocados (which they label as “extra-large”) for $1.69 each. So I bought a blender to make my own smoothie.

This is probably the first and only time I use my blender because cleaning a blender is not my favorite activity, and because I prefer smashed avocado than blended avocado (the ice dilutes the taste). Still, who knows when the blender might be handy again.

Recipe for avocado smoothie: (1 serving)
– 8 cubes of ice
– 1 large avocado
– 2 teaspoons of sugar
Blend and serve.

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. 😉

The latest addition to my dream house: a wooden platform to put in the garden where we can sit cross-legged, eat, drink tea, lie down while listening to the birds and wind chime. That platform, we call it phảng |fang|, but I don’t know the Japanese or English word for it :-/

It came about when Kristen and I sat on that wooden thing outside Ippuku tonight. It was outside outside, not a patio sitting, no chairs, no tables, just a platform like a wide bench. We came for their goma ice cream, and the wait for a table was super long so ordering at the bar was the best idea. You’d think it’d be cold, but there was the heater lamp hanging off the roof to warm us. My face was so warm I thought I was gonna get sunburn at 9 pm.

It was so relaxing. Sit cross-legged, savor sesame ice cream, sesame cracker and a mochi, watch the street and the boys goofing off on it, and be watched by people waiting for a table. Come to think of it, we weren’t any less goofy than those boys. 😀

Address: Ippuku
2130 Center Street #101
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 665-1969

I wrote about twenty different Ippuku dishes before. Every time I came here it feels nicer and nicer. The guy at the bar was also so kind, he gave us water and wet towels (one of which is visible in the picture to the right) although we only ordered one bowl of ice cream…

*Photo courtesy of Kristen Sun*

UPDATE: As of November 2013, this dessert is no more. The machine broke down and would cost too much to be fixed, mostly Asians like this dessert while non-Asians don’t, and management doesn’t consider Asians the target audience. I weep (with rage).