Flavor Boulevard

Category: sandwiches

  • Cous Cous Café in Oxford

      – Guest post by Paul Simeon –

      While in Oxford for two weeks attending a summer school, I rarely needed to find a place to eat.  We were given generous dinners in the large dinning room of St. Edmund’s Hall, lunch at the cafeteria at the Culham Science Centre, and breakfast at our dormitory, the William R. Miller Building, just outside the hustle and bustle of the main campus.  So what do we eat on the rare occasions when we aren’t fed?


      I found that eating out was a little more expensive in England than in America.  They had a few fast food chains, but not too many, even if I wanted to eat there.  The sit-down restaurants were pretty expensive, around 9-12 pounds per item.  Luckily, I found a nice place quite close to my dorm that was both affordable and noteworthy: Cous Cous Cafe.


      This Moroccan cafe served several types of sandwiches and wraps, as well as plate dinners with meats, vegetables, and, of course, cous cous. I probably would have gotten a falafel wrap had I not eaten it the night before at 11 pm from a food truck on a walk back from a pub with some friends. Yes, a food truck served fish & chips, hamburgers… and falafel. What caught my eye was a Brie and cranberry sandwich. I asked the lady which bread would go best (wrap, ciabatta, panini), and she said panini. The British and Irish have paninis everywhere. They must really like them. Then I wanted to add roasted veggies. She said it might not fit on the panini, which is thinner, so she recommended ciabatta. So, I got Brie and cranberry on ciabatta.

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    • Big wraps from tiny Razan’s Organic Kitchen


        Maybe I’m still holding everything in comparison to Texas, and maybe it’s unjust to do so, but South Berkeley is seriously the hole-in-the-wall haven. It’s like the folks here just woke up one day and decided hey I’m gonna swap out the sofas downstairs for some huge stoves, place in a few tiny tables and a few tiny chairs against the walls, and maybe an umbrella out on the pavement for style, a receipt printer, a sign that says “Cash only”, and a drink dispenser (or water pitchers). Voilà, mon restaurant! Or in this case, more humble and descriptive, Razan’s Organic Kitchen!


        The wraps take center stage on the chalkboard menu, and the snugly enclosure doesn’t invite a serious course, so we opted for two wraps. The veggie one, named Egyptian (did Egyptians not eat meat?), came out as soon as we filled our water paper cups.

        As far as content goes, I didn’t expect much from a package of falafel, hummus, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, and tahini (sesame paste) wrapped in wheat tortilla, which isn’t really different from pita. But the package did surprise me with its freshness and harmony. Tomato and hummus made it a bit runny, but the lettuce crunch was a perfect complement for the falafel’s meatball-like texture. I’m not sure if the falafel was made Egyptian-style with only fava beans, but it is the distinguisher between the veggie Egyptian wrap and the other nine veggie wraps (Jerusalem, Lebanese, and less regional names) on board.

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      • Def’ly not a Brazil day

          The yellow-and-green parrots ain’t seein’ da Cup this year. I was overjoyed. Seriously, best news to start the day since summer began. To celebrate I walked half a mile down Shattuck and hit Brazil Cafe for the first time (my students strongly recommend their tritip sandwiches). You know, kinda like warriors in the old day eating their defeated enemy’s liver or sum’. It’s supposedly opened today 11am – 9pm. I got there at 11:45, but they were closed, grief-stricken perhaps?

          Feeling pretty defeated myself, I swung by Bongo Burger on Center St. and scored a bacon bun in revenge. They say they’re proud to serve Niman Ranch, and I say I’m proud to refuse the alluring offer of Miss Cashier to pay extra for fries. $6.04 for a third pound burger and water only, please.

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        • Kim’s Sandwiches


            In one bite you taste a garden. Minty fresh coriander, crunchy pickled carrots, a load of soft white pickled onion, but most special of all is the aromatic burnt lemongrass. It makes the charcoaled pork here extra flavorful just as crushed peanuts make Huong Lan’s texturally delish. Microwaved, the pickled sweet onion and meat grease make the bread somewhat like a slice of steamed baguette dressed with chives and lard (bánh mì hấp mỡ hành). Thumbs up.

            Kim’s Sandwiches (in the Lion Supermarket area)
            1816 Tully Rd 182, San Jose, CA 95111
            (408) 270-8903

            The owner is supernice. More from this store later.

          • Saigon Express – catching up with the sandwich


              Another day, another banh mi.

              And another. And another. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted thịt nguội (Vietnamese cold cut, also called “ham”), chả lụa, or pâté, and I didn’t want to settle for the special ($3.20) which has all three, because that means there is less of each. Like a good girl I got all three ($2.75 each), then mixed and matched. Cha lua is nothing beyond expectation, smooth and pure, sliced as thin as chicken skin. To its left is the firm rosy thit nguoi, made from cured pork and fat strips, similar to pork belly. To its right is pork liver pate banh mi. The brown spread looks like nutella with pepper,  feels grainy and silky on the tongue, and tastes magnificent. In one bite of oozing goodness, you can find something nutty, something sweet, a bit fatty and rich, a lot of salt, no sign of bitterness, all tempered by the mildly sour pickled carrots. Pork liver pate is my favorite.

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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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              • Food and plates

                  ZsFillingStation_Woodville_TXTwo hours north east of Kingwood is this town Woodville. So peaceful is the thirty-some-mile long hilly road from Livingston to it, a thin ribbon through the verdency. Every year mom and dad find it rewarding to make the drive to eat chicken and dumpling at a local restaurant there, when the wind turns cold and the sky is covered in mesmerizing gray. But this year the pilgrimage took a different turn. We missed the chicken dumpling by half an hour, and starvation is not easily appeased with only a tranquil landscape. We drove further to downtown Woodville, found Jack in the Box and Z’s Fillin Station. It was God’s will? We pulled into Z’s Fillin Station.

                  Long menu. The hostess waited patiently for our order, but exhaustion showed on her face. She was also the cook. The host, big and friendly like any countryman of Texas, eagerly checked on us and was happy when we cleaned our plates. A few men in cowboy boots swaggered in, nodded hi to us. This part of Texas is rural and secluded, but it’s nice precisely because of that. People here are home-folk like the land they’ve settled on. The food, too, is bawdy.

                  Zs Filling Station - Woodville
                  Philly cheese steak, crawfish poboy, and grilled catfish all came in good portions. A hearty meal with good grease and good salt, with black pepper and bell pepper, with half-boiled broccoli fighting an uphill battle against cheese and butter. But at the end, although the food was absolutely life-saving on that day and quite delectable in its earthy nature, it wasn’t the memory-trigger for me about this “filling station”. What did it were the painted wooden bird houses, the doorbell connected to an iron weight by a rope and a pulley, the collection of car plates from all over the States – some dated back to the time Texas needed only three letters to identify a vehicle. It’s the pure romance in the rust. This place preserves a part of time for those who will not change no matter how the world transforms.

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                • Little big hits

                    It was 7 PM in Houston. Cold winds crept up the rustling trees. We were in the mood for kolaches. No kolache store was opened. (I would be surprised if I could even find some right after noon, it’s usually sold out by 9 AM at any local Shipley Donuts.) Desperate as we were for something small and meaty, we pulled into this backyard parking lot on a dark little street of Montrose. The name is cute, but… “Go Horns”?!*

                    A few years ago I would have shy away from any place resembling a shady, fuming pub with TV screens blasting out a football game, hoards of muscles with beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, and a gigantic burger streaming cheese and lard in front of the mouth. That’s what Little Big’s looks like from the outside. But the patio was empty. And so were our tummies.

                    Inside, it was a tamed ambience with three or four rows of long tables and high stools. It has a TV, and football was on, but no attentive enthusiasts screaming at the screen or banging mugs on the table. There was little room between the door and the counter to stand looking at the overhead menu, but luckily we had an expert of the area with us to quickly order and moved out of the way. Everyone walking in here seemed to know exactly what they were hungry for. Not that there are much to choose from on the card.

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                  • P for Potatoe, B for Beef

                      Before you say hey dummy foreigner, learn how to spell, no, I did not come up with “potatoe”. Potatoe Patch did. And I think it’s pretty cute.
                      These days it’s been hard to find wholesome meat within walking distance and spending measure (for a frugal grad student). The best one can afford around Berkeley is little slivers of chicken in a *huge* bundle of pad thai, or minced pork in cheap dim sum. I can’t help but posting about this now to ease the carnivore’s mind.

                      I would flat out say that this is our most-frequently-visited American restaurant. Great food. Good price. Excellent service. A serving here would freak out the health-conscious, nitpicking nimble diner, but who cares. We’re here for the hearty, generous embrace of baked potatoes in melting cheese and sour cream, of thick gravy, of sizzling steak, of tingling barbecue sauce, of a full rack of ribs so tender it falls of the bone.

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                    • Banh mi run

                        You know how school kids don’t get tired of peanut butter sandwich even if they eat it every day for lunch? Well, every time I catch the BART down to Fremont, it’s hard to pass up the chance to stop by Huong Lan Sandwich in Milpitas for a fresh crusty loaf, or many of those banh mi’s – a week’s supply for lunch.

                        When in California, be liberal. The store has diversity. Above is packages of bánh bèo (white) and most likely bánh bột lọc (leaf-wrapped). Many kinds of cookies, crackers, shrimp chips, and other snacks unknown to ubercmuc. Below is the real goodies: nice warm bánh bao (steamed pork bun), bánh cốm (the bright green flat thing), bánh giò (leaf-wrapped pyramid), and mini bánh chưng (the squares).

                        Here’s the square unwrapped and cut in four. The pork is fatty, which is not quite right, but nonetheless it’s well done. So the story goes as follows: in a competition among the princes in ancient Vietnam, the king asked all the princes to find an exceptionally good food. The youngest prince, having no money and little power, couldn’t afford fancy stuff like ginseng and who knows what in the woods, so with the advice of a god in his dream, he took sticky rice, meat, and mung bean to make a bánh, wrapped in lá dong (Phrynium placentarium), and boiled for hours. The bánh is a green square, symbolizing the square Earth, pork – the animal, and mung bean – the plants. So I suppose fatty or lean pork doesn’t really matter to the story. After all, we have some really chubby animal, not just skinny ones. Mung bean seems to be Vietnamese’s favorite legume, just like red bean is to the Japanese. Perhaps because it’s good as a paste (in both sweet and savory bánh), a powder (on xôi), whole beans (in sweet deserts like chè), and as an ice cream flavor.

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