Flavor Boulevard

Given how often my family comes here, I feel obliged to give this store a proper post. About every other week or so, my parents make the hour-long drive to get a loaf or two of cha lua (silk sausage) and maybe a few Vietnamese between-a-snack-and-a-meal goodies. The affable owner lady knows our usual grabs, and we know her trustworthy provision. Whether it’s wrapped in banana leaves, aluminum foil, or cling wrap, Giò Chả Đức Hương has the best of its kind in Bellaire.

The shelves of nem (fermented pounded pork sausage), bánh tét (sticky rice log), and bánh ít (sticky rice pyramid). These small bánh tét are sold all year round, they are only about 4 inches long, usually with vegan filling (mung bean paste or banana). They make an appropriate snack for a teenager, but usually a little too much for me. Unwrapped below, left-right-down: bánh giò – bánh ít – bánh tét:

Bánh giò always reside on the front counter, next to loads of chả (sausages). There are chả chiên (fried), chả lụa (lean pork), chả Huế (spicy), chả bò (beef), chả gà nấm hương (chicken and shiitake), and boxes of chà bông (also known as  ruốc in the North, pork floss in English, and similar to rousong in Chinese).

A few more pictures of bánh tét just to do partial justice of how many kinds they have there:

Black bean mixed with sticky rice, disrupting the usual smooth glutinous texture by nutty bites.

Sticky rice mixed with pandan leaf extract for flavor and color. A sweet touch.

Plain white sticky rice, usual fatty pork and mung bean paste filling. The classic.

Address: Đức Hương Giò Chả in Bellaire, Houston
11369 Bellaire Blvd, Ste 950
Houston, TX 77072
(near the Vietnam War Memorial)
(281) 988-6155

This sausage store sets their price a knuckle higher than the Asian markets, but the care, the freshness, and the family touch are unbeatable.

Despite the name, banh men are quite girly cookies. Just look at how colorful they are: pink for strawberry, yellow for durian, white for plain coconut, green for pandan leaf. The literal translation “yeast cookie” is also a misnomer because there is no yeast, just tapioca flour, sugar, coconut milk and water.  Somewhere between your teeth and your tongue they would transform from crunchy to melting, all of a sudden that crisp cookie disappears, a sweet lingering gently passes by. And that’s it, you wouldn’t even know that you’ve just had a cookie.

My mother’s girl friends at work love these. The cute bites come in all shapes: worm, button (like the ones made by tt at PlayingWithMyFood, and spiky caterpillar (banh men gai, the ones I got). Ch3rry Blossoms made flowers of them. Extremely light and mild, they are a convenient snack, my fingers just have a go at the bowl next to my laptop without me even noticing. The label on the box says: “Serving size: 150g, Serving per container: 1”. There are about 150 cookies in there, so I can be proud that at least I didn’t follow the label.  A container like this at Lion Food market sells for less than two bucks. What’s better than a cheap sweet treat?

If I had to pick one Vietnamese dish made from rice flour and eat it everyday for the rest of my life (whole grain white rice doesn’t count), then bánh cuốn would be it. These rolls of thin rice sheet, filled with minced pork and woodear mushroom, gently dipped in nước mắm, make the perfect warm breakfast, light lunch, and quirky dinner. The question is where to find them. Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ tops the chart everywhere from Texas to Cali, but does Bánh Cuốn Hoa II come close? Maybe rival? Miss by a long shot?

I cheated a bit at the beginning. The first picture isn’t bánh cuốn, but bánh bèo, a rice flour spinoff drafted in the shape and size of waterferns, hence its name. Flooded with nước mắm, they make great appetizers while we were waiting for bánh cuốn.

Bánh bèo comes with a few toppings: fried shallot, chopped green onions, and tôm chấy (dry fried shrimp). The tôm chấy I usually have are totally desiccant, ranging anywhere between flaky and powdery, but these (I’m guessing homemade) shrimps are still plump, and more sweet than salty. It’s not a bad twist from the usual though. The flour part is a bit tired, they broke easily into pieces the moment my chopsticks pinched them. Bánh Hỏi Châu Đốc does it better.

Because it is very hard to go wrong with grilled meat, it’s always safe to get bún thịt nướng on first try at a new restaurant, also a friendly choice for those who have not had Vietnamese cooking before, want to try, but are still cautious. There’s no weird stuff, just rice noodle, crushed peanuts, vegetable and honest grilled pork. Nước mắm seasoned with a tidbit chili paste, a lot of sugar, and a squeeze of lemon juice would spike the taste to infinite pleasure. Bánh Cuốn Hoa II nailed it with a supertender juicy marinated pork.

As much as my dad is a fan of grilled meat, my mom is loyal to noodle soups. She ordered bún măng vịt (vermicelli soup with duck and bamboo shoot), which actually comes in two parts: the duck salad (gỏi vịt) and the bamboo shoot soup (bún măng) with no duck. Dunk the duck into the soup and you get duck soup :-).

The broth is quite pure and slender, free of fatty bubbles floating on the surface, not as heavily seasoned as pho or hu tiu broth, simply refreshing. As for the bamboo shoots, there were both the fresh kind and the re-hydrated dried kind. The dried kind is a tad firmer and more squid-like than the fresh kind. A lovely texture. Boiled duck is also very tender and flavorful.

Bánh Cuốn Hoa II has a pretty clean look. Varnished wooden chairs and tables, high ceiling, humble paintings of Vietnamese countryside sceneries on the walls. I took a peek into their kitchen to capture the banh cuon production line.

Clockwise from bottom left: 1. stirring the liquid batter (rice flour with water); 2. spreading a laddle of batter on a hot flat surface; 3. making a roll; 4. 3 kinds of final products: normal bánh cuốn (with minced pork and mushroom), bánh cuốn tôm chấy (dry fried shrimp), and bánh cuốn thịt nướng (grilled pork).

The lady was just too fast for my camera, I missed capturing the crucial step where she gently used a long chopstick to take the thin rice veil off the cooking surface and whip it aside for the rolling chef.

So here it is, the restaurant’s signature plate: bánh cuốn topped with cha lua, bean sprouts, greens, and fried shallots. The filling is good. The sheet is thin and not oily. But the flour has a sour hint. Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ is still the champion of bánh cuốn.

Price: a very reasonable lunch for 3:
1 bánh bèo + 1 bún thịt nướng + 1 bún măng vịt + 1 bánh cuốn = $24.57

Address: Banh cuon Hoa II
11169 Beechnut St. #K
Houston, TX 77072

Take a look at RavenousCouple’s recipe for bún măng vịt, it’s my new fav noodle soup.

Update: the amazing pictures and recipe for homemade banh cuon, also from RavenousCouple.

Bánh chưng and bánh tét to the Vietnamese Tết are like turkey and ham to the American Thanksgiving. The holiday feast just wouldn’t feel right without them. Although I have blogged about these sticky rice squares and logs before, the lunar new year has come back, and so are they. Sticky rice can be uberfilling in large quantity, and like all festive food, it’s not recommended that you feast on these dense beasts day after day, as satisfaction would turn into tiresomeness. But once a year, or maybe twice, a couple slices of banh tet sound so much more interesting than cereal, rice, even noodle soup.

Banh chung and banh tet have rather similar ingredients, especially when they’re made by Vietnamese Southerners. Both are wrapped in leaves (although slightly different kinds of leaves), and boiled for hours in water that is sometimes spiced with lemongrass. After cooking, a heavy weight is put on banh chung to drain the water, while banh tet are rolled around to perfect the cylindrical shape. I remember we used to hang pairs of banh tet in my grandfather’s kitchen, taking one down everyday during the week of Tet to whip out a nice settling meal with thịt kho trứng (pork and egg stew), dưa giá (pickled bean sprout),  and spring rolls. There are the savory kind with meat and mung bean paste, and the vegan kind for those who want to practice self-control on the first day of Tet. In Houston, my mom usually gets the savory kind from Giò Chả Đức Hương, where we also get our cha lua supply, and the vegan kind from Linh Son pagoda. I branched out this year and tried a meaty log from Huong Lan Sandwiches 4 in Milpitas.

Their banh tet measures about 7 inches long, making eight thick nice slices, each has a chunk of fatty pork in the middle, pink and spiced with pepper. The sticky rice coat here gave its leaf wrapping a bit insecure sliminess when we first unraveled, but all was well. The banh tet smelled great, the sticky rice has a tight but soft texture. The seasoned bean paste is just salty enough to intrigue. In some way, banh tet is better than banh chung because every bite guarantees a bit of everything. No piece will miss the meat completely and no bite will get all the meat, the stuffing is even throughout the whole banh.  It was honestly good by itself without condiments. Huong Lan Sandwiches had not failed me.

And neither did Thao Tien. When we got there last week in our quail quest, Thao Tien’s employees were busy running a small table pyramidized with banh chung and banh tet. They locate nicely in front of the Grand Century mall, passed by hundreds of people Tet shopping that day. Seeing the sale went like hot cakes (the sticky rice cakes were actually still warm), we were too eager to snatch one home that we forgot to check the tiny white sticker on the side. Surprise, we had grabbed a bánh tét chuối (banana banh tet).

It’s solely vegan. The sticky rice coat is made interesting with dots of black beans on shiny green background. The core is sweet, mushy banana in a reddish purple hue. This is just the usual ivory banana that always ripe too soon, but somehow slow cooking in a compact block of sticky rice wrapped by banana leaves makes the fruit change color. Chemical reactions? It still tastes sweet, with a hint of bitter (for lack of a better word) like a guava skin. And it looks beautiful to me.

The banana banh tet also goes well with my rotisserie chicken from Safeway, minus the guilt of defeating the whole vegan purpose thing. Thao Tien’s logs are also shamelessly long, almost two times bigger than Huong Lan’s. I will be eating banh tet every day for the rest of the week. Happy Tết to bánh tét and me!

Address: Hương Lan Sandwiches 4
41 Serra Way, Ste. 108
Milpitas, CA 95035
1 bánh tét with meat: $6

Thảo Tiên restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
1 vegan banana bánh tét: $10

Being a blatant ruthless carnivore all year round, I know that going vegan one day of the year won’t help me redeem myself in hell, but I still follow my mom’s tradition on the first day of Tet. No cheese, no animal milk, no bone marrow, no lard, no skin, no fishy business. It’s the first day of the new spring, everybody deserves to live, so we believe it’s nice to spare the lives of yummy things that can move. Or at least we should try not to cause their deaths. That means I have to find a vegan restaurant in Berkeley. Mudpie was estatic. (Mudpie has been fighting to go to Herbivore down the block for months, and I’ve been “gently” suggesting other places all this time.) Mudpie went online and picked his order even before we got there: the Indonesian noodle salad with tamarind dressing (pictured above).

When we got there the place was packed to the roof. Lucky for us, we got the last free table, and some folks who came later had to wait for at least an hour to be seated. If you wonder how I knew how long the wait was, it’s because that’s also how long we had to wait for our food. I had nothing to do within that hour except looking at other customers and eavesdropping on their conversation. The table arrangement is quite efficient, everyone’s utensil is within everyone’s neighbor’s reach. We ordered a yerba mate tea to sip boredom away. The hot kind comes in three choices: organic (plain, no sugar, no milk), organic latte, and chai spice tea; the chilled bottle kind is flavored with either raspberry or mint. The plain kind wasn’t anything spectacular. It’s just commonplace bitter like any other unflavored tea. I don’t want to sound snotty, but yerba mate is just another overhyped foreign substance, worthy of seeking after only for its novelty and cultural value.

Moving on to the food. The Indonesian noodle salad was like a garden harvest. Cucumber slices, pineapple and orange cubes, a few streaks of bean sprouts, lettuce, cilantro, cabbage, onion, whole peanuts, carrots, all partied up in a spicy chili pepper tamarind sauce. It was sour and refreshing. The thin rice noodle got lost in the jungle. For a salad, it scored well. For an entree, it needed more warmth and more substance.

What the noodle salad didn’t have, the “curry-coconut udon noodle” had: warmth and substance. I don’t know why it’s not “coconut-curry,” and I don’t know why it’s called “udon noodle,” because this was not udon. Texture aside, the curry noodle didn’t have what the noodle salad had: flavor. It was coconuty, but a pinch of salt and a few tablespoons of sugar would be a nice boost. After all, vegan food doesn’t have to be unseasoned food.

It’s not clear to me why Herbivore has gained such popularity in the region. The two entrees we got did not make us oomph and aahh. Looking around at other tables, we saw many sandwiches, italians and happy faces, so was it just us not picking the right plates? Being on the verge of disappointment, I almost decided to leave without dessert, but Mudpie and a second thought made me grab the waitress to order a wedge of vegan pie with one scoop of ice cream. We heard that strawberry rhubarb was good, but since it was out, we opted for the olallieberry pie (just because of the name). According to Wikipedia, the olallieberry is half blackberry, a quarter raspberry, and a quarter dewberry. The pie filling was more tart than sweet, which is always nice. The crust was thick, dense, and plain enough to shelter us from a sugar flood.  The mudslide vegan ice cream swept me off my feet with its creamy texture, chocolaty sweetness, and sneaky coconut shavings. If anything, this awesome dessert assortment would draw me back to Herbivore.

Address: Herbivore the Earthly Grill
2451 Shattuck Avenue (the corner of Shattuck and Haste)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 665-1675

Click for Herbivore’s Menu

An order of 1 curry tofu noodles, 1 Indonesian noodle salad, 1 yerba mate organic tea (plain), 1 vegan pie + a scoop of ice cream set us back by $30. Overall, a decent and healthy catch. But in all fairness, dessert aside, Herbivore is not in the least comparable with Garden Fresh in Mountain View.

It must have been at least 4 months since we last went to Thao Tien, and I’ve been telling myself to blog about this place ever since, but for some reason every record of our visit had mysteriously disappeared. Did I not take picture? What happened to the receipt? I have no idea. But the amazing taste of roasted quails haunts me in my sleep. We just had to go back to take pictures again, and it’s only appropriate to complete this last hour of the Ox year with the best of birdies.

Thao Tien actually specializes in hủ tíu, a noodle soup with slightly sweet broth, chewy noodle, fried shallot, usually accompanied by pork and shrimp (I blogged about it before at Bún Bò Huế Cố Đô). With the southern Vietnamese theme, the house not only has their waiters dress in áo bà ba but also extends its menu to include the less commonly seen savories like chim cút rô-ti (roasted quail) and cá kèo kho tiêu (a kind of freshwater fish – the “elongate mudskipper“, if you absolutely must know – simmered in fish sauce and caramel sauce much like cá kho tộ, but with a lot of black pepper for kicks). Among the daily specials, Mudpie was excited about the ca keo kho tieu, but unfortunately it was only served for dinner that day. Still, the quails are up for grab anytime, and expensive as they were ($7.95 for 2 birds), we drove 50 miles here just for them.

The birds, split and stretched, were just as long as my hand from nail to wrist. Their plump breasts and legs rival those of a frog, no fat, just honest meat and thin crispy skin. The marinade seeped through every strand of muscle in that  vibrant little body. Lemon and salt pepper mix came with them, but was unnecessary, the birds needed no aid to taste good. The moment we grabbed them, our fingers got busy tearing them apart, and our eyes focused on getting every scrap off the bones. Table manners we lost, vicious  beasts we became. And the aftermath:

I remember the hủ tíu here is good, bò lúc lắc (shaken beef) is quite delicious, Hainanese chicken rice is not the most exciting thing, but if I could, I would come here every week just for the quail.  Thank goodness Thao Tien isn’t close to me, or I’d go bankrupt being a quailitarian.

Cost:
1 shaken beef (9.75) + 1 Hainanese chicken rice (8.50) + 2 roasted quail (7.95)
+ tax
= $28.62

Friendly service and spacious setting.

Address: Thao Tien Restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Rd #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 283-9231

Although 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.

The sansai udon was also a delight. Thick wheat noodle in vegetable broth, it tastes far more interesting than it sounds. The stock is so pure and yet so relishing, with a profound taste of shungiku (Garland chrysanthemum, or rau tần ô). There was also an unsolved mystery: the pickled “bean sprouts” (translucent strands at the left corner). They look like bean sprouts, but only from a distance: close circumspection revealed rectangular cuts.  They also taste starchy like some kind of root. I incline to say turnip, as such texture is midway between the porous crunch of jicama and the granulous dense of potato. Whatever it was, it had a great companion – some kind of pickled radish in ruby color. It was like a sour candy, all different tangy levels sang a song in unison, the song is called “The Best Pickle I’ve ever Had”.

Yes, this visit was full of cute little surprises. What can I say, subjective factors aside, some restaurants are like a bunch of grapes, you wouldn’t stop eating the bunch just because the first grape you picked out happens to be a bit sour. Anzu at Berkeley is such a place, and this time, the grape was perfect.

Dinner for two (free appetizer, 1 California roll, 1 udon, 1 tonkatsu): $15.04

Anzu Japanese Cuisine at Berkeley
2433 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 843-9236

P.S. Anzu also has an excellent salad dressing made of peanut sauce, mayonnaise, and a bit of seasoning. The salad comes with the entree, no extra fee.

Update: the “bean sprouts” are actually kohlrabi (German turnip, or su hào). Thanks to my mom who knows every ingredient upon hearing the description of the texture!

When 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.

Was it the drowsy sunbeams that made this cafe more removed from its neighboring reality and closer to some distant realm one can only find in books and old movies? Two ladies in their late 60s and wide brim hats softly sipped the afternoon away at a nearby table. Their presence furnished the luncheonette with a whiff of Chez la Père Lathuille – minus Manet’s humorous romantic air, of course, and plus a few walls.

La Bohème Café & Pâtisserie

1425 Burlingame Avenue
Burlingame, CA 94101
650-347-3331

Lunch (and dessert) for Four: $81.94

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?

Anyway, our little homesick craving has been found in a Vietnamese bakery northwest of Houston. Made by preorder, each log costs $29 at Xuan Huong.

Address: Xuân Hương Bakery
13480 Veterans Memorial Dr. Suite D
(in the same shopping center with Hong Kong Market #3)
Houston, TX 77014

(281) 895-6553

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.

This joint doesn’t have mayonnaise out for a squeeze. I was in great despair, considering the array of mustards on display. Although the special house sauce was white and good, I thought I felt a tidbit of jalapeno or something equally mordant; besides, it lacked the creamy consistency of mayo. My worries quickly diminished, though. It was instant love at first sight between me and the sliders – baby burgers that can fit snuggly in your cupped palm and come in herds of three. Each herd will set you back by 5.79, an addition of cheese constitutes another 69 cents. Who needs the busy shebang of tomato, lettuce, and those of vegetable origin that keep falling out embarrassingly every time you take a bite? The beef patty admits a layer of rich, juicy grilled onion, and the fried chicken breast was comfortable with a slice or two of pickles. (As Katie put it, Chick-fil-A knows their stuff.) But that was it. A slider epitomizes the way to eat a burger: if you want one, don’t let guilt cover it up with skimpy fresh bits of greens. There is no such thing as a tasty healthy burger, beside one that is only savoured by the eyes.

*Texas A&M was the only school I applied to, so I consider myself a pure bred Aggie.