Flavor Boulevard

Every morning at six, sometimes five thirty, my dad went to the market with my mom’s grocery list, and on the way back picked up something fresh for my breakfast. He had to be extra early if we wanted xôi that day, because the warm morsels folded up in banana leaves wouldn’t last past six thirty. Sweet xôi was a popular morning food, until they started putting in lap xuong and pork floss and turned it too close to a lunch thing. But our xôi lady, and later her daughter, never made anything but sweet sticky rice in their loyal steamers. Every morning, sitting on a plastic stool and head half-covered by the cone hat, they surrounded themselves with three or four shining aluminum wok-like basins on the low table, neatly cut squares of banana leaves, old newspaper and rubber band in the side basket. Those aluminum basins often had peanut xôi, black xôi (which actually looked purple), and one other speciaux du jour. My mom was so concerned with my health that she would pick off all the peanuts if my dad got the peanut xôi, and I got really bored with black sticky rice and sweetened bean paste, so there was no telling what I would get for breakfast. On rare occasions it was corn. My favorite.

Without the seed coat and the yellow tip, each kernel was all soft, white and plump, must be twice its natural size. The sticky rice too was gummy, hardly discernible from the corn. I’d try to eat all the sticky rice first and save my precious puffs for last. Our xôi lady always covered the white palmful with mash mung bean, a big spoon of sugar, and a pinch of fried shallot. Arguably the fried shallot tempered the “sweetness” of this xôi, but it’s not as crucial as sugar and sweetened mash bean. Something I didn’t realize until years later.

We moved sometimes at the end of sixth grade, then again, this time across the Pacific, at the end of eleventh grade. My chance of eating corn xôi dropped like the housing market in Detroit. Partly because the cling wrapped stuff on styrofoam plates doesn’t at all look like Ms. Điệp’s warm morsels. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw it at Kim’s Sandwiches, not wrapped up but in aluminum trays behind the counter. Sure, they put it in styrofoam boxes when you order, but that’s still better. I got two for five dollars.

It might have been bad timing. I blamed it on our late morning arrival: xôi is best when it’s just thirty minutes out of the steamer, cool enough not to burn yet warm enough to keep the sticky rice gummy and moist. Our xôi was cold and dried up. But it was also bland. Lack of sugar in corn xôi made it un-corn-xôi-like. The grains and kernels were coated with mung bean powder, not mash, hence we got a heap of powder-coated grains and kernels instead of corn xôi. This is the Northern Vietnamese style, but frankly it’s incomparable with the Southerners’ sweet twist.

On a brighter note, Kim’s Sandwiches’ savory xôi, with roasted chicken and green onions, proved worthy of toothwork. Although the sticky rice was also cold and dried up, the meat was plenty and flavorful to boost.

On an even brighter note, the corn xôi was well-salvaged by a sugar dispenser and a microwave.

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Xôi bắp and xôi gà ($2.50 each) from Kim’s Sandwiches
(in the Lion Supermarket area)
1816 Tully Rd 182, San Jose, CA 95111
(408) 270-8903

Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh ú tro
Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh khảo/bánh in

It’s been two weeks, but better late than never. After I read Jessica’s zong zi post on Food Mayhem, images of amber tedrahedra just wouldn’t leave me alone. I talked to my mom about them, and I could hear her voice crackle with sweet memories over the phone. We haven’t had these sweet little things for years. We used to eat them by the dozens every lunar May. Like most Saigonese, we didn’t do anything huge to celebrate Tet Doan Ngo, but bánh ú tro was too scrumptious a tradition to pass.

Each pyramid is just a little over an inch tall, whichever way you roll it. It’s unclear whether the traditional zongzi grew smaller when Chinese immigrants share the recipe with their Vietnamese neighbors, or only the dessert zongzi (jianshui zong) is favored by the locals over savory types. Most Vietnamese have also long dissociated this sticky rice snack with the Chinese reason behind Duanwu festival, if not to assign the Fifth of Lunar May to commemorate the death anniversary of Vietnam’s legendary Mother Âu Cơ, kill off bad bugs, make ceremonial offerings to family ancestors, or simply bathe in the summer solstice’s endless sunlight. Whatever meaning someone chooses to celebrate (or not celebrate) Duanwu (Đoan Ngọ in the Vietnamese language), he can enjoy bánh ú tro all the same. And if he lives in Hội An, there’s a big chance he actually participates in making them too.

The people of Hoi An don’t make a living with bánh ú tro year round, but they keep the tradition with earnest. Within four days, 1st-4th of lunar May, everybody makes bánh ú tro. The fifth day, everybody eats bánh ú tro. The sixth day, things get back to normal. In Saigon’s markets, bánh ú tro start showing up a week or two before the Fifth, and disappear right after, my mom recalled. So when I told her that I was going to search for them after I read Jessica’s post, she said “fat chance”.

Why such rarity? After all, bánh bía, also adapted from the Chinese and also originally made just for one specific festival, shines its face all year long in every bakery and sandwich shop these days. Well, the recipe for bánh ú tro turns out to be real hard, and it’s not just the wrapping stage. The best bánh ú tro, according to Hoi An banh makers, must be wrapped with “kè” leaves from the mountains of Huế. The cleanly washed sticky rice is soaked in sesame ash water overnight (sesame plant burnt into ashes, mixed with water and sifted through sand). The ash water turns sticky rice grains into semi-powder form, giving bánh ú tro a clear amber look and a strangely light texture, unlike any other sticky rice concoctions. No wonder “ash” (tro) is part of the banh’s definitive name. (If you look at jianshui zong recipes, you’ll find lye water or alkaline water listed. More correct terms perhaps, but the horrid image on Wikipedia’s page on lye takes away my appetite. “Ash” even has a romantic ring to it, and this banh is made for a poet after all.) A bit of alum is put in the ash water to somehow keep each banh from falling apart.

Now of course sesame plants aren’t growing in everyone’s backyard to burn, so just any coal ash would do, as long as you sift the ash water carefully to avoid big pieces of charcoal in your sticky rice. Some different source suggests ash from mangrove firewood, dissolved in water for a month, but it seems to be just another grandmother’s special recipe varying by the regions. After soaking the rice for 1-3 nights, take it out and wash with cold water again.

The wrapping leaves, too, vary from place to place. Kè leaf is obviously not the most popular, as bamboo leaf and reed leaf, in their slender shape and earthy fragrance, do the job just as well. Banana leaves can be cut into wide strips to imitate bamboo leaves. Skilled banh makers can also control the colors: older leaves give darker hues,  substituting ash with white lime paste(*) lets bánh ú tro have the natural green shades from the leaves, while red lime paste causes a reddish amber shine.

Nonetheless, there exists a common wisdom regardless of ingredients: burn an incense stick when you drop the banh into water for boiling, when the incense burns out, the banh is done. Usually that takes four hours.

Let cool, bánh ú tro is more firm than chewy. There you can still see silhouettes of individual grains on the outside, but each banh is a solid tedrahedron of defined edges and uniform texture. It unwraps easily, parallel thread marks of bamboo leaf veins imprint on the smooth and fulfilling surfaces. It’s hardly sticky, unlike bánh ít and bánh dầy (also made from sticky rice). And it’s light. The banh’s are tied together in bundles of ten, and I can eat all ten in one sitting. (I can hardly finish one bánh ít in one sitting.) Funny, “ít” means “small in quantity”, and “ú” means “chubby”.

The traditional bánh ú tro of the North and Central Vietnam is just that, a plain chunk, good by itself to some and must be accompanied by honey or sugar to others. Then with time it got a sweetened red bean paste filling. Then a sweetened mung bean paste filling. Then a sweetened grated coconut filling. I grew up eating the red bean kind every year and thought it was the only kind. So I jumped at the first bunch I saw at Kim’s Sandwiches last Sunday, twelve days after the Fifth of Lunar May. The bunch was tied together by green nylon strings. I hurried home, unwrapped, took a bite. My mom called.
– Mom, I found them!
– Really?!?! How are they?
– Good, but why’s there no bean paste?!

Should’ve gotten the red string bunch instead.

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Bánh ú tro ($3.75/10 pieces) from Kim’s Sandwiches
(in the Lion Supermarket area)
1816 Tully Rd 182, San Jose, CA 95111
(408) 270-8903

(*) Lime paste is used to eat with betel leaves and areca nuts.

Click here for a recipe of bánh ú tro (Vietnamese zong zi)

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Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh bía (Vietnamese adapted Suzhou mooncake)

Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: corn xôi

The literal translation is “highland”, but for most Vietnamese the word Cao Nguyên brings to mind images of eye-soothing green terraces, people of ethnic minorities in colorful traditional dresses and hoop and ring jewelries, dancing around the fire, drinking rice wine with a meter-long straw out of a communal urn, and simple but sturdy stilt houses above ground. In San Jose, Cao Nguyên restaurant has the decor up to theme with an urn and straws in the corner, and a painting of a highlander couple dressed in their most comfortable attire, a wrap from the waist down, by the fire. (This blog is rated G so I’m not gonna upload a picture of the painting.)

The menu, though, isn’t particularly highlandish. At first glance it is similar to most other Vietnamese restaurants, and diners here also order the similar things they always order: hot pots and noodle soups. But if we’re to say that Lemon Grass has more single-portion dishes (the way we always do at American restaurants) and Thảo Tiên‘s focus is Mekong Delta noodle soups, then Cao Nguyên is the place to go for family meals. Most dishes are for sharing among 4-6 people, and to eat with rice.

So share we did. It’s really quite cheap this way. An order of sườn nướng sả (lemongrass grilled pork chop) costs a slim $8.25, and is indeed enough for four even as the chops too are slim like Wasa knäckebröd. It’s not fatty, perhaps a tad dry, and there was no scent of lemongrass, but grilled pork is grilled pork, it’s just never bad.

An order of cá chim chiên comes with nước mắm gừng in a wholesome bowl and some pickled vegetables for colors. The menu reads “pan fried Chinese pompano“, but not only the ca chim I know is pomfret, I’ve never seen ca chim split in half and flattened out on the plate like this, as it is already wide and flat by nature. What we had might not be ca chim after all. However, its extra crispy skin dipped in nước mắm gừng is more than enough to let the zoological tidbit slide. I even got to nibble the eyes. It was $8.95 well spent.

Just a few dimes down are the single-portion rice plates, such as this broken rice for $7.50. There’s that grilled pork chop again, sided by a heap of shredded pork skin (bì), whose chewy and grainy texture contrasts the spongy softness of ground pork and chopped cellophane vermicelli in a slice of golden yellow egg casserole (chả trứng). Somehow this combination is standard for broken rice, with sweet and savory nước chấm enhancing every grain.

Although what we got were not excellent, the restaurant’s popularity speaks differently, and we too enjoyed our meal enough to consider a takeout next time we’re in the area. Just like the highlands and their inhabitants’ cultures, Cao Nguyen isn’t the best, but it has its values.

Address: Cao Nguyên Restaurant
2549 S King Road
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 270-9610

Lunch for two and lotsa leftovers: $29.17

Other Vietnamese restaurants in San Jose:
– Lemon Grass Vietnamese & French Cuisine
– Thảo Tiên

Chain means reliability. Berkeley’s snobbish take against big franchise and corporations plays to my blogging advantage, but there always lies the uncertainty. It could be a very good looking, cozy little restaurant with quaint menus, and mediocre food. They could have a long line of people waiting in the cold to be seated, and mediocre food. Somehow people sitting about you are all hyped up by the new raw or vegan order, but you just can’t enjoy yours because it’s mediocre food. When a business is the only of its name, there’s just no guarantee that it’s palatable to everyone, no matter how many stars it gets on Yelp or votes by the locals. Franchise takes care of that. I don’t know how. But I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t objectively like Burger King, Subway, Yogurt Land, KFC, et cetera (I say “objectively” because taste buds can be clouded by health conscience, religious reasons and who knows what). Some Vietnamese businesses, though still in much smaller scale, have also established their chain names. For banh mi, we almost always go to Lee’s Sandwiches or Huong Lan. For cha lua, we trust Gio Cha Duc Huong. When we’re in Houston, we go to Phở Danh to slurp noodle soups.

All three locations in Houston have the same silvery ambiance: white walls, glass door, formica tables, simple chairs, bright lights, white melamine dishware. We always get the same things here: pho bo tai for Dad, pho bo chin for Mom and me.

Mom always asks for extra giá trụng, blanched bean sprouts. And Dad always asks for hành dấm, pickled onion. Both are free.

He never asks for hành dấm anywhere else, making me wonder if it’s some special thing of Pho Danh. Vinegar and sugar soften the onion’s pungent flares, but keep it crisp and clean. I submerge it into the steaming broth. Dad savors it alone, one ring at a time.

Pho Danh in Texas

3 locations in Houston:
– 11209 Bellaire Blvd – (281) 879-9940
– 13480 Veterans Memorial Drive‎ – (832) 484-9449
– 11049 FM 1960 Rd‎ – (281) 890-4011

1 location in Austin:
– 11220 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX‎ – (512) 837-7800‎

Do you have those times when you keep craving something sweet, even after you wiped clean a cereal bowl worth of Double Fudge Brownie, exterminated many prunes, and skillfully chewed up four pirouette cookies like a mafia boss smoking cigars? I’ve started to see such danger of staying up late, but sweet stuff is always easier to eat than savory stuff in those wee hours. To avoid having my belly exceed my face, I started going through pictures of food (it helps more than studying and thinking about food), and found some munchtastic  sweet treats I meant to but never got around to blog about.

1. Chè khoai môn (taro che)

One of the few country treats without mung bean paste. Depending on each root and how long it’s cooked, the purplish pale taro cubes can be grainy, nutty, a little chewy, or al dente, like scallop potato minus the butter. However they are, they serve as a textural contrast to the gooey pudding-like sticky rice base. I’m particularly charmed by the vibrant green color in this Lee’s Sandwiches‘ rendition, hopefully from pandan leaf extract. You know it’s a skilled cook when the sticky rice grains are still visible, yet so soft you don’t need to chew. Taro che is less sweet than other kinds of che, as coconut milk alone gives much of its sugary taste.

2. Chè bắp (corn che)

Another rare sticky rice concoction without mung bean intervention. Another pair of contrasting textures: crisp and firm kernels versus luscious goo. Another mild pudding sweetened by coconut milk. Bellaire Kim Son’s kitchen strayed from the common recipes that call for shaving the kernels off the cob, and used whole kernel sweet corn straight out of the cans. A simple, cheap, inhomogeneous toothsome mess.

More than 18 months ago: chè đậu trắng, chè bột báng, chè trôi nước

The laminated page has Goi Cuon next to Fritures de Calmars, Bo Luc Lac between Rossini style Tournedos and Agneau. Funny interlingual names like “Ap Chow Bo” and “Ap Chow Hai San” precede English descriptions of stir fries. Don’t bother google “ap chow”. Such innovative term doesn’t exist outside the menu of Bodega Bistro. Just like the dialogues between Jim and Huckleberry Finn, names like these can’t be understood unless you speak it out loud in your head. Ap chow is áp chảo, “press against the pan”, a Vietnamese way of saying pan fry. Why did the chef phonetically transform it into Chinese, while keeping Goi Cuon and Bo Luc Lac true to their original spellings? I don’t know, but I got a chuckle out of it.

The menu alone, however, didn’t strike me as anything unusual. This wasn’t the first time I had to decode a strange name for a familiar dish. Vietnamese menus tend to have such mix between trying to keep the Vietnamese name and (mis)translating it into some other language. The unusual thing was that our thought-to-be-Vietnamese waiter didn’t understand me when I said the dishes’ names in Vietnamese. Then I noticed Chinese songs blasting shuo shuo in the background. And Chinese conversations between the waiters. And, shame on Vietnamese restaurants, very good service.

More on the service part later. But I have a small grudge against Chinese restaurants dishing out Vietnamese food. It’s probably rooted in the powerless distress at the rice-paper-wrapped-and-fried spring roll confused with the Chinese egg roll, or the names of vegetables, fish, and New Year festival with the word “Chinese” attached to it, as if China were the whole Asia. Not that it’s the Chinese’s fault. To my mind, the Chinese have enough dishes of their own, they don’t need to adopt our recipes and innocently serve them without reference. Likewise, I feel slightly vexed by orange chicken and sweet-and-sour pork on Vietnamese menus, things that just mean to attract the safe eaters.

So as soon as I realized Bodega Bistro has a Chinese chef and Chinese staff, I sighed with disappointment. My expectation dropped. My appetite wilted. I didn’t come here for orange chicken and sweet-and-sour pork. Then I remembered that wasn’t what we ordered and just how wrong I was for doubting the place’s authenticity and sincerity. Chinese chef Jimmie Kwok of Bodega did specify that this is Vietnamese food, as he did his best to keep the original spellings, with the exception of “ap chow“.

In fact, he kept more than just the spellings. He kept the flavor, the presentation, and the ingredients. Nem cua is wrapped in rice paper, stuffed with real crab meat, wood ear mushroom, and cellophane noodle (NOT cabbage, thank goodness), served with bún (thin rice vermicelli), rau sống (lettuce and mints), and a gargantuan bowl of nước chấm.

There are floating chili pepper seeds and garlic slices, strings of pickled daikon and carrots, subtle sugar and a squeeze of lemon to temper fish extract’s saltiness, and ginger to counter seafood. The clear sienna dipping liquid elevates the crispy crab rolls and coats the bland vermicelli in flavors. Rice vermicelli and nuoc cham trump pasta aglio e olio, if I may brag.

Just after we slurped clean the last twirl of noodles and sauce and erased all crispy crab rolls’ existence, a staff member came and politely replaced our plates with new ones for the second dish. (Yes, the very nice service I mentioned earlier.) It’s also nice that somehow the staff knew we were sharing and didn’t swarm the table with everything at once. The meat arrived when we were half full and wholly satisfied. Bo luc lac, commonly appear as “shaken beef”, sometimes “beef luk lak” (!), is like philly cheese steak, it simply can’t go wrong. But it can be underseasoned. I’m not sure if this is a difference between Northern and Southern recipes, or if the chef intentionally makes it edible without rice, but Bodega’s bo luc lac is more bland than Lemon Grass‘s bo luc lac. It’s soaked in a light salty wine-and-mushroom-like sauce, served with lemon juice, and it lacks the sweet-and-savory signature of Southern cooking. That aside, the tenderness is superb, and the onion bits melt like candies.

So just what makes authenticity? Is it the name? The ingredients? The cook’s experience? Certainly not the cook’s ethnicity. We came to Bodega looking forward to a Hanoi meal, and we left, looking forward to coming back.

Address: Bodega Bistro
607 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA
(415) 921-1218
(a few blocks away from Herbst Theatre)

Dinner for two (including tax): $32.75

In the middle of bright yellow paste lies a crimson orange ball. The egg yolk. Salted and dried up to the size of a cherry. Or should we say it is the moon, at its fullest on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month each year.

Roughly 650 years ago, it was a bright moon for the Ming Dynasty, but not so bright for the Yuan Dynasty. The Mongolian rulers’ defeats started from a full moon day of August 1368, when the capital Dadu (present day Beijing) was captured by Zhu Yuanzhang and his Han Chinese insurrection armies. Zhu Yuanzhang then rose to the throne as the first king of the Ming dynasty, and he made sure that the Mid-Autumn Festival, which coincides with the end of the harvesting season, was celebrated throughout the country. As the story goes, such revolutionary victory could not have happened without them little mooncakes.

They were secret means of distributing messages among the resisting forces. Words were printed on each mooncake as a simple puzzle. Each mooncake in a package of four was then cut into four pieces, and the sixteen parts were arranged in a particular way to form the entire message. Afterwards, the cakes were eaten and the trace erased. I don’t know what they would do if a hungry kid got hold of a piece.

Although people aren’t sharing secret information anymore (as if anything could remain secretive under the communist watch), the mooncakes still have imprinted words on top and still come in packages of four.

The most popular kind of mooncakes have elaborate designs with golden brown crust, originating from Guangzhou. Other kinds more or less are spin-off versions of the Suzhou-style mooncake with a simple round shape, no design, flaky skin which can be peeled off by the layers, and no need for a mooncake mold.

When the Chinese immigrants settled in the Mekong delta, they introduced the round, flaky mooncakes, referred to as “pía” in Teochew dialect, to the southern Vietnamese, who quickly adopted the recipe and the trade to make it a regional specialty, the Soc Trang‘s pía. “Pía” means “bánh”, things made with flour, but the innocuous southerners took it as a name, and started calling the flaky mooncakes bánh bía. Unlike the Cantonese mooncake that is only eaten during the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival, bánh bía gets served year round, bought as gifts from travelers to Soc Trang, featured in the Khmers’ moon festival Oc Om Boc in October, and individually packaged for sale at $1.50 a piece in Vietnamese sandwich shops in San Jose.

The recipe, too, has slightly departed from its Suzhou originals. If the Chinese counterparts often contain lotus seed, red bean paste, nuts, and sometimes pork for savoriness, the Soc Trang version stays homogeneous with either mung bean paste or taro paste, which can be flavored with lard and durian to the likings. But whatever goes inside, the doughy, flaky skin of bánh bía is the unchangeable feature, distinguishing it from all other pastries.

Each pía needs two kinds of dough: the “skin dough” and the inner layer dough. The skin dough on the outside, made of flour, water and canola oil, gains its elasticity and smoothness from a little kneading, while the inner layer dough has only flour and oil and is left unkneaded to keep it thick and chewy. Later the two kinds are flattened together to make the crust, but with the inner layer dough always contained inside the skin dough, otherwise the banh bia would have a coarse surface. After baked half way, the pía is taken out and glossed some egg wash over its upper side. When fully baked, they shine a ripe yellow invitation, ready to be stamped “longevity”, “harmony”, or some other character in red.

The whole process, from making the filling paste to baking, can take up a whole day. Buying it at the store takes two minutes. If you don’t count driving time.

Address: Huong Lan Sandwiches #4
41 Serra Way, Suite 108 (across the parking lot from New East Lake Seafood)
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 942-7777
Monnday – Sunday: 6am – 9pm

Click here for a recipe of bánh bía (Vietnamese-adpated Suzhou mooncake)

Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh gai (thorn leaf sticky rice bun)

Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh ú tro (Vietnamese-adapted jianshui zong)

Sitting still, it looks like a rock. It is sweet with a hint of lard. It is chewy with a weak crunch, similar to a lasagna’s crust. The smooth, thick black skin shines like lacquered wood, but possesses an almost clear and cool embrace of jello. Though closely related to the superglutinous and mud-heavy banh it, banh gai takes it light.

The same everenduring stuff of Vietnamese villagers’ creations are thrown together, wrapped and steamed in banana leaves: sticky rice flour, water, mung bean paste, sugar. If you make it in cone shape and let the sugar brown the flour naturally, you get banh it. Go the extra mile of picking, chopping, sun-drying, boiling, and grinding the ramie leaves to a black powder that you would mix with your sticky rice flour in a 1:10 ratio, then after the fire settles you get banh gai.

Actually, you get the skin of banh gai. The thorny ramie leaves with silver underside give the black buns their color and trademark names, “thorn leaf banh it” (bánh ít lá gai), “thorn leaf banh” (bánh lá gai), or, most economically, “thorn banh” (bánh gai). But as proof of their everversatile imagination with ingredients, the villagers of North Vietnam mix the mung bean paste with shredded coconut, lotus seed, ground peanut, winter melon (bí đao) for crunchiness, and translucent cubes of pig fat or vegetable oil for a mild saltiness.

The thorn leaf buns sold in package of three for $1.99 at CD Bakery & Deli don’t have fat cubes, peanuts, and pieces of winter melon. They are wrapped with plastic instead of banana leaves. They are labeled “mung bean black sesame mochi”. They contain yellow and blue (?) food colorings. But I like their slightly sweet, slightly crunchy, slightly cool black skin.

After a week at room temperature, they get white mold. Perhaps, it is to match the white sesame seeds on top.

Address: CD Bakery & Deli (in the Lion Market plaza)
1816 Tully Road, #198
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 238-1484
Open 7 days 8am – 8pm

Something else from CD Bakery: sugarcane juice

Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh bía (Vietnamese-adapted Suzhou mooncake)

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.

Who do you think is more confused about his identity, the penguin or the avocado? The penguin is the prime example of a bird that can’t fly. The avocado is the most commonly known fruit that doesn’t taste like a fruit. It lacks the citric hint of berries and oranges, the crunch of apples, the pulpiness of peaches and plums. If I were an avocado I’d ask myself several times a day, why did mom and dad make me taste like butter and different from every other fruitie at the market?

A good avocado mom tree, like all good moms, would say “Av, being different is a good thing!”.
– But I don’t get to hang out with the other fruits, they say I’m fat.
– The other fruits can’t make Ice Cream by themselves. They’re only side flavors. You can become Ice Cream all by yourself.
– If Sugar helps me.
– Sugar is nice, but you also have what it takes to be a good Ice Cream. And think about what you can do for others if you learn from Butter and Cheese, you have their smoothness too.

If I were an avocado, that’s the story I’d tell when people ask why I decide to join the Sushi corporation and partner with Tortilla Chips. But just between you and me, I actually prefer my alone times with Sugar in the fridge.

3-minute dessert: Avocado “ice cream”:
Scoop the avocados out of their peels and into a glass. Add sugar sporadically between layers of avocado, if possible. If not, add sugar on top at the end of the scooping process, but before mashing up the avocado. Mash, taste, add more sugar to liking, taste again.
Refrigerate.
Spoon.
Lick spoon.