Flavor Boulevard

Category: Won’t go out of my way to revisit

  • I tried I Squared

      What is the product of Italian and Iranian food? It’s I Squared‘s food. Clever name. Clever combination to get the oddivores, those who seek to eat oddities at odd places, like me, hooked. While looking for a nice eggplant parmesan to properly celebrate Ashley’s birthday, we were presented with a choice among the traditional Ristoranti italiani, the eggplant parmesan sandwiches, or I Squared. It’s clear what we picked.

      Eggplant Parmigiana from I Squared – Baked layers of eggplant and Napoli sauce topped with fresh mozzarella and Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses

      The eggplant parmesan of I Squared is among the healthier, lighter kind of eggplant parmesans, where the eggplant slices are baked instead of battered and fried, and there is hardly any cheese between layers. The wilted, sinewy eggplant peel adds a dried-apricot-like chew, the bread crumb and melted cheese on top makes every bite sink and bounce in lushness. The palm-sized portion drowns in a pool of tomato sauce sprinkled with mozzarella. I find it best to eat each layer of eggplant by itself, just plain, when it’s neither like fruit nor vegetable. The texture is amazing.

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    • Delicious Food Co. is one fourth delicious


        Let us all agree that food tasting is subjective, and totally unrelated to the food’s affiliation. That means even if I hate goat cheese I still find goats quite cute, and if I choose instant cup noodles over a meat-filled burrito it doesn’t mean I have something against Mexican immigrants. Now that we’ve made that clear, I’ll get to the point: I don’t like the Cantonese turnip cake (luobo gao).


        We got it at a very crowded Chinese bakery in Oakland Chinatown this weekend. One white lady in line before us asked for 3 turnip cakes, and I want to stress “white” because her Western palate gave us assurance that this treat is among those rare Asian ones that are happily consumed by white people, aka it must be at least “normal” (white people, especially Caucasian Americans, are not always up to trying “new” food). So we thought we’re in for a safe bet. Turns out, turnip cake (a misnomer for daikon cake), unlike crumbly carrot cake, is an oily soft chunk most resembling a used oversize eraser, except not as gummy.

        It’s neither sweet nor savory nor bland. The taste clings to the back of your throat as if you were drinking seawater covered with oil. Won’t buy again. As for the other things we got from Delicious Food Co., because I believe in happy endings, they will appear in increasing order of deliciousness.

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      • Starting the Tiger year with Herbivore

          indonesian_noodle_salad
          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).

          Herbivore_interiorWhen 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.

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        • Azerbaijan cuisine

            There are three free things the Bear Transit has to offer (when the buses do come): a ride to and from campus uphill (free for those with a UCB ID), a lively chat between the bus driver and his or her favorite passenger (feel free to eavesdrop – even if you don’t want to, you have to – they’re loud), and a tour around downtown Berkeley, also happened to be the part cluttered with everything from restaurants to food trucks (if you have a free eye to wander). This last offer led to my finding of Azerbaijan Cuisine.

            Although Alborz was shy of making the list of ubercmuc’s favorites, I thought I should give Persian food another try. After a winter shower, Fulton Street was sparkly clean. The trees shed another layer of their bright foliage. The breeze was quirky but not too cold. It was the perfect weather for a hearty meal in a nice restaurant. Like Alborz, Azerbaijan Cuisine shows great effort in designing an attractive, spacious interior. Plain white light bounces off mahogany surfaces and crystal wine glass, giving a delicate coziness that makes you smile softly and talk with care. But unlike Alborz, Azerbaijan Cuisine gives you house-baked pita bread for appetizer. It’s unevenly crunchy, light and mildly sweet, promising a satisfactory affair.

            To make sure that we would go home with at least one full tummy, Mudpie pulled the safe card and ordered a serving of ground beef kabob accompanied by saffron rice. The chargrilled tomato on the side was arguably the most flavorful item on the plate.

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          • Alborz


              After a pleasant Turkish dinner at Turquoise Grill in Houston last year, followed by countless shawarma lunches at a cheap cafe on Durant this semester, I figure I should venture eastward and attack Iran, with a fork. The first target is 5 blocks away: Alborz Restaurant.

              Take a look at the old menu to get an idea, but there are more items on the real menu, and the actual price is roughly two times higher. Being carnivorous as I am, I couldn’t resist the sound of a lamb shank with baghali polo (green rice with dill and lima beans) (pictured above). Ignorant me, I didn’t know the lamb shank was so little. It’s just about the size of a big turkey leg. Slow cooked in a vegetable stew, it’s more tender than deep fried turkey (which I had for an early Thanksgiving dinner). According to the far-eastern tongue, the stew fell short by at least a teaspoon of sodium chloride and a tablespoon of sucrose, per lamb shank. The polo (basmati rice), however, tastes slightly salty. It makes a dish alone. Each grain is slender and bare, the miniscule fibrous texture is simply lovely.


              Mudpie got the better dish of the two: chicken fesenjoon (chicken in pomegranate-walnut stew), also served with basmati rice. I should mention that on every table there’s a jar of filled with mysterious maroon sumac powder, that looks most like some kind of aromatic sand accompanying a Yankee candle, and tastes somewhat like the pomegranate sauce. (We asked the waiter, but we couldn’t understand his answer, so we just nodded to make him happy. We finally found its name online.) Pomegranates grow well in hot, desiccant climate, (the grocery stores here were flooded with them last summer during the drought), is that why it is the central condiment in the Middle East? It can be quite acrid, but in moderation the pomegranate sauce gives a tinkling delight. Come on, FritoLay, what are you waiting for? Make this flavor.

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            • Beach and buffet


                Galveston beach is calm today. In Vung Tau we can see foaming waves hitting the shore from 300 feet away, and the sun-shy ones (like myself) can hide under the shade of sheoaks planted along the beach (*). Galveston is different. A blazon strip of land.

                When you go to the sea on a holiday weekend, you get what you expect: (too) plenty of sunshine, sand, lots of people smiling, sweating on the bikes, burning tanning on the beach. When you go to a Chinese restaurant, you expect cheap, commonplace food, casual companies and indeed they are. But never expect too much. We went to China Island, a “restaurant” 10 minutes from the sea, expected decent seafood, and didn’t get it.

                A lady stared at little mom, making her feel guilty for taking the last fish fillet. Later we found out the lady didn’t really miss much, the fish wasn’t fresh. The fried shrimps were poorly coated and poorly fried.

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