Flavor Boulevard

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.

Also among the house specialties is ghormeh sabzi, “Iranian stew with saffron braised beef, baby leaks, fresh parsley, mint, dried Iranian limes, red kidney beans and fenu Greek, served with basmati rice”. This mixture of spices and vegetables is quite harmonious, however bland. To quote Mudpie, “it is good at what it does, but what it does isn’t good”. Nonetheless, the longer and slower you eat it, the more you appreciate the subtleties hidden in that small, melting tender chunk of beef, that unintelligible bundle of green mush, even that watery broth on rice. Suddenly it’s all gone, and you miss it.

Address: I Squared Restaurant
5403 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 658-4400

Dinner for two under dim light, attentive friendliness of the staff, and a grown-ups’ atmosphere: $26.34 🙂

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.

#3- Black bean bun – the middle ball of black bean, only one spoon worth, is fine, but the dough is as dry as Sahara sand.

#2- No-name red bean mochi-like minibun – the mochi part is too chewy and a bit dried up, but I’d rather chewy dry than crumbly dry. Mudpie prefers the black bean bun though.

#1- Mini apple pie in foil cupcake cup – As good as you can expect from a good apple pie. The crust is moist on the inner side and crumby outside, the apple innards is just as sweet as a spoon of honey. Every bite leaves your lips a little buttery gloss, enough to make you stick your tongue out and ask for more.

I can’t say that I was impressed by anything but the extremely inexpensive price at Delicious Food Co. Four black bean buns and one of each of the other three pastries swung merely a total $5.25. That said, I’d rather them charge double that and make it taste good.

Address: Delicious Food Company (Oakland Chinatown)
734 Webster Street
(between 7th St & 8th St)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 893-2288

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.

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.

As usual I opted for the most obnoxiously meaty choice on the menu – the Koofteh tabrizi (full description: “jumbo lamb meatball stuffed with dried plum, barberries, boiled egg and fried onion in tomato broth served with fresh berbs and bread – 14.95”)

Whoever made this must have dreamed of eating dinosaur eggs. I probably should have expanded my cavity as much as the frog in La Fontaine’s fable had swollen hers in order to store this gargantuan loaf of fare. Although the colors were inviting, if you’re not into bland food, this wouldn’t cheer up your palates. It was the first time I ever had to use both the herbs and the salt shaker on the table in a restaurant, with much liberty, still I couldn’t help but relating myself to a cow savoring golden bales of hay. Persian folks, being landlocked, seem to have built an appetite for meat-rich, sodium-poor diet. A strong cardiovascular system they must have.

To end on good terms, the dessert menu looks quite interesting. Perhaps one day I’ll come back for the bastani and the palloodeh. Ice cream doesn’t need salt, does it?

Dinner for two: Koobideh (12.95) + Koofteh tabrizi (14.95) = $30.62

Address: Azerbaijan Cuisine (part of Eclipse Cafe)
2175A Allston Street (the corner of Allston and Fulton)
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-704-1718

Update on August 9, 2010: This place is closed.

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.

Summary:
Dinner for two: $35 (with tax and before tip). The interior bathes in cozy light and delicate atmosphere, with white table cloth and well-dressed customers. The pita bread for appetizer was plenty, but of low quality. 3.5 stars for presentation, 2 stars for food. We ended the night with a bratwurst to fill up the salt quota.

Address: (not to be confused with the one in Texas or the one in Del Mar)
Alborz Restaurant
2142 Center Street
Berkeley, CA 94704

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.

Fried rice hastily done, just as plain as white rice can be. Chickens boring and textureless. Crème caramel and watermelon both tasted like water. The fortune cookies were perhaps the best things, since we all got good quotes. What can I say? It costs only $28.65 for three. Our car got a break and some suntan in the parking lot too.

It looks like I’m not the only one unhappy about China Island.

(*) It must have been 10 years since I last went to Vung Tau. Of course lots must have changed.