Flavor Boulevard

Gyuu tan – sliced and grilled beef tongue, brightened up with a touch of lemon and raw daikon.

So I was going to write a really scathing review on this Joshu-Ya Brasserie place in Berkeley, but midway through the draft I went to Yelp to read my friend Kristen’s review for that same dinner by which we were both gravely disappointed. Not only is her review already detailed and scathing enough, but she’s also been to Joshu-Ya several times. Me? I don’t give restaurants second chances, even first chances are rare. So I figured no way I’d know and write about Joshu-Ya better than Kristen. Also as we immerse in this holiday spirit and on our way to a brand new year, I’d rather be all cheery about a restaurant that I love. 😉 It’s so close to me yet so secluded from the flock of eateries downtown that I hadn’t tried it until last month. Tried it once, then I went nuts and suggested Musashi the izakaya(*) to myself and everyone every time somebody says Japanese. Beware though, this is one of those places that you need to go with someone in the know to get the real things. There’s no fake thing per se (well truth be told I’ve only been here with someone in the know), but the real things will make you that much happier blowing your wad. Even better, your wad gets blown a lot less here than at other izakayas in the block: Musashi is cheap.

What are the real things? Please, no California rolls. (**)

Eggplant tossed with sesame and sweet soy sauce (goma ae). Healthy, no frills, and strangely addictive.

A fresh start is the 3-piece nigiri sampler (salmon, tuna and hamachi), but Musashi first blew me away with their simple green beans tossed with sesame, miso and sweet soy sauce (さやいんげんのごまあえ|saya ingen no goma ae|?). A similar eggplant dish started the next dinner we had there, good but I’m no eggplant fan. Of course we have no say in the free side dish, but if the stars all line up right you might just get the green bean. 😉

They have all of the common izakaya food like karaage (fried chicken), sunagimo (chicken gizzard, mmmmm), teba (chicken wing) and every other chicken thing, but my staple go-to has been the gyuu tan: a heap of sliced beef tongue, so lightly grilled that it doesn’t turn rubber, for a measly $6! (UPDATE: Musashi has the BEST gyutan in Berkeley!)

Hamachi nigiri – fresh and chewy as I like it

Clockwise from left: mune (chicken breast), tsukune (chicken meat ball) and karaage (fried chicken).

Although it’s possible to fill up on the skewers (I’ve done that at, of all places, Ippuku), it’s more economical and less confusing to fill up on something with rice. The nice thing about Musashi is they often have these few-day specials with ridiculous discount, such as this bowl of curry rice for $6 topped with a tonkatsu for another $1. The first time I had Japanese curry at a Korean-owned Japanese restaurant I was bored out of my mind, but Musashi’s sweet, slightly peppery curry works for me, with some tsukemono (pickled things). Unaju (rice with unagi) would also make a perfect choice any day.

That said, you can order all of these things without knowing Japanese, because they’re on the menu. The real deal isn’t, but somehow your Japanese friend knows it exist and asks the hostess, she nods welcomingly “hai! hai!” and you just enjoy the ride.

For example, buri daikon – fatty hamachi (yellowtail) and daikon simmered in soy sauce and mirin ($8.50), or  saba no misoni – saba (makerel) simmered in miso sauce, which, to my surprise, tastes almost identical to the Vietnamese cá kho despite the different ingredients. The sauces are watery and great over rice. If you’re afraid of (fish) bones like me, then ask her for buta no kakuni (braised pork belly), same concept.

Finish with black sesame ice cream.

One Monday evening I planned to meet a friend here, only to find out that they’re closed on Sunday and Monday. I was very sad.

Address: Musashi Japanese Restaurant
2126 Dwight Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 843-2017
www.musashiofberkeley.com

(*) There’s Musashi (宮本 武蔵) the famous samurai whose life stories inspired several works of fiction, such as the historical manga Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue. It’s bloody bloody, and bloody sad, nonetheless I’m at volume 34.

(**) I know. These American rolls can be good, and the place to get them would be Anzu.

Sometimes you just have to cast away all manners and enjoy a day in town like a tourist. After a few cups at Teance, Kristen and I were famished. As student I’ve gone lunch-less almost daily without problems, but drinking oolong without lunch is definitely the quickest way to wake up the hungry beast in you. We planned on gorging down pancakes at Bette’s across the street but we missed it by 6 minutes (why on earth do they close at 2:30 on a Friday?), so we dashed back to the other side of the street to Zut with exclamation mark and chose an appetizer and two entrees before the waitress could ask what kind of drinks we wanted. This, in our book, was record fast. However, despite our effort, the food didn’t come out fast enough. On a normal day, we would say the appetizer indeed got out in a really reasonable time, but one thumb-sized stuffed squid plus our extreme tea-induced hunger plus the lack of bread commonly served at Western restaurants really brought out the best of us: we stared longingly in the direction of the staff and the kitchen. The waitress caught our eyes.

Chorizo-stuffed squid ($9) – too expensive, the spinach is good, the sauce is good, tender squid, but the pepperiness of chorizo offsets the savoriness for me.

The first time she came back: “Do you need something?” Glances exchanged. “No…” *innocent smile* Longing stare continued… The second time she came back: “Would you like some bread with olive oi..” “Yes PLEASE!” *big wide grin* Four slices. Don’t know if they’re good because they’re good or because we were hungry, but they were gone after 2 minutes. More longing stare… This time our waitress intentionally avoided eye contact. We understand, but would we give up? No. Young as we were (we think), we were desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. We waved at another waiter, said, somewhat alarmed at our own temerity: “Could we have some more bread?”

Sausage and egg pizza ($15) – pizza’s okay, runny egg yolk on soggy pizza is waste of brain power

Zut! burger with white cheddar ($14) – the beef patty needs salt, the pickles are fresh, good crunchy fries

We were more fortunate than Oliver Twist because the waiter was much nicer than Mr. Bumble, as evident by the 6 slices following our request. Unfortunately, they arrived at the same time as the burger and the pizza, so instead of devouring them, we devoured the burger and the pizza. To discover that neither had enough salt.

Pear cardamom bread pudding ($8) – couldn’t taste either pear or cardamom. There were some kind of grapes which Kristen thought were fresh grapes and I thought were raisins. Ice cream would have been 56 times better than crème chantilly, but the airy crust on top saved the day.

So that solved the mystery: there’s a thing of salt on every table (not a salt shaker, mind you, but a sort of porcelain cup shape-wise akin to the thing that contains the tea candle, no lid). Without the bread we had no idea why it was there. Anyways they have good fries and good pickles. Dessert menus brought out, the waitress no longer avoided eye contact. Pear cardamom bread pudding looked good. So did grapefruit sorbet. We were really full at this point (Kristen finished only half of her pizza) so we said bread pudding please. Then we thought hey a palate cleanser would be nice because we needed to wash the fries off our palates… what next was only inevitable: “Can we have the grapefruit sorbet before the bread pudding please?” The sorbet dissolved the fullness (maybe it was just an illusion, but it lasted long enough for us to finish the bread pudding). How wonderful is the power of cold citrus things.

Grapefruit sorbet ($8) – with ginger snap. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

On a normal day Zut (exclamation mark or not) wouldn’t make the cut because we’re not into risottos and paninis, and we like our foods well seasoned, but that pink sorbet made our soul glint, an instrumental version of Memory was playing, the dangling lights on the trees were getting brighter as the sun got lower. The holidays drew nearer. We stood outside for a good five minutes just watching the lights. Silly girls. 🙂

Address: Zut! on Fourth 1820 4th Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510-644-0444 www.zutonfourth.com

Today. Big glistening birds. Crimson cranberry sauce. Mashed sweet potato with a crusty marshmallow top. Green bean casseroles. Gravies. The all-American classic holiday dinner table that every grocery store has a picture of on their website. Once upon a time I was enticed by such beauty, much like how I engulfed a chunk of ham the first time I saw real ham after years of seeing ham in old American cartoons (Tom and Jerry I think?). To be fair, save for the turkey, I do like the marshmallow sweet potato, the green bean casserole, and sometimes the stuffing if the gravies’ done right. But the turkey… I don’t get it. In a bird, the best part is the brown meat: legs, thighs, wings, that’s all. (Ah yes, I love the offals too, but today I’ll speak from the American perspective for a change.) Yet, the turkey leg is a monstrosity of toughness that my weak 20-some-year-old bone-gnawing cartilage-grinding gizzard-and-heart-loving teeth have trouble handling. Were all the turkeys I sunk into Olympic weightlifters or something? Well they have to lift their 30lb+ body every minute anyway, so no wonder. Conclusion: I don’t like turkey(*).

I like duck.

And you know what drink duck goes well with? I can’t speak for Pinot Noir, Merlot or Rosé, but some oolong teas make great companies! The long awaited double duck dinner at Bay Wolf arrived (2 months ago) before I could really get in tune with this semester, but I still remember how the Tung Ting made the duck dumpling soup and duck gizzard bloom.

Although I started out drinking tea for the sole purpose of matching tea with food, most of my pairing experiments were at home with more sweet than savory stuff. I blame the busy schedule but in reality I just don’t buy the thermal bottles to store hot water nor do I grab anything but my wallet and camera when I go fooding. (I used to forget my wallet.) My friend Nancy Togami, on the other hand, pursues her hobbies with much more heart than I. When we embark on a tea date, she brings teapots, hot water, teas and a thermostat to check the water temperature. I love her.

Duck liver flan, rillettes, gizzards and grapes. The liver flan (basically, pâté): paired with Tung Ting for a light and floral whisper in the mouth, paired with High Mountain for depth. Neither Tung Ting nor High Mountain did anything good to the rillettes. Tung Ting with gizzards and grapes was better than High Mountain with gizzards and grapes, as the grapes amplified the floral note of the Tung Ting.

Head-to-feet duck soup with savory duck dumplings. Again, the Tung Ting is a good match, it brightened but not intensified the tomato in the broth. (Surprisingly, the only tea that doesn’t go well with any of these courses was the Royal Courtesan: a little plumy, a little sour, even after we steeped it for 2 minutes, it refused to give an impression on the food.)

Duck tagine with spiced couscous, preserved lemon, olives and coriander. Tung Ting and High Mountain with duck tagine and steak: all 4 pairings are good. With High Mountain, although the fatty part of the steak does not go too well, the duck fat sauce shines through. The Tung Ting and the duck tagine is best with the lemon sauce in the tagine, otherwise the meat dried out and became too fibrous.

Grilled rib eye steak with duck fat fried and Béarnaise sauce. Nancy also had an excellent pairing of a Merlot with the steak and the duck. The Merlot smells tangier but tastes softer (more berry-like) than the Pinot Noir, it also has a smooth finish that made the steak more “unctuous”, and several times she went from meat to merlot and finish with High Mountain, which seemed to make things really shine.

Duck egg mocha pot de crème. Both Phoenix Honey and Tieguanyin Medium Roast go exceedingly nicely with this dessert: the Phoenix adds a lychee flavor to it, the Tieguanyin complimented the mocha flavor and at the same time makes it more perfumy. Both lightens an otherwise too rich ending.

So for this Thanksgiving (and maybe the next), ditch the turkey. Dish the duck. With some tea. 😉

(*) I love the living turkeys as much as I love any other animals. 😉 Since their meat doesn’t taste that great, why don’t we make them pets like dogs and cats, and give turkey-eaters “the look“?(**)

(**) In case you’re wondering: No. I don’t eat dogs and cats. I also don’t eat ham. For different reasons, though…

P.S.: First time I was at Bay Wolf.

So Flavor Boulevard went out of existence for about 10 days. It just disappeared. First of all (it wasn’t my fault but I will apologize because that’s how my culture works), my apologies to anyone who tried to visit Flavor Boulevard (and thank you for checking back to read this now 🙂 ). Secondly, I’ll explain. Thirdly, I’ll complain. And finally (I haven’t decided between devil Mai and angelic Mai yet, so maybe there’s no “finally”), I’ll make a voodoo doll of whoever caused this to happen.

My site got DDoS.

That sounds like a disease, doesn’t it? It happened like that too. One beautiful night after work I decided to update my blog, and dah dee dee dee dah I typed in the url and “Oops Google could not find flavorboulevard.com”. This had happened from time to time and usually it came back on within the hour, so I waited a bit… nothing changed… I started to worry… I emailed Web Hosting Pad (WHP) who was my webhost at the time and they said, in so many words about violation of terms and whatnot, that my account has been suspended. That explained why my primary site pmaitruong.com and the two subdomains disappeared too. I said okay why and what can I do to get the suspension off. They said your site has DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack and I’m forever suspended.

What?!

It’s like you went for a regular checkup and bam you’re told that you got Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and the doctor basically kicked you and your confused face and your whatever-name disease out of his office with a Wikipedia link to your whatever-name disease. (That’s exactly what the tech support person at WHP did by the way, they gave me the Wikipedia link to DDoS when I asked them what to do…)

I scrambled. Then from a couple of panic and confused hours searching the internet and message exchanging with friends (thank you for all of the messages! They were helpful in many ways! 😉 ), I gathered two things:

1. DDoS is caused by blockheads who weren’t love by the parents and simply take it out on other people for absolutely no good reason. Bullies. Sites that get DDoS get floods of fake traffic that exceeds the limit your webhost gives you, this is damaging to the host because it slows down their whole system, so their solution is to block your account. Nobody benefits from this, not even the attacker. Only the site gets hurt.
2. There’s no simple solution once you get DDoS and your site is on a shared server (which is what most amateur blogs like mine are on). The only solution is to change host.

So I did. As my friend Tyler put it, the problem was cyber-bullying, and the solution was to move your house to a better, hopefully more gated neighborhood and hope for the best. Pretty passive I know, but there was nothing else I could do on my end when I couldn’t access my cpanel, and WHP tech support insisted on upgrading to VPS hosting (which is for e-business: dedicated IP address, more bandwidth, all that jazz that costs a lot).

With that we move on to Part III: The Complaint

Switching host is a pain.

There are companies that will do it for $160/site, and I can understand why after 9 days doing it myself. Getting the files from WHP was the first problem: the guy said that I have 4GB of files so I’d need to delete either my gt-cache or my uploads in the content if I want the backup to be generated without problem. Another “what!” moment. Deleting gt-cache will cause 404 errors. Deleting uploads means no more pictures on Flavor Boulevard. Yeah.. I don’t think so 😐 . I insisted on giving me the full backup. He said you might get corrupted file. I said whatev, just do the backup please. I got the backup. It’s fine.

Then I spent 4 days uploading the files to the new host. FTP-ing was SO SLOW. But there was a very nice tech support guy at the new host that made things a bit more pleasant.

I asked specifically for his help every time I went to chat support. Unfortunately the guy’s weekend started just as my files finished uploading, so I went through the rest of the process with other people. Some were friendlier than others, but in general I got what I needed. I’ll spare you the details here (yeah like I haven’t said enough jargons already, thank you for reading this far down by the way! 😉 ).

Part IV: The Voodoo Doll

Devil Mai wants to say many nasty things here but Little Mom has taught me to be nice and proper and not to wish bad things to people, so I’ll refrain.

To be honest I’m not that angry actually. Mishaps happen. I doubt anybody targeted me specifically. (I don’t think I made enemies with any tech-savvy people, did I 😛 ). I was first scared of losing my blogs. They mean a lot to me. They hold memories and made me friendships. Well, mostly memories because I have a pretty poor memory, I need this space to store the feelings and names and bits of culture I’ve encountered in the past 4 years.

Somewhat exaggerated, but I felt at a loss like a parent with a sick child. I now somewhat understand why my mom didn’t sleep for 10 days to watch me when I had a bad fever.

And then I learned A LOT from this. All those web jargons. The proper procedure to host switching. Things that webhosts don’t always tell you unless you ask. The different places that have a hand on your domains. Tech support is much nicer when you transfer to them than when you leave them (of course!).

So… you DDoS attacker:  I’ll make you a voodoo doll and smear THICK GOOEY WARM DARK chocolate sauce ALL OVER its face and wish you bon appetit.

Dear Flavor Boulevard, I’ll take more proper care of you from now on. Don’t get sick again. Love, Mai.

Heloise from Eating Modern voted me for the Super Sweet Blogger Award. Thank you, Heloise. 🙂 I did some quick Google search and this game seems at the very least a nice way to know who (besides myself) reads my blog and whose blog I read. So, I’ll treat it the same way I treat food: if someone tells me to try something, I’ll try it (except balut, dog meat, bear paws, and so on). Here goes the meme (it’d be nice to know who started it maybe…):

There are three rules to follow:

-The nominees have to thank the person that nominated them.
-Answer the 5 Super Sweet Questions — See below
-Nominate a bakers dozen of other Super Sweet Bloggers and let them know.

1. Cookies or cake: what kind of cookies and what kind of cakes? If not chewy chocolate chip cookies, then cake.
2. Chocolate or Vanilla: chocolate 97% of the time.
3. What is your favourite sweet treat? It’s a three-way tie: ice cream, chewy chocolate chip cookie, and mitarashi dango.
4. When do you crave sweet things the most? I actually don’t crave sweet things that often, probably because I always stock up on ice cream in my freezer. 😉
5. If you had a sweet nickname what would it be? Hmm it seems like my nicknames are pretty savory (bánh canh and phô mai (fromage) :-D) and I’d like to keep it that way 😉

My 12 nominees are: (this is hard… and in no particular order)
– Carolyn Jung at Food Gal – She inspires me, and she’s always so sweet in replying to her readers. I’d love to meet her one day.
– Ben at Focus:Snap:Eat – what can beat a chocolate cookie sandwich?
– Oanh Nguyen at Rau Om – love her amazake and lively personality. And her dinner parties.
– Hyunjoo Albrecht at Sinto Gourmet – okay so her blog is all about kimchi but this is about sweet bloggers, not sweets blogs, right? 😉 Btw, kimchi can be pretty sweet depending on how you define “sweet”. 😉
– “Kid Diva” at The Sugar Bar – her blog has not been active since last December, but I still like it, and I first learned about mitarashi dango from her blog.
– Hong and Kim at The Ravenous Couple – so many macarons
– Anh at A Food Lover’s Journey – she’s publishing a baking cookbook, can’t get sweeter than that 😉
– Catty at The Catty Life – Once she had this series of posts about green tea desserts, my second favorite flavor only after taro.
– Jessica at Food Mayhem – I don’t know, I haven’t met her, but she just seems so sweet. 🙂
– Bob Fukushima at Pacific Rim BBQ – a sweet BBQ guy, whichever way you read it.
– Jen Helsby at Where’s the Seitan? – her blog was short-lived, but we have the greatest time over food whenever we meet.
– Ginger from Ginger and Scotch – her stories in Dubai are just fun to read like a chocolate chip cookie that never goes old.

Jya, mate ☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)

1. The kimchi I made with Kristen won First Place in the Kimchi category of the Puttin’ It Up contest. (Yes, the Korean fingers in the picture were intentional. No, that’s Sinto kimchi, not ours in the picture, but we didn’t get back our kimchi at the time this picture was taken.)

2. Via friend’s introduction (고마워요, 유경 언니 :-)), I ended up as a helper for Hyunjoo Albrecht at her Sinto Gourmet kimchi table on Saturday and Sunday.

3. Saturday was crazy, no spare second between chopsticking kimchi into sample cups for the festival visitors from 11 am to 6 pm.
4. Sunday was a bit more relaxing but we still sold out the big jars of kkakdugi (spicy radish kimchi) and the small jars of spicy pickled cucumber.

5. Thanks to Hyunjoo’s husband who got food for us while we stood our ground behind the table, I got to try from the other vendors: shoyu ramen from Youki, kalbi with steamed rice from Seoul on Wheels, Brown Cow vanilla yogurt, rose chai from The Chai Cart, and some pretty good mac ‘n cheese followed by a couple of dimsum dumplings.

6. Hyunjoo’s kimchi is delicious.

Read more: Eat Real 2 years ago, Eat Real 2011

Summer Green Roll – avocado, cucumber, kaiware sprout, wakame and hijiki. Alissa scooped wasabi like it was green tea ice cream, but I like this one just as it is: plain, fresh and light.

It’s been a long time since I last either wrote about food or ate anything that I could write about. The occasional rainfalls during the drought of takeout Chinese are so-so hu tieu and com suon somewhere in the Ranch 99 complex, and homemade soups, lovely but no hot news. Vegetable intake has been limited to shibazuke from Berkeley Bowl, homemade kimchi, and toasted seaweed (seaweed counts, doesn’t it?). Before leaving for her trip, Cheryl fed me her black chicken soup, brown rice, tau yew bak (similar to thit kho but with soy sauce instead of fish sauce) and, like a loving sister, concerned looks and advice on how I should feed myself healthy meals. I agree with her one hundred percent, but all planned menus for the next day fluttered their wings away as I run from class to class and get home only wishing to relax. Cheryl is married. I entertain the idea that I live like a single guy. A single guy that could not have looked more forward to a vegan dinner with some old friends.

After much debate we decided on a simple kampyo roll, a big fluffy summer green roll (that we each stuffed into our mouth in one bite to prove our manliness(*)), a Cha-Ya roll, a tempura stuffed eggplant, a gyoza and vegetable soup, and three desserts.

Cha-Ya Roll – avocado, yam and carrots, tempura roll with sweet soy sauce.

Tonchi Nasu – tempura stuffed eggplant with setsuma potato, corn, tofu, hijiki, soybean and carrot

Taku Sui – gyoza soup with tofu, broccoli, zucchini, napa cabbage, snap peas, asparagus, cauliflower, silver noodles and mushrooms in a light broth – I like this a lot!

Yellow Moon – tempura banana with a scoop of soy ice cream, drizzled with green tea sauce and red bean sauce

The Yellow Moon is just the tempura banana, the soy ice cream is listed as a separate dessert, but we shameless girls requested a scoop of ice cream with the banana. The Cha-Ya staff is so nice. 😉 This tempura banana is not oily like the deep fried banana desserts at Thai restaurants, the batter is light and plain. It gives you the impression of healthy foods.

Vegan chocolate cake (left) and Oshikuro (right) – plain white mochi in gooey red bean sauce. The red bean is a bit too sweet, but I like it still. The cake is like a soft brownie, not at all dry and lifeless like normal vegan cakes.

(*) In case you wonder, a picture of us is to the right.

Address: Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Cuisine
(North Berkeley)
1686 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley CA 94709
(510) 981-1213
Dinner for four: roughly $90 – Kinda expensive now that I think about it…

One very cold Saturday afternoon in Oakland.

Darren: Normally I don’t like fruit flavored stuff, like watermelon candies you know?
Mai: Yeah, like cherry candies…
Darren: But this mango ice cream is really good!
Mai: It is! I like the green tea the most though, it’s so refreshing. What about you, Kristen?
Kristen: I usually don’t like strawberry flavors, but this strawberry one is so good…

Good thing we each had a different favorite.

When the girl took up our empty sushi plates and asked if we wanted dessert, we were already stuffed, which is a given every time Kristen and I go out together. But we asked the girl what’s on anyway, and she listed, if I remember correctly in my post-food stupor, “tempura ice cream, green tea ice cream, red bean ice cream, green tea cheesecake, seven flavors of mochi ice cream, which includes mango, vanilla, strawberry, green tea, red bean, coffee and chocolate”. We looked at each other for two seconds then at her.

– Can we have the seven flavors, please?
– You want all seven?!
*Looks exchanged*
– Uh… it’s not a thing of seven mochis?
– Well we can make a platter of that too. You want that?
– Yes please. *sheepish grin*

Never turn down ice cream.

Zero complaints on the tempura and the rolls too, they’re Americanized of course and we didn’t do any nigiri nor any of us Japanese. But if you’re American, happen to be near the intersection of Piedmont and Echo in Oakland while hungry for sushi, Shimizu is a sure bet.

Address: Shimizu Japanese Cuisine
4290 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 653-7672
shimizucuisine.com

Volcano Scallop ($7.95) – Battered and deep fried scallops with sweet soy sauce

Mom posed a question and I can’t conjure up any adequate answer for her: why does Korean fried chicken only appear in holes in the wall?

Not just a simple hole-in-the-wall thing in a busy strip mall, it has to either stand alone in an empty lot or sit at a shady street corner with iron folding doors and a few rowdy-looking guys smoking outside. Granted that those guys look Korean and the signs are in Korean, which confirms the authenticity of the place, and these are Korean drinking establishments after all. But does it have to be so shady? I want to walk down the street and eat fried chicken late at night sometimes…

The fried chicken bits with green onions at Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지, which should be pronounced |Kang Tong Twe Jee|) might be good enough to risk it though. Frankly there’s less chicken on that plate than fried batter and green onion, but since when did fried chicken become so refreshing? A squeeze of lemon makes all the difference.

Thanks to Kristen’s mom, we three shared 8 dishes that covered tofu, seafood, chicken, pork and beef, one of them was a portion for two; the guy’s look of concern was funny, he even asked if we were sure. (We had plenty of leftovers of course. Nothing beats eating with moms. ;-)) Although “twe jee” (돼지) means pig or pork, this shack has good but not the best pork dishes. Kwen chan thah, their haemul soondubu (해물 순두부, soft tofu soup with seafood) and haemul pajeon (해물 파전, seafood onion pancake) are top of the game.

The wallpaper and the table arrangement are just too cute.

Address: Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지)
3702 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 658-2998

Soft tofu soup with shrimp, squid and clam. It looks fierce but tastes just slightly spiky. It was a good warm-up.

Banchan (side dishes). The only place I’ve seen that serves little crunchy shrimps. Yum yum.

Kimchi fried rice. In a moment of joy I dropped my camera head first onto the sunny-side-up, breaking the yolk and clouding my lens. Hence the dreamy look.

She’s the person behind the mochi at Teance. She pounds the cooked sticky rice instead of using mochiko, chops up whole yomogi for the actual grassy freshness, grow her own wild blueberries because they’re denser in flavor than the bigger highbush cultivars at the stores, and makes fancy mochi fillings with seldom fewer than 4 ingredients. Every time I nibble one of her soft little piece of art, each costs a whopping 4 dollars, I wonder what she doesn’t make at home from scratch and how much more work it takes.

Turns out, Yuri doesn’t make katsuobushi from scratch, that is, she doesn’t behead, gut, fillet, smoke and sun-dry the bonito fish herself, instead she buys the wood-block-looking karebushi and shaves it to top her okomiyaki, which goes without saying is made with grated nagaimo and dashi instead of premixed flour like when I did it.

We made Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, which doesn’t have egg in the batter, but we later added egg to brown the pancake more. Yuri told me to choose the fluffier cabbage instead of those with the leaves tightly packed together, and she added a squeeze of lemon juice on the finished pancake to brighten it up, exactly the little things that I can learn only from a home kitchen.

After two okonomiyaki, we had genmaicha with pickle cucumber and shiromiso, both homemade of course. Then a plain koshihikari senbei (rice cracker), as the sun set generous rays from the window.