Flavor Boulevard

I wish I could be like Hikaru, eating 20 cakes in 3.5 hours. Then I could go to cake shops like Masse, ask for every beauty of the day and not worry about missing out on any flavor. Wouldn’t life be so sweet then?

But maybe I don’t have to be like Hikaru. Minus the pastries and the cookies, Masse has only about 10 cakes on display, most of them are available in small size (because they don’t sell by the slices like Crixa Cakes); if I skip dinner and invite a friend, we could easily bring down all of them in one sitting, don’t you think? Danielle and I tried only two this time, though. Five bucks each, round and pretty and screaming “Got your spoon ready?”

The mocha walnut chocolate cake was a fun little one: I thought about peeling off its white, woody patterned wrapper but it turned out the wrapper was white chocolate. 😀 The caramelized walnut base proved a mild and coarse complement to the thick, creamy layers of dark chocolate cake, chocolate Bavarian cream and espresso mousse. Its richness is complemented by its stark coffee flavor. Just now, I realize the cake looks like a cup of coffee with two stirring straws. 🙂

But the main reason we came here was the cheesecake. The soft, subtly briny ricotta is wrapped up in a coat of hazelnut shavings and topped with a refreshing guava glaze. The glaze actually tastes too sweet and too fruitily generic to be guava, though. Regardless, when I combined a spoon of cheesecake with a spoon of mocha cake, I saw fireworks just like Remy.

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A few days later…
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I found out about Reuschelle’s. Victor Reuschelle says “[his cheesecake (I think)] is like heaven on a fork!”. I think it’s pretty heavenly that he offers delivery for free within 20 miles of the East Bay (in fact, there’s no physical store to visit).

Reuschelle’s Cheesecake is a one-man operation: Victor receives order via phone or email, Victor makes the cake, Victor delivers. Victor says ordering 4 days in advance would be best, but he makes exceptions based on what he has and what his schedule looks like. I ordered yesterday afternoon and the cheesecakes arrived this morning. The best deal is the 4-flavor sample of four 3-inch cheesecakes for $20, and unlike sampler plates in restos, you get to pick the flavors from a thousand choices on Reuschelle’s list. Okay, so it’s 57, but Victor says custom made is no problemo.

Clockwise from top left: Red Velvet, Original, Raspberry Lemonade, and Sweet Potato. I had my reasons for such picks. I wanted the original cheesecake flavor the way I want the original pho brought straight from the kitchen to the table, unadulterated by sauces or herbs. The red velvet is a playing-safe choice because it has chocolate. I haven’t seen sweet potato flavor in desserts. Raspberry and lemonade sound tart enough to temper the cheese.

Heaven forbids, these cheesecakes are no joke to get tempered by fruits. The Sweet Potato is a twin of the country pumpkin pie. The raspberry hint is stronger than the lemonade hint, but neither can emerge from the dense, creamy grasp of the cheese. The cocoa in the Red Velvet? Got lost. They’re good cheesecakes, but they’re all the same.

At Masse, North Shattuck, Berkeley. What happened to the boy's pants?

Thinking back, I’ve come across Reuschelle’s bites at Ghiradelli Square chocolate festival last September. He just started his business a few months before that. I like Victor’s casual friendliness, his delivery option, and his thrive for varieties, but if I must compare Masse’s one cheesecake with Reuschelle’s four, Masse’s wins. The fruit glaze makes the cake more dessert-like and less cheese-tray like, the hazelnut shavings break the textural homogeneity. The prices? Reuschelle’s a bit steeper, but you get the cake at your door.

And no, I couldn’t finish 4 mini 3″ cheesecakes in one sitting. Ninety percent of them are hanging out with the spinach and the pork chops in my fridge. Would you like some?

Address: Masse’s Pastries
1469 Shattuck Avenue (across the street from Safeway)
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 649-1004
www.massespastries.com

No-address: Reuschelle’s Cheesecake (aka Victor Reuschelle)
Telephone: (510) 219-2997
E-mail: reuschelle@gmail.com
www.reuschelles.com

Thiên Phú has been in my draft list for over 18 months. I wanted to write a post worthy of their dishes, but a proper post requires proper pictures, and either I was too hungry at the time or I just sucked at taking pictures at the time (I still suck now, but less than before) that every single picture was blurry like a blizzard. I was more concerned about food than food blogging so I didn’t snap many shots and didn’t check the clarity of the shots I took before digging in. I also didn’t know any photo editing. Basically, I was plain dumb.

At many points I thought about abandoning the post altogether, but we had a good meal that time and I even fed the birds in the parking lot while waiting for my friends to come join us. The birds were full, we were full. The restaurant was, as usual, empty except for us (because their menu is catered to large groups and wedding parties), so we got extra attention from the staff. Such memories kept me from deleting the draft that had nothing but terrible pictures. Then my parents came to the rescue when they revisited Thien Phu in the spring and took some luminous shots, like the beef and shrimp salad above and the seafood stir fry on rice below.

The salad, like most Vietnamese salads soaked in that half sweet, half tangy mixed fish sauce, was yummy. The seafood stir fry was nothing beyond expectation, they said, but at the very least, Thiên Phú brown sauce was not fattily thick like that goo in Phở Hà’s pan-fried phở. Dad’s vermicelli with stir fried beef was a good sweep, as evident from its picture.

If you’ve read my blog for long enough, you probably would notice that my dad almost never orders anything but beef, while Little Mom goes for shrimp or fish nine times out of ten. Naturally, Thien Phu ranks high in my parents’ list because their specialties are the 7 courses of beef and the whole grilled fish.

We’ve never tried all seven beef courses at once. We just choose a few that sound most savory, and for this party of 5, something shareable. Like beef that can be wrapped in rice paper and dipped in sauces. The chunky, fatty steamed beef balls (bò chả đùm) was broken into coarser bits to be scooped with a rice crackers or wrapped with lettuce. Razor-thin leaves of still red beef were dunked into heated vinegar for a simple, tender, and tangy completeness of bò nhúng dấm. Halved shrimps joined the beef in a similar fashion to make tôm nhúng dấm. Dad even dipped it in mắm nêm (ground anchovy sauce) to tighten the taste.

Then there’s the good old style of flopping beef slices on a hot black grill pan and hearing it sizzle while loading the wet rice paper with bean sprout, herbs, pickled radish and daikon. I also put a slice of unripe banana in my bò nướng vỉ roll because its cookie-like texture and clinging aftertaste are fun, although they don’t add much to the roll as a whole.

Leaving the blurry images of December 2009, we’re back to the present: grilled beef ball on rice. The marinade was sealed inside its smooth, gritty texture, each ball was so juicy it would shame a plump mango.

The seafood dishes are not subpar either. Loaded with shrimp, squid, and broccoli, mì hải sản (seafood noodle) had the sweetness of hủ tíu Nam Vang (Phnom Penh ka tieu) and the strength (and curly noodles) of ramen. The more broth we drank, the more delicious it got.

But there is one thing that everyone gets when they go to Thiên Phú: the crunchy-skin grilled fish (cá nướng da giòn). The whole catfish is enough for two by itself, grilled hiddenly in the kitchen until its skin breaks a crackling sound and glisters like topaz, then it’s brought out to you topped with crusted peanuts, cilantro and lime wedges. Its flesh stays white, juicy and soft. Roll up a side piece, you can savor its pristine, naturally sweet taste or dip it in nước mắm. The second grilled fish I had here this May was better than the one I had in December 2009, and so were their beef dishes. It’s good to see a good place gets better.

Just watch out for bones.

Address: Thiên Phú Restaurant
11360 Bellaire Blvd Ste 100
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 568-1448
(in the same parking lot as Giò Chả Đức Hương)

Lunch for 5: $76.03

Three times. Aaron and I drove up and down Westheimer three times to look for this little bitty sign of a black-and-white pig and a one-syllable name: Feast. The restaurant with over 150 glittering reviews on Yelp and several listings of Best New Restaurants appears humbly a residential-looking house, which faces a brick box called the Crabell Building and is a stone’s throw away from Hollywood Food & Cigars if you’re coming from the east. Hollywood Food & Cigars, you say? Well that was part of Varun’s instruction for us, the last two man standing as the GPS is taking over the world. (Or one man and Mai, but that’s not the point).

Varun had been here before on one of his food expeditions, and heaven knows why he did not veto my call when I suggested Feast for our rendezvous. I know why I suggested it: it has a daily changing menu that happened to have interesting wild games on the day I looked it up online. The day we came has more of a porky theme, presented in somewhat interesting combinations (click to see Feast Menu on Jun 3).

Aaron and Varun each decided on two appetizers for flexibility. If the listed price could initially throw off some shy college students, the good thing about Feast is that this is Texas we’re talking about: each appetizer is hefty enough to be a full course and the entree makes two meals. The content for us is heavy too, partly because we stayed macho and away from the salads, partly because the Scallop St. Jacques and the Potato and Leek Vichyssoise were loaded with enough cream and cheese they should just call them cheese bowls.

Normally, scallop has a chew to it, but the scallops tonight melted in my mouth almost indistinguishably from the cream sauce coating them. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if you are into drinking your food, but once you take away the texture from the scallop, it’s nothing but a blob as flavorful as it is colorful.

On the bright side, Feast makes stuff soft. My pork cheeks with red pepper and Rioja also melted in my mouth, its accompanying omelet-like rice tortitas (“pancakes”) were decent, although the seasoning reminded me too much of the veal mixiote I had in Puerto Vallarta. That veal was too salty, this pork was too bland, but both of them reflect a lacking attention to taste.

The Spiced Pork and Dried Fruit Chili was also both too seasoned and unimpressively plain at the same time, although with rare highlights of raisins. Aaron’s choice of Pork Rillettes served on toasts was arguably the most harmonic piece of the night, and the only dish that was finished.

Because Little Mom wouldn’t like me criticizing anything too much, I would rank Feast in the same category with Harry Potter and Las Vegas: stuff I don’t regret trying just so that I can tell anyone who would recommend them to me that I’ve tried them. (The night we went there, Feast was also crowded and noisy like Las Vegas.) Will I try Feast again? When I have dentures, maybe. Or when my heart can’t take any more salt.

Or when I want to be cool like Varun: order two appetizers, try one spoon from each, and eat bread with butter for the rest of the hour.

Although we felt bad about asking the waitress to describe a couple of dessert items and not ordering any, we felt great about filling up on frozen yogurt and hot fudge minutes later at Aaron’s favorite: Swirll (right next to, and I think cuter than, The Chocolate Bar).

Address: Feast
219 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77006
(713) 529-7788

What hits the spot in the morning better than a hot packed handful of sweet sticky rice with muối mè (sesame-sugar-salt mix)? A hot packed handful of sweet sticky rice with soft steamed whole peanuts and muối mè. Xôi đậu – my forbidden childhood love.

$1.50 for a full tummy.

Mom did not want me to eat too much xôi đậu in the past because peanuts are known for producing gas excess.

Address: Alpha Bakery & Deli
11205 Bellaire Boulevard
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 988-5222

San Antonio sleeps in on Sunday. It may be the seventh largest city in the States but it acts like either a college student or an old man who can’t sleep at night and frequently doses off in the day: Saturday night – cars, tourists and horse carriages packed Houston, Commerce and the streets about, Sunday morning – there may be 50 cars on the freeway and 3 people wandering downtown: us. The plus side for walking the pavements at 6 am is you can pose for pictures without being embarrassed about acting like a tourist. The downside is the restaurants aren’t opened, actually, they remain closed for the rest of the day.

Just when we thought about settling for the hotel breakfast, the internet came to rescue: the Guenther House in Arsenal, an 1860 old-house-turned-museum with a late Victorian styled parlor, German-imported porcelain and a terrace looking out to the river, serves breakfast all day.

The pancakes are fluffy. The white gravy is thick like melted cheese. The pineapples and oranges are sweet.

But the best of all was the so-called Southern Sweet Cream Waffle. I’m a pancake gobbler but in this pancake vs. waffle match, the crispy, airy waffle with subtly sweet dough and syrup-filled pockets won hands down.

A red head exercising down the river, across the street from the Guenther House

They sell the waffle mix upstairs the Guenther House for $6.50 per 15 oz. We cleansed our palates with a perfumed-cool, lingering sip of raspberry sage ice tea and filled our lungs with the river breeze as we prepared to drive back to Houston. Another town has been added to our list of retirement havens.
For a mini tour of the villa, click on Mr. Red Head’s beak.

Address: The Guenther House
205 East Guenther
San Antonio, TX 78204
(210) 227-1061

Country-styled breakfast for three: $25.63

The morning we left for the drive to San Antonio, Ms Baker told me, “I worry about your mom… she can’t eat Mexican food so what’s she gonna eat there?”. I told her I actually spent the night before browsing through loads of places, and indeed many of them are Mexican, just to find a quaint little restaurant on South Alamo. La Frite is like an oasis for the elders and the lovebirds seeking a quiet breeze in this old, vibrant Spanish settlement and this continental summer heat. We’re neither elders nor lovebirds, but we’re used to standing out. 😛

La Frite‘s specialty (and Belgium’s popular version of fish and chips) is Moules Frites (mussels and fries), but we’re not into bivalves so we got the frites. Good crispy sticks, can be dipped in ketchup or some green sauce that tasted like avocado with lemon juice, the frites here remind me of Fuddruckers‘ fries.

If you’re in a hurry, this place is not for you. It’s great for the lovebirds, who enjoy marveling at the wine between exchanging strategic smiles, for the elders, who loftily slip their jokes and wisdom into hourglass-shaped beer pitchers without caring what time of the day it is, and for the people observers, who quietly comment on them all. As if to keep us longer in the ambiance, there’s a prix fixe three-course dinner menu for $38 with plenty of time between each course.

That night, a popular choice for appetizer in the prix fixe was the Asian baby back ribs. The accompanying frisee with mandarin orange lightened the meat that was fall-off-the-bone tender of course, but its main score is the sweet sauce backed by the burnt nuttiness of black sesame. Perfect little ribs.

My entree choice was a plump stuffed quail confit. The quail leg made great finger work but the stuffing was a bit dull in flavor and a bit too fatty.

Little Mom had better luck with her small plate: a crepe filled with crabmeat and gruyere cheese. Soft and creamy.

Bi had the best luck, though. The crispy skin of his pan sauteed magret de canard (duck breast) sang so beautifully with the sweet raspberry gastrique sauce, I kept stealing pieces from his plate. A side cultural difference:  in Vietnam there’s no such thing as a non-well-done duck, but the West apparently does their ducks medium rare, like beef, to keep ’em moist and tender?

The classic end: a chocolate mousse.

Parking on the side neighborhood street was a tad funny because it says “NO Parking this side in this block during events”. It’d be quite something if after 2 hours dining nonchalantly we discovered that our car was towed.

Dinner for three: $86.23

Address: La Frite Belgian Bistro
728 S Alamo St
San Antonio, TX 78205
(210) 224-7555

This has nothing to do with this post, but I want to say it anyway: I’ve been home for two weeks and Little Mom’s been making sure that everyday I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, fruits, mid day snacks, late night snacks, and more snacks. “Stock up for the rest of the year cuz you don’t eat at school. I know you,” she says. 😀 I get sleepy if I’m constantly full –> now I’m sleepy all day –> now I can’t blog. On the note of abundance, this post is about 4 kiosks in the food court of the Memorial Super H Mart, where my parents will most likely frequent for a quick tasty lunch after buying the kimchis and the myulchi bokkeum.

The food court makes a wavy strip at the right end of the store, starting with Tous les Jours at the door and ending with a kiosk selling kimbab (김밥) near the kimchi section far back, the tables sealed from the view of passing shoppers by a strategic row of potato sacks and artificial sunflowers. I didn’t stand long enough in front of each kiosk to read everything cuz I feel bad facing the cashier (and possibly the owner) for too long without ordering, but it appears that almost every menu more or less has the same common Korean dishes (like bibimbap (비빔밥) and galbi tang (갈비탕)). Being in a food court made us feel soup-inclined, kinda like how we opt for phở when we want a quick fill, I guess.

The non-spicy seafood noodle soup (#24, $8.11) from Sobahn Express (also signed as Bibijo(?!)) was ordered next to last but ready first. ‘Tis my first time seeing a stone bowl embedded in a wooden box. The box must have helped containing the heat longer cuz it was at least 20 minutes into eating and Little Mom was still blowing at every bite. It’s a good choice for her cuz she always likes it hot and the seasoning was just right to her taste.

My soondae guk (순대국) ($8.66) from Jumma was ordered last and ready second. It came topped with a hefty scoop of some brown powder that looks like ground pepper and tastes like tea. It has a bland bone stock that tastes like sul lung tang (설렁탕), to which I added a few teaspoons of salt and kimchi juice. There’s no dangmyeon (당면) in the soup like sul lung tang though; I just dumped the rice into the soup. With the pig intestine and liver (yum :-D) in thin slices and the soondae (순대) in chunks, it became sorta like a bowl of Vietnamese cháo lòng (innard porridge), a street nosh for the late night drunks and the market ahjummas.

Close-up of the soondae: blood sausage stuffed with dangmyeon. It’s grainy and pretty bland.

Bi had to wait for his food for so long I thought they forgot him. But the wait was totally worth it, his samsoon jajangmyeon (삼순 자장면) ($12.99) from Daddy & Daughter was the best of the three. The black soybean sauce (jajang (자장)) is sweet and thick but not fatty. Now I know why they make it look so good in dramas: it really is good. Better than chowmein and pad thai. (Once upon a time I idiotically ordered my very first jajangmyeon at a Chinese restaurant whose name I won’t say, it was so boring I had to stop after 3 bites. It goes to say that if you can’t make an ethnic dish as good as or better than the people of that ethnicity, then don’t tarnish its name by making it. Considering that jajangmyeon originates from China, it goes to say that if you can’t make your own ethnic dish as good as or better than the people of another ethnicity, then you might as well stop making it.)

I like places like Toreore: upfront and simple about what they dish out. There are 8-10 choices of fried chicken and you need to decide if you want 7 ($8.65) or 14 pieces, but we always stick to the non-spicy kind and that leaves us one option: garlic soy sauce chicken. It ain’t no OB Chicken Town but sure is better than KFC. Mom liked the sweetness, Bi liked the juiciness, I liked that they liked it.

These Korean fried chickens have cute pictures, too. 😀

The place is crowded with the continuous flow of families and carts pre- and post-shopping but the people are quiet. The tables are not squeaky clean but a quick tissue wiping would do. Foods are served on blue plastic trays and the kimchi isn’t top notch, but you’re not paying 18 bucks a meal. The Super H Mart food court is the best among the food courts I’ve been to in terms of both taste and atmosphere. As Little Mom says, we feel at home because the shoppers here share a similar culture, yet we can also talk comfortably because the neighboring tables don’t share our language.

Address: Super H Mart food court
1302 Blalock Road
Houston, TX 77055

A Japanese chef, a former Korean restaurant interior, a Vietnamese manager, and a buffet menu combining all three plus Chinese. Sounds unauthentic and one-star fusion? I thought so too, I didn’t plan on blogging about Saigon’s Buffet until I was a third way through my plate. Then I scrambled for the cam to snap a few from my mom’s. Good thing it’s a buffet, can always go back for seconds.

From the far right end we gandered first through the kimchis and namuls, grouped with a bright yellow ripe mango salad mixed with gochujang and something soakingly flavorful similar to either pickled sweet onion or green papaya salad. To its left are sushi rolls and plump chunks of red tuna and orange salmon, and a few stubby octopus tentacles that I really wanted to get but didn’t know where to fit on my heaping pile.

From the far back of L-shape buffet counter are fried rice, chow mein, and lightly mixed rice vermicelli (similar to bún xêu) that goes exceedingly well with the sesame-oil-sweet-smelling, cucumber-free wakame salad. Trays full of shrimps, baked salmon-wrapped pork, and grilled shrimp paste on a lemongrass stalk shine next to the more Vietnamese familiars: bánh xèo, bánh bèo, stuffed tofu in tomato sauce…

Little Mom fell for the all-around-crunchy and coconut-sweet sizzling crepes right away (“better than Kim Son‘s,” said she), while I grew on the chewy leaflets of semi-translucent steamed flour encasing carrots, mushroom, and pork, which looks halfway like a bánh bột lọc and tastes halfway like a bánh giò.

The dessert section lies between the octopus tentacles and the cashier, which is at the corner of the L. Simple, but sufficient for a cool washing-down, are the coconut milk jelly and the fruits, classic silky and Bi’s favorite is the flan, while the wafers dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with sesame seeds hit home in a nutty cheerful crunch. “Take a lot the first time,” obviously it’s not because they “charge for seconds” like the manager jokes, but because you don’t need to sample things here to be safe; everything’s better than expected. Everything’s yummy.

As we waited for the machine to print our receipt, the manager told Little Mom that the chef just brought out bún bò xào (stir-fried beef rice vermicelli), Little Mom said oh Bi likes that, had it come out earlier he woulda stuffed himself with it. And who woulda thought, the manager offered us a free to-go box with bún bò xào! It could just be the opening month (when they charge only $12.99 instead of $15.99 per person) and the beaming summer spirit, but Saigon Buffet surely had us this time. Come back we will.

Address: Saigon Buffet (previously Korean Garden Grille)
11360 Bellaire Blvd
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 879-0228

Brunch: WestSoy vanilla soymilk
Dinner: Pearl green tea soymilk

When my green tea soymilk got scanned at the cashier, there were two reactions from the cashier girls: “Wow, this sounds awesome! I’ve never heard of it before!” and “I don’t know… it sounds a little weird to me”. Call me a Berkeley-induced hippie if you want (although I’d like to say I’m as far from being a hippie as Japan is from Berkeley), but I side with the first reaction, cuz I like green tea ice cream and I like soymilk. Now I’m addicted to this thing.

Sweet and smooth with a light-hearted, herbal accent. I finally understand why the Brits add milk to tea. In this case, it’s adding tea to milk. The mix rivals my most favorite drink number: mung bean milk.

It’s great alone. It’s an elegant partner to a mini chocolate rugelach or a kuri manju, a sweet chesnut-shaped bun with white bean paste).

The budget:
1 Quart Pearl Organic Green Tea Soymilk carton – $2.85
Package of 4 Kuri Manju – $4.95
Package of 14 Green’s Chocolate Rugelach – $7.99
… all from the Berkeley Bowl…

More green drinks: mung bean milk and pennywort juice

DISCLAIMER: I received no free product or monetary gift in exchange for this review.

Do you like soy milk?
No? Well, someone once told me that if you don’t expect milk when you drink soy milk, then you’d enjoy it.
Yes? Then you might just prefer this luscious, green, liquefied nourishment to soy milk.

Not only is it nuttier, mung bean milk also feels more natural and more local than the modern soy milk. From the cheap plastic bottle with a green plastic cap and no label (that means no half-stamped “Sell by…” either), you can probably tell that it didn’t go through any metallic machine with pulleys and tubes. Whoever makes this mung bean milk probably soaks the beans overnight in a dented aluminum basin, boils the extract at 2 am in a sooty pot, and bottles the final liquid via a red plastic funnel that looks just like the one they always use for oil change. It doesn’t really matter as long as the delivery of a fresh batch comes at 6. The sandwich shop unstretches its iron folding doors. The customers start buzzing in. At 11 I came. I grabbed a bottle at the cashier. It was warm.

Two and a half hours later I got home and the milk got cold. I packed the 16 oz bottle into my minifridge next to the banh mi and banh bao (from the same store), sighing in relief that it’s just short enough to stand fit on the upper shelf. Was the bottle I had back then also about this size? How many years ago since I had last tasted that nuttiness in a glass? I dialed, “Mom, guess what I bought today! Sữa đậu xanh!”

On the other end of the phone I could hear her eyes widened and her lips part into a half moon shape. She’s happy. Every day for some time between my fourth and sixth years, Little Mom used to buy me a pint of mung bean milk from a grandmother of one of Dad’s students, and it had to be that grandmother because of her indisputable cleanliness. When I was 6, we switched to the packages of Vinamilk’s pasteurized fresh (cow) milk, a more convenient alternative to get in loads per week. Actually, I remember the cow milk packages with light blue words printed on white and the typical picture of a black-and-white Holstein cow, but not the mung bean milk bottles, barely the fact of drinking it every day. The point is, even in the Saigon of the ‘80s, mung bean milk was rarer and pricier than cow milk. Today, Bánh Mì Ba Lẹ in Oakland sells $2.50 for every 16 oz bottle, roughly six times more expensive than a gallon of cow milk, which you can get on average for $2.99 at your local grocery. Not that the price always represent the taste, but if I were a cow I would sulk a little, knowing that those helpless bird-eye seeds could produce something more valuable than my giant rectangular body could.

Now, about the taste… I’ve tried mung bean milk both ways: chilled in the fridge and warmed up in the microwave. Warm is better. Warm embraces the sweetness instead of masking it. Warm sooths your sensors from the tongue all the way down the esophagus. Warm also elevates the fragrance of pandan leaves and mung bean.

I wanted to stock up on the stuff so much I came back the next Sunday afternoon to buy off their last 4 bottles: 2 on the counter and 2 from the fridge. I refrigerated them all and refrained from drinking them that night; like a poor drug addict I tried portioning whatever little amount I had for the whole week: 1 bottle per two days seemed satisfactory. But ah the best-laid schemes gang aft agley, Wednesday morning one bottle turned sour on me.

“There goes three precious pints down the drain,” thought I. But it turned out the remaining two were fine. ‘t was one from the counter that got ruined. The cold ones stayed for 6 days. So unless you drink it within two days, buy the refrigerated bottles, keep fridging, then shake it well and warm it up with a microwave when you drink.

One last bit to tell you how stingy I get when it comes to mung bean milk: I drank and drank and at the bottom there was the thick beany leftover, I poured in some water, shook it up, more mung bean milk for me.

Address: Bánh Mì Ba Lẹ (East Oakland)
1909 International Blvd
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 261-9800

Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: nước rau má (pennywort juice)
Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh khoai môn hấp (vegan steamed taro cake)

This post is submitted to Delicious Vietnam #13, May edition, hosted by Jing of My Fusion Kitchen.