Flavor Boulevard

It takes us six years and a cross country drive to set foot into one of the Cracker Barrel, thanks to Mudpie waking up right as a sign comes into view to show which exit to take from I40. (In my defense, Cracker Barrel doesn’t show up in the Bay.)

There are as many people in the store as antique candies on the tables and shelves near the cashier. We put our name on the list, then quickly merge into the buzzing about knick knacks and candles, preparing for a thirty minute wait. A mere ten minutes later our name echoes on the microphone, we get seated near the dining hall entrance, four menus swatted onto the wooden table, the waitress is a little disappointed that we aren’t ready to order yet.

Then it comes our turn to wait for the food, and we play games.

We get the usual Southern flavors: chicken fried chicken with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, fried okras and green beans,…

… and the creamy chicken and dumpling with two side “vegetables“, choosing among cabbage, turnip greens, beans, corn, fried okras, macaroni ‘n cheese, cole slaw, fried apples, and a few others. The fried apples (pictured), almost crystal clear and melting like butter on hot pan, taste like wedges of soft brown sugar, but Little Mom and Mudpie love ’em.

They even say that it’s better than the glazed apples in my cider-braised roast pork shoulder. Mai disagrees. But they can’t deny that the supertender, honey-like pork triumphs today, accented with dried cranberries and pecan bits. Deservingly being an in-store special, it is so good I forget all about my backache and fork right in.

We could consider a fruit cobbler for dessert, however the check comes just as quickly as the food got served. They rush us out for the waiting patrons, which is understandable but makes Cracker Barrel’s atmosphere less countrily charming than Pickett House in Woodville. It turns out there’s a CB ten minutes drive from my parents, busy like a beehive even on Monday, and when it comes to chicken and dumpling, Little Mom decides she prefers CB’s to Pickett House’s. But if it’s country food, I prefer a little country style (and space).

Or perhaps a Goo Goo, “a nourishing lunch”? 😉

Money talk:
1 chicken fried chicken ($8.99) + 2 chicken ‘n dumplings ($7.39/each) + 1 pork roast ($8.99) + tax = $35.05
Address: Cracker Barrel Store #617 (I never saw it before, now I see it everywhere)
5700 Redlands Road N.W.
Albuquerque, NM 87120
(505) 352-5430
Exit 155 from I40

Usually people go to church on Christmas Eve, but we (kind of) do on Christmas Day. At 9, we leave the hotel and beat the traffic to St. Charles Avenue, a historically elite thoroughfare delineated with mansions and century old oak trees, themselves decorated by dangling Mardi Gras beads from last seasons. Hardly any traffic presents, except for a streetcar chugging up and down the cable lines. If not for these black lines, the scenery would have resembled Tự Do Street (now labelled Đồng Khởi) in Saigon, especially with the Holy Name of Jesus Church looking out to Audubon Park, like the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica and the greenery to its left front side.

Parting from the arches of oak branch weaving across the road, we head to the French Quarter. Hardly any trees now, but many more colorful skinny houses adorn the sidewalks. A flimsily dressed, green-shoed man jumps rope on Canal Street, in the mist and sprinkle of Christmas Morning, disturbed by neither cars driving by nor the onlooking of another man, black-jacketed and huddling to himself in the corner.

A mule pulls a carriage.

We loop back for dinner at Mudpie’s Aunt Mamee and Uncle Mike’s residence, starting with some melting-cheese-veiled etouffee in mini pastry shells, chips and dips, and trouts on bread that go faster than hot cakes.

We are seated in the dining room, surrounded by Nativity sets (some inside Christmas tree ornaments), a collection of pine trees and white chinas, and pampered with velvety mashed sweet potato and crispy browned marsh mallow, brown sugar glazed carrots,

crumbly dirty rice, stuffing, gentle and buttery red fish,

juicy turkey, and Little Mom’s crunchy chicken cabbage salad dressed with tempered lemon juice. We all come back for seconds, and would have come back for thirds if not to save room for Mamee’s scrumptious chewy chocolate chip cookies. 🙂

I don’t like the Backstreet Boys but when an apt title comes you gotta grab it. Last Sunday we were out celebrating ZuChu‘s birthday with her favorite: sashimi. I was fully expecting a glamorous meal since I’ve come to like smoked salmon and figured all thinly sliced raw fish must have that silky springiness too. Besides, there are those pictures of translucent peony and phoenix made out of fugu sashimi. The Japanese get you by the eye.

This modest stop on Shattuck has the biggest selection of fishy cold cuts in South Berkeley, with 13 individual kinds and 2 combo plates. Word of mouth is it also slices up the freshest, gruesomest sashimi around.

For $18.95 we preempt 16 chunks of maguro (tuna), shiro maguro (albacore, or “white tuna”), sake (salmon), and hamachi (yellowtail, but red meat). The salmon is best (just like La Bedaine’s smoked salmon, but thick). The tunas slide down my throat with some stickiness, as if stuff were crawling up… The hamachi fans apart into a string of cubes, each as bland and bare as the next. Suddenly I understand the presence of wasabi, but I don’t use it.
In the end, I don’t understand the thickness. It’s like eating a blob of gooey rubber, the more you chew the more you realize it’s not cooked, but once you try to swallow it it clings to your tongue. Soy sauce makes it twenty times better.

And I never felt happier eating veggie rolls. V8 (mushroom, cucumber, oshinko, gobo, kanpyo, avocado and daikon) – $4.95, and cucumber roll – $3.00.

Address: Sushi Ko Berkeley
64 Shattuck Square
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 845-6601

You may say it’s shabby, and in fact it is. The single restroom has a questionable floor, a toilet with enamel-cracked seat and a sign to forbid disposal of paper in the toilet, and a faded red door with a knob that doesn’t invite contact. On this windy Saturday late morning, a few pick-up trucks pull up, a few old, beer-bellied, bearded men in plaid shirts stand around to wait for their orders or chow down at the wooden tables and attached benches, crows and pigeons peck at the sandy surrounding parking lot, making this Original Burger Hut of Route 66 the most alive place in Needles.

This hut is not related to these huts. This hut is a rectangular kitchen with one sliding window for taking orders, occupied by two women, a quiet chef that swings between the stoves and the counter where she rolls burritos and boxes up food, and a stern cashier that also fixes drinks. It takes ages for the burgers to get out the window, then again with roughly 5000 residents, time seems to go by more slowly in this town.

Their burgers are okay. At $2.90 with added cheese, it fills but not too much, like a burger you’d grill out at home casually every now and then. The same goes for their carne asada burrito. I save some bread for the birds, who appreciate it dearly.

We switch gear for dinner, as the long foggy drive through Flagstaff fogs up our will to eat out, especially when the Quality Inn in Winslow has a orderly-looking restaurant and lounge and very amicable staff.

The golden crispy fish and chips ($7.99) with Texas toasts wow my mom, while my dad’s New York pork strips ($7.99) are well seasoned, albeit a little tough.

The heavily peppered haricot vert, which also comes with my honey stung chicken, is definitely worth the bucks.

From the name “honey stung chicken” ($8.99), I expect a roasted game, but golden battered fried chicken shows up in front of me. Although the fried chicken is good, it isn’t as satisfying when I’m not in the fried mood.

The closest-to-perfection is Mudpie’s harvest salad ($6.49), with walnut, cranberry, goat cheese, apple, and fried sweet potato chip. I wonder if the carnivorous side in me is starting to get old.

Address: Route 66 Burger Hut
701 West Broadway
Needes, CA 92363

DJ’s Restaurant & Lounge (inside Quality Inn)
1701 North Park Drive
Winslow, AZ
(928) 289-3274

For the past few days we’ve been behind the wheels from dawn to dust, making our way across three time zones. In the first, we happen to stumble upon the best seafood restaurant in Salinas, or so they claim.

Sitting on a corner lot on Main Street in a peaceful little hometown of John Steinbeck and fewer than 150000 people, Salinas Valley Fish House looks homely attractive with an old-fashioned bistro touch. Little Mom instantly gives an approval nod as she walks into the spacious dining room, seeing fresh flowers on white cloth tables, and Santa hats on the fishes. It opens for lunch only during the week, good thing we drive by on a Friday.

Despite being in a seafood restaurant in a seaside town, Little Mom fixates on an order of pork chop ($13.95), oak grilled, medium, no condiments. First time I see her liking a pork chop other than her (awesome) own. 🙂

Mudpie and I also set out for some grilled deals…

From the sea, a half order of snapper…

And a half order of calamari steak, which looks exactly the same as the snapper fillet. Mai prefers the squid’s soft yet springy and compact texture to the fish’s flakiness, while both has a lovely smoky touch of the grill.

Dad branches out of the pack and goes for linguine lightly dressed in a butter garlic sauce with sauteed clam in shell ($13.95). The gentle chewiness pretty much hits the spot.

About an hour past our usual dinner time and a hopelessly lonely drive through the foggy and mountainous Los Padres National Forest, we reach Santa Clarita, make a few loops and turns to figure out the entrance to the parking lot of La Quinta Inn, and have no strength left to look for a dining exoticus. International House Of Pancakes sounds more appealing than anything else with a big sign visible from the highway.

This time Little Mom turns around and orders a grilled tilapia, the new addition to IHOP menu. Understandably, it’s just alright. They don’t claim to be an IHOF anyway.

But she does get overwhelmed by the amount of food, including two crumbly buttery pieces of toasts and a cheesy potato soup, which Dad has to finish instead of his giant big steak omelette.

The other man in the quartet takes off more healthily on an International Crepe Passport with fresh fruit crepe, two bacon strips, two sausages, and two fried eggs…

… while the usual meat-eater now opts for a vegetarian plate: four Swedish crepes with lingonberries and lingonberry butter. The crepes here are thicker than those at Millbrae Pancake House, and the butter is not as fruity either, but what counts at that hour is how it satisfies our rumbly tumbly. And it does. All 4 orders for $36.72 and 20 minutes wait.

Address: Salinas Valley Fish House
172 Main Street
Salinas, CA 93901
(831) 775-0175

IHOP
24737 Pico Canyon Rd.
Stevenson Ranch, CA 91381
(661) 254-1537

Do you like that crisp, burnt, gochujang-dyed rice crust at the bottom of the dolsot when you scrape off spoon after spoon of bibimbap? If the answer is yes, I’m certain that you’d fall for this one too.

Mom cooks her xoi in a non-stick pan, with coconut milk and little water. Somehow, without a precise recipe, she can make a shell of brown, sweet and crusty sticky rice every time. Then we fight each other for it when it’s still warm and just a tad chewy, leaving the soft innard xoi for my dad.

Approximate recipe: Xôi cháy (literally “burnt xoi”, usually considered a point against the skillful xoi cooks, but I think it’s better than icing on a cake, it’s the best part of a perfectly cooked batch of xoi)
– 1 lb sticky rice
– 1/2 lbs mung bean (halved is fine, unscraped)
– 1 can of coconut milk
– 1/2 tsp salt
– sugar (lots! ~ 8-10 tbs)

Soak mung beans in water overnight to soften them, so that they get cooked faster (at about the same rate as the sticky rice). Mix sticky rice and beans together.
Put sticky rice, mung bean, a can of coconut milk, and just enough water to have the grains 1/10 inch under the liquid surface. Cook in a deep pan, covered, on medium heat. (If cooked in rice cookers, the bottom crust won’t form.)
When the mixture boils, turn the heat to low, wait about 10 minutes until most of the liquid is soaked into the grains, then use a chopstick to make holes in the mixture, allowing steam to circulate easily all around. Keep covering. Cook for another 10-15 minutes.
When rice and mung bean are soft, sprinkle salt and sugar on top, then gently mix (with chopsticks) the xoi without disturbing the bottom layer. (This is exactly what you must do when eating dolsot bibimbap, you don’t want the crust to mix with the soft part.) Make holes in the mass again. Cook for a few more minutes.
Scrape off the xoi innard first and store separately. Take out the whole crusty shell with care, or break off into chunks. Eat by itself. Flavorastic by itself.

It all happens because of the tongues. First I found out that Ashley’s and Kaily’s favorite is Mexican food. Except for one taco at Taco Bell a few months back when I was starving in San Francisco and unable to find any cheap and quick filler, I haven’t had Mexican food for a few years, simply because the burritos, tacos, quesadillas, tamales, and other Spanish names that crossed my path didn’t impress me the right way. Then I hear Michelle praises the churros with such enthusiasm that makes me rethink about the cooking affairs south of the Rio Grande. Then Mudpie’s birthday comes up, for which Mexican is the desired course, and Tacubaya the desired destination. Two things on the menu catch my glance: churros and taco de lengua (beef tongue taco). Heck, any tongue is worth a try.

Once you’re there, you can’t just get one thing, especially when each taco is the size of a tea saucer. So we each opt for two soft tacos and share one sweet potato puree (camote).

Turns out the beef tongue is less chewy than expected, rather too soft, like a beef-flavored gelatin cube, but its accompanying tomatillo salsa brings in a refreshing limey zest.

Mudpie thoroughly enjoys the taco de asada, grilled beef cubes with salsa roja, onions and cilantro, and we both feel good about the adobo-smothered crumbly chunks of spit-roasted pork topped with avocado salsa, labelled taco al pastor. Thumbs up for no cheese in tacos. The only setback is two thick corn flour tortillas that feel almost undercooked and a bit too soggy. Meanwhile, the sweet potato puree is a creamy dream.

On our return for dinner, the hot pink wall enclosure is packed to the door, patrons sitting elbow to elbow, and dishes take four times longer to reach our table. But the wait is worth it, at least for our respective choice.

Mudpie’s $5.50 miniature sope de chorizo y papas is a ripoff to me but a smile to Mudpie. The combination of mushy refried black bean, crumbly chorizo, fried potato, a mildly sour crema Mexicana, zesty feta-like cotija cheese, pickled jalapeno and diced carrot boasts wholesome Mexicanness, compactified in fewer than ten conservative bites.

On the other side of the table, my voluptuous torta al pastor, spit-roasted pork with avocado sandwiched in a fresh, toasty, buttery bread, completes my night. Mudpie shrugs off, not too impressed by its lack of vegetable and thinks that the sope is better.

We sweeten things up with three churro sticks, faintly cinnamon-flavored with a sandy coat of brown sugar crystals. The sticks are dense but light and all around crispy, though I wish they serve them with hot chocolate, the way they do it in Spain.

In the end, I’m glad I have a good reunion with Mexican food. Some might say it was only Tex-Mex, not real Mexican, during those few years of first impressions, or maybe the more upscale taqueria makes it better. Maybe it’s a different expectation. But overall, Tacubaya gives me some surprises: 1. the Fourth Street Shopping area, and 2. beef tongue is more tender than duck tongue (maybe it’s the acid from the tomatillo).

Address: Tacubaya (in the 4th Street shopping area)
1788 4th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710-1711
(510) 525-5160

Oakland Chinatown, except for places like Tây Hồ, Bình Minh Quán, and the Korean restaurant on 13th street, carried on its everyday business on Thanksgiving as if it were a town in China. The Chinese dedication is admirable and to be grateful for. Without it I would haven’t had two meals worth of $1.75 wrapped in bamboo leaves. Yes, two meals.

Jung, as the lady at Sum Yee Pastry pronounced, is a heavy deal. At first I thought it was a Vietnamese banh gio, except for the leaf wrapper being dried instead of smooth, damp, and waxy. I asked her for the name and couldn’t make out what she was saying, I asked her to write it down but she didn’t know how, she then asked if I was Vietnamese and switched to my mother tongue in her mixed Chinese tongue to explain that this thing is eaten on May 5th just like banh chung is eaten during Tet. Aha, so it’s zong zi, the great great great grandfather of banh u tro! Turns out zong zi (just a different, and much more common, pinyin name of jung) are sold year round nowadays.

This zong zi in particular has different fillings from its regional variations in China or Malaysia, and certainly bears little resemblance to the sweet version (gan shui hong dao sha joong), as its main feature is mung bean paste. (Sum Yee has the peanut type for the same price, too, though I’m not sure if it’s peanut paste or whole peanut.) The barbecued pork and lap cheong are rather dry, the sticky rice cements my stomach, I reluctantly wrap up one half for dinner. Little do I know I’ve saved the better half for last. There is a salted egg yolk embedded in that corner. 😀 *Dancing hearts*

Address: Sum Yee Pastry* in Oakland Chinatown
918 Webster St
(between 10th St & 9th St)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 268-8089

(*) It actually has a whole long array of savory dinner dishes, steamers of pork buns and relatives, and if my memory hasn’t failed, just one corner of pastries

Not many Vietnamese diners roll out steamed rice leaves stuffed with pork and mushroom, and among those that do, not many actually do it right. A good roll of banh cuon must be slick but not oily, delicate but not crumbly, the flour leaf thin but springy, the stuffing visible, almost poking through, on one side and hidden on the other, served warm. A good nuoc cham must be more sweet than salty, with a little zest of lime, and spicy is not necessary. You then pour as much of that honey-colored dipping sauce as you want all over the plate, soaking the cucumber, the bean sprout, the cha lua, and especially the rolls. You then savour. When it comes to banh cuon, Tay Ho rules, from Vietnam to America. But among the Tay Ho’s of the Bay, Tay Ho #9 in Oakland makes it best.

After taking over the business from her aunt, Duyên transforms Tay Ho Oakland into an all-American restaurant with fluent-English-speaking staff (herself on weekdays and with another girl on weekends), attentive service, credit card accepting, and a list of common herbs on the last page of the menu, something I haven’t seen at any other Vietnamese restaurant. It helps me at least, finally after 24 years I know which name goes with which plant. (Click on image for full-sized version). The food authenticity, of course, is preserved.

The menu features four types of banh cuon. The first, order #8, is the definitive authentic unadulterated version of steamed rolls that the Northerners had created and the whole country has fallen in love with: bánh cuốn nhân thịt (steamed rolls with meat). The more I eat it the more I crave it. The best part: flat, slick, crunchy pieces of wood-ear mushroom that accidentally fall out of the rolls.

The second type of banh cuon, for non-meat-lovers like my mother, is bánh cuốn tôm chấy (rolls with dry-fried shrimp). The shrimps, peeled and fried without oil or any liquid, get dried up and broken into a flossy powdery entanglement. That’s if you make it at home. Here I suspect the kitchen uses some prepackaged shrimp powder for efficiency, which has a beautiful scarlet hue but little texture and flavor. The rolls, though practically just steamed rice leaves, are still savourastic when soaked and glossed in that honey-colored sweet and salty nước chấm.

The third type is a modern spinoff with thicker rice leaf, bigger rolls, stockier stuffing that features grilled pork, bean sprout, and cucumber all in one, also at a heftier price (4 rolls for $6.95). Bánh cuốn thịt nướng is more of a filler than a delighter, but who says it can’t lift your mood while settling your stomach. Instead of grilled pork, shredded pork skin is also used, making the fourth type: bánh cuốn bì.

If banh cuon thit nuong‘s savoriness from grilled pork saves it from getting drowned in nuoc cham, the shredded pork skin (with some meat) in banh cuon bi are merely for textural pleasure, leaving chilipeppered peanut sauce to dress up the rolls. I have faith that nuoc cham would be a better roll-dresser though.

Occasionally I like to fool around with these variations, but in the end banh cuon nhan thit is still the winner in taste, just as Tay Ho Oakland is the winner in reliability.

Address: Tây Hồ Restaurant – Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #9
344B 12th Street
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 836-6388

Last night I dreamed of these brown sticks in cellophane wrappers. The sound of crunchy plastic unraveled. The smooth yet sticky, dried-syrup-like surface that easily gives way to the pinch of two nails. An ever so lightly sweet, fruity, malty breath whizzing up as your nose closes in…

I woke up feeling as though there were some of those pieces melting on my tongue. But the best part of eating a banana tootsie roll, if I may call it so despite it having no relationship to the Tootsie Roll, is, like with the real Tootsie rolls, the chew. You chew it and notice it get smaller, but not any less sweet or less gummy. And it’s only as sweet as a just ripe banana, yet with an alluring touch of coconut.

The chewy banana candy is a Mekong delta specialty, where siem bananas grow more easily than rice. The stout, dense, supple bananas either make their way into che, bread pudding, wrapped and grilled in sticky rice, flattened and sun-dried, or cooked in some recipes that are only passed down from mothers to daughters. I just know that whenever we traveled to or a friend of the family came back from the My Tho, Ben Tre region, I got a bag of keo chuoi – banana candy (pronounced somewhat like |keo jui|), or keo dua (|keo yua|) – coconut candy. Banana candies are less sweet and less strenuous to the jaw than the coconut ones; some are coated with roasted sesame seeds, some contain crushed peanuts or ginger bits, but I like the plain, pure, consistent banana kind the best.

– Keo Chuoi (banana chewy candy) –
Ingredients
– 3 bags of whole dried bananas
– 1 coconut
– 1 ginger root, roasted and crushed peanuts (if you like some texture variation)
– Sugar, 1 tsp lime juice
– cellophane candy wrapper

Slice thinly the dried bananas, coconut, and ginger. Stir banana and sugar in a skillet on low heat (add at least half as much sugar as banana), add coconut (and ginger if wanted), stir constantly to avoid them burnt. Add lime juice to keep the mixture gooey. Add peanuts when the mixture is homogeneous and start to harden. Take out, flatten and smoothen the surface (add a sesame coat now if you want), wait until cool then cut and wrapped in cellophane wrappers.
If you can’t find dried bananas, try using a blender to mix banana, coconut, and ginger together, and do every subsequent step the same way.
(Recipe not yet tried :-P, translated from Vietfun)

Ze kwik-n-easy vay:
Vua Khô Bò & Ô Mai (loosely translated: “King of Beef Jerkies and Dried Huamei“)
2549 S King Rd #A-B
San Jose, CA 95121
(408) 531-8845

Go bananas a few other ways:
– banana ice cream
– banana dog
– banana bread pudding
– banana in sticky rice log