Flavor Boulevard

When I was little, I built this little toy settlement with animal figurines that I collected over the years. One of my ladies, an inch-tall cat with apron and yellow dress, was a baker, and I would  gather water droplets on the garden leaves each morning so that she could bake cakes for the village. Apparently the best thing my imagination could come up with was a “soil cake”. Yep, I said my baker would collect the best dirt in her backyard, wash and knead it with morning dew, then make pastry out of it. Crazy, you say? Well, apparently a group of Indonesian villagers agree with my cat patisseur. Have you heard of ampo cake? I did just last night.

ampo snack at Tuban village, East Java Province, Indonesia - Image courtesy of OddityCentral.com

The ampo snack, made entirely of clean, gravel-free earth from paddy fields, can be eaten like crème roulée. I’m not sure what they mean by “clean” in the context of dirt. Regardless, Tuban villagers also believe that these supposedly cool, creamy baked rolls of soil are an effective pain-killer and skin-nourishing product. (From Reuters)

Why do the Tuban villagers eat soil? Some of us may quickly reason that they are poor, uneducated, or have malnutrition. Fair enough, since this ancient town of East Java preserves its land and culture rather than going industrialized, even if it hosts Indonesia’s largest cement factory, a petrochemical plant, two universities, and frequent Western tourists.

But what about Pearls of the Undergrowth (la Perle des sous-bois) from De Jaeger snail farm? If simple soil snacks are sold for cheap among villagers of the Far East, snail eggs are considered a delicacy with black truffle and fine wine among new French restaurateurs. Each 30 grams costs a whopping $109 base value.

“It has a sensation of fresh dew, beaming pearls. Your mouth will experience the sensation of a walk in the forest after the rain, mushrooms and oak leaf flavours, a journey through autumn aromas.”

– Quote from The Snail Caviar Company, London, UK

Though I don’t understand French, the lady’s expression in this video confirms it all.

Think about it, the snail eggs are slimy babies of slimy parents. Go ahead, say ew. My mom did. She has a morbid fear of land snails and slimy things. Of course, snail caviar is pasteurized and no longer slimy, just like the ampo snack is baked and no longer muddy. But somehow we instinctively slip out an “ew” or two upon hearing of some food we have not yet associated with food.

I’ve heard people say “ew” to food items many times, especially in America. Liver? Ew. Chicken gizzard? Ew. Bone marrow? Ew. Rabbit? Ew. Duck egg? Ew. Soy milk? Ew. Then I’ve heard sympathetic comments such as “I guess it’s good not to waste anything”. I’m afraid to disappoint you, but the point isn’t to waste or not to waste. Soup stock doesn’t taste good without the sweetness from the bones, unless you add MSG. Offals have unique textures and flavors irreplaceable  by meat, just like cheese cannot be replaced by bread. How is soy milk gross when peanut butter is yummy? We eat mushroom, sometimes raw, without thinking about it as fungus, and yogurt without thinking about the bacterial fermentation, so why do we think about the slime when we are offered escargot?

The answer is simple: we are content with the taste we’ve grown up with, and believe that the other things must be gross. The first part is understandable, the latter is a huge mistake. Matthew Amster-Burton, author of Hungry Monkey, talks about his toddler daughter’s pickiness with food and how all children would say “ew” to food even before trying them, just because they’ve formed some preconception of that food in mind. Then one day the kids see their friends eat those things, and come home to question their parents about not feeding them those things earlier. Toddlers’ eating preferences are inexplicable, and we sometimes have reverted to the toddler stage when presented with new food.

So I’m not going to touch the subject of respecting cultures and whatnot, because we all (should) know how you make someone feel when you express disgust about their food to their face. But Everything deserves at least one try before you say ew, or, like a toddler I know who refused meatball when she had spaghetti, you’d miss out on some serious good eats.

Summer has rolled around, and it’s time for the restaurants to get flocked with new college graduates and families. We didn’t make reservation last time we went to La Note, and we thought we would have had to wait for 55 minutes. Luckily somebody cancelled theirs, so we only waited for 10 minutes to be seated at a little table near an old piano and a giant fly, looking out to the beaming afternoon on Shattuck Avenue.

I’ve heard many good things about this cozy corner. I’ve walked past what I thought to be its main door countless times, wondering why the sign “Ferme” is always there and if La Note is ever opened. Finally, we’ve gotten behind those doors. We heard the girls giggling and commenting on its “cuteness”. We read the two-paged menu and saw the chalk board of daily specials. It feels bistroesque.

Somehow we ended up ordering lasagna at a French restaurant, but it was one of the specials. I’ve had some boring moments with lasagna before, so I didn’t expect much from this Lasagna Bolognese. However, the creamy layers of pasta made it gateau-like, there was very little tomato sauce, the finely grounded meat went unnoticed, and this Lasagna Bolognese sang a harmonious tune at $13.95.

The Ratatouille Borghetti was a different story. From a Vietnamese viewpoint, vegetable stew over couscous felt like broken rice (cơm tấm) with tomato sauce overload. It was fresh, healthy, vegan if we hadn’t added two runny eggs for extra buttery glueyness. It was tongue-catching at the first few bites, then kinda fell into flat land. Well, we contented ourselves on paying $16.50 to feel good about eating vegetarian.

Overall, the lovely La Note didn’t pull out the oomph from me. Did I not pick the right dish? Should we have asked for the croques, the bagnats, or the meat du jour? Maybe next time.

Money matters: dinner for two + tax: $33.42

Address: La Note Restaurant (since 1997)
2377 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 843-1535

Saturday. The usual question comes up: what’s for dinner? It’s been well over three weeks since I last “slashed down a cow” (to quote Makiawa), so I feel just to insist on a chunky slab of red meat. The next question is where. Yelp’s list of steakhouse in Berkeley has six suggestions, but Hana Japan Steakhouse is not really a “steak house” with only two things of beef amidst a ton of chicken and seafood. Kincaid’s? Well, we’ll wait for an occasion to spend $33 on a petit filet mignon, which is already beside the point of tasty and cheap steak (that you can eat without feeling bitter in the mouth). So this week it is Prime Spot, just a few hundred feet north of The Alley.

Here’s my two cents guess: their thing is the prime rib, so they name it “Prime Spot”. Or maybe they’re just that confident about their stuff. We’ll see. We ask for one Grand Ave. Cut of Oven Roasted Prime Rib to share, and a side of steamed veggie to lessen the cheapskates’ guilt. Five minutes later, the 10 oz slab of pink velvet arrives luke warm and dripping wet. When I cut a piece, it feels like slicing cheesecake. The meat is unexpectedly tender. Garlic mashed potato bathed in steak juice, like ice cream, is expectedly yummy.

What surprises me is the amount of food. Ten ounces does not sound like a lot when I think of times I’ve eaten a pound of steak by myself (and felt like my tummy would burst and my back would break, but that’s not the point). It turns out two people can get pleasantly full on just ten ounces. Must be the potato and broccoli. Not having too much on our plate works out well because the meat gets kinda dull as it gets cold, and just when we can’t take it anymore, we don’t have anymore to take.

Previously on Berkeley Steak Search: Buckhorn Grill (Emeryville)

Address: Prime Spot Bar & Grill
3417 Grand Avenue
Oakland, CA 94610
(510) 268-1840

I do feel guilty for eating so much meat, though. With friends, movies, and my own empathy for animals rubbing it in everyday, I find the American steak less and less enjoyable (that is to say, bulgogi is still too good to give up :-D). So upon leaving Prime Spot, I redeem my conscience with a hot slice of strawberry rhubarb pie and a scoop of mud slide ice cream at the vegan Herbivore. Few things can be better.

Vegan strawberry rhubarb pie and mud slide ice cream at Herbivore (Oakland)

One blue-sky Sunday in May. A section of Channing Way, between Shattuck and Fulton, was blocked. Two girls draped in summery garments danced to joyous Hawaiian tunes on a sunlit wooden stage, surrounded by a small crowd of both familiar spectators and curious passing pedestrians. The seductive smell of grill beef got caught in the wind here and there.

So it was the street front of the 61st annual Satsuki Bazaar and Arts Festival at the Berkeley Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temple on Channing Way. Inside the temple, a multitude of items displayed for silent auction held visitors’ footsteps, starting with orchids, matted photos and paintings, gift cards to sushi bars and diving lessons…

…to porcelain sets, stuffed toys, a wooden sculpture of Daruma, and Shichi Fukujin in a glass box.

But few things can attract everybody like food. The “dining hall” was packed to the door like a beehive overflowed with nectar.

Every few minutes there were tiny old ladies weaving among the crowd with big trays of musubi and sweets from the dining hall to the “bakery”, a front desk covered with homemade edible goods, baked, rolled, fried, pickled, and jarred.

We just couldn’t help it. The umeboshi (pickled plum) was going fast at $5 per small jar and $8 per big one. Mudpie hungrily grabbed onto two jelly jars, kumquat ($4) and persimmon-pineapple-apricot ($5), which have the exact same color. Then we started loading pastries into our bag…

First came the blueberry scone, which tasted like wet sand, but we paid only one buck for it, can’t complain.

Then there were little squares of mochi (and a lonely piece of brown banana cake). Each square cost a buck too (and they are about 20 times smaller than the scone), but none was as good as the mochi cubes in front of Cafe Hana. Pretty scrumptious lonely piece of brown banana cake though.

Now these are the real disappointment. The manju, mochi balls with red bean paste, looked so much better than they tasted. Is the yellow egg-shaped pastry dotted with poppy seed and filled with sweetened taro paste also a manju? Guess how much they were. $1.25 each. Sugar excess.

Fortunately the savory side is a greener pasture. The 2-dollar spam musubi hit the spot just right (processed meat always tastes so good after you reprocess it with sugar and soy sauce). The nori was mild, thick, and moist.

We top things off with a lustrous loco moco, a burger patty squatted on a bed of extremely moist short-grained rice, covered with a runny egg and a ladle of beef gravy. After one spoonful, Mudpie couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the afternoon. The whole thing was like a peppery, creamy, rich butter boat. All for $5, and honestly it would be just as spoon-licking without the grilled meat.

And so I learned something new. At Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas, you can find only vegan food regardless of festive occasions or normal days. Here at a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple, there is plenty of meat, crackling and sizzling on one blue-sky Sunday in May.

61st Annual Satsuki Bazaar and Arts Festival, May 22-23, 2009
Berkeley Buddhist Temple
2121 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 841-1356

Update: I WON something in the silent auction: an adorable set of tea cups and tea bowls, notice the matching pairs with one tea cup slightly taller than the other. The visit was a success!

Tootsy Maki - RA Sushi's signature plate and guests' favorite, with crab mix, shrimp, and cucumber rolled and topped with crunchy tempura bits, and drizzled with sweet eel sauce

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance.

In the first week of June, from May 30 to June 5, all 25 locations of RA Sushi in Southern California, Arizona, East Texas, Florida, and five other states will host a fundraiser for St. Jude. Diners can choose any item on the Nicky’s Week Special menu, such as Shrimp Nigiri, Chicken Yakitori, the signature plates Tuna Tataki and Tootsy Maki. All sale profits from the Nicky’s Week menu will be donated to St. Jude.

If you’re in Houston or planning on driving by Houston, RA Sushi is opened for lunch 11a.m.-3p.m. daily, and dinner from 3p.m. to midnight at the Highland Village location, and 3p.m.-11p.m. at the CityCentre location. Last year RA Sushi in Highland Village alone raised nearly $10,000 during the week long event. This year RA Sushi in CityCentre will participate in the event for the first time.

On the Southern California front, there are six locations in San Diego, Tustin, Corona, Torrance, Chino Hills, and Huntington Beach.

The fundraiser started in 2005, in memory of the 13-year-old Nicholas “Nicky” Mailliard, shortly after his unsuccessful battle with brain cancer. Mr. Rich Howland, Nicky’s uncle and one of RA Sushi’s original founders, started the annual Nicky’s Week fundraising event to help fulfilling Nicky’s wish of finding a cure for cancer. Since 2005, the event has raised nearly $500,000 for St. Jude, and the goal this year is to add another $125,000 to that sum.

The cost of cancer treatment is on the order of $10,000 per year on the low end, and hundreds of thousands can be spent on each additional year of treatment.

So if you’re going to spend money on food and drinks during the first week of June, why not make your dollar more meaningful as well?

The 6th Annual Nicky’s Week – May 30 to June 5
RA Sushi Texas

• 3908 Westheimer, Houston, TX 77027 (at Highland Village above West Elm)
• 12860 Queensbury, Houston, TX 77024 (in CityCentre)
• 701 Lone Star Dr., Plano, TX 75024

RA Sushi California

• 13925 City Center Dr., Chino Hills, CA 91709
• 2785 Cabot Dr., St 101, Corona, CA 92883
• 3525 Carson St., St 161, Torrance, CA 90503
• 155 5th Sreet, St 183, Huntington Beach, CA 92648
• 2401 Park Avenue, Tustin, CA 92782
• 474 Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101

*All images are courtesy of RA Sushi Bar & Restaurant. With special thanks to RA Sushi’s PR & Marketing Coordinator Stacia Schacherer for providing me with all information to complete this post.

I’ll keep it short and sweet: it’s dim sum today. I gave up on microwaving the frozen potstickers that never get cooked in a microwave, and we set out for some steamy bamboo baskets, the real stuff.

It was prime lunch time. I was hungry like a grasshopper when we went to New East Lake last weekend, and looking around at the other tables covered with plates didn’t help much. Thank goodness the kitchen didn’t let any cooking smoke escape to the dining area.

The wait was of course shorter than it seemed. After I snapped a few pictures around, our first three baskets arrived.

Pork siumai. Mudpie’s comment: “taste like omelet” (?!). Mai’s evaluation: juicy ground pork, well-seasoned, warm. 8/10

Shanghai pork dumpling. Mudpie’s comment: “Be careful, it has hot soup in it”. Mai’s experience: there’s no soup, just a little bit of juice from the meat. Warm. 8/10

Shrimp dumpling. Mudpie: no comment, just eat. Mai: not sure if ground up shrimp would enhance the texture better, but this whole shrimp filling is good. Warm. 8/10

Then they started storming the table.

Chaozhou dumpling. Mudpie: “hmm… urgh”. Mai’s thoughts: the thick, wet, chewy coating doesn’t match the crunchy pork-and-peanut innard very well. Not warm enough. 4/10

Shiitake mushroom stuffed with shrimp. The whole thing is bathed in sweet thick soy sauce. Hot and juicy. 7.5/10

Duck tongue and jelly fish. Each duck tongue, probably from a roasted duck, is about 2-digit long, as wide as a pinky finger, basically crunchy skin with a bone base at one end. Toothsome, but a bit tedious to eat. You grab the end bone and use your teeth to pull off the edible part in one swift jerk. Mudpie’s reaction: *eyebrow raised* “they’re all yours.” Fine by Mai. 8.5/10

Jelly fish are sliced up into translucent strips, flavorless, crunchy like cabbage. Cold. 5/10

Chicken and bitter melon chee cheong fun (rice roll). This is a thicker, stouter, filling-er version of Vietnamese banh cuon. Mudpie’s comment: “It’s guuud… but the bitter melon is too bitter.” Mai’s comment: the bitter melon is fine, what gets on my tasting nerve is the thickness of the rice sheet. 6.5/10

Shanghai fried mantou with condensed milk. I don’t think we ordered this one, but the waitress insisted that we did, so be it. Mudpie is keen on the milk’s sticky sweetness. Mai’s take: kinda like a dense donut, the dough could use a little more yeast. 5/10

Mango pudding, topped with condensed milk. Notice the yin-yang decor. Smooth, fresh, ice-creamy. Unanimous: 10/10

Why is dessert always the best?

Address: New East Lake Seafood restaurant
(across the parking lot from Huong Lan Sandwiches #4)
61 Serra Way Suite 120
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 263-9388

I’d say this is satisfactory dimsum with affordable price, because the bill totalled up a mere $32.23, and there was more than enough food for two. Final score: 7.05/10

It has the texture of corn germs (the flat yellow seed inside each corn kernel). With the tiny mahogany peel cracked open just a little, each quinoa seed spills out its soft white flesh, the combination gets amusing. It’s like broken rice but more vigorous and inhomogeneous, or sesame but more fleshy. It goes well with walnuts either mixed in at the beginning or added at the end. If you think hard about it, it even tastes like clariid catfish eggs.

Several ideas spring up: quinoa chè? quinoa xôi (sticky rice with quinoa or quinoa with mung bean)? quinoa bread, quinoa pie?

Have you cooked with quinoa before? What is your experience with it?

Mudpie’s Red Quinoa with crushed walnuts
(recipe adapted from Suzy’s special red quinoa)

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons butter
• 1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cube beef bouillon (or more if you like)
• 1 cup red quinoa, rinsed and drained

Mudpie notes that you shouldn’t go light on the seasonings, especially the beef bouillon. And if you’re not a fan of cinnamon like me, then star anise, cloves, and a tad of pepper powder can kick the Chinese five-spice powder out of the pot.

Directions

Rinse the quinoa grains carefully before cooking, as the saponin coating on the seeds can give an unpleasant bitter taste.

Place the water, butter, five-spice powder, ginger, black pepper, and beef bouillon cube into a saucepan over medium heat, and bring to a boil. Stir the mixture to dissolve the bouillon cube, then add the quinoa and crushed walnuts. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until all the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes.

Nothing beats mom’s cooking. Things may come close, or they may be enchantingly as good as mom’s cooking albeit in some different way, but nothing can top a familiar taste that you grew up with, when you’re fed with love. Remember how Ego dropped his pen and dived into Remy’s ratatouille dish upon recalling the aromatic smell of his mother’s boiling pot? In episode 5 of Gourmet, tears of joy wet the eyes of a renowned food critic as he savored a bowl of  boodae jjigae (부대 찌개), the kind his mother used to make for all poor children in the village and the taste he has longed for in several decades. The concept is universal: mom’s cooking is the best. Lately I’ve been steering away from Vietnamese restaurants, not because they aren’t good, but because  my mom makes better. So I seek out to the food my mom has never made, yet a part in me still wants a sense of home.  And what’s more home-like than the thin, ruffled floral cotton cushion pads loosely tied to some wooden chairs?

Korean food always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I’m not talking about the chili heat and the bubbling sizzling dolsot and the oksusu cha (옥수수 차), even if that’s part of the reason. If you take off the tongue-torching taste, Korean food is actually very similar to some Northern Vietnamese food, especially the soups and the stir fries. Neither cuisines go down the slippery slope of lard overdose or drown the plates in curry sauces and coconut milk, and both embrace a sweet-savory harmony topping a lot of rice.

But above all, it’s the feel of a Korean restaurant that charms me. It always feels slow. Even if it’s like OB Chicken Town, where the lone waiter has to rush between tables, love songs blast all around, basketball players run across the big TV screen, time still goes by slowly at that wooden table where you’re sitting.  Time swirls around in the tea cup. Time lingers like the steam above your dark stone bowl. Time precipitates in each little morsel of banchan that you get served a few minutes after placing your order. Maybe it feels slow because you don’t have to rush shoving food into your mouth, or clearing the table so that the later course can come. It feels slow just like eating at home, when each dinner would take hours because I talked to my mom instead of eating.

So I feel happy at every Korean restaurant I’ve been to, with every Korean dish I’ve tried. I feel happy at Sahn Maru (산 마루) in Oakland. This chulpan bulgogi (출판 불고기) is another pleasant find. I like my choice of mild sauce because the lack of chili paste lets other flavors flourish, but you can choose spicy. The ddeokbokki (떡볶기) is a playful texture that could be done without, while the cellophane noodle buried under a mountain of beef and soaked in marinade is just too great.

On the hot side we have bubbling soondubu jjigae (순도부 찌개). The soft tofu is creamy like scrambled eggs. Pour a few spoons on top of rice, mix it up. You won’t notice the meat, and the meat is totally dispensable. This stew is good because of the fish sauce, the heat, and the creamy tofu.

At the end, the bill gets served with a cup of  cold sujeonggwa (수정과). I’m not a fan of  cinnamon, but anything sweet and cold just cleanses the throat so nicely. There was no dried persimmon, though.

And I would have said that Sahn Maru was another pleasant experience. But something among the banchan (반찬) makes me change my mind.

The dried anchovies. I’ve had the other things before, odeng bokkeum (오뎅볶음 fried fish cake), buchu jeon (부추전 chive pancake), kimchis, nokdumuk (녹두묵 mungbean jelly), but this is the first time I have myulchi bokkeum (멸치 볶음), stir fried dried anchovies with heads intact. Whatever little flesh the fish used to have has crystallized into tiny perfections of salty sweetness. The fish taste like candied orange peel. I just can’t get enough of it.

Because of the anchovies, Sahn Maru is not just another pleasant experience. Sahn Maru is a place I will visit and revisit, even if it costs a notch above all other Korean diners I’ve come to like.

Those little fish provoke memories of my mom’s ca kho tieu.

See more pictures of Sahn Maru’s dishes at my web album Photon Flavors.
Address: Sahn Maru Korean BBQ
4315 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 653-3366

Dining dollars: chulpan bulgogi ($20.95) + soft tofu soup ($11.95) + tax = $36.10
UPDATE: We have also tried a variety of other dishes here, from the usual dolsot bibimbap, japchae, seafood pancake and kalbi tang to the less-known bibimnaengmyun (비빔 냉면, cold buckwheat noodle), joki gui (조기 구이, fried king fish), and duehji kamjajim (돼지 감자찜, braised pork in mild chili sauce with dates and sweet potato). So far, all of them are the best of their kind. 🙂

Not too long ago I came upon Monica Eng’s essay Morality Bites, and I vowed to cut down on meat. Well, I’ve been keeping my words, just not all of them: I cut meat. And eat it too. Two weeks ago I entrusted myself on an alphabetical quest for the best steak within ten miles of Berkeley, starting with The Alley. This week, Buckhorn is up to the chopping board.

Okay. So it is a chain. A meat-up version of Burger King. Bigger plates, bigger menu, bigger service (they offer catering), big customers. As of today, Buckhorn Grill has opened only seven locations in the Bay Area, so I think we can excuse myself for bucking off my no-chain rule to blog about them. Of course it’s not really that qualified to be in the steakhouse category, there ain’t no sirloin, T-bone, or filet mignon. All it has is tri-tip, or triangular steak, a boneless cut from the bottom sirloin, with charcoaled rim and lotsa salt.

Mudpie opted for the regular 6-oz platter at $12.95, while I headed down the 10-oz Dad’s Cut at $15.95. Talk about glutton embarrassment. The only difference is a slice of tri-tip. The Bay Area health-conscious trend shows up here in big chunks of grilled squash, carrot, and asparagus. Yes, if you’re gonna eat meat, make sure you doubly expand your tummy for a lot of veggie, too, then cement it with mashed potato and gravy. Actually the carrot is quite delicious, the dried skin and gummy inside  remind me  of a beautifully grilled sweet potato. Meanwhile, the black cup of meat dripping looks attractive, but it’s just too light to accentuate the airy bread.

And look at that knife! Its blade is as wide as the gravy pool. It could kill a bull, much less a tri-tip.

So is it the best tri-tip on the planet? It’s tasty, but I think I can get better at Sbisa, for a much cheaper price (all you can eat at $8.25). That said, next time I get a craving I’d order a 2-lb whole tri-tip for $20, and unbuckle the belt.

Address: Buckhorn Grill (in the Emeryville Bay Street Mall)
5614 Bay St (at Shellmound St)
Emeryville, CA 94608
(510) 654-2996

Previously on Steak Search: The Alley (Oakland)

Next on Steak Search: Prime Spot (Oakland)

It’s late April and the wind still blows cold. The tiny coffee plant I got last winter is still grudgingly hiding in my room for warmth, while I desperately crave a big hot soup with kimchi. Since coffee leaves wouldn’t make either great broth or pickle, we set out to Sunnyvale.

But driving in Sunnyvale on an empty stomach is no fun. The signs and loops are out to get you, and your tummy makes you rush running around. It was supposed to take less than thirty minutes, yet we’ve been driving for over an hour. After lots of wrong turns and backtracking eastward and westward, we thought we wouldn’t make it before closing time. Then as Hope faints, we see it. Secret Garden timidly stands at the end of a strip mall’s parking lot.

The restaurant may not have a snazzy outlook, but its spacious interior is quite nice. I’m a fan of booth seating and its privacy, but it’s a luxury in Berkeley. Here, the mahogany tables and thick cushion benches fit snuggly in enclosing of wooden planks, so that conversations can be spilled out somewhat comfortably and elbows do not touch. But the loveliness of food on neighboring diners’ plates is still in sight. It’s torturous to look at others eating merrily while you’re hungry, you know. Thank goodness the banchan is served quickly. Within minutes after placing our orders, plates after plates come out that I barely have enough time to snap a picture of them all. As light shines directly onto the crisp white melamine, the color contrast is so brilliant I suddenly don’t want to disturb any plate with my clumsy chopsticks.

From left to right: napa cabbage kimchi, nokdumuk (녹두묵 mungbean jello), kongnamul (콩나물 boiled and seasoned soybean sprout), and very tasty firm red strips (name help, please? is it eomuk strips in chili sauce?) nakji bokkeum (낙지볶음 fried octopus). The soybean sprouts are bigger, fatter, and nuttier than the usual mungbean sprouts, which means they’re more satisfying. The nokdumuk tastes as translucent as it looks, a refreshing heal congealed and coated in soy sauce that playfully wobbles on the tongue.

To the right of the kongnamul are cucumber kimchi, radish kimchi, eomuk (fish cake), and crunchy green strings (again, I love it, but I don’t know its name. My guess is sliced seaweed?) seaweed with gogumajulki (고구마줄기 dried sweet potato stem). Something about rings of jalapeno in banchan bugs me, just like jalapeno in banh-mi. Not that I have anything against Mexican peppers, but the taste doesn’t belong.

Just as I thought the banchan list ended at eight, a generous plate of japchae (잡채) fuming sweetness comes…

… with two stylish inox cups of miyuk gook (미역국). Whether or not it can enhance my brain function, it well enhances the sizzling goodness of the dolsot bibimbap (돌솥비빔밥).

White rice mixed with veggies, beef strips, egg, and gochujang (고추장) until crimson has been Mudpie’s No.1 favorite for a while now. He treasures every spoonful and guards the forming crust at the bottom against any careless scooping. At the end he then scrapes and eats the well seasoned crust with the joy of children eating s’mores. He orders it almost every time we go to a Korean restaurant, I feel like he should have a bibimbap blog much like Adam Kuban with Slice. And he claims this dolsot bibimbap is the best he’s had.

Meanwhile I am busy slurping what I have dreamed of for days: a hearty beef soup. A bowl of wet steamed rice comes with the galbi tang (갈비탕), but I wish they had given me more. The rice goes quickly as I pour the mild yet sensuous broth over it, with a piece of meltingly soft short rib, and maybe a bit of kimchi. I even eat the shiny green chives, since they now taste so sweet.

When I get near the end of the big soup bowl, a pleasant surprise surfaces: a small bundle of dangmyeon (당면 cellophane noodle) has been there all along, soft, clear, quietly soaking up flavors from the darling broth. I have rarely felt more gluttonously satisfied after a meal dined out.

Address: Secret Garden (Bi Won Restaurant)
3430 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95051
(408) 244-5020

Money matters: $26.11 – dinner and happiness for two.