Flavor Boulevard

This seems like a cop-out first post after several days of inactivity (due to my main profession of doing homework and all), but I just can’t resist. Very Good Taste (via Sean Carroll‘s post on Cosmic Variance) has a list of food items, plus the following instructions:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I crossed out and bold things I’ve tried and would never consider trying again. There are a lot more to go, it seems (especially the beignets). And I don’t think drinks quite fit in the food list. Somehow this reminds me of the snail drinking coffee.

It’s amazing how Wikipedia updates its stuff so efficiently, there is no way we could have read our encyclopedia about a hurricane the same day it is hitting the coast of Louisiana if we were trying to 10 years ago (or if we’re in New Orleans right now, as there’s no power anyway). On my flight back to Houston, I remember how happy I felt to see the plane streak through thick fluffs of cloud, as I was too filled with sunshine in California any small shade of tree was a blessing. For a whole week after that Houston was soaked. It rained and rained and rained. And now Louisiana too is getting a bath. How about California? As dry as a frying pan.

As we waved goodbye to our friendly hostess at Cafe Renaissance, we still had some room for dessert (or so we thought, little did we know the Persian food had a surprisingly delayed effect), so we set out for Nola a stone’s throw away, hoping to get some beignet. This was not my first attempt to try the French pastry that I’ve heard about during commercials on the Little Saigon Radio, and it won’t be the last. Nola (short for New Orleans, Louisiana) was out of beignet on a Saturday afternoon at 6pm. The waiter kindly told us so and assured us if we came back the next day there would be some, so albeit the guilt we felt and the balcony seat we got, we thanked him for the water, stood up and left. Perhaps it was our fault for not coming back the next day, but we returned on Monday, asked for beignet, our sweet waitress disappeared into the kitchen, then came back gently apologized that their frying pan had broken, hence no beignet. She also did not forget to assure us that if we came back later in the week there would be some. At this point I started to wonder why they hadn’t just taken the beignet off the menu and avoided all the troublesome customers like me. But anyway, we were hungry so we stayed and ordered jambalaya and etouffee, which were as Cajun as you can get.

For dishes this red, nothing but a white plate can enhance the color so well. The jambalaya above was as spicy as it looks, although not intolerably tear inducing spicy. It would have been nice if the sausage cuts were a little more generous, though. (I know, you can’t see any sausage in the picture.)

I thought the etouffee was good. Mainly because of the rice. Sadly it’s not Cajun rice, but basmati rice mixed with green onions. The little curled up chaps are the crawfish, not too intimidated by two big shrimps also curled up and lots of marshmallowy chunks of scallops. No offense to the scallops, but I think their texture didn’t quite belong there. Nonetheless, I finished everything on my plate except the green onions and their white bulbs. See the dinner menu for more of what’s in there.

We didn’t have to wait very long for our food, but we had to wait quite a while for our bill. Such is the loving attention of the restaurant: they didn’t want you to leave. It was early in the evening, the restaurant only had a few tables occupied, both up and downstairs. Some waiters casually leaned against the wall chatting away the hour, a few waitresses walking around in miniskirts, putting colorful Mardi Gras beads on the tables. It was such a peaceful scene. Despite our obvious display of finished plates on the table, no one came our way with a black leather envelope. At first we were unsure whether we needed to go to the cashier to pay, but we asked and a waiter lackadaisically delivered the bill to our table. Meanwhile our waitress was nowhere to be found. We put in the card, and waited some more. Finally our waitress came to take the card and let us sign, and we were released. Restaurant California. Perhaps the Eagles came here before?

Did we come back to try again for the beignet? We’re not that desperate over a dried well. Well, if you’re drinker, it’s definitely not dried. The food is decent, but I’ll patiently wait until I can go to New Orleans to try New Orleans food. Until then, we’ve bid farewell to fake Palo Alto Nola (Panola? Nopa? Anyway…).

Address: Nola’s Restaurant and Bar
535 Ramona Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 328-2722

It’s almost certain that outside the big Vietnamese communities any Vietnamese restaurant you see in America has the word pho in it. People must eventually have the impression that Vietnamese eat nothing but rice noodle soup. Of course, Japanese eat nothing but sushi and Americans have only hamburgers.

Mudpie found this place earlier in Los Altos, about 10-15 minutes car ride from SLAC. We strayed from the usual pho and ordered a gargantuan set of appetizers and main courses. Starting off was the familiar goi cuon, a salad wrap with some lettuce or garden herbs, some halved shrimps (mainly for decoration), a razor blade thin slice of boiled pork, some fresh bean sprout, and a little bundle of rice vermicelli. I took a bite by itself, and the meat couldn’t quite buff the plain veggie up, so a dip into the peanut sauce nearby was essential. It was a very light appetizer, and no matter how slowly you go you’re gonna finish the roll in at most 3 minutes. I don’t know what kind of sauce they serve with in Vietnam, but the peanut sauce here is just really good.

Next came the supposedly called cha gio (stated “in rice paper” on the menu). As I had lived in Vietnam for 17 years I believe I’m qualified to judge whether a roll of cha gio is actually made of rice paper (banh trang) or the fooling wheat sheet that makes the Vietnamese cha gio synonymous with the Chinese egg roll. So here goes: “rice paper” my foot. It’s not any more rice paper than the average mediocre egg roll you find at any Chinese buffet. Can you ever find a real cha gio in America anymore? I’d give them some credit for trying: the wrapper is indeed thin. But rice paper is translucent, this is as opaque as Venus’ atmosphere. Good egg roll, but honestly, I feel cheated.

Pictured above is goi ngo sen tom thit (lotus stem salad with shrimp and pork), which appeared suspiciously in the appetizer section, since we both ate some and even took the rest home for another meal. One thing to be noticed is Vietnamese salad is nothing like our usual American garden salad or Caesar salad. The waiter is not going to ask you what kind of dressing you’d like, and you need not innocuously remind “on the side, please”. There is no reason to fret over some little Ranch or bleu cheese dressing that will cause your calorie level to shoot up, or vinaigrette to make your taste buds sour. The salad is simply soaked in a mixture of salt, lemon juice, and sugar. Every piece of lotus stem, sliced carrot, sliced onion, cilantro, even the thin slices of boiled pork and the shrimp halves, has almost the same taste of that mixture, thoroughly and evenly. The lotus stem is a little crunchy, the pork is tender and mild, but not plain in the least, topped with crushed peanuts for some nuttiness. The salad is a meal in itself, so simple and elegant. And healthy.

But we didn’t stay healthy for long. For main course we had com tay cam (English name: clay pot) and old timer bun thit nuong (cold rice vermicelli with grilled pork).

The rice came with a small cup of pho broth, which I’m not sure what to do with. I’m pretty sure the rice wasn’t cooked in the pot, only served in it, because the pot wasn’t hot and the rice was almost flaming. The first spoon was excellent, the second revealed that it’s a rather oily combination of fried rice, fried shiitake mushroom, fried Chinese sausage, and fried chicken. The pot could be smaller than your cereal bowl, but it’s like the pot of Thach Sanh, it’s so filling you keep eating layer after layer but you just can’t finish it in one sitting.

Now this had been my craving for a long time. A bowl of chargrilled pork chops atop a soft bed of bún, some bean sprout and sliced cucumber at the bottom for a taste of freshness, sprinkled crushed peanuts and many a spoonful of nuoc mam pha (fish extract diluted in water, mixed with lemon juice, salt and sugar, and very little chopped garlic). I like the bun, the nuoc mam, and the veggie, but I would whisper *just* a little disappointment with the pork. It was definitely flavorful, but it was too thinly sliced. It wasn’t grilled long enough to bring out all the flavor. And it’s a little, just a little, dry. Beside, how are you supposed to cut that monstrously wide sheet of meat with chopsticks?

This is the closest one could get to Vietnamese food from Palo Alto, and unarguably a good find (a decent one, if you’re uncompromisingly picky about real cha gio). It’s cheap and takes credit card. We didn’t have to wait long for our food to arrive, but if you expect attentive service coming to ask “Is everything okay?” and refill your water every 10 minutes, don’t come here. Vietnamese restaurants respect privacy of their customers, so no need to worry about putting food in your mouth the correct way (as there is none). The only thing that bothered me about this place was the chatty nature of the hostesses. When the restaurant wasn’t packed after prime lunch time, our ladies comfortably spilled out to each other, across the counter and tables in Vietnamese with heavy Southern accent, numerous pieces about friends and relatives. Not that many could understand them, but some background music would be more pleasant I think. See menu.

Phở Vỉ Hoa Restaurant
4546 El Camino Real Suite A12
Los Altos, CA 94022
Lunch for two: $21.81

My roommate is out to Bible study. I have wasted enough time on the internet today, my homework is patiently waiting in the corner, and so is my refrigerated banh mi thit nuong bought at Lee’s sandwiches in Houston Saturday morning. Tightly wrapped and into the microwave it goes (the sandwich, not the homework).

Steam coming out of the hot freshly 3.5 minute microwaved banh mi and marinated grilled pork clouds my vision as you can see above. Below is after the lens has recovered.

Strangely this banh mi tastes better than all the others I’ve had from Lee’s, and I’ve had a lot of their banh mi thit nuong. Now this is the first time I have it microwaved, also the first time I keep the cilantro. For some reason the meat was more flavorful, a tibbit more charred (3 minutes and 30 seconds was a little long, I think). The bread was crunchy at parts and chewy at others. There is no pâté in Lee’s banh mi thit nuong, no soy sauce, no sauce at all actually. They didn’t even bother replacing the baguette with the Vietnamese bread to keep it authentic. That’s quite ok, though. It could be because I skipped lunch today and starved after I got out of class, but this dinner was thoroughly enjoyable.

Ten minutes walking from Studio 3, dwindling around blocks of old houses with small flower-filled garden, crossing Yale Street, you reach the Sunday morning Farmers’ Market on California Avenue. (Click on the image above to see more pictures) Tents are set up alongside the carless road. Housewives scrutinize the artichokes, the blueberries, the fresh caught, filleted fish, the vinegar and oil. Little kids keep tugging their parents’ shirts’ lower hem. Teenagers crowd the fruit tent, continuously chewing and filling up their mouth with pieces of plums, pineapples, grapes, peaches, and apples put out for sampling. It’s not the most busy market, but it has cooked food, vegetable, meats, fruits, flowers, handbags, coasters, jewelries, spices, a lot of things to entertain your eyes and remind you of the old days in Saigon, where markets are more common than grocery stores. The only difference here is it’s a little more pricey than a grocery store, and it doesn’t have various kinds of cereal for your morning bowl (in fact I don’t think they have cereal at all at Farmers’ Market, is it not something handmakeable? What did people do before machine age to make cereal?).
We didn’t get much, just a couple of artichokes, 2 boxes of eight truffles from the Barlovento Chocolates tent (the old couple and their tiny samples were just too inviting), 4 little Suha Suha coasters (which came with an unexpected (handmade?) card of choice, and are 3 times more pricey than each truffle box), and something else.

No, the something else isn’t the chocolate. I have indulged myself in all kinds of chocolate multiple times, but I must say munching this something else is far more soul-fulfilling. I found it the best buy of the day, thanks to Mudpie.

Gems indeed they were. Firm, sweet, juicy, totally enticing treats. Luv ’em.
Dunno about the other seasons, but it gets hot walking back in August, and nothing was more satisfying than eating a cold plum after that walk (not right after, unfortunately, we had to put them in the fridge).

I’ve been back to Texas heat and rain for a week, but my blog will still be on California for who knows how long. With my snail fast speed *maybe* we’ll finish talking about California when I graduate.
Anyway, 3 years after leaving Saigon guess where I had my first Vietnamese banh bao in America… Lee’s Sandwiches in Houston.

My first impression? Decent. That’s all I could say about Lee’s banh bao. But that was then. Now I can say something else: Huong’s banh bao is better. (I blogged about Huong’s Sandwiches here and here)

Both have half a boiled egg, seasoned ground pork, one piece of boiled Chinese sausage (lap xuong), and some kind of vegetable relatives, which is green pea in Huong’s version and some diced carrot in Lee’s. Both are coated with a thick layer of wheat dough, then steamed, hence banh bao can be called steamed bun. The piece of boiled Chinese sausage, remnant from the Chinese ancestor baozi, is a letdown in both Huong’s and Lee’s (the moral of the story is never eat your Chinese sausage boiled just because it tastes good when it’s fried). So what’s the difference? Well, the coat is one difference. Huong’s has it fluffy and light, it looks thick but it tastes lighter than the inner fluff of a biscuit, and the inner most side is wet with sauce from the stuffing. The stuffing is the other difference. Huong’s is slightly sweet, slightly salty, slightly peppered, and it was just down right savory. I savored it, every bite. That clump of meat couldn’t be any better seasoned, the egg also sipped some of the savory sauce and became seasoned itself. For only $1.50, it surely makes your tummy happy for a while.

We got one banh bao with 4 banh mi thit nuong and a tray of banh bot loc, all for $15.50, and the lady took only $15 (we believe she didn’t want to break our 5-dollar bill, since we didn’t have 50c in change). She doesn’t know a whole lot of English, but we could tell she was happy that Mudpie could speak some Vietnamese. 🙂 I don’t know when I will be in the area again, so I’m counting on Mudpie to do more exploration with the wide variety of labelless food items in that little shop.

If you have a handful of shrimp, some pork, some cassava roots, and a banana leaf, what would you do? I’d boil the cassava and hope it doesn’t kill me, throw the shrimp and pork in the skillet with some stir fry vegetable, and wouldn’t know why on earth I even have a banana leaf. That’s why I’m not a Vietnamese chef.

Banh bot loc. That’s what you can make out of a handful of shrimp, some pork, some cassava roots, and a banana leaf. We were looking at these banana wraps while waiting for our banh mi thit nuong at Huong’s, and the owner, noticing our cuckoo stare, kindly told us what they were. The simplicity of the name gives away the main step of making the banh: loc (filter) the bot (flour), in this case cassava flour, which makes it translucent and a tad chewy. The shrimp-pork stuffing is well seasoned so the banh is good by itself without nuoc mam. I have the feeling the stuffing is cooked separately before coated by the flour to be steamed, but how it is cooked I know not Here’s the recipe. But I wouldn’t bother, if you’re in San Jose, for only $3 you get 6 of these.
I’m not sure what food category banh bot loc belongs too, appetizer, perhaps? We had them for snack one night. The nice thing is that was 4 nights after we bought them from Huong’s, refrigerated, and microwaved for 2 minutes on high. They tasted perfectly fresh.

On a Saturday evening what would you want for dinner? Sure, I could stay in, fry an egg, heat up a can of corn and call it a meal, or order pizza, or go to a hamburger place in town just to say I go out every now and then, but would that really worth a Saturday evening? As usual, we use Citysearch to find new places. Chinese, Indian, Mexican, American, and Thai never make it to my list. Nothing against them, they’re just a bit too… usual. I’ll admit I can hardly distinguish enchilada from quesadilla (without looking them up on Wikipedia), because I don’t even remember when was the last time I ate something Mexican. I also can’t think of any Indian dishes other than curry and naan, because I’ve hardly had anything else remotely Indian. So those food definitely aren’t usual to me, but they are the usual options you get when someone takes you out to eat. Next in line boarding boredom plane is Italian. Tomato sauce, cheese, pasta, that’s about it, right?
5pm. We opt for Persian tonight.

Greeting us is an Asian lady. (By this point I would no longer be surprised if someone told me Californian meant Asian.) The door is kept opened, warm (no AC, of course) and welcoming (a dog almost ventures into the place had his owner not yanked him out). We choose a tiny table in the corner, looking out through the glass walls to the slow afternoon street. The menu is neatly placed on the front door, so we go in quickly placing our orders. Pomegranate chicken (khoresh-e fesenjan) and souffle (kuku-ye sabzi) we get.
The chicken comes with rice and a big plate of salad. The souffle comes with a tuft of salad and no rice, but a few dolmas. What is the white sauce on top of the dolmas? Please tell me if you know.

Does she arrange the smiley face on purpose? 🙂
This is the first time I have dolma. I later find out the leaves are grape leaves, and I taste something like mung bean and sticky rice in the roll, but other than that I can’t dissect the ingredients of a dolma. The grape leaves give a zing on the tongue, a little too tart, like a lime clinging tight to your taste buds. Hard to explain, it’s just a tight taste. The stuffing is mild, but not too plain. Next time eating dolmas I’d discard the leaves and go for the stuffing.

The souffle is much kinder to the taste buds. It’s like eating a veggie pudding. It tastes veggie and soft. I like how menus in America have detailed description of the dishes. I wouldn’t have been able to tell what was there otherwise.

What about the chicken?

It looks nothing like a dolma, not even close in colors, but it tastes like a dolma, only a degree higher of tart tightness. Is pomegranate related to grape?
My tongue curls and shrivels at the touch of the sauce, but it enjoys the tender, juicy, flavorful chicken meat under. I can handle only a few bites before giving the chicken to Mudpie, who is a fan of the sauce. Carnivore I may be, but plain ole souffle is a soothing delight.

For a little more than $15, we also get paper pita bread to warm up at the beginning and really caring service from the hostess throughout the whole meal. She thinks it is cute that we trade plates.

Address: Cafe Renaissance (Persian cuisine and American sandwiches)
321 Hamilton Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 321-6222

Except for the little houses with little gardens, and with cars replacing motorcycles, San Jose resembles Binh Thanh District in Saigon. I don’t know the demography of the city, or even of the state of California, but I saw Vietnamese everywhere when I was there. Palo Alto doesn’t breathe exclusively Vietnamese, but it has Asian everywhere. Gas stations, restaurants, office employees at Stanford, ladies walking by your dorm in the morning, the mall… But Palo Alto doesn’t have banh mi. San Jose does. And it has good banh mi. Mudpie found Thanh Huong’s Sandwich from Google (the sign on the building says Huong). Two out of three times we went to San Jose when I was in Palo Alto, we went to Thanh Huong’s. The other time we went to another banh mi place which didn’t have it as nicely as Thanh Huong’s does.

Here’s my hypothesis of how banh mi came about: the French colonized Vietnam and brought with them some baguette for breakfast, the Vietnamese looked at the French baguette, thought “what’s the point for being so long?”, made it shorter and lighter, kept the pâté and to heaven the cheese, cut it vertically, stuffed in some homemade grilled pork and pickled vegetable, added some soy sauce. Voilà. A banh mi – a banh (made of) wheat. Actually I don’t know what people originally ate banh mi with, I just know that it’s an all-day food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, after school snack, late night snack. The stuffing can be hot meat, cold meat, eggs, banana, sardines, tofu, pate. We always choose grilled pork when we get our banh mi.

It’s not the best quality pork, but the flavor is top notch. The right mixture of salt, sugar, garlic, onion, a little bit of time to sit and soak, and some hot grill. We always had too much food to eat banh mi right after we bought them, so we had it for lunch the day after. The fridge did a fine job preserving the taste. The oven helped bringing back the bread’s crunchiness, which meshed well with flavorful pork, pickled carrots and daikon, a thin spread of liver pâté (not the infamously bitter foie gras), a couple shooks of soy sauce, one or two sprigs of cilantro. I take out the cilantros, Mudpie likes them.
For $2.75, would you rather a couple of double cheese burgers from McDonald’s, a 6-inch sub from Subway (I think the price was raised not long ago and no longer less than $3?), or a banh mi thit nuong? I’d go with banh mi thit nuong every time.

Address: Hương Sandwiches (near San Jose State University)
404 S 2nd Street Ste A
San Jose, CA 95113
(408) 287-8688

I had my usual corn flakes for breakfast this morning. I was about to open a new box. Nothing too exciting… But behold! It’s not just any cereal box… To my surprise I found this on the back:

Book trivia. Now that is neat. Not just some ad or recipe for crispy chocolate cake. Dunno about you, but I read it and tried to answer.

4 Correct I got. 🙁 The corn flakes go well with a mix of rice milk and soy milk though. On a side note I would say anything goes well with rice milk and soy milk, but Ben Kim couldn’t disagree with me more.