 Summer Green Roll – avocado, cucumber, kaiware sprout, wakame and hijiki. Alissa scooped wasabi like it was green tea ice cream, but I like this one just as it is: plain, fresh and light. It’s been a long time since I last either wrote about food or ate anything that I could write about. The occasional rainfalls during the drought of takeout Chinese are so-so hu tieu and com suon somewhere in the Ranch 99 complex, and homemade soups, lovely but no hot news. Vegetable intake has been limited to shibazuke from Berkeley Bowl, homemade kimchi, and toasted seaweed (seaweed counts, doesn’t it?). Before leaving for her trip, Cheryl fed me her black chicken soup, brown rice, tau yew bak (similar to thit kho but with soy sauce instead of fish sauce) and, like a loving sister, concerned looks and advice on how I should feed myself healthy meals. I agree with her one hundred percent, but all planned menus for the next day fluttered their wings away as I run from class to class and get home only wishing to relax. […]
Continue reading Vegan out at Cha-Ya
 Thick sweet & spicy sauce. Soft chewy sticks of sticky rice. This is one heckuva tteok bokki. I can see myself going here for a tteok bokki takeout on movie weekends, and it’s only $7. Address: Crunch 2144 Center St Berkeley, CA 94704 (Downtown Berkeley) (510) 704-1101 This place used to be a sushi joint. I ate there once. I’m glad it has changed into something much better. Also, Crunch gave me a humongous plate of kimchi pork fried rice that was just three spoons above my limit and not enough to take home. What should I do? Cut down or increase my limit?
 After four months at Teance on 4th Street and one morning at Imperial Tea Court on Shattuck, the stupid demanding tea snob novice in me revealed herself. I’m far from being the perfect judge on what constitutes a good tea house, but I know the basics. With that, I wouldn’t recommend Imperial to anyone who seriously wants to learn about tea. Click on the image if you want to know my reasons.
 Thank you, Kristen Sun, my dear friend who has shared many great meals with me in Berkeley and definitely many more in the future, for sharing a post here with us today 🙂 Halfway through our meal, Mai and I turned to each other and we agreed, “I’m not that full yet” and “I can still eat more.” This was after a small plate of charcuterie (which wasn’t that small) and two small plates, which again, were not that small. It solved, however, the main question that had been bugging us since we arrived at the restaurant: which entrees should we get? And if we get more than one entree, could we still do dessert? Turns out indecision works very well at this restaurant; sampling the diverse offerings of the menu is definitely the way to go! Eating with Mai is always a treat – for the mind and for the stomach! Thank you Mai for the great honor of being a guest blogger for Flavor Bouvelard! Simply put, Revival Bar & Kitchen, located right in the middle of Downtown Berkeley, is gorgeous. The tall ceiling, the rustic decor, the feeling of open space, and best […]
Continue reading Revival in Berkeley with fruit jellies
 And eat an amazing cream puff. (Cream puffs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cupcakes) Click to see my post on the Spring Harvest Tea Party at Teance tonight. We drank some eye-opening teas, literally and figuratively.
 After a 5-course afternoon tea, the three of us felt our stomachs’ calling. The wind blew chilly moisture from the sea. A hearty dinner of noodle in hot broth would hit the spot, one that was saturated with oolong. Quite appropriately, we walked into O Chamé, meaning “eye of tea”(*) literally and “playful little one” colloquially. It’s Mother’s Day, no reservation, we couldn’t be any luckier that the guy found us three seats at the end of the bar. Of course, who would skip the appetizers. And of course, we couldn’t decide on just one appetizer, so we ordered three. The potato and snow crab croquette ($8.50), buttery but mild, tastes ten times better after a dip in the plumier-than-usual-and-not-too-sour tonkatsu sauce. Usually I don’t dip my stuff, but the sauce is a must here. The grilled, caramelized eel ($10.50), Kristen’s choice, is great. Little Mom loves eel, and she would love this. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! 🙂 A bite into the crisp endive releases a burst of sharp, almost minty air to balance the eel’s fatty sweetness. Continue reading In the Eye of Tea
 The best (known) green tea of China. The cream of the cream of the crop. I feel sophisticated just drinking it. Paired with a tangerine bee pollen truffle and I almost hear little cherubim playing the lyre. You can read the whole story in my journal Tea & Mai. I’m off to dance in my head.
 Last year I had a great meal at Himalayan Flavors, starting with a reddish purple smoothie whose ingredients I no longer remember and can’t find anywhere on their current menu, and ending with a mango dessert. The owner is Nepalese, so technically, the food is Nepalese, which is too similar to Indian for me to discern because I haven’t had much of either. A quick Google search renders over 6 million results, but the actual number of differences between Nepalese and Indian foods are few and easy enough to remember: Nepalese cooks use no cream/curd, so their gravies are thinner and more watery than Indian gravies. In Nepalese dishes, green vegetables are chopped up and stir-fried, like in Chinese cooking, except for the cumin. In Indian dishes, the green vegetables are turned into paste (like saag paneer (spinach and soft cheese), the best of which I’ve had is at Aslam’s Rasoi, but that’s a different story). Nepalese cooks do not use sugar to flavor the savory dishes. Source: Binaya Manandhar Continue reading Himalayan Flavors and the mango art
 The third pairing of mochi and Japanese green tea. Perfect! Yes, finally a mochi that goes perfectly with sencha. Yomogi (Japanese mugwort), julienned into tiny strings and mixed with the mochi dough, gives the mochi a clean, refreshing taste, which reminds me of the tip of a Vietnamese bánh Ãt or a bánh Ãt gai (*). However, what struck me was the filling: red bean and sweet potato paste. The red bean is the main factor, the sweet potato is only at the top, closest to the doughy coat. The azuki sweetness subdues the fishiness (umami) of sencha, and the sencha bitterness subdues the sweetness. Is this why the Japanese use azuki for their desserts so often? Why didn’t the sencha – matcha-mochi pair work as well? The matcha mochi also has azuki paste, but I think the orange juice and the walnuts distracted me. The yomogi clarifies the taste in a more floral and less bitter way than the matcha; and like saffron, sometimes a spice’s presence isn’t noticeable, but its absence would be. Anyways, this pair also shows that a simpler mochi […]
Continue reading Sencha and yomogi mochi
 Pineapple fried rice, with tomato, eggs, cashew nut, onion, pork, and the highlight: raisin. So simple. So good. I’m not crazy about Thai food, but this is the first time in a month that a meal tastes better than my expectation. Welcome back, Appetite!
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