Flavor Boulevard

In foodie talk, Berkeley is synonymous with Chez Panisse: there’s hardly a writing of Bay Area cuisine without the mentioning of Alice Waters and her propriety. But as attractive as the local and sustainable idea sounds, places like Chez Panisse are clearly not in the accessible range for everyone’s weekly, or even monthly, savour. If it’s not what the locals regularly eat, how can it represent the local cuisine? The common Berkelers don’t make one month reservation to eat at a cafe, they instead would rather make a line on the sidewalk, waiting to be seated in 25 minutes or so-told by waiters with tattoos and spiky hair. Such casualness, though paired with obvious reduce in taste innovation and price, defines the Berkeley dining spectrum, with the holes in the wall like Razan’s Organic Kitchen and Gregoire at the cheaper end, to more comfortable sit-downs like Herbivore and Venus at the other.

I call it a sit-down because Venus is barely bigger than a classroom, and diners are spaced more snugly than students on exam day. Its rectangular base holds a kitchen-cashier combination and roughly 40 seats – an ok amount for lunch and dinner but not enough for the mornings. I’ve seen lines, and been in one myself, standing outside the door even on weekdays. The mornings here are cold, but Venus’s breakfasts are good.

Venus's scramble eggs with calabrese sausage , spinach and mushroom, with roasted potato and toasts - $11.00

Omelets and scrambled eggs are the main categories, with typical Californian blendings like chicken-and-apple sausage, fresh berries and chocolate chips in pancakes, and thick, fat, buttery French toasts accompanied by melons and oranges.

A Venus daily special - apple French toasts and sausage, to be dressed in blackberry syrup - $12.50

If you feel guilty about taking time to savor your toasts while others are shivering outside waiting to slip through that door, lunch proves a more comfortable choice. To boost, the hosts give you both the breakfast and lunch menus if you arrive around noon. The specials of the day are printed items with a simple twist, like my chicken salad with a load of watermelon cubes mixed in.

A Venus daily special - watermelon salad with grilled chicken breast and feta cheese - $13.00

The ingredients aren’t clamorous and the mixing isn’t adventurous, but such daily specials are nonetheless a refreshing attempt to harmonize flavors: sweet watermelon to temper tangy feta and vinaigrette, teeth-sinking jello crunch of the grilled chicken to pair with airy crustiness of newly baked bread. It isn’t the best salad I’ve ever had, but it bursts a mouthful of Casual-Cali aroma(*): healthy food can have attractive taste.

The atmosphere, too, is characteristic. Jazzy 60’s records reluctantly slip words one by one off the speaker like water dripping from a roof after some heavy rain. College students twirl their straws over a quiet chat by the windows. An old man with a cane and weak feet drags his steps to the table, clouding himself with a Degas’ look while waiting for his soup. Lone diners in spectacles spend an entire morning flipping through the news, occasionally take a bite of sandwich and a sip of coffee. Couples in their late fifties laugh and talk without constraint. Everyone is comfortable. It’s a noisy place, but oddly it’s full of solitude.

Venus restaurant, in some aspect, is just like their panna cotta: rich and smooth, with the occasional fresh and tart berries to boost.

Dessert at Venus - panna cotta with fresh berries - $8.00

Eating local and sustainable means spending unsustainably, or eating expensive in plain terms. Sure, breakfast for two or lunch plus dessert will rip you off about 25 dollars sans tip. But when the bill doesn’t absurdly boast $50 or more a person, the taste, the portion and the good feeling of eating healthy and local justify the self-indulgence. I guess.

Address: Venus Restaurant
2327 Shattuck Avenue,
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 540-5950

(*): This definition is made only on comparison with the cuisines of other states in America, as the fusion and local trend is by no means particular to California, but a growing fashion in high-end restaurants around the world.

Maybe I’m still holding everything in comparison to Texas, and maybe it’s unjust to do so, but South Berkeley is seriously the hole-in-the-wall haven. It’s like the folks here just woke up one day and decided hey I’m gonna swap out the sofas downstairs for some huge stoves, place in a few tiny tables and a few tiny chairs against the walls, and maybe an umbrella out on the pavement for style, a receipt printer, a sign that says “Cash only”, and a drink dispenser (or water pitchers). Voilà, mon restaurant! Or in this case, more humble and descriptive, Razan’s Organic Kitchen!

The wraps take center stage on the chalkboard menu, and the snugly enclosure doesn’t invite a serious course, so we opted for two wraps. The veggie one, named Egyptian (did Egyptians not eat meat?), came out as soon as we filled our water paper cups.

As far as content goes, I didn’t expect much from a package of falafel, hummus, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, and tahini (sesame paste) wrapped in wheat tortilla, which isn’t really different from pita. But the package did surprise me with its freshness and harmony. Tomato and hummus made it a bit runny, but the lettuce crunch was a perfect complement for the falafel’s meatball-like texture. I’m not sure if the falafel was made Egyptian-style with only fava beans, but it is the distinguisher between the veggie Egyptian wrap and the other nine veggie wraps (Jerusalem, Lebanese, and less regional names) on board.

The meat wraps are three fewer than the veggie ones. The three main choices are chicken, beef, and salmon, in increasing order of price. Being in the safe mode that day, I went for the beef shish kabab, with roasted vegetables, brown rice, hummus, sumac and parsley. Every bite strikingly resembled a steak burrito from Chipotle. Not bad, but not wow-enducing either. Rice falling out from all sides is not a pretty sight.

They were big, tight wraps. The stuffing was as compact as the place itself. Even so, putting together the size, the taste, the ingredient freshness, and the location, $7.95-$12.95 a sandwich log is still a steep edge. I know I should support free range chicken and grass fed cow yada yada, but we students have to support ourselves too.

Address: Razan’s Organic Kitchen
2119 Kittredge St
(between Fulton St & Shattuck Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94704
Neighborhoods: UC Campus Area, Downtown Berkeley
(510) 486-0449

I’m suffocating myself with two large pizzas from West Coast. The one above is No. 7 The Godfather, with tomato sauce, pepperoni, salami, onion, mozzarella, olives (which I enjoy picking off), pepper rings (the yellow thing, very mild), and green bell pepper. No. 3 Pesto Chicken sounds excellent but turns out dry like hay in the shed, I never knew tomato sauce was so important at keeping it wet.

West Coast is good pizza at moderate price in a moderate factory-looking store. There is no chair or table for dine-in, but there’s a wide unadorned counter for orders and pickups, where you can stand awkwardly watching the guys throwing and spreading cheese and sauce on your pies before swifting them into the ovens.

There are two big fridges full of soft drinks, a delivery map of the area, a sign that says “Don’t put pizza boxes on the floor” in English and Portuguese, a few Brazilian magazines scattered in one forlorn corner. They only take credit card for purchases over 10 dollars, something I’m not so fond of at local stores around Berkeley.

There’s really nothing spectacular about this recently opened pizza shack, but what makes me call them time and again is their special deal with cheese sticks: roughly $4 off for one huge crusty cheese pizza when ordered with any other baked pie. And I’m crazy about cheese sticks :-D. I eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Really, the other pizza is just an excuse.

Note: if paying with credit card, show the delivery man your credit card. They’re so careful with charging you they need to get a carbon copy of the card number. First time I’ve encountered this in my years with food-to-your-door. Is it a common thing?

By the time we found Crixa Cakes, the bluish afternoon sunlight was tinkling its almost empty glass cabinets. The bakery closes at 6:30 everyday and does not open on Sunday. The menu changes daily and the cakes go fast. But we were slow at making up our minds. Bakeries are worse than quaint bookstores, where you can at least try out something before buying it.

Easiest choice: Boston creme pie. Tender chiffon cake with creamy vanilla custard, covered with dark chocolate ganache. The refrigerated sponge is like Choco Pie, only much better and, of course, pricier at $5.85 a piece. (Fun facts: its monetary value is, however, nothing compared to the Choco Pie in North Korean black markets, where a single pie costs one sixth a worker’s monthly wage.)

Curious choice: Pave vergiate. Flourless chocolate cake.  Slightly bitter, some on and off hint of lizard eggs or herbal tea. I know that sounds weird, and it’s not like I’ve tried lizard eggs, but you’ve gotta trust your instinct, and as weird as it may sound, it’s a nice subtle taste that leads you on forking. Now texture-wise, eating pave vergiate is like bouncing on a plush sofa (not to mention that the piece looks like one). Featherly light with intermittent chocolate hits. It gets dense and similar to normal chocolate cake once refrigerated though.

Eastern European choice: Poppyseed rugelach. Flaky tender pastry roll with ground, honeyed poppyseeds. This is Hungarian, to be exact. The poppyseeds are like finely ground sesame, eating them between layers of baked dough is like walking on a sandy beach with a semisweet tropical wind. I’d ditch cinnamon rolls (and I always do) for these cuties anytime of the day.

There’s hardly any better way to sum it up than Elizabeth Kloian’s own lines:

[…]Think of the smallest pastry as the greatest extravagance not because of how many calories it has, but because of the satisfaction it gives you[…]

And yes, “extravagance” is the right word, these darlings cost aplenty. Especially when you keep wanting to buy the whole store…

Address: Crixa Cakes
2748 Adeline Street (across the street from Berkeley Bowl)
Berkeley, CA 94703
(510) 548-0421

The yellow-and-green parrots ain’t seein’ da Cup this year. I was overjoyed. Seriously, best news to start the day since summer began. To celebrate I walked half a mile down Shattuck and hit Brazil Cafe for the first time (my students strongly recommend their tritip sandwiches). You know, kinda like warriors in the old day eating their defeated enemy’s liver or sum’. It’s supposedly opened today 11am – 9pm. I got there at 11:45, but they were closed, grief-stricken perhaps?

Feeling pretty defeated myself, I swung by Bongo Burger on Center St. and scored a bacon bun in revenge. They say they’re proud to serve Niman Ranch, and I say I’m proud to refuse the alluring offer of Miss Cashier to pay extra for fries. $6.04 for a third pound burger and water only, please.

The problem with big burgers like these is that they don’t fit in my mouth. I nibbled around like a squirrel on a tough nut,with melting cheese stringing from side to side and lettuce shreds falling like autumn leaves. Part of the problem is with the bun. So freaking puffy! When you go to McDonald’s and Burger King they give you these tired soft breads that stick flat to the patty like white on rice, and nothing falls off as long as you got a good grip on the bun. Here it’s like fresh-out-of-the-oven bread. Warm and crusty and pillowy and bready.

The bacon was the opposite. Thick and chewy like spiral ham. Nothing like the smoking crispy strips sizzled in lard they show on ads. All good though. Even better, they didn’t sneak in any pickles, so I didn’t have to pick any out.

Now I’m full for the rest of the day.

In the orange spirit, it’s time for a clementine.

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

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!

My cravings fluctuate from time to time, and it’s not always rational. One time I bought two kilos of prunes, ate some for a few days, now the rest are sitting patiently in my pantry. Then I used to have a crush on chocolate bars, the result is an almost complete collection of Endangered Species Chocolate wrappers, but a few bars have been on my desk for over six months. As of late, I’ve grown a crepe tooth. A matchbox kitchen fifteen-minute leisure walk from Sather Tower, called Crepes A-Go-Go, is to blame.

A quick drop of sound sizzles when the spatula folds and presses the fluffy layer. The oversize pancake lies supine. The heat is low. The quiet, stout chef casually sprinkles some Swiss cheese and some pineapple; he seems bored, or maybe I’m just too excited. I like my crepe soft and thick. Heck, I even like my banh xeo soft and thick, no matter how many people tell me that a qualified Vietnamese sizzling crepe should be crispy and paper thin. I watch the cheese melt. The chef lets the doughy pancake rest a minute or two, then deftly folds it again into one sixth of a disc, sweeps and swings it into a clear plastic container. My five-buck-and-a-quarter dinner to go seems sluggish and content like a well-fed baby pig.

And soon I am one happy hog myself. The cheese-turkey-pineapple crepe is a rich and chewy mess. The first bite is so good I ditch the plastic fork (which doesn’t do much at cutting anyway). Pineapple juice streams out at the tip as I scramble to bite sideway, and when the crepe reduces to a sizable conic chunk I use it to wipe clean the juice. The last mouthful is as rewarding and lingering as it can be, my fingers wet with butter and cheese. But my embarrassing story doesn’t just end here.

I feel full, yet still want more, but I know better than letting the tongue fool the tummy. So I save the luke warm sweet crepe for later. And I forget about it. It sits in my fridge for over a day. The next morning, filled with guilt, I microwave my sweet crepe. Cut-up fruits don’t behave really well with refrigerating and microwaving, the banana turns overripe, the kiwi and the strawberry taste zealously sour. But the crepe still has its fleece-like texture, buttery, thick, and snuggly. The squirt of lemon juice gives a refreshing fragrant. I scrape off the fruit chunks, sink my teeth, and sheepishly smile.

Seven years and counting:
Crepes A-Go-Go near UC Berkeley campus
2334 Telegraph Avenue (between Durant and Bancroft)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 486-2310

Borrowed from the receipt: Bon Appetit, Bon Journee

Exchange rate:
Cheese-turkey-pinapple crepe: $5.25;
Strawberry-banana-kiwi crepe: $5.50

Other tasty creperies in the Bay Area:
Cafe Grillades in San Bruno
Crêpes Café in Menlo Park

Another day, another banh mi.

And another. And another. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted thịt nguội (Vietnamese cold cut, also called “ham”), chả lụa, or pâté, and I didn’t want to settle for the special ($3.20) which has all three, because that means there is less of each. Like a good girl I got all three ($2.75 each), then mixed and matched. Cha lua is nothing beyond expectation, smooth and pure, sliced as thin as chicken skin. To its left is the firm rosy thit nguoi, made from cured pork and fat strips, similar to pork belly. To its right is pork liver pate banh mi. The brown spread looks like nutella with pepper,  feels grainy and silky on the tongue, and tastes magnificent. In one bite of oozing goodness, you can find something nutty, something sweet, a bit fatty and rich, a lot of salt, no sign of bitterness, all tempered by the mildly sour pickled carrots. Pork liver pate is my favorite.

Although most scoffers stay at Saigon Express for no more than 10 minutes, just enough time to grab a quick sandwich or a phở to-go, I dined in just to sample more food. Seemingly everyone comes here knowing what they want, I wonder if some of the dishes are forever hidden in the multipaged menu. I dug one out from the clay pot section: tofu and prawn claypot, served on white rice. For only $7.75, I can’t complain that its quality isn’t up to par with Le Regal’s ca kho to. There’s plenty of thin, almost broth-like sauce to soak your soft fried bean curd and wet your rice. The shrimps are plump. Mushy onion slivers encase tiny, juicy, salty outbursts.

Having stationed here for fifteen years, Saigon Express weathers the ebbs and flows of the competitive eatery market by setting its price low. The most expensive items are $7.75, easily portioned into two meals unless you’re preparing for football practice or something of sort. It also takes credit card.

Address: Saigon Express
2045 Shattuck Avenue (at the corner with Addison St, and in the same block as Biryani House)
Berkeley, CA 94704

Older posts on banh mi:
– banh mi ba chi pate (pate pork belly sandwich)
– banh mi thit nuong (grilled pork sandwich): from Lee’s Sandwiches and Huong Sandwiches

It looks like one of those noodle houses on the roadside with plastic chairs, formica tables, laminated menu, and plain white neon lights. Actually, it is one, but with green cushion chairs. The atmosphere is so casual, the slurping scenes so familiar I could almost hear motorbike engines and vendors’ calls around Saigon. Everywhere I look, Berkeley brings back memories of Binh Thanh and Tan Binh Districts with its frameless mix of dashing modernity and forlorn architecture, damp narrow alleys separating discordantly colorful buildings, shoe mending stores tucked between pricey diners, Vespas, bicycles, cars, trucks, men in suit and men in rag, the only thing missing is a xich-lo. Like it or not, this world doesn’t stay outside noodle houses like Pho Hoa, you can eat while feeling life scurry on the pavement. The diners casually bring the commonest of life into their chatter. The kitchen brings the commonest of noodle soup onto the table.

But only they added a twist to it. Of course eighty percent of the menu is laminated with things every pho joint would have: pho. Pho of all varieties, Steak, Brisket, Chicken, Tendon, Flank, Tripe, Meatball.  Then at the very bottom of the page, estranged by all other pho’s, is Seafood Sour.

I first heard of sour pho a few months ago. The regional specialty of northern province Lạng Sơn sounds exciting: tamarind sauce, a ladle or two of chicken broth, a handful of chicken meat and innards, fried shallot and crushed peanuts, structurally somewhat like mỳ Quảng (Quảng Nam noodle) and cao lầu (Hội An noodle). So as soon as I saw “sour pho”, I leaped at the chance. Fifteen minutes later, the eight-dollar-and-ninety-five-cent chance looked me in the eye with fiery inquisition, “maybe it’s a little too much chili paste?” I sniffed and hawked, blew and gulped, a sip of water now and then between spoonfuls of the clear red broth. It is definitely not the sour pho of Lang Son. Not only copious amount of squid, shrimp and salmon replaces chicken gizzards, but the sourness comes from pineapple and tomato instead of tamarind, and your rice noodle gets lost in the sea. It is pho and canh chua entanglement, harmoniously with joy in crescendo.

But some part of me will forever crave meat. Big chunks. Marinated. Sauce dripping. A tad of fat to loosen the muscle. Bits of tendon to brighten the chew. Meat that is bold and brown. Like a beef stew.

We found it demoted to the menu’s bottom league with Seafood Sour.  Bò kho is Vietnamese beef stew with a complex wealth of tastes, a French-influenced Southerner’s display of abundance, and an ambrosial love of Mudpie. Star anise and cinnamon link bo kho with pho, annato seeds make it color-stricken like claypot fish, nuoc mam gives it the regional stamp. All for a mere $7.65. The quality doesn’t lie in the beef, but in every bite of baguette wholeheartedly dipped in that rich, peppery, daring juice. E V E R Y bite. Only found at:

Pho Hoa Noodle Soup
2272 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 540-9228

UPDATE: This location is now closed.

Other pho houses in Berkeley: Le Petit Cheval (student-pocket-friendly), Le Regal (big-pocket-friendly)