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.
The sky is grey. The ipod plays Gustav Mahler’s piano quartet in A minor. One hand turns the page to Der Prokurator. The other hand maneuvers the fork into a stack of three pancakes. Oozing chocolate chips and a thick strip of bacon.
Bistro 1491 sits, in fact, at 1491 Solano Avenue. Somehow I keep thinking that the name is 1941. It feels so. The burn orange walls, the abstract paintings, the white-haired ladies by the window.
The pancakes are fluffy, soft, good at first, the bacon is at the right saltiness. The maple syrup errs on the watery side, or maybe it’s just overwhelmed by what’s supposed to be dark chocolate but turns out too sweet. About 60% dark. A heavy feel sets in after the pancakes are gone, what’s left on the plate are messy streaks of brown chocolate and faint yellow syrup. It could almost make a hasty painting. But hasty does not suit this scene.
Address: Bistro 1491
1491 Solano Ave
(between Santa Fe Ave & Curtis St)
Albany, CA 94706
(510) 526-9601
Breakfast at noon: dark chocolate & bacon pancakes – $8.65
Dressed in black and white patterns from walls to chairs, FIVE spots a slightly older, more refined atmosphere for casual hotel dining just above the Berkeley BART station. I meant to go here after someone said that he finally understood the rave behind “chicken and waffle” after he had it during FIVE’s After Hour Happy Hour. If that dry white meat and cake-like bread at FIVE was that good, then surely the other things wouldn’t disappoint. Now nothing on the regular dinner menu costs 5 bucks like the Happy Hour (7-9 pm) nosh, but I got hungry before 7 pm, so I dashed in on what seemed to be a busy night. The hotel is hosting some conference. Nobody wanted to eat with me today, but one beauty of going alone is that you can always get a table.
That said, if you have a party of 4 or less and would like to raid FIVE, which you should, I have a FIVE Vip Card “valid for a 20% discount in FIVE” to give you. Here’s how to get it:
Leave me a comment below by midnight March 31, and if the number of comments is more than 1, which would make me ecstatic :D, then the winner will be chosen by a random number generator. The card is valid until July 31st, 2012. The winner will receive the card by mail or in person.
Here’s why you should eat at FIVE:
Appetizer: roasted bone marrow on crunchy fried bread with parsley and pickled shallot salad ($9). The bone marrow is rich and fatty, as expected from a cow leg bone. The salad is dressed in a light bordelaise, sweet, taut, and feisty. The fried toast is a guilty pleasure.
Main: creamy green garlic risotto with grilled asparagus, oyster mushroom, shallot, and pesto aioli ($16). The ladies next to me got the prix fixe, which also featured this risotto with shrimp, and they kept complimenting how good it was. The charred, salted touch of the vegetables is the highlight.
Dessert: dark chocolate torte with a milk chocolate ganache and mint chocolate chip ice cream ($8). I asked my server what was the least sweet desserts tonight (the other choices were butterscotch pudding, walnut carrot cake, and coconut cream pie), and he suggested this torte. It is rich, but it is indeed not too sweet. My only complaint is that the ice cream scoop is too far away from the cake, making it difficult to get both cake and ice cream in one bite. At the end, I had a puddle on my plate.
The starter bread is crunchy on the outside, soft and airy on the inside, and perfect without butter. Now that I think about it, FIVE must be quite good with breads: waffle, starter bread, and the fried toast with bone marrow are proof. Because the restaurant had run out of pear sparkle, I might have made a mistake ordering the blood orange sparkle instead of the apple kind; I also chose the pretty simple stuff, nonetheless, it was a pleasing meal. So the more interesting things like monkfish wrapped in prosciutto or herb roasted pork loin might be even better. 😉
Address: FIVE Restaurant and Bar
2086 Allston Way,
Berkeley, CA
(510) 225-6055
Money matter: 3-course dinner for one – $40.28
Every year just after the winter holiday hustle and bustle, Mom and Dad let me choose a restaurant for my early birthday dinner. Last year it was Martin’s Place for barbecue. Dad never tells me no, but let’s just say that Mom didn’t feel too confident of my aesthetics since then. This year she gently insists on French. But I manage to sneak in a twist of Texas. 😉
After all, Chef Philippe Schmit dubbed himself the French Cowboy. His two-story Philippe Restaurant & Lounge opened last February just a mile north of The Galleria. Looking out to the Houston’s limitless horizon, the second-floor dining room is bathed in a warm chocolate hue of the furniture, accented with soft vanilla light and word decorations made of Chef Schmit’s quotes in watermelon red. In contrast, the menu is bold, extensive, spanning from Texas BBQ and cactus to foie gras and fish pâté, from the classic croque monsieur to the carefree duck confit tamales; there’s a little something for everyone.
“The Moroccan”, beef tartare with raisin, almond and the Tunisian hot sauce harrisa served with flat bread, rings amazingly close to Mexican flavors.
The roasted duck magret is drowned in a rich clementine-Cognac sauce and accompanied by one crispy fried duck confit ravioli on a lustrous carrot flan.
The four monkfish medallions topped with sun-dried tomato tapenade are pleasing. Although their texture errs on the dry side, the supple artichoke confit makes a fine complement.
The most pleasant surprise must be the garlic-butter escargots, listed among the “contained decadence”, served in a jar with airy brioche toast on the side. On one hand, my Vietnamese friends have chastised me many times for not having eaten snails ever; on the other hand, Little Mom isn’t a snail advocate. Today, the snails win. In Mom’s words: these snails have the fragrance of the roots of rice plants, the earthy but comforting hint of mud and grass. To me, they’re like chubby shiitake smothered in fennel puree and a “tipsy mushroom” paste. It’s a good first impression.
And finally, the deciding factor in my choice of restaurants: the desserts.
A smooth tonka bean creme brulee. The lime scent in the chantilly is a bit too faint for me, and the liqueur taste in the griottines is a bit too strong that I almost felt drunk (guess I’m not cut out for Western alcohol); besides, I’ve never fancied whipped cream and candied cherries. But Little Mom likes this one. And I like that there are three cherries for our family of three bears. 😀
The second dessert, plated like the setting sun on a mountain range, is much richer than the first, as it’s whimsically named the “Texas Millionaires tart”. Decadent chocolate and lace cookies are tempered by the super sour grapefruit. To top it off, the jasmine ice cream is a sweet lullaby.
As we get to the desserts, the dinner rush starts, the patrons fill the room, but the atmosphere remains easy. A waiter, tall and slouching, whose bushy Abraham Lincoln’s goatee makes him look like a toothbrush, leisurely takes a gander into the bright night cityscape. Through the voluptuous portions and the rich sauces, Philippe the Restaurant embodies Houston: bountiful, down-to-earth, wittily romantic. And above all, it is wholeheartedly welcoming.
Address: Philippe Restaurant and Lounge
1800 Post Oak Blvd, Suite 6110
Houston, TX 77056
(713) 439-1000
www.philippehouston.com
What’s with this time of the year that festivals keep popping up every weekend? Just two weeks ago my friends and I were strolling among some 60 food trucks at Jack London Square; then last week we had some awesome grilled chicken at Martin Luther King Park; and this past Sunday we wound up queuing in the shivering bay wind for some artisan desserts at Ghirardelli Square. If we keep this up(*) I will become quite athletic, all that walking and standing in (long) line build muscles, you know. 😛
So here’s the deal with the 15th annual Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival: you get a $20 ticket to try 15 samples (there are 31 total, some of them are chocolate favored alcoholic drinks); supposedly the booths started giving samples at noon, but lots of people got there earlier and lined up in front of the booths. Kara’s Cupcakes is one of those booths with a 100 feet line before it even opened. I’m not crazy about cupcakes (yeah… you can tell I’m not American) so I didn’t contribute to that line’s ridiculous length. I did contribute to the line wrapping around McCormick & Kuleto’s, but it was worth it.
They are a seafood restaurant chain, but at this festival they whipped out flourless chocolate truffe cakes, with raspberry, blueberry, or blackberry on whip cream. The bite-sized sample was quite rich.
But it was among the best at the event. For one thing, we actually got a whole truffle cake, while Sweet simply gave a full spoon of crème brulée for each mark off the sampling ticket.
It tasted good (to quote other triers, “it tastes divine”), but one spoon? Seriously? The ticket is $20 for 15 samples, that’s $1.33 per sample, and don’t tell me an average spoon of creme brulee costs that much. Disappointed me by the rip-off.
The Tea Room Chocolates gave a much better deal. We got to sample 6 types of tea-infused chocolate: 72% dark with green mate, star anise & nibs (orange), 58% dark with raspberry rooibos tea (pink), 58% dark with green earl grey tea (green), milk with black masala chai (purple), milk with jasmine tea (blue), and white with chamomile tea & honey (yellow). The pink and the green bars were the best.
Next to Tea Room Chocolates was Ana Mandara‘s booth. According to the brochure Ana Mandara had chocolate mochi, but actually they had brownie. Very good and moist brownie, but mochi would have been a better score. On a side note, this place has an interesting (and affordable) lunch menu, which we would have tried had they not closed at 2:30. :-/
Another disappointment was the mini vegan cupcake from Eat My Love For You. It’s a cute little chocolate bite with lustrous vanilla butter cream on top. It was great during the first few seconds, but like most loves at first sight, the dazzles wore off and we got a burnt oily aftertaste. Maybe it was just an off batch.
DeLise Dessert Café offered slightly more choices, cupcakes and brownies among them (surprise!), and the line was also “slightly” longer. But at least it looked out to the beach instead of others’ backs, and we can kill time watching seagulls preening themselves under the sun…
…Until we got to the goodies. The sea salt brownie was super popular, but we opted for the nutella biscotti (which was just like any other biscotti), and lemongrass ice cream. THIS ice cream alone makes the trip worth it. The lemongrass fragrance wasn’t apparent until it melted down at the back of your throat, then gently rose back to the palate like herbal tea.
Mudpie was more enthused by the chocolate covered Oreo cookies from Plumeria Flours. You got to pick 2 types of cookies for each sample’s worth; the peanut butter and the mint were, again, good but uninteresting.
The same can be said of Sterling Confection‘s banana honey truffle bar. These intriguing sushi-looking blocks cost a whopping $25 each at the festival. Most have liqueur flavors and some (a bit too sweet) fruity touch, but the colors are the only thing exotic about them.
The upstairs (the Fountain Plaza area) had a few more choices, not as splendidly colored as the Lower Plaza, but more (ful)filling.
Leonidas‘ chocolate martini was exceedingly popular, the line practically connected the upper and lower plazas.
Reuschelle’s marble cheesecake bite was rich, perhaps a bit too rich. At this point all I could dream about was a full glass of ice cold water. One can only handle so much sweets in one day.
Bo’s chocolate and vanilla mini pancakes… I was getting thirstier, and wanted some real food…
… Which explains why a piece of toasted and buttered cherry chocolate English muffin had never tasted better. Thank you, Leadbetter’s Bake Shop.
So, how was Ghirardelli’s 15th Annual Chocolate Fest? Besides the awesome lemongrass ice cream from DeLise and the tea-infused chocolates from The Tea Room, everything fell a little… unimaginative. In fact, nothing sums up the day better than the expression of this little girl at Sterling Confection‘s booth.
(*) Should I go to another food fest at the end of this month? Women of Taste sounds pretty good. 😛 But is four food festivals in one month a bit too much?
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
Pretty packaging. Attractive name. Big thick bar. Teenie tiny holes that are supposed to be bubbles.
The texture is rather normal. You have to really focus to feel the difference. It also tastes like store chocolate Easter eggs. Unimpressed.
Bubble chocolate – $2.50 a bar at Whole Foods.
Previously on Down the Aisles: Purple potato
DISCLAIMER: I received no free product or monetary gift in exchange for this review.
Appetizer: green waffle
The batter is flavored with pandan leaf (lá dứa) extract and coconut milk. Mudpie first discovered them at Century Bakery in Little Saigon, San Jose, and that’s where we’ve been getting them since, in increasing amount. The most recent deal is buy 10 get 1 free, warm and prepackaged in a nice paper box. Then I had green waffle for breakfast for 3 days straight. Each waffle is about $1-1.50, rather costly if you think about how a banh mi costs only 2.50. But it’s delicious, fluffy and sweet.
Main course: Mo’s Bacon bar
You can have bacon with breakfast pancakes, and in BLT (bacon-lettuce-tomato) sandwich for lunch, so might as well stuff it into your chocolate for a late night snack, right? The lady who discovered the magic of bacon-chocolate combo had 6 years of culinary study, and she got it right: chocolate goes with everything, and so does salt. The bar isn’t a slab of bacon coated with chocolate (which is kinda what I hoped for). There are only tiny bits of bacon, even more scarce than in a simple salad. An unhealthy dose of smoked salt gives a boost to the milky sweet taste. This chocolate is not extraordinary, but it might be a good gift for those unadventurous eaters (to prove that “crazy” food can be good). Take a look at the list of Vosges’ exotic chocolate bars. Perhaps I’ll tackle them when I see them at Whole Foods, although they are not that exotic except for the names.
Dessert: hibiscus sorbet
After the wonderful engagement with cardamom-rose ice cream, I became a bee with fantasies about flower flavors. The petals are always delicate, their taste swift and light, a safe choice if you want to avoid extremes. So I grabbed this as soon as I saw it at the store. Well, being a sorbet, it lacked the creamy texture of ice cream, and the taste was a bit rusty. I felt a chemically enhanced sweetness in the throat as it passed down. We can never expect too highly of mass production, but again, I haven’t chewed on a hibiscus flower to know what it really tastes like. The sorbet was worth a chat, and I shall not retract my tongue from other floral attractions.
Next on Down the Aisles: Yeast Cookies
Follow up on my previous chocolate review, this time in a much better mood as I’ve settled at the new school. New city, getting further behind in blogging.
Deep forest mint: dark with mint (72%): what do you expect, well… it’s like eating your toothpaste, only more unyielding. It’s not bad, but a little sweetness would be nice. You know how you picture a humid, colorful setting damped with flavors and warmth when you hear “deep forest”? This chocolate doesn’t taste at all tropical. It’s cold, harsh, dry, it flushes your sinus with strength. I prefer mint chocolate ice cream. I shouldn’t score this one.
Wolf: dark with cranberries and almonds: crunchy, crunchy, little bar, almond, chocolate, there you are… no trace of cranberries though. What else is there? Have I lost taste for dark chocolate? Perhaps. It is 70% in any meaning you can think of. Pass.
Sea otter: smooth milk (48%): little sweet treat. My new favorite. 48% seems to be the best medium, not too bitter, not too sugary, not too hard, not too soft. I can eat it all day long. What is it like? Sleeping in on a rainy day – you just keep wanting more. 9/10.
Grizzly bear: dark with raspberries (70%): it’s really not that that much different from the wolf, if you forget about almonds for a moment. Good for passing time. 7/10.
Bat: I didn’t know that bat was among the endangered species. Anyways, the bat tastes like the grizzly bear, 70% is 70% everywhere, regardless of species. Points? 7/10 (surprise!)
For 2.79 I can either get an animal or 3 bars of IKEA chocolate with 30 cents left over, which taste (and sound) delicious. The animal bars will make you feel like you’ve done something good for the world. IKEA choklad will make you feel like you’ve done something good for yourself. Take your pick.
Ten weeks after sending off the application to grad school, including 2 weeks of anxious waiting and roller-coaster cycling of hopefulness and hopelessness, the first result I got back is a rejection. How to handle a rejection? You don’t, you just ignore it. It wasn’t a bad moment, to be honest. In some way it was relieving, no more waiting from that school. It’s been restless for the last two weeks. I’ve heard friends getting acceptance and rejection, I’ve thought about the embarrassment, and the choices I have in the worst scenario. Switching to med school would take at least one year to study for the MCAT, another to apply and hang around worthlessly, another 4 in grad school (in the case of acceptance), perhaps 2-3 years of residency (if graduated), which totals to 8-9 years, about the same time length to professorship (if everything goes well). Or I could be a bum, but Chris had assured me that I wouldn’t make it. Judging from my GRE scores, I have little belief that my MCAT score would be impressive, multiple choice tests and I aren’t buddies.
But, those were just negative thoughts in the dark hours. I still have classes, movies, and chocolate for self-indulgence. And all the cheesy appreciation for the support from parents and professors, which I consider quite personal(ly valuable) and would spare you from. However, I will disclose my other personal stuff, which has to do with chocolate. Thanks to Mudpie, I’m now racing with time in consuming 9 bars of chocolate, or 22.7 oz (645 g) of chocolate liquor, water-filtered beet sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, and flavors. It will help you overcome any depression initiated by academics. So here goes.
Zebra (70% cocoa, dark chocolate with orange): feel smooth, aromatic right after opening the wrapper, a little bitter, easily melt in hand, not as orange as expected, the bitterness is not noticeable when let melt in mouth. No orange peel pieces visible like Valrhona’s dark with orange. Score: 7/10.
Koala (70%, smooth dark with cherry): same bitterness with subtle sweet from cherry, almost unnoticeable taste of cherry except for the smell, pleasant, like lying on the grass at night, a very genteel experience suitable for those who don’t like dark but have to eat it anyway. Score: 7.5/10. On second thought, it’s like talking to an old man, there’s some grumpy bitterness, but there is definitely something sweet and cute.
Lion (35%, smooth milk chocolate): definitely a little too sweet, better to let melt on your tongue than to chew, as the sugar splash is intense. Maybe I’m just too accustomed to dark chocolate. The silky feel makes it reside a level above Hershey’s. Score:6/10 for perfect achievement in ordinary. Suitable for unadventurous nibblers.
Dolphin (48%, milk chocolate with cherry): pieces of cherries inside, do not melt on hand, firm, confident, lingering, suave, take a bite and you’d feel like you’re bathed in milk and wrapped in velvet. Very sensational, yet very assertive. Perfect touch. Score: 9/10.
The Endangered Species chocolate producers donate 10% of the net profits to help species and habitat, so their taste is moved up a notch for me. My ambition is to try all of their collection, to collect for myself the wrappers with animals and their story inside. I’ve also mastered the skill of rewrapping the bars. They look like new.
Next on Down the Aisles: more Endangered Species Chocolate
DISCLAIMER: I received no free product or monetary gift in exchange for this review.
