Flavor Boulevard

There are a few unexpected things for me about Koi Palace. I didn’t expect it to be in the middle of PetSmart, Ross, 24 Hour Fitness, Outback, and CVS. Nor could I fathom why it was completely full at noon time on a Wednesday. People in Daly City don’t have to work on weekdays? What about schools? (plenty of school-age glanced at me mid-bites when I tried to spy the food on their table…) Inexplicable.

Perhaps the food here is really so good that work is meaningless without it? Among the things we got, a few really gave us that instant burst of satisfaction like when you pop a bubble-wrap bubble and made me forget work for a second. Such as the grilled chive and shrimp dumplings. Each ball plops into your mouth and fills the void so perfectly, you sink into a plump piece of shrimp every time you move your jaw. It takes some time to chew, and you kind of wish it would last even longer.

The espresso coffee ribs are another. You can definitely taste the coffee in that succulent, rich piece of meat. This is one of those examples of candied meat, an odd-sounding but undeniably addictive entanglements. If Koi Palace were a buffet, this would be what people pile on their plates.

Not all items were unanimously favorites, however. Most were oily, regrettably but not unexpectedly, such as the roast duck with the perfect-looking burnt orange glaze, the lo mai gai (sticky rice with dried scallop and lap cheong wrapped in lotus leaves), and the cheong fun with BBQ pork and crispy rice.

This cheong fun is interesting, though. The crispy rice part is some type of crispy rice noodle made into a mesh and deep-fried, then rolled next to typical Chinese red-and-sweet BBQ pork cubes inside thick sheets of rice noodle. Finally, the rolls are doused in a sweet soy sauce. We see that they’re trying to go for a soft-versus-crispy-versus-meaty (?) texture harmony thing, but the crispy rice couldn’t stay crispy very long. I like them still, but had I not been Vietnamese and a fan of the much-thinner-rice-roll banh cuon, I would have liked these more.

We always order xiao long bao as a standard measure of how good the dumplings are at dimsum houses. Unfortunately, the xiao long baos here are a bit of a disappointment compared to Shanghai Dumpling King’s (I’m convinced that Shanghai Dumpling King actually has the best Shanghai dumpling aka xiao long bao aka soup dumpling in the Bay Area). They’re not juicy enough. The stuffing is lackluster. They won’t be ordered again.

The remaining fares were neither dream nor embarrassment. There were the fairly commendable congee with pork and pidan, although I would prefer it 30% less thick, sliced jellyfish and green seaweed salad that got stuck in my teeth forever, really nutty gailan in oyster sauce, which was a nice break from all the meat, some Sichuan spicy seafood dumplings in red peanut sauce that looked like little green aliens but thankfully weren’t too spicy, and the unassuming but lovely Peking-style steamed chive and pork dumplings, which never go wrong.

Although the porridge was brought out near the beginning as it should be, the rest of the food arrived in no predictable order. Lo mai gai came first. Deep-fried sesame balls for desserts came at the same time as the green aliens, then they kept pouring in and dangerously took over our table. I stopped taking pictures at one point to start eating so that we could get rid of the plates…

Speaking of desserts, if there is one thing you should never get at Koi Palace, it’s Number 501 under “Sweet Heart” – “Grilled Black Sesame Filled Glutinous Cake”. They are deceptively cute – each is a little squishy ball coated with sesame seeds and contains a gooey black sesame core, kinda like the Sno Balls(*). They are death. Not in a good way, because they are so oily that you are afraid of swallowing, so you have to chew them to death. The problem is that the core is too little and the skin is too thick. If you want black-sesame dessert balls, go to Shanghai Dumpling King, they serve it boiled and full of sesame. On the other hand, the deep-fried balls with lotus and bean paste inside are actually good.

The take-away message: when you’re at Koi Palace, order “espresso coffee ribs” and “grilled chive & shrimp dumpling”. Do NOT order “Grilled Black Sesame Filled Glutinous Cake”.

Address: Koi Palace in Serramonte Plaza
365 Gellert Blvd, Daly City, CA 94015
koipalace.com

Foodnote:
(*) Sno Balls are the best American sweets ever invented.
(**) Photo credit: some photos were taken by bnibroc.

Clockwise from top left: “Oregon finger food”, smoked trout salad, fava bean cannelloni, Liberty Ranch duck. Image courtesy of Nancy Togami.

Hi! I’m Nancy, one of Mai’s intrepid partners in food and tea adventures. I’m guest blogging about a wine dinner that I enjoyed not too long ago…

Baywolf on Piedmont Avenue is well known in the Bay Area for its duck dinners (Nov 2012). An opportunity arose last month to indulge in the duck again, along with some mighty fine Oregon wine. Of course, this is where Mai and I part ways, as I usually enjoy a glass or two of fine wine with a special meal. We agree to disagree 😉 A treat for the evening included appearances from Dick Ponzi from his eponymous winery and Harry Peterson-Nedry of Chehalem Wines.

I called to reserve a spot and was asked if I’d be willing to sit at a ‘community’ or shared table. Of course I would! All my prior experiences with wine dinners have included the convivial memories of shared passions of food and wine with new friends…the more, the merrier! But when I arrived at Baywolf, I found that dinner times were staggered for different parties, even at the same table… bummer! It looked like I would be dining alone after all. As I was finishing my amuse-bouche, Joanne T. was seated opposite me. We hit it off immediately and I gladly waited for her to be served, to be in sync with her courses while I sipped a nice Chehalem sparkling wine. After another 15 minutes, a party of 4 joined us at our table.

Two wines (a dry Riesling and a rosé) accompanied the amuse-bouche plate, which consisted of duck pâté crostini with gherkin slices, prosciutto rolls with arugula, and red radicchio “boats” filled with a creamy goat cheese and nectarine slices. The bitter herbal elements played well opposite the Riesling, bringing out its spicy fruit, and the rosé brought out a nice sweetness in the pâté, prosciutto, and nectarine.

The salad course was paired with a Pinot Gris from each vintner. Arugula made another appearance to give the salad an herbal pungency that underlined the savory meatiness of the smoked trout and the crunch of the hazelnuts. When the pasta course arrived (a fava bean and ricotta-filled cannelloni), it looked so much like the salad that it was slightly confusing. Arugula showed up yet again, this time as a garnish. I think I would have gone with a more typical chiffonade of basil, both for the color and herbal variety. Having said that, the dish was lovely, especially when accompanied by Chardonnays from both wineries. The ricotta filling in the house-made sheet of pasta was creamy and sweet from the fava bean and green garlic. Young cepe mushroom slices added an earthy texture and taste to the dish.

Finally, two Pinot Noirs appeared (the Oregon wineries of Willamette Valley have built their reputations on the Burgundian style of Pinots.) These accompanied a terrific plate of Liberty Ranch duck breast and leg, both nicely done, over a sweet creamed corn and polenta mixture. Berries and a pinot noir sauce provided a counterpoint to the rich bitterness of grilled white radicchio which served as a garnish… notice a theme, here ? 😉

A sweet Zinfandel rosé from Sineann Winery accompanied Point Reyes blue cheese and plump Bing cherries, and a sweet dessert wine from Elk Cove Vineyards arrived with buttery short bread cookies.

The classic duck dinners at Baywolf have some element of duck in every dish. Here, the meal was full of other flavors suited to the Burgundian white wines served and allowed the duck to shine on its own at its most pristine and simple. I have to say, I was hoping for more Pinot Noirs and would have been interested in their pairing with the cannelloni. However, I found myself truly satisfied at the end of the meal with both the progression of courses and the depth of the wine varietes from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. And, of course, the high spirits of the table companions made everything seem even tastier. It was a lovely night!

— Guest blogged by Nancy Togami, undoubtedly one of Berkeley’s most avid and knowledgeable aficionados of the finer things —

In less than a month since its opening, everybody I know on 4th Street has been to Iyasare, from the regular shoppers to the shop owners, and everybody praises it. The restaurant, operated by former Yoshi’s executive chef Shotaro Kamio, replaces the equally cute and also Japanese O Chame. The two restaurants have different concepts, of course, and experiencing both in the same space – reminiscing on O Chame’s menu and atmosphere while savoring Iyasare’s – was like tasting the fleeting grandeur of ukiyo-e aesthetics in the most delicious way possible.

A beautiful arrangement: ikura (salmon roe), ankimo (monkfish liver), hotate (scallop, the white thing that is barely visible next to razor-thin slices of radish), mackerel (silvery grey, also almost invisible under the radish), and 4 beautiful sweet lobes of uni (sea urchin roe, on the maple leaf) ($22). The ankimo has a thick and dried rind, its flavors were a tad salty and smokey for my taste.(*) The uni was extra-creamy but a little too soft. The ikura was some lovely bubbles.

You can order a side of sushi rice with the sashimi. Or just sushi rice. Actually, I ate every single last grain of rice in that bowl, and I’d be happy to skip the sashimi.

Apple seaweed salad with fennel, pickled daikon and carrots, shaved bonito, citrus brown rice vinaigrette with fresh bits of blood orange, and two silken tofu cubes ($9). Nothing to complain here.

Wagyu beef tataki ($13), slightly seared; the best way to eat them, we found, is:
1. Place a tuft of green stringy stuff (julienned wasabi leaves, wasabi sprout, chicory, whatever leafy things) and a sliver of crispy garlic on a slice of beef,
2. Daintily use your chopsticks to roll the beef to enclose the greens and the tangerine bits,
3. Still using the chopsticks, turn the beef roll 2 times around to soak in the ponzu (the brown sauce).
4. Stuff it in your mouth (if you manage to keep it together this far). Delicious.

Our waitress weaving back and forth through the dinner rush hour.

It was a Wednesday night, Iyasare was pretty peaceful and devoid of people, but only until about 7. Then, everybody in town poured in, the waitresses started to lose track of things, brought us things we didn’t order and simply couldn’t see us anymore.

Miso-glazed Maple Leaf duck confit ($20). Embarassingly, we thought the “Maple Leaf” was part of the dish (but no, it’s the name of the duck farm). In our defense, the maple leaf in the sashimi plate led us astray. 😛

I wasn’t too thrilled by the Tokyo turnip, the green beans and the gobo (burdock) in this dish. A length-wise-cut gobo would have been crunchier, and the turnip was cooked a hair too long. On the bright side, very rarely does a duck dish go wrong, and when it’s glazed with miso like this? Heavenly.

The BEST of the night: gyutan (grilled beef tongue) ($17). Well, I always love beef tongue, so I’m biased. Maybe the duck was better. But this beef tongue dish was perfect as a whole, from the quick-pickled cucumber to the trio of miso (the black akamiso had the deepest, richest flavor among the three). When you cut into a slice of gyutan, you could feel through your knife how tender it was. I even ate a fourth of the grilled lemon (under the right piles of gyutan).

We skipped desserts.

Address: Iyasare
1830 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 845-8100

FOODNOTE:
(*) For comparison, B-dama’s ankimo is still the champion on the East Bay, and Musashi’s ankimo is surprisingly satisfactory for its price mark.

A more comprehensive “map” of what we shared is on Ponga.

In summer 2011, I ate at China Village once per a friend’s recommendation and was not super impressed (like I ever). Then it burned down in early 2012 (so did Intermezzo and a few other restaurants on Telegraph which I also visited in summer 2011…) and I hardly missed it. A few days ago, Cheryl and Eric called me up, “We’re going to that restaurant on Solano I told you about, wanna come?” I thought Cheryl told me about some dimsum place in Albany… “Sure!” Turns out it was China Village. (Now I wonder if she ever mentioned a dimsum place at all…)

Although China Village does have dimsum, it’s not a place to order dimsum. It is known for Szechuan food – spicy, oily, rich and usually a combination of all three. The menu has a gazillion items, and your experience definitely depends on what you order. Not everything is a wow (as clearly indicated by my first visit, and by names such as “classic sweet and sour pork with pineapple”[*]). Ask the waiter for recommendation.

Usually, I ask the waiters just for kicks, because 9 times out of 10 their recommendations turn out disappointing (most memorable examples: here and here). But China Village does surprise me with its service – the restaurant is fully operated by family members, the waiters remember Cheryl and Eric from their previous visits, and the chef[**] personally came out to tell us to switch order because what we wanted would be too spicy. That’s sweet. 🙂

Item #206 – 川式牛腩面 Szechuan beef stew noodle soup ($8.95). The beef is similar to the beef in niu ro mien but the broth is spicy.

Item #71 – 东坡烧鸭 Dong Bo braised duck ($16.95). Not spicy, super tender. This is what we switched into per Chef John Yao’s warning. (At the beginning, we asked for a mild #69 – 砂锅啤酒鸭 clay pot duck with beer-infused sauce – but Chef Yao said it can’t be made mild.)

Item #175 – Sauteed bitter melon with eggs ($9.95). Definitely not “restaurant-worthy item” in Asia but it’s hard to find bitter melon here (except in Vietnamese and Chinese markets) and we love bitter melons too much to pass.

Item #72 – 家常肘子 Five spice hot and spicy pork shoulder ($18.95). This one can be made not spicy. And LOOK AT THAT SIZE!!!!! The three of us could barely make a dent! SUPER tender, SUPER flavorful. I can eat it for days (and I do, with the leftovers…)

With the bill, the restaurant also gave each of us a small bowl/cup of sweet red bean soup with tapioca pearls (not the tapioca in bubble teas. These are “bot bang” in Vietnamese, but what are they called in Chinese?). It was so simple and so soothing.

This time, I can see why my friends keep going back here.

Address: China Village
1335 Solano Avenue,
Albany, CA 94706
chinavillagealbany.com

Footnote:
[*] In Vietnam (and I suspect throughout Asia), not every eating establishment can be called a “restaurant”, and not every dish is worthy of being served as a restaurant item. Sweet and sour pork can be good, but it’s nowhere complex and luxurious enough to be in the same menu with, say, “five spice pork shoulder”. The chefs know that, the Chinese customers know that, and sweet and sour pork is just there for the people who don’t stray from what they have at Panda Express. So, if you go to a Chinese restaurant worthy of being called a restaurant, don’t order sweet and sour pork.

[**] The chef is quite established. I like that the “five spice” sauce for the pork shoulder actually has over 8 ingredients.

These pictures needed no editing at all, the shine and glory of the meat are their actual shine and glory. And I still can’t get over how tender that pork shoulder was. (T_T)

Juicy, tender duck packed with sweet-savory marinade, you know, the typical red roasted duck that you see hanging by the neck at cleanliness-questionable Chinese eateries in Chinatown. But in this case, we don’t see the hanging ducks, the restaurant is Thai, and at least from where we’re sitting, everything looks clean(*).

The noodle, too, is flavorful. The same sweet-savory vibe. Chewy and not soaking wet.

I was doing well until the last maybe 3-4 bites and I could feel the part under my diaphragm harden, like a water balloon. I can’t ask for a box for 3-4 bites, so I stuffed it in. To the very last noodle.

The nice thing about this restaurant: you can get roasted duck (or mock duck, which is made with seitan) with pretty much every dish. So my friend asked for Veggie Delight with roasted duck. I asked her if it was delightful, she said yes. 🙂

Address: Nara Thai Dining
18445 W Lake Houston Pkwy
Humble, TX 77346
(281) 812-0291
www.narathaidining.com

(*) The restroom is also clean and flavorful. Raspberry air freshener with black-raspberry-and-vanilla hand soap. As soon as we walked in, we could smell the overflowing raspberry. However, the floor of the hallway leading to the restroom is sticky, so I guess they only keep it clean where it matters?

Veggie Delight with roasted duck – $14.95

Tofu fried rice – $8.95

Like many small businesses in the so-called “Little Saigon”s throughout the states, Hai Ky Mi Gia is operated by Chinese immigrants. Originally, Hai Ky Mi Gia is a popular noodle soup joint in District 5, Saigon – the Chinatown of Saigon – before 1975, and it remains popular today. When Saigon fell, the Chinese immigrants in Vietnam left the country with the Vietnamese and became associated with Vietnamese political refugees in foreign lands such as America. These Chinese Vietnamese immigrants continue speaking both languages, opening businesses under the established names(*) in Saigon and catering to the homesick Chinese Vietnamese and Vietnamese alike. Whether this Hai Ky Mi Gia is in any way related to the Hai Ky Mi Gia in District 5 or other Hai Ky Mi Gia’s scattering across the US, its patronage doesn’t seem to care either way. To the Chinese Vietnamese and Vietnamese immigrants, it’s a name they’re familiar with, so they feel at home. To the rest of the patronage… well, I can’t speak from their point of view, but I guess the low price and the popularity raved by Yelp, InsideScoop SF, SF Chronicle, SF Weekly, etc., do have an effect.

Does its food live up to the expectation that these websites have built for it? I’m afraid not, but then again, I would be very surprised if those reviews are ever different from your online zodiac personality description: nothing bad is described.

Do I feel like a jerk for pointing this out? Yes, especially since this place IS popular, my dining companions enjoyed it, the other customers enjoyed it (to some extent, otherwise they wouldn’t come back), and it’s really not the restaurant’s fault that they get hyped up. Noodle soup is comfort food, so it’s meant to be popular. If it’s any consolation, I think of this type of restaurant as the Asian version of McDonalds, or burgers in general.

Because I believe in saving the best for last, I start with what I don’t like.

Braised duck leg noodle soup with wonton ($7.59) – #4 on the menu
Score: 12/30

Like a McDonald’s burger, the braised duck in Hai Ky Mi Gia’s popular choice “braised duck leg noodle soup” has a distinctive smell. The swampy smell of duck. My mom has told me for as long as I can remember that although ducks bathe often, they have a strong smell, possibly from the preening oil that they spread on their feathers. This smell would go away with enough washing before the duck is cooked. There are several possible reasons that this smell was particularly prominent to me and didn’t seem to bother anyone else:

1. Only my piece of duck happened to be washed less or kept out longer than the other pieces of duck.
2. My olfactory system has become more sensitive as a result of studying tea.
3. Everyone else doctors up their soup with jalapenos, chili paste, soy sauce, hoisin sauce. (The jalapenos at the tables are very green, very fresh, and very strong.) I believe in experiencing the true taste of the soup as the chef makes it.
4. Everyone else is used to this smell because they’re used to eating this noodle soup at this noodle joint.

Whatever the reason, I grade my food based on smell, taste and texture. For this duck leg noodle soup with wonton, 0 for smell, 5/10 for taste, and 7/10 for texture.

But Hai Ky Mi Gia is not all disappointment. They serve big portions. Their warm homemade soymilk ($2.30) tastes of real soy, rich and soothing (better than store-bought cartons, of course). The seafood noodle soup, which we ordered with thin rice noodle, has a light, mildly sweet broth and enough fish balls, fish cake, squid and shrimp to entertain the diner. The dry noodle with broth on the side makes up for its less-than-deal cousin (the duck noodle soup) mainly because of its well-seasoned, tender charsiu pork.

Seafood noodle soup ($7.36) – #13 on the menu
Score: 5 for smell + 6 for taste + 7 for texture = 18/30

Dry wheat noodle with pork (charsiu pork, ground pork, boiled pork) and broth on the side – Not on the menu but you can order by asking the hostess.
Score: 5 for smell + 7 for taste + 7 for texture = 19/30

For out-of-town guests, I wouldn’t recommend this place, but the Hua family who opened this Hai Ky Mi Gia did not open it to attract tourists anyway. It’s meant to serve affordable comfort food with no frills, and I found comfort at least in its soymilk, so the restaurant fulfills its purpose.

Address: Hai Ky Mi Gia
707 Ellis Street (in the Tenderloin)
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-2577
Closed on Wednesdays. Cash only.

(*) If a restaurant/bakery/cafe/any food establishment has “Ky” or “Ki” in its name, it is 100% run by a Chinese immigrant who lived in Vietnam. “Ky” or “Ki” (pronounced |kee|) is the vietnamization of 計 (as in “生計” – |Sheng Kee|, which means “measure”, “plan”, “calculation”, etc).

A few years ago, things were rough at school and I was a bittermelon*. I got upset easily, turned people away from me, was critical of everything and mostly found faults in mankind. Long story short, I became a misanthrope and immersed myself in two things: anime and foreign language. Ironically, the former taught me to think more positively, and the latter brought me new friends. Then I realized that when I suppress my negative thoughts, eventually they dissipate on their own and I would feel so much better without bothering anyone with my complaints. In America, we are encouraged to express our negative feelings. People like to see and hear about problems (that’s why the daily news are mostly bad news and the reality shows are full of anger). Some people say that it’s good to let it out. That’s true, but it’s only temporary. Complaining is like eating chips, it’s impossible to stop**. Anger multiplies when it’s let loose. The more cynical I feel about a situation, the more depressing scenarios I envision, and it only goes downhill from there.

These days I try to appreciate everything more, and when some incident doesn’t seem so appreciable at first, I find it funny, which clears my mind and then I can see something to appreciate. But sometimes I lapse back into the critical mode, especially when it’s about food. It’s easy to lower my expectations and like everything. It’s also easy to write a very bad review. But it’s hard to find the good points while maintaining my high expectation. A bad review gives the temporary satisfaction of being in the position to judge. A good review for a not-so-good experience makes me appear goody-two-shoes and lose my credibility. One solution is that I only write about the good experiences. But I think that defeats the meaning of a blog. A diary doesn’t have only happy entries, why should a food blog talk only about the good food?

Every bad experience at a restaurant puts me into this dilemma. Cafe Rouge is the most recent one. Here’s my first draft when I sat down to write about it:

On my birthday, we went for drinks at Teance and then we got famished. Drinks for me are not alcohol but a few pots of tea. That’s the great thing about tea: it gives you an appetite. If you ever feel like you ought to eat something but just don’t feel hungry, drink some tea on an empty stomach, the next thing you know is that all you can think about is food. So we were famished, and we headed over to Cafe Rouge next door.

I should stress again that I was famished. Everything tastes better when you’re hungry, that’s a known fact. I could hardly wait to spread the velvety duck liver flan on my tongue and sink my teeth into a succulent slab of steak. The good thing is I didn’t have to wait too long. The problem, though, is that neither of my dreams came true. The duck liver flan was underseasoned and not smooth enough. The steak was so tough I thought I was chewing on a coil of rope.

Would a rare sear make it better? The full story goes like this: on the menu it said “Grilled bavette steak with sweet potatoes, broccoli, red wine cippolini onions and herb butter 24.” — I didn’t know what bavette steak was. The waitress asked me how I’d like my steak, I told her somewhere between medium and medium rare, she said let’s do the medium rare and if it’s too rare I can send it back to the kitchen for more sear. Turned out the cut was extremely sinewy. Even in the middle, where it’s still bright red. I told the waitress, and she said yeah well this is not like New York steak so hmm too bad…

So I gave up halfway and grudgingly waited for desserts.

We narrowed it down to 4 choices: vanilla panna cotta, chocolate streusel cake, granitas, and chocolate ice cream profiteroles, then we asked the waitress what she thought. She highly recommended the panna cotta, and said the following about the granitas: “it’s like a sorbet, if you’re into that kind of thing then it’s good”. We’re into sorbet, so we got the granitas. But granitas ain’t no sorbet, it’s water ice. Seven dollars for a tiny cup of water ice is too much. And not even very flavorful water ice at that. Huge disappointment.

So that’s my luck with Cafe Rouge. The seafood cioppino and the cassoulet that my friends chose turned out a little too seasoned for my taste, but a hundred times better than my steak.

I’ll file Cafe Rouge under “Won’t go out of my way to revisit”, although it’s really on the way every time I go to Teance.

The view from upstairs.

Here’s what I should think:

The restaurant is well-designed, I enjoyed looking from the upstairs at the people’s plates down below. My friends enjoyed their seafood and stew. Today Cafe Rouge’s dinner menu has “Grilled hanger steak with flageolet beans, radicchio and almond bread sauce”, so I wiki-ed “hanger steak”. This cut is “prized for its flavor”, which means its texture is tough. Then I clicked around and read about the other beef cuts. In the end, the steak taught me something new.

We should have listened to the waitress in the matter of desserts. Again, we went in not knowing what “granitas” was and went out knowing exactly what it was, so we got wiser by paying 7 dollars. That’s a cheap price for information.

Most customers around us ordered the burger ($14). While fancy burgers are like Rothko’s paintings to me, some people appreciate them. Maybe the rest of the menu also connects to people at such levels, which I simply couldn’t comprehend.

I probably won’t go out of my way to revisit Cafe Rouge, but its menu changes often and I go out of my way to Teance all the time anyway. When I have a more forgiving heart, and maybe a lot of hunger, I’ll stop by.

I prefer the mild, more positive view, although it’s like steamed rice. Next, I need to figure out how to make it funny. 😉

FOOTNOTE:
(*) Actually, I LOVE bittermelon! Bittermelon soup, bittermelon stir fried with egg, stuffed bittermelon. I love it so much that the first word I could think of that contains “bitter” was “bittermelon”.
(**) In high school health class, the teacher showed us a video about two anorexic twin sisters. When asked how they became anorexic, the surviving sister said that they were chubby when they were little, so one day they decided to lose weight and competed with each other to see who could lose more weight. The only detail that I remembered is that they would eat only 2 potato chips when they ate any chips at all. The interviewer asked her “How could you eat only TWO chips?!” With a lot of willpower.

Housemade charcuterie plate ($15) – rabbit pate: ok; duck liver flan: I’ve had better’s; air dried beef: well, it’s dried meat… Good pickled onion though.

Cafe Rouge bar ribs ($7) – Not fall-off-the-bone tender, but I liked the sauce.

Cioppino ($27) — dungeness crab, rock fish, mussels and clams in red wine tomato sauce. Good but too spicy for me.

Cassoulet of duck confit, garlic sausage, pork, baked beans and bread crumbs ($24) – good beans, tender duck, the sausage was too grainy (and doughy(?!)). Read more about it from Kristen’s point of view.

Blood orange and grapefruit granitas with shortbread cookie ($7) – The flavor wasn’t there.

Today. Big glistening birds. Crimson cranberry sauce. Mashed sweet potato with a crusty marshmallow top. Green bean casseroles. Gravies. The all-American classic holiday dinner table that every grocery store has a picture of on their website. Once upon a time I was enticed by such beauty, much like how I engulfed a chunk of ham the first time I saw real ham after years of seeing ham in old American cartoons (Tom and Jerry I think?). To be fair, save for the turkey, I do like the marshmallow sweet potato, the green bean casserole, and sometimes the stuffing if the gravies’ done right. But the turkey… I don’t get it. In a bird, the best part is the brown meat: legs, thighs, wings, that’s all. (Ah yes, I love the offals too, but today I’ll speak from the American perspective for a change.) Yet, the turkey leg is a monstrosity of toughness that my weak 20-some-year-old bone-gnawing cartilage-grinding gizzard-and-heart-loving teeth have trouble handling. Were all the turkeys I sunk into Olympic weightlifters or something? Well they have to lift their 30lb+ body every minute anyway, so no wonder. Conclusion: I don’t like turkey(*).

I like duck.

And you know what drink duck goes well with? I can’t speak for Pinot Noir, Merlot or Rosé, but some oolong teas make great companies! The long awaited double duck dinner at Bay Wolf arrived (2 months ago) before I could really get in tune with this semester, but I still remember how the Tung Ting made the duck dumpling soup and duck gizzard bloom.

Although I started out drinking tea for the sole purpose of matching tea with food, most of my pairing experiments were at home with more sweet than savory stuff. I blame the busy schedule but in reality I just don’t buy the thermal bottles to store hot water nor do I grab anything but my wallet and camera when I go fooding. (I used to forget my wallet.) My friend Nancy Togami, on the other hand, pursues her hobbies with much more heart than I. When we embark on a tea date, she brings teapots, hot water, teas and a thermostat to check the water temperature. I love her.

Duck liver flan, rillettes, gizzards and grapes. The liver flan (basically, pâté): paired with Tung Ting for a light and floral whisper in the mouth, paired with High Mountain for depth. Neither Tung Ting nor High Mountain did anything good to the rillettes. Tung Ting with gizzards and grapes was better than High Mountain with gizzards and grapes, as the grapes amplified the floral note of the Tung Ting.

Head-to-feet duck soup with savory duck dumplings. Again, the Tung Ting is a good match, it brightened but not intensified the tomato in the broth. (Surprisingly, the only tea that doesn’t go well with any of these courses was the Royal Courtesan: a little plumy, a little sour, even after we steeped it for 2 minutes, it refused to give an impression on the food.)

Duck tagine with spiced couscous, preserved lemon, olives and coriander. Tung Ting and High Mountain with duck tagine and steak: all 4 pairings are good. With High Mountain, although the fatty part of the steak does not go too well, the duck fat sauce shines through. The Tung Ting and the duck tagine is best with the lemon sauce in the tagine, otherwise the meat dried out and became too fibrous.

Grilled rib eye steak with duck fat fried and Béarnaise sauce. Nancy also had an excellent pairing of a Merlot with the steak and the duck. The Merlot smells tangier but tastes softer (more berry-like) than the Pinot Noir, it also has a smooth finish that made the steak more “unctuous”, and several times she went from meat to merlot and finish with High Mountain, which seemed to make things really shine.

Duck egg mocha pot de crème. Both Phoenix Honey and Tieguanyin Medium Roast go exceedingly nicely with this dessert: the Phoenix adds a lychee flavor to it, the Tieguanyin complimented the mocha flavor and at the same time makes it more perfumy. Both lightens an otherwise too rich ending.

So for this Thanksgiving (and maybe the next), ditch the turkey. Dish the duck. With some tea. 😉

(*) I love the living turkeys as much as I love any other animals. 😉 Since their meat doesn’t taste that great, why don’t we make them pets like dogs and cats, and give turkey-eaters “the look“?(**)

(**) In case you’re wondering: No. I don’t eat dogs and cats. I also don’t eat ham. For different reasons, though…

P.S.: First time I was at Bay Wolf.

Ever since the steamed duck at Shanghai Dumpling King, I’ve been haunted by the juiciness of a duck done right.

When my friend Kristen and I walked down Piedmont looking for dinner, we passed several doors but like shopping for clothes, as Kristen pointed out, none “jumped out” to us. There was one sign that we read “Pork Avenue” and crossed the street all excited for, but it was “Park Avenue“. On the way was also the curiously crowded Fenton Creamery, to me their selections aren’t that interesting. When the street started to look devoid of both restaurants and humans and hope had dwindled from a tteok in tteok bokki to a strand of angel hair, we found Bay Wolf. The duck liver flan and roasted duck with polenta sold us.

Bay Wolf specializes in duck. Their menu changes weekly but they always have two duck dishes, one appetizer and one entree. Both sing. Even the polenta was good, must be that honey-lavender gastrique that we had to wipe clean with bread after we ate the duck leg to the bone. 😉

After dessert, some unknown force compelled me into the washroom, where I saw the Pinot & Double Duck Dinner dated September 17, 18, 19, 2002. Every dish was a duck dish: duck prosciutto with curly cress, grilled duck neck sausage with caramelized onion, duck lasagna Bolognese; even dessert: Espresso duck egg pot de crème.

So I did what I’ve never done (because I’m a foreigner and still feel nervous talking on the phone in English): I called the restaurant three days after my meal, thanking them, and asking if Bay Wolf will have another Double Duck Dinner like that in the future. Mark your calendar, pals, September 16-18 this year.

Address: Bay Wolf
3853 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 655-6004
www.baywolf.com

Dinner for 2: $77.76

Duck liver flan with grilled Acme bread, pickled onion, cornichon and olives ($8.50). The pate is smooth and rich. The pickles add just the right zing.

Grilled prosciutto-wrapped apricots with ancho cress and parmesan ($9.50). The apricots were a bit too tart, another two layers of proscitto would have balanced it out.

Slow-cooked lamb shoulder with vegetable tian and red wine reduction ($23). The tian consists of zucchini, tomato and eggplant. The lamb was a little stringy.

Liberty Ranch duck with polenta, rapini and honey-lavender gastrique ($24). A truly flawless delight.

Seasonal sorbet: chocolate-coconut, ambrosia white melon, and watermelon-mint ($6.50). The two melon scoops have a faint taste of melon seeds. Combining all three in one bite is the way to go.

The waiter brought out a kettle of tea, but Nancy Togami waved him back, asking for just plain hot water. Carefully, she used her thermometer to check the water temperature. One hundred and eighty degree Fahrenheit, too cool to steep the Baochong and Phoenix Honey that she brought. But Nancy brought her own water too, which measured close to 200 degrees, so we used her water instead. I’ve never brought my own tea to a restaurant, but it makes sense: people bring their own wine to restaurants, and when you have good teas, there’s no reason to refrain from pairing them with good food. The dim sum at Shanghai Dumpling King proved to be perfect experiment material.

Without Nancy, I probably would never have known of this hole in the wall way out on the west side of San Fran, and probably too lazy to get here because it’s not 2 blocks away from the BART and I’d doubt the dim sum would be worth anything farther than that. Now, dim sum are good. You have to really suck as a cook to make ground meat in a piece of dough taste bad (it happens, though), and I crave potstickers and xiao long bao at least once every other night, but the gap between the potsticker in my head and the potsticker in my mouth always ended up bigger than my head, so I can’t comprehend it. There’s some kind of epiphany reaction I want to get from eating dim sum that I’ve never gotten. But I think today came really, really close. Because of a duck and two teas.

The duck set the mood. We stood in front of the restaurant before it opened, so they had to rush setting up things to let us in. We were the first customers of a Sunday. Few minutes after we placed our order, the guy strode out asking if we would like some duck, the kitchen just finished steaming one. Yes, of course, we said. Out came small chunks of legs and thighs in a simple white bowl with a sprig of coriander, the meat still pink, the skin moist in a sunglow shade. It’s not chewing gum and it doesn’t fall apart like cornmeal, it has all the right tenderness, the right juiciness, the right saltiness. I couldn’t pry any information from the waiter except that it’s steamed. But they must’ve put something in the water.

The Hung Zhou crab and pork dumpling (Hung Zhou xie ruo xiao long bao) and the Shanghai soup dumpling (Shang Hai xiao long bao) both contain half a spoon’s worth of broth. They’re the juiciest xiao long bao I’ve found anywhere, and the Hung Zhou xie ruo ones are packed with enough savory sweetness on their own that they don’t need the vinegar and soy dipping sauce.

We got too absorbed in the xiao long bao that we didn’t pair any tea until the seafood and tofu eggdrop soup and the Tian Jing go bu li bao (steamed wheat dumpling with pork, mushroom and rice noodle inside) came. One one hand, Baochong, a light Taiwanese oolong, accentuates the chive in the bao, and the bao intensifies the Baochong’s floral note, so the pair just blooms in your mouth.

On the other, Phoenix Honey is a stronger oolong with a roasty profile and a sweetness of lychee, which complements the soothing eggdrop soup.

The spicy pork dumpling (xian shui jiao) kicked us in the throat, although we asked for “not too spicy”, but Baochong can sooth the spark away. The pan fried chive and pork dumpling (jiu cai xian bing) and Baochong made another floral pair, similar to their steamed smaller brothers. Phoenix Honey brought forth the nuttiness of fresh-but-need-more-salt peashoots.

Soon we figured out the rules: lighter tea with more flavorful dumplings, darker tea with milder ones. The sesame mochi in hot water (zhi ma tang yuan) is bland outside and intensely sweet inside, so neither tea had a noticeable effect on it, but the Phoenix Honey added a nice roasty finish that spotlighted the nuttiness of sesame.

The restaurant before 10:30. Half an hour later we got people sitting back-to-back with us and a line spewing out of the door.

After eating here, I regained faith in dim sum. I can look pass the obnoxious name. The duck helped. And the teas helped a bunch. Infusion after infusion, they kept their flavors and washed clean the dumplings’ grease, which was surprisingly scarce to begin with. Nancy was worried that the restaurant might not like us brewing our own tea. But we were seated by the window, our table filled with bamboo baskets, I was aiming my camera at all kinds of angles, Ken helped me rearranging the plates for the pictures, and Nancy was drawing in the aroma of a fresh cup. Old Chinese ladies walking on the streets kept stopping to look at our table with unhidden interest. I think we made a good window display. At the end, before politely asking us to leave the table for another group waiting, our waiter commented with much pleasantry: “You guys drink tea!”

Address: Shanghai Dumpling King
3319 Balboa Street
San Francisco, CA 94121‎
(415) 387-2088

Big lunch for three: ~ $62
This post also appears on Tea & Mai.