Flavor Boulevard

Aside from opening a little bit late on Sunday (11:30 am), the Tokyo One at Westchase is a lovely place. Three things that I have now associated with Tokyo One, although I probably shouldn’t, since they kinda belong to the ukiyo (floating world) more than to the permanents:
1. A beautiful peach-colored water lily in the mini pond creek artificial water thing surrounding the building
2. Perfect silky chawanmushi (pictured)
3. The gentle (the gentlest I’ve ever heard) but persistent recommendation of Sean, our server, for ice cream. We were full to the brim, but I gave in after he asked us for the second time if we would like some ice cream (as if I could ever turn down icecream 8)). I’m happy that he insisted, the plum ice cream with plum bits was great, and green tea ice cream is always good. We finished two scoops, Sean came back and asked if we’d like some more. Honest to goodness, I wanted to say yes.

Address: Tokyo One at Westchase
2938 W Sam Houston Pkwy South
Houston, TX 77042
(713) 785-8899
Buffet lunch for three: $51.93
Ah, food-wise? Good tempura, good gyoza, good fish, good rice, etc.

The one thing you can be certain about when you go to Korean restaurants, regardless of their size and price and menu, is that you will always get full. I’ve never been to a Korean restaurant where I think “hmm, maybe I have room for some more” when I leave. Korean restaurants always give you big portions, and on top of that, there is the banchan (반찬).  When you sit down all starving because of the steaming broth or the grilled meat smoke from nearby tables, the banchan is the first thing to nibble on and ebb the hunger. You can either get a lot of coleslaw and dongchimi (동치미, pickled white radish in this case), or an array of little bitty plates that look too colorfully appetizing to disturb. Naturally, the size of your bill corresponds to the variety you can sample. And the biggest sample of banchan I’ve had so far is at Sura.

Here’s what to prepare your tummy for when you’re at Sura: 1 starter, 18 side dishes,  whatever you actually order (which comes with either brown rice or white rice), 1 dessert. If you order gogi gui (고기구 이barbecue), then you also get a heap of lettuce to wrap. If that’s not enough, you can ask for more side dishes. So let us begin.

Starter: gaeran jim (계란찜 steamed egg) in a dolsot (돌솥), still bubbly when brought out. It’s really mild, bland even, with dots of green onions and an airy texture.

Starter: a small ladle of thin juk (죽 rice porridge) with vegetable bits. Also very mild.

And here comes the banchan. There’s the usual stuff: tomato, broccoli, bok choy kimchi, oisobakki (오이소빅이 cucumber kimchi), ggakdugi (깍두기 radish kimchi), kongnamul (콩나물 boiled and seasoned soybean sprouts), pajeon (바전green onion pancake)…

… odaeng (오뎅 stir fried sweet fish cake), japchae (삽채 stir fried cellophane noodles), baechu kimchi (napa cabbage), sliced kohlrabi (the pink thing) and cabbage (the purple thing)…

… tofu, cauliflower, spinach, kongjaban (콩자반 sweet black beans), kaji kimchi (가지 김치 eggplant kimchi), and chwinamul (취나물 a crunchy stir fried leaf vegetable)…

… potato,  sweet potato, fried chicken bits, and muk (묵 jelly). (Mudpie *really* liked the chicken and the potatoes.) Now, most of these side dishes didn’t set off any fireworks for me, the japchae was even a bit dull, but there were some BIG exceptions:

This is Carrot. AMAZING. AMAZING. AMAZING. Somehow it is sweet like honey and chewy like dried apricot. If I could have carrots like this everyday, I’d love carrots a lot more than I do now.

This is Clueless. On the left is something similar to the carrots, but a lot more dried-fruity, like a dried persimmon. The texture is denser and crispier, but it could just have been an older batch of carrots, who knows. On the right is some dried leafy thing dried kelp (dashima (다시마) in Korean, or kombu in Japanese), which was crunchy like Pringle’s chips, dusted with crystals of sugar and salt. When microwaved, it gets soggy and similar to chwinamul but I have no idea what kind of leaf it is.

Get on with the main course.

Doenjang samgyeopsal (삼겹살) – grilled pork belly with soybean paste ~ $18. Mudpie felt uneasy with the fatty layer, but really it wasn’t fatty fat, it’s crunchy fat, just like skin. The doenjang (된장 fermented soybean paste) has a distinctive flavor, and is most like the Vietnamese chao.

Jogi gui (조기구이) – grilled “king fish” on the menu ~ $18, Google says it can be either yellow corvina or yellow croaker, and I’m no ichthyologist to tell the difference. Look at those teeth. The head was hard and not so fun to eat (very little brain, and I suppose grilling drained all the liquid away), but the body was well seasoned and perfectly crisp. Have fun picking out the bones.

Bulgogi (불고기) – good old barbecue ~ $25 each. The one on the left is marinated in a sweet mushroom-onion sauce, while that on the right is green tea bulgogi with, naturally, a delicate herbal, grassy taste. The meat came with doenjang, chilipepper, and garlic, but I didn’t include any of those in my lettuce wraps.

And finally, complimentary dessert of the house is either green tea ice cream or shikhye (식혜) (sweet rice punch):

Lovely both.

I should add that this place has a huge menu, with inviting names like ginseng chicken soup (samgyetang (삼계탕)) and crab stew (kkotge jiggae (꽃계찌개)). The bill is wholesome too, of course, but it feels all better when the friendly staff smiles at you with the most soothing, genuine smile in their single-lidded eyes.

Address: Sura (Nulbom Korean Cuisine) (수라)
4869 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 654-9292

The pho was good. The broth was beefy and the noodle was brothy. Every twirl you manage to pick up with the pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks was worth inhaling a deep breath for the flavor to soak your taste buds and dally with your turbinate. The tripe and the sweet onion rings texture-wise taste about the same to me (see, tripe tastes just fine!), which is good, since I’m soft-tongued and those little zings of spiciness can easily bring me to tears. Tendon and Flank were, frankly, tender, but still a good change of texture from the lean brisket consistency and the rice noodle naivete.

Rosie’s Pho does not serve just pho. It serves a whollota things. Mudpie once amusedly predicted that one day its menu will include pizza and hamburgers. But no, it has stopped expanding, at a menu large enough that I had to carouse over for 5 minutes to find my order amidst various noodle and rice dishes. But my dad didn’t take that long, and he didn’t even have glasses on. So here’s his order:

Grilled beef chunk steak served over rice. Don’t you just love the colorful display? I have no idea what the sauce to the side was, he didn’t have it with his rice, and I was busy snouting in my soup, so I didn’t remember to chopstick a taste, until now. My take is soy sauce with ground peanuts, but please let me know if you have a guess at what it is.

Another shot close up. I just really like the colours, the flowery arrangement, the inviting variety. We see fresh cucumber, tomato, lettuce, onion; we see stir fried bell pepper, more onion; and we see grilled marinated beef, and very little rice. The Vietnamese dishes here are so Americanized that meat overpowers everything. Anyway, dad said he remembered the beef here used to be more tender. Maybe the chef was a little occupied with my humongous USS Pho, and chunky beef got overcharred. Sorry for the hype over the colours.

But we have desserts to make up for it. 🙂

I know, that is not the most dazzling presentation. We had to ask for to-gos, because we sat there too long to let the dust food settle before ordering dessert, and ended up running out of time. In the plastic cup is green tea ice cream, which tastes extremely like banyan pandan leaf (lá dứa) to me. My favorite. I can come here just for this ice cream. Avocado bubble tea and chocolate Capuccino bubble tea were pleasant endings as well. What else can you expect?

Lunch for three with desserts costs a total of $36, tip and tax included. (I kinda miss dining in Vietnam, no tip and tax there.) And we were rolling out filled to the brim.

Address: Rosie’s Phở – Asian noodle soup
2001 Texas Ave S #300
College Station, TX 77840
(979) 680-8580