Flavor Boulevard

This restaurant…

The plus: 1. their steamed dumplings, despite being stuffed with 95% tofu and 5% unidentifiable substance (probably also tofu, but Cheryl and Eric hoped it was pork, so let’s go with pork), were big and well seasoned; 2. their kimchi seems homemade and tastes fresh.

The minus: well… where should we start…

So, food-wise, things are pretty average (homemade level – neither in the “hole-in-the-wall heaven” kind of thing nor in the trendy meaning that restaurants advertise themselves as these days). We were disappointed, but this is not unusual – we’re so used to being disappointed with average food that we might just be disappointed (with ourselves) if we’re not disappointed. Now, the service is something else. They weren’t outwardly rude, they just maybe discriminated, a little bit.

We were the only non-Korean customers at the time. Cheryl asked for recommendation of a noodle dish, the lady said “we don’t have any noodle now, it’s a summer specialty only” (supposedly referring to the naeng myeon [냉면, cold noodle]). Okay. We ordered oxtail beef soup (꼬리곰탕, ggori gomtang), which came out as a few (I think 5?) pieces of oxtail helplessly drowning in an ocean of broth. Then we looked over at the neighboring tables to see cheerful Koreans (and some hard-to-please-looking old men, also Korean) slurping noodles from exactly the same type of hot stone bowls, containing most certainly also some kind of gomtang. We couldn’t help but wondering. Finally, when another hostess, a girl about our age, came to take our credit card, Cheryl asked what the other Koreans were having and included “so that one comes with noodle?”, the girl, somewhat reluctantly, replied:

– Well, you could have noodles too, if you had asked. We give them noodles so that they feel full.

Um… perhaps we like to feel full, too, don’t you think?

I won’t go over how they left us alone between the time the food arrived and the time we were ready for the check (and after we got the check), that would just be nitpicking. Actually, this isn’t the first time I feel a little discrepancy in service at Korean restaurants. One time at Kang Tong Degi, my non-Korean friend and I were completely ignored while the two Korean girls sitting across from us got all the attention. If you’re going to be nationalist or discriminative, or just have bad service in general, at least make sure that your food is so %^$&!#! good that I’d have to beg for it.

Address: Seoul Gomtang
3801 Telegraph Ave,
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 597-9989
Dinner for 3: $54.37
[Seoul Gomtang specializes in soups (탕, tang), and if you’re lucky (or Korean), you’ll get some noodles in the soup too, a type of white, round and thick wheat noodle (곰국수, gomguksu). Kimchi juice or pepper paste should be added to the soup to taste, or you can eat the soup like I do  – not adding anything at all – and just taste an ABSOLUTELY bland but fatty broth, the way Korean tangs always are. (I come to appreciate that blandness after some time.) The banchan are limited to napa cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi and cucumber kimchi, all of which taste milder than they look.]

The True Deluxe: cheese, medium-cooked quarter-pound hamburger on toasted egg buns, lettuce, tomato, garlic mayo (no mustard, thank god), and a crispy portobello mushroom stuffed with smoked mozzarella. When I eyed it, Eric was like, “it’s BIG. Maybe you two can share one.” You two being me and Cheryl. Now that I think about it, Eric hadn’t seen me with burgers before.

Luckily, Cheryl was also hungry and wanted her own burger. Hers was pretty small compared to the Deluxe, but she’s a skinny girl who thinks a regular In ‘n Out is sufficient. For Mai, there’s no burger too big.

The most prominent plus side of True Burger is that it’s ready in less than 5 minutes. It satisfies our imagination of what a burger should be. It smells of fast food (but not of McDonalds, how does McDonalds maintain that distinctive McDonalds smell all these years?!) and of industrialized America. I don’t even know why I’m writing about True Burger when nothing about it really screams significance, even its name. It’s just that, somehow, sitting in a classic, simplistic orange-colored fastfood joint in the middle of a modernizing city, chomping on a messy burger while staring at the wall art is oddly utopian, as if we were cut-out pieces of that messy Richard Hamilton’s collage.

Address: True Burger
146 Grand Ave.
Oakland, CA, 94612
(510) 208-5678
True Deluxe: $9, normal cheese burger: $5.65, fries: $2.60

September was an extremely busy month. In addition to the usual school work, teaching, a part-time job and my editor job at the Daily Cal, I took on editing a special issue on Food (how could I resist?) and I worked for Sinto Gourmet for two weekends (again, it’s food work, I just couldn’t resist). The first weekend, Hyunjoo Albrecht, Sinto’s owner, asked me to be at the Stonestown Farmers’ Market at 7:30 am on a Sunday.

I told myself that waking up early is good for me, and that after the Farmers’ Market finished I would have the rest of the day to study. That was all good in theory, until I couldn’t sleep the night before and ended up working all night, then begrudgingly got dressed to leave at sunrise. (My friend Nancy was so unbelievably kind to drive me all the way from Berkeley to Stonestown, otherwise, I would have had to take the bus at 5:30 am and made a few transfers)

After leaving me with the kimchi, Hyunjoo rushed to another Farmers’ Market to set up her stall. Other vendors slowly arrived and filled up their space, but not the stall to my left. The wind blew fiercely from Lake Merced in the west, which is also on my left side. Of course, I didn’t dress warm enough, had no scarf, and had to mentally fight off the cold by reading about sushi. I hated the first two hours at the Farmers Market.

By 9:30, the sky got clearer and I stepped into the sun to warm up. Then customers started coming by, I started giving out samples, the vendors of the stall to my left finally came and rushed to set out their vegetables. I came back to life.

At the end of the day (which was about 1 pm), the vendors began packing up. I dropped by the neighboring stalls to say hi and see what they were selling. The Saint Benoit Yogurt lady gave me a strawberry yogurt, the Phoenix Pastificio guy gave me a chocolate macaroon (not macaron), the honey guy let me taste 5 (or 6?) different honeys and gave me an orange blossom honey jar, and the vegetable vendors to my left gave me some tomatoes (the girl even washed one for me to eat right there – I hadn’t tasted such an aromatic tomato for years!). The other vendors also traded stuff with one another, kale for honey, marinated tofu for pastries, and so often they just give them for free.

Orange blossom honey, tomatoes and chocolate macaroon.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted from standing and talking and dragged my feet to the bus station without a care in the world, but I was happy. Not just because I got free food (that made me happy of course). Not just because the food was so divine (the yogurt was so creamy because it’s made with whole milk, the honeys actually tasted like the flowers that the bees used to make honey, and over all, these fresh, real foods have such pleasant floral smells to them that store products can never compare). I actually didn’t know why I felt so happy until two weeks later, when I worked at Eat Real Festival with Hyunjoo. I was happy at the end of each day at the festival too.

Sure, I had to wake up at the time I normally go to bed, walked half a mile each way (from the bus stop to Jack London Square, where the festival was held), stood for 8 hours each day and felt like my knees and heels were going to shatter. Neither Hyunjoo nor I had any time to eat or check out other stalls, no vendors did. On Saturday, we bought two pastries from the stall right in front of us and a few sad dimsum (that were tiny and tasted no difference from the frozen ones). On Sunday, we ate nothing. We were tired for sure, but like Oaktown Jerk’s Randall Hughes in the next stall said, I didn’t feel miserable. There’s something so real about working with products, holding them in your hand, handing them to your customers and watching their expression as they got surprised by its quality. It was motivating. The kimchi is not even my own product and I’m already this happy selling it, I can hardly imagine how happy Hyunjoo must feel, and how the other vendors feel about their own. I began to understand how my parents feel when they spend hours everyday tending the apple and plum trees and cucumber vines in the backyard (and others in the front yard too).

Sinto Gourmet booth at Eat Real Festival 2013. Image courtesy of Sinto Gourmet.

For someone who spends almost all of her time in front of the computer, the interaction with physical products and physical people was fresh air. There were some annoying customers and some crazy ones of course (literally crazy, as in something is off in their head), but it was all very real. The interaction among the vendors was even better. Everyone was kind and eager to share their knowledge, and I like how they buy from one another (for example, Hyunjoo buys apples from another vendor at Farmers’ Market to make apple juice in her white kimchi). There was hardly any competition. During those hours, my focus was on preparing samples fast enough while observing and talking to the customers; I didn’t have to think about what I should do for my future, how to write my resume, how to sound smart against everyone else in my field. During those hours, I could actually rest.

The day after, my calves felt as if they had shrunk and standing up to start walking was the most painful moment ever. But, I would gladly do it again. I’m sure I would hate myself when I try to get out of bed, but as soon as I leave the apartment, I would feel alive.

Early August, I had a great meal at Homestead, one of the newest additions in Oakland’s restoscape. The meal was a media invite – one benefit of working at the Daily Californian – and the owners were incredibly generous at letting us order everything we wanted at no charge, which turned out to be, as it always goes when Kristen and I dine together, everything on the menu. But that’s not the best part of a food writing job. The best part was the interview. The chefs are always busy of course, but they were willing to set aside an hour the next Monday morning to chat. Afterwards, I gained 48 minutes and 31 seconds of recording, part of which I transcribed into 6 full pages of typed notes, a load of information about opening and running a restaurant, and so much positive emotion.

Earlier last week, I struggled to choose which pieces of information and which quotes should make it into my article to fit the word limit for print – there were just too many valuable details. Unlike news reporting, a feature must also follows a theme, and someone’s life is a lot more diverse than one box of introduction-body-conclusion tied together by a theme. Editing was a pain, and for the sake of journalistic professionalism, I won’t go into details, but despite the frustration, the feature, which came out on Friday, is one of my favorites, because it’s a product of the understanding between the chefs and me.

I find interviews a lot more enriching than the meals themselves. The person tells you a story and lets you catch a glimpse of their world, from their perspective, something that you can’t get from simply eating a meal. This is particularly true with Homestead. The welcoming and homey vibe that Fred Sassen and Liz Hopkins want to create in their restaurant isn’t just a business theme, they were genuinely open people that can make you feel at home.

“If you ever think back about the best meals you ever had, nine times out of ten, it’s not the food that’s the memory, it’s the reason you went to eat that’s the memory,” said Sassen. “We sat down with [Hopkins’] family and had sunday supper and it was the best sunday supper I ever had. The ham was burnt, and the peas was overcooked to mush, but it was okay because it was fun. It was that interaction with the family and that communal atmosphere.”

That’s one of the stories I like that didn’t make it into the final draft. To be honest, I didn’t expect to find Homestead very homey – the food they serve is not what I grew up with, and the price is higher than what I can afford everyday. But that conversation with Sassen and Hopkins became the reason that I want to go back, and the memory that makes the meal there memorable.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for “home”. Maybe it’s because both Sassen and Hopkins are young and passionate about what they’re doing (Hopkins is only 26, I didn’t get to ask Sassen’s age), and something about young people branching out on their own to build something for themselves is the inspiration I need these days. For whichever reason, I like this restaurant.

How was the food, though? This part I reserved for this personal blog and not talked about it in the Daily Cal review, because as a rule, we only review the food when we’re anonymous diners.

The small plates

Squid with bean stew, sausage and pesto ($11) – We both like the bean stew, and Kristen doesn’t like tentacles, so more tentacles for me. 😉

Summer squash salad with lemon, padrones and goat cheese ($10) – I detest goat cheese, but I could tolerate this goat cheese, so this salad was actually quite bright and lovely.

Housemade ricotta, peaches, housemade spicy coppa and grilled bread ($12) – Best ricotta I ever had.

Pan-fried gnocchi, corn, chanterelle mushroom and wild nettles ($12) – I think I’ll start pan-frying all of my gnocchi from now on.

The counterspace

While waiting for the food, we looked at the open kitchen attentively.

On the left is Sassen filleting a halibut. On the right is the multi-functional brick oven that he designed, taking inspirations from Camino’s, Waterbar’s and Boulevard’s brick ovens. The oven is fascinating but I’m afraid to get it wrong if I try to recite what Sassen described…

The main course

Slow-roasted pork with cream corn ($20) – We liked the cream corn, but the pork erred on the dry side.

Grilled ribeye, grilled frisee, carrots and bone marrow ($24) – The picture speaks for itself.

Salt-baked halibut, butter-roasted potato, pickled torpedo onion and hollandaise ($24) – Best halibut I ever had.

I’m no fish fanatic, but I’m still drooling for this halibut’s melting texture right now…

Desserts

“Plate of fresh fruit” ($5) – They tasted sweet and fresh, but we were expecting something more elaborate…

Plum upside-down corn cake with creme fraiche ($8) – I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember anything about this corn cake…

Hot fudge brownie with vanilla semifreddo and cashew brittle ($8) – It was as rich as you would expect.

Teas ($3 each pot) – Lapsang Souchong (white pot) and Spring Jade (green pot). Although I appreciate the effort to include several kinds of tea (7 total) in the dessert drink menu, let’s just say that, unfortunately – in America in general and Homestead is no exception – restaurants’ knowledge of tea is still far below that of wine. A tea aficionado can only hope for the future.

Sometimes I’m amazed by Kristen’s and my own capability of consuming infinite dishes in one sitting. 😀 We unapologetically finished everything, too… Kristen said she was so ready for us to be kicked out of the restaurant. So was I.

Address: Homestead
4029 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 420-6962

Why don’t I like spicy food? For the same reason I don’t like cupcakes, Chicago pizza or anything that has too much of something for me to taste anything else. For the same reason I shunned sushi for almost 10 years: the first time I had sushi I scooped a spoonful of the lovely green paste into my mouth.

Those were 10 years that I could have enjoyed so many hamachi nigiri. It’s sad. But that aside, for the same reason that I dislike spicy food, I like B-Dama so much more than I expected. It’s a tiny tiny Japanese restaurant in Piedmont. Its menu doesn’t boast anything particularly breath-taking to draw me out of the comfort of my home, except that I once saw Kristen post on Facebook a picture of the ankimo (monkfish liver) from B-Dama, and Kristen and I have had more than two failed attempts to eat there together just because the restaurant was either closed or too busy when we popped in. When you can’t have something, you want it more.

Then the day finally arrived. My friend and I tried the ridiculously popular Geta that serves possibly the cheapest sushi and fried chicken bits in the East Bay, were thoroughly impressed by how cheap it was ($35.30 for 7 items), and felt compelled to try its posher sister B-Dama. This time, we made reservation.

Let’s talk about the dish that implanted the name B-Dama in me from the very beginning: the monkfish liver.

This wasn’t the first time I had monkfish liver, or liver, or monkfish. I’m neither a fan nor an antifan of monkfish, but I love livers, so it’s a make-or-break deal for me. At B-Dama, the liver was so creamy yet maintained the smooth, bouncy resilience of freshness, and above all, the taste was so clean! If I didn’t know that it came from a fish, I would think that it’s just soft tofu flavored with cream and a pinch of salt, slightly chilled to shape into such medallion-scallop size. Considering the steps to prepare ankimo (the liver must be rubbed with salt, then rinsed with sake, then de-veined, then rolled, steamed and served in ponzu sauce), this dish requires such precise treatment to rid of the ocean smell and preserve the creamy nature. I think steaming is the most unadulterated cooking method, and this ankimo is the most unadulterated, freshest ankimo I’ve ever had.

The same theme resonates throughout the rest of the meal. The housho maki (raw tuna and salmon with sliced cucumber wrapped in daikon), the hamachi nigiri and even the nabe taste crystal clear. Daikon naturally has the daikon taste (a bitter, somewhat piercing pungency that sometimes reminds me of sake), but the daikon at B-Dama, in whatever form it’s served from grated to sheet, does not have that daikon taste. Its crunchy texture and cooling freshness are well preserved, only the pungency is gone.

The cold openings:

Hamachi nigiri sushi ($6.5)
My must-order item at every sushi restaurant. This version sets the highest bar so far.

Housho maki ($6) – raw fish and cucumber wrapped in daikon.
So fresh, so suitable for spring.

Ankimo ($8) – steamed monkfish liver served in ponzu sauce
My most recent must-order. I find it offensive that I have to pay so little for something this good.

The fried and grilled dishes:

Tsukune – chicken “meatball”

Ika karaage ($6) – deep-fried squid.
I like it. A lot.

Hotate – scallop

Gyutan – grilled beef tongue
Another must-order of mine. A little bit too thick (and therefore, too chewy) for me, I still prefer Musashi’s gyutan.

Kani korokke ($8.5) – crab croquette
Creamy inside, crunchy outside, not too overwhelming but yet to be the ideal croquette I’m looking for.

The finish:

Oxtail stew ($10) in soy-based soup.
There’s no way around ordering a serving of rice for this one, that sauce demands to be soaked up with rice.

Yosenabe ($12) – seafood, tofu, and vegatable soup with glass noodle (harusame)

For reason unknown, the host gave us one of the specials of the day, the asari sakamushi – steamed clams cooked in butter and sake broth ($9.5). At this point, I was too busy chowing to remember taking pictures. I feel obliged to mention this because the host was so nice, but I should clarify offhand that the clams did not alter my perception of B-Dama.

So, at the restaurant, we ran into my friend’s colleague, who also works at another great Japanese restaurant in the East Bay, and after the meal we briefly mentioned how good we thought B-Dama was. I said that I was surprised that the food here did not have any strong taste, and my friend’s colleague commented that Japanese food in principal are not supposed to be overwhelmed with spices anyway. I knew that before, and that’s why I like Japanese food, but my comment might have failed to explain my thoughts properly. B-Dama especially succeeds in delivering that clean-tasting aspect of Japanese food more than any other Japanese restaurant in the East Bay.

Address: B-Dama
4301A Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 420-1578
www.b-dama-geta.com

Sake sampler – ($11)
The Yamahai Junmai is the sweetest, least stringent and best-tasting to me, and I’m not just saying that because it’s listed as the “connoisseur’s junmai”. (I didn’t the description when I tasted it.)

It was 1 AM Wednesday night when I saw the text message from Chris, “hey Mai, do you expect you’ll have another review ready by tomorrow?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh good. When can you have it in? It’ll have to be sort of early if we want to get it in Friday’s paper.” Chris is the editor of Eating Berkeley, and all of my publications with them so far are online, so it’d be pretty exciting to see my name in print. The problem: it was 1 AM and I had to finish a few scripts for my research the next day. The good thing: I just had dinner at Burma Superstar (the Oakland one) earlier that evening, followed by a LOT of puer, so my eyes were opening as wide as the Pacific Ocean and ready for no sleep. I started typing away about Burma Superstar.

This morning I picked up a copy of the Daily Cal at the bus stop. It IS good to see my piece in print, although it’s on a B&W page and I don’t feel like they chose the best photo there. Later in the day I checked the online section, where it’s also published. Below is what I wrote:

A full bar and a wildly successful sister establishment in San Francisco could be the reason for the huge line outside Burma Superstar in Oakland’s Temescal District on a Wednesday night. But for me, the restaurant’s main draw is its fresh coconut, for which they charge a whopping $5. It brings back childhood flavors from the tropics, though, and that justifies everything.

It wasn’t a young coconut, and I didn’t expect it to be given that we can’t grow coconuts in most of this country. But this middle-aged coconut had such rich water and a sweet fragrant from the husk that I thought I was drinking sugar cane juice, so it was doubly nostalgic. The rest of my meal at Burma Superstar followed smoothly through every sip of that coconut water.

Burmese food is a cross between Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines, with some dishes showing the influence of one culture more than the others. For example, the curry pork with potato has a strong Indian touch of cumin and shines with chili oil like Szechuan mapo tofu, but it isn’t sweetened by coconut milk like other Southeast Asian curries. Thus, its perfect match is the sweetened coconut rice topped with fried shallots. In fact, the coconut rice is so fluffy and flavorful that it stands well on its own and it enhances everything. In hindsight, the curry pork was the weakest link in the meal for several reasons. The description said that there was pickled mango, but we detected neither mango nor pickle. It had too little potato and too much pork, and the big chunks of pork could have used some more cooking time or fared better in smaller pieces to reduce the fibrousness of the cut.

But whatever slight disappointment we had with the curry was quickly drowned in the dense, confident garlic and chili sauce of the sauteed eggplant. The shrimp served their purpose of keeping the name of the dish not so simple as “sauteed eggplant”, but they were hardly noticeable next to the perfect eggplant — tender but not mushy, and firm but not rubbery. The nan gyi dok was a pleasant surprise. I expected thin rice noodle like in pho, served warm, but Burmese rice noodle is thick, smooth and so fragile. It was also served cold as a noodle salad with fried shallots, boiled egg, cilantro, chickpea flour and coconut chicken curry, tossed together at the table after a squeeze of fresh lemon.

As if to reward the customers for the long wait, the kitchen turns out dishes very quickly and in big enough portions that my friend and I had to ask for three to-go boxes at the end. However, that did not deter us from dessert. We hurriedly drank up the coconut water and asked the server to chop off the tops so that we could scrape off the coconut meat inside, a joy I hadn’t had for years. Meanwhile, we ordered another nostalgic comfort food — warm black rice pudding with coconut ice cream. Well, sliced almond isn’t exactly authentic Southeast Asian, but its toasty crunch earns it a home with the creamy ice cream and the gooey rice.

In the end, I wouldn’t say that Burma Superstar shines as bright as its name suggests, but the food was just as pleasant as the staff. We were full and happy when we walked out, a little slowly so not to burst. Our jackets also smelled like sauteed onion for the rest of the night, but that’s never a bad thing.

EDIT: to adhere to the Daily Cal policy, I’ve removed the quote of the commenter on Eating Berkeley. This post is not a respond to the commenter, but a reflection on my style.

When I reread my review though, I realize the depth of reviewing ethnic restaurants that I should explore. It’s not as simple as saying whether a dish is good or bad because each dish has a complex culture behind it. That makes reviewing ethnic restaurants more challenging but more enjoyable. Burma Superstar was only my second time trying Burmese cuisine, and the first time barely left any impression. Of course, my review needs a lot more research if I was reviewing Burmese cuisine as a whole, but for now, as a single restaurant review, did I do it justice?

Curry pork with potato ($13.95) – description on menu: “specialty curry cooked with pickled mango, potatoes and tender pork”. I think I’ve said enough about this pork in my review…

Nan gyi dok ($9.95) – Burmese rice noodle salad with coconut chicken curry, boiled egg, fried shallots, cilantro, onion, chickpea flour and lemon juice. Complex in flavors and satisfying.

Eggplant and shrimp in garlic sauce ($13.95) – well, it’s eggplant and shrimp in garlic sauce. We asked for mild, so although there was chili in the sauce, it was actually mild. Really good. The shrimp doesn’t need to be there, though.

Black rice pudding with coconut ice cream and sliced almond ($9) – Worth the money. Besides, I always LOVE coconut ice cream.

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.

1. The kimchi I made with Kristen won First Place in the Kimchi category of the Puttin’ It Up contest. (Yes, the Korean fingers in the picture were intentional. No, that’s Sinto kimchi, not ours in the picture, but we didn’t get back our kimchi at the time this picture was taken.)

2. Via friend’s introduction (고마워요, 유경 언니 :-)), I ended up as a helper for Hyunjoo Albrecht at her Sinto Gourmet kimchi table on Saturday and Sunday.

3. Saturday was crazy, no spare second between chopsticking kimchi into sample cups for the festival visitors from 11 am to 6 pm.
4. Sunday was a bit more relaxing but we still sold out the big jars of kkakdugi (spicy radish kimchi) and the small jars of spicy pickled cucumber.

5. Thanks to Hyunjoo’s husband who got food for us while we stood our ground behind the table, I got to try from the other vendors: shoyu ramen from Youki, kalbi with steamed rice from Seoul on Wheels, Brown Cow vanilla yogurt, rose chai from The Chai Cart, and some pretty good mac ‘n cheese followed by a couple of dimsum dumplings.

6. Hyunjoo’s kimchi is delicious.

Read more: Eat Real 2 years ago, Eat Real 2011

One very cold Saturday afternoon in Oakland.

Darren: Normally I don’t like fruit flavored stuff, like watermelon candies you know?
Mai: Yeah, like cherry candies…
Darren: But this mango ice cream is really good!
Mai: It is! I like the green tea the most though, it’s so refreshing. What about you, Kristen?
Kristen: I usually don’t like strawberry flavors, but this strawberry one is so good…

Good thing we each had a different favorite.

When the girl took up our empty sushi plates and asked if we wanted dessert, we were already stuffed, which is a given every time Kristen and I go out together. But we asked the girl what’s on anyway, and she listed, if I remember correctly in my post-food stupor, “tempura ice cream, green tea ice cream, red bean ice cream, green tea cheesecake, seven flavors of mochi ice cream, which includes mango, vanilla, strawberry, green tea, red bean, coffee and chocolate”. We looked at each other for two seconds then at her.

– Can we have the seven flavors, please?
– You want all seven?!
*Looks exchanged*
– Uh… it’s not a thing of seven mochis?
– Well we can make a platter of that too. You want that?
– Yes please. *sheepish grin*

Never turn down ice cream.

Zero complaints on the tempura and the rolls too, they’re Americanized of course and we didn’t do any nigiri nor any of us Japanese. But if you’re American, happen to be near the intersection of Piedmont and Echo in Oakland while hungry for sushi, Shimizu is a sure bet.

Address: Shimizu Japanese Cuisine
4290 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 653-7672
shimizucuisine.com

Volcano Scallop ($7.95) – Battered and deep fried scallops with sweet soy sauce

Mom posed a question and I can’t conjure up any adequate answer for her: why does Korean fried chicken only appear in holes in the wall?

Not just a simple hole-in-the-wall thing in a busy strip mall, it has to either stand alone in an empty lot or sit at a shady street corner with iron folding doors and a few rowdy-looking guys smoking outside. Granted that those guys look Korean and the signs are in Korean, which confirms the authenticity of the place, and these are Korean drinking establishments after all. But does it have to be so shady? I want to walk down the street and eat fried chicken late at night sometimes…

The fried chicken bits with green onions at Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지, which should be pronounced |Kang Tong Twe Jee|) might be good enough to risk it though. Frankly there’s less chicken on that plate than fried batter and green onion, but since when did fried chicken become so refreshing? A squeeze of lemon makes all the difference.

Thanks to Kristen’s mom, we three shared 8 dishes that covered tofu, seafood, chicken, pork and beef, one of them was a portion for two; the guy’s look of concern was funny, he even asked if we were sure. (We had plenty of leftovers of course. Nothing beats eating with moms. ;-)) Although “twe jee” (돼지) means pig or pork, this shack has good but not the best pork dishes. Kwen chan thah, their haemul soondubu (해물 순두부, soft tofu soup with seafood) and haemul pajeon (해물 파전, seafood onion pancake) are top of the game.

The wallpaper and the table arrangement are just too cute.

Address: Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지)
3702 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 658-2998

Soft tofu soup with shrimp, squid and clam. It looks fierce but tastes just slightly spiky. It was a good warm-up.

Banchan (side dishes). The only place I’ve seen that serves little crunchy shrimps. Yum yum.

Kimchi fried rice. In a moment of joy I dropped my camera head first onto the sunny-side-up, breaking the yolk and clouding my lens. Hence the dreamy look.