You gonna eat that?

I've moved!

2005-10-31T22:53:00.000-08:00

I've moved my blog to a more robust platform powered by WordPress.
If you're a regular visitor, please update your bookmarks. If you have a link to my blog on your blog, please update that, too:

http://professorsalt.com

Bulletproof BBQ theory

2005-10-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

While the best barbecue is found in its native habitat down South, there are places like Mike Mills' restaurants in Illinois, and to a lesser extent, in Vegas. We can get pretty good examples in Southern California, too. Folks from the Chowhound board held a BBQ taste off two years ago. From the local contenders, I liked the ribs that Sandra brought from Rib Nest. Joe H flew in a Texas ringer: brisket from Black's in Lockhart, voted as the best cue by a large margin.

My favorite places around these parts are all in Los Angeles. None in Orange County. For example:

Rib Nest: terrific pork ribs served from behind bulletproof glass.
Phillip's (original Leimert Park location): terrific pork ribs served from behind bulletproof glass.
Woody's: terrific pork ribs served from behind bulletproof glass.
Bad 2 Da Bone: terrific pork ribs and brisket served from behind bulletproof glass.
Jaybee's (original location, on Avalon Blvd): terrific beef ribs served from behind bulletproof glass.

I'm led by these observations that your odds of finding great local BBQ increases exponentially at a shop shielded behind thick, ballistic acrylic. Try these and draw your own conclusions:

Rib Nest
1766 W. El Segundo Blvd.
Gardena, CA
310-329-6378

Phillip's
4307 Leimert Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
323-292-7613
and
2619 S. Crenshaw Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

Woody's
3446 Slauson
Los Angeles
323-294-9443
and
475 S. Market St.
Inglewood, CA
310-672-4200

Bad 2 Da Bone
4565 W. Century Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
310-671-6600

Jaybees BBQ
15915 S. Avalon Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
310-515-9221

Memphis Championship BBQ - Las Vegas

2005-10-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

Mike Mills makes the best barbecued ribs I've ever tasted. I've eaten a lot of barbecue across the southern United States, but his stand head and shoulders above anything else I've tried.

Mills owns a small, otherwise ordinary looking restaurant in a tiny Southern Illinois college town called Murphysboro. Like many other people, I learned of Mills from Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, who wrote of his unprecedented three Grand Championships at the Memphis in May BBQ World Championships. My buddy Matt and I drove from New York to visit both the restaurant and the Memphis in May competition back in 2000, and we were simply blown away at Mills' amazing ribs.

Real barbecue cooks slowly over wood smoke and low heat. It takes about four hours to cook a rack of ribs, during which time the fat renders, tenderizing the tough rib meat and connective tissue in the process. Spicy dry rub and smoke penetrate the meat as moisture and fat slowly escape, coloring the outer later of meat with a rosy pink smoke ring. There's a 20 minute window when the ribs are perfectly cooked. When two rib bones are pulled apart, the meat should stay attached to them, and tear easily between the ribs. "Falling off the bone" ribs are overcooked and mushy.

Competitive barbecue teams expend a lot of effort to deliver one perfectly cooked rack to the judges. They'll stagger ribs at 20 minute intervals so one rack will be peaking at the exact moment they're judged. Restaurant pitmasters can't afford to be so picky. They start cooking large batches hours in advance of mealtime and you'll get what you get: Mama Bear, Papa Bear, or Baby Bear.

What we got on that visit to Mills' Illinois restaurant near closing time on a slow weekday was Baby Bear: a perfectly cooked rack of ribs. Also: the best baked beans I've ever tasted, great coleslaw, and amazing cornbread. Barbecue restaurants usually focus on the meat and make lousy sides. Not here. It was simply the best barbecue meal I'd ever eaten.

Fast forward to 2001: Mills had partnered with a Vegas businessman and opened up 4 corporatized restaurants with faux down-homey decor. Just as Vegas apes New York, Venice, and Paris, these restaurants mimic what a barbecue restaurant in small town America might look like, tongue firmly embedded in corporate cheek. Think TGI Friday meets county fair.

I visited about a year after their openings, and the Vegas store's food was a faded, illegible facsimile of the Illinois original. I'm glad to report things have improved in four years.

We started with a basket of fried dill pickles, which I loved. Thick waffle cut slices are dredged in a flour heavily seasoned with cayenne and Mills' dry rub. Fried crisp, spicy and rather salty, these might be the ultimate beer snack.

We ordered the massive Mama Faye's combo of baby backs, chicken, beef brisket, pulled pork and hot links:

The Memphis style baby back ribs are Mills' specialty and my favorite of all the meats. They're cooked with what's oxymoronically called a wet dry rub. The ribs are mopped with apple cider near the end of cooking, and dry rub is reapplied, leaving a moist spicy sweet coating that tastes great without sauce. The other meats? Nice, but not nearly as distinctive as the ribs. Next time, I'd order just the baby backs and call it a day.

A food epiphany like the one I had in Illinois doesn't happen often. I realize I'm judging Jan by Marcia's accomplishments here. Really, Jan is terrific. Definitely stop in when you're in Vegas. But that Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Memphis Championship Barbecue
2250 Warm Springs Rd.
Las Vegas, NV
702-260-6909
and
1401 S. Rainbow Blvd
Las Vegaas
702-254-0520
and
4949 N. Rancho Dr
Las Vegas, NV
702-396-6223
and
4379 Las Vegas Blvd
North Las Vegas, NV
702-644-0000

17th Street Bar & Grill
32 North 17th Street
Murphysboro, IL 62966
618-384-3722
and
2700 17th Street
Marion, IL 62959
618-998-1114

PS: I picked up Mills' new book, called Peace, Love and Barbecue, which is one of the better colections of barbecue lore I've read. It also lists recipes for some of my favorite dishes from his restaurants. The award winning ribs, his Magic Dust dry rub recipe, the baked beans, the fried dill pickles: they're in there. I'll write a book review after I've had a chance to go through it more thoroughly.

Colorado dreaming

2005-10-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hello from western Colorado, where we've been since last week visiting Gurlfren's family. Her dad and I spent 4 days camped out on Black Mountain where we unsuccessfully hunted elk. So much for the Mighty Hunters.

I was hoping to give you the blow by blow of how we took down an elk and turned it into some delicious wild game dishes. Better luck next time?

Beard Papa cream puffs - Hollywood, CA

2005-10-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

When Krispy Kreme first came to Southern California, people went nuts for the stuff. Drove in from hours away to the only location on the West coast, as if Jesus Christ almighty had come back to sell us donuts and the only way to see Him was to wait in line at the drive through window of the Brea Krispy Kreme. The madness didn't subside for months after the grand opening.

Americans are a donut eating people. We Japanese don't donut. Wouldn't give a rat's patootey if Krispy Kreme opened in Tokyo. We are a "choux cream" eating people. Today, a Beard Papa opened in Hollywood's massive Kodak Theater shopping-tainment megaplex. It's Japan's largest chain of cream puff bakery cafe, and people lose their minds and and queue up when a new one opens in Japan. This is their first California location, with others soon to follow in the South Bay area and possibly Santa Monica.

The staff started baking at 2am for today's 10am grand opening. According to someone on Chowhound who was there, a line of anxious (mostly Japanese) people waited an hour for the first taste. This intrepid reporter showed up at 7:30pm, well after the lines subsided.

Baked choux pastry prior to filling

Cream puff selection

Directly across from the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd.

These treats are heavy for their moderate size because they're overfilled with a soft, almost runny vanilla custard. The choux pastry is baked to a firm, crisp texture with very little sweetness. It's a crispy vehicle for carrying the pudding like filling. Although they claim to use lavish amounts of vanilla beans, the vanilla flavor was mellow, and balanced nicely with egg yolk and a very restrained amount of sugar. It's Japanese subtlety at its best.

If Americans think of cream puffs at all, it's in the pejorative, sissified sense. That's because most American bakeries make lousy cream puffs filled with a stiff overstarched pastry cream, or worse, a butter cream. These don't weep moisture into the choux puff, but they don't taste good, either. They do that because their cream puffs sit around for hours until someone buys them, and they weren't ever good to start with.

Beard Papa, on the other hand, just makes cream puffs so they're always fresh. They can use wetter, gooey, luscious cream fillings. For today's opening, the basic vanilla filling is all they offered. I can't wait to try the other fillings like sesame and green tea!

The sum of Beard Papa's cream puff is greater than its mild components. It's a perfect contrast of crisp shell and creamy filling, with just enough powdered sugar to remind you these are decadent treats. Left unsupervised with a pot of coffee, I could easily scarf a box of six by myself, and I guarantee my ass would grow a size larger by next week. Ah - there's the American in me!

Beard Papa, for your next location, please give us a drive though window. If there's anything you can learn from Krisy Kreme, it's that we Americans love our drive-thrus!

Beard Papa
6801 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood, CA

Persian Harvest Festival

2005-10-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

The Salt household was invited to Mehregan last weekend as guests of Network of Iranian-American Professionals of Orange County. I interviewed Dr. Hosseini, the President of NIPOC, for a Persian foodstuffs story filed with the OC Weekly. His organization puts on a large cultural festival that draws over 20,000 Iranian-Americans from across the country to the Orange County Fairgrounds. Sadly, the OC Weekly story didn't run before this weekend, so we weren't able to plug the festival as I'd hoped.

Grilled tomatoes

Beef koobideh

Chicken koobideh

About 20 food vendors lined sides selling mostly Persian foods, although roasted corn on the cob and Pizza Hut were there. Local restaurants and catering outfits grilled kebabs of ground meats called koobideh, or pieces of marinated chicken breast called barg. For the same reason that a Fourth of July cookout wouldn't be complete without burgers and dogs, kebabs are the quintessential cookout food found from Turkey to Mongolia. Even with other food options, a cookout's not the same without smoky, sensual, satisfying sticks of charry meat.

Ash-e reshteh, garnished with mint oil

I was hoping for more variety among the vendors' menus, but everyone had similar offerings: a plate of kebabs, plain rice, a grilled tomato, and the noodle soup called ash-e reshteh. A few different kinds of polos would have been nice: the rice pilafs flavored with nuts, fruit, and herbs. Or my favorite stewed meat dish called fessenjan flavored with ground walnuts and pomegranate. But as someone who's cooked professionallly, I understand that long cooked stews don't work well for impatient festival crowds that want to eat right now. Kebabs cook up in minutes and keep hungry crowds happy.

One vendor sold Persian donuts, some sweet, some savory. Picture a round oily donut filled with a pleasing, sweet, eggy custard. Another was shaped long, like a fat cruller, but stuffed with potato chunks flavored with dill and mint. Two other varities were made, but we were pretty full at that point. It kills me that I didn't take photos or notes on what they're called. Please leave a comment if you know.

What better way to end the meal than at Akbar Mashti's booth, aka Mashti Malone's Ice Cream? One of Los Angeles' best ice cream makers brought select flavors including faludeh and my favorite, orange blossom with pistachio nuts. We're looking forward to next year's event!

Soup mystery update

2005-09-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

For those of you wondering, a letter and photos of the mystery chunk have been sent to the Campbell Soup Company. I'm waiting to hear their response, half expecting a standard form letter, half expecting a call from their attorneys. We'll see what happens.

Pupusería San Sivar - Costa Mesa, CA

2005-09-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Pupusas are not the infantbearing slings worn by native American women. No, pupusas are to El Salvador what quesadillas are to the United States. None of the very divergent things called quesadillas found across the regions of Mexico are anything like the bland grilled-cheese-on-a-flavorless-flour-tortilla as we know it in the US. But that's another story for another time.

We're talking about pupusas: fresh masa dough and savory fillings like cheese, chorizo, meat and vegetables handpatted into a flat round disc about 8 inches in diameter, then griddled until crisp. Make the masa too thin, and the fillings can leak. Make the masa too thick, and it's as clodgy and heavy as day old oatmeal.

That baby bear, just right balance point tips precipitously close on the too-thin side of the equation, and you'll find it at Pupusería San Sivar, a wee, modest restaurant in an unassuming Costa Mesa strip mall. Proudly displayed on the door and wall sits their justly deserved Best Eats of OC 2005 award from the paper I occasionally write for, the OC Weekly.

Seven classic flavors are offered. Can't go wrong with revueltas con queso, frijol y chicharron: a mixed cheese, bean and pork filling. I heavily favor the ones here with chicharron. Pollo is a mildly seasoned shredded chicken meat, without cheese, which is only ok in my book. I'm partial to the squash with cheese, called calabazitas. Loroco is a pod-like vegetable whose shreds are sauteed and mixed with cheese. The cheese lets off an agreeable slick of oil, in the way a good New York pizza slice might ooze a little orange grease. Don't let it harsh your mellow.

Pupusas de arroz, made of rice flour, cost 20 cents more than corn and are an unusual variation on the theme. The rice dough tastes plainer than the corn version, but its texture is phenomenally better in my opinion. Something about the gels and starches in rice give it the ability to crisp into a toasty, crunchy, browned crust.

Rice eating people the world over fight for the crisp brownies at the bottom of the rice cooker. Persians invert this browned crust in the dish called tadig. Japanese grill rice balls into yaki onigiri, and Italians fry rice balls into arancini. Koreans use a superheated stone pot to serve the rice dish called dolsot bibimbap, which continually toasts your rice while you eat it. Rice's ability to take on a browned crust makes its way to El Salvador in their most popular dish.

Salvadoran food doesn't mandate chili heat like so many Mexican dishes, so the spicy variation of curtido, the requisite side dish of cabbage slaw is surprising, and good. Sweet is balanced with vinegar which has been infused with red chili flakes.

San Sivar makes their own horchata salvadorena in house. They flavor this version of the rice drink with ground sesame, cacao bean, pepitas, morro seed and cinnamon. Very unlike Mexican horchata, and definitely not from the concentrate that most restaurants use.

One last bit of advice. Eat pupusas as soon as they hit the table. The half life on these things is about 8 minutes, after which the crisp goes soggy, the starches in the dough stiffen, and the whole thing skids downhill fast and faceplants like your first time on a snowboard. Take out is a last resort, m'kay?

Pupusería San Sivar
1940 Harbor Blvd
Costa Mesa, CA
949-650-2952

What eez it man?

2005-09-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

What

the hell

is...

THIS?

It's:

Hard and bonelike
Doesn't dissolve or soften in water
Has several spiky looking points

I'll tell you what it's not. It's not supposed to be in a can of chicken noodle soup. Yes, I'm going to call the Campbell Soup Company. Before I contact them, I figured we'd have a little fun with it here first.

Dear Campbell Soup Co:
"I recently found something chunky that shouldn't belong in your Chunky soup. I took a poll on my website, and now think this nubbin is .... We'd like to hear your response."

I'm leaving comments wide open for a few days at the risk of letting in the comment spammer scumbags. Any comments with a URL will be deleted as usual, unless it has something to do with this mystery.

Take a stab. What the hell?

Why I keep reliving summer vacation, part 2

2005-09-07T04:18:00.000-07:00

When I visit my folks in New York, I'm only in town for a day or two, and like to hit some of favorite old Greenwich Village haunts: Mamoun's for falafel and shewarma, Joe's Pizza for some of the best slices in the city, maybe cross town and get some Italian pastries at Vesuvio Bakery.

Breaking my usual pattern, I chose to spend time with my parents. Must be getting family oriented in my old age or something. Dad wanted to take us to a Shanghainese place in Flushing that he's been going to for years (without telling me or giving me an invite). Or maybe I was too busy running out the door for falafel.

I inhertited my instincts for finding good food from him, because his place turns out to be Joe's Shanghai, internationally renowned for their soup dumplings, or xiao long bao. When we walked in, the manager greeted him by name. My dad. How about that?

Neon sign touts Joe's specialty

The chefs form the dumplings with a bit of cold gelled broth in the filling, which liquifies into a hot soup after they're steamed. It's splashed with black vinegar & shredded fresh ginger and plopped atop a spoon to catch all the juice that spills out. Open carefully so the hot soup doesn't scorch.

Pork and shrimp xiao long bao

The dumpling skin is medium thin and tender, with lots of rich soup inside. As with Peking duck, pastrami, or southern barbecue, seek out a specialist restaurant where every table is ordering that one thing, or you'll wonder what the big wooptee-do is. If you need help locating a dumpling specialist in your city, stop by chowhound.com and ask on the approriate discussion board for your town.

Joe's Shanghai
136-21 37th Ave
Flushing, NY
718-539-3838
(other locations in NYC as well)

In the greater LA area, I like Din Tai Fung, a Taipei based mini-empire whose various dumplings are all very good, if different than Joe's. But let's not split hairs over these differences right now. As with New York pizza, these fine distinctions among shops are important and you won't understand until you understand, dig?

Din Tai Fung
1108 S. Baldwin
Arcadia, CA
626-574-7068

That segues into my lunch the day afterward. I continued breaking my usual NYC eating habits and spent the day in Brooklyn. I hit Di Fara's pizza just as they opened. The legendary Dominic De Marco has made masterful pies for over 40 years. He stands at the pinnacle of New York pizza makers along with a very select group of pizzaiolos. If I have to explain New Yorkers' obsession with pizza, you haven't had the real thing. I nudge you to buy Ed Levine's book, "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven." It will guide you to the best New York pizza on your next visit.

Unassuming hole in the wall with world class food

The Legend at work. Note herbs growing in window pots.

Di Fara Pizza
1424 Avenue J
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-1367

In the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge lurks a French magician in a chilly lair, stirring a copper cauldron full of brown elixir. Ancient cobblestones line the row in front of the wizard's shop, where ladies driving Saabs and Volvos visit.

Inside, the ladies' eyes glaze over, captured by the gilded glint of glossy chocolate truffles, a spell as powerful as any in the enchanted city.

But beware the poor soul that touches lips to the plastic chalice protected with a paper covered sippy straw, for it takes its victims words and renders them rather like moo cows in heat. Inside this wicked chalice awaits... the Frozen Hot Chocolate!

Fast forward to the happy ending: magical fairytale chocolate shop. Fantastic truffles assortment. Chocolate covered corn flakes. Genius without pretense. And that frozen hot chocolate: thick, rich cocoa and chocolate flavors with just a touch of sugar sweetness. It's fuller bodied, not as chilled and has fewer ice granules than the city's other famous frozen hot chocolate served at Serendipity 3 on the Upper East Side.

Go. Fall in love.
Jacques Torres Chocolate
66 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY
718-875-9772
One other location in Manhattan, see their website

PS - This trip happened a month ago at this point, and I've had a chance to reflect on the differences between New York and California. Los Angeles has a high end patisserie called Boule that makes phenomenal chocolates, pastries, candies and even ice creams & sorbets that'll blow your mind. As great a product as Jacques Torres, but served with a heap of annoying attitude. The entire store, the gift boxes, and even the website is done up in robin's egg blue to evoke a Tiffany's-like boutique feel. I asked them if I could take a photo of the chocolate display, because that's what I do. Got the sneery look like "this is a boutique, daahling, a temple. You must not photograph it, for our souls will be stolen."

Boule people: please take a cue regarding service from the friendly, unpretentious Jacques Torres people, like the girl who gladly posed for the frozen hot chocolate photo. I would also like to ask why you framed a letter of congratulations from Chef Daniel Boulud only to adorn the men's bathroom with it. Does he know you put that in the crapper?

Why I keep reliving summer vacation, part 1

2005-09-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

Our band of itinerant eaters stopped for a night on the border of Maine and New Hampshire to visit Marlene's cousin Anne and her family. Their small town home is surrounded by creeks and canals that feed the estuaries around Portsmouth. In their neighborhood remains well preserved textile mills from the 19th century and an old countinghouse that monitored commerce on the ancient canals.

Anne, Zach, McGill and Grace keep hens that provide their eggs. We fried them sunnyside up for breakfast in a bit of butter. I'd never had eggs this fresh before, and was shocked at how rich the yolks tasted compared to commercial eggs. Perhaps it's the diet of kitchen scraps their hens eat, but fresh backyard eggs are definitely superior.

Green eggs from Araucana hens, the small one on left is from a bantam hen

In this place of strong traditions and historical continuity, people still fish the salt creeks for shad in the spring and pick wild summer berries in the woods as countless generations before them have done. Vainly dodging bloodthirsty horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes is another timeworn woodland tradition we didn't care for, so we opted out of that wild blueberry adventure and instead crossed the state line to Saltbox Farms to fill up on the domesticated variety.

Diaphanous dragonfly

Red and golden raspberries

Domesticated blueberries

Saltbox Farms
321 Portsmouth Ave
Stratham, NH
603-436-7978

We chose Saltbox Farms in part because a county fair was open right down the street. Unlike my local (suburban) Orange County Fair, which features vendors hawking hot tubs and home mortgages as soon as you enter the grounds, the folks in Stratham County take their animal husbandry very seriously. In the rabbit pavilion, they held a bunny hurdling contest, where handlers nudge their leashed rabbits to hop over a series of wooden obstacles that increase in height with each round. For reals - I'm not making this up. Think I'll find this sport at this month's Los Angeles County Fair?

Shady carny rides and French fries

Happy potato chip eating goat

After a long afternoon of driving, we arrived at Matt's childhood home outside of Albany, NY, where his retired parents have a beautiful 18th century farmhouse. His dad Richard is a beekeeper, and mom Marianne keeps the garden beautifully well tended. We picked red currants from her bushes, and she made us raspberry and currant jam to take home: flavors and memories of our summer vacation to savor months from now.

Homegrown currants

Richard harvests honey seasonally from different flowers in bloom at the time. His early summer honey tastes lighter than the dusky, late summer variety. Fantastic honeys with great character. A more complete post about his honey coming at some point.

Have I punished you enough with vacation pictures? DiFara's pizza and chocolates from Jacques Torres in Brooklyn coming next!

Thinking of New Orleans

2005-09-03T04:29:00.000-07:00

The distant helicopter camera shots of the devastation in New Orleans color them with a distant, surreal quality that makes the city look like a parallel universe filled with alien beings.

I then recall the really nice people I met during a handful of visits, and the devastation becomes more real for me. I wonder if they heeded the warnings to get out before the storm, and how their stores, homes and families fared.

Earlier this year, Anthony and Gail Uglesich retired after 50 years of running their legendary family restaurant and closed up shop, with much ado from its fans around the globe. The Uglesich family had operated their humble restaurant in that location since 1849. Located in the shadow of the Superdome in one of the poorer parts of the city, their menu was priced too high for most of their neighbors to eat there on a regular basis. This is where I learned how good fried green tomatoes with remoulade can be, and where my standard for an oyster po' boy was set.

As soon as you entered the front door, you'd notice a man of impressive stature standing behind a counter, shucking oysters like the champion he was. Michael Rogers loomed over his station and effortlessly opened a dozen oysters using nothing else except an oyster knife, a U shaped anvil of soft metal to steady the oyster and his powerful, well practiced hands. I'd stand in front of him and watch his technique. He'd chatter while he worked, his mouth running as fast and steady as his hands while he'd charm the customers waiting for their food. A plaque on the wall behind him hailed his oyster shucking feats, and he'd gladly relate the finer points of how he'd won these contests.

He'd place an oyster in a dull grey metal block that looked alarmingly like lead, and put the point of the knife in the hinge of the oyster. With a precise push and twist, the oyster would open. He'd slice the meat away from the flat top shell in a flash and serve the critter in its bowl shaped lower shell.

"I never cut into the oyster - knife marks lose you points in competition," teaching me something I never thought to look for on a plate of raw oysters. Most restaurants hire shuckers to work the raw bar and buy buckets of preshucked "cookers" for use in the kitchen. Uggie's relied on Michael to open every oyster they'd use because freshness and quality mattered. That counter was his stage where thousands appreciated his easy manner and performer's charm.

I see the devastated Superdome on TV and know that a half mile away, the flood probably reclaimed the formerly cheery Uglesich building into an otherwise undistinguished and ignominious neighborhood: hip deep in filthy water, and possibly housing catfish that once would have been served there. I think of Michael's magnetic charm, and hope that he can somehow manage that charming smile in the midst of the devastation. Know sir, that you are loved and remembered by a world far bigger than you can possibly imagine, and our thoughts are with you and your family.

# # #

On a more local note, my friend Brian fowarded a press release from a Thai-Chinese restaurant in Anaheim Hills called Spice Delight that's raising money for the flood victims. Brian and his wife took us there for a mind blowing dinner, and I'd say it's easily the best restaurant in the otherwise glum restaurant scene of Anaheim Hills. It compares favorably to Thai Nakorn, a widely praised Thai restaurant in Orange County, minus their focus on the Northern regional dishes of Isaan.

I've been holding off on a writeup of Spice Delight until I've had a couple more visits, and this fundraising effort seems a good time to do it. John Sangsiri is a 20 year veteran of running Thai restaurants in Florida and Southern California, and has friends and family that lived through the Asian tsunami of 2004.

He's giving 10% of the daily receipts to charity from September 18 to September 24. They're open 7 days a week from 11am to 10pm and also offer free delivery within 5 miles on orders over $20.

Spice Delight
124 South Fairmont Blvd.
Anaheim Hills, CA 92808
714-921-8710

What I learned about food this summer, Act IV

2005-08-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Start with great local ingredients. Prepare them simply and don't get in their way.

5:30am. Bar Harbor, ME. After our so-called "epic sunrise" fiasco, we headed to the water and looked around for a fishermen's diner where grizzled old salts fill their dented steel thermoses with thin, nasty coffee and head out for a day of drowning bait. Where the crusty old fishermen go, so goes some worthwhile chow at a good price. What docks in Bar Harbor aren't fishing boats, but billionaires' yachts and the barf barges that take landlubbing tourists to see whales and puffins. We therefore ate very nicely in a diner where $10 breakfast items were served. Prices felt like we were in Beverly Hills, not way-the-hell-far-from-anywhere rural Maine.

Robin Leach would be impressed

We found the working boats a short drive away in Seal Harbor.

This lobsterman brought ashore the morning's catch and I got to ask a few questions.

Me: "Do you have to throw back the females?"
Him: "No, they just have to be big enough."
Me: "How do you sex a lobster?"
Him: "Dinner and dancing, then ask nicely."

How it's really done is by flipping the beastie on its back and looking at the small pair of swimmerets just behind the last set of legs. Females will have a soft, fin-like pair, while the males have hard, pointed "pistols." The male is on the left of the photo below. Now you know what to look for if you want a female lobster filled with red "coral!"

Lobsters molt in late Spring, so their shells are still thin and easily cracked when caught during the summer. The meat inside hasn't yet filled out their new carapace, so some will argue that it's not as firm, or sweet tasting, as the same critter harvested in the winter. I can't vouch for one argument or the other, but I do know they're still delicious when served on a buttered and toasted roll.

Here's another variation of the lobster roll, from Beal's Lobster Pier. This one has a wan crunch of iceberg lettuce and smallish chunks of cold lobster meat dressed with mayo. Although it's a fine sandwich, I much prefer the caveman style hunks of unadorned meat at Red's Eats.

The creamy broth of their lobster chowder slicked with red lobster fat tasted great and left a rich lobster slick in my mouth, but the chunks of meat in it were overcooked and tough. As with any fish chowder, presenting piping hot broth and just-barely-cooked-through seafood is a tough trick to pull off.

Fried strips of clam, not whole bellies

Fried clams strips are from a different animal than the whole belly clams I'd written about previously, and not nearly as clamtastic. Hard shell clams are called littlenecks or cherrystones while they're small, and their little bellies and firm muscle are delicious eaten raw on the half shell. As they grow larger, they're called surf, skimmer, or sea clams and they grow a rotund beer gut that's usually set aside for fish bait and no longer delish for humans. The firm muscle also grows thick, and is cut into chewable, bite sized slices. These fried and battered strips you see above are the result. While they bring back memories of the Howard Johnson's clams strips I loved in my youth, they're an anticlamactic experience compared to the more tender, more flavorful whole belly clams.

Beal's Lobster Pier
182 Clark Point Rd.
Southwest Harbor, ME
207-244-3202

Even in Maine, where sun burnished fishermen deliver lobsters caught that morning , inattentive cooks can mistreat ingredients that demand the utmost attention and respect. Though Beal's has all the elements of a working dockside fish market & restaurant, it lacked the care practiced in the kitchen at Red's and Scales. I suppose comparing lobster rolls in Maine is like comparing sushi bars in Los Angeles (read: splitting hairs). Life is short; why not do both? Travel widely and eat well, dear reader.

Intermission

2005-08-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

We'd arrived rather late at a motel near Acadia National Park when I mentioned that the park was known for epic sunrises, and perhaps it might be worth waking before daycrack to take some unforgettable photos. The irony of such words leaving my mouth was not lost on these very close friends of nearly two decades.

"Um, aren't you the vampire who works nights and wakes up at the crack of noon? Crack being the operative word there. Please put down the pipe before you burn your lip."

"Ha fucking ha. How many times in your life are you going to be in Acadia to see this?"

We rose after precious few hours of sleep and drove toward the highest peak of Mount Desert Isle. As we neared, an ominous fog rolled across our windshield. By the time we climbed Cadillac Mountain, the fog didn't roll so much as barrel through us like rain clouds caught in a blustery sea squall. Our clothing got soaked just standing against a 40 mph wind. Next "winter" if I bitch about the "freezing" 45 degree weather we have in Southern California, please reference this photo and ask me what that wind would feel like in February.

Isn't the sunrise breathtaking?

Soon after the aborted sunrise recon mission, we retreated to a diner in Bar Harbor and realized that Mainers are a fun lot with a particular code of humor known only to each other. So a few questions for you Maine readers out there:

1) How many days a year can you see this alleged epic sunrise? Is this a local gag to clear out the motels early so's Housekeeping can get home in time to watch Oprah?

2) If you're going to name a far-from-deserted island Mount Desert Isle, shouldn't its highest peak be called Mt. Desert and not Cadillac Mountain? If the National Park Service is selling off corporate naming rights, may I suggest the very obvious Golden Arches National Park?

3) The stereotyped "cahn't get there from he-ah" Downeaster spirit is very much alive and persistent with nearly everyone we asked for directions. For future reference, instructions like "we're right next to the Coast Guard station" are not useful to us tourists arriving by land and therefore bereft of nautical charts that might guide us to the Coast Guard station that you're looking at through your window. When I asked for directions, perhaps I neglected to mention we were driving. Y'know, in a car. My bad.

I loved visiting Maine, the great folks we met, and the food they made for us with love and pride. Next time I'll bring a GPS and we won't have these directional miscues distracting us from the important things like lobster boats, you-pick berry farms and county fairs. To be continued...

What I learned about food this summer, Act III

2005-08-10T15:46:00.000-07:00

Eat bad food on vacation and miss home. Eat great food and reconsider going home.

When the bike tour ended in Maine, we enjoyed a lobster banquet and bid vaya con dios to the compadres with whom we'd ridden 1700 miles.

Of the 3 or 4 people who tried lobster for the first time, one common comment was that cracking the shells was too much trouble. Mainers have a solution for this, and it's called the lobster roll, a top-loading New England roll conveniently filled with shelled lobster meat.

These first two photos are from our post ride banquet dinner at Governor's, a chain of restaurants that host banquets. As with most banquet halls, the food is not all that great. However, it did serve to compare their small, scantily filled, appetizer sized lobster rolls to the more impressive versions we'd try later.

Wee bitty appetizer sized lobter rolls

Our old college buddy Matt joined Marlene and I the next morning for the post-vacation vacation. This is the guy who drove with me from New York to Texas ostensibly for Marlene's wedding, but also to sample the country's finest Southern barbecue along the way. After hearing about our food vacations, she couldn't wait for our bike trip to end so that we could drive around and gorge on lobster rolls and fried whole belly clams.

First stop for the day: the Portland Public Market. Our English friend James had a couple hours to kill before his shuttle to the airport, so he gamely joined us for a shellfish and microbrew orgy at Scales Seafood.

Gimme one of everything...
James after eating his first ever raw oyster
Fried whole belly clams and mussels & fries

Eat locally whenever possible. The raw oysters that James gamely choked down are Damariscottas from the eponymous town less than an hour's drive north of Portland. The fried clams are also locally harvested soft shell clams (aka steamers or piss clams). These tender, smallish clams buried in the sand flats will squirt water at you if step near them at low tide. More importantly, these clams have a firmly tender neck as well as a soft, minerally, briny belly, which when fried provide a wonderful contrast in texture and flavor.

Soft shell clams are expensive. They can't be farmed like mussels or oysters, and by law can only be backbreakingly harvested for commercial sale with hand held rakes. They don't travel well like hard shell clams, and thus aren't found much outside their native New England and Canada. Find a reputable place that insists on serving local clams and seek these out while you're on the Northeast coast, m'kay?

Scales used a light cornmeal batter that simulatenously had a lightly tender batter matter and a cruchy, toothy cornmeal deal encasing the wonderfully sweet briny clams. Grease? What grease? Look at the butcher paper cone they're served in. Scales made the best fried clams I've ever eaten. After this, I need to visit the clam shacks near Ipswich, Mass for some comparative clam research.

Scales Fish Market
25 Preble St
Portland, ME
207-228-2008

"Venezuelan beaver cheese?"

Kristin Horton opens a stinky wheel of Bravura, a washed rind cows milk cheese

David Lynch fans take note

Mainers take a great deal of pride in their many food traditions, be it the seafood, the Moxie soda, or the church pie socials. Unsurprisinsgly, we found a cheesemonger in the Public Market that sold many varieties from local producers. We bought Blue Velvet and a Colby from Hahn's End Farm; some mild cheddar curds; an intesely stinky wedge of Bravura which I enjoyed in combination with a tempering, sweet Spanish quince paste; two kinds of Italian salumi. We enjoyed these with a whole wheat baguette and Chianti at an improvised picnic overlooking Southwest Harbor, near Acadia National Park. Click on any of these photos to see my complete Flickr album of the trip.

Kris Horton supplies many area restaurants, and sells their local Maine cheeses via mail order.

K.Horton Specialty Foods
25 Preble Street
Portland, Maine 04101
207-228-2056

Boathouse brown ale and Frye's Leap I.P.A.

We barely had time for one last beer in one of Portland's many microbreweries before James' prearranged trip to the airport. But which one to choose? As we walked along the downtown corridor of brick buildings, Matt and Marlene settled the matter with a quick rock / paper / scissors game, and off we went to Sebago Brewing. We quickly sucked down a pint, returned to our hotel with barely enough time, and loaded a lightly plastered Englishman into his waiting cab.

Sebago Brewing
164 Middle Street
Portland, ME
207-775-2337

We quickly improvise arrangements to visit Acadia National park, and leave Portland by mid afternoon. We might make it to Acadia by 8 or 9 pm. Will we find an open restaurant at that hour? Probably not. So we pull off the interstate onto US Highway 1 and head for Red's Eats, a legendary yet modest seafood shack in Wiscasset. This is the kind of place that's been written up for decades in every food and travel media outlet, much like Pink's Hot Dogs in Los Angeles, or Arthur Bryant's BBQ in Kansas City. Because of places like Pink's (which I'm not impressed with) I'm suspicious of that much hype, but Red's lives up to it and then some. They prepare simple foods incredibly well and the pricier-than-average $14 lobster roll was well worth the wait in line.

Now I'll have to try the $22 version served on a brioche roll at Los Angeles seafood restaurant The Hungry Cat. Care to guess whose is better?

Tiny riverside shack

Meal for three

Now THIS is a lobster roll

Battered and fried whole belly clams

Red's lobster rolls start with a buttered and griddled, top-loading New England style roll. That's like a tall hot dog roll split vertically instead of horizontally so's all the fillings don't spill out the side of your sandwich. It's loaded with tender steamed and chilled lobster meat, close to two lobster's worth. Other places dress their lobster with mayo, add celery, etc. Here, the sandwich is overfilled just with meat, and either drawn butter or mayo on the side.

If the fried clams here existed in a vacuum, I'd say they were incredible. But in comparison to the version at Scales just a few hours prior, they weren't as greaseless, or crisp, or as well prepared. Nonetheless, I wanted to sample as many of these as possible during our short stay in Maine and I'm glad we did.

Red's Eats
Water Street
Wiscasset, ME
207-882-6128

I promised you food would return to this blog. Do I deliver, or what?

What I learned about food this summer, Act II

2005-08-09T02:55:00.000-07:00

Ride more, eat more. Then eat some more. Lose weight anyway.

We ate in more than a few shitty restaurants during our trip and I was happy about it. Not about the mediocrity of the meal, but that after a 10 hour ride, I was seated on something other than a bicycle saddle, and clutching silverware instead of handlebars. We expended something like 5000 calories a day during this trip, and the need to eat settled in quickly after the need to peel off salt crusted riding clothes and take a bracing shower.

Prior to the trip, I researched places to eat in as many of the stayover towns as possible. I naively figured that after a long day on the bike that I'd be willing to ride a short way from the hotel for food that was worth it. [ed - We did not have access to cars, just our bikes]. I mean, after 100 miles, what's another 5, right? Wrong. Asheville, NC has a slew of great restaurants. We ate in the chain BBQ joint directly across from our motel, cuz there was no way in hell I was going to pedal back up the hill we just rode down.

It had all the hallmarks of mediocre corporate `cue: no smoke smell at all as we approached it; a "waiter wanted" sign in the front door; faux country decor; young underexperienced waitress who didn't know if the pork dinner was pulled, choppped, or sliced. You get the picture. Ordinarily, I'd have turned around running at the lack of smoke leaving the chimney. On that day, I was glad to be eating. Pass the mustard sauce.

One entree was seldom enough. As the trip wore on, I'd add a second dinner. So after soup, a large burger cooked to perfect rosy rare, a large side of fries, and a pint of microbrew, I ordered a plate of steamed mussels and another pint. This was after a heavy breakfast, and stuffing my face throughout the day so I wouldn't bonk during the ride.

You'd think pro football players eat alot. They'd be put to shame by a group of scrawny ass cyclists.

What I learned about food this summer, Act I

2005-08-09T02:29:00.000-07:00

Eat ye not so much and shed thine middle-aged beer gut and flabby manboobs.

This I acheived by late June, by throttling down my voracious eating habit and riding my bike every day in preparation for the East Coast death march on bikes. On many nights, my dinner at work consisted of microwaved broccoli with salt and pepper. You wondered why I wasn't writing about food on this blog? "I nuked some broccoli tonight... and last night... but the night before that I melted some brie on top and it was better..."

Though I'd signed on last December for this two week tour that averaged over 100 miles of hilly riding every day, the daunting reality that, "gee, I really haven't ridden that much over the last decade and maybe I oughta lose some weight for this thing" hadn't really set in until March. With some diligent effort, I actually managed to drop 20 pounds before I left for the ride in July.

Eat less, ride more. Lose weight.

End Act I

Bike ride from hell

2005-07-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

What's the most physcially demanding thing you've ever done? For some it's birthing a child. Others, maybe it's running a marathon. For me, it's this bike trip I've been on for the past week, riding across the Eastern United States from Atlanta to Maine. Today, we finished a 135 mile ride in the hilly farmlands of cental Pennsylvania. Tomorrow's ride is shorter at 90 miles, but includes more climbing.

We're about halfway along our 2 week trip and each day that doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Or so I tell myself as I suck wind climbing up the hills the torment us ceaselessly like the late night TV commercials for the Ab Lounge. On the other hand, I've been eating like a pig every day to take in enough nutrition to recuperate. What have I been eating? Well, we're staying in small town motels with very few quality food options. Buffet restaurants. Fast food. Nothing remotely "nutritious" nor delicious. Nor do I care. After a 100 +mile ride, I need calories, it almost doesn't matter where it comes from. I'd eat the grass in the parking lot if I thought it'd carry me through until dinner. So no exciting food photos, no tasty missives from the hinterlands of the East coast.

With any luck, I'll have more to write about after the bike ride is done and we start a foodcentric tour of New England. Lobsters. Clam shacks. The legendary pizzas of New Haven, Connecticut. Stay tuned. Food will return to this blog, I promise.

3rd of July

2005-07-04T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. For the past few years, I've been hired as the grill cook for a ginormous block party in Huntington Beach. Last year's party got out of hand: over 1000 people showed up and the line at the catering grill never got shorter than 10 people deep for 10 hours, nonstop. Made great money, though. This year, the party committee held a stealth party on July 3 and kept it low key, so only those actually invited showed up. Much less stress for me, and much more fun time hanging out and partying.

A great block to live on

Every single family on this block is out front, grilling and hanging out. The neighbor across the way works for a Temecula winery, and gave free tastings of their champagnes and chocolate port. A volleyball net strung across the cul de sac helps keeps cars out, as does a quarter pipe that the skater grommets hit throughout the afternoon. Neighbors know each other's names and what the kids are up to. Dogs wander from yard to yard, and are greeted by name wherever they go. It's that kind of neighborhood that makes me proud to take part in the festivities each year.

Grampas Grass has some chops

My friend Christopher hires the bands, so when I cook at his house, I have front row seats. Grampas Grass lit the fuse on their Bob Weir meets Allman Brothers jams for a solid 90 minute set. Singer Lisa Blue's voice ranges from a soothing coo to boozy rage: going from "there, now baby, it'll be ok" to "ok baby, pack up and and get out" in the course of one song. Her cover of Me and Bobby McGee suggests Lisa Blue had her own share of hard living that connects her very personally to that song and the lady who first made it famous. Check them out if they're playing near you.

French dippin' since 1908

2005-07-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

As Philadephia has its cheesesteak rivalries, Los Angeles has its French dip wars. Philippe's the Original opened its doors near downtown Los Angeles in 1908 and looks every year of it. It's among LA's oldest restaurants and disputably claims to have invented the French dip sandwich. A mile away, the equally old Cole's P.E. Buffet also lays claim to its invention.

While Cole's has a great bar atmosphere that's been used as a set for more than 450 films and TV productions over the years, I am unapolgetically a Phillippe's partisan. Step inside and notice the ancient cash register mounted atop an old fashioned candy counter. Sawdust covers a wooden floor well worn by the shuffle of generations of Angelenos: millions over the decades have come for the simple pleasures of its famous sandwich.

Lunchtime crowds scan the menu

This sandwich survived the Depression years, so expect nothing fancy. No Wagyu beef, no panini press, no artisanal bread. What you get is plainly roasted beef, lamb, pork, turkey or ham sliced to order by your counterperson, and laid atop a French roll that's been dipped in au jus. A cheese of your choice is optional. My favorite's simple: lamb and blue cheese, single dipped. A single dip moistens just enough for takeout sandwiches. Double dipped rolls are best eaten right away, as they can sog the bread a bit too much. Smeared heavily with some sinus searing Phillippe's mustard, this is a lunch I'd happily eat until I look like the wizened old veterans who've sat in the same benches since the Roosevelt administration.

Philippe's The Original
1001 North Alameda Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
213-628-3781

Cole's P.E. Buffet
18 East 6th Street
Los Angeles, California, 90014
213-622-4090

PS - For a fancified French dip sliced from roasted prime rib, try the one at the Houston's chain. Many locations across these here United S of A. Served with shoestring potatoes, it's a damn fine, if yuppified and corporatized version of the 1908 originals at about 4 times the cost. But in a good way.

Hiatus interruptus

2005-06-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

Long time readers of this blog will wonder if I fell off a cliff, or got hit by a bus because I haven't updated in forever. So my apologies for this long hiatus, and forewarning of the next one. I've been training for a bicycle ride in July that starts in Atlanta and ends 16 days later in Portland, Maine. I'm part of an organized tour of 35 otherwise rational people who think that pedalling an average of 106 miles a day over the various mountain ranges that run from Georgia to Maine sounds like a good way to spend their summer vacation.

When this trip starts in July, I'll be gone for three weeks and probably won't have internet access. If I get good photos of Carolina BBQ huts and Maine lobster shacks, I'll post, don't you worry.

So I've lost 20 pounds since I started training in earnest this March. The first 10 pounds melted off quickly during phase one of the South Beach diet. Lost it really quickly, but felt physically horrible during this two week, zero carbs phase. The following 10 pounds took 3 months and entailed a lot of hours on the bike. The remaining flab will be a bitch to get rid of, but I think two weeks of all day aerobic effort will help accomplish that goal. That is, if I don't blow out my lungs climbing some mountain in North Carolina.

I intend for this food blog to describe deliciousness in its many forms and to learn from your comments what's striking a chord out there in internet land. I don't think you care to hear about my fitness goals and the exercise / eating habits that are getting me there. Maybe I'm wrong, and this fascinates you. Probably not. Let me know either way.

With a few notable exceptions like my trip to Northern California two weeks ago which included a lunch at Chez Panisse, the past few months have felt somewhat barren of exciting food adventures, but that's because I've chosen that particular view. As a marketing flack I can spin even the most mundane eating experience into positive press, but in truth, I've been lazy and haven't felt like writing. Again, my apologies, and thanks for checking in. I will write as my head and heart get back in line and will update as I'm able.

Honda Ya - Tustin

2005-04-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

American bar food works on the principle of "it's salty, so buy another drink." Pretzels, cocktail peanuts, Chex mix. At best, you can hope for a good burger or properly crisp french fries. I love a bar like Costa Mesa's Goat Hill Tavern as much as the next guy, with over 100 quality beers on tap and peanut shells discarded on a sawdust covered floor. They make no pretense of being anything but a beer lover's bar, but there's nothing to eat other than those oversalted peanuts.

Taking a different tack to keep men in the joint is Hooters, which tarts up their underpaid, leered-at waitresses in silly orange ass shorts dating back to the 1970's roller disco craze. They draw pisswater American lagers from a trough and sling the worst chicken wings to foul the face of the earth, and thrive nationwide with this satin-clad-ass formula.

In other countries, the only enticement to stay at a bar is the company you bring, the anticipation of the next round of inevitably delicious food, and the intangible feeling that you belong there. Spain has tapas bars. Mexican cantinas comp delicious botaňas as you order more cerveza. Japan has izakaya.

Sake: my namesake, the aqua vitae of my family across countless generations. It is the first character of my Japanese last name. It's the middle character in the word izakaya, traditional pubs where sake and beer flow freely and small dishes of food are served to share with friends. I finish work around midnight, grab Katy, and sometimes head over to neighboring Tustin, where Honda Ya stays open until 1am. Since most Irvine "bars" close up around 11, Honda Ya is our default neighborhood bar. Perhaps we should move...

Izakaya offer a large menu of small dishes categorized by the method of cooking: raw, grilled, fried, steamed, and stewed, each with different textures, temperatures and flavors in the mouth. Variety is the watchword at an izakaya. We start off with squid sashimi and natto, which arrives in a small bowl. Thin juliennes of squid resting on a few tablespoons of fermented soybeans, with a sprinkle of nori and green onion. It's your job to squirt some soy sauce and wasabi and stir the contents until the natto takes on a slimy, snot looking consitency. If you think only a Japanese could love this, you're almost right. This is one of Katy's favorite dishes here.

Grilled skewers of beef tongue, bacon wrapped asparagus, bacon wrapped okra, chicken cartilage and chicken breast arrive next. Prepared simply over a hot flame, the flavors of the food itself shine aided with a sprinkle of Japanese sea salt. Simple, and delicious.

We order a tall bottle of Sapporo and a cold Hakkaisan sake. We share the beer by keeping the small glasses topped off. As she's younger than me (and female), this is Katy's "job," and she 's learning to do it well. The Hakkaisan is a chukuchi sake, starting off with a round richness and finishing with a mild alcoholic off dryness. Neither too sweet, nor too dry. Other sake are sweet, described as amakuchi. You might enjoy the extemely sweet, unfiltered sake clouded with rice dregs called nigori sake. Others with a taste for the dry, clean finishing sake should ask the waiters to guide you toward a karakuchi sake.

"Buta no kakuni" is a chunk of pork shoulder slowly simmered in a master sauce of soy, mirin, dashi and a touch of dark sugar that's replenished and reused for the next day's batch. The fatty parts of the pork melt down into an unctious jelly, and contrasts with tender meat with every bite. It's served with a small bit of simmered spinach drizzled with spicy Japanese mustard. If you've ever had the massive "pork pump" [sic] in San Gabriel restaurants like Lake Spring or Mei Long Village, think a small, single serving version of that, minus the Chinese five spice seasoning, and less sweet.

Takoyaki are octopus fritters, small bits of meat encased in dashi seasoned batter and pan fried into a golf ball size. It's served with mayo and tonkatsu sauce, and a few strands of red pickled ginger. They're popular street food and served at festivals, but occassionally found in izakaya, too.

My favorite here is the special handmade steamed crab shumai. Three square raviolis filled with crab meat and minced fish are steamed, and taste cleanly of crab. Unlike most shumai, it contains no pork. The texture is delicate, the flavor decidedly marine. Smear some hot Japanese mustard in the shoyu, and I'm a happy guy.

Despite our trips thus far, we've barely scratched the surface of the more than 100 items on the menu. Weekly specials add even more selection, so it'll take a lot more visits to say we've really tried everything. Certainly, we'll have to try more of their modest but sophisticated sake selection.

Izakaya aren't bars where lonely saps walk in and everyone knows his name, like some fictional bar on a TV show. You bring your own damn friends and they'll welcome you with a century old tradition, well prepared foods, and a place that feels immediately comfortable and familiar, even if you're not Japanese. I can go on ad nauseum and describe every dish we've ever tried at Honda Ya, but anyone who's been to an izakaya will already know what I'm talking about. If you haven't I hope I've tempted you into visiting one near you.

Honda Ya
556 El Camino Real
Tustin, CA
714-832-0081
Open 7 days, dinner only
5:30pm - 1am, last order at 12:30am

[ed - this writeup inspired by Sarah at The Delicious Life, who invited other food bloggers to her virtual event called Bar Fly: Dine at the Bar! I'm looking forward to reading the other submissions.]

OC Weekly on China Garden & dim sum

2005-04-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Photo by Amy Thelig

This week's edition features a review I wrote about one of the finest Cantonese restaurants in Orange County. Click here for the story.

White Castle fries only come in one size

2005-04-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by Josh Karpf

One reason I'm glad I no longer live in New York, the city that brought you street signs that read:

No parking
No standing
Don't even think about it
This means you

Click here to read more about this charming White Castle sign on Chowhound. If you think this sign is a fake, you haven't spent enough time in New York.

In season - green almonds

2005-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

I found green almonds for sale this week at Irvine's Wholesome Choice, a great Persian owned supermarket with an excellent produce section. Not as extensive and exotic as the Berkeley Bowl or Austin's Central Market, but far better than most in Orange County. If you want to play the "my supermarket can beat up your supermarket" game, we'll have to step outside...

Having started phase one of the South Beach diet after last weekend's carb orgy at the Songkran festival, Wholesome Choice provided all the veggies we've been eating this week at the Salt household. In addition to the stores in our area that serve the Persian and Arab populations, I suspect you'll find green almonds for a few more weeks at the better farmer's markets around these parts. Here's a link to farmer's markets in the Los Angeles area, courtesy of the LA Times (free registration required).

The Persian recipes I've seen for green almonds have included fruit and or sugars, so I'm afraid those are out. Perhaps I'll simply boil them and sautee with oil, garlic, and parsley, or something along those lines. To be truthful, I bought these cool looking, fuzzy little critters without knowing exactly what to do with them, but who's not guilty of that every now and then? If you have any carb-free recipes, please leave me a note.

[Update: Regina Schrambling wrote this story for the LA Times about almonds, and talks about San Francisco chef's Judy Rodgers role in popularizing green almonds. Free registration to the LA Times is required.]

Wholesome Choice
18040 Culver Dr
Irvine, CA
949-551-4111

Songkran festival - North Hollywood

2005-04-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Add two parts Buddhist holy day to two parts Thai food festival, a large helping of minor league karaoke singing, a pinch of beauty pageant. Stir with a hyperkinetic water fight among teenagers that resembles an Unreal Tournament game played with Super Soakers and water balloons, and you have a recipe for the Thai New Year festival held at the Wat Thai Temple. Vendors are here every weekend, but not as many as on special events like Songkran.

Thousands filled the temple grounds to sample foods from a score of vendors hawking street foods. When we arrived about 1pm, some booths had lengthy waits of 30 minutes, like the green papaya salad lady. While waiting, we sampled chicken, pork, and beef satay from the vendor next door. Later, we tried garlicky grilled Thai sausages, a mediocre pad thai, and an oversweet bowl of boat noodle soup. Desserts consisted of excellent mango and sticky rice, custardy kanom krok, and sweet crepe called rotee filled with a fried egg, drizzled with sweetented condesed milk and sugar. Sounds odd, but think how good the maple syrup incursion tastes on your breakfast eggs. Get yourself an egg rotee!

The Wat Thai temple

Just some of the food vendors

Satay, anyone?

Green papaya salad Queen

This dish is the food equivalent of standing in front of the stack of Marshalls at a Zeppelin concert. Prepared to order with mortar and pestle with juliennes of unripe papaya, tomato, fish sauce, small pieces of raw salted crab, dried shrimp, tamarind, lime juice, garlic, chili, cilantro, red chili powder and topped with peanuts. Last time, I asked the papaya lady to make mine spicy because I'm manly like that. I couldn't take more than a few bites before succumbing to the knowledge that I am an utter spice wuss who'd be outdone by half the 12 year olds in Bangkok. This time, I asked for mild, and there wasn't enough heat to balance the tamarind sweet and lime tartness. Next time, like Baby Bear, I'll get mine just right.

Thai rice steamers

Just emptied

Saucing steaming sticky rice with coconut milk

Glutinous rice, shorter grained and fatter than the jasmine rice favored by Thais, cooks up sticky and chewy instead of light and fluffy. It's flavored with sweetened coconut milk and a generous amount of salt, and eaten with fresh mango, or durian. I'm gonna be in Georgia this summer, maybe I'll make some with fresh ripe peaches!

She's a mango slicing machine!

With four straight strokes of the knife, ZIP ZIP ZIP ZIP, off comes the skin from half of the mango. Freed of its pit with a swift stroke, she lowers the blade on the mango filet, WAP WAP WAP WAP, and turns the fruit over. In fifteen seconds, your tray of mango and sticy rice is ready.

A man, a plan, a smelly hand: durian!

This vendor cracks open a fresh durian. His left hand is gloved to protect himself from the sharp, weaponlike husk of the fruit. Myself - not a big fan of the fruit that tastes like heaven and smells like hell. If someone hasn't trademarked that cliched description, I think I will and make a fortune from licensing it

Dessert lady ladling

Kanom krok, coconut milk fritters

Fans of the sweet Scandinavian donut aebleskiver, or the savory Japanese octopus fritter takoyaki will recognize the pan used to cook these Thai sweets. Funny how different cultures use similar tools so differently. Here, the rice flour and coconut milk batter is both sweetened and salted, in the distinctly Thai fashion.

Whatever you say, kid

Colorful handbags

You're reading a food blog, so naturally I've focused on the good eats for sale at the Wat Thai temple. Other vendors hawk handmade clothes, jewelry, handbags, Thai music CD's and movie DVD's, cases of fresh fruit, religious icons (it is a temple you're visiting, yes?) and carved wooden phallus charms, presumably to put some sting in your man's thing. Bring the kids and the impotent - something for everyone, and come hungry!

Wat Thai Temple
8225 ColdwaterCanyon Ave.
North Hollywood, CA
818-785-9552

In season - rambutan

2005-04-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

One foodie benefit of living in Asian-rich Orange County is good access to tropical fruits from the Pacific. Mangos are widely available right now, as are jackfruit, durian, and cherimoya. This photo shows rambutan, a delicately sweet and succelent fruit that tastes much like lychee. If a lychee tree were dosed with LSD, rambutan would be the result.

The hairy looking husk is just thick enough that a knife should be used to slice through the skin, revealing the pale fruit inside. Its flesh is textured like a firm grape, and uh, gonadal in shape and size. Its flavor is mildly sweet and far less intimidating than its bristly husk. My kid didn't hesitate to try it, and enjoyed his first try.

I bought a package of Hawaiian grown fruit, 7 for $3.70 at my local Persian supermarket, but imported produce is available all over Little Saigon for less. The specimens I saw in Little Saigon were more brightly colored, magenta swirled with crimson and tipped with neon yellow spikes. Tropical fruit, indeed.

Where to buy them? Click here to see a recent discussion on Chowhound's LA board.

Mmm..... bacon

2005-03-31T22:42:00.000-08:00

Here's the double smoked slab bacon from Tip Top Meats. Will Owen from the LA Chowhound board dropped me an email, and we got to talking about Tip Top in general, and slab bacon in particular. He had recommended sources from his old stomping grounds near Nashville, and I'll post his choices after I've dug up more information.

Surprised to find the rind left on: that is, the pig skin, shown on the left side of the cutting board. This needs to be removed, because it's too tough to eat. Dry cured bacon is considerably dehydrated, and was easy to slice, especially when cold, right out of the fridge. It got a little wiggly as it warmed up, but still much easier to work with than raw pork belly, which squishes around under the knife like the slab of blubber it is.

I made thicker slices than most store bought bacon, and got a little variation, as you'd expect when doing it by hand. I should note it sliced easily because I just sharpened my thin carving knife. Don't try this with dull knives. Of course, the smart thing to do is to buy the slab, and ask the butchers to slice it for you, but I never claimed to be smart.

I see now that old fashioned bacon tastes much more meaty and natural than chemical-and-salt overtreated commercial product, say, like Farmer John brand. This bacon tastes intensely smoky, the sort that comes only from long exposure to cool wood smoke, and not of meat soaked in acrid liquid smoke flavoring. It still tastes of meat because the salt doesn't overwhelm it. Though this product was cured with nitrites and sodium erythorbate, it didn't taste chemically processed. I imagine they use just enough of these curing chemicals to keep the raw bacon pinkish instead of the dull grey of non-nitrited meat.

Would I buy this again from Tip Top Meats? Damn right I would. At $4.95 / pound, it seemed like a bargain for handmade bacon of this quality. I'll be seeking out some other mail order sources, and plan on writing a report in the upcoming months. If you have any favorite artisanal sources, let me know.

Dedication

2005-03-28T02:24:00.000-08:00

A shout out to my friends in Austin, TX who took time to call me last night while they were on a brief death march through the woods at 1 am. They are training for an extended three day adventure race in May which entails mountain biking, hiking, climbing, rappelling, kayaking, spelunking through bat infested caverns, macramè, a written essay, and who knows what else, all with no sleep. FOR THREE CONTINUOUS DAYS.

So sometime in their 12 hour overnight practice run last night, Marlene calls to ask how I'm doing. How I'm doing, while they're hiking dark trails strewn with rocks the size of babyheads in 40 degree, pissing down rain.

"Well, my lazy ass is reclined on the couch watching the Live Links commercial for the umpteenth time on Court TV, thanks for asking."

I then hear someone in the background holler, "UPDATE YOUR BLOG!!" So I dedicate this last entry to you, my team of superheroes. Please don't hesitate to call me if you need a team mate for the essay question.

Meat & vegetables

2005-03-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

Springtime in Southern California means swarms of critters make their northward migration: the slugs return to Capistrano, and massive flocks of butterflies flitter purposefully toward wherever it is they go. On Saturday, I drove to San Diego County through thick schools of butterflies for the entire 70 mile drive. It looked like a plague straight outta the Old Testament, if biblical Egypt were set-dressed by the Queer Eye guys.

After a morning errand in Carlsbad, I headed over to Tip Top Meats. Ostensibly a European deli and meat market that makes German charcuterie, they also have a restaurant that serves their delicious house-made sausages, hams and bacon. I had the Big John breakfast, a bargain for the big breakfast eater: three eggs, home fried potatoes, toast and all you can eat smokehouse bacon, pork link sausage, Polish sausage, bratwurst, or ham, for $6. It's really a smart way to convince you to buy more product on your way out. I tried all of their sausage offerings, and couldn't possibly finish it. They offer huge volume for the money, but also very high quality.

The smoked breakfast links were the best of the bunch, and I ended up buying some to take home. The fat brats and flavorful Polish sausages were griddled slowly to a dark brown, yet still juicy perfection. These sausage makers also know how to cook them well. I have to say I've had better brats in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (the brat capital of the nation), but Tip Top make a fine showing for Southern California.

They sell smoked beef bones for your ever faithful dog. They stock unusual wild game, like wild boar, ostrich, the Cajun specialty turducken, the Pennsylvania Dutch pork loaf called scrapple. They sell a half dozen varieties of German style liverwursts. If it mooed, oinked, clucked or grazed at one point, they have it here, or they'll order it for you.

Their butcher shop sells excellent fresh meats, and house smoked hams, bacon, and turkeys. They cure their own corned beef and pastrami, which I'll have to take home next time. I bought an unsliced slab of double smoked, dry cured bacon. Most supermarket bacon is wet cured, pumped full of brine and artificially flavored with smoke flavor. We end up paying for a lot of water at bacon prices. Before refrigeration was taken for granted, bacon was preserved by dry curing: i.e. packed with salt, sugar, flavorings (and nitrites) to draw out water from the pork belly, then hung in a cool smokehouse for hours which further dehydrates the meat and adds flavor. Can't wait to try it!

I also took home a chunk of black pepper ham. The lingering burn of coarse ground peppercorns smolders for a long time in the mouth, complementing the understated smokiness of the mostly lean ham. A bit spicy for wee kids and invalids, but a good choice for grownups who love black pepper.

They sell all manner of imported goods from across (mostly Northern) Europe, such as the Scandinavian lye-preserved codfish called lutefisk. Take a homesick European there, and you'll bring back one happy Euro. After reading about it for years, I finally tried licorice drops from Holland. Some two dozen varieties are stocked, each with a different shape, texture, or flavor. Unlike American licorice, the less sweet Dutch varieties are spiked more heavily with that distinct anise flavor, and surprisingly, salt. Sometimes lots of salt. One variety used an overwhelming amount: definitely an acquired habit. However, I'm glad that Tip Top stocks so many, and I'll try some others when I take the family to see the famous Carlsbad flower fields in a few weeks.

Tip Top Meats & European Delicatessen
6118 Paseo del Norte
Carlsbad, CA
760-438-2620

About ten miles further south, the Chino family produces unusual varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and famously supplies such temples of California cuisine as Los Angeles' Spago and Berkeley's Chez Panisse. Since strawberries are in season, I bought two small containers of the small French cultivar called mar du bois for a pricy $5 each. These small berries the size of my thumbtip packed with intense tart and sweet flavor make industrially farmed stawberries taste like flavorless red pulp. They grow every kind of produce for flavor, and pick at the height of ripeness to eat that day. Their boutique produce is very expensive, but you'll know where your money goes.

Chino Nojo (nojo being a Japanese word for farm) is well off the freeway in a still underdeveloped part of highly exclusive Rancho Santa Fe, and it's worth going out of your way to buy the best produce grown in Southern California. Bring cash - lots of it - because they don't take credit cards.

Chino Nojo
6123 Calzada Del Bosque
(exit the 5 fwy at Via del Valle east, go about 5 miles and turn right after "The Vegetable Stand" sign)
Rancho Santa Fe, CA
858-756-3184

Banh mi story in the OC Weekly

2005-03-24T17:39:00.000-08:00

I've been in love with the Vietnamese sandwiches called banh mi for some time now, and did an extensive taste test in Little Saigon back in January 2004. I wrote a two part review on Chowhound based on that survey: part one is here, part two is here.

I got a wild hair to pitch a query letter to some magazine offering to write about banh mi, so I held off writing more about it. Concerned about publishing rights and so forth, but mainly because I could slack. As it turns out, the food editor at the OC Weekly read the Chowhound writeups and approached me to write one for him. That story came out in today's edition.

But Dad, it's Smoky....

2005-03-01T02:11:00.000-08:00

This is the "before" picture of baby back pork ribs I smoked last Sunday. The "after" photo didn't come out well because I lost too much daylight by the time they finished cooking, but the ribs cooked up just fine: deeply smoked over hickory, and gently spiced with an improvised (and therefore secret recipe) Oscar night dry rub.

A full load in my Weber Smoky Mountain cooker equals 10 racks of baby backs - a fairly expensive loss if I screw it up. I once screwed up a beef brisket that came out tasting lightly of creosote instead of tasty applewood smoke, but I've solved that problem.

Now that I'm getting more confident, I'm filling the cooker to capacity for the maximum return on my time investment. It takes anywhere from 4 hours for baby backs to 18 hours for a large brisket, so I'm going to fill the cooker, even at the risk of messing up from time to time. One of these days, I'll screw up the courage to smoke a prime rib roast, which costs about $100. Maybe Easter dinner. Or Passover Seder. Note to self: look into the Kosher rulebook.

If you're a fan of real slow cooked Southern barbecue, you'll be disappointed with the lack of a truly great commercial source in Orange County. Yes, there are a few places that'll do in a pinch (Burrell's in Santa Ana, Clayton Shurley's in Newport Beach & Aliso Viejo). Los Angeles has more options, and some really good ones at that (Phillips, Woody's, Bad 2 Da Bone, Jaybee's, Rib Nest...)

But no matter where you live, why gripe about the lack of good cue when you can have fun making it yourself? Sure, there's a learning curve, mostly in controlling the heat of an open fire. But Weber designed their cooker to make good barbecue easy for the home enthusiast. This is not Peking duck or advanced pastry. Head over to the Virtual Weber Bullet, a forum dedicated to the use of the Smoky Mountain cooker. Read up on the basics, and get yourself a Weber. You know you want to.

New Concept - Monterey Park

2005-02-24T18:20:00.000-08:00

About 18 people from the Chowhound board met up last weekend for dim sum at the recently opened New Concept Restaurant. Sorry to be lame, but I'll post photos now and write later. Meantime, click here to read Dommy's writeup on Chowhound.com. She was sitting at another table,which got some items my table didn't, and vice versa.

Watch for this sign

Menu

Abalone Soup

Baked pork buns

Steamed pork buns

Claypot rice with chicken and mushroom

Chow Chiu dumplings

Egg custard cups

Steamed and sauteed gai lan, aka Chinese brocoli

Green tea balls, filled w/ sweet black sesame paste

Shark fin dumpling

Shiu mai

Savory taro dumplings

New Concept Restaurant
700 S. Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA
626-282-6800

BBQ sushi

2005-02-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

Q: You have leftover sushi rice, leftover homemade smoked beef brisket, and a hungry 4 year old. Now what?
A: Desecrate your ancestors.

Don't hate me. Thinly sliced brisket sauced with sweet BBQ sauce, and tied on with a ribbon of nori. My kid ate nori today and liked it for the first time. He ate sushi rice today and liked it. Moreover, he was entertained by the idea that the beef was held on with a seatbelt.

Just be glad I don't keep bologna and yellow mustard in the house.

Temple of Duck

2005-02-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

Some foods can only be had in their far away, native lands, prepared by the experienced hands of wizened old cooks: mopani worms in Zimbabwe, or live monkey brain near the Temple of Doom, where Indiana Jones went with Steven Spielberg's wife and that cute Asian kid.

Just as you won't find a great pastrami in a diner with a ten page menu, one must seek out a specialist for great Peking duck. For me, that means driving far beyond the backwaters of Orange County and into San Gabriel Province, practically annexed by the greatest concentration of Chinese peoples outside of Asia.

In this mighty valley once roamed the American outpost of a legendary Beijing duck house called Quaanjude, which sadly closed down several years ago. Picking up the mantle is a relative newcomer: Lu Din Gee Cafe, where seven of us gathered recently for a duck feast.

Some places, like Empress Seafood will bring out a whole roasted duck, head and all, and make a show of carving it tableside. LDG carves the bird in the kitchen, and only serves the breast meat and the crispy skin in the first course. The legs and other parts are served in a later soup course. Tasting of roasted duck, the soup here is very good. Whoever said duck soup is easy never made a good one.

The skin and breast meat arrives at the table accompanied by thin flour pancakes, a salty black bean paste called tian mian jiang, and a plate of julienned scallion and cucumber. Some places serve a fluffy white steamed bun instead of the thin pancake. I prefer this more traditional form. The pancake is smeared lightly with bean paste, then wrapped around pieces of skin and meat, proving that the Chinese also invented burritos. The best part: tasting like duck chicharron, the perfectly roasted skin gave up what little duck fat remained and reminded me how much better I like duck than, say, turkey, or chicken.

Note to self: learn how to roast a halfway presentable duck by next Thanksgiving.

A perfect Peking duck is the culinary equivalent of simultaneously juggling a bowling ball, a chainsaw, and a wet paintbrush: a balance of conflicting requirements. The prized, crispy skin must be defatted sufficiently, yet the meat below should be greaseless. A humid oven initially helps to defat, but later inhibits crisping. The breast meat cooks faster than the leg meat, meaning the breast will be dry when the thigh is perfect.

Involving air compressors, plenty of refrigerator space, and a few days of preparation, Peking duck is difficult to pull off well at home. If you care to try, click here to find out more. I can make one every day for the rest of my life and I won't ever pull one off as good as Lu Din Gee Cafe. Screw it - next Thanksgiving, we're going to a restaurant for duck, that's why they're there.

Dessert included a passionfruit jelly made with konjac. I saw the molds at IKEA!

A sweet dessert made of peas, something the Japanese would call yokan

Lu Din Gee Cafe
1039 E Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA
626-288-0588

OC Weekly digs ramen

2005-02-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

The OC Weekly has graciously published my first freelance piece today. Many thanks to Gustavo Arellano for running the piece! In case you were wondering what happened to the rest of my ramen writeups, this idea morphed into the OC Weekly story. Click here to read the story.

37 words for "belch"

2005-02-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you've heard that the Innuit language has 37 words for the various states of "snow." I have no idea if this is myth or truth. I learned it in the context that human beings assign narrowly defined distinctions to things we hold most dear, yet we have only one word for "love" in the English language to describe all the ways people are capable of loving.

Another cultural mythoid holds that South Pacific islanders belch after eating to express satisfaction with their meal, and gratitude to the person who cooked it. This leads me to wonder how restaurant critics on those islands write reviews. Are there 37 words for "belch?"

(This is what happens when the mind is allowed to wander unsupervised instead of writing about the wonderful Peking duck we enjoyed at Lu Din Gee Cafe in San Gabriel last Saturday. A review with photos is coming, I promise)

Before you and your Samoan linebacker and/or restaurant-reviewer brothers get your panties all in a bundle, let's make clear I'm just playin' here...

Dr. Literstein on Good vs. Right

2005-02-02T03:13:00.000-08:00

We went skiing in Park City, Utah last week only to find ourselves unpreparedly in the midst of the Sundance Festival, which seemed more L.A. than L.A.: film geeks and wannabes everywhere talking endlessly about themselves.

So at noon, we escaped to a terrific old bar called the No Name Saloon because you can't drink all day unless you start early.

We drank massive, liter steins of delicious, cold beer. I said it was past noon... and we were on vacation... Don't get all 12 step on me.

What food goes good with that much beer? Sometimes the question is not what's good food, but what's the right food. Ideally, your local tavernkeep will run a joint like Santa Monica's Father's Office, where the hamburgers are among the best in a town full of great burgers.

But in the absence of really good food, I'll take really right food. In this case, the No Name served up a righteous basket of fresh fried shoestrings, potato chips, and onion rings. Just greasy enough to keep one's gullet lubricated for more beer, and starchy enough to fill the stomach and keep me (I mean one) from making an ass out of himself.

Sometimes, though, when the winds and tides align, right food will also be good. Buffalo wings go great with beer, and the best on the planet used to be made in a dive bar called The Rafters in Cortland, NY. We'd head there after work and order a plate of outsized chicken wings that could've come off an albatross, or a pterodactyl. George, the owner, would never tell anyone where he sourced his wings, or what he put in his magic sauce. Crunchy, meaty, salty, saucy and custom spiced just for my asbestos palate, George's wings remain the best I've ever tasted. Proving that you can't go home again, the Rafters is no more, and the puny, pallid wings that most bars sadly serve these days are neither right, nor good. RIP, George, and thanks for everything.

Ramen "Week" - yeah, whatever

2005-01-26T01:23:00.000-08:00

So I'm full of shit and man enough to admit it. I've got three more ramen shops to write up, and but I'm leaving to go skiing today. Park City. With the Sundance Festival going on. So much for a quiet, off-peak visit to see my college roomate Matt, who happens to bake bread for the resort.

So how about Ramen Month? No, month's almost over. Ramen Q1?

Treat for Tet

2005-01-24T11:59:00.001-08:00

I'm interrupting Ramen Week to announce that February 9 marks the start of the lunar new year. Happy 4702, everyone! All over Little Saigon, restaurants and bakeries are gearing up with seasonal treats for Tet. This also means that weekend traffic in that part of town will be a nightmare - go during the week, if you're able.

Visit Viet World Kitchen to read Andrea Nguyen's Tet edition.

You're looking at a sesame and cashew brittle I picked up at Van's Bakery. It's nothing like the clodgy, too-thick pistachio brittle I make that puts me at risk of dental reconstruction. I hang my head in shame. Van's diaphanous candy just barely cements the lightly toasted sesame seeds and cashew pieces into an impossibly thin crisp.

You'll find all sorts of Viet / Chinese / French baked goods at Van's. Try the freshly baked waffles. Available in durian flavor or pandan/coconut, even my 4 year old lily-white stepson likes them. Don't be a big gringo wuss - go. It's a bakery, for chrissakes, you'll find something you'll like. If Van's is "too Asian," try the very French Boulangerie Pierre & Patisserie a couple doors down.

Like so many other treats available now, this brittle is around for only a few more weeks. Get some before it's gone!

Van's Bakery
Several locations in Orange County, San Gabriel, and San Jose
14346 Brookhurst St
Garden Grove, CA
714-839-1666

Boulangerie Pierre & Patisserie
14352 Brookhurst St
Garden Grove, CA
714-418-9098

Oki Doki - Costa Mesa

2005-01-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

Goofy name aside, the folks at Oki Doki are serious. About soup. Soup is consistently great here. I've been telling people on Chowhound for years that the sizzling rice soup is amazing. If it's possible to kick ass with both feet, they do it day in and day out with their chicken stock.

Their ramen appears to be an afterthought, however. You'll easily miss it if you're not paying attention to the menu. Unsurprisingly, they make the ramen with this fabulously flavored chicken broth seasoned only with salt. Chicken soup is an exception in the pork-centric ramen world, and delicious. I finshed the whole bowl of soup, right to the bottom.

Most of the toppings are typically Japanese: the chashu, hardboiled egg, bean sprouts, and scallions. The delicous, fried crunchy bits of garlic are an atypical, probably Viet influence. Oki Doki bills itself as a pan-Asian restaurant with touches from Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisine. Some of these international items are good, like the Korean seafood pancakes and the Vietnamese Imperial egrolls. Avoid the stir fried Chinese dishes, however.

Eggrolls w/ lettuce and mint to wrap them in and spicy nuoc mam dipping sauce

This place is Japanese owned, so ask the wait staff to guide you their Japanese izakaya specialities if you go for dinner. The lunch menu is more limited. Izakaya are pubs where small dishes are served to share with your drinking companions. The menu of daily specials is usually good. Of these, I like the eggplant sauteed with ground pork and red chili powder. It's a version of mabo dofu, called mabo nasu. This is a lightly spiced Japanese version of the Sichuan dish called pockmarked lady's tofu, minus the tofu and Sichuan peppercorn.

But I digress. Oki Doki makes a fine ramen, especially if you prefer a lighter soup. Another nearby option: Mitae Ramen makes a very light, vegetable-rich, soy sauce flavored Tokyo ramen. Mitae is probably my least favorite because of my bias for rich, porky soup, but for you - I'll go and report back. Stay tuned as Ramen Week continues...

Oki Doki
3033 S. Bristol St. #O
(SW corner of Paularino)
Costa Mesa, CA
714-540-2066

Shinsen Gumi Hakata Ramen - Fountain Valley

2005-01-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

Above: chashu ramen

The world of difference between instant ramen and real ramen is like the gap between great homemade chicken soup and canned condensed: it’s hard to appreciate either until you’ve had both.

My favorite in Southern California is Fountain Valley’s Shinsen Gumi (SSG), which specializes in a murky, pork-rich tonktosu soup. Ramen shops that offer tonkotsu soup on their menu in addition to soy and miso soups (*cough*...Ebisu, a half mile from SSG) most likely cheat by adding a commercial tonkotsu base to their all-purpose broth. Shinsen Gumi offers only this style of soup, and does it better than anyone in these parts.

SSG names their ramen after Hakata, a Kyushu port city. Their unique broth takes 15 hours to make by vigorously boiling bones, meat, and vegetables, rendering a richly murky, flavorful base the color of Mom’s pork chops. A secret-recipe soup flavoring is added to this broth, to your liking: light, regular, or strong.

Customize your ramen further at SSG. Kyushu soup is slicked with pork fat, and SSG lets you select how much you want. The noodles will be cooked to your spec: soft, regular, or firm. I order firm, because they'll continue to cook in the bowl. Their extra thin noodles have an elastic resilience that please the teeth.

The standard ramen comes topped with chopped scallions, red julienned ginger, and a slice of chashu, Japanese roast pork. There's a dozen additional toppings to choose from. Add extra pork, a hard boiled egg, bamboo shoots, nori, butter, or get a dollop of spicy miso on the side. This Korean influenced chili paste packs a lot of heat. Although I love spicy foods, the spicy miso overwhelms the delicious soup.

You can get an extra serving of noodles for 95 cents. For the stunt eater / frat boy set: men who can finish six extra helpings and women that polish off five get their extras for free.

Above: gyoza comes with the "A" set lunch

Lunch combos cost less than $8. The same items at dinner will run a lot more. Choose from several excellent sides, notably the gyoza: one-bite garlicky potstickers expertly cooked with a crispy crust. Dipped in a mix of soy, vinegar and chili oil, gyoza goes with ramen like strippers with rock stars.

I love the Spam musubi: a Hawaiian mom might pack this for lunch. A teriyaki-grilled slice of Spam between two layers of steamed rice, and wrapped with seaweed. These sounded wrong to me at first, but they’re delicious! Arrive early, because these sell out quickly. Other sides such as fried rice or salad are competent, but unexceptional.

SSG is part of a Gardena-based group of restaurants that offer Japanese specialties not found in your typical sushi / teppan shop. The Fountain Valley location has the ramen shop, and an adjoining restaurant that offers grilled Japanese pub foods called robatayaki – be advised to choose the right storefront. The exceptionally delicious (and fairly pricy) charcoal-grilled fare and sake selection at SSG merits its own review; watch for that in a future story.

Shin-Sen-Gumi Hakata Ramen
18315 Brookhurst St. Ste 1
(Across the parking lot from the Rite Aid)
Fountain Valley, CA
714-962-8971

Ramen 101 w/ Professor Salt

2005-01-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

Cold rainy days call for hot soup. Toothsome noodles. A slice of braised pork. Those three elements spell ramen with a capital R. During last week's torrential rainstorms, I explored some of the Orange County ramen joints I mentioned in the post called Ramentown USA. I'll post specific reviews later this week.

I consider the dish a soup with noodles, as opposed to noodles with soup. I make this distinction because the soup is my focus. Any ramen guy can buy noodles and boil them al dente. Does he* know how to build a broth, and make it great day after day?
* Props to the lady ramen guys. The other 99.8% of ramen guys are guys.

Distinguishing ramen as a soup dish serves a second purpose, of defining its regional style. The most common style originated in Tokyo, defined by a clear broth flavored with soy sauce (shoyu). A miso flavored soup comes from the northern island of Hokkaido. The murky, fat-slicked pork broth from Kyushu is also known as tonkotsu (pork bone) soup. The fourth major style of soup simply flavored with salt is called shio ramen. I'm a tonkotsu soup guy, but some places make a damn fine clear soup, too.

Broth is the foundation for the soup. Shops post signs proudly proclaiming how many hours it takes to make their broth. Technique is critical, and secretive. Pork leg bones might be cracked with a hammer to expose the marrow or not, depending on the desired result. To make a clear broth, bones are simmered gently to draw out flavors, but not the fats and proteins that would cloud it. Tonkotsu broth is boiled vigorously to render the fatty marrow that colors it a pallid, off white. Either way, some of the broth might be set aside to start the next day's batch.

The cook adds another layer of obsessively flavored seasonings to this foundation. The slice of pork served with your bowl was braised in a soy sauce based liquid. Like Chinese "red cooked" pork, some of this liquid is saved to cook the next day's pork, and the rest flavors the soup broth. Like Shrek, a ramen soup has many layers.

Vegetarians be advised: if yer vegetable ramen don't say it's truly vegetarian, it ain't.

Noodles vary in style, but not as much as the soup. Ramen noodles are fresh wheat and egg noodles. Some will be fat as spaghettini, others thin as capellini. Some will be frizzy, some straight. Ask for "kata-men" to get it cooked firmer than normal. The noodles will continue to cook and soften in your hot soup. Places that hand-stretch their own are rare even in Japan, but worth seeking out to witness the zenith of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Want to know more? Worldramen.net will tell you everything you'd possibly want to know about ramen: the variations, photographic examples of the best in Japan, and where to get ramen around the globe.

Then go rent Tampopo. It's the classic food movie about ramen. And movies.

Nam Viet - Irvine

2005-01-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

If I tell you about a place whose food I don't love, do I do you a disservice? The chef came out to say hi, and wants to hear feedback. Should I give her my honest, somewhat negative opinion?

What would Buddha do?

A Vietnamese restaurant just opened in my neighborhood, and my first visit underwhelmed me. Really nice owner is making a go of it and I want her to succeed. But the food is overpriced for what it is, and not as good as others places. $7 for banh mi might fly in a neighborhood used to paying that much for a Quizno's sub. But any number of bakeries in Little Saigon sell a killer banh mi for $1.75.

We started with their excellent coffees: I had a Viet coffee with sweetened condensed milk, Katy had the latte. They've invested in some serious coffee equipment, and they know how to use it. Very good stuff.

We tried a couple dishes: the fried spring rolls, house special pho, and a roast pork banh mi. The spring rolls were nicely done - served with the classic accompaniements of lettuce leaf, mint, and fish sauce to dip in, these were competent, but not mind blowing. Total for lunch ran $35. Kinda spendy, in other words.

The banh mi was good, the pork more so than the baguette sourced from Gala Bakery in Long Beach. Baguettes are at their best very briefly after they're baked, so any banh mi shop that buys their bread elsewhere starts with a big handicap. The roast pork is very well seasoned with a slightly sweet glaze, and expertly grilled.

The pho needs work. The broth is too sweet for my tastes, the brisket tough and leathery. Brisket needs to cook for a long time to cook tenderly, and that didn't happen with mine. Perhaps the kitchen still needs to work out the kinks. Until they get sorted out, I'd choose Pho Bac on Barranca Pkwy for pho in this part of Irvine.

I don't claim to be any kind of expert on Viet cuisine, but I've eaten enough to know a restaurant that caters to Viet clientele from one that doesn't. Someone who's intimidated by Little Saigon but wants Viet food can have a good meal here, love the cuisine, and explore further. That was how it worked for me when I had my first Thai meal in a suburban, gringo-ized restaurant. And perhaps that's the customer that Nam Viet seeks. Try it for yourself and decide.

Nam Viet
15455 Jeffrey Rd
Irvine
949-552-5500

Two books for the New Year

2005-01-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Ever wanted to order off of the specials menu hand-written in Chinese in a restaurant where nobody else is speaking English? The serious food enthusiast should order a copy of James D McCawley's The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters.

McCawley's a linguistics professor teaching the written language found on menus, complete with pratice exercises. He doesn't attempt to teach any of the spoken dialects, which is a whole different ballgame. My resolution for this year is to understand at least half of the specials menu in the local restaurants that cater to the Chinese community here in Irvine.

Almost every herb and spice used in European and Asian cuisines is well photographed and described in Jill Norman's Herbs and Spices: The Cook's Reference. Publishing color photos on every page of a book is terribly expensive, so I hope Norman sells enough copies to keep this volume in print!

This culinary encylopedia illustrates hundreds of herbal ingredients both common and unusual. I recently purchased Vietnamese corn tea, which contains pandan leaf. What's that? Norman's got it covered. If you're an eggheaded type like me, then this book's for you.

Oh - for disclosure's sake - I am now pimping Amazon. I'm recommending these books because I sincerely like them, not because I want the nickel I earn from you clicking through and buying stuff from them. So though I feel a tad whorish, I bought these books from Amazon, and I feel good about sending you there too.

Vietnamese Costco

2004-12-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

T & K Food Warehouse stocks every Viet - Chinese food item imaginable inside a ginormous blimp hangar of a building. I ran into many items I've never seen before, and took home a few. I love being baffled by foods I'm completely ignorant of. As with Costco, many items are packed in bulk quantities.

I found the elusive Szechuan peppercorn (labeled as Chinese prickly ash), which has been hard to find since the US Department of Agriculture confiscated much of the wholesale supply several years ago. The medicinal tingle of the numbing spice is legal again in the US, but still hard to find.

$7.99 for a big bag that could numb all the mouths in Sichuan province.

Corn tea. I give it a thumbs-up, too.

Made of toasted corn silk and other medicinal herbs, it tastes toasty and mildy sweet. Who knew? I also took home artichoke tea, and it's good in an herb tea way. Slightly bitter and alkaline, it's one of those "cooling" foods that I should eat to balance my body with, says my ayurvedic counselor.
Both teas available from www.hungphatteacoffee.com

Dafuck is this? Anyone? Beuller?

Both Maine and local lobster are available, at least until they sell this one.

T & K Food Warehouse
9681 Bolsa Ave
Westminster, CA
714-775-6678

Quan Hy - Westminster

2004-12-29T20:02:00.000-08:00

In today's episode, our band of meddling kids explore the mysteries of Hue cuisine at Little Saigon's Quan Hy. Sandra invited friends from the Chowhound board. I loved that nobody cared what was on the menu. We all were in, no matter what showed up on the table. True chowhounds!

The chorus of flavors in Vietnamese cuisine fascinates me. If there's a Vietnamese term for medley of contrasting flavors and textures, I'd like to know. Herbs like ginger and cilantro play off salty, pungent fish sauce laced with palm sugar. Crunchy brown bits of fried shallot versus fresh green onion. Soft, gooey glutinous rice against fried bits of rice cracker. All in one dish. Fascinating, simple, and a lovely principle with which to feed loved ones.

Our waiter did a great job describing dishes we never tried, and suggested a few winners. He steered us away from one of the clam dishes, saying it's a Hue specialty that even some Vietnamese don't like.That's like waving a steak in front of a dog with this group. Yeah, we got it and loved it. He later revealed that he doesn't like this dish.

We started with banh beo, steamed rice cakes with shredded shrimp. Splashed with fish sauce flavored with hot chilis, these were terrific. The rice cake's neutral flavor plays with the slightly sweet fish sauce, the shrimp, and the crunchy fried shallot.

Next up: banh it ram, described inadequately on the menu as "potsticker stuffed with mushroom, and shrimp on crunchy rice cake." It's a clash of textures: a saucer shaped fried rice cake stuffed with shrimp and shrooms, and capped with steamed and pounded sticky rice that I can only describe as mochi's gooey cousin. Garnished with green onion and fried shallot, this was one of my favorite dishes. If you like mochi, definitely get it.

Soups were next: bun bo dac biet cha hue. Special Hue royal noodle soup with pork, beef, and pork patties. Hue style broth is somewhere between the clear beefy flavor of a good pho broth and the funky, fiery, pork-rich cauldron of red chili and lime of a Mexican pozole. This version came with substantially thick, cut pieces of rice noodle, well stewed pieces of pork, beef and pork patty. The pork patty here is like a skinless sausage, mildly flavored and unthreatening. I've had Hue style noodles at Thanh My, and their patty is a square of congealed pork blood. Complex, tart, tangy, herby and spicy.

Banh canh tom cua white noodle soup w/ crab and shrimp. The soup is pure essence of crab, tinted turmeric yellow, and slightly starch thickened. The thickener got in the way of an otherwise lovely soup, filled with thick hand cut noodles, crabmeat and seafood.

Com hen. Stir fried manila clams and vegetables with steamed rice. This is the dish our waiter warned us about. He called it a "jungle style" dish. Well, that's one jungle I'd like to spend more time in. With lots of shredded vegetables and fruit (pineapple!) supporting the steamed shreds of clam, it's practically a salad. It comes with a bowl of hot clam broth, chili paste, julienned ginger, and a pungent shrimp paste. For Viet customers, the kitchen mixes these components together, but they kept it separate for us gringos in case we didn't like any of them.

Anyway, the condiments are combined with the dish, and served with steamed rice. The crisp rice cracker studded with black sesame softens, and adds its character to the dish. Fabulous!

Mi guang. Yellow noodles w/ shrimp, pork, and mixed vegeables. This reminded me of a Thai dish, but with cleaner, more distinct flavors. The individual voices in a Thai dish sometimes get lost in the song. Vietnamese food flavors somehow remain distinct within a multilayered dish. Excellent!

We didn't try desserts from Quan Hy because Sandra brought treats from L.A.'s superchic new patisserie, Boule. Sandra lives practically around the corner from this very high end boutique of pastry. Lucky!

Below are macaroons: lemon, rose, and chocolate. We also tried five chocolate treats. Wasabi flavored chocolate truffles, passsionfruit jellies, caramel filled chocolates with sea salt, and a couple others that I don't remember. The other photos, sadly, didn't come out well.

I stumbled across NorCal based writer Andrea Nguyen's Viet World Kitchen. Check out the Mama Says page for cooking tips from a Vietnamese mom with gems like, "When bringing home your bottle of fish sauce (or any other kind of condiment), avoid laying them down in the bag or in your car. The bottles are seldom packaged with tight seals and can leak."

Quan Hy
10212 Westminster
Westminster, CA
714-636-1652

or

9727 Bolsa Ave
Westminster
(inside the T & K plaza - see my Vietnamese Costco post)

Goodbye Jerry

2004-12-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

Jerry Orbach 1935 - 2004

Jerry Orbach died yesterday of prostate cancer at age 69. He starred as Detective Lennie Briscoe in Law & Order, one of my favorite TV shows. He convincingly played the real New Yorker he actually was. I'm saddened by his loss, even though I only knew him through his body of work.

Peace be with you, Jerry.

Take a trip back

2004-12-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas dinner featured a Honeybaked ham. I have a soft spot for Honeybaked because it takes me back to my college years, when I taught skiing at a local ski resort. The Kreuger family owned Honeybaked at that time, and they brought their kids to ski with us for years.

They'd bring two hams for the ski school every weekend. The day crew got one, and destroyed it before anyone got seconds. I worked on the smaller night crew, and we always had leftovers. We'd come in from a cold night of skiing, and tear into the spice and sugar crusted slices of ham, smeared with the sweet and spicy champagne mustard. Food always tastes better after working hard outside, doesn't it?

There are fancier, "better" hams out there, but none of them evoke memories of a job I loved in my heyday. I thought of friends I haven't seen in 15 years. They might be like me - older, heavier, a little more wrinkled than my memory wants to admit. I'll bet some of them are still ski gods and goddesses, on dodgy knees. Me - I haven't skiied in 6 years. I hope I still can when I go to Park City next month.

Food and holidays unlock powerful memories. Where did your Christmas dinner take you?

King me!

2004-12-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine invited us for live king crab at Irvine's China Garden. It's close to home, and I go there when I want good dim sum without schlepping to the San Gabriel Valley. For the usual Hong Kong style dim sum, it's the best choice in Orange County. We ordered the usual suspects: the very white-peppery hot & sour soup; a couple variations on har gow (steamed dumplings w/ shrimp and greens); a couple potsticker iterations; steamed and baked char siu bao (BBQ pork buns); etc.

Today, we splurged on live king crab and live giant clam, which showed me another side of this restaurant that I'd taken somewhat for granted as my local dim sum joint. Color me spoiled.

The 5+ pound crab was brought to our table for approval, and sent to the kitchen to meet it fate in two ways. The legs were steamed and shocked in ice water. After this, it'll be hard to go back to frozen king crab ever again.

The joints around the body were prepared "house special" style: coated first in cornstarch and fried, then sauteed in a sweet / tart sauce along with green onions and hot peppers. I'm not sure of the Chinese name for this preparation. Westminster's Seafood Cove offers crab, lobster, shrimp, calamari, even mussels in this way, and they're all delicious. I'll have to see if China Garden's menu covers the same items.

Even though we were pretty full, my friend, a known instigator, asked if we should order a live giant clam. I'll pretty much agree to jump off any bridge, so the kitchen prepared it for us in two ways: sashimi style, and sauteed with asparagus. If you order giant clam at a sushi bar, two little pieces will run about $8. We got the whole giant clam prepared two ways for $50. Not a bad deal if you look at it that way, but not cheap. I neglected to photograph the clam dishes. Forgive me.

We saw other tables ordering this thing that resembled a frou frou pot pie, so we jumped off of that bridge too. It turns out to be an almond "souffle," and takes 20 minutes for the kitchen to cook to order. Creamy, mildly sweet almond milk fills the ramekin about halfway, and as it bakes, the steam raises the elastic puff pastry to form the pale golden dome. Inside the almond milk lurked 5 gingko nuts simmered until tender. A pleasant end to a lunch filled with new surprises. I'm looking forward to more new discoveries from China Garden.

China Garden
14825 Jeffrey Rd
Irvine, CA
949-653-9988

I suck

2004-12-17T01:53:00.000-08:00

I apologize for how much I suck. The Quality Seafood outing was over a month ago, and I finally got around to posting it. Will get back to a weekly reporting after the holidays.

Merry Chanukwanzaamas and a Happy New Year, everyone.

Sir, your 15 minutes are up

2004-12-17T01:08:00.000-08:00

My little blog got a mention on another blog called The Food Section.com today, along with Chowpatty's Eating L.A. and Steve Doggy Dogg's Hot Dog Spot.

Fun, this blogosphere is. Maybe the novelty will wear off someday, but right now I'm enjoying being part of a bigger realm of food geeks.

Quality Seafood

2004-11-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

Redondo Beach's Quality Seafood reminds me of the seaside fish markets along the coast of Long Island, where I grew up. Dad and I would visit nearby Freeport NY, and stop by the restaurants and fish markets of the mile-long wharf to see fish hauled freshly from the local waters. In today's world that fresh fish more likely flew across the world and got to the market on a truck, but that's progress for you.

Quality Seafood has anchored a waterfront corner of King Harbor since 1954. Quality sells all manner of seafood: freshly dead, alive, or ready to eat. One part of the building houses live tanks that hold all kinds of crabs and lobsters, including a local spiny lobster in season right now. More tanks hold dozens of oysters, clams, mussels, whelk, and live sea urchins, all of which will be gladly served as you like: on the half shell or steamed.

On this day, some of the folks from Chowhound gathered to sample the seafood, drink beer, and feed the panhandling gulls and pigeons. This is not a seafood restaurant, per se. It's a fish market next to a slightly shabby marina with poured concrete picnic tables outside. Don't go for the atmosphere. Go for the wide variety of live shellfish, cooked or shucked to order.

The clams and oysters are the best bet here. Live uni can be hit or miss: some will be amazingly sweet and delicious, others urchins will be slightly bitter or not flavorful. The crabs and lobsters are cheaper and just as delicious at the Cantonese seafood houses of the San Gabriel Valley and Little Saigon. However, Dommy! notes that local spiny lobsters aren't easy to find, and Quality Seafood has them. I tasted some of her lobster, and it's definitely a different animal than Maine lobsters.

I shot some video of the live uni still moving their spines while we ate the goods inside the shell. Video streaming is still beyond my technical ability - perhaps for the better in this case.

These live tanks hold the larger clams, whelks and sea urchins.

Quahogs, Golden littlenecks, and local conch.

The small white clams in the center were imported from Ireland. These were sweet, delicate and very tender when steamed. Definitely get some Irish clams!

The fresh fish counter runs the entire length of this part of the building. TomSwift had fresh whitebait fried to order. Must have been good, because they disappeared by the time I finished taking pictures.

Checking out the breaded and fried offerings from the fry bar.

Our oyster schucker, hard at work.

Quality Seafood offers a couple dozen varieties at any given time.

Various fish are also smoked on site. We got the black cod - very rich, very delicious when warmed in the nuke for a minute. By the time you read this, eels will be available smoked.

This is a garibaldi that lives in the presumably clean waters of King's Harbor. Garibaldis are California's highly protected state fish. If you so much as harm a scale on their knobby golden heads, the game warden is allowed to chop off your pinky yakuza style and ceremoniously feed it to the offended garibaldi in homage.
Gurlfren and I have spotted this little guy the past two times we've visited Quality Seafood, and have named him Orenthal J. Garibaldi. Say hello if you see him.

Quality Seafood
130 International Boardwalk
Redondo Beach, CA
310-374-2382
It's imprecise to say it's at the base of the Redondo Beach Pier,because it's next to the Strand north of the pier. Do this: drive into the underground parking garage @ the pier. After you take your parking ticket, drive straight until you can't go further. There's a staircase at that end of the garage. Take it downstairs to the waterline, and QS is on your right.

Barbecued bacon & eggs

2004-11-13T15:24:00.000-08:00

I began thinking of my smoker as an outdoor oven, and realized that most any food that can be roasted or baked indoors can be cooked outdoors. Much more than the usual barbecued meats would taste good cooked in this way. The possibilities seem endless, as long as I learn how to control the heat in the cooker.

This particular barbecue lesson focused on holding a higher temperature of 350 degrees F, so I chose to cook turkey parts and sausages. These tender items, small in size, do not require the all-day smoking at low temperatures that large, fatty, sinew-rich cuts like pork shoulder and beef brisket require. To achieve 350 F, I had to increase airflow to the charcoal by opening the bottom vents fully and also by propping open the door of the cooker by resting it on the shovel I use to scoop the coals. Seems ad hoc and hokey, but it worked.

As long as I was firing up the smoker, I wanted to try a couple of appetizer ideas. Chileheadmike on chowhound.com suggested bacon-wrapped jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and a smoked cocktail sausage, so I tried something like it, with excellent results. Although I love my spicy food, Gurlfren and 4 year old Adam do not relish the sting of capsaicin, so I thought I'd wrap some hard boiled eggs with bacon and smoke them for their less bulletproof palates.

These smoke-burnished turkey parts cooked for an hour after brining overnight to reach this state. The breasts and wings tasted good (but it's still boring ol' turkey). The legs tasted off, but that's because I sourced frozen legs that turned out to be old and nasty. Lesson: use fresh meat only. The skin rendered out a lot of fat, but wasn't as crisp as I'd like. Next time, I'll dry the skin in the fridge overnight so it'll crisp up when cooked.

Above, on the left: bacon wrapped jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese. On the right: halved, hard-boiled eggs. Foreground: kosher salt, prepared for smoking. I heard about someone who sells smoked salt, and liked the idea of having some handy any time I wanted to add a pinch of smoke flavor. The salt smoked for 30 minutes, and took on a too- subtle smoke flavor. I'd probably extend the time to 45 or 60 minutes next time.

Jalapenos and hard boiled eggs, after smoking. I'm convinced anything wrapped in bacon and smoked will taste good: medallions of skunk, for instance, or crow on a stick. Mmmm....bacony crow.

Closeup of the eggs. These were mighty good right out of the smoker! Next time, I'll make deviled eggs with the yolks before smoking.

Leatherface

2004-11-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

At the rate I'm using my new smoker, I'll permanently smell like a slab of bacon and have a leathery, browned face from standing in its exhaust. Very excited by the semi-success of last week's pork ribs, I cooked up 16 pounds of pork shoulder yesterday, with oustanding results.

This photo shows the pork after I basted it with a vinegar and spice "mop" after 5 hours of cooking. It took a total of 8 hours to finish, and yielded about 9 pounds of pulled pork for my freezer. I was late to work, but the boss was very understanding, especially because I took some of it in for everyone to taste.

I'm encouraged by the good results from this Weber smoker and will be using it often. If I knew how easy it is to operate, I would've bought one years ago. If you see a Japanese born New Yorker in Southern California smoking up some Southern barbecue, it might be me. Next purchase for this good ol' boy: old pickup truck with gun rack, perhaps.

Irvine farmer's market

2004-10-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday mornings in Irvine mean there's probably something interesting to taste over at the farmer's market near the University. Our market compares feebly to Santa Monica's or San Francisco's Ferry Building market that I wrote about in September. Sadly, the UC Irvine farmer's market remains the largest one we have in Orange County.

My four year old cares nothing about exotic produce or how much better things are at other markets. The important thing is all the free samples of fruits in season. Today's tastes featured Fuji and Pink Lady apples, Fuyu persimmons, pomegranates and the last of this year's yellow peaches.

Homegrown

Irvine's hyperplanned development over the past couple decades means that most of its former farmland and wild grasslands have been paved over into the über-suburb that you see today. While there are large plots in Irvine still being farmed industrially for tomatoes and strawberries, these too will be developed over the next decade.

So it's nice to talk to real farmers who work the earth every day and buy carrots that smell of rich, fertile soil, even if it's trucked in hundreds of miles from California's Central Valley. Here, a young boy in the midst of Southern Californian suburbia can learn that apple season starts as melon season ends, and taste how strawberries have no flavor or sweetness in October.

UCI Farmer's Market
In the shopping center parking lot across from the UCI Campus
Campus Drive, cross street is Bridge
Look for the In n Out Burger or Steelhead Brewery
Saturday mornings from 9a-1pm

Some folks on Chowhound wrote about Strickland's Ice Cream, a mile east from the farmer's market in yet another strip mall. This is an Ohio based chain that dates back to 1936. Here, you'll see large churns dispensing old fashioned soft-serve into freezer bins. The soft serve feels smooth and rich on the palate, with no discernible ice granules. Vanilla and chocolate are always on the menu, and two other flavors of the day constantly rotate on the menu of soft serve. Hard-frozen pints and quarts of other flavors are available to take home, too.

The folks on Chowhound described the soft serve as a frozen custard, and I asked what that means. Technically, any ice cream base that has egg yolks in it can be considered a frozen custard. The lady I spoke with said that eggs were in Strickland's original recipe prior to WWII. Since eggs were too precious during the war, they changed to an eggless recipe and nobody seemed to mind. Their recipe remains eggless to this day, and is no longer called frozen custard.

I'm told they add real fruit purees to their base. Today, we tried vanilla and pumpkin, since it's Halloween and all. Both tasted like the real thing, and were pleasantly sweet. For soft serve ice cream, I think it's the best game in town. Far, far better than the frozen custard at Kill Devil's in Lake Forest.

Strickland's Ice Cream
4523 Campus Drive (next to Jimmy Z's)
Irvine, CA
949-387-9955
http://www.stricklands.info

Barbecue Beginner

2004-10-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

So I tried my hand at real barbecue last night in my Weber Smoky Mountain (WSM), a charcoal and wood burning smoker that I bought at my buddy Buddha's behest. He travelled from San Diego last weekend for the Los Angeles Chowhounds' fundraising potluck, and showed me how to use my WSM. There's a way to fire the charcoal so they burn steadily for over 12 hours while keeping the temperature in the sweet spot between 200 - 250 degrees. Last night at 1:15am, the temperature inside the smoker stabilized at 225 degrees F, and in went the ribs. Charcoal fires will spike up in temperature, but the temperature never went above 275 by the time I went to bed at 3:30am

The results you're seeing are overcooked. I should've pulled these out after about five hours, instead of the seven hours they cooked. Though they have a beautiful pink smoke ring and plenty of smoky flavor, they're dried out. You can tell the meat's shrunk too much by how much of the bones are exposed. Anyway, a positive experience in controlling the heat inside the smoker and a lesson learned about timing.

My first ribs of many, many more to come!

Food void

2004-10-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

Lake Forest, CA

Black holes exist, and I have proof. Somewhere in this quiet inland town, an ominous vortex sucks any compelling dining experience into its massive, swirling void. If someone has eaten at a really good Lake Forest restaurant, please tell me about it. Nory's Peruvian - tried about 3 dishes there once, and wasn't excited enough to return. King's Fish House at the El Toro mall - merely ok for a chain place. I cut Peppino's some slack - I actually like their New York style pizza. Most places I try in Lake Forest just disappoint me.

Case in point: Kill Devil's, a West Coat franchise of a North Carolina chain that sells pulled pork sandwiches and frozen custard. I suppose it's possible in the Carolinas to sell a pulled pork sandwich that doesn't taste at all of smoke. I suspect a place like that would shut down pretty quickly where pulled pork is king.

Note to Kill Devil's Lake Forest franchisee: pulled pork = barbecue = meat smoked for long hours over wood embers. Perhaps a visit to the home office in Kill Devil Hills is in order. If y'all came to the Chowfiesta potluck put on the Los Angeles Chowhounds this past weekend, our man Buddha would've shown you how it's done. Kill Devil's cold, shredded pork is meekly schpritzed with a vinegar based sauce and piled on a hamburger bun with some uninspired coleslaw. Interesting? Not.

Kill Devil's also sells frozen custard. I didn't grow up with this stuff, so it seems like soft serve ice cream to me, and it doesn't lift my kilt. I admit my ignorance. However, if you appreciate this stuff, they have an extensive menu of their custard desserts painted onto a surfboard.
Frozen custard menu

The surfboard menus showed up in the past month. Prior to that, they sold a sandwich made from the best Italian sausage made in our local area, from Sabatino's in Newport Beach. It's no longer on the menu. Go figure - they get rid of the one really interesting item on their menu. Damn you, black hole of Lake Forest!
Kill Devil's
23842 El Toro Rd
Lake Forest, CA
949-462-0690
http://www.killdevilsfrozencustard.com/

Epilogue: As of summer 2005, Kill Devil's Lake Forest location ceased to exist.

Want a good pulled pork sandwich in Orange County without tending a wood fire for 8 hours ? Head up to Huntington Beach and give Smokin Mo's Barbecue a shot. Their pulled pork has just a faint taste of smoke, and it's the one thing on Mo's menu that I really recommend. Their excellent coleslaw is based on a highly regarded recipe from The Pantry in downtown Los Angeles.
Mo's Barbecue
301 Main St. #107 (across from Avila's El Ranchito restaurant)
Huntington Beach, CA
714-374-3033
http://www.mosbbq.com/

Want to try that Italian sausage I mentioned? Go to the wharfs of Lido Peninsula and try it at the source. Take home a big coil of Italian sausage studded with cubes of cheese and flecked green with parsley. It's on the salty side, but damn fine if pan fried then simmered in a tomato sauce!
Sabatino's Restaurant & Sausage Company
251 Shipyard Way
Newport Beach, CA
949-723-0621

TJ's alert

2004-10-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

My favorite new item at Trader Joe's: Wasabi Cashews. Nuclear wasabi flavor. The 12oz bag comes with about a pound of wasabi powder. We're talking armor-piercing potency.

Mariscos Tampico

2004-10-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Santa Ana, CA

Fourth Street in downtown Santa Ana brings back memories of Mexico City when I visited there at 10 years of age. There are pushcart vendors hawking fresh fruits and Mexican snacks on every corner of this business district lined with restaurants, bridal shops and discount stores with windows signs that say "Envio Dinero." That could mean "send money" or "envy my diner," depending on how well one paid attention in Spanish class.

Scoping out restaurants by car is difficult on this narrow one way street, because of all the traffic behind me. Parking on Fourth Street can be a dodgy proposition, but I managed. Dodgy not because it's a bad neighborhood, but because parking spots are rare and watched over by the meter maids in their triwheeled scooters. I dumped an hour's worth of quarters in the meter, and walked a half mile stretch. From the several candidates, I chose Mariscos Tampico for a light seafood lunch.

The place looks like it's been around since the`70's judging by the wood paneling and the bright, handpainted underwater motif on the walls, and fishnets draped from the ceiling. Think Spongebob Squarepants meets the Brady Bunch on the Gulf of Mexico. A jukebox by the door played Mexican ballads with instrumentation that sounded several decades old. A retro, not-intentionally-ironic, kitschy place.

The antojitos menu offered some interesting snacks, including a taco of smoked fish (pescado ahumado) and a chicharron de pescado (fried fish skins) . They were out of the smoked fish, and I wanted something more substantial than chicharron de pescado, so I ordered a small mixed seafood cocktail, and a fish taco off of their antojitos menu. The large entrees were more than I wanted.

The seafood cocktail arrived quickly in a sundae glass, filled with shrimp, octopus, fish, and raw oysters and accompanied by a handful of saltine crackers. Its tomato sauce tasted oversweet. A heavy squirt of fresh lime juice cut the sweetness nicely, and the pieces of fresh avocado on top added a nice richness to the seafood-topped saltines. The other seafood tasted just fine, bu the oysters were small and flabby, leading me to think they use canned oysters for the cocktail. I will have to go back and try their ostiones menu to see if they use freshly shucked oysters on those dishes.

The fish taco, however, was terrific. Two large corn tortillas were griddled with a bit of oil, and topped with a big heap of grilled fish fillet pieces (I think it might have been catfish, judging by its fine flakes), shredded cabbage, tomatoes, avocado and oddly, a squirt of mayo. The mayo worked just fine, I just don't think of it as an especially Mexican condiment. Perhaps they do this in Eastern Mexico, I don't know.

Paid my $9 tab, ran back to the car and pulled away from the meter maid with four minutes left on the meter. I will go back to try other interesting dishes on the menu. Most entree items are in the $10-$19 range. The fresh fish and lobster dishes, and several behemoth seafood soups on the caldos menu caught my eye as they left the kitchen. They also offer two kinds of chilaquiles, in Mexican and Norteño styles.

Mariscos Tampico
220 E. 4th St
Santa Ana, CA
714-667-0441
Two other locations in L.A. county, too.

Boba me, baby

2004-10-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

Fresh fruit smoothies with boba pearls. Sounds much more appealing than the nasty, neon, non-dairy-creamer concoctions that most boba shops will foist upon the unsuspecting.

My favorite boba shop in OC is a little shop in a big Costa Mesa strip mall on Harbor Blvd and Baker Street. They use real fruit (bananans, stawberries, mango, lychee, etc) in their drinks, which makes all the difference in the world. Think of a fruit smoothie you might buy, say, at Jamba Juice with chewy black tapioca pearls. Depending on what you order, they will boost sweetness with a flavored syrup too.

Reading impaired menu

They also have good quality teas and herbal blends with which they'll brew your tasty beverage: things like rosehips and the herbal sweetener stevia in its natural leaf form.

Mayo jars full of herb

Boba Smoothie
1460 Baker St. Suite D
Costa Mesa, CA
714-979-9665
and a new location:
19092 Beach Blvd., Suite V
Huntington Beach, CA
714-968-2169
http://bobasmoothie.com/

Ramentown, USA

2004-10-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Costa Mesa, CA

Within a quarter mile of the intersection of Bristol Street and Baker, there are no less than 5 Japanese restaurants that serve ramen, and even more if you expand that radius by a few miles. Some are ramen specialists. Others treat ramen as an afterthought. That there's five places to get ramen in that close proximity is amazing, even in Japan.

Dadami serves ramen and other Japanese staples in an obscure strip mall close to where I work. Buried behind Wahoo's Fish Tacos, it's easy to overlook. Even though I've passed by Dadami for months, I've only tried it recently for the first time. The first sampling of their ramen is promising. Overly salty soup, but promising because they make a really rich pork broth by boiling for long hours. I'll save the review until after I've sampled their menu more deeply. They have a Japanese curry rice that they make with this same ramen broth. [ed -I've since tried this curry, and it is amazingly good]

These other shops I'm talking about are: Mitae Ramen, Oki Doki, and a couple more inside the food court at the Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa. I'm not that fond of Mitae's very light, vegetable-tasting soup. Like my photo on this blog states, I am big on the pig (flavored soup). The food court ramen shops are mediocre at best, using a broth from commercial bouillon. I haven't tried the ramen at Oki Doki yet. So even though the ramen in Ramentown USA isn't necessarily great, I will go back and try them all, for the sake of being thorough. My favorite? Shin Sen Gumi, in nearby Fountain Valley and Gardena. A more detailed review will follow.

Shin Sen Gumi Hakata Ramen
2015 Redondo Beach Blvd #G
Gardena, CA
310-329-1335
or
18315 Brookhurst Ave #1
Fountain Valley, CA
714-962-8952

Dadami
688 Baker St #7
Costa Mesa, CA
714-979-2755

Little Saigon, a prelude

2004-10-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

The TV shows "The OC" and "Laguna Beach" would have you believe that only rich, beautiful, white people live in Orange County. Which they do; Newport Coast and the clifftop homes in the superexlusive Irvine Cove are loaded with the white people that even white people call white people. White folks -- love you (air kiss) and your food -- but oftentimes, I need a food fix of the Asian persuasion.

For that, I drag Adam on a venture into Westminster, the largest Vietnamese enclave outside of Vietnam. Little Saigon is a local gem that makes our county more special to live in. Adam is my 4 year old, lily-white stepson, the most Asian white kid in our neighborhood. We start our forays into Little Saigon at Top Baguette and the Vietnamese sandwiches made with them, called banh mi. It's a multitextured party of flavors in my mouth, filled with various meats (Chinese style red roast pork, shredded braised chicken, etc); juliennes of pickled carrot and daikon; slices of raw jalapeno; sprigs of fresh cilantro. Entry into this party: $1.50. Crazy cheap. Even though the Vietnamese consider banh mi a fast food snack, they're about the best fast food I've found. I tip my hat to any culture that reveres good, fresh food as much ast the Vietnamese.

I wrote about banh mi on chowhound.com earlier this year, after I tried a dozen or so banh mi shops. Click here for part 1 of the report, and click here for part 2. Top Baguette is still my first choice for banh mi. They have very few potholes on the menu, and the rest of the choices are top notch. If I want a banh mi with a smear of paté, I'll go to Gala Bakery, because I like theirs better. If I'm in the mood for really great red roast pork, I'll go to Tai Buu. Today, we ordered a fried egg banh mi (Adam's favorite) and a pork "ham," which is actually not ham but a mild, white, cold cut made from ground pork. Think sliced, processed turkey cold cuts, but made of pig. If a 4 year old can like it, so can you. But then, he likes it because it's mild. If you like big flavors, get the hoisin-tasting Heo Nuong (roast pork) or the Xiu Mai (meatball).
Top Baguette
9062 Bolsa Ave (south side of street)
Westminster, CA
714-379-7726

There's a tiny mom and pop fruit vendor a couple blocks East on Bolsa Ave that sells Southeast Asian fruit like mango, jackfruit, durian, lychee for retail and wholesale. Today, the store was loaded with bright pink dragonfruit for $4 / pound, which is a steal. In the past, I've paid higher than average prices here for jackfruit and mango, but their quality is high, fruit is all they do, and they give friendly service, so I'm willing to pay more. I regret not bringing a camera because the sight of the store filled with this bright magenta fruit impressed me. If you've never seen a dragonfruit, scroll down to the "fruit from hell" photo on the SF - Part 2 post. Check back next week and I'll have photos too.
Tien Phat
9291 Bolsa Ave (NE corner of Moran)
Westminster
714-893-7970

I find it funny how the Vietnamese do French food better than the French in this part of the world, and for less money too. Adam and I finished our trip today at Sing Sing Bakery, which makes excellent French style pastries. I especially like their puff pastry and the pastry cream here, so we got a mini fruit tart and several cups of Vietnamese yogurt. The silky yogurt is made with sweetened condensed milk, which contributes a caramelly, mild sweetness. The small, clear plastic cups of yogurt are sold all over Little Saigon. The cups look remarkably similar despite different labels, so I'm guessing there's a wholesale source that these shops all buy from. Will track that down and report back when I do.
Sing Sing Bakery
9600 Bolsa Ave Unit A
Westminster, CA
714-775-8307

Assaulted Bagel Man

2004-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Remember how you'd chase down the ice cream truck when you were a kid? I followed a bagel truck recently, at midnight, into a sleepy strip mall parking lot. The man from Brooklyn Bagel Bakery had just dropped off a sack at a Seattle's Best coffee shop and was locking up after himself when I pulled up in front of his van.

"Hey, uh... so, do you guys have a bakery in Orange County, or do you drive all the way here from LA?" The guy had the afraid-to-speak look of someone stuck on an elevator with a load of Hare Krishnas.

Really good bagels are hard to find anywhere, especially on the West coast. I've found 98% of bagel and pizza shops with an East coast allusion in their name inevitably suck. (Yeah, I'm talking to you, Noah's NY Bagels...) Brooklyn Bagels has a reputation as one of the better ones in LA, and I'd never tried theirs. You can understand my excitement when I spotted their truck in my neighborhood (or maybe you don't, and I am a freak). Interrogating the bagel man is a minor misdemeanor at worst, during which I uncovered another of his retail accounts in my area (Benji's Deli in Tustin).

Long story short - I stopped by that Seattle's Best shop this morning and found they wrapped each of last night's delivery in plastic wrap, a crime far worse than stalking the bagel truck. It's bad enough that the bagels were now over 8 hours old. They completely ruined what's left with Saran wrap. I ran crestfallen straight to Bruegger's Bagels, where I got theirs right out of the oven, still too hot to touch. While not a great bagel by any means, it's acceptably good when fresh.

I will schlep over to LA some day and try Brooklyn's straight from the source. To be continued...
Brooklyn Bagel Bakery
2217 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles
213-413-4114

Bruegger's Bagels
All over, nation wide
http://www.brueggers.com/

Roscoe's House of Chicken `N Waffles - the movie

2004-10-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Turkey `N Waffles

Some stories are better left untold. Roscoe's fried chicken & waffle empire serves pretty good Southern food (for around these parts) in 5 locations around Los Angeles. As odd a combination as it sounds, fried chicken and waffles go together like milk and Pepsi. Think hot, crisp, peppery fried chicken. Grits, greens, corn bread (two kinds), chicken sausage, smothered biscuits, red beans and rice, and of course, waffles.

Went to the Long Beach store a couple weeks ago, and noticed paper placemats promoting their movie. My verdict: skip this straight-to-video turkey. Ostensibly, it's the story of two shady numbers-running guys from NY who came out to LA and opened a restaurant to pay off loan sharks. I shut off the DVD after the first 20 minutes. The production quality approached a soft porn film's, but lacked your typical soft porn's professional acting, writing, and directing . I swear the DVD player gagged when it hoiked out the disc.

If the recent price hike on Roscoe's menu is paying off production costs, I'm going to be *very* upset.

Roscoe's - Long Beach
730 E. Broadway
Long Beach, CA
562-437-8355

SF Bay trip, part 3

2004-09-24T01:10:00.000-07:00

I got long winded on my last post. We squeezed alot into one day, so shoot me. This will be a skinny post, with lots of pictures. Went to the kick ass farmer's market at the Ferry Building on Saturday morning. The bike race (see part 1) also started in front of the Ferry Building on Sunday. Bike race pictures are here.

Here's some food photos from the last two days of our trip.

Ferry Building Farmer's Market

Ferry Building Farmer's Market

Pretty good cioppino at Fisherman's Wharf

Cheesecake at Franciscan Restaurant

SF Bay trip, part 2

2004-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Day 2: Oakland and Berkeley

F@*# Wheaties. [ed - the F bomb has been censored to appease members of my family, who are not New Yorkers like me and don't appreciate its many uses as a verb, noun, or warm greeting]. Fried dough is the breakfast of champions. And take note: if you can't find a doughnut shop, ask a cop for directions. Cliche or not, he helped us find it. So what's a beignet? Famous in New Orleans, these square pillows of puffy yeasted dough are hollow, and therefore lighter than a doughnut. I grew up with the fried doughballs called zeppoles at Italian street fairs of New York. Zeppoles aren't hollow, and heavy in comparison. Zeppoles have enough mass to huck a hundred feet and nail someone good with hot grease and powdered sugar. Beignets are the southern gentleman of fried dough. Zeppoles are blue collar knuckleheads.
When they're fresh out of the fryer, there's nothing better than a good beignet. Made me completely forget about the French dips we ate for breakfast the day before. Crisp on the outside, tender and toothy inside, and dusted with enough powdered sugar to look like breakfast for Scarface, the beignets at this shop are better than the ones at New Orleans' Cafe du Monde. Sure, Cafe du Monde has plenty going for it, like the street scene and the chickory coffee. But the beignets are better at Powderface, and no pesky hurricanes to spoil one's day.
Powderface Coffee House
3411 E. 12th St Suite 134
100 meters from the Fruitvale BART station)
Oakland, CA 510-536-3223
http://www.powderface.net/

Cooking our beignets

Beignets on display

Over in Berkeley, Cafe Fanny also has beignets on display. Theirs look greasy, sad, and way past their prime, like a pop starlet whose 15 minutes have long since passed. So instead, we got sandwiches. I ordered the daily special: a morbier cheese panino grilled wtih heirloom tomatoes and arugula on thinly sliced pain de mie. Katy's sourdough baguette came with grilled eggplant and jack cheese with a schmear of roasted red peppers.
Cafe Fanny
1603 San Pablo Ave
Berkeley
510-526-7664

Any sandwich for me is all about the bread, and these babies were built on the bread baked next door at Acme Bread, one of the finest artisanal bakeries in the country. The rustic sour baguette had a thick, chewy crust with sharp "ears" formed where slashes had been cut into the crust. Thousands of tiny bubbles blistering the surface indicated the dough had risen slowly at cool temperatures, which improves the flavor of the dough. The inside had fully gelatinized into a moist, elastic, chewy crumb marked with lots of uneven holes; another mark of excellent dough technique.
Acme Bread
1601 San Pablo Ave
Berkeley
510-524-1327

One rack of several at Acme

We prearranged a tour at a small boutique chocolate company called Scharffenberger, housed in a 1906 brick building on the West side of town. Walking into the factory gift shop, we were assaulted with the smell of dark, dank chocolate, hanging thick in the air. If only they sold air freshener this strong. They started the tour with free tastings of four different chocolates and roasted cacao nibs while our guide gave a brief company history and an explanation of the machinery about to be shown to us. If you go, visit on a weekday while the machines are operating.
Scharffenberger Chocolate
914 Heinz Ave
Berkeley
510-981-4066
http://www.scharffenberger.com/

Where chocolate comes from

Puttering around the UC Berkeley campus and shopping on Shattuck Ave put us in range of the Gourmet Ghetto on the North side of town. The original plan entailed stopping at the Cheeseboard Collective for a slice of pizza to warm up, then going over to Cafe Rouge for dinner. We ended up ordering an entire pizza, and it became both dinner and the next day's breakfast. Cheeseboard has two storefronts. The cheese shop closed while were standing in line for pizza, so we missed seeing that, sadly. They bake a pizza du jour, and too bad if you want something else.

For me, pizza is all about its crust. I generally prefer a thin, crisp crusted NY style which will snap when folded in half. Cheeseboard is bready and thicker than that. I didn't travel to Berkeley expecting NY pizza, so I wasn't disappointed with Cheeseboard's. It's a very satisfying pizza made with great ingredients, available only there.

Cheeseboard Collective
1512 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley
510-549-3055

"NEXT!"

The food day ended at a supermarket called Berkeley Bowl. Here, wandering through the massive produce section, we came across at least a dozen varieties of grapes. We bought the large, black cultivar called Kyoho. Thick skinned, but sweet and so flavorful I think they must be artificially enhanced by flavor chemists in New Jersey. It tastes like the grape flavor in Asian juices and candies. My new favorite grape.

In the tropical fruit section, they have a citron called Buddha's Hand, which looks like a demon fruit. Don't know what to do with something like this, but it sure looks cool.

Berkeley Bowl
2020 Oregon St
Berkeley
510-843-6929

Fruit from hell

Talk to the hand

Raw olives

SF Bay trip, part I

2004-09-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

My old friend Jimbo reminded me last month that he'd be on the left coast for the T-Mobile International Grand Prix, a professional bike race with the likes of Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and company. Jim mentored me as a mechanic on the pro race circuit many years ago, so the vacation was built on the premise of visiting with folks I knew from a prior lifetime. We did the touristy stuff too, like riding on cable cars singing the Rice-a-Roni jingle (not really, I'd be the guy egging on other tourists to do that). Of course, food factored largely in a town known for outstanding eats.

Day 1: Los Angeles to Oakland
Slow is better. Rather than fly, Katy and I began our twelve hour train ride in Union Station, the beautiful Art Deco depot in downtown LA. Phillipe's the Original, the oldest restaurant in the city, lays claim to inventing the French dip sandwich and has done so since 1908 in the same location two blocks away from Union Station. We stopped by at 9 am for breakfast to go, packing a lamb sandwich with blue cheese and a beef with jack cheese (single dip, sinus-searing mustard on the side) for the morning meal. Maybe you think a french dip sandwich makes a terrible breakfast. You'd be wrong.

Amtrak's Coast Starlight train wends along the central California coastline through beautiful stretches of still-undeveloped land. When I say along the coast, sometimes the tracks run atop the dunes just above the beach. Katy spotted several pods of dolphin playing in the froth of the distant surfline. Or perhaps they were killing their lunch. Inside the train car, we lunched on a picnic we packed of Dutch hard goat cheese, Irish "Blarney" cheese (whatever the hell that is), Cambozola blue veined brie, and sesame crackers washed down with a spicy, pleasantly complex zinfandel from D Cubed.

North of Santa Barbara

Dinner provided aboard the train proved unnoteworthy if not for the really nice couple we shared our table with. Kym manages a fashionable eyewear shop in the Beverly Center. Josh is a house DJ and they were travelling to a gig in San Francisco. Becoming a parent kills one's nightlife, and the magnitude of my squareness became painfully clear when talking music with this very with it, beautiful couple.