David Sloo's Profile
Sound chicken-rice at Cơm Gà Nam An, San Jose
Cơm Gà Nam An is a specialty restaurant serving boiled or roasted chicken in several traditional forms, including with chicken-stock rice, sticky-rice, rice noodles, and in soup. This is a Bay Area echo of Singapore's so-called national dish of Hainan chicken-rice, and I recommend it.
I ordered the house standard, #1 cơm gà: boiled chicken with rice.
The chicken was a small, resilient half bird, with quite a bit of flavor. You have a choice with the boiled chicken of having it with skin or without. I had mine with skin. The chicken comes completely boned and cut or scored into pieces.
Alongside are unremarkable tomato- and cucumber slices plus a cup of salty broth: not remarkable, but neither bland nor greasy.
More important, they include a pile of lightly pickled sliced white onions and several sprigs of rau ram. The rice is medium-short grained and cooked with enough oil and chicken stock to hold it together into lumps. Cơm Gà Nam An served three sauces with my chicken:
- oil and chopped green onions
- winey and flavorful dark soy
- sweet garlic paste
These are all good sauces - none of them the traditional gingery sauce familiar in Singapore. But they are different from one another and all good counterpoints to the chicken. Together with the rau ram and pickled onions, you can make your own little tasting menu of chicken rice with assorted condiments. (I admired most a forkful of rice with a piece of chicken, two rau ram leaves, an onion slice, and a drizzle of dark soy.) In fact, if you are like me and have had mixed feelings about rau ram, you might come away from this meal respecting it more.
The menu also includes some sweet bean drinks and canned sugar waters.
The restaurant was quiet on this holiday weekend, so I spent a couple hours at my table using the house's open Wi-Fi. This was a nice perk, and definitely a culinary step up from the other Wi-Fi hotspot down the street - a Starbucks.
The total with tip for one: about $11.
Cơm Gà Nam An
348 E Santa Clara St
San Jose
La Ciccia
I should have just asked. We were at the table in the back and, as last to arrive, I had the seat facing away from all the other tables and from the kitchen exit.
I thought the pane guttiau was delightful this time, so I didn't miss having plain pane c.
La Ciccia
There haven't been updates in a bit about La Ciccia, so here's one:
La Ciccia gets a bit of a pass for being simultaneously the area's best and worst restaurant to represent one of Europe's minor (but interesting) regional cuisines. Mostly, let's call it best.
Most American eaters could probably name only one Sardinian specialty, and it's cleverly named to conceal its origin: pecorino romano comes largely from Sardinia. Even in central Italy, pecorino romano and ricotta sarda are the Sardinian specialties on every block. You have to look a little to find a bottle of cannonau (grenache) or a packet of malloreddus.
Sardinia is a great attractor of tourists, of course, but you can spend a whole vacation hearing nothing but Italian and eating nothing but Italian food that you might find in Latium or Campania. You can do this an come away satisfied, even.
But La Ciccia plays up the autonomous region's specialties, and it does so to good effect. Nevermind the historical influences that went into the food: Roman rule, then Aragonese for a long time, some Genoan, a little Venetian, a bit of Austrian, and then finally a sometimes strained but generally successful relationship with the sometimes strained but often successful Italy as a founding partner in the kingdom in the 19th century.
I don't think you can taste all those centuries, but you can taste something and be glad you did. We had:
House-made salami, dripped with a little bit of sapa (saba in Sardinian). A serviceable salami - even handed, with noticeable flavor to the fat. Anyone who has eaten good lardo or good mortadella will appreciate how the fat tastes in this salami.
At the waiter's recommendation, we ate the salami with la Ciccia's preparation of pane carasau, the ultra-thin bread of Sardinia. Pane guttiau is pane carasau with a little pecorino, a little oil, and a little rosemary on top. Essentially, together with the salami, we were getting something close to a white salami pizza. I don't know why La Ciccia doesn't serve pane carasau by itself; maybe it's too austere. One of my dining buddies is a composer, and he was amused to learn the Italian name for pane carasau: carta da musica, or music score. Think of one of those large conductor's scores that cover a table and an entire orchestra's parts.
An (off-menu) salad of arugula, lots of oily smoked trout, and some mandarin chunks. This is a delightful combination of flavors, and it showed off the olive oil. See: this is what we wanted the pane carasau for...
Spaghetti with botarga (buttariga in Sardinian). So here is the problem, which isn't necessarily a problem: La Ciccia knows that their olive oil is good, and a good spaghetti dish will hold up to some oil, and the oil will keep the bread crumbs and herbs and bits of botarga clinging to the pasta. But I felt like each bite left my beard dripping with oil. Half as much might have worked. The botarga flavor is good, to me the star was the freshly made spaghetti: plump, chewy, elastic. I keep getting (elsewhere) freshly made pasta that turns into a flaccid mass, and this was a reminder of why to continue trying.
Breaded pork cutlets with onion mostarda and spinach. A standout dish. My dining companion looked at the dish and said: "looks a lot like latkes with applesauce". Breaded pork cutlets are global ambassador for good breading. Think of a great Schnitzel wiener Art (or a wiener Schnitzel, which is the same thing in veal), or tonkatsu, or a Taiwanese pork chop sandwich. Good breading and careful frying makes the dish.
Lamb loin, quickly grilled, with sapa, on a bed of spinach. Notice in the other replies there's a debate about how lamb can taste. That seems often to be up to the lamb. This doesn't surprise me; chickens from the same farm raised the same way taste different from one another. I imagine that subtle differences in personality, digestion, preferences, and predilection for gamboling leads each lamb to have its own special flavor. This lamb was like lamb, and La Ciccia did its part nicely, searing the outside and adding more delicious sapa to complement the salty flavor.
For dessert:
Three gelati - chocolate, fig and crème fraîche, and marsala with raisins. Good gelato is not impossible, but you have to be scientific about it, and clearly this gelato-maker measures carefully.
A semifreddo with chocolate. Unremarkable, but light and fluffy.
My two dinner companions had wine by the glass (fiscal folly, but the wine list is very good, and they had started before I could stick my accountant's nose in) and we had a bottle of Sardinian mineral water. This was a big meal, but not a huge one. It still came to $75 per person including tip. With a bottle of wine and changing up orders a bit, you could keep a meal well under $50 per person. You could have just a pasta and a glass of water for about $20.
The atmosphere is friendly, not loud but not silent, and the place was full the whole time we were there. Good for La Ciccia. The meal seemed better than the last time I was there - thoughtful, varied, and honestly Sardinian - and I'm glad they are still taking diners' money.
Parking is a pain around 30th and Church, but the J Church runs right in front of the restaurant doors.
http://www.laciccia.com
Willi’s Seafood & Raw Bar in Healdsburg
We had a late lunch at Willi's in downtown Healdsburg on a warm April weekend afternoon. It is serviceable.
Willi's is busy with visitors and with residents. Its fare is accessible and simple: mostly seafood, mostly small plates, nothing particularly challenging.
We had:
Whitefish crudo, piled needlessly high with oily and salty vegetables, primarily roasted red sweet peppers. Not necessarily a bad dish, but hard to dig out with just a fork.
Hamachi ceviche, which was described as not very spicy, but was in fact moderately piquant. (I eat a couple of chiles de arbol at bedtime; I like spicy.) Too acidic, too robust, and without the fine flavor of hamachi. Uncalled for, hard, and otherwise disappointing taro chips.
A lobster roll with lots of butter. Good Atlantic lobster, shut down by mediocre wine-country bread. It reminded me a little bit of Tuscany, where the food is simple and often delicious, but the bread is a salt-free, flavorless pap. Maybe that's what Willi's is after.
Thin french fries. Good - especially when dipped in the mignonette that accompanied the oysters for reasons that are completely beyond me. Why would anyone dip a 26-bit oyster in vinegar?
3 Kusshi oysters. Unremarkable, expect for their $3.25 price. Perfectly good oysters.
3 kumamoto oysters. A reminder that you should always order kumamotos rather than kusshis. These were fine, although Hog Island has better and I've had better and cheaper in the depths of winter at Zuni.
Lunch for two was about $80 with no wine.
The service was perfunctory and functional. My recommendation: down a couple of cocktails or a bottle of wine when you visit Willi's, because it is a pleasant enough place with pleasant enough food, but it doesn't merit sober scrutiny.
Baci in Healdsburg: well intentioned and adequate
Healdsburg shouldn't be a culinary conundrum. It is full of visitors who are ostensibly visiting the area for gustatory reasons. There is a measurable density of prominent chefs. It's theoretically possible to find competent young staff. And the local produce is what almost every town on every continent can only dream of - and can hardly dream of paying for.
And it's a place with lots of choices: from bar food through upmarket sandwiches at Oakville Grocery up to an endless tasting menu at Cyrus, you can pay what you want and find something you like.
But I keep wondering if it's all too easy. It's a beautiful Saturday night in April. Your clientèle are tired and maybe still a little lubricated from an afternoon of wine tasting. You're going to fill all your tables, anyway. Does each dish have to shine? Does each staff member have to be attentive? In economic terms, probably not. If you look at the restaurant business with the cold, analytic vision of a Marxist, you would conclude that the experience under these conditions will achieve only modest goals.
I liked Baci just fine, but it underwhelmed me.
The ambiance is what the restaurant guides describe as "up tempo", which is one step below "lively" (you can't understand what your waiter is saying) and two steps below "energetic" (you can't understand what you are saying yourself). Tables are adjacent but not jammed into the space. You can see your neighbors' meals but don't need to be part of their conversation.
Dishes we had:
Rocket salad with chicory and pears, filberts, citrus balsamic dressing. We asked for a side plate for the menu's listed gorgonzola, which was a good idea: it did complement the salad, but it wasn't necessary. In flavor terms, this is much more a chicory salad than a rocket salad, but both were present. This is a sound salad, and dressed mostly in olive oil and salt - very wise. I'll make this salad.
Ragù alla bolognese, which is listed with spaghetti. That's a silly dish to have on any menu, as spaghetti is not capable of holding that sauce. We tried it, at the waiter's recommendation, with gnocchi: delicate, light gnocchi with good starch flavor. Not the slightly firm kind, but the meltingly soft kind. The ragù was definitely informed by the classic, with the right mixed meat flavors, enough milk, and not too much tomato - I am convinced that another tear falls in Bologna every time someone squeezes another tomato into alleged ragù bolognese. But there was too much meat, and it was cut coarsely, so the dish approached stewed meat with gnocchi for dumplings, rather than dumplings gently held together by ragù.
Risotto frutti di mare. I would travel a long way for what this dish should have been. In the right hands, with enough time, with the perfect shellfish, and with good fumé stock and grana cheese, it could be the great Medusan seducer: all the flavors of the sea come to shore to woo your palate.
This was not that. It was instead a slightly runny, tomato-flavored rice gruel with some chunks of pretty good but not extraordinary shellfish. Shrimps: nice. Small octopus: quite flavorful. Squid rings: correct texture but flavorless. Scallop adductor muscles: neither sweet nor flaky. If you concentrated hard, you could feel the pearls at the center of the Arborio rice grains in all that paste.
But worse that those comments, this dish had no edge. Even canned clam chowder has an edge, albeit a salty, metallic one. Brighter wine in the sauce might have helped. Crisped onions would have done wonders. Red chili flakes. Sumac powder. Something.
We saw:
At the other tables in view, the best looking dish was agnolotti with lobster, which looked simple, stuffed, barely touched by their cream sauce, and like they pleased our neighbor. The pizzas appeared adequate - medium thin, slightly charred - although I noticed that our neighbors on both sides left part of theirs untouched. Hmm.
The wine list is thoughtful and long - common in Healdsburg. There are some highlighted wineries, and I chose a riesling from them. Potable.
Service:
At the arrhythmic and unpredictable times that our waiter came by, she proved friendly, forthright, and knowledgable. Her recommendation about the gnocchi and her accommodation with the cheese on the salad earned marks.
To Baci's credit, the correct dishes came out in the correct order.
The whole restaurant looked and felt like they were short at least one wait-team. That's unfortunate and unfair. I saw more than one diner revert to a broad wave to attract wait-staff attention. And even at the beginning of the evening, when we walked in, we were at the podium for bit without attention and the host seemed bewildered when I said we had a reservation for 2 under my one-syllable name. It's isn't a nightclub with grumpy bouncers who look straight through you; it's a middle-rung wine-country restaurant.
Baci, 336 Healdsburg Av, Healdsburg.
bacicafeandwinebar.com
Completely unfashionable: Sam's Grill [SF]
I had a delightful dinner with my learned family at Sam's Grill, and I shall return.
Just before I got there, my brother The Professor sent me a text from his spot by the bar: "Throwback is an understatement."
We were installed in one of the 1946-vintage booths, with a curtain for a doorway. Yes, the waiter was grumpy. We had:
Asparagus. Trimmed, blanched, and served cold, with aïoli. Not overcooked. Good.
Sand dabs. Pan sautéed. Just a big plate of sand dabs. Delightful.
Petrale [sole], grilled. Good, but not as good as the sand dabs. My next fish pie will be full of petrale, because it's clear this is one of those flavorful-yet-delicate fishes.
The fish came with roasted potatoes, and this was a simple, practical idea.
Creamed spinach. Certainly at its best, which means 'edible but slightly disappointing and I'm glad this has faded into the annals of mistaken cookery.'
Tiramisu. No note.
I peeked through the curtains at the booths around us: lots of sand dabs, some grilled meat, plus three-piece suits and scotch and soda.
Next time, I wear my fedora.
Sam's Grill
374 Bush, San Francisco
Another excellent meal at San Jose's Hana
We had eight people to dine at Hana, next to Mitsuwa supermarket on Saratoga in San Jose yesterday, and it was once again excellent. This remains one of my favorite Japanese-style Chinese food restaurants. That is, it remains one of my favorite restaurants.
For sui gyooza (boiled dumplings), you have a choice of fillings: pork+cabbage+negi, pork+negi, pork+shrimp, mushrooms. For fried gyooza, you get pork+cabbage+negi. Both are good and we cleared 18 of each.
The fried rice is notable. Yesterday's special was a salty, light salmon fried rice. Not greasy, no peas (hurray!), and well flavored. If you are going to have fried rice at a restaurant, it should be as good as this.
We also had Sichuan-style noodles with sesame, which is mostly a sesame-soy dish - not dan dan mian, but more soy-flavored, simpler and lighter. At our request, the kitchen put shredded chicken on top of the dish.
From the specials, we chose a simple garlic cabbage dish, which we ordered non-spicy for the non-spicy people in our party. Just cabbage, garlic, salt, oil, and gentle cooking. This is a wonderful cabbage preparation.
And we had two more fried dishes: scallion fried dumplings, which were chewy and fresh tasting - essentially gyooza with scallions for filling. Then something listed as negi mochi on the menu, which is almost identical to cong you bing ('scallion oil pancake'), made with rice flour. We ordered seconds on this dish.
Hana
4320 Moorpark, San Jose
In the Mitsuwa / Kinokuniya center on Saratoga
La Ciccia, SF report w/ pics
Some quick comments:
I'm impressed with the care put into the explicitly Sardinian dishes, the three best for us were all evening specials: gnocchetti sardi with ragù, pretty much traditional malloreddus with boar. The malloreddus themselves were unremarkable but hold the sauce well. The meat flavors in the sauce were medium, not strong or particularly clear -- overpowered by the rich tomato flavor. Excellent consistency, too heavy on the fruit rather than the flesh.
My sense is that La Ciccia likes concentrated tomato flavor, because a stewed tripe dish - better than the gnocchetti - was also really a tomato stew. The tripe itself barely came through in flavor, but its texture was perfect: soft but well short of the total mush you sometimes find in callos or menudo.
The standout in the meal was tagliarini with cured (that is, salt-preserved) tuna heart. Intense, fishy flavor - almost old botarga meets bonito flakes. The chef had the good sense to match it with moderate chilli spiciness. The thin pasta stayed completely coated with the sauce. My only complaint would be that the sauce is a little oily - there was still oil (very flavorful oil) left in the plate after lifting a forkful of pasta. An outstanding dish, somewhat offbeat, not for everyone, but anyone who likes anchovy pizza with hot peppers is seeking these flavors.
For dessert we ate little ricotta cakes flavored with saffron and orange. These were unnecessarily gilded with sliced almonds (a quick scrape fixed that).
Pane guttiau and (very fine) Parma prosciutto were not as noteworthy, although certainly edible.
As other reviewers mention, La Ciccia is friendly, personable, and crowded. The wine list is long and well-considered, with plenty of Sardinian choices. Cannonau aficionados will delight.
-----
La Ciccia
291 30th Street, San Francisco, CA 94131
Good to great places in the Peninsula ...
This has been a wonderful thread -- lots of recommendations worth reading. I think that the Peninsula has a long list of restaurants with particular dishes worth having. That's not unusual, since every chef and every diner realizes that there's a sweet spot somewhere, even when the rest isn't good. Here are some restaurants I go back to often for particular items (every one of them has good food as a whole):
Saravana Bhavan, Sunnyvale: especially consider the 12-piece mini idli. I don't know why their mini idli are so delicate, but they are.
Himawari, San Mateo: you want the shio (salt) broth, and you might consider any corn / butter combination.
Kappo Nami Nami, Mountain View: I have had wonderful black cod preparations, but consistently comforting is the tai cha (ochazuke), which is a ball of rice in smoky tea broth, with small pieces of snapper (tai) on top, cooked only by the heat of the broth.
Happy Café, San Mateo: try pork kidneys with ginger. Remember: only open at lunch
Dosa Place, Sta Clara: paper dosa (yay!)
Trend, Mountain View: fish filet with Sichuan pepper and chillies
Joy, Foster City: almost any of the dumplings, especially pot-stickers
Backayard, Menlo Park: chicken curry (even for someone who rarely likes chicken); escaveitch (order it whole, rather than in filets).
La Casita Chilanga, Redwood City: the torta called La Milan, which is a milanesa torta
And I wish I had special places for the following:
- ama ebi
- salt fish fried rice
- meatball grinders
- ragù bolognese
- sweetbreads
- root vegetable soup
- fried chicken gizzards
- red lentils (Zeni in San Jose comes close)
- butter-fried sage leaves
- biscuits and gravy
Good, if fashionable, ingredients at Lark
We had dinner at Lark again this week, and it was just plain pleasing. Not free, but still good.
Carpaccio of hamachi, with green olives and salted lemons and a bunch of celery root and a lot of coarse salt. (The celery root isn't mentioned in the menu, I think.) I've had this each time I've been to Lark, and it doesn't get old or disappointing.
Rösti with clotted cream and paddlefish caviar. Rösti is an eggless preparation of shredded potatoes, something like hashbrowns. When I lived in Switzerland, I thought of it as the Swiss answer to latkes -- not lighter than latkes, but equally homey and somehow more Alpine and austere. Lark makes them in little cast-iron pans, filled to the edge with the pancake (I've made latkes this way, too, because you get very thorough browning from the pan's sides; at Lark, they have the advantage of serving the dish in a small, hot pan, therefore they have less washing up). The cream could have easily been mascarpone or any other clotted cream, and I missed the acid contrast that crema mexicana or sour cream could have lent. But the paddlefish caviar -- a new treat for me -- was a salty, micro-explosive condiment for the whole dish. If you haven't had paddlefish caviar, then you're in for an interesting substance: little popping bubbles of saline solution. Paddlefish are evidently a big freshwater fish with a frame mostly of cartilage. These were from the Yellowstone River, which hints of purity (if you don't think too much about sulfurous vents).
Me my own personal self, I am not an individual person who is utterly smitten with fish-eggs, although I like the stuff that you get in a tube and spread on crackers in Denmark. All told, I thought this was a simple and toothsome dish, and it was listed -- for not quite so much coin -- on the menu without the caviar, too.
Farro with nettles and mushrooms. The farro was plump and creamy, with buttery mushrooms and limp, intensely flavorful nettles. I wonder who figured out that you can boil stinging nettles -- the formic acid goes away -- and they turn out delicious, with no internal urticating welts. They remind me a little of fugu -- well, maybe not quite fugu, but a sort of amateur teenage vegetarian's answer to the excitement of fugu. Except I think that nettles are worth the preparation, and my experience with fugu is that it's way more interesting to talk to licensed fugu preparers than it is to eat their preparation. This was the star dish of the evening, with oystery mushrooms, the chewy farro grains, and the wonderful green flavor of the nettles. You could do this with any flavorful braising green, I suspect. Maybe even mizuna or pea shoots.
Sweetbreads on scrambled eggs with bacon. This is the ultimate breakfast food. If diners served this dish, we would have huge swaths of the Midwest devoted to growing sweetbreads.
The sweetbreads were floured and fried, and they are just lovely: nice fry-feel, but lots of sweetbread delicacy underneath. They'd look right at home in a fish-and-chips basket. I'm so glad that sweetbreads have come back into fashion. I still serve them at barbecues to my carnivorous friends who claim that they don't eat innards: sweetbreads make an excellent gateway innard to the delights of brains, kidneys, and chitterlings.
The scrambled eggs were damp, almost runny, and riddled with pieces of aromatic and salty bacon.
Every time I come to Lark, I think "there is a reason that _salivate_ is etymologically dredged in salt". Lark serves salty food -- probably not the stuff your cardiologist wants you eating every day. But this was the first time that a dish was so salty that we didn't finish it. (As a lad, I chewed pieces of salt cod as a snack.)
For dessert, I had a piece of Sea Stack cheese, from Mt Townsend cheesemakers. Young, tangy cow cheese with a bloomy and delicious rind. Lark served it with a sliver of honeycomb. I would seek out this cheese again.
We also had a little parfait, which -- if I remember correctly -- had blood oranges, a couple scoops of nice mango sorbet, and some blood orange coulis at the bottom. Lark sometimes goes in for having a bowl of something, then a couple pieces of something else alongside. In this case, it was three little marshmallows.
Lark, like Harvest Vine and Crush, seems to have taken the small-plates fashion of 8 years ago and done something with it. At Lark, they've really made it their only thing: all of the dishes are small dishes. That's one of the reasons I like eating at Lark, going for dim sum, having tapas, or eating at an izakaya: there is a chance to try and to finish each of three or four dishes without feeling utterly bloated. But Lark has combined this bar-snack eating with restaurant pace and calm -- and prices, to boot.
The total tab was USD 100, tip not included. We had one glass of riesling and a coffee. Note that Lark's wine-bottle prices are not heavily marked up.
That's not a horribly expensive meal for a fancy, refined place where a couple can linger from 7 till 10 without feeling rushed. But it is a lot of money. I think Lark is consistent and I think it's worth it.
Lark, http://www.chow.com/places/38850
The New Lemongrass (SEA)
I had a late lunch yesterday at 1207 S Jackson. This restaurant might have a very odd name, "The Lemongrass" is a sort of tropical take on "The Spinach" as a name. But the restaurant doesn't have very odd food. It seems to have good food.
My only dish was cơm tấm đạc biẹt, or broken rice with shredded pork, grilled pork, egg cake (a well-filled omelet with bean threads and pork shreds), grilled shrimp cake on a piece of sugar cane, and ample vegetables.
The rice was somewhat casually broken, so the pieces were half- or third grains of medium-grain rice. Some places break the rice so it is as fine as fine couscous. I think I like the texture better when the rice particle are smaller. But when you are miffed at the size of the rice bits, the food must be good overall.
The grilled pork was thick pieces of boneless pork chop, and not terribly flavorful either from the charcoal or from general pigginess. The shredded pork and the omelet were much more flavorful, and the shrimp paste cake, which looked like a plump mushroom cap on the piece of peeled sugar cane, particularly pleased me. (I think this is called chả tôm.)
Notably, the fresh cucumbers and the mildly pickled carrots, plus ample bits of scallion, gave the whole dish a lot of textural vigor and some nice flavors. Cơm tấm is really a multi-course meal on one plate, and I noticed halfway through that I hadn't even added any chillies yet.
I'll go back. I've eaten at a couple of the places in that shopping center, and The Lemongrass strikes me as the downstairs pick for a quiet date or just a peaceful lunch. And it's not bad to walk away from a fairly upscale, toothsome meal for $10, including tip.
Has anyone tried the new Chez Papa Resto in the Mint Plaza?
I had a great experience at Pizzanostra, and I hope that you're right and it's just a temporary digression from good food chez Chez Papa. (The servers and the place seemed great; having a prix fixe lunch is welcome; the wine list is thoughtful -- it was just too bad that none of our food was up to expectations or up to the Pizzanostra standard.)
Has anyone tried the new Chez Papa Resto in the Mint Plaza?
I had lunch with two other chowish friends on Monday. Maybe Mondays are off there. It was not a place to which I would return for food. For drinks, sure.
The atmosphere and service are uptown button-down - a little hurly burly, but not too much (as they say).
We all had starters and sandwiches. The day's soup was mushroom, creamy. This got the best reviews. A fine soup, although I noticed that one of my tablemates didn't finish his.
The sandwiches were not so fine.
Pan bagnat. This should be a tuna sandwich. It should be a good tuna sandwich. Ours were disappointing tuna sandwiches. For a lot of people, just reading pan bagnat on the menu recalls Calvin Trillin's experience with a tuna sandwich in Nice, where the proprietress looks at the sandwich, with its olive-oil-laden ingredients, and squirts on more oil as a finish. Squirting on a lot of olive oil doesn't make up for too much egg and not enough anchovy and limp lettuce.
Chicken b.l.t. worked better. Chicken okay, but not gorgeous-tiny-machine-show. The staff served up the bacon separately so that dietary restrictions were met. Not remarkable bacon. (Remember the old maxim about bacon -- get the cheapest or the most expensive; this tasted in the middle.)
I had beef tartare. The Kobe-style beef is too fatty for this preparation. Not enough onions, nothing on the side to mix in myself. My own first encounter with beef tartare was at Windows on the World, and I got to pick out the different ingredients, then the waiter melded them in a bowl. No such luck here. The quail egg atop was the good part.
Overall, this meal was relatively uninteresting, everything had too much olive oil, and the ingredients seemed middle-rung. The location in Mint Plaza is swell -- we went to Blue Bottle to cleanse our tongues -- but you can have just okay sandwiches elsewhere in the neighborhood for a lot less.
Pizzanostra -- opening report
We had lunch today to establish a baseline for Pizzanostra. We both liked it quite a bit: pizza easily worth going back for, and a smart, accessible menu of appetizers and simple dishes.
Our pizzas were:
the cannibale (or cannibal, I think -- the menu is in whimsical Italglish, without being patronizing): red sauce with copious ground beef (described as Bolognese, which is a term used in the U.K. and shortened there to 'bol'; not much to do with traditional sauce from Bologna), mozzarella, an egg, and lots of oregano.
pizza "pescatora": red sauce, mozzarella, lots of parsley and oregano, some minced herbs, and a lovely spread of squid pieces, manila clams (in shell). another small clam, shrimps, and octopus legs. Lots of parsley and some minced garlic.
Technical comments: the pizzas (we looked around the room) all have a rim, which is standard in the Italian south and in the U.S. northeast (especially Naples, Amalfi, New Haven, New York, Ridgewood, N.J.). Roman pizza occasionally has a rim, but rarely. Again, according to more frugal Italian standards the cheese, sauce, and toppings were laid on thick. But the cheese was pleasantly light.
In Roman or Neapolitan measure, the crust is medium -- not thin, nor crispy. I think Joan's temperature reading should give an indication: most pizza in most places is cooked at about 500 deg F, and sometimes at 550 deg F. A licensed Neapolitan pizza napoletana provider must cook their pizza above 900 deg F (technically, at 485 deg C). Yes, a pizza oven will melt both lead and tin -- and it shouldn't be used for the purpose. I think the best description for Pizzanostra's pies might be "American-style pizza with a central Italian feel".
Nothing on the menu or served at the tables around us looked pretentious or fussy. Rigatoni, octopus salad, chick peas, cold cuts (inevitably labelled salumi), marrow bones with gremolata -- really just straightforward lunch food that will please most people and threaten few. Pizzanostra seems to have locked onto the fashion of the past decade for straightforward Italian food and wine. Good for them.
Joan's comments on the wine are apt: a range of wines that suit the food (no powerhouse Barolos or super-Tuscan wines), just nero d'avola and vermentino and general eating-reds and -whites, with bigger markup by the glass and modest markup by the bottle.
For dessert we had two scoops of pistachio ice cream. Strong pistachio flavor, completely smooth and a fine livery green.
Coffee was good quality but pulled long, exemplifying the maxim that coffee is an activity best left to specialists whose minds are uncluttered by food.
Pizzanostra is not for scrimping -- count on $30 a head with wine and tip, although you could keep this down by sticking to starters, sharing a pizza, buying your wine in a bottle, and skipping coffee.
Disappointment with aka miso ramen at Maru Ichi
I had never been genuinely let down by Maru Ichi on Castro in Mountain View, but I was today. I had lunch set B (with 3 gyoza and California roll) and ordered aka miso broth.
Everything looked pretty good -- the two rectangles of nori were suspended above the broth, the inside-out California roll was plump and cleanly sliced. There was a red cast to the broth and a generous handful of both noodles and bean sprouts.
But in flavor and texture, nothing came up to Maru Ichi's usual standards. I don't order noodles firm at Maru Ichi, because they seem to cook them to a medium firmness as a rule. But I wish I had today. By halfway through the bowl, the noodles were mushy.
The aka miso broth should have been the star, but it was one-dimensional. Not enough miso flavor compared to the amount of salt, and the oily piquancy just felt like overly peppered oiliness. Both pieces of chashu were gristly. The yolk of the half-egg was dry and crumbly. At least the bean sprouts were crunchy, clean, fresh, and plentiful. I gave up on the noodles after a bit and used the bean sprouts as the solid component.
The California roll reminded me of a salad made from cat food, but not a very good brand. Tiny slivers of avocado did nothing to help. The nori was flaccid.
Finally, the gyoza were greasy and had almost no flavor. They were cooked without any crunch in mind and probably in oil that was too cool.
Needless to say, I am certain that this was just some kind of aberration in Maru Ichi's predictable and usually delicious cuisine. I'll go back in a few days, have my dose of kuro broth, and my faith will be redeemed.
Dim sum at Purple Dot café
I had surprisingly edible dim sum this morning at Purple Dot Café at about 9:30. I knew nothing about the place, but the server at the front was refreshingly brusque and that seemed like a good start to the culinary day. It's not so surprising that the food was good -- I like most of the dim sum that I have when visiting Seattle. But it did surprise me that I could get nice, bright-tasting dim sum on a Tuesday morning before 10 and, by the time I left, I certainly wasn't the only patron.
As I experienced it, Purple Dot was a dim sum menu establishment -- no carts and all of my dishes were clearly steamed or fried after I ordered them. I could hear the kitchen bell as each of them was finished. The menu isn't extensive, but it's fine for breakfast.
In general, the food had bright flavors, and the vegetables in the fillings were flavorful -- especially the greens and the bamboo shoots. The skins were diverse, intact, and neatly wrapped.
I didn't pick up the menu, but from memory (and looking at my picture, here's what I tried. I'll try to give the basic Cantonese pronunciations -- and I'm sure I'm murdering them -- and hope people know what dishes I'm talking about:
ha cheong fen2 -- shrimp rice rolls in the long style that's popular in Singapore. These were delicate in texture, and not drowning in sweet soy sauce or stuffed with tasteless goo. Instead, the mix of Quite edible.
ngau tou ("baak yip", I think I might have also heard this called) -- steamed beef tripe. Specifically, bible tripe. This is very simple, quite salty, was garnished with one piece of jalapeño, and a nice way of eating tripe. It's worth telling your tablemates that tripe doesn't have a strong organ meat flavor, like kidneys and liver do. It's more like muscle tissue than most offal -- even though it looks nothing like any other muscle nor, really, any other food. Maybe it's closest in appearance to sliced mushrooms.
chui4 jau2 fen2 guo2 -- literally, something like 'Chuizhou starch skin', but really just a beautifully translucent skin around a generous filling with pork and lots of bamboo shoots (and carrot, I think), flavored with steamed peanuts and shrimp. This was my favorite especially for its mix of textures.
haam sui gok (I think this literally means 'preserved water ball', but that doesn't make any sense). These are spheres of slightly sweet glutinous rice paste, filled with a mix of meat and greens, then deep fried. They were both pretty and kind of fun to eat, although I admit that by the time they got to the table, I only had one. The moderately sweet dough happened to provide a nice contrast with the other flavors in the meal. Incidentally, the frying oil was very fresh. Often, when I get deep fried things (and especially you tiao / yau ja gwai), they come out the color of mahogany shoe polish, and combine that flavor with essence of dried shrimp.
The tea was wulong and it was potable.
So I have questions for you locals:
- is Purple Dot normally a bad dim sum place, but I lucked into being one of the first customers so I got everything fresh and cooked to my order? I tried nothing daring -- really just dim sum standbys, but they are standbys for good reason.
(After I wrote this review -- having found no references on Chowhound -- I googled and came across a bunch of typically disjointed and unhelpful Yelp comments, all of which seemed to be about eating there late at night after clubbing and not enjoying the food. Thank goodness for chowhound.)
- the name on the front in Chinese is not 'purple dot', but I don't remember what it was. Who does? (And why 'purple dot'? It's a nice play on the word 'dim' (dot), I guess, but that isn't really a good answer.)
Furthermore, which are other early morning dim sum places or Hong Kong style coffee places that you would recommend?
What is with the cacio e pepe at Otto?
We had a good -- in some ways great -- meal at Otto on Monday. But it wasn't perfect.
Otto is structured most like a pizzeria, not a formal restaurant -- there are no secondi, just starters, pizze, pasta, and pre-prepared sides. It's not like any Roman pizzeria in particular, and there are strong New York touches like a voluminous wine list, a giant bar, and a devotion to cured meats.
We had the following:
Starter
$25 carne plate including duck cotechino, testa, salami, culatello
The headcheese was full of tangerine (or maybe orange) peels, meltingly gelatinous, and spectacular. If you like fresh brawn, or even if you don't, this is sort of a preserved and fruity version.
The pepper salami was very salty. A good salami, with something that made the flavor very deep. My guess would be red wine before the fermentation, but it's just a guess.
The duck cotechino seemed salty and boring till my brother recommended holding a piece on my tongue -- like a milnt pastille, or a communion wafer, depending on your creed (I, for one, believe in Duck). Then all the flavor came out, with a little earthiness but mostly the sweetness that preserved meats sometimes have.
The culatello was a standout. I didn't understand the appeal of culatello till this meal -- it just seemed like a way of spending more money for soft but good prosciutto. But this stuff was unctuous: sweet, salty, fatty, and vaguely nutmeggy all at the same time. Once it's sliced thin, I don't know how to tell culatello visually from prosciutto, but maybe there is something in the pattern or the color. Good ham.
Sides
$4 salsify with blood orange
I'm going to the market to get some salsify and make this dish: just bite-sized chunks of salsify, cooked till they were no longer crunchy but not at all mushy, and mildly spiced with some squished up blood orange. Salsify, scorzonera, black salsify, gobo -- the whole group, with its funny and overlapping names -- deserves greater press, and this is a way to stick on on a plate and say, "I know you're tired of cooked carrots and buttered parsnips, so try this."
$4 cardoons with bagna cauda
I've had run ins with cardoons in the past -- they are a pain to prepare, since the outside is stringy and intensely sharp. Someone spent a lot of time peeling and scraping the cardoons, which were simply cooked and good in themselves. Many cardoon recipes have them cooked in milk, for reasons I don't really understand, although the artichoke flavor of course gives the milk a sweat aftertaste. The bagna cauda was not very cauda, but it had the right ingredients: garlic, anchovies, and olive oil. It's an anchovy version of the eggless aioli that you get along the Mediterranean, or maybe it's just a salad dressing. Good sauce that had no relation to the cardoons. I ate some sauce with bread and I enjoyed the cardoons separately, because they were better that way.
Both sides came at the beginning of the meal, and they were sitting ready, at room temperature, in their little crocks. This was a good plan: if you look through the contorni list on the Otto menu, a lot of the flavors will be more delicate than the pizza and pasta flavors.
There were distinctly un-Rpman but good, slightly sour bread and packaged grissini on the table. Helpful for mopping up bagna cauda and for making stick sculptures.
Pizze
$13 pizza with guanciale, radicchio, pecorino and red sauce
This was the saltiest pizza I've ever had, but good The pizza is thoroughly Roman in style: thin as a saltine and without a raised edge. It wasn't blackened in many places, but thoroughly cooked, the red sauce was sweet and salty and intense with tomatoes but not much else. (This is my main complaint about red sauces in New York in general: it sometimes seems like Two Boots is the only popular place that has discovered that pizza sauce is better with a peperoncini bite.) There was quite a bit of sauce although maybe sparse by New York standards.
The radicchio and the guanciale were both cooked through and blackened at their peaks. Guanciale -- cured jowl -- is great but expensive meat to cook with, and anyone who likes bacon pizza would like this, too. With guanciale and a little pecorino, this pizza attacked my tongue like a salt lick.
$9 pizza with just mozzarella
This is off-menu, but obviously traditional. The lighter topping let the crust develop a little more crispiness than in the sauced pizza, and the mozzarella was just great: bright white, creamy, very gently elastic. My son, who (I promise) has eaten more pizze con solo mozzarella than you have, tried it "both ways": that his, he had it integrated and he also peeled off the toasted cheese so he could eat the parts separately. He gave it his highest rating.
Pasta
$9 bavette cacio e pepe
My main disappointment was what's listed as bavette cacio e pepe on the menu. Bavette are the Genoese bulging linguine: distinctly flattened, but curved along the flat side. Imagine pasta with the cross section of a magnifying glass, and that's packaged bavette and identical to what we got. The pasta was cooked well, with lots of salt in the pasta (from salty cooking water) and not at all mushy.
Cacio e pepe is, I think, traditionally robust in flavor and austere in preparation: just pecorino cheese, some of the pasta cooking water to make the cheese into an adherent sauce, and then a lot of black pepper. Usually, you can count on the cooking water and the pecorino to provide the saltiness. In Otto's version, the pasta came slippery with oil, with a light pecorino dose and almost no pepper bite. There was none of the adherent creaminess that I expected. Not a bad dish, but a sort of gutless and greasy echo of the peppery Roman version. Cacio e pepe happens to be my favorite pasta preparation, and this wasn't my favorite.
Wine
$46 Aglianico "Irpinia" Mastrobernardino 2003 (Campania)
Peppery nose, no acidic harshness, very smooth alongside the food, and obviously ready to drink and finish now. I have a new aglianico to hunt down in the wine stores.
Ice cream
$7 vanilla, dark chocolate, milk chocolate chip,
The vanilla and the dark chocolate got higher marks at the table. The warm chocolate sauce also got gobbled down.
$7 ricotta di bufala, salty caramel, olive oil
The combination was a mistake, and it was our fault. Next time, I will have either all salty gelati or all non-salty. Fortunately, I tried a bite of the ricotta gelato first, so I got to taste it -- pretty much, just what you would imagine sweet frozen ricotta to taste like: delicate, creamy. But the other two ice creams were heavily salted, and after eating them, I couldn't eat the ricotta. Of the two salty ones, my brother liked the fruit (yes, olive oil is fruit) and I liked the sugar, but they are both wonderful flavors and the gelato was all
house nocino, house limoncello
Someday, I will understand the appeal of nocino, but not today.
The limoncello, in contrast, is wonderfully pulpy, not at all syrupoid, and like a fresh and dapper lemonade whose life has been extended by taking a glass of schnapps each day after its constitutional. My brother is more of a limoncello devotee than I, and he told stories about sipping an even better version recently during a gondola ride (in Central Park, of all places) for his birthday. Limoncello surely derives a lot of its quality from its surroundings.
Atmosphere
Otto looks pretty, with Roman red the predominant theme and a huge number of empty wine bottles as completely effective sound reflectors.
We went early, but even between 7pm and about 9, the place was right loud, not just with diners, but also with contemporary pop on the tannoy. I often felt like we were using the Cone of Silence, and I had to shout to ask Don Adams and Edward Platt to repeat things.
Service was efficient, accurate, and timely. No one rushed us. Our water glasses stayed filled.
I drank lots and lots of water all evening and into the night. The use of salt seemed much more like a Roman restaurant than a New York one, but I also admit that we ordered a whole set of very salty things from the menu. Still, if you don't like salt you will have a hard time at Otto.
Summary
I will go back, try the fish, maybe have just contorni and antipasti, and try another traditional pizza, like Margherita. I think I'll see if I can go even earlier, though, or go alone so that it's not quite so noisy. Also, I'll drink tons of water beforehand.
Note: for somewhere so fashionable, Otto is not just affordable, it is cheap. You could have a full, good dinner for under $25 including wine. You could eat well for $15.
-----
Otto
1 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Bamboo Gardens in Bellevue
I had another top-notch dinner at Bamboo Garden this evening.
Tonight my only two dishes were as follows:
the cold appetizer listed as Fu Chi beef 夫妻肺片: thin slices of well-cooked beef with some additional bits of omasum tripe, as in the dim sum 牛百頁, in a scallion, garlic, and peanut sauce based on chili oil, topped with cilantro. This is a straightforward, satisfying dish. A little spicy, but mostly flavorful from the rich meat -- I think the beef was top round, but I am not great at distinguishing beef cuts. Whether it was round or brisket, it was a very flavorful, well-cooked, tender cut. The tripe added mostly a textural dimension, but it was an excellent addition. The peanuts brought the dish together and made it memorable.
My main was something called Succulent Chunks of Sole Fish & Intestines in a Spicy Broth on the menu, 毛血旺. The dish is centered on a brown sauce, moderately spicy but very, very intensely flavored with Sichuan peppercorns. (I had asked for hěn mà, hěn là -- very spicy and very Sichuan-peppercorny.) The ingredients were a fairly even mix of fish slices, blood cubes, Chinese cabbage, tofu (Bamboo Garden has delicate, flavorful tofu), bamboo shoots, more omasum tripe, and chitterlings. I enjoyed eating it, and the serving was easily large enough to make a meal for three.
I think that this dish might be a good introduction to organ meats for someone who likes Sichuan sauces, is sufficiently bold, and just hasn't tried innards: congealed blood is a tough sell when you describe it (however, it isn't listed as such in the menu). It has a pretty tame, rich beef flavor and the same soft texture as good tofu. The tripe is just tripe, and therefore a new texture for many people. The intestine itself is more flavorful than the tripe, and its appearance is certainly the most off-putting of the elements in this dish. I thought that it was the best part, and the fish the least interesting part.
Again, I think you people who live near Bellevue are lucky to have a really good, affordable Sichuan restaurant with a menu diverse enough to suit most palates. The total cost was under $20, plus tip, and I had plenty of leftovers for at least one more large meal. The waitstaff was fast, accurate, accommodating with recommendations, and tolerantly code-switched between Mandarin and English for me.
(Replating in downtown Bellevue is a different story. I couldn't find a single public trash can, so I left the containers atop an unemployment newspaper box. I hope that's the right procedure in these parts.)
Dosa Place, Santa Clara report w/ pics
Dosa Place is delightful.
There I was, in Santa Clara at lunchtime and on my way to have a big bowl of naengmyeon, and thinking, 'that's not really what I want right now, is it?'
And I saw Dosa Place, of which I had never heard. So I tried it. It is bright, cheery, and the tables are very clearly numbered.
After going through the long, long menu for a while -- the server twice came by to see if I was ready -- here's what I chose:
Kanjipuram idly, $4.99. Evidently this is a Tamil Nadu way of making idli, with some spices already in the steamed lenticular wonder that is an idli. This dish is marked as 'new' on the menu, which specifies that they are available only Friday-Sunday.
I can't compare these to Dosa Place's regular idli, but I can compare them to idli I've had elsewhere here in the Bay Area and prepared by southern cooks in Mumbai. They were richer tasting, maybe with oil in the batter, and very pretty with their bright yellow sheen and nuts studding the surface, and a delicate, almost pasty texture. I don't know if they were cooked less than usual (certainly less than any other idli I have had). If so, then bravo: I like my idli rare.
The sourness was pronounced -- idli batter needs to be fermented at least overnight. The spicing within the idli, except for the nuts, was simple and subtle, and it disappeared largely when I started dipping into the chutney.
Karuvepillai dosa. $6.29. All the dosas that I saw served at Dosa Place were a golden color, a shine suggesting delectablility, and a nice set of sambal and chutney dishes on top. I asked the server to help me decide between this and the Kothamalli dosa, but I gave it away by admitting that I love curry leaves (Murraya koenigii).
Karuvepillai dosa is described as having "Grounded Curry Leaves mixed with specialty spices". The leaf mixture blends into the dosa, so you aren't slammed with curry leaf flavor, but it is distinctive enough to come through all of the chutneys and wasn't overwhelmed by the sambal.
Sambal was the best I've had, just thick enough that I would describe it as 'like a light pea soup' rather than 'like a broth'. Also, my two bowls were both full of carrots and drumstick (Moringa oleifera), which I happen to adore for both its flavor and its fibrous texture that reminds me of fresh sugar cane or even of chewing on your chopsticks.
The three chutneys were coconut (lightly sweet but more strikingly well spiced); a tomato one with chilies (I have had this kind of chutney often and it tastes to me like what you'd get at a Heinz/McIlhenny wedding if they hired the right caterer). The last chutney was a ginger one that easily won my affection: long on ginger flavor, a little spiciness, and not too sweet.
Incidentally, both the idli (an appetizer) and the dosa (a main) came with the same three chutneys and sambal. Not so good for you if you're a reader who wants to know about the restaurant, but good for me because all three were good chutneys and the sambal was, I thought, outstanding.
The menu really is long. The Web site for the restaurant seems to have languished, or I'd link to it. Like at other south Indian restaurants, there are plenty of vada, pakoda, and other snacklets. Dosa Place has some of them listed as available only in the evenings -- especially fried ones (perhaps the vada are pre-fried). I have never had fried idli, and I can't wait for my next visit to discover them.
There are menu sections for rice, bread, "LowCal", dosas, and utappham. 35 dosa variations. 8 uthappam. A few of the specialties are weekend-only. Also, there is a short section listed as "Indo Chinese ... evenings only" -- there have been a couple recent discussions on this board of Indo-Chinese places in the Bay Area, so this might be of interest.
Many of you will be asking, "so is it as good as Saravana Bhavan?" I ask myself that, too. I think the answer is no, but it's good, there are lots of choices I've never seen anywhere (is Karuvepillai dosa common anywhere in the Bay Area? Can anyone even name another restaurant that makes it?)
The prices are higher than the prices at Spice Hut, but the quality seems likewise higher.
I would definitely bring a first-time south-Indian-food eater to Dosa Place, even if they are squeamish. The presentations are beautiful, the restaurant is upbeat and neither pretentious nor intimidating, and the food is diverse -- how could you go wrong with a plain- or butter dosa?
Mountain View’s Trend Restaurant: Next Installment of “Find the Sichuan Chef”
We had three dishes that worked out quite well for us at lunch today at Trend in Mountain View. I'll explain after the individual dish recommendations why I think this worked well and why I will definitely go back to Trend.
G3, ChongQing chili fish. 重慶辣子椒魚片. Literally, 'Chongqing chili / Sichuan-pepper fish slice'. This is a very good dish -- battered, fried white fish filets (unremarkable fish, but nice batter) tossed with a large number of hot-toasted chilies, handfuls of Sichuan peppercorns, and quite a bit of salt. We both thought that the chilies were maybe too cooked -- the browner ones were quite dried out and had no chili sweetness. But the dish is so good that it stands up even to that slight failing. (Beautifully served, too, in a basket.)
L6, Spicy Garlic Eggplant. 魚香茄子. Literally, Yu-xiang (that is, fish fragrant, but here it's the name of the sauce) eggplant. We ordered this because my friend Mike said he's always looking for dishes that compare to his mother-in-law's specialties, and this is one of them. I was skeptical because I didn't look and realize it was Yu-xiang, but we ordered it anyway, and I am delighted. This is one of those totally tame dishes that won't gross out the sort of people who don't eat innards or who can't contemplate chewing through half a basket of pretty dry chilies -- though it is meaty. The eggplant was steamed then quick fried with the quite sweet sauce, which was full of fresh ginger flavor -- I think the last part marks good Yuxiang. There's a fine richness and some of the chili oil to the sauce, too.
N1, Trend Special Cold Noodle with Chicken in Sesame Sauce. 川外川雞絲涼麺. Literally, Trend (the restaurant's name is 川外川 -- which I think means 'Sichuan away from Sichuan') chicken shreds ('silk') cool noodles. Okay, here's a dish that didn't impress me at first, a ring of cucumber shreds surrounding a net of thin noodles with some white-meat chicken shreds on it, all atop the pool of sauce. Pretty enough, but how good would it be? This dish came first, I tried it, and I said, "maybe I'd like it better if these were shreds of bitter melon, or something". It seemed missing an element, like we should sprinkle vinegar on top. The sauce was, again, sweet, but with plenty of sesame flavor.
Which brings me to what I enjoyed most about Trend.
So much for the three dishes. Good enough in their ways, but not perfect. Now here's the point: after a little while, we both realized that we kept taking from each of the dishes. Mike aptly described it as 'making a round'. Then you'd get to the end, crunch through a few more chilies, think that maybe you were done, and then start another round. The food worked as a meal, which is unusual. And I don't think we just lucked into ordering three very different dishes; I think that Trend has individual ways of making each of their styles, and it really showed through.
To sum up: individually, one would criticize each of the dishes on its own. The noodles were plain, the eggplant maybe too sweet, the chilies with the fish too well-toasted. But they went together well. It sounds from a few other reviews like maybe many people find the food a little oily, maybe too sweet, and maybe not sufficiently fiery (although plenty 'má' -- my tongue still feels the Sichuan peppercorns), but I thought that Trend really kept my mouth interested and I wanted to keep at the food.
These were pretty big dishes, but we ate them all. (I was reminded of the lesson: if you want to eat a lot, have your lunch late and skip the rice.)
- What else looked good
The hot pots on others' tables seemed to be emptying fast. The pieces of tofu in particular looked good. I noticed empty plates with the remnants of thick noodles on them -- I believe these are listed in the menu as something like H& made noodle.
- The service
Perfunctory, but accurate and efficient. We used English for our interactions, with no hiccoughs or confusion.
- The outlay
This was a moderate, huge lunch for two. Under $30. It's especially cheap if someone else pays.
- extra delight, if less chowish
Trend seems to have a very pleasing way with editing: not only was there the menu's h& made noodles and some accurate transpositions like 'fired' for 'fried', but their Web site uses the transliteration 'citron' for Sichuan. Before you just snigger, think of how clever this is -- the pronunciation of citron in English is far closer to the Mandarin way of saying 四川 Sichuan than you will get from most English speakers with either pīnyīn 'sì chuān' or, especially, the nearly opaque Wade-Giles 'sze1 chwan4'. (What? You want she one chew and four, ma'am?)
I hope someone (KK?) will correct mistakes in my Chinese. Note for learners: the menu is all in traditional Characters. Not so bad for most dishes, but Chongqing might bewilder, and how many beginners know the character for 'tendon'?
Trend Restaurant
400 Moffett Blvd Mountain View CA
Ramen Club Palo Alto
I lunched at Ramen Club in Palo Alto yesterday. They opened on Sunday, April 20, at 11 am.
The menu includes kuro, miso, tonkotsu (printed as 'tonkosu', but the chef pronounces it in the usual way), a house special, and aka miso. There is a wide range of sides, including a bunch of sushi rolls, the usual gyoza, and chawan mushi. In front of the counter are banners advertising ramen, udon, and soba, although there is no udon or soba on the menu. Strange.
I ordered aka ('red') miso broth, a mentaiko (spicy cod roe) topping, and chawan mushi. More about this below.
On the table are a container of washable chopsticks (good thing on Earth Day), gyoza sauce, sesame, red pepper, and a pot of kimchee.
The kimchee was limp, mild, and watery. I didn't know such bad kimchee could be had in the Bay Area.
Broth: not spicy at all. Aka broth usually has some chili oil on top. This did not. Lots of miso. Some garlic. A sort of unpleasant beefy, salty flavor. I added about thirty seconds of shaking from the red pepper shaker. That helped somewhat.
Noodles: the high point. The menu says they make their noodles daily. They are the wavy kind, and mine were cooked to that full point where they are still resistant to the tooth, but not at all crunchy. These are reasonable noodles.
Toppings: my word, what a pathetic display of ramen ignominy. A rectangle of limp nori, half a hard-boiled egg, and a surprising amount of pork shoulder. That's it. The egg was cold at the yolk and overcooked in the white. The pork slices (cha shu) were somewhat flavorless but unusually abundant.
Extras: under the limp nori blanket was the worst mentaiko I have had. A pale salmon color, and nothing spicy about it. I miss the ubiquitous mentaiko sellers of Fukuoka, admittedly, but other ramen shops manage to sell a quality product.
After fifteen minutes wait, my tab came, with my chawan mushi listed below the ramen. It took a little while to explain that I was still waiting for the chawan mushi. There was a huddle of most of the staff at the cash register, where they threw out accusations and denials about what was expected. Finally, I called to them and said that I didn't really want it after all.
In the end, the head chef came over to me and told me that he had read 'cha shu' instead of 'chawan mushi'. That explained why there was so much meat in my bowl. He gave me the tab, without the chawan mushi. And he said, without a hint of irony, 'no extra charge for you'.
Maybe Ramen Club will improve after a settling-in period. It has a long way to go.
Bamboo Gardens, Bellevue: heat and oil
Thanks to several positive postings, I had dinner yesterday at Bamboo Gardens, the large Sichuan restaurant in downtown Bellevue, an easy stroll from the shopping malls or the transit center.
Bamboo Gardens has taken the precaution of dividing their English-language menu into easily accessible dishes for those who aren't used to Sichuan cooking and something they creatively call the "wild side", which is where you'll find most of the cold dishes, plates centered around innards, and some of the spicier creations. (If you are interested in why they do this, consult some of the other posts about the restaurant; it seems to make sense.)
Of the foods I ordered, the Sichuan dumplings were fine but the standout was something called swimming fire fish. This is a large pot of white fish, tofu squares, bean sprouts, scallions, and sea greens in an elixir of chilli oil and Sichuan peppercorns. I asked to have it very hot; very peppery (hen la; hen ma). It did come out very peppery -- surely the most Sichuan peppery dish I've ever gotten in a restaurant. And it was hot with chilli oil, but not numbingly so.
The fish and tofu were of equal tenderness, and I think maybe the dish would be almost as good without the fish -- the tofu, sprouts, and greens made a nice vehicle for carrying the broth's flavors.
The pot is huge -- I imagine that three moderate eaters could make a good meal from it, along with bowls of (very good) steamed rice. The picture at http://bamboogardendining.com/SwimmingFireFish.aspx will give you some sense for how the pot brims with solids.
I also think that some diners will be put off by how oily this dish is, and perhaps by the oiliness of a lot of Sichuanese cooking.
I will go back to Bamboo Gardens when I'm in Bellevue. This pot tells me there is a lot more worth trying.
Bamboo Garden of Bellevue, 202 106th Pl NE, Bellevue, WA 98004, (425) 688-7991. http://bamboogardendining.com
Bombay Garden in Sunnyvale: Fertile Ground for the Biggest Indian Buffet Ever
It's interesting how buffets are like this: they have some good things and some things that are truly not worth serving.
I had a parallel experience when colleagues took me to Shiva's on Castro in Mountain View. However, at Shiva's there is a clear rule: the meat dishes were horrible, and the vegetarian dishes were acceptable to quite good.
It seems like it helps to know what the specialties are -- good things out of the tandoor, for example. It also helps, as at small buffets like Deedee's (also in Mountain View) or at medium-sized ones like Passage to India or Tumeric, when the restaurant knows not to try to include every possible dish from the Punjab to Kerala.
Dinner at the Cheese School
It definitely isn't a way to save money or a cheap date. Here are the advantages:
You get the information cheese by cheese, and the educators have stories and some data that neither Jenkins nor the Handbook contain. In one class, for example, Wil handed out the EU application for protection of the status of the Serra da Estrela cardoon-curdled cheese. Plus, you can ask questions.
The selection is of one-person portions of cheeses in prime condition. I guess you could buy 2 oz of each cheese at Cheese Plus or at the Ferry building, but it would be hard (for me, at least) to know which cheeses to buy.
It's also an evening out, which is different from an evening at home.
I come away from each class with a more articulate idea of what I like and don't like about the cheeses.
Dinner at the Cheese School
Twice in the past few weeks I've spent an evening at the Cheese School in San Francisco. Since the time amounted to both an enlightening class and a fancy dinner, I thought more Chowhounds should know about it.
The Cheese School celebrates its first birthday soon and currently occupies a cozy second-floor suite in Northpoint/North Beach. It is run by Sara Vivenzio and features a range of cheese educators and -makers. I'll concentrate here on the Cheese School class as a dinner destination, although I think it's also a huge boon to the Bay Area from an culinary-o-intellectual viewpoint.
At this week's class, led by clever former Harley Farms worker and Queens-raised cheese educator Wil Edwards, we went through a set of sheep cheeses. They are all cheeses you can buy in the Bay Area at retail, and they were diverse in style and flavor. For the record:
Yogurt from Bellwether Farms (Sonoma).
Sally Jackson sheep (Oroville, Wash.)
Brebiou (Rhone-Alpes, Fr.)
Ombra (Catalonia)
Vermont Shepherd (Putney, Vt.)
Woodcock Farms Westin (Westing, Vt.)
Berkswell (Berkswell, U.K.)
Cacio di Basco Tartuffo (Tuscany)
Serra da Estrela (Beira, Port.)
Carles (Roquefort, Midi-Pyrenees, Fr.)
With these comes a basket of bread, both the sweet baguette and the walnut-brown bread from Acme. Three additives included Marshall Farm wildflower honey, which is an important element in the adventure of cheeses versus other things. That is, if you like a cheese and it has strong flavors, try it with honey and see what that brings out. Cheese, unlike wine or a salad, doesn't really have a way for the maker to add sweetness, even when sweetness will complement the cheese's fatty, salty, umami qualities. The other condiments were a Frog Hollow nectarine preserve and a fig and almond spread from Gracious Gourmet, both good in their own right but very intricate when you are trying to taste ten different cheeses (and two breads and four fruits).
Other side plates contained a huge portion of cut figs, good raspberries, better strawberries, and very good Granny Smith (I think) apples. A water glass, a bowl of Marcona almonds, and we were ready to go.
The best of the cheeses -- like the Sally Jackson and the Serra da Estrella -- slightly overshadow some of the others. One of the good things about being in a class is that you go slowly, so you can taste even the intricacies of a less pugnacious or assertive cheese: Berkswell is remarkably good to eat and has a fun history to learn about, even when it's among more swaggering company.
The Cheese School might seem an expensive dinner, at $60 for a class like the one we took. However, you are getting a full meal, all set at once and without any wine bill or tip. On your plate is about an ounce each of ten or so cheeses. This is a lot of cheese.
The two wines, chosen by the school, are appropriate, and your glass will prove nearly bottomless, as one of the school's workers refills it should you decide that, say, your pecorino needs a pint of pinot to wash it down. Our wines were '02 Monmousseau Vouvray chenin blanc (Loire) and '06 Mark West pinot noir (Sonoma). Both hold up to sheep cheese richness.
Cheese School is a good solo dinner or a swank date. No menu, no choices, and you have to like cheese and be willing to listen. Mostly, you are getting to try in a pure state some of the best foods that often end up as ingredients elsewhere.
Cheese School of San Francisco
2155 Powell, 2nd fl., San Francisco, (415) 346-7530, www.cheeseschoolsf.com
Dinner at Crush, with questions
I had dinner last night at Crush, and I won't rave but I will go back.
The menu is evenly divided between small plates (9 of them, though one was out) and somewhat-larger-plates (8). Each item and its sides get described, as in "Maple-Bacon Sausage Stuffed Chicken Breast / Truffle Tagliatelle, Chanterelles, Sugar Peas & Baby Squash / $24". There's a small foofy drinks list (walnut manhattan, etc.), a full bar, and a long wine list ordered mostly by grape varietal.
I've learned not to ignore the foofy drinks list when in Seattle. I had an alcohol-free, somewhat sweet cucumber and mint cocktail, and although I could have done without all the simple syrup, it's a reminder what nice pleasant summer drinks come from cucumbers. Today in Seattle the temperature was 85 deg F.
We ate:
Wagyu Flank Steak Salad & Black Truffle Vinaigrette / Chicory Greens, Roquefort & Pickled Pearl Onions. The meat came medium rare, as ordered, and a pretty charcoal color on the outside. The black truffle flavor in the dressing was lost, but the bitter chicory was not. Better than either, though, the Roquefort: a large triangle, and its strength of flavor and buttery texture stood up easily to the acid in the dressing, the bitterness of the greens, and the salty-umami meat. (I sometimes think that restaurant menu writers -- never mind the chefs -- just insert the word "truffle" for effect.)
Heirloom Tomato Salad & Fried Spanish Anchovies / Lettuces, Balsamic & Lemon-Basil Aioli. Again, a dish with a one-too-many-flavors problem, but salads make that easy to forgive. The anchovies are dipped in a thick batter and deep fried, not just dusted in flour and pan fried, which is a more usual treatment. Frankly, they would be a good introduction to eating anchovies for someone who had not yet graduated from the phase where you use anchovy paste when you cook them broccoli, they love the delicious flavor, but they have no idea what makes it taste so good. Anchovies for those who don't like anchovies but do like fish-and-chips. I asked my friends if you could grow tomatoes here in Seattle, and one of them said, "If you are lucky enough to have an especially warm spot in your garden, and it's hard". I don't know where the tomatoes came from -- maybe the other side of the Cascades -- but they were sweet and summery and lightly acidic. The salad was mostly the tamer sorts of lettuces. Fried anchovies and fresh tomatoes would have been simpler and just as good.
Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras & Blackberries / Cornmeal Waffle, Port & Endive. A dish straight out of a very decadent medieval feast, except for the presence of corn and the existence of sweet port. This was, in fact, the sweetest of all the things we ate all evening, including dessert. The blackberries -- which you can't help but grow here in Seattle -- were like candy, and the port reduction a syrup. The foie gras itself, seared on the outside and beet red within, might have been rich enough to stand up to all the sugar, but we weren't. And it was on a waffle. And the endive was utterly gratuitous.
Hawaiian Kampachi with Summer Herbs & Olive Oil / Cauliflower 'Tabouleh,' Spicy Peppers & Tomato. You probably noticed that that is a strange description - no note of how the fish would be prepared, and the enigmatic 'spicy peppers'. Well, the fish was herbed and then broiled through, and rich and delicious, but it was the bed of mint-laden bits of cauliflower that stood out. Recently back from Rome, I've been missing all the wild- and domesticated mint flavors that characterize summer meat dishes. Crush didn't disappoint. The tomatoes here were little red ones, probably Sweet 100s, and the spicy peppers remain enigmatic. (But neither spicy nor peppery.)
Wild Salmon Belly, Hamachi & Ahi Tuna Tartare / Avocado & Vanilla Spicy Citrus Vinaigrette. Again, Crush can turn out wonderful dishes. In this case, I don't know if I should make fun of the 'vanilla' or the 'spicy'. They were evanescent in their presence and alleged spiciness, but maybe they made this dish so good. Just a cylinder of finely chopped -- but not minced -- high-grade fish that worked surprisingly well as a combination. On top, a quail egg, some roe, and minced greens. Altogether the best of the small plates.
Side dish: "rappini" (one of only two misspellings on the menu) in butter. Good, buttery, bitter, salty. Not a great companion to anything, but fine in itself. Rapini is getting more air time, it seems; lucky diners.
I don't have the menu description of the dessert, but it was a piece of corncake, prepared as an upside-down cake with blackberry topping (that is, bottoming), licorice ice cream, and a wafer. Not a bad thing if you like that sort of thing, though the licorice flavor was more theoretical than otherwise.
One standout at Crush was the presence of the difficult-to-get marsanne and roussanne blend White Coat from Turley, 2005. This particular wine had more assertive flavors than most of the dishes. If you look through the list, you'll see that at least half of them were tough challenges for any wine. But with the Roquefort cheese and especially with the kampachi and cauliflower, the wine and the food just made each other better.
I had an espresso at the end: too long a pull, and the cup was not hot enough. Oh, well.
Crush, on the whole, is pricey but not exorbitant. The small plates run about $10 to $20, and the large plates (only the kampachi above) $20 to $30.
My two questions:
What is the deal with the extra flavors? The kitchen at Crush clearly pay for good ingredients, know how to chop-and-simmer-and-sear, and put together interesting sides with each course. But there's just no reason for the black truffle or the licorice. Is it possible that these add-ons are really just there for their seductive effect on the menu? I mean, are they just an edible form of marketing-blub?
What does the word "spicy" mean in this context? It doesn't refer to piquancy, but it probably means something.
Crush, 2319 E Madison, Seattle. 206 302 7874. www.chefjasonwilson.com.
Temptations - Indian Chinese on Castro, Mntn View
I had hopes for Temptations, even with the high prices on the menu.
I ordered Singapore noodles, knowing that this dish is easily prepared but should show off both the place's ability to combine ingredients and their ability to balance.
What a disappointing dish: I might as well have been handed a plate with five piles on it: the noodles, the turmeric, the overcooked little chicken dice, the carrots, and the green onion. Then I could have poured over a large quantity of overheated vegetable oil to simulate Temptations's preparation, got up, and walked away.
I've found that "Singapore noodles" is ambiguous about whether it will be Singapore mee or rice sticks. The noodles in this case were an unremarkable wheat type, broken into pieces about the width of my hand. They were fully cooked, but not gummy.
I don't think this dish displayed any potential whatsoever, so I am unlikely to give Temptations a second visit.
JZ Cool Eatery and Wine Bar in Menlo Park -- recommend?
We had dinner at JZ Cool Eatery and Wine Bar this week. After years of enjoying Jessie Cool's sensibilities at the JZ Cool formerly in this spot, at the cafe in Stanford's Cantor art center, and at Flea St Cafe in Menlo Park, I was pretty disappointed.
It's not a terrible place, but it is also not a good one.
Our dinner was four small plates, each $8 or so. Stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms were mostly light, simple cheese filling and batter, if pretty, with a nondescript sweet dipping liquid. Braised little lamb ribs were probably the only laudable dish, in a very rich and sweet chutney, served in a little pot, tasting strongly of cinnamon and of the lamb. We were served mixed vegetables fried (rather than the grilled vegetables that we had ordered), but we ate the fritto misto because we were short on time. Good vegetables, but certainly not a special treatment. The chipotle aioli alongside tasted neither distinctly of garlic nor of chipotles. And we had a plate some of the dullest gravlax I've had -- completely edible, but also completely free of pizazz or chutzpah.
I had a glass of unexciting sangiovese. The place will give you a big glass at 6 oz or a little glass at 3, and all the wines are the same price, and they'll give you a flight of wine. This is a smart way for an informal restaurant to deal with a range of local wines.
The ingredients were up to Cool's standards: mostly local and well selected. The preparation was distinctly underwhelming. The service was in that region underneath lackluster -- our waiter came back at one point to ask us to refresh her memory on an order, and we still didn't get what we had ordered; it took a long time to flag someone down, even though we were sitting at the bar.
For those of us who spent years liking the shared tables, big selection, and informal character of Cool's older deli-style restaurant, this new place is a real blow in the gut. I'm not going to bring my young child, and the tab was thrice what it would have been for a filling and delicious sandwich or meal in the old place.
Culinarily, this trend-driven place is really the last thing that Sta Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park needed: we've already got swish mediocrity (or, often, worse) at Vida, a good upscale grill in Yuban, the surprisingly acceptable chain bistro in Left Bank, a coffee shop, one of the better chain taquerias (¡Una Mas!), and the culinarily troubled but atmospheric Tokyo Subway.
I really, really wanted to like the new Cool, but I couldn't. It filled me with some pretty forgettable food and a sense of loss.
JZ Cool Eatery and Wine Bar
827 Sta Cruz Av, Menlo Park
(650) 325 3665
www.cooleatz.com
Pizza rustica at Umbria
Golden Boy sounds interesting. Is it pizza rustica in the thick-rectangular-Roman sense or pizza rustica in the short-crust sense?
Pizza rustica in Lazio is often the same as pizza al taglio -- usually just a big sheet of dough, often rectangular or oval (in the shape of the circo massimo, of course), that can be adorned with many different things. Like Robert, I've only ever seen it served in rectangles, never in wedges.
Pizza rustica in most home cookbooks and in most places outside Lazio is more like what Root described -- a short-crust pie, usually with eggs in the dough, adorned with assorted things.
It's a multifunction term, this pizza rustica.
To answer Melanie's question: the crust at Umbria was thinner than at most places -- maybe about as thin as what the Amici's chain serves.
Interestingly, the surest differentiator that I've heard described in Rome between pizza napoleatana and pizza romana is that the Neapolitan version has the thickened rim.
I clearly need a guide to measuring pizza thickness.
Pizza rustica at Umbria
Robert is utterly right: The pizza rustica at Umbria is a regular, bread-dough based pizza. I don't know why they use the 'farmhouse' term for the pizza. But I notice that another reasonable pizzeria, Pronto in Redwood City, applies 'rustica' to one of their chicken pies. The menus at both give more detail and do nothing to suggest that it's a egg-crust, a filled pizza, or a dessert. It seems a little silly, but not really misleading.
I'm pretty sure that this term can mean all sorts of things. Just in Waverley Root, you get three fairly different ones:
'Pizza rustica is made in Ascoli [in Le Marche] of egg pasta filled with green vegetables, cottage cheese, sausage and herbs...'
'Pizza rustica [in Abruzzi] is a sort of meat-and-cheese pie of considerable complexity. The dough is made with self-rising flour, beaten eggs, milk, a generous dosage of olive oil, grated Parmesan-type cheese, some sugar, a little cinnamon and a touch of nutmeg. The filling requires three kinds of cheese (mozzarella, soft pecorino and Emmental), chopped ham, sausages cut into small pieces or sausage meat, and the yolks of hard-boiled eggs. The upper crust, pierced with holes to let steam escape, is brushed with egg yolk and melted butter before the pie goes into a slow oven for 40 minutes.'
'One [dessert in Basilicata] whose ingredients sound rather curious for a sweet is pizza rustica, which is puff paste stuffed with grapes, sweet ricotta cheese and sweetened salami (!) eaten hot from the oven.'
I think of pizza rustica as pizza on a pastry crust, usually with eggs. This is a much quicker pizza for most of us to make at home -- you don't need the heat of a traditional bread oven, and you don't need the rising time of a bread dough -- which would suggest why the pastry-based pizza has this name.
I measured the crust of the ill-named pizza at Umbria. It is consistently under 0.4 cm thick, although I don't know exactly how to measure thickness in crust -- at which point? Do you press the calipers into the soft dough on top?
