augustiner's Profile
he likes ___. where do i take him for sushi in SF?
thanks everyone for your help. it looks like dinner has been postponed, so koo is back on. but i've had my eye on some of these places and its nice to have the feedback. i will be checking out sebo and aka tombo (especially for that $30 omakase). and i've been curious about hama-ko, as well. dinner report pending.
he likes ___. where do i take him for sushi in SF?
yes, my understanding is that the current chef used to work at sushi ran. most of my meals at koo have been with a close friend's family, and they used to dine at sushi ran years ago when they lived in marin. its funny, the mother, who lives in japan, always encourages us to eat what we like, like ravenous teenagers, then she pokes at a couple things and orders a california roll. i asked her once why, and she said she couldn't get them in japan, but she DOES get better sushi there.
he likes ___. where do i take him for sushi in SF?
for years i've had many wonderful meals at koo in SF. unfortunately, i am not terribly familiar with other sushi restaurants in the city. i want to treat a friend to a sushi dinner for his birthday, but koo is closed until june 7th, which makes planning a dinner with a few more friends a bit more difficult around the birthday boy's actual birthday.
so i'm trying to think of alternatives. i've been throwing around sebo and sushi aka tombo in my head. maybe kiss, but its been so long since i've been there.
i want to tailor the meal to my friend's taste, while leaving room for my own. he loves mackerel. i think its delicious when it is fresh, and inedible when its less so. but recently when he tasted kohada, which i think is fairly similar (strongly flavored, oily, not unlike herring, anchovy, sardines), but to me, better, he just shrugged and said, "it's like mackerel." well yes, but...ok! he likes maguro, and i don't think he's had nice toro yet, but tuna in general is good. he likes scallops. he isn't terribly adventuresome but i think that given the option of nice fish for free on his birthday, he'd try a lot of things he usually wouldn't. he likes spicy tuna rolls. i don't. usually.
i think he would really like the aji sashimi prep at koo, which also comes with the skeleton deep fried into what should probably replace popcorn as the snack of choice in movie theaters worldwide (yes, korea, its even better than that toasted dried squid!).
i usually like really simple and fresh sashimi and nigiri. i'm not opposed to american style maki rolls, but they just don't really appeal when they have five kinds of fish, are deep-fried, slathered in spicy mayo with tiled avocado armor. i want a place in SF that has GOOD fish, but might also serve up more creative or outlandish preps.
i know i should just be diving into the threads, but i hope you all can help with suggestions for both a more or less traditional sushi experience and one with a bit more western flair without skimping on the quality for either approach.
right now i'm still looking at koo for an alternate date but also sebo, sushi aka tombo and...well that's it for right now. help? thanks! oh and places that consistently have really good saba.
Dong Bei Mama update
the cold dishes are ALL gone? i was there for a late lunch a few weeks ago, and while there was a limited selection, there were a few sitting out in the cold case. seaweed, pressed tofu, etc. i got the spicy pig's ear to go with a pork and preserved cabbage noodle soup that was pretty homely looking, but had the same milky rich broth served in their hot pots perked up with a bit of tang from the krauty napa and bright white pepper.
Rice - How did you experience it today?
short grain white rice cooked with pearl barley and millet. eaten with hand-sliced grilled pork belly (korean samgyeopsal), kimchi, raw garlic, ssamjang or a fermented soybean-chile based sauce, with sesame oil and salt. wrapped up in lettuce. but its usually short grain white rice, plain, in the rice cooker. though i've taken a liking to vietnamese style broken jasmine rice, which i enjoy texturally.
Korean rice
in restaurants in the US, i've often found it to be a medium-grained white rice, sometimes short grain. kokuho rose is super common, or Calrose, which i believe is a branded hybrid medium grain. it has about the same tactile properties as short grain rice, so its sticky, but the grains are longer than what i remember from korea, where the rice was short grain.
major brands like kokuho rose or nishiki are likely what you're eating in korean restaurants in the US. rhee bros. might be another likely culprit. kokuho rose and nishiki are also widely used in japanese and or sushi restaurants. there are many other brands, but i think what you're looking for is california grown short or medium grain rice. here in california i usually end shelling out a bit more for in-state grown "premium" rices usually marketed to japanese/japanese-american customers, though i am korean by heritage. its good rice, and totally appropriate for korean food. tamaki and tamanishiki are two of my favorites. but the bigger players, kokohu rose and nishiki, are excellent and cheaper.
Namu Gaji To Go (San Francisco)
i was pretty excited when i ordered the "bibim" to go for lunch today, but i wasn't that thrilled with the end product. the different players all sounded really appetizing, especially on such a nice day: cold soba, romaine lettuce, toasted pine nut, toasted white and black sesame seeds, shredded cucumber, diced soft tofu, daikon sprouts, pickled red onion minced, and a kimchi dressing? sounded delicious, but i thought that the proportion of lettuce to noodle was way off, and i felt that the dish didn't know whether to be a cold noodle dish or a salad. when i realized i had eaten all of the soba noodles, there was so much lettuce left over. the noodles were heavier and slippery, while the lettuce by contrast seemed weightless and was difficult to integrate into a cohesive dish. i also thought that the kimchi element that was supposed to dress the whole thing together seemed skimpy in portion, and the dish suffered from a bit of wateriness that probably also contributed to it seeming under-seasoned in general. i hope yours tasted much better.
i do want to go back for dinner. especially after watching two of the chefs butcher down huge hunks of pig and cow while i waited for my order. and your description of the fried chicken will not be far from my mind anytime soon.
Eiji Restaurant - Oboro Tofu - Anyone tried?
i have wanted to try out eiji for years, but didn't get around to it until tonight. the oboro tofu is quite a treat. they fill a small claypot nabe dish full of soymilk and heat it on a portable burner. when it comes to temperature, they stir in the coagulant. it sits and a piping hot fresh pot of tofu the texture of a broken custard arrives with a dish of the following condiments: minced and/or shredded katsuobushi, shiso, and green onion, along with toasted sesame seeds, ground spicy daikon and ginger. plus a little pour spout of tamari, to season to taste.
we also had goma-ae, the spinach dish topped with a sweet and nutty sesame sauce, although this one seemed freshly ground, almost the difference between smooth and chunky peanut butter, though more finely textured. it was nice. and a steamed "white fish" appetizer with cha soba. i'm not sure what sort of fish it was, but it was giving, skin-on, and juicy, maybe black cod? under a small tangle of green cha soba noodles that must had been finished or reheated in an oven, because the top of the noodles were toasted, browned and crunchy.
a side of kohada nigiri was so-so. as was a spicy tuna roll and a green onion hamachi roll my friend ordered. guessing sushi isn't their strength.
but i loved that tofu.
i'm guessing if i do a search i might find options for similarly made piping hot fresh tofu at other restaurants, but any recent recs would be great. the sun was out this evening but it was brisk and chilly. this dish was exactly what i wanted.
Wo Hing General Store (SF Mission) report
i was there on the same night. the meal began promising enough with a fresh yuba and mushroom salad. a mix of mushrooms tossed with fresh, creamy yuba trips. it was delicious. everything went downhill from there.
the xlb were just bad. one of mine had a torn skin, and the other one didn't seem to have much discernible juice. but the worst was the pork filling, which was dried out, tough, and chewy.
the handmade noodles tasted fine enough. the noodles were very thin, and not as toothsome as one might expect from handmade noodles. they came stir-fried with napa cabbage, pork, and shiitake mushrooms. they tasted like...what that sound likes.
the poached half chicken was, as our server described, a take on hainan chicken rice. just without the rice. it came with a green ginger sauce on the side. the chicken was poached the way i've seen cantonese chickens cooked: pink on the bone. which i like but seems to make most americans queasy or uncomfortable. it looks slightly undercooked. but i like it that way. it's the only way i can enjoy eating poached chicken breast at all.
but the chicken was also under-seasoned. yes, i know that is what the sauce is for, but there wasn't enough. and i think some level, or a higher level, of salinity in the poaching liquid would have benefited the meat itself. we needed another side of the ginger sauce, and we were brought a soy-chile dip as well. so, for me, a perfectly poached though not especially flavorful chicken that will probably disappear from the menu because everyone thinks its undercooked, or they will start cooking it to a higher temperature and i wouldn't enjoy it anymore.
service was wonderful. and being by the window the saturday night before halloween provided much entertainment. i anticipated the high prices, knowing this was a charles phan restaurant. i know the difference between the slanted door and "vietnamese" restaurants. so...maybe if wo hing didn't try sticking to traditional chinese foods, it would be better. if that makes any sense. my friend and i decided we'd return in a couple months to see if the food improves. but i did find this to be pretty disappointing.
Koream Bossam in Oakland?
i obviously have forgotten how to read. thanks for the correction!
Koream Bossam in Oakland?
its not a barbecue dish. bossam is pork belly (usually) that has been steamed or slow-boiled until tender. the cooled pork is thinly sliced and its usually eaten with napa cabbage leaves that have been salted until pliable, and a panchan-relish made with shredded daikon. it is also often served with shucked raw oysters. i just checked the menus for jong ga house, ohgane, and sahn maru and i don't see it listed in any of theirs.
but its extremely popular, so it has to be available somewhere. anyone else?
Baked Black Cod and Another Birthday at R&G Lounge (SF)
i just had the baked black cod the other night for a birthday dinner, and i thought it rivaled the s&p crab for top billing at this meal. tender, pleasantly rich and fatty, the flesh smooth and giving with superb sweet and savory notes. i thought it tasted more like a japanese style prep than cantonese, like nobu styled miso glazed cod. my friends were scraping the flesh away from the skin, for which i went back to covet and eat. rich, fatty and tasty. this is now a new must have for me.
also tasty were the freshly steamed (formerly) live prawns, steaming hot and sweet, with their juicy heads to suck on.
i can't wait to go back when our local crabs are in season.
Top 10 (20?) American-Chinese dishes
i think chinese food in the western hemisphere is fairly similar, with regional differences. obviously from this thread there are even regional differences in chinese-american food within the US alone. but yeah chinese menus i've seen in germany, ireland and scotland were pretty familiar to this american.
although i HAVE to say that the most surreal chinese meal i've ever had was in ireland. friend's parents took us out. i ordered the black bean beef, which you reference but which i never see in california. during the meal i looked around and realized that i was the only person in the room eating white rice and using chopsticks. there were maybe five people eating fried rice with their meal, and the rest were eating chips!
potential noodle adventure in the south bay
so i'm motivating a few friends to trek down to the south bay for a double noodle fest. ramen and naengmyon. the idea is to head down and do one or the other for lunch, and the other for dinner, with some sort of distraction in between meals. i would like to do this within the month of july, but that might be out of my hands, though i want this to happen on a very very warm day and or evening.
i was wondering about himawari. there doesn't seem to be a lot of recent posts about it. anyone eaten here recently that can attest to what is going on here now? what broth is best, for example? shio, it seems? and maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree and should be looking at santa, or ramen dojo, or other places? sorry i know this is talked about constantly but it seems that recent reviews of specifically well regarded restaurants aren't so available.
the other idea was naengmyon, based on melanie wong's recent post on kunjip. a place that specializes in beef soup AND naengmyon appeals, especially since mul naengmyon, or the cold noodles served in a chilled slushy broth, is supposed to be based on a well made beef broth and mild radish kimchi, or dongchimi "broth.". and while i just can't eat that much food, the idea of free noodle refills is tempting...
hope to accomplish this goal very soon, but any tips would absolutely be appreciated, especially in regards to recent experiences with ramen, with himawari in mind but not with any exclusivity. thank you in advance for any tips.
Dong Bei Mama : Formerly Panda Country Kitchen.
anyone been back or tried the crispy fried intestines very recently? last night four of us ate at dong bei mama and ordered this dish and it was very different from the last time i had it. the intestines were coated in a thick batter before frying, unlike the previous time i've had this when they were fried naked in the oil. the addition of batter really weakened this dish. it was greasy and oily, coating the mouth. i suppose i should have asked about the difference but we were getting full and everything else was spot on (chongqing chicken, sliced beef pancake, cold cut appetizers, pickled napa with lamb stew/soup, which i liked much better than the similar version with pork belly).
Dong Bei Mama Chowdown
I was at table #2, and while i'm perfectly fine with the huge amount of food we ordered, the speed at which the dishes arrived made it difficult for me to keep up, and some of my impressions of the meal are fleeting.
of the cold appetizers, i really enjoyed the headcheese and the shoulder terrines. i have textural issues with cooked egg yolks, salted or no, so the ones featuring the salted eggs and the century eggs appealed to me less. the cold cucumber dish was a simple thing done really well.
my favorite dishes of the meal were the spicy intestines, the sour cabbage and pork, the dongpo pork leg, the lamb dumplings, and the chongqing chicken wings were super addictive. i have little experience with intestines but this dish was fantastic. i heard vliang and someone else mention that they didn't like it that crispy, but i loved it. guess i'll have to sample less crispy versions to see how i feel about that. the sour cabbage and pork definitely was a surprise, as when i closed my eyes i thought i was eating something germanic as others have mentioned. the thin slices of pork were tender and rich, cut with the tang of the 'kraut, so to speak. the stewed pork leg was just the handsomest thing ever, alchemically delicious with the sweet meat and luscious skin.
i much preferred the juicy lamb dumplings to the pork, shrimp, and chive version. and from the sichuan specialities, the chongqing chicken kept beckoning, distracting me from the other dishes. when this and the intestines came out, you could hear the sharp inhalation of breath through teeth to cool tongues singing with heat.
the chicken with mushrooms pot disappointed on my first go round. i think it was competing with the more vibrant and louder flavors of the dishes mentioned above. but when i tried it again, i thought the braising liquid was delicious, and i loved the texture of the shredded mushrooms. the potatoes were great, the perfect conveyance of those rather subtle flavors. i did not really like the corn cakes, however. even after dunking them in sauce or soup, they seemed dense and mealy.
i didn't feel strongly either way about the pork with the tofu knots. the sweet and sour pork was good, wish i had grabbed a second bite. i was disappointed in the cumin lamb, which was overly greasy and dull. i have a fondness for the cumin lamb at beijing restaurant, so i'll stick with that there. i never tasted the double skin, and it sounds like i didn't miss much.
overall i loved the cold-plates selection station, and much of what we ordered from there. the hearty stews and soups appeal, and i have to go back for that intestines dish. i'm very grateful to vliang for organizing this and for adding the second table. it was a wonderful meal.
Ti Couz Liquor License
it was sold. ti couz also has downgraded to self-service during lunch hours. i had a very surreal lunch here last week. we ordered our food from the cashier behind the bar, which is now as useless as the section of the restaurant called "ti couz too" that is now relegated only to the odd musical performance and otherwise lies dormant. it's a handsome bar, too...
so we sat and realized that we had left a placard with our number at the register. retrieving it i also grabbed my own carafe of water and glasses and napkins and silverware, since there appeared to be no staff of any sort to provide any.
my crepe was just as its always been, and my second choice cider was just fine in its little earthenware bowl.
when we decided to leave, we went to the register to pay, but there was no one at it or anywhere else behind the naked, empty bar. there was a faucet running a steady stream into one of the sinks which was about to overflow onto the floor. my friend walked behind the bar to turn off the faucet, which finally produced a staff member from somewhere, and we were able to pay and go on our way.
so i don't know what this means for ti couz. they used to have delicious bloody marys as well as tasty, fresh cocktails such as the ti couz 10. i don't see how the lack of revenue from liquor could bode well for the long term future of the restaurant, whatever the amount of money gained from selling the license. i think its weird that only 1/3rd of the space in the restaurant is being put to any use at all during lunch. is there going to be a ti couz at all in the near future?
Rhea's Deli
i had the korean steak sandwich once, but found the sweetness of the meat jarring with the other flavors, or rather with the cheese. i guess i just can't get into the korean bulgogi fusion thing, like the tacos taking over the country.
however i frequently order the pork katsu sandwich. the katsu is pounded thinly before breading and frying, and comes with the pickled onions, jalapenos, slaw, spicy aioli and katsu sauce, the worcestershire-like condiment usually served with tonkatsu. i find the medium to actually be medium hot, so maybe you do just like it spicier.
i did pick up a jar of the kimchi and its pretty good. $6 for a small mason jar, spicier than the stuff i usually buy at woori market on fillmore, but that kimchi isn't really spicy at all. i'd try to describe it better but its been in the fridge for awhile, so now its just pretty ripe, about ready to be cooked rather than eaten straight up.
but do go try the katsu sandwich, it is quite yummy.
Condiment crazy
in south korea, jjajang myon is a national obsession. for those who don't know, its a noodle dish with a black bean paste sauce that is served in "chinese" restaurants. the sauce is made from a paste called chunjang, a bean paste that is as dark as molasses.
when you go to a chinese restaurant in korea they will serve you raw onion and tanmuji (pickled daikon, its basically takuan, the japanese pickle) with a side of chunjang. you dip the raw onion (rinsed, i think, because its sweeter and not pungent) or slices of tanmuji in the chunjang sauce, which is very salty with a bit of caramel flavor. and they give you kimchi, of course. but this use of chunjang seems to be the only way you'll encounter it in korea: at a chinese restaurant at which jjajangmyon is one of maybe four dishes you would ever think of ordering. i've never encountered the chunjang dip and the onion and pickled radish as part of the panchan spread of a typical korean meal. but always at the chinese restaurants, which are as popular as pizzerias are in the US
kimuchi vs. kimchi
yeah my mom makes "instant kimchi" sometimes, especially in the summer. but there is a different word for this: keotjeori or kotjori (romanized spelling is confusing). its not a kimchi, i think precisely because it is NOT fermented. often made with lettuce or napa cabbage, almost a spicy salad.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/654472
corn starch thickened sauces
no thank you, i like how the thickened sauce binds the mild tofu and super flavorful meat together, as well as how it coats rice. if there is an issue with my mapo tofu, it must be excess water that i don't properly deal with. i also like softer tofu, but that can't be it, since i've had tasty mapo tofu made with soft (not silken or korean sundubu style tofu) in restaurants with properly thickened sauces. not gloopy, but rich and...gently binding.
corn starch thickened sauces
i mixed roughly 1/2 cornstarch to 1 part cold water, by sight. the sauce thickened fine poured at the end, at the hard boil, and only broke about 5 minutes after i took it off the stove. i didn't add any sugar to the sauce, except the small amount present in the oyster sauce i added (to the chow mein sauce, not the mapo tofu sauce). it wasn't very fatty, either (it was just a bit of duck broth, oyster sauce, sherry, soy sauce, and a touch of sesame oil). but these are good tips, i'll pay more attention the next time i do a starch-thickened stiry fry and hopefully figure it out!
should i be adding more slurry?
why haven't i spent time in oakland's chinatown before? new gold medal, shanghai, and yuen hop noodle co.
i've been known to cut in line when the occasion calls for it. thanks for the tip, plan on trekking to oakland again soon.
corn starch thickened sauces
i just made a chow mein style stir fry, and i thickened the sauce with a corn starch slurry. while i was eating it, the sauce relaxed and because a thin, runny liquid again. this has happened before, most notably when i've made mapo tofu. i had reasoned that maybe the excess water in the tofu cubes released after cooking and thinned the sauce out. but i don't know. has anyone else had a similar problem? are there more reliable thickening starches? i've used potato starch before, and can't remember if i had trouble with the sauce breaking, which probably means it didn't.
why haven't i spent time in oakland's chinatown before? new gold medal, shanghai, and yuen hop noodle co.
i barted over to oakland today to explore chinatown. it was a pretty blind tour, since my computer was down and i didn't know where i was going. walked around for a bit and almost hit up spices!3 and shandong restaurant before walking into new gold medal. i don't know why i ordered what i did. i really wanted roast duck wonton noodle soup, especially since the hanging meats at the front counter looked so enticing. but i ended up ordering...what i think was called on the menu "won mein crab soup." it got my attention. i ended up with a huge bowl of thickened soup with egg white flower floating amidst a negligible amount of crab meat. i think snow crab legs. came with wiry wonton noodles and a super generous scattering of minced yellow chives. i accidentally poured too much ground white pepper into the bowl. i wasn't that into it, but i think if i had stuck with my initial wish for roast duck wonton noodles, i would have a been a happy slurpee.
picked up some fresh noodles at yuen hop noodle co. as well as some pea shoots and steamed red bean buns, and nearly passed by shanghai. i was looking for it earlier. both new gold medal and shanghai restaurant have been talked over quite a bit, but not so much in the past few years, so hence this update. i just wanted to try the xlb. place was deserted when i got there, at about 4PM. luckily i have somehow managed to commit to memory the chinese characters for "shanghai" and "xiao long bao,"(or at least xiao long. or long, as in dragon?) because the english menu is a bit unclear. lots of "shanghai" style dumplings and buns.
the very sleepy man who was the lone person in the restaurant roused himself with some difficulty from his table to hand me two different menus. i found the xlb and ordered. he muttered, "it takes 10 minutes to steam them." i paused and offered, "that's just fine." then he stared at me and yawned, "they have pork." I paused again and said, "well...good. i...expect them to?" gruff service aside, i noted a man and woman in the corridor leading to the bathroon stuffing another type of dumpling, not the xlb. the kind that are boiled, i think...?
my order came and two or three of the eight (?) had no broth, but the rest did, and the flavor of the broth and meat stuffing was better than my last round of xlb at bund shanghai, which i find rather bland and one dimensional. porky without finesse. i don't know. i'm not quite there yet on having strong opinions about the thickness of the wrappers, etc. i am planning on returning to both shanghai and new gold medal, this time for the duck wonton noodles. can't figure why i've taken so long to go to oakland's chinatown. it's close to me, BART wise, and i don't have to abide the tourists on grant or the swarms on stockton.
the noodles i bought from yuen hop noodle co. were pretty tasty. no chemical ickyness. went well with a broth made from a smoked willie bird duck carcass and pea greens for dinner. and a bag of steamed red bean paste buns is taking me back to before i was even born. as in... well i adopted my mother's craving for them. like em better in donut form, if anyone has a suggestion for a good version!
all the threads i found about these places are fairly old. any other recent experiences?
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Shanghai Restaurant
930 Webster St, Oakland, CA 94607
New Gold Medal
389 8th St, Oakland, CA 94607
Yuen Hop
824 Webster St, Oakland, CA
“Bamboo” Noodles (jook sing mein) and Hand-pulled Noodles (lai mein) @ King Won Ton (SF)
do the trotters usually come with huge peeled chunks of ginger? as in whole roots peeled and bashed into 3" pieces? if the sugar had been cut in half i would have loved this dish very much. and i'm quite ignorant about wontons. are they (the good ones) traditionally big and thick, slippery, porky, with whole shrimp? any tip offs in the city proper would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
“Bamboo” Noodles (jook sing mein) and Hand-pulled Noodles (lai mein) @ King Won Ton (SF)
two years later...
after finally managing to escape from hardly strictly bluegrass, i wandered down irving with a friend. after passing up saiwaii ramen and a few other places, we ate here. it was not crowded at all, at about 2 PM on a sunday, but looked as if it had been earlier.
i tried to order the roast goose wonton noodle soup, but no goose. so i got bbq duck wonton noodles. from re-reading these old posts, not sure much has changed in the food. i liked the noodles, didn't seem alkaline to me. big slippery wontons, pretty tasty duck, lackluster broth. oh, and i've never come across super finely minced chinese celery floating in this sort of soup before, but they brought an occasional, pleasant green note.
an interesting side dish was...what was it called on the menu..."sour pettitoes." pig trotters stewed in soy, ginger....and an astonishing amount of some sort of sugar. is this normal for this style of pig feet? it was like CANDY. ginger meat candy. while the texture was nice and the initial bite of intense ginger was great, the sweetness was overwhelming.
service, which seems to throw so many people off, was actually great. our waitress was super helpful, navigating us through all our questions and even dissuading us from ordering one thing, NOT because we were getting the sweet and sour brush off, but because we were about to order way too much food.
i was amused to see that this place rates 2 1/2 stars on yelp. didn't bother reading the reviews, but i'm guessing there's lots of issues with service and the general paranoia about msg and "mystery" meats. if i lived in the sunset i would probably swing by on a semi-regular basis. i really like wonton noodles, but rarely get to eat them. its the comfort food that i wish was my comfort food.
ken ken ramen? in the mission
yesterday i was strolling through the neighborhood with two friends . on 22nd st i noticed a red paper ramen lantern hanging outside of panchita's #3. curious, we walked up and saw menus in the window advertising $11 bowls of ramen available only on sundays.
i've since done some research and i guess this pop-up ramen joint is called ken ken ramen, although there was no such name on the menus. they just said "ramen." and i guess that this was previously open only on mondays, but they've switched to sundays.
i ordered the shio broth, described as okinawan flavored. my friends each got miso ramen. they got theirs without meat, but mine came with three slightly thick, fairly tender and moist slices of cha-su pork shoulder, bamboo shoots, scallions, bean sprouts, and soft boiled marinated egg. saw some images online where the bowls come with mizuna, nori, and kamaboko, but ours didn't. although they were listed on the menu under "extras" for an additional $3. so altogether, not the cheapest bowl around...BUT i it was actually pretty decent.
well, i wish i had ordered the miso ramen, as a spoonful of my friend's broth revealed it to be more complex and generally more delicious. my shio broth tasted fine, if a bit light. it tasted mostly of chicken, and i was expecting pork notes. the noodles were fairly firm and stayed so, and the marinated soft egg was a textural delight, after too many green tinged overboiled eggs in SF. bamboo shoots seemed more generic than the photos of long, young whole shoots in photos on yelp. bean sprouts are bean sprouts. again, the pork was pretty generous, three big quarter-inch slices that were not dried out, and were fairly tender.
i couldn't get much information out of the staff of panchitas #3. they were the ones making the ramen. there was zero crowd at 2 PM. all the owner would say is that it used to be on monday, but it was too busy, so they moved it to sunday. he never mentioned the name ken ken, and it wasn't on the printed menu.
all in all a pleasant surprise in the mission. decent ramen in a mostly neglected mexican/salvadorean restaurant? who knew.
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Ken Ken Ramen
3378 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Did I order the wrong thing at San Tung?
i'm pretty sure that the noodles at san tung are machine-made in house, not hand-pulled. K K is right that you have to request the house-made noodles when ordering the stir fried dishes. i don't love or hate san tung. i like the noodles and dumplings just fine, but my background is korean, not shandong. san tung makes fairly decent versions of the "korean-chinese" dishes, but none are great. it's out of the way for me, but when i do go there, i make sure it's during off-hours so i don't have to wait. and i personally like the dry-fried fish better than the chicken wings. i could be wrong but the fish version seemed less sweet the last time i had it (over 2 years ago).
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K K Cafe
3095 McKee Rd, San Jose, CA 95127
