CAFE FANNY

Everybody seems to know about Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, but lesser known to people nationwide is Cafe Fanny. Cafe Fanny is another place opened by Alice Waters, but it's really a neighborhood place for people living in Berkeley and nearby. But it's a really popular place and there's always a line. Plus they don't really have a seating area- just a handful of tables outside, a bar that you can stand at and a little bench indoors. Still, that doesn't keep people from showing up.

My sister hadn't been there before, so I decided to take her so she could try it out. We got there a bit later than I normally do- a bit after 9 and it took us 20 minutes just to order. Still, they were pretty nice about it. The one things I always get here is a cafe au lait, served French style in a big bowl. It's always tasty.

Oh also, they don't exactly have a kitchen at Cafe Fanny. Just a small work area out in the open. So here are orders lining up on the counter waiting to get finished and picked up.

Christine ordered poached eggs and prosciutto. I think she enjoyed it quite a bit.

And I always get a 3 minute boiled egg with toast. It seems so simple, but it's my favorite thing here and I always order it. The first time I got it, the egg shell was almost blue- totally awesome.

This is a place a visit frequently for its simple food and atmosphere. I actually ended up taking my parents like 3 days later, and I think they like, it too. So if you do come and visit, don't be surprised if this is one of our stops.

THE DAY AFTER TURKEY DAY

So the day after Thanksgiving, I had to work. But it was my uncle's birthday, so additional cousins came up from LA to celebrate. In all, there were 12 of us. My aunt made a traditional birthday food, which is noodles with marinated eggs. You usually have stewed pigs feet with this, too, but we used left over turkey meat instead. Here's my bowl.

This is the perfect thing to have on a cold morning- steamy, warm and delicious, it got me all ready to head off to work.

While I was at work, my sister spent the day with all the cousins and kids, which ended up wearing here out. (There were 4 kids, all under the age of 5). We were supposed to go back and have dinner with them after my shift, but my sister just couldn't deal with any more crying, so I picked an Indian restaurant for dinner.

I'm still trying to find some good Indian in the East Bay, but after speaking to my friend last week, it seems that this may be more difficult than I had planned. Anyway, we ended up going to Cafe Raj on Solano Ave., which I had been told is a pretty good place. When we arrived, the restaurant was packed, but luckily we were able to grab the last open table.

After taking a look at the menu, I decided to get my old stand by, which I use to gauge all Indian restaurants- the Chicken Tikka Masala. But first I got a few starters. Here's the order of papadams I got. They were ok, though not very flavorful.

Then I got an order of veggie samosas. The exterior on this was a little different- much more similar to a spring roll wrapper cause it was so thin and crunchy. It actually wasn't too bad, but I prefer to have tamarind as a dipping sauce, and here, they just gave you a mint sauce.

Lastly, here's my order of chicken tikka masala. I had ordered this medium, but it seemed to have no heat to it at all. It's a pattern that I'm noticing for restaurants on Solano- they just don't like to really spice things up. The flavor was Ok, but I disliked the fact that there were raisins.

Overall, this was another disappointing venture into the world of Indian food on Solano Ave. Also, the service wasn't so great. I realize they were busy and only one us was eating (my sister had already had dinner), but it took forever to get our bill, or even a refill on water. I don't think I'll come back here, but I'll keep searching for a good place while serious missing Gourmet India of Comm Ave.

TURKEY DAY

Hey, I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day! Tom headed off to NY the day before T-Day, but my sister and aunt came into town to spend the holiday over at Cindy's house. All together we had 8 people. I was in charge of dessert, but somehow, I always end up making more stuff.

I figured since I was only making dessert, I was gonna do it all from scratch. So using my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, I decided to make a classic apple pie and a pumpkin pie. I made the crust a couple of days before and froze them and then I got started on making my pumpkin puree for the pumpkin pie. Here's my pretty sugar pumpkin that I got at Monterey Market (which I'll write about in a later post)

It was really easy preparing this guy. I just cut him in half, cleaned out his insides and roasted him for like an hour. Then I just pureed everything. I did this the day before Turkey Day, and also prepped a few other things before the big day.

So when the big day arrived, I was preparing all my stuff. I decided to make a salad with roasted beets, oranges, avocados, toasted pine nuts and a citrus dressing that I got from my Chez Panisse cookbook. Since I had extra pumpkin puree, I also made a pumpkin and sweet potato puree and topped them with homemade candied pecans. Oh, I also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, cause more cousins were arriving the next day. And of course, I had my pumpkin and apple pies. I really spent the entire morning cooking. So as I'm getting all ready to cook, I find out that my oven's out and it smells like gas.

So I had to wait for my cousin to arrive to figure out what was wrong (the pilot was out). He lit it, then turned it off to show me how to do it in the future. He left and I get back ready to cook and find out, the oven's out again. I didn't have matches, so after a trip to get some, the oven was back on and I was ready to cook. (of course this all happens on Thanksgiving).

I got the pumpkin pie cooking and had the apple pie in the oven when I had to leave and pick up my sister at the airport. The apple pie came out half cooked. And ended up finishing it while we ate dinner. Here's a pic of all the food:

And my apple pie, which came out beautifully (you go Martha). I served it with a side of fresh organic whipped cream. (I like that you can find that kind of stuff here).

Overall, Thanksgiving was quite yummy. I was stuffed and hauled my very full tummy home to sleep it all off.

ANOTHER LOCAL BREAKFAST PLACE

Yes, we found yet another breakfast place to visit. This one, Raphael's, is really close- literally 2 blocks from the house. So one morning, we figured we'd give it a try. It's pretty small, just one cook and one waitress, and it's got a very basic menu. Here's Tom drinking his coffee.

And here's a shot of the interior. Kind of diner-y.

I ended up ordering an omellette with chicken apple sausage and cheddar cheese. Fere you see it below. It wasn't so great. The eggs were a little too runny, and it was odd having chunk of chicken apple sausage just cut up and thrown in. I could've made a better omelette at home (if only I weren't so lazy)

But Tom had blueberry pancakes, and he actually liked them a lot. I know he still hasn't tried the pancakes at Bette's Oceanview Diner, which I think are great, but he'd rather walk the 2 blocks and get pancakes immediately. Me, I'd be willing to wait the half hour for Bette's pancakes. But if we're in a pinch and it's too late to go to Fat Apple's, I'm sure you'll find us here again.

BAKESALE BETTY'S

Fried chicken sandwiches with spicy coleslaw. Need I say more? I was excited to go to Bakesale Betty before I'd even moved out here. And I'd even told Leah about it and showed her the pics. So since I happened to be in that part of Berkeley, I dropped by with my mom and aunt after our trip to Berkeley Bowl. There was a small line out the door, but it was moving fast. They had lots of cookies, but I knew what I wanted. I ordered two fried chicken sandwiches, an egg salad sandwich (for my mom) and a cookie. They had my order ready in like 2 minutes.

We ended up taking them home for lunch. I left one sandwich with Tom, who was working at home, and took the other one to my cousin's house. Here's the fried chicken one:

Well, what can I say, this could have been so much better. Maybe if it'd still been hot, but I doubt the ones at the store were even hot since they were frying the chicken in advance to make. It ended up being super greasy, under seasoned and that coleslaw? Not so spicy. Overall, it was eh. Perhaps it'd be different if I'd actually had one there.

And here's the egg salad.

I didn't have any, but it was the eggiest egg salad sandwich I'd ever seen. It was like all egg, no filler. There must've been 4-5 eggs per sandwich.

I guess that not all things can live up to the hype. I'll just make my own fried chicken sandwich at home.

BERKELEY BOWL

Wow. I haven't blogged in a long time. But these last weeks have been really busy, both at work and at home. The final guests (my parents) finally left yesterday, so it should be relatively quite for the next few weeks (at home, not at work. Work is busy busy). In fact, this post is from my mom's last visit, 2 weeks ago. But better late than never.

My aunt wanted to buy someone hormone, anti biotic free chicken for my cousin, Cindy. So I took this as a great opportunity to check out Berkeley Bowl, a super famous supermarket that specializes in a ton of fresh produce. It's a Bay Area institution and is always packed. When we arrived, it was around 11 in the morning and the parking lot was already full.

When you step in, you realize it's a lot like Whole Foods, except the produce section takes up like 2/3 of the store. Here's a pic of something I'd never seen before. It's called Buddha's hand, apparently it's some type of citrus.

Here some shots of some pretty produce:

Brussell sprouts still on the stalk. You see this pretty often, and I haven't quite figured out what the benefit is. Can you eat the stalk? If not, then why go through the extra work of picking them off?

And here's a shot of the poultry section. I was FINALLY able to buy some duck legs (something I couldn't find in Boston), so now I can make Mario Batali's duck ragu. And my aunt was able to get the chicken that she wanted.

Overall, I was glad that I was finally able to go to Berkeley Bowl. They had a wonderful selection of fresh produce and other products. But I don't think I'll be back any time soon. Shopping for groceries just shouldn't be so stressful.

OUR FIRST MEAL IN SAN FRANCISCO...

sucked. Ok, well it's not the first time I've eaten in SF. Nor Tom's. It was just the first time we'd eaten there together after our move here. And it was completely unplanned. We were driving back to the East Bay through SF when we hit a huge amount of traffic. The option was to sit in traffic or grab something to eat and head back a bit later. I made the ultimate decision to head into the city.

I figured we could go to Chinatown and there would be plenty of places to find a cheap meal. I'd been there before and wandered the streets and found lots of restaurants. So we parked our car in a lot, got out and started wandering around. We ended up on a street filled with kitschy tourist souvenier stores. Accept they were more like megastores than little shops. We had fun wandering around, and even bought Kitty a kitty shaped food bowl. But when it was time to find a place to eat, there really weren't any on this street.

I'm not that familiar with Chinatown, but I now know that we were in the super tourist section. Had we headed a bit more north, we would have found more restaurants, but it was getting dark and we were hungry. So after wandering a few more blocks, we decided to go to a Rock n Roll Sushi restaurant. Yes, the fact that a Japanese restaurant was located in Chinatown should've been the first warning. The name should've been the second warning. But the restaurant was pretty packed, so I figured we'd give it a shot.

We were seated quickly and given enormous menus to order from. And we were served some free miso soup and this cucumber salad. The miso soup was standard, though the tofu was weird. The cucumber salad below was crappy:

Normally the cucumber salad is seasoned in rice wine vinegar and sugar. This was just raw cucumbers with some nori and soy sauce sprinkled on top. It was pretty terrible.

Tom then ordered some fried chicken and a roll. Meanwhile, I got tempura dinner. The portion was quite generous and it was OK. The same could be said for Tom's dinner.

I guess the one good thing is that the bill wasn't sky high. But I've learned my lesson about eating Japanese food in Chinatown. We'll be heading back into the city tomorrow- Tom wants to go back to Chinatown to buy souveniers for family and co-workers, but I've done my research this time, and I'm sure our second meal in SF will be much better.

A VISITOR FROM THE EAST COAST

Two weeks ago Sue Min was in town for her dental school interviews. It was fun seeing a friend from Boston- the very first one to visit us from the East Coast. And of course, this gave us the perfect opportunity to go check out a new restaurant. Since Sue Min had missed her flight the previous evening- she arrived right before our lunch reservations at Chez Panisse, so that was the first stop we made after she had landed.

As many of you may already know, Chez Panisse is the highly influential restaurant in North Berkeley founded by Alice Waters. It is the cornerstone of an area that's now known as the Gourmet Ghetto and Alice Waters effectively established California cuisine- the use of fresh, local, organic, seasonal ingredients. We had lunch in the upstairs part of the restaurant, which is also known as the cafe. (The bottom part is only open for dinner). After being seated in the wooden and brass accented dining room, I realized that I'd been here before. 10 years ago when I was still deciding on what college to attend, I had visited Berkeley and my cousin had brought me here for dinner. I still remember that fava bean salad we had from that night.

After taking a look at the menu, Sue Min and I ended up ordering the same thing while Tom got the prix fixe menu, which was actually a pretty good deal. The menu really did feature a lot of local growers and ingredients. Sue Min and I started with what ended up being our favorite dish of the day, a little gems salad with anchovies, egg and I forget what else.

The salad dressing on this was perfect. I wish I could figure out how to make it myself. Actually, I'm sure it's in Alice Waters' new cook book. At any rate, I quickly gobbled it up and could have eaten more.

Next came our main course. I actually forget what kind of fish it is now, but both Sue Min and I found it a bit overcooked. It was simply poached and dressed with a good olive oil and fresh herbs. However, Sue Min really like the turnips that were served on the side, while I enjoyed the fresh, flavorful potatoes.

Here's Tom's calamari spaghetti. He also enjoyed this, and I liked the smokiness of that the grilled calamari brought to the spaghetti.

Of course, we had to have dessert. This is Tom's dessert. It a huckleberry and pear sorbet sitting in a pool of muscat. I actually ended up trading desserts with him. He didn't like the muscat, but I think it paired perfectly with the sorbets.

Meanwhile, I ordered this chocolate cake, which ended up tasting a bit like an overcooked chocolate brownie. It wasn't chocolatey enough for me and I think I could've done a better job at home.

Overall our lunch was good, but really pricey. I can see how this restaurant was revolutionary when it started, especially after the excess of the 80s, but the principles of Alice Waters are now very well established. When I know that I can go down the street to the farmer's market and buy the exact same produce, that I get veggies just as fresh in my CSA box every week, that I can drive over to Acme bakery and buy the same bread, it just doesn't seem like a meal here is worth the high price tag. But I'm glad that we were able to try it and figure that out.