BUSHI-TEI, SAN FRANCISCO

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that most of my friends eventually move to SF. (Yes Leah, I'm waiting on you). The first one to move here has been Sue Min, she's here for at least 3 years for dental school, and it's really nice having a friend from the East Coast, who loves to eat as much as I do.

Unfortunately Sue Min is often quite busy with school, so we haven't been able to hang out as frequently, so when she called me up for brunch recently, I agreed to meet up with her. Sue Min now has a favorite brunch place, a restaurant called Bushi-Tei located in Japantown (one of the few places I know how to navigate in SF). It's a Japanese French restaurant that features a prix fixe brunch menu. Now, it's more than I would normally spend on brunch, but I rarely go into the city, so I didn't mind spending the money.

So here's the exterior of the restaurant

It's got this mix of modern and rustic - with some large wooden pieces inside. I liked this huge communal table they have running down the length of the restaurant made of some really cool wood. Sue min was a little late, but luckily, she'd chosen a restaurant next to one of my favorite stores in Japantown, Super 7. So I hopped over there and bought Tom a little key chain while I waited for her to arrive.

She did eventually show up and we sat at a table in the window. The restaurant was pretty empty (which is probably why they offer the prix fixe deal in the first place), but the waiter was helpful and pretty friendly (though a little pushy trying to up our bill with special lemonades and iced teas - we passed). So for the prix fixe, you're allowed to choose two courses from the menu. All of it is French-Japanese inspired food. After we ordered, we were given this lovely and adorable selection of breads and pastries.

They were all very fresh and quite yummy. Then my first course arrived I ordered a corn soup:

My soup was pretty yummy. It was kinda thin and not as corn flavored as my favorite corn soup served at Gotham, the restaurant that I used to work at in NY. But it was still very nice. Next up, Sue min and I both ordered the crab cake hollandaise:

I know. Truly decadent and a bit over the top, but they were really tasty. The hollandaise sauce wasn't too heavy and those crab cakes were basically all crab meat and very little filler. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but at this point, I had gotten quite full and only managed to finish one of them. I ended up taking the second crab cake home.

Lastly, I ordered dessert. I hadn't planned to, but Sue Min ordered dessert and I that encourage me to do so. I ordered something light - a trio of sorbets

There was a mango, green apple and pear. All were homemade and very light and delicious. The mango was my favorite.

Bushi-Tei was a lovely restaurant for brunch with a friend. Though I don't think I'll be going back any time soon (I ended up spend around $40, which is more than I'd spend at dinner for two normally), but it's a pleasant place to take someone like my mom (especially if she's paying.)

T-REX BBQ, BERKELEY

A few weeks ago Huong was once again visiting the Bay Area. (I swear I see her more often than I see my parents). At any rate, knowing what a meat lover she is, I chose a bbq restaurant that seems to be a local favorite - a place called T-Rex BBQ. I knew it was sort of a fancy bbq restaurant and not all that cheap, but felt it was worth checking out.

Located on a corner in West Berkeley, I'd driven by T-Rex plenty of times before, but had never really noticed it. When we entered, we found a really slick, beautiful room with high a lot of open space (it was two floors), big windows and lots of wood accents. Though the place seemed pretty full, they were able to find a table for us right away.

As we waited for Huong to arrived, I ordered a basket of homemade bbq chips and Tom got a ginger beer. Meanwhile, we perused the menu. Rather than ordering an entree, I decided to get an appetizer and a couple of sides so I'd get a try a number of different things. At some point Huong arrived, our orders were taken and we waited for our food to arrive. (We never got those bbq chips - the waitress forgot about them and I can only hope that we weren't charged for them).

As I said, I got a number of different things to eat. I started off with some chicken mushroom spring rolls.

They were allright. The filling wasn't all that flavorful and I found the dipping sauce to be too vinegary.

Meanwhile, the rest of our food come out all at once, shortly after we'd ordered. I love corn bread, so ordered a side of cornbread with maple butter. Here it is below:

What I hadn't expected was that the cornbread would actually be soaked in maple butter. I would've preferred it on the side so I could spread it on myself, but this version of it made it really more like a dessert. I only had a small nibble of it. Finally, I ordered a side of mac and cheese:

It was allright. Kinda runny, very heavy. I had a few bites of it and that was enough.

Overall, our experience at T-Rex was very much like many of our experiences at restaurants in Berkeley - namely, what's all the hype about? My experience was a bit better than Tom's. He said the sauce for his ribs tasted more like a spicy marinara sauce than BBQ sauce. I guess we just really prefer our hole in the walls and more authentic restaurants. All these fancy versions of whatever just aren't doing it for us.

JAC'S ASIAN BISTRO

We have a small strip mall just 2 blocks from our home. It's a little sketchy, with an "adult video" store, a strange massage parlor and a pizza place that never appear to be open - but it's also the home to our favorite bahn mi shop (Bah Le). So when a restaurant, Jac's Asian Bistro, opened there a few months ago, I was rather skeptical about it. Every time we drove by, Tom would jokingly say that he wanted to try it, so one evening I finally caved and we walked over for dinner.

The place was very minimally decorated, but it was nice to see some other Asians dining there. As we were seated, we were handed some massive menus, that went on for pages and seemed to have anything imaginable on it (including some dishes involving hot dogs.) We ended up ordering a few dishes to share (including several off the menu where all the dishes were $5.99 and under).

Before our food arrived we were given a couple of bowls of house soup, which wasn't too bad.

Then our dishes started to arrive. Tom had ordered a chili-garlic fish dish. And considering it was off that $5.99 menu, it was pretty good.

Next, my dish arrived. I had gotten a seafood chow-fun with XO sauce. It wasn't off the cheap eats menu, but it was only $7.99 and it was a pretty big portion.

Lastly Tom ordered this dish with mushrooms and bok choy, also off the $5.99 menu and it was surprisingly good. The bok choy was fresh, as were the mushrooms, and best of all, it was really cheap!

Overall, the dinner at Zac's was pretty decent. It certainly wasn't the healthiest or best Chinese food around, but for the price and quantity, we'd happily go back.

JAPANESE FOOD IN EL CERRITO

As many of you know, we're still searching for a good Japanese restaurant near where we live. We'd heard of a Japanese sushi place near our home called Yusan Sushi, so we wanted to check it out. Unfortunately when we arrived, we found the restaurant closed, with a pretty cryptic note on the door. It said "Reopening Soon", but was dated three days earlier. As we stood outdoors contemplating whether or not the restaurant would open that night, we noticed another restaurant next door called Yokohama Restaurant. Given that we didn't have many other restaurants nearby to choose from, we decided to check it out.

When we entered the restaurant, it was pretty empty, but it was cute, with your stereotypical Japanese restaurant decorations. We were seated right away and after putting in our orders, we were given a few freebies, a little plate of cold soba noodles along with some pickles.

They weren't too bad, and I was pretty suprised that they gave us these freebies in the first place. With my dinner, I also got a salad, which was pretty average.

For dinner, I ordered a combination- chicken on chicken. Well, it was more that I got to pick from a list of foods, so I chose chicken karage (which was done as chicken wings) and chicken teriyaki. Here it is below:

As you can see, the portions are pretty generous, and it wasn't too bad either. Tom and I decided that it certainly wasn't the best Japanese food that we've ever had (nor the cheapest, we spent about $15-18/ea for dinner), but it was better than some of the places we had tried previously (and certainly better then Katana-ya, where our cousin likes to visit frequently). I don't think we'll be back any time soon, we'll continue to visit LA for truly great Japanese food, but if we're ever in the mood, we'd certainly go back to Yokohama.

FUDDRUCKER'S

That's damn right people, I'm doing a post about Fuddrucker's. Most of you know that above all, I want to know that when I pay for a meal, it has to be worth it. That means if I pay $5 for a meal, I know that I'm not going to get a whole lot for my money, and that's ok with me. I'll still enjoy my food. And if I'm paying $100 for a meal, then I'm going to expect more- better food and exceptional service. When I don't enjoy a meal iis when I pay $50, and end up getting food and service that was worth $10. So yes, I may love going to fancy restaurants, but I also like KFC fried chicken and biscuits.

So it was my co-worker Kim's birthday and she loves Fuddrucker's. A little while ago, we'd gotten some coupons for Fuddrucker's in the mail, and I handed them off to her, but she wanted to use them, so a group of us headed out for burgers.

So I'd been to Fuddrucker's as a kid, but it's been at least 15 years since my list trip, and I was actually pleasantly suprised by the settings. It was pretty early on a week night, so there weren't any screaming kids, big families, etc. It was really tame, the place was impeccably clean and they even refilled the BBQ sauce pump right away when I complained that it was empty. (more on that later).

But first, a photo of my soda (I got the Orange Crush for Tom and took it home with me) and the large roll of paper towels that they provide for each table:

One reason why my friend loves Fuddrucker's is for the free pump cheese. Actually, if you're unfamiliar with the chain, the whole idea is that they make a burger for you, and then there's this whole toppings bar when you can add all the free toppings that you want- tomatoes, onions, lettuce, pickles, mustard, ketchup, bbq sauce, and for my friend, the glorious pump cheese, served warm and in two different flavors (plain or jalapeno). Behold the pump cheese:

Let me just say, this whole trip was worth it, just to see my co-worker order a Kobe beef burger, with bacon, and then dump orange pump cheese all over it. And yes, she finished the whole thing (though she felt kinda sick afterwards).

I was a little more tame and ordered chicken breast with grilled mushrooms and cheese. As you can see below, I topped it with tomatoes, onions, pickles, lettuce and bbq sauce:

And I gotta say, it wasn't that bad. The mushrooms were kinda dry and overly peppered, but apart from that, I'd totally rather pay like $6 for a burger here, than $10 for a burger at Barney's. I think it's got something to do with that all you can eat toppings bar- just makes it feel like you've got so much more control. So overall, I enjoyed by meal at Fuddrucker's and I truly wasn't expecting to. Maybe one day I'll go back and take Tom- just as long as he promises to avoid the pump cheese.

DA NANG, ALBANY

For Vietnamese, we normally go to the pho place in Ranch 99. It's pretty decent and cheap and quick. But one evening, I felt that we should try out a new place, and decided to check out Da Nang, a Vietnamese restaurant pretty close to our house. Now a while ago, my cousin had warned me not to go to this place. Apparenly she and her husband had gone there a long time ago, and had a bad meal there. I maybe should've heeded the warning more, since they're a lot less pickier than I am when it comes to food, but I had read views online that said that new management had taken over and that the food was much better now. So we headed over and decided to give it a try.

When we arrived, there were a few people present. It had pretty simple decorations, and I liked the planters of lucky bamboo running down the middle of the restaurant:When we were handed the menus, it was clear that we were off to a poor start. The restaurant serves a mix of Vietnamese and Thai food. They had the Vietnamese dishes, but the focus was clearly more on the Thai stuff. That's always a warning, when a restaurant takes two distinctive Asian cusinese and thinks it can lump them together and come out with something good. I tend to avoid such places. But we were there, so I put in an order for some summer rolls:
These were OK. I guess when you're making summer rolls, the components are so simple that you really need to use super fresh, yummy stuff. That was not the case here. The veggies weren't overly fresh and the dipping sauce wasn't very good, either. Just kinda tasteless and forgettable. It certainly didn't add much to the rolls.

I had also ordered the Vietnamese classic: pho. The thing that bothered me was that it wasn't even called pho on the menu. They had all these different dishes, and I couldn't really identify was just a bowl of chicken pho- I finally just asked the waiter if they had it, and this is what they brought:
So this wasn't really the best pho I've ever had. The noodles stuck together, the broth tasted kinda strange and worst of all, the chicken tasted as if it had gone bad. Like, you know when you smell raw chicken and it has that slightly rotting flavor so you know it's bad? The chicken in my bowl had that flavor. I ended up picking our all the chicken cause I didn't want to get sick, and dousing the damn thing in hot sauce so I could mask the flavor of the broth.

So overall, it wasn't a great trip to Da Nang. We'll be sticking closer to home, with trips to the Ranch 99. I guess you just gotta go where all the other Asians go.

SAN DIEGO, DAY 3

Well, you guys may actually see some blog posts out of me this week. Tom's off in Boston for a whole week, and kitty's ignoring me (as usual). So unless some really great stuff starts showing up on TV, I'll be blogging more. Though I must admit, I have gotten quite addicted to Weeds. Unfortunately, my local video store didn't have season 2 in stock, so I've got one episode left of season 1 before I run out of episodes to watch.

But onto the food. On our last day in San Diego, we returned to Balboa Park in order to see the Star Trek exhibit at the Air and Space Museum (this was not my idea, but Tom and his friend, Evan, seemed to enjoy it). But before we headed to the museum, we had lunch at the Prado Restaurant in Balboa Park.

It's actually set in a beautiful area of Balboa Park (no wonder so many ppl have weddings here) and there was a ton of outdoor seating. It being another beautiful day in SD, we opted to sit outside. This is the view we had...

Our waiter started us off with a small selection of bread sticks. Evan kindly repositioned them so I could get a shot of the cheesy one. They were pretty good.
The menu at the restaurant is an attempt at California cuisine, with very heavy Mexican influences. The place wasn't cheap, but I guess you can charge that much for the setting. Below is Tom's order of fish tacos. I think he said they were ok. The fish was pretty drowned in white sauce, and though the plate looked pretty, I don't think the flavors worked that well.

Meanwhile, I had chopped salad. I had taken a pic of it, but accidentally deleted it while screwing around with Tom's camera. But it wasn't that great. It was an attempt at an Asian inspired chopped salad, but ultimately, the veggies weren't so fresh and the salad dressing could've been much better. As I say quite often, I could've made a better version at home, and wouldn't have had to pay over $10 for it.

Overall, I think people go here much more for the setting than for the food (it's one of those places). But I don't question it too much, it is a goregous location, and because it's located right near the outdoor organ, you can probably hear a whole concert if there's one happening. So just realize, you're paying for the view, and not for great food.

SAN DIEGO DAY 2

Ok, I'm back. I am a little handicapped right now, after slicing half my nail off while chopping veggies this past weekend, and the band-aid gets in the way of my typing, but I'm limping along and continuing with my San Diego blog posts.

So reading this post, it may seem like we spent the entire day eating, but really we didn't. The best part of the day was visiting the San Diego Zoo and seeing pandas! And the baby panda was not just lying around sleeping, he was so active and playful with his mommy, I almost died. I wanted to get back in line to see him again, but everyone (especially Tom) voted me down. Sigh, guess I'll see him again next time.

But first, we started the day with brunch. Cathy and Ben took us to one of their favorite places, the Parkhouse Eatery, which according to their sign serves "American Ethnic Grub" or whatever that may be.

When we got there, the place was already packed and there were a slew of people in front of us, so we ended up waiting quite a while for a table. I think it took almost an hour before we were finally seated. But the weather was quite nice and it wasn't too bad just hanging out outside. They had lots of tables outside, but of course, that's where everyone wants to sit, so when we finally got a table inside, we were just happy to be sitting. The interior of the restaurant is actually much nicer than the exterior, and had lots of rooms, almost like a house. We were seated at a table in the back, close to the kitchen.

The menu wasn't huge, and they had some pretty enticing options, but I ended up going with the Bueno spicy homemade turkey chorizo & eggs scrambled w/roasted potato and fresh romas w/flour tortilla. Our server had warned us that the kitchen was backed up, so it did take a while for the food to arrive. Here's mine below.

I had actually expected the eggs to be cooked separately from the chorizo, but they were cooked together. It ended up being pretty tasty, but wouldn't have been half as good without that spicy sauce you see on the side. That really made the entire dish. The food there was pretty good, and in a very cute neighborhood. Even though it was kinda pricy the largish portions help to offset the high cost.

After brunch, it was off to the zoo, and after spending a number of hours walking around there, we were pretty hungry and ready from some dinner. Cathy suggested that we check out a yakitori place, Yakitori Yakyudori, one of the few in San Diego, and she had made a reservation for us. When we arrived, it was actually a few minutes before their opening time, but they let us sit. And it was a good thing we made reservations, because the place filled up very quickly.

One of the things I liked about this place where the picture menus they give you. Another fun thing was they had these two big signs on the wall. One listed the most popular items for Americans, and the other listed the most popular items for Japanese. I ordered stuff off the Japanese list.

We ordered a bunch of stuff like : chicken hearts (though I don't like it when places slice them apart like this- I prefer them pretty intact)

Chicken thigh meat:

chicken "meatballs"

chicken gizzards and Tom's order of takoyaki to the the right:

grilled smelt:
and fried chicken wings:

To be honest, we ordered more stuff than this, but I didn't have time to photograph everything. The food came out pretty quickly and it was all really good. This place isn't as refined as my favorite yakitori place in LA, Yakitoriya. And unlike many yakitori houses, I don't think they cared as much about the type of charcoal they were roasting over (if they were using charcoal, they could've been using gas). Some place are really particular about the charcoal, because it imparts flavors to the meat, and the stuff we had didn't really have character. However, I was happy to have pretty well priced yakitori and would be happy to have this place located near us.

We were all pretty full after dinner, but we had to make sure to save room for dessert. There's a pretty famous dessert place in SD called Extraordinary Desserts, which Cathy has been telling me about since she went to college. So finally, we had to take this opportunity to visit. We went to the original location, not too far from where we'd had dinner, and even though it was still fairly early (it was before 7pm) there was already a line of people out the door.

The setting was really cute. It looked like someone's home, warmly decorated inside with garden seating outside. There was lots of outdoor seating, which is not surprising considering it's SD. As we waited in line, Ben bumped into a friend, and I plotted out what to order. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line to place our orders. There were a ton of choices, from pastries, to cakes and they plate all the desserts. Here's a pic of their cake case:
I ended up choosing one a passion fruit chocolate bombe. And I made Tom order some ice cream so I could try it. After ordering, we took our seats at a table and waited for them to be plated and served. Unfortuantely, the place seem understaffed, and it took a while to get our desserts. The problem was that we could see them sitting on the counter behind us, and I was tempted to just walk up and grab them:

Finally, our plated desserts arrived, along with our drinks. Here's mine below:

As you can see, it's very pretty. However, it wasn't as amazing as it looks. It wasn't very passion fruity at all, and I got more fruit flavor from the sauces on the plate than the dessert itself. It wasn't bad, but I was hoping for better. Here's the ice cream that Tom had:

To be honest, I don't remember what flavor this was. I do remember that it had macadamia nuts, but the ice cream itself didn't have much flavor. The flavor came from the toppings that were mixed in.

And lastly, my sister got a cookie.

This was also pretty good and loaded with butter.

Overall, I can see why this place is so popular. It's an adorable setting, has great presentation and the desserts are pretty good. I'm not going to say that it seems to be more flash than substance. After all, I've only been once, and I'd like to try a few more desserts before making that call. However, I certainly enjoyed going there, and once again, I can only wish that we had something similar in our area.

We had a great time in SD and hope we can go back and visit soon, to fill out bellies with more food and check out more adorable animals.

MEXICAN FOOD IN SAN DIEGO

Last weekend Tom and I headed down to San Diego for a visit with friends and family. Tom actually headed down earlier than I did, taking a couple extra days off to hang out with his friend Evan and attend Comic Con. Meanwhile, I stayed to work, but headed down Saturday evening to join Tom. When I arrived, I was picked up by my little sister and her boyfriend who live in SD and then we picked up Tom. I was ready to eat after I landed. My little sister had planned to take us to Phil's, a local BBQ joint, but turns out that Tom had already gone, so we headed to Old Town instead and looked for a place to eat.

Apparently Old Town SD is very touristy, and filled with Mexican places to eat. Not a bad idea, since Mexican food in San Diego is supposed to be great (how can it not be with Mexico being less than an hour's drive away), and almost all the restaurants we saw were packed with people. We got a really great parking spot and started looking for a place to eat. We saw a huge restaurant, which seemed to have a fairly short, quick moving line in front, so we decided to check it out. The place was Cafe Coyote. It kinda looked like the place you'd hang out as a college student and wanted to drink margaritas, but I was hungry and it seemed promising enough.

We were seated quickly in one of the large dining rooms, and right away we ordered some guacamole and chips and were also given salsa with more chips for free.

I actually like the salsa. It was kinda watery but had good flavor.

And I like the generous serving of guacamole, though it could've used more salt. If I could've taken the salsa seasoning and mixed it with the guacamole, I would've had a really great guacamole, but I just took alternating dips of both.

I ended up ordering this combo place with a fish taco and a chicken enchilada. The fish taco was pretty good, but the crema dressing was a bit thick, and they didn't serve it with the nice pickled veggies that I enjoy. The chicken in the enchilada was a bit tough, and the thing was so drenched in cheese, that I ended up scraping most of the cheese off and taking nibbles from the inside.

Tom ordered a "Mexican pizza" which looked interesting, but was quite heavy. It kinda reminded him of the Taco Bell Mexican pizza, but heavier.

Overall, the food was decent enough, and it certainly satisfied my hunger. The service could've been better, though. Our waitress was pretty good at first, taking our orders and getting the food to us quickly, but then she totally disappeared. We couldn't find her to get our check, and when we were ready to pay, it took even longer for her to pick up the credit card to run it. I did kinda enjoy the live music, played buy two guys who were talking from table to table, playing their guitars for tips, but it really was a tourist trap and I look foward to more authentic Mexican food the next time we visit.

VENTURING OUT

As you all know, Tom and I have a favorite Thai restaurant that we always go to - we visit almost 2-3 times a month. (And we just saw the owner at our local farmer's market, which is always a nice thing to see) But there are a number of Thai restaurants in the area, and after some debating, we finally decided to venture out and try a new place, one that we'd heard was pretty good, called Sweet Basil.

The restaurant is rather oddly shaped. we entered through what appeared to be the main entrance- which was a rather small room with only 12 tables and a kitchen, but there appeared to be another larger dining room outside, which was filled with a private party. We were seated right away (the dining room we were in was kinda empty) and we started to peruse the menu. There was a lot of stuff that you'd see at any typical Thai restaurant - this one just seemed a little fancier and slightly pricier.

Tom and I decided to share a few appetizers, and then ordered a few entrees. We started off with these summer rolls stuffed with veggies and tofu. There were pretty good (though not nearly as good as the summer rolls they occasionally have at Sabuy Sabuy).

Next we shared some mushroom skewers. They had a choice of different skewers, but we wanted some veggies and got the mushrooms one. At $3/ea, I was hoping for some mushrooms that were more exotic than white button mushrooms (even some mini portobellos would've been nice) , so I'd say these were just ok.

And I also ordered a bowl of Tom Yum soup. Tom says that whenever I don't like something at a restaurant, I always say that I can make a better version of it at home, and I could've made a better version of this soup.

Behind my soup, you'll see a dish of fried squid that Tom is still complaining about, even weeks after we had this meal. This was their famous crispy fried squid, which Tom expected to be your normal fried squid, but it turns out the batter on it was sweet- they had put sugar it it. And that made it taste really really strange. He's still saying "You don't put sugar on squid".

After this I had Pad Kee Mow as my entree, and it was pretty decent, but nothing special. And Tom doesn't even remember what he had as an entree. Overall, our dinner wasn't horrible, it was pretty average. And maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if we didn't know that we could've gone to a fantastic Thai meal just 1/2 mile away. Personally, I think people are still eating at Sweet Basil because they have yet to discover the greatness of Sabuy Sabuy 2.