VEGAN/VEGETARIAN SUSHI? ONLY IN BERKELEY

There's a very popular Vegan/Vegetarian Japanese restaurant in Berkeley called Cha-ya that I've wanted to try for quite some time. However, the place is tiny and since it's located in Berkeley, it's also packed most of the time. We'd tried going there once, but the line was too long, and on other occasions, the restaurant's been packed.

So we were pretty surprised one evening while we were headed to a different restaurant that there were seats available at Cha-ya. We decided to take advantage and ducked in to sit at the sushi bar. Now, I knew that Cha-ya was expensive since I'd seen their menu previously, but it was really quite surprising how expensive it was considering that there was no fish involved at all. Many people assume that just because it's vegetarian, food will be cheaper, but I've founded that that is often not the case, especially up here in the Bay Area. Basically, the prices at Cha-ya were the same as if you'd gone to a nice sushi restaurant (and maybe a little higher, too).

At any rate, since the place was kinda pricey, I had to do some strategic ordering. I started off with a special. It's a tofu roll with corn that's wrapped in seaweed and deep fried. It served with a side of dipping sauce:

As you can see, they have very nice presentation here, and the tofu roll wasn't too bad. Meanwhile, Tom ordered a bowl of agadedashi tofu. (deep fried tofu in broth). It was quite good, and I ended up liking it more than my own tofu dish.

Then we each had plates of sushi. Here's mine. You can see that there's one cucumber roll, and then 3 pieces of nigiri - one with seaweed, the other topped with mushroom and the third with eggplant. Again, the presentation was really nice.

However, the sushi itself was pretty terrible. Or not so much the sushi, but the sushi rice. It was tough and underflavored and really not tasty at all. I soon discovered why. While watching the chef prepare sushi for another customer, I watched him take out a large plastic bag filled with rice. He then walked over to a microwave, nuked it, and used that for the sushi. This place charged so much money, and they didn't even make their rice fresh. That was just appalling.

Additionally, we didn't really start off the meal on a great note. We were basically ignored by the waitress for like 10 minutes, during which I was very tempted to just walk right out. Our dinner ended up costing $40, which is much more than we usually spend on a sushi dinner, and in the words of Sue Min, "It cost the same as regular sushi and there was no fish? Why bother?" and I'd have to agree with her.

BREAKFAST IN BERKELEY

As many of you know, Tom and I are early risers, so we enjoy going out for breakfast. After living here for over a year now, we certainly have our favorite places, but we're always looking for new ones to try, too. We've recently found two places to add to our regular roster of breakfast favorites. The first is a coffeeshop called Jimmy Bean's. We've often driven by this place and I'd heard good things about it, but we hadn't taken the time to visit it, so one morning we finally headed over to Berkeley to check it out.

Jimmy Bean's is owned by a family that owns several restaurants in Berkeley. Unfortunately, I haven't really loved the other restaurants that we've visited (T-Rex BBQ and Fonda), so I was a little skeptical about Jimmy Beans. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to screw up breakfast. When we arrived, the place was pretty empty, so it was easy to find a table quickly. We first ordered out breakfast at the cashier, helped ourselves to coffee and were given a number to put on our table.

This place is much more casual and has an unfinished look to it that their other restaurants lack. After picking a table and flipping through the paper a bit, our breakfast arrived. I had ordered a breakfast burrito, which chicken sausage, eggs and cheese.

As you can see, it was served with a side of 3 dipping sauces, and the green one, the cilantro pesto, made the whole thing worth eating. The breakfast burrito was good, but with that cilantro pesto, it was truly amazing. Meanwhile, Tom ordered corned beef hash.

He found the hash to be pretty good, and even liked it more than the hash he'd had at 900 Grayson. Breakfast ending up being very enjoyable - the only thing that wasn't was the price. This place definitely cost more than our usual breakfast places, so I think we'll visit it only when we have guests in town.

Another breakfast place that we've frequented lately is Berkeley Bagels. It's been known to have the best NY style bagels in the Bay Area. We finally checked this place out while dog sitting for a friend - they just live a few blocks from the store. Here's the bagel case:

And here's the bagel I ordered:

Though the coffee there isn't great, I do enjoy their bagels. I normally get a toasted Asiago bagel with light butter. We did try their whole wheat bagels, but they use real wheat, and it came out too heavy and chewy. It might not be as healthy, but I'll stick with their normal bagels. As for being as good as NY? Not quite, but since I don't eat bagels that often, I'm happy to have theirs.

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.