 Been one measly week since I got back to the West Coast, and my stomach is already shifting in discomfort with the regular irregular dining pattern of a student, or perhaps of just someone living alone. At home, on weekdays, we have dinner at 5 while watching TV. For lunch there are banh bao that Mom made, each as big as a small fist with a pork ball and a half an egg [...] Continue reading Went home to eat  Curry rice with tonkatsu – $10.95 – a bit more peppery than the curry rice at Musashi in Berkeley, but still mild enough to my taste, pretty good. On the western edge of Yosemite National Park is a little town called Sonora. In Sonora there is Koto, the only Japanese restaurant in a 38-mile radius. In Koto, I had saba shio for the first time. It’s a grilled mackerel seasoned with salt, squeeze on some lemon juice [...] Continue reading Kaneyama and mixed feelings  Happy New Year from Port Arthur, TX. Just when I thought El Sombrero Taqueria in Berkeley was interesting for combining Mexican, Indian and Pakistani food under one roof (not in one dish, thank goodness), or I Squared in Oakland for Italian and Iranian, we stumbled onto a Japanese restaurant that also dishes out Chinese, Thai, Indian, and Indonesian. The lady who greeted us at the door is South Asian, probably Indian, but I [...] Continue reading Lunch in the Far East of Texas  Legend said the first ever bánh dầy (pronounced |beng yay|) was a flat thick bun of cooked-and-pounded sticky rice, white and chewy and not recommended for dentures. The prince, taught by a Bodhisattva in his dream, made it to represent the sky, and bánh chưng to represent the earth. I don’t think the sky is chewy, but I really like it when it’s white. I also like banh day with [...]
Continue reading Sandwich Shop Goodies 21 – Bánh dầy đậu (Vietnamese mung bean mochi)  Little Mom likes Houston because it’s big, I’ve grown to like Berkeley because it’s so tiny I can get around without a car. Little Mom likes our big garden where she can grow 20 trees and who knows how many rose bushes, I’m content with my little dried-plum-container-turned-flower-pot in which I grow my onion. Point is, Little Mom likes big things, and I, well, sometimes like and most of the time don’t mind small things. But [...] Continue reading Little Cafe Du Bois in Kingwood  Pretty is the right word. Hearsay, or “Heresy” as Aaron calls it for some reason, warms your senses with a large yellow glass chandelier dangling several meters above the bar. The old walls, now lined with artsy thin bricks, bring to mind the image of a mahogany cascade from the high ceiling; tiny specs of light from the chandelier reflect off them like a meteor shower. It feels like a church almost. The [...] Continue reading Indulge in the dark  Sometimes things just refuse to go the way you plan. I’ve been looking forward to the fried chicken at this place called Number 1 Chicken Rice & Seafood for half a year. It’s in Houston, so I have two time windows each year, each a couple of weeks long, to plan my voyage. Last winter we hit the place less than an hour after they closed (which was like 8 pm, I think), this June we [...] Continue reading Sweet El Meson in the Rice Village  Ever wonder why Banh Cuon Tay Ho has the best steamed roll of all places? Thin like a veil, never too chewy or oily, the flour never tastes sour, and the mixed fish sauce never has the bitter hint of lime. Their secrets are mysteries to me. By chance, the Lưu family who operates Tay Ho 18 in Houston stumbled on my blog post of 4 years ago and invited me to the opening week after [...] Continue reading Chat with Mr. James Luu and a peek inside Banh Cuon Tay Ho 18  Aside from opening a little bit late on Sunday (11:30 am), the Tokyo One at Westchase is a lovely place. Three things that I have now associated with Tokyo One, although I probably shouldn’t, since they kinda belong to the ukiyo (floating world) more than to the permanents: 1. A beautiful peach-colored water lily in the mini pond creek artificial water thing surrounding the building 2. Perfect silky chawanmushi (pictured) 3. The gentle [...] Continue reading Ice cream friendly  There’s a Vietnamese song that starts like this: “Ten years pass by without seeing each other, I thought love had grown old/ Like the clouds that have flown by so many years, I thought we had forgotten.”(*) It then went on to say, as you might expect, that the narrator still yearns for that love like ten years ago. An even more dramatic thing happens to me: I still crave xôi khúc with the same passion [...] Continue reading Sandwich Shop Goodies 20 – Xôi khúc – Jersey cudweed sticky rice |
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