 Partly because of my busy schedule, partly because of the lack of good Vietnamese food in Berkeley, I haven’t had Vietnamese food for months. I miss it, of course. Luckily, the neighboring cuisines share so much similarities that my “comfort food” category has steadily expanded to enclose most of East Asia. If for some reason America and I don’t get along, I think I can happily merge into Taiwan and Japan (not sure about Korea – their food is too spicy…). So when I crave comfort food, if it’s Sunday or Monday and Musashi is closed, I go down University Avenue to the Taiwan Restaurant. It’s the purple building next to Anh Hong, and it’s another case of generic-names-hence-don’t-go-there type of restaurant. However, two Taiwanese told me that it was “good enough” – the owner of Asha Tea House across the street, and Kristen. As with any Asian eating establishment, you have to know what to get at the Taiwan Restaurant, otherwise you end up with oily overload. I haven’t strayed once out of the usuals. It’s comfort food, there’s no need to change it. In fact, […]
Continue reading Comfort food at the Taiwan Restaurant
 Above is our table at 10 a.m. (after we have cleared the first few dishes). To your right is Hong Kong Lounge at 9:31 a.m., exactly 1 minute after the doors opened. Every seat was filled. When we arrived at Hong Kong Lounge at 9:10, 20 minutes before the restaurant opens, a line had already formed. While we were eating, the line formed again outside and kids were pressing their face against the frosted windows to peak at people’s plates. I’d imagine it’d feel a bit weird if you’re seated by the window. Continue reading Hong Kong Lounge – it’s never too early for dimsum and tea
 In Europe the royalty and the aristocracy used to eat a lot better than the peasants – they weren’t eating the same things at all. It was either partridge or porridge, and each class stuck to its own food. But when Queen Elizabeth came here and President Eisenhower bought her a hot dog I’m sure he felt confident that she couldn’t have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than that one he bought for her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark. Because there is no better hot dog than a ballpark hot dog. Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars could she get a better hot dog. She could get one for twenty cents and so could anybody else. – Andy Warhol Why is that ballpark hot dog the best hot dog? Because the ballpark hot dog seller sells nothing but hot dogs. You can’t beat someone who does it day in and day out, a thousand times and another thousand times more often than you. Continue reading Andy Warhol, kokeshi dolls, and oden
 Mother said “you shall not eat meat on the first day of Tet“. And I said “yes, Mom.” It has been our family tradition that the first day of the lunar year is a vegan day. It’s not unique to our family of course, most Vietnamese Buddhists eat vegan on certain days of the lunar calendar, the number of days depend on the amount of devotion to practice the precept of not killing. To refrain from all of the festive food is also a step to train the mind against the worldly temptations. Normally, that would be difficult if I were at home, given the excess of pork sausage loaves, braised pork and eggs, banh chung banh tet, roast chicken, fried spring rolls, dumplings, et cetera. But I’m here by myself, it’s like expatriation on top of expatriation. To refrain from meat has never been so easy. 😉 My quick and simple vegan lunch: steamed rice with muối mè (a mix of sesame, salt and sugar, similar to furikake but Vietnamese 😉 ), steamed bok choy, shisozuke umeboshi (salted plum with pickled shiso leaf) […]
Continue reading Tet of a Buddhist Vietnamese expat
 Today. Big glistening birds. Crimson cranberry sauce. Mashed sweet potato with a crusty marshmallow top. Green bean casseroles. Gravies. The all-American classic holiday dinner table that every grocery store has a picture of on their website. Once upon a time I was enticed by such beauty, much like how I engulfed a chunk of ham the first time I saw real ham after years of seeing ham in old American cartoons (Tom and Jerry I think?). To be fair, save for the turkey, I do like the marshmallow sweet potato, the green bean casserole, and sometimes the stuffing if the gravies’ done right. But the turkey… I don’t get it. In a bird, the best part is the brown meat: legs, thighs, wings, that’s all. (Ah yes, I love the offals too, but today I’ll speak from the American perspective for a change.) Yet, the turkey leg is a monstrosity of toughness that my weak 20-some-year-old bone-gnawing cartilage-grinding gizzard-and-heart-loving teeth have trouble handling. Were all the turkeys I sunk into Olympic weightlifters or something? Well they have to lift their 30lb+ body every minute anyway, so no wonder. Conclusion: I don’t like turkey(*). I like duck. […]
Continue reading Duck for Thanksgiving! (Stealing ideas from Double Duck Dinner at Bay Wolf)
 The waiter brought out a kettle of tea, but Nancy Togami waved him back, asking for just plain hot water. Carefully, she used her thermometer to check the water temperature. One hundred and eighty degree Fahrenheit, too cool to steep the Baochong and Phoenix Honey that she brought. But Nancy brought her own water too, which measured close to 200 degrees, so we used her water instead. I’ve never brought my own tea to a restaurant, but it makes sense: people bring their own wine to restaurants, and when you have good teas, there’s no reason to refrain from pairing them with good food. The dim sum at Shanghai Dumpling King proved to be perfect experiment material. Without Nancy, I probably would never have known of this hole in the wall way out on the west side of San Fran, and probably too lazy to get here because it’s not 2 blocks away from the BART and I’d doubt the dim sum would be worth anything farther than that. Now, dim sum are good. You have to really suck as a cook to make ground meat in a piece of […]
Continue reading Pair Dim Sum with Tea at Shanghai Dumpling King
 After four months at Teance on 4th Street and one morning at Imperial Tea Court on Shattuck, the stupid demanding tea snob novice in me revealed herself. I’m far from being the perfect judge on what constitutes a good tea house, but I know the basics. With that, I wouldn’t recommend Imperial to anyone who seriously wants to learn about tea. Click on the image if you want to know my reasons.
 And eat an amazing cream puff. (Cream puffs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cupcakes) Click to see my post on the Spring Harvest Tea Party at Teance tonight. We drank some eye-opening teas, literally and figuratively.
 The best (known) green tea of China. The cream of the cream of the crop. I feel sophisticated just drinking it. Paired with a tangerine bee pollen truffle and I almost hear little cherubim playing the lyre. You can read the whole story in my journal Tea & Mai. I’m off to dance in my head.
 The third pairing of mochi and Japanese green tea. Perfect! Yes, finally a mochi that goes perfectly with sencha. Yomogi (Japanese mugwort), julienned into tiny strings and mixed with the mochi dough, gives the mochi a clean, refreshing taste, which reminds me of the tip of a Vietnamese bánh Ãt or a bánh Ãt gai (*). However, what struck me was the filling: red bean and sweet potato paste. The red bean is the main factor, the sweet potato is only at the top, closest to the doughy coat. The azuki sweetness subdues the fishiness (umami) of sencha, and the sencha bitterness subdues the sweetness. Is this why the Japanese use azuki for their desserts so often? Why didn’t the sencha – matcha-mochi pair work as well? The matcha mochi also has azuki paste, but I think the orange juice and the walnuts distracted me. The yomogi clarifies the taste in a more floral and less bitter way than the matcha; and like saffron, sometimes a spice’s presence isn’t noticeable, but its absence would be. Anyways, this pair also shows that a simpler mochi […]
Continue reading Sencha and yomogi mochi
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