Food Adventure Team

A couple of weeks ago, Violet (one of our Food Adventurers) was hosting a party. While there, I ran into her good friend and acquaintance of mine, Richie of Hapa Ramen. Richie used cook at Nopa until about a year ago when he quit to start his own pop-up, Hapa Ramen. I’ve been meaning to check it out ever since but haven’t gotten a chance to because the hours are so limited. I was lamenting this fact to Richie when he informed me that he would be doing a pop-up at Bar Tartine on the 20th and the 27th of December: Mondays! FAT is on Mondays! I knew what I had to do. I rounded up the troops and made a reservation, eager to finally try the transcendent ramen that I’d often heard Violet raving about.

I was not disappointed. And it wasn’t just ramen, either. We started out by ordering every appetizer: Brussels sprouts, which were roasted in oil, salt, and vinegar (?) and were so delicate and crispy and rich that I couldn’t stop eating them. Some of the most amazing fried chicken I’ve ever had: every so crispy on the outside and fall-off-the-bone moist on the inside, resting in a pool of sweet/citrusy/spicy sauce. Dates stuffed with cheese curds and (pickled?) lemon zest, on a bed of clover greens with a light lemony dressing. Pig’s head. Pig’s head? Yes. I’ll admit, it wasn’t my favorite item but I liked it a lot more than I expected (I don’t do well with unusual meats). The flavor was great, even if the texture wasn’t my bag.

There was no question which ramen we would get. Eight Big Daddy Ramen Bowls, please. In addition to fabulously rich and nuanced broth and a towering nest of perfectly chewy handmade noodles, each bowl contained: a beautiful slow-cooked farm egg with a gooey, rich, deep yellow-orange yolk; balls of breaded and fried chicken breast meat; seaweed; kale (or was it chard? or some other deep green leafy veggie?); incredibly flavorful delicata squash; and a chunk of melt-in-your-mouth slow-cooked pork belly. Oh, the pork belly. I could write songs about the pork belly. I tried to finish my bowl, but the portions were so generous that in the end I was defeated. My mouth wanted more but my stomach protested.

But somehow, as is always the case, I had room for dessert. There were two options: sesame seed fudge with a black & white sesame cracker and whipped cream, and a brown rice pudding with ginger (?), coconut milk, and orange peel preserves. We got both, of course. I tried the fudge first. It was dense and chocolatey, enriched with the earthy sweetness of the sesame seeds. It reminded me a lot of halva, a Middle Eastern sesame seed dessert. The sesame seed cracker it came with was slightly sweet and ever so slightly salted, and its crunchiness offset the smooth denseness of the fudge nicely. Next I tried the rice pudding. I should’ve tried the pudding first. The richness of the chocolate and sesame seeds in the fudge was so overpowering that I could barely taste the delicate orange, ginger, and spice flavors in the rice pudding. I felt the pudding was good but could’ve been a little sweeter, a little saltier, a little creamier. What can I say? I’m a sucker for ultra-rich desserts. I was sold on the fudge.

All in all, a truly wonderful meal. Richie puts a lot of time and effort into perfecting his recipes and sourcing the best ingredients, and it shows in how wonderfully satisfying and delicious his food is.

Where do I even start? Food Adventure Team 2.0: Return of the FATtening was truly epic.

We began at Mission Chinese Food, an offshoot of the much storied and sadly no longer with us Mission Street Food. Let me tell you, this was some damn fine Chinese food, the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. I have no clue if it was authentic but you know what? I really don’t give a shit. It was wonderful food and that’s all that matters.

Because we were a large party, we got the prix fixe menu at the very affordable $25 per person. Plate after plate of wondrous delight was brought out to to us in rapid fire succession. The squeals from our table were plentiful, and Doomy went into a meat fugue before long. Let me tell you about the meat. Here’s a little secret I’ve been harboring: I’ve never been very excited about pork belly. I know, I know. It turns out I’d just never had it prepared correctly. Mission Chinese Food does it right. Their Slow Cooked Char Siu Pork Belly (tea smoked egg, ginger scallion, rolled noodles, cucumber) is one of the most divine things I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming. Its caramelized, slightly crisp exterior stuck to my teeth as I bit into the lighter-than-air layer of fat that burst with flavor in my mouth. The beef cheeks were equally tantalizing. We were brought both the Braised Mongolian Beef Cheek (onions, hot peppers, bean sprouts) and the Broccoli Beef (stir fried gai lan, braised beef cheek, oyster, smoked oyster sauce). I believe we deemed it “meat butter”: the most pillowy, tender, fatty beef that you’ve ever devoured. The vegetables were nothing to shake a stick at either; they were all perfectly cooked and seasoned.

We were also brought a variety of nibbles to start, the Tiger Salad (xi’an herbs and lettuces, red perilla, roasted seaweed, turnip vinegar; pictured below), Ma Po Tofu (ground kurobuta pork shoulder, beech mushroom, szechuan peppercorn, flaming chili oil), Thrice Cooked Bacon (rice cakes, bitter melon, tofu skin, scallion, black bean, chili oil), Taiwanese Eggplant (3 types of garlic, hot basil), 7 Chicken Wings with Explosive Chili Pepper, and Lung Shan’s Vegan Delight (shiitake and oyster mushroom dumplings in miso soup). It was truly a feast to behold.

Tiger Salad at Mission Chinese Food

And yet, when we had paid the bill we were still hungry for something a little sweet. Laurie suggested Xanath for its amazing vanilla ice cream, so after thanking Chef Danny Bowien, we headed south toward the ice cream shop. As luck would have it, Nosh This was set up for the evening on the corner of 20th and Valencia. At first all we saw was a sign that said “BACON CRACK!” — we knew whatever was happening had to be good. Sure enough, Bacon Crack lives up to its name as chef Kai Kronfield delivers up a delectable concoction of butter toffee studded with chunks of bacon and covered in chocolate. Yes, it really is as amazing as it sounds.

He also had Irish Coffee On A Sticks: homemade Jameson marshmallow with a cube of Bailey’s Irish Cream/Ritual Coffee fudge. Lordy. And in case you weren’t in the mood for sweets he was serving up some steamy meat-only Texas chili laced with chocolate. Mmmm.

After we finished our sweet ‘n’ salty treats, we continued on our journey for ice cream. A short half-block later we were there. Xanath is a unique ice cream shop. Their front window is decorated with towers of vanilla beans, and they hand out whole vanilla beans as samples to draw in customers. They have multiple kinds of vanilla ice cream (Madagascar Vanilla, Tahitian Vanilla, Mexican Vanilla) as well as a number of flavors like Pumpkin Pie, Saffron Ginger, and Salted Caramel.

More vanilla beans than I ever expect to see in my life

Wanting to appreciate their vanilla ice cream in all its subtle simplicity, I opted for the Mexican Vanilla. I was not disappointed. This is the most vanilla vanilla ice cream you’ll ever taste. It tastes real. It tastes floral, fruity, rich, complex. You will never go back to normal store-bought vanilla ice cream once you’ve tried some of Xanath’s. You might not even go back to chocolate.

Our rowdy little group took over the shop and shared a multitude of flavors before heading back out into the winter chill, full of so much good food that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

Laurie

Reed and Arlen

Arlette and Doomy

As you may have gathered, there was a period of time where I got lazy about writing reviews for FAT. This is unfortunate because Borobudur was an experience that deserves many words. Sadly, the details have been lost to the sands of time, so I will have to leave you with that which stuck out in my mind: A fish, served whole, including eyeballs. Incredibly strange desserts. One was a crepe of sorts, containing chocolate sprinkles and cheddar cheese. Another was a drink filled with flavored ice, tapioca, strange stuff that resembled green silly string, and of course the ever-present sprinkles. I remember the food to be overwhelmingly unusual, but also quite good. I would definitely go back for a repeat experience.

(Written December 6, 2010.)

My two-years-too-late assessment of Tselogs is: YUM. Tselogs was my first exposure to Filipino food. Being a lover of all things meaty and greasy, Tselogs made me very, very happy. Tselogs is located just outside of San Francisco in Daly City. According to Wikipedia, “35.4% of Daly City residents are of Filipino descent, the highest concentration of Filipino/Filipino Americans of any mid-sized city in North America”. We figured it would be a good place to check out the cuisine. We were not disappointed. My personal favorite was the sisig: a sizzling platter of meat, accompanied by a sunny side up egg and a dome of rice. Stirred together, it becomes a wonderfully gooey, rich, savory dish that satisfies even the most demanding appetite.

(Written December 6, 2010.)

When I saw that this restaurant serves Indian Pizza, I was all over it. I’d heard of this phenomenon, but never actually partaken in it. Zante came highly recommended, so I looked forward to Wednesday night.

I was not disappointed. We started with two “Assorted appetizers” — each order consisted of one veggie and one meat samosa, two chicken pakoras, and two lamb (?) pakoras. And of course they came with various chutneys including the ever-present mint chutney. I must say, the appetizers were great. Bold spices, delicious meat, tender chicken. Greasy of course, but most deep fried things are.

For pizza, we ordered the extra large “Best Indian Pizza,” which has basically everything on it. It was enormous! The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming abundance of garlic. Do NOT get this pizza if you don’t like garlic! It was delicious, though. The pizza had basically everything on it. Cauliflower, shrimp, chicken, lamb, mozzarella, their special sauce (garlic), etc. It was all slathered on top of what was basically a giant naan. The naan was perfectly crisp on the bottom, and deliciously soft around the edges, as naan should be. Naan makes a perfect pizza crust, it turns out. Highly recommend dipping it in mint chutney, too.

While the pizza in general was quite tasty, I did wish that the toppings had been chopped less finely. I don’t really know what all I was eating; because everything was chopped so finely it kind of turned into mush. Delicious mush, but a more varied texture would’ve made me happier.

I also got a mango lassi, which was the brightest shade of orange I’ve ever seen on a lassi. It looked like pureed carrots! It was nice and creamy and had decent mango flavors, but it was overly sweet. Like sweet tea sweet. I prefer a bit of tartness in a lassi. Not bad though.

Conclusion: Tasty, would definitely go again– or at least order from them, since they offer free delivery to the whole city! There are things I wished they did differently, but the price (SO CHEAP) and the novelty make up for it in the end. And, pizza aside, their regular North Indian food was pretty awesome.

Team members Ed, Laurie and I found ourselves in DC for Obama’s inauguration. Ed and I had just arrived from the airport and sought sustenance. Simply Home, an upscale Thai restaurant on U St., provided a welcome respite from the freezing cold and crowds from outside. Startlingly uncrowded, the restaurant was, oddly, connected to a home decor store. Its interior was trendy, yet welcoming and unpretentious. Everything was beautiful. Their light fixtures were formed from hundreds of (empty) silkworm cocoons! And the best part was that the food was GOOD. We get good Thai food in San Francisco, so this is saying something.

We started off with a few simple yet exquisite cocktails — a mango martini for myself, and a lychee martini for Lori. Delicious. We got two appetizers as well: wontons stuffed with feta and sundried tomatoes (ehh… fusion can be hit or miss and this one was a miss), and something else that I can’t remember except that I know it was quite tasty.

Entrees were delightful. I got the chicken stir fried with asian pumpkin (asian pumpkin is my new food crush). Beautifully presented, the stir fry was served with the perfect amount of rice. Its flavors were well balanced between sweet, spicy, and savory. The pumpkin was perfectly cooked (slightly to the teeth) and so was the chicken. I was very pleased. Ed, Laurie, and Lori all got the same thing, some sort of coconut-fried chicken. I had a bite and it too was quite tasty; I wish I could remember more about it. Kim (our lovely DC hostess) gave me a bite of her pad thai and it was the best I’ve ever had.

In all, I was very impressed with Simply Home. What a great introduction to a great city! I hope to go back soon and sample more of its cuisine.

(Written February 11, 2009.)

Photo by Laurie

Whoops, I never wrote a review of this one. What I remember of this shabu shabu dinner is that it was kind of crazy and a lot of fun. A huge party of us cooking a ton of delicious food at the table. The waiter brought us lots of extras, which was incredibly nice of them. The meat was delicious. Everything was fabulous! (I write this two years later, almost to the day – that’s how memorable this meal was!)

(Written December 6, 2010.)

Burmese food! A first for me. Conclusion: delicious. A little like Thai, a little like Chinese, some hints of Indian. Thoroughly Southeast Asian. Supposedly it’s like Lao food, but since I’ve never had Lao food that doesn’t mean much to me.

Overall, everything was delicious. My only gripe would be that the food wasn’t quite spicy enough. That’s saying a lot, considering Kateri and I had to fight tooth & nail with Reed to NOT ask for extra-super-no-really-I-can-handle-it-even-though-I’m-white spicy. We did agree that he could order one dish spicy–the basil prawns–but he didn’t do it emphatically enough I guess because it was the least spicy of the bunch! In fact it wasn’t spicy at all. Still very tasty though.

Appetizers:

• Samusa (with Chicken or Vegetarian) – A mixture of grounded curried meat and potatoes
  Yum. Nice and crispy with tasty innards. Pretty much the same as Indian Samosas. (Funny how the Eritreans have sambusas, the Burmese have samusas, and the Indians and Tibetans have samosas.)
• Balada – Burmese crispy pancake with curry dipping sauce
  If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I love fried food. This pancake was no exception. The curry sauce was good, if not a little bland, but when combined with the spicy red pepper sauce they put on the table at the beginning of the meal, it was divine.

Entrees:

• Rainbow Salad – Salad prepared with eight ingredients served with house special dressing

  This is the only thing I didn’t try because it didn’t look appealing to me. (No meat? Cold? Pickled things? Not my cup o’ tea.)

• Basil Prawn – Our fresh basil leaf sauce is fragrant and created in our chef’s oriental wok
  As mentioned above, not spicy enough, but delicious and very basil-y. I wish there were more shrimp; between the four of us, we each only got two shrimp. The dishes were pretty small — which is not to say we walked away hungry.
• Mango Chicken – Pan fry chicken sauteed with fresh mango, onions, and green chili
  My favorite! Tender white meat chicken with generous chunks of sweet, perfectly ripe mango. Only gripe: difficult to get a hold of mangos with chopsticks. Wait, do they use chopsticks in Myanmar, or have they switched to forks, like Thailand?
• Mandalay Beef – Fried beef slices sauteed with garlic and chef’s delicious hot sauce
  I’m pretty sure this is the beef dish we got. Unfortunately, I’m writing this a few weeks late, so I can’t remember for sure. It was very tasty, though.
• Rice – Instead of plain white rice, Mandalay gives you a selection of about four different types of rice. We got the coconut rice and the saffron rice. Both were delicious, in very different ways. The coconut was nutty and slightly sweet. The saffron rice was more savory.

Desserts:

The desserts aren’t listed on Mandalay’s website, so I’ll do my best to remember what they were.

• Little rectangles of cream of wheat, sprinkled with poppy seeds. I have no idea what these were called, but they were quite tasty indeed! A little sweet, but not too sweet. Some might call it bland, but I really enjoyed its subtle flavors. The poppy seeds added the perfect amount of crunch.

  

  Backlit confection. Photo by Josh

• Mango Sticky Rice. A classic. Delicious as always. Rich, creamy, sticky, coconut sticky rice, topped with cool, perfectly ripe mango. One of my favorite desserts of all time!

Pretty standard good Indian/Pakistani food. The one thing that made it stand out as different from most Indian places was the momos. Momos are a Nepalese specialty. They are best described as delicate steamed dumplings similar to potstickers. We ordered all three kinds: chicken, everest (buffalo), and vegetable. Unfortunately they brought us samosas instead of the vegetable momos and we didn’t realize at the veggie momos weren’t also coming until it was too late. Samosas were decent but nothing special. Jared got the Kathmandu fish curry; I didn’t try it so I can’t comment on it. Aaron got saag paneer, which was creamy and delicious. I love saag paneer; it’s such a subtle dish. There didn’t seem to be much different about it than the saag paneers I’ve had at other quality Indian restaurants. Laurie got the goat curry. I tried a bite and it was good, though it didn’t stand out to me. Leah got the chicken tikka masala which was of course delicious. I can’t resist this dish ever. Tracey got the chicken curry and I got the lamb curry; they were basically the same except for the difference in meat. Chicken was not dry; lamb wasn’t melt-in-your-mouth tender, but it wasn’t tough either. We got roti and paratha to eat our curries with. The paratha was awesome. The roti was pretty standard. We were way too stuffed to get dessert!

Warning: White girl reviewing! I love Chinese food and consider myself fairly adventurous, but I definitely was not raised eating the more unamericanized fare served here. So some of the stuff I didn’t like may have been because I’m just a white girl and I don’t like things that seem “weird” to a westerner (like, for example, tripe).

The service was fine for such a restaurant. Nothing special. The servers pretty much spoke no English, but it wasn’t really needed. It was a little dirty (for example, they left a water jug for us, but it was an old tupperware container with food crusted in its cracks — kinda unappetizing), but on the whole the ambiance was totally acceptable. And everyone was super nice!

We ordered the meal for 7-8, plus a few extra things. I’m glad we did it this way because we got to try things we never would’ve thought to otherwise. However, I probably wouldn’t do it that way next time, because there was some kinda “meh” stuff that got wasted because we didn’t eat it.

Things you must get:

• DUMPLINGS! We got the Shanghai dumplings, which I had never had and were completely delicious. Soup in a dumpling — what a novel concept! I have no idea how they do it. We also got the crab and pork dumplings, which were similarly delicious.
• Rice with some sort of Chinese bacon (?) on top. Should’ve grabbed a menu so I could know what this was actually called. The rice was perfect and fluffy but still quite moist — not gluey. It had scallions in it, and on top was some sort of extremely salty cured (?) pork. The pork, while delicious, was a bit intense for me so I didn’t eat a huge amount; the rice was amazing.
• Soy braised “lion’s head” meatball. This was quite tasty in unexpected ways. Not “weird” at all, these huge (as in, softball-sized) meatballs were spiced of cinnamon and ginger, and served in a soy sauce based sauce on a bed of spinach. One of my favorite entrees.
• Red Bean Buns – holy crap, BEST EVER. So light and fluffy and fresh. Not overly sweet. Perfect. Do not miss these. (But be careful, they come out HOT and the filling will burn the roof of your mouth.)
• Sugar puffs – very simple dessert. Extremely fluffy, eggy dough with lots of air pockets, like a popover, fried up tall and served with sugar on top. I could eat 12 of them if I let myself.

Things that weren’t bad but weren’t amazing either:

• Green onion pancakes. Nice and crispy without being overly greasy. Weren’t something I’d write home about though.
• Cucumber salad. This was the only appetizer I liked, really. It was a really simple salad of sliced cucumbers with a strongly garlicky dressing. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but others devoured it.
• Some sort of spicy beef dish (kung pao?) with onions and bell peppers. It was pretty tasty, but was more along the lines of “generic Chinese food”, the kind you can get at every mom & pop Chinese restaurant you walk into.
• Fish soup. It had a lot of greens (spinach? bok choy?) in it — perhaps too many — but it wasn’t fishy-tasting or smelling at all (which is a good thing). It wasn’t my favorite thing, but others seemed to enjoy it a great deal.
• Shanghai style salted pancakes. I think that’s what these were called. They were kinda weird and gluey, but not in a way that I enjoyed. The outsides were crispy, which I liked. They had something else in the filling besides the gluey stuff, but I never did find out what it was.
• Some sort of shrimp dish. It was shrimp and some leafy green veggies and probably green onions (I don’t remember) in a gooey, clear, bland sauce. The shrimp themselves were great — not fishy, not tough — but the sauce didn’t impress me.

Things I definitely would not order again:

• Vegetable stir fry of some sort. It had tofu skin noodles, pieces of… tofu? Seitan? bok choy, and some other unidentifiable veggies & stuff. It kind of tasted like nothing, and looked like nothing also.
• The appetizers. I think they were just too “weird” for me. They were all cold appetizers, which wasn’t helping for some reason.
  • The cucumber salad (mentioned above) was pretty good, but the other things left something to be desired.
  • There was a duck dish that tasted pretty good (marinated in sesame oil) but was sliced in a way that the bones were embedded and impossible to remove from the meat. I know bone marrow is a Chinese delicacy so I guessed that maybe it was supposed to be eaten bone and all, but honestly I’m not there yet.
  • There was a chicken dish. The chicken had its skin on, but it was just floppy white skin– I’m guessing the chicken was boiled? The meat tasted strongly of sherry; very one-dimensional.
  • There was a tripe dish. This was the only thing I didn’t try all night. I know, I know, I’m a big wimp. But it didn’t look terribly appetizing and others who tried it weren’t big fans, so I didn’t bother.

Summary: It was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The good stuff was REALLY good (as in, I’d happily trek across town again just for their red bean buns or Shanghai dumplings). For the stuff we weren’t such fans of, hey, at least we had a new culinary experience! And, amazingly, we walked away paying only $17 apiece, including a generous tip! Highly recommended.