Chiu on This

2011: My favorite dish

And the winner is...Ma po tofu from Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco. (The picture doesn't do the dish justice.) Folks have said that Mission Chinese has been overly hyped. I can't speak to that since (1) this was the only dish I've had there, (2) I've only gone  there once, and (3) I didn't have to wait at all for a table (I went for lunch, fairly soon after they opened for the day).

The flavors were brilliant and complex - spicy but not one-note. Biting into the Szechuan peppercorns that studded the dish, I felt like I was eating electricity - zap! ping! zzzzzt! And I got the full-on mala effect of numbed lips.

As I tucked into the dish and savored its odd combination of earthy and ethereal qualities, I remember hearing Radiohead playing in the background and thinking, "This works for me." "Wish You Were Here" came on immediately after, and I really wished folks were with me to share my meal.

I've eaten ma po tofu before and have often cooked a very simplified version of it with ground pork and pretty much no spice. But this version made me sit up straight, open my eyes wide, and breathe deeply. In the wake of eating this, I've had ma po dishes about 3 more times in about just as many weeks, but this version still stays in my mind.

Maybe finding a similar - or better - version in NYC will make for a good 2012 quest. Happy new year!

Pickles, chorizo, sardines

I happen to love pickles. Being a sour person, I enjoy sour things. So it was a forgone conclusion that the "plate of pickles" on the menu at Magnolia Pub and Brewery was going to wind up at my table.

And quite a plate it was. Daikon (I'm pretty sure that's what the white stuff on the far left was), cauliflower, carrots with a bit of cumin, good ol' cukes, watermelon, green beans, and grapes. Nice and sour! And everything but the watermelon and grapes still had a bit of snap or resistance. I wouldn't mind another round of that right now and tomorrow, etc., etc.

The next item up was a platter of thinly sliced chorizo with bread and sliced onions, which were perhaps slightly pickled or marinated. At 3pm, they were already out of all the other cured meats - coppa, salame cotto, and salame toscano.

That wasn't too much of a loss - I went ahead and ordered the oven-roasted sardines with pickled onions (again! hooray!), romesco sauce, and toast. Very, very tasty, and definitely fishy, in a good way.

Drinks to accompany: cask conditioned Long Break Bitter and Proving Ground IPA. Thumbs up to both.

As we were winding down, a photographer started to test her camera flash, which got real annoying real fast, particularly when it became clear that she wasn't photographing anything. After a while, the flashes abated but then resumed, just when a heavenly smell of fried chicken drifted our way. Like a cartoon character floating along a scent trail, my head bobbled in the direction of the aroma, and it all became clear - the photographer was clicking away at the plate in front of her - Thursday night is fried chicken night - and I'm guessing her handiwork will go up on the "great visuals" section of Magnolia's website. I just hope she got to eat the chicken when she finished her work, and that I get to try some the next time I'm in town.

Beer and burger at the Bear

Good timing allowed me to meet up with my former co-worker Erin and her friend for lunch at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company on the first day of my vacation in San Francisco. A bit woozy from having gotten up at 4am and sleeping for only 30 minutes on the plane ride from NYC, I didn't realize until halfway thru my 12 oz glass of Meyer ESB that I was a wee bit tipsy. Thankfully, the burger part of my beer and burger combo (a great deal at only $12) helped to provide some balance. Made with Wagyu beef, pork, and lamb (one of which came from Niman ranch, as if I could actually tell), and layered with a coarse mustard and interesting little pickles, the burger reminded me of a good merguez sausage. Not a bad choice, considering all the good looking tapas selections on the menu. Thumbs up also to the fries.

Honorable mention: the cask conditioned ale made with chamomile. The waiter rightly described it as "a little weird." Is it beer, or is it tea? I found the taste intriguing and palatable in the sample size, but wasn't ready to commit to full glass.

Not sure what I'll be having for dinner tonight, but tomorrow will be full on elastic waistband measures as I head to the Magnolia Pub and -- wait for it -- the House of Prime RIb! Medic!

Chicken and chili

This doesn't count as a new post - it's really an add-on to the previous one from my friend Rob, who snapped this photo of the Chongqing Chili Chicken dish from Trend Restaurant.  I just wanted to make sure that the picture didn't go unnoticed!  And as Rob mentioned before, while the number of chilis looks daunting, this dish does not exhibit excessive and pointless spiciness, but rather a fine demonstration of ma la.

Sichuan in the cities

Okay, sorry for the stupid title to this post, but sometimes my creativity is in short supply.  I figured that waiting for a better idea would delay my posting of this first review for 2009, thoughtfully provided by FOCOT gold medalist Rob.  Enjoy!

Back in the 80's, a Chinese restaurant opened in my hometown: Omei Szechuan.  At the time, the few Chinese restaurants in Gainesville did not stray beyond beef'n'broccoli.  I had no idea what Sichuan cuisine entailed, besides the vague notion that it was spicy.  The name evoked scenic Mt. Emei, in Sichuan Province, but the restaurant itself was located in a humble, repurposed cinder block house.  Omei offered the twin novelties of 1) dining in what was obviously once a bedroom, complete with sliding closet doors, and 2) a menu with (then) unfamiliar dishes like kung-pao chicken and mapo tofu. Little icons of chili peppers marked the spicy menu items and served to dissuade the hot-adverse customers. The restaurant also offered sweet-and-sour pork and chop suey, but we came for the spicy dishes, which really were spicy.  There was nothing else like it in town.

Folks weren't quite ready for Omei. Though the restaurant was eventually quite successful, Omei had to modify its menu to keep the crowds coming: the spicy dishes became less so. Over time, the menu converged on standard Chinese-American fare and the owners added a lunch buffet. They kept the kung-pao chicken, though.

My next encounter with Sichuan cuisine came about 15 years later, when I visited Tina in New York City. We attended a dinner banquet at Wu Liang Ye on 48th Street. I drank so much of the eponymous firewater (wu liang ye is a brand of distilled liquor) that my memories, besides a general impression of wide-eyed appreciation, are quite fuzzy. I do remember one of the appetizers: thinly-sliced sheets of beef tendon dressed in chili oil. Who knew that gristle could be so tasty?

San Francisco year-end clear out

These selections come from my colleague Dan and FOCOTs Mark and Rick; it's taken me, oh, four months to get them up here.  The only place I've actually been to (along w/ Rob, Tracy, and Jeremy) is Bi-Rite Creamery.

• The Thirsty Bear
• Tommaso's in North Beach (Rick highly recommends this)
• Swedish pancakes at Sears' Fine Food
• Tadich Grill
• Bi-Rite Creamery - get some of their fabulous ice cream and sit in Dolores Park along with hundreds of other people.  Try the orange cardamom.

Santa Cruz picks

My colleague and FOCOT Christine provides these picks for eating in Santa Cruz, where she spent a stint doing work for her dissertation.  I feel like half the office has gone there for work, but I've never been invited.  Hmmph.

Good breakfast place that Andres and I went to everyday is the Buttery - chocolate croissants are to die for; I hear O'mei was an awesome Chinese place but the night I went it was closed.  Riva Fish House was highly recommended as the place the locals go on the wharf.  I went and it was awesome - great food and if you wait for one of the tables by the window, lovely views of the ocean; Walnut Avenue Café also had really good breakfast and (although I never tried it) supposedly has good lunches too.  Zachary's was the place I went a couple of times for brunch - Mikes Mess [see photo] was what everyone said to order so I did, and it was really good.  I can't remember the name of it but there was a really good Mexican place on the main strip too.

(Photo source - http://www.flickr.com/photos/stutefish. Digression - check out her photo set of The Wire!  Terrific, and I completely love her gushing over her love of the actors; totally appropriate.)

Liking the leftovers

It's already been a week and a half since I was in San Jose for work.  My friend and colleague Gloria found a restaurant in downtown San Jose, Billy Berk's, that put us in a bit of a pickle.  We ordered several dishes, including fried zucchini with wasabi aoli for an appetizer; a lovely braised pork roast (highly recommended by our waiter) and the "mojito" skirt steak with fried jalapenos as entrees to share; and for sides roasted butternut squash w/ caramelized onions and a skillet of cornbread with cheddar.  We didn't count on the portions being so massive, so we already stuffed before making much of a dent in the pork roast, squash and cornbread.  (Note: those were the best tasting dishes; the steak and zucchini were just okay - which makes me wonder why we finished those items up entirely.  Huh.)

On a work trip, those leftovers would have probably gone to waste and I would have left feeling highly guilty, or, if I was guilty enough, I would have tried to eat more than even my stretch pants would have permitted.  Luckily, I was going to stay an extra night with my friend and longtime COT contributor, Rob, and his family, so we were able to haul off what felt like five pounds of food for Rob, Tracy, and their son Jeremy (butternut squash puree could have made good baby food).  Our colleague Sandra was kind enough to find a refrigerator in the hotel for me to stash the leftovers, and I was both happy and relieved to hear from Rob that they were tasty enough for him to want to know where the restaurant's located.

I'm glad that all worked out, but one of these days I hope to learn my lesson and scale back on ordering while I'm on the road, because I'm still feeling guilty for not having finished my pulled pork sandwich at the Loveless Cafe when I was in Nashville earlier this year.  Note to self: do not fill up on biscuits, no matter how good they are!

Secret menu

This posting comes from an email my friend Rob sent.  Here he refers to a fellow intern at the High Energy Physics division at Argonne National Laboratory, where we met in 1996 (yikes!).

last weekend we had lunch with ex-argonnenaut John (and Jennifer).  we went to joy restaurant, which is the chinese restaurant where I had translated their secret menu and posted it on my website.  John told the waiter that I was the guy who had translated their menu; the waiter told the owner, who said "I need to show you something!" and, from the back, produced a large stack of food-stained hardcopies of my menu translation.  she also treated us to lunch.  that was kinda cool.

For the secret menu at Joy Restaurant, which specializes in Taiwanese, Sichuan, Hunan, and Mandarin dishes, check out Rob's wiki page, which also provides contact info and directions to the place in Foster City.  I can't look at the menu too much - it makes me really hungry.  I've noticed he's also undertaken translations for another secret menu, this time at a Shanghainese place in Mountain View; my stomach keeps growling.

The coldest winter I ever spent...

This year's DUCS conference took place in July in San Francisco, one city I love to be in during the summer because it can get so danged cold.  Sam's earlier site visit paid off in the selection of the Hotel Adagio, a lovely place, for our conference. (Coincidentally, the hotel is very close to Rye, the bar that nearly did me in during my last visit to the Bay area.)

The hotel's restaurant, the Cortez, was closed for renovation when Sam made his visit, but luckily was open for business when we arrived.  I ate there on two occasions - I actually had a second dinner there even after visiting Rob, Tracy, and Jeremy (yay, Jeremy!) and dining on excellent beer can chicken, ribs, and corn (yes, Rob, my stomach is cavernous) - and put down several drinks along with many handfuls of thoroughly addictive popcorn.

My second dinner was the appetizer of pan roasted octopus and monterey squid w/ fresh soybeans, teardrop cherry tomatoes, preserved lemon and warm garlic creme fraiche.  The octopus and squid were the most tender I'd ever had.  I would not have dreamed of pairing them with the lemon and garlic creme fraiche, but the flavor combo and mouth feel were outstanding.

Both Anita and Chris N. ordered the hangar steak w/ smoked fingerling potato puree, marrow braised cippolini onions, chiodini mushrooms and solera elixir vinegar. I had a sampling and was nearly ready to go for dinner #3.  Olga ordered the striped bass w/ spicy braised cabbage, buckwheat pasta, garlic chives and aromatic tomato broth. I held back from sampling but noted that Olga really liked the dish.  It smelled great.  We split the chocolate peanut butter truffle cake with caramel ice cream and peanut praline.  I didn't care for the cake (not a big PB fan) but the others sure did, so I attacked the ice cream.

For breakfast the next day, I tucked into a duck confit hash w/ roasted vegetables and poached egg.  I then wondered why I did not vacation more, why life seemed like such drudgery back in NYC, and what I could do other than move to SF to rectify the situation.  I then got an interesting customized tour of the Tenderloin and Chinatown through the Joie de Vivre's Golden Gate Greeters program.  Much thanks to Rick for being a great greeter and showing me aspects of the city that I probably wouldn't have gotten to learn about otherwise.  Let's see what Chinatown's like in the next 10 years.

Whoops, I can't forget the drinks.  I'd recommend the Elderflower # 10 (not to be confused with Cortez' elderflower cocktail, made with champagne): Tanquerey #10, lemon juice, D'Arbo elderflower syrup, orange bitters, lemon twist.  Wonderful - I could drink this all the time.  (I first encountered elderflower at a tasting by LeNell's.  I fell in love with it immediately, but it took me maybe 15 minutes to figure out what its flavor reminded me of - lychees.) Also, try the Industry: Fernet Branca, fresh mint, ginger, lemon juice.  Classic.

Great hotel, great restaurant.  I'll definitely go back to both.