Main Stop: Oakland Chinatown

I was in Oakland Chinatown for the past two days preparing for Chinese New Year. This may be the most chaotic of all weekends. The community has to buy food and it is the Lunar New Year Bazaar. I acted as the chauffeur and the caddy for my mother yesterday as she went to various stores to buy pounds and pounds of groceries.


This morning I was on my own to get a few remaining prepared foods. I arrived at about 9:15am which is probably the earliest I have ever been to Chinatown. Prior to today, noon is a typical time for me to show up in Chinatown on any given day. I was on a mission to make sure I could get a roast duck and roast pork. Every Chinatown storefront selling roast meats had a line. I went to Cafe 88 inside the Pacific Renaissance Plaza. After about a twenty minute wait, I was successful.


The other item I wanted to get were fried sesame balls or jin deui. We picked some up yesterday, but most of them got eaten up quickly. My mom wanted to make sure we had some for tomorrow, New Year’s Day. Chinatown would be a ghost town on New Year’s Day, so today would be a last ditch effort.


Tao Yuen Pastry on 8th and Franklin may have the best fried sesame balls in town. I’m not the biggest fan of them, but when they are warm, they can be exquisite. The consistency is chewy and crispy. Fried sesame balls are made of a glutinous rice flour mixture that is filled with a sweet lotus paste, dipped in sesame seeds and deep fried to a golden brown. The line at Tao Yuen was also out the door. Another twenty minute wait left me successful. I left Tao Yuen with my pink box tied with red string.


Fried sesame balls are something very common to find in dim sum restaurants, but they hold special meaning on Chinese New Year’s Day. The round shape, the sweet flavor, the way it expands when cooking, and the golden color are all significant. It all means wealth and good fortune.


With less than two hours until Chinese New Year, I feel prepared. I’ve cleaned up, vacuumed, cut and washed my hair. It’s going to be the Year of the Dragon and I wish everyone health, wealth, and happiness.

P.S. A fried sesame ball equals 7 Weight Watcher points. Half a sesame ball is not too bad!

P.P.S. Last year’s Chinese New Year blog post can be found here.

Food Club Visit: Kokkari

I am now part of a food club that my BFF started. It’s very exclusive as there are only three members. We meet once a month and we take turns picking a restaurant. Last month was my turn and I picked Kokkari, the Greek restaurant in San Francisco. This is the sister restaurant of Evvia in Palo Alto. After my first visit to Evvia, I vowed to try the lamb chops my next visit.

My friends decided to do some sharing of appetizers. Lamb chops were on my mind so I wasn’t exactly participating in the family style eating. But we are close friends so they were generous to allow me to taste their food.

The first thing to come out were the grilled lamb meatballs with spiced tomato sauce and Greek yogurt. These were delish. I was just whetting my appetite for my lamb chops.


The grilled octopus with lemon, oregano, and olive oil was another appetizer ordered. This was good, but didn’t stand out.


Earlier when we were sitting at the bar, we saw someone order the Pan fried Kefalotiri cheese with lemon and oregano. It looked and smelled great, so my friends ordered it. Wow! I’ve never had anything like this and it was wonderful. Definitely something to share as it is a bit rich.


One friend is obsessed with Brussels sprouts so they ordered the wood oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and lemon. The star of this was the bacon.


My friends each ordered a soup. One got the Avgolemono or traditional egg-lemon soup with chicken and rice. This was the best one I have ever tasted. This was so good it would make anyone sick feel better.


The other soup was a lentil, vegetable soup with braised greens. I actually don’t remember much about this. Probably because I was wanting more Avgolemono.


While my friends were enjoying their soups, my grilled lamb chops with lemon-oregano vinaigrette and potatoes came out. It was a beauty. Of course I let my friends try. They agreed, it was perfection. This has made me a lamb fan.


The dessert we all shared was some type of cheesecake with shredded baklava that was sprinkled with pistachio nuts. The creamy cheesecake was nice, but I didn’t like the texture.


I was curious to taste the Greek coffee. This was stone ground coffee heated over hot sand. I’m glad I tried it, but it was way too strong for me.


Kokkari, like Evvia, is a great restaurant. I would go back in a heartbeat and order the Avgolemono and the lamb chops. That would make a perfect meal.

The Apple of My Eye: Addie’s Pizza Pie

Last night I went to Addie’s Pizza Pie in Berkeley. It was a return visit having gone there last month. The restaurant is in a nice space on the corner of Adeline and Alcatraz in South Berkeley. There are high ceilings and the acoustics are not so good, but this is a perfect place for families. What kid doesn’t like pizza? And I haven’t even mentioned the frozen custard.

I’ve tried two of their salads thus far. When I have pizza, I try to balance my meal a little by eating a salad. From my recollection, the salad from last month was a winter salad with romaine, endive, pomegranates, and parmesan cheese in a lemon vinaigrette. It was fresh and did what it was supposed to – balance my meal.


Last night, we had the Caesar salad. This one was a bit disappointing as the dressing was not a creamy Caesar. The salad was a little bitter and I am thinking that maybe they put the wrong dressing on, possibly the lemon vinaigrette. I should’ve said something. Oh well, it still did what it was supposed to – balance my meal.


While Addie’s could make improvements to their salads, they have got the pizzas right on. Last month, I tried two of their pizzas. The Southside is one of their specialty pizzas and includes sausage, basil, onions, and olives.


I love pepperoni so I designed our second pizza and added mushrooms to it. This two topping pizza may sound pretty basic, but when you use cremini mushrooms, it turns gourmet in an instant.


The pizza we had last night was a combination of the two best ingredients from last month. We built a sausage and mushroom pizza. This combination is the way to go. Our waiter offered us two different hot sauces and I tried my pizza this way. I love spicy and it made my pizza pop!


What’s so special about Addie’s “pies”? The toppings are fresh and flavorful. The outer pizza crust stays crispy while the thin inner crust is chewy. The crust is just delicious! I can only imagine a baker behind this crust. Apparently there is one. The two people behind Addie’s is Jennifer Millar from Sweet Adeline (bakery) and Tom Schnetz from Dona Tomas, Tacubaya, and Flora.

I was intrigued by their spaghetti and meatballs so we got a taste of that last night. The meatballs were moist and yummy. In the future, I might just order the meatballs without the spaghetti so I can eat more pizza.

I mentioned frozen custard earlier. Frozen custard is not something easily found on this side of the Country. When I lived in New York, I would make special trips to Grand Central Station to get some frozen custard. (Even that is closed now). Frozen custard is similar to soft serve ice cream, but in addition to cream and sugar has eggs in it making it a little richer. Although Addie’s ran out of frozen custard last night, I did get to try it last month. We tried the burnt orange and the chocolate mint. It’s a great way to end a meal.


I might have to make Addie’s a monthly ritual. For a pizza lover, it’s that good.

New Year’s Day

Happy New Years! I’ve been attending the same New Years Party that my friends host for the past several years. I’ve also been coming to the house a day early to help with the festivities. This party is known as the pozole party because amongst other things, pozole is served. It’s always a great Mexican themed party with fantastic food. Here are my top five food and drink photos from the party.

5. The host is a tequila connoisseur. There were six options of tequila to choose. I enjoyed two shots of tequila, the Tonala Añejo and Tequila Ocho Añejo. I liked the latter the best. The tequilas were great especially with the delicious sangrita chaser.


4. Homemade Chips and guacamole. I helped make the homemade chips on New Years Eve. It’s very important to use the right corn tortilla. Mi Rancho makes the best. I think people come to the party because of the chips and guacamole.


3. Empanadas. This was new this year. We also made these the day before. We made meat empanadas and vegetarian empanadas. The meat empanadas had grass fed London broil, onions, jalapeños, various quality chili powders and spices, hard boiled egg, and green olives. The vegetarian empanadas were filled with butternut squash, onion, garlic, shitake mushrooms, goat cheese, pecans, and sage.


2. Desserts. This annual party serves the best of desserts. The host also puts his hands into baking homemade desserts. He makes a wonderful lemon cake, Mexican chocolate cake, and flan. You really can’t ask for more but then he purchases some of the best cookies around from Miette bakery.


1. You don’t call this the pozole party for nothing. Hours of love go into this comfort food. Pozole is a Mexican stew made of chicken stock, nixtamal, pork, chicken, and other seasonings. Once you fill your bowl, you add oregano, red onions, avocado, and lime juice.


Thank you P&B for a wonderful party. Cheers to 2012! May good food and drinks be with you!

Hazelnuts and Pomegranate: Ingredients for Life

I recently found a great winter salad that has a great point value for Weight Watchers. It’s called a “Rainbow Chopped Salad” and it’s filled with plenty of fruits and vegetables. I learned a couple of things while making it. I learned how not to roast hazelnuts and I think I mastered how to seed a pomegranate.


I’ll first talk about what not to do when roasting hazelnuts. Do not place shelled hazelnuts in the oven like I did. You are supposed to unshelled them first or buy them already unshelled. After roasting them for about 10-15 minutes, the skin would crack. Wiping them with a kitchen towel would easily remove the skin. I ended up roasting them a little longer than needed and had a heck of a time getting the shells off. I ended up having lots of broken hazelnuts, but that didn’t ruin my salad. Next time I will buy the unshelled hazelnuts. I still like the idea of roasting them myself.


Pomegranates are a beautiful fruit. I remember eating them as a kid. My mom would give me a quarter of the fruit which I would just bite into. I would suck out the juices of the seeds and then spit them out.

These days you can buy pomegranate seeds, but now that I have seeded one, I will never buy pomegranate seeds and I hope you won’t either.

First, you take a knife and cut around the fruit partway. Once you have a cut, you can use your hands to pry it open. Now rip the halves into further sections.

Fill a deep bowl with water. Take a section of the pomegranate at a time and underwater, carefully using both hands, remove the seeds from the membrane. Doing it underwater avoids stains.


The seeds will sink and the majority of the membrane will float. I was pleasantly surprised by the abundance of seeds that actually came out of the fruit. It took less than ten minutes.


You can find the recipe for rainbow chopped salad from epicurious.com. I skipped the Asian pear and blue cheese and used extra virgin olive oil.

I’ve made this salad two weekends in a row now and have had great reviews. It’s definitely a healthy choice especially when surrounded by holiday feasts.

Sol Food: Good for the Soul

It’s been several hours and I’m still thinking about the food I ate and the restaurant I ate at for lunch today. Although the restaurant is located in San Rafael, it reminds me of Puerto Rico. You can’t miss Sol Food with the bright lime green exterior. There’s a story there in itself. I’ll leave it for the end of the blog.


My friend visiting from New York was a great sport and went to boot camp with me this morning. I’ll call him my Visiting Food Companion (VFC.) After a two hour work out, we were ready to eat. We actually were on our way to a Mexican restaurant when I was almost blinded by Sol Food. I recalled my colleague mentioning this Puerto Rican restaurant several months ago. She’s Puerto Rican, so I made a U turn and changed our destination.


At Sol Food, you grab a menu, order at the counter, take a seat, and your food gets delivered to you. The rotisserie pork rib plate caught my eye and it came with rice, beans, organic salad, fried plantains, and garlic bread. There was an option of black or pink beans. I went with pink which are kidney beans cooked with kalamata olives. I took a bite off the rib and was in heaven. The pork was crispy, juicy, tender, a little bit of fat, and a whole lot of flavor. I loved the white rice which was fluffy and has flavor not seen in Asian rice. The pink beans were good too. I was happy to have a salad to balance off everything else on my plate. I remember eating the type of plantain served here in Puerto Rico. The plantains are fried, smashed, and refried. It was great and hardly oily. Everything was delicious including the simplest thing as garlic bread.


My VFC ordered the chicken sandwich. It was free range baked chicken with ham, cheese, sautéed onions, tomato, lettuce, and cilantro-lime mayo. He enjoyed the savory combination of ingredients.


To drink, I had the orange mango ice tea. It was delicious like there was fresh mango and oranges in it.


My VFC decided to end the meal with a cafe con leche which he thought was “heavenly”.

I was very happy I made the U turn to Sol Food and I can’t wait to go back to San Rafael with a group of friends to try more of the quality authentic Puerto Rican food at Sol Food.

Earlier I mentioned the lime green paint. I thought I would end the blog with a photo of a letter that is posted in front of the restaurant.


The opinion expressed in the letter definitely doesn’t reflect the views of this blogger.

Crab Season = Crab Roll

It’s one of my favorite times of year, dungeness crab season. We had a little bit of a late start this year because the fisherman and the distributors couldn’t agree on a price. The fisherman were asking for $2.50 per lb while the distributors were only willing to pay $2 per lb. After two weeks passed by including the Thanksgiving holiday, both parties gave in at $2.25 per lb. What a relief to restaurants that wanted it on their menu. What a relief to those that love dungeness crab like me.


Yesterday I had lunch at Southie on College Avenue in Oakland. Southie opened earlier this year and is a fancy sandwich shop. Their big sister restaurant is Wood Tavern right next door. It’s a very small place with counter seating and small tables for parties of two. My sister, my friend, and I were lucky to be seated at the counter. It was the best seats as you get to see all the preparation happen.

Both my sister and I are currently on Weight Watchers so we agreed to share a sandwich and a salad. Although there were many interesting sandwiches on the menu, today they offered the dungeness crab roll which we couldn’t resist. Neither did my friend. She was having the full sandwich all to herself.


Butter was spread on the rolls and smashed under the panini grill for several minutes. This technique gave it the form of a pocket and a generous crab filling was stuffed in it. As I mentioned, you get to see everything sitting at the counter. The crab roll came with Cape Cod potato chips. Yum! Sharing was definitely a good decision as the crab was plentiful. I love crab season.


The salad we ordered was the truffled bacon and poached egg salad which came with frisée, romaine, couscous, radishes, scallions, and truffle vinaigrette. This was a hearty and delicious salad. I watched the prep cook mix the salad really well. But I also noticed that my poached egg didn’t get an extra toss of black pepper and olive oil like the others made. No harm no foul because I asked him to fix it and he did. I think he was surprised and embarrassed. I wouldn’t have even known the topping was missing if I sat elsewhere.


I didn’t mention that before lunch the three of us walked around Lake Merritt and earned some activity points. We shared one lemon panna cotta with huckleberry comport and shortbread to share. It was a nice small treat to end our meal.


Counter seating is a really great marketing strategy for Southie. I want to come back and try the fried pork belly sandwich for sure.

Nopalito: Fresh Mexican Comfort

I really like the restaurant Nopa in San Francisco and have been wanting to try Nopalito, their sister restaurant serving Mexican fare. Nopalito is special, it is “a Mexican kitchen, celebrating the traditional cookery of Mexico and utilizing the philosophy of purchasing local, organic and sustainable ingredients.”

I had lunch at Nopalito recently with a friend. I started with ice tea which came in a jug and with a little bottle of agave nectar. It was really nice. My friend had the ginger lemonade. All their beverages are made in house. Our waitress also brought out some spicy roasted garbanzo beans. They were a delicious snack while we reviewed the menu.


With just two of us, we decided to share a few items so we could try more things. We ordered the taquitos de camote. These crispy rolled tacos were especially great as they were plated with a very generous amount of fresh accoutrements – guacamole, queso fresco, and salsa.


The ensalada de betabeles y naranja came out next which is a delicious salad of beets, oranges, pickled onion, queso fresco, chili, and lime. This was a unique take on beet salad and I think the flavors are a great match.


We shared the taco de pescado al pastor. We thought this might be a hard dish to share, but we were able to cut this fish taco in half. It was not a hard taco shell or deep fried fish. It was a healthier dish, but still very good.


The last thing that came out was actually the first thing that caught my eye, the caldo tialpeno. This Mexican chicken soup came out in a big bowl. It had carrots, zucchini, cauliflower, avocado, garbanzos, chunks of queso fresco and a chipotle chili. Our waitress told us the more we stirred the chili, the more spicier it would get. This soup was pure comfort.


My only complaint is that Nopalito only serves one dessert- house made popsicles. Since we ended our meal with soup, popsicles weren’t going to suit our palette. Flan would’ve been a perfect pairing.

Nopalito reminds me a lot of Tamarindo in Oakland. For those that can’t get enough of Nopalito, they plan to open a second Nopalito on 9th Avenue in the Inner Sunset. Although it was shooting to open the end of this year, it appears it’s been delayed until March of 2012. I hear the restaurant will be much larger as well.

Aperto: A Great Solid Meal

A few weeks ago I had dinner with my Food Companion (FC). I have been wanting to try Aperto, the sister restaurant to Bellanico. I previously wrote about Bellanico and I’m proud to call it my neighborhood restaurant. Aperto is also a neighborhood restaurant, but not mine. It’s located in Potrero Hill in San Francisco.


I started with the Caesar Salad with dressing on the side. (Remember I am on Weight Watchers). The romaine lettuces were left as leaves and came with one large homemade crouton which I thought made a nice presentation.


My FC ordered the sformato which came with wild mushroom-frisee salad, truffle oil, and manchego. Sformato is a molded dish that is either sweet or savory. I think it’s a cross between a custard and a pot de creme in consistency. I’ve seen it pop onto many restaurant menus in recent years including Bellanico. The mushroom salad was a nice bonus.

They have a daily fish selection of the day as well as meat selection of the day. My FC got the fish and I got the beef.


We can’t remember what the fish was, but it was a white fish that was very delicate. The flavor was nice which was probably attributed to the broth and onions. He enjoyed his pick.


The beef selection was prime rib roast. It had been quite awhile since I had prime rib so I went for it. It was perfectly medium rare and came with mashed potatoes and spinach. For $22, I thought this was a bargain. The meat was like butter. Thinking about it now still makes my mouth water. I definitely used up some of my weekly available Weight Watcher points for this meal.


For dessert, we shared the warm chocolate soufflé. It came with Italian wet nuts and whipped cream. I think the wet nuts could’ve been removed from the plate. Maybe I just don’t like wet nuts. It would have been just fine with the whipped cream alone.

Aperto met my expectations. I hope the next time I go, I am lucky enough to pick the day they make another prime rib roast.

White Gold: I’m Not Talking about the Metal

A year ago I wrote about truffles. I can’t believe another year has passed already. We were dining at Oliveto Cafe because we didn’t have reservations at the upstairs restaurant for the truffle dinner.  My friend didn’t risk it this year, she made reservations ahead of time.   Even with advance notice, we ended up with a 5:30 pm reservation for four at Oliveto on Friday.  They were serving their special truffle dinner for only four days.  From my understanding, this years trip to Italy didn’t warrant the abundance of truffles like it did last year.

We were all newbies to the truffle dinner so the waiter spent a significant amount of time  describing our options.  There was a special menu created by Chef Jonah Rhodehamel, with many items infused with black truffles.   Items listed with an asterisk were accepting of white truffles.  We were there for the white gold, the white truffle.  Like gold, you would pay by gram.  Each gram was $10 and they recommended about 5 grams per dish.  Do the math!

I was going to share a few things with one of my friends.  We were each going to have our own appetizer, split two pastas and one entree.  Our table had a total of three pastas and we had decided we would get ten grams and divide it among the pastas.  The waiter found an 11 gram truffle and brought it to the table.

I chose the soup which was velluta of celery root with black truffle creme fraiche.  Velluta means velvet and my soup was not only velvety, but delicious.  My friend who doesn’t like celery was into it.

She ordered the sformatino di nocce which is like a custard.  I had a small taste.  My friend describes it as “warm and delicate gelantanous mold of savory walnut custard”.

My other friends also shared two of their own appetizers, one was the same soup I had and the other was the pan roasted scallops with cauliflower two ways and black truffle spumonte sauce.  I didn’t try this dish, but it looked gorgeous.  The scallops were perfectly golden brown.

A few moments after our pastas arrived, someone came by to shave our 11 gram truffle that had been sitting in the center of our table.   We had two orders of cannelloni of leeks with Parmesan cheese and tajarin with butter glaze.  The truffle was carefully shaved equally on top of the three orders of pastas.  The cannelloni was soft and delicate.  It was simple and allowed us to really taste and appreciate the earthly flavor of the truffle shavings.

Tarjarin is pasta made of flour and egg and similar consistency to angel hair pasta.  Again we chose a simple pasta and figured the butter glaze would match well with the truffles.  It did.

The entree I shared was the pork porterhouse with black truffle sausage, farro, and lacinato kale.  I enjoyed this dish, but wasn’t sure why or how Chef Rhodehamel came up with this combination.

We went a bit dessert crazy and each ordered one.  I was trying to be good, ordered the Isabella grape sorbetto and had a teaspoon of everyone’s dessert.  They were all amazing and enjoyable.  Two thumbs up to the pastry chef.

French Butter pear budino with black truffles in Cognac and agrumato cream

Warm apple crostata with huckleberry swirl ice cream

Bittersweet chocolate cake

This was an amazing meal that was enjoyed well over three hours with good friends.  Although the meal is gone,  we will keep the memories.