i like to eat.

To celebrate my friend's new apartment, we had a little housewarming party in San Mateo. Instead of ordering the usual pizza, a few of us cooked.

Mari made crackers with fig and goat cheese. It was pretty good. I'm usually skeptical about goat cheese, but the flavor was mild and helped accentuate the sweet fig. She also made coconut infused quinoa with chicken. I've always wanted to try quinoa and enjoyed it very much. It's a healthy grain and I can see its potential in many dishes.

The host, Genki, made some amazing karaage (Japanese style fried chicken). The chicken was extremely moist with a crispy batter. So good! One of the best karaages I've had. I definitely have to steal his recipe.

Mike showed off his chops with tuna tartare and chicken liver and gizzards. I'm not a fan of offal (internal organs), but I still had to try it. Meh, still not a fan. Haha. I don't mind the chewy texture, it's just the grainy after taste I dislike.

Buddy Jon made crispy lumpia (Filipino rolls) filled with meat and vegetables. We even had a special banana sauce to accompany the rolls. The sauce was tart, sweet and gave the lumpia extra flavor.

Kate also brought Vietnamese sandwiches and some interesting appetizers wrapped in banana leaves. Wrapped inside the leaves were roasted barbecue pork encased in a jelly-like texture. I'm not sure what it's called and I've never had it before. It was interesting, but nothing I'd ever buy myself. The translucent jelly was mild in flavor, but the pork was a little bit sweet.

My contribution was a vegetable stir fry of mushrooms and sugar snap peas. I'm glad I brought some vegetables since our assortment was filled with heavy items.

Genki had this really cool non-working panel for his stove. Something about its vintage look and simplicity appealed to me. What ended up being more appealing is this Japanese powder(?) that solidifies oil! I've never used something like this before, but it's really simple. You drop a packet into cooled oil and the stuff inside the packet solidifies the oil within 15 minutes. Crazy! What an easy way to throw out a lot of oil.

The night was fun - filled with eclectic food, a proposal (haha) and many games of beer pong. Thank you Genki for inviting us!

EDIT: Mike pointed out that he made HEART and gizzards. Ack, they're all the same stuff that I do not touch! :X

                             

Click here to download:

Hello_Burlingame_tag_parties_f.zip (3365 KB)

Ever since I got back from my Los Angeles trip, I've been feeling nauseous. It doesn't feel like food poisoning, but maybe just from all the greasy food I had over the weekend?

Who knows? It's been three full days since I've got back and I still don't feel 100%. A weekend trip to LA shouldn't take more than a day to recover!

I've been craving Vietnamese noodle soup, pho, and prayed the hot broth would recover me. Jason, Mike and I went to Pho Saigon and I ordered my usual - number 18, beef ball noodle soup.

The piping hot broth quickly came and I topped my noodle soup with fresh bean sprouts, basil, squeeze of lime and a few jalapeño peppers. These compliments come on another dish and you can pick what you want to put into your soup.

The rice noodles were fresh and yummy, the beef meatballs tasty and the hot broth, comforting. I typically don't drink the soup because of its high leavel of MSG, but my body was craving the warmth.

I wouldn't say this familiar dish fully recovered me, but I did feel much better.

Jason and Jeff had to work on 4th of July, so Wendy and I paid them a visit. Business was slow and we left early to have lunch.

We headed to Kevin's Noodle House in Oakland. I usually get pho (Vietnamese noodles in broth) whenever I'm at a Vietnamese restaurant, but it was a little bit warm so I ordered a plate dish.

I got a grilled pork chop with shredded pork, egg and rice. The pork was good, charred and greasy while the egg yolk kept the meat moist and yummy.

What's also great about Kevin's is they have a ton of drinks and desserts. Everything from Vietnamese coffee, durian (super spiky fruit) shake with pearl (tapioca) to avocado shake and red jelly tapioca.

As you can see, the dish is not as gorgeously plated as Slanted Door's (see post), but I paid only $7 for that! You don't go to Kevin's for gourmet food or service, it's straight to the point, good, hearty food.

OK, so I'm probably going to get a dramatic drop in readership after I post this. But, please hear me out before you hit that unsubscribe button.

The Slanted Door.

Located in the Ferry building, The Slanted Door is a nationally-acclaimed Vietnamese restaurant that uses ecologically farmed meat and locally grown produce, encapsulated in a gorgeous industrial interior with an even more beautiful view of the bay. Sounds like a formula for success, no? It sure is, with millions of dollars in revenue each year.

A few of my friends wanted to try Slanted Door and not wanting to be a party pooper, I tagged along. We shared an array of dishes - crispy imperial rolls, daikon rice cakes, Vietnamese crepe, noodles with fresh crab meat and their famous shaking beef. All for about $25 per person that left you faintly filled. I'm not saying I needed to be stuffed, but a point where your stomach should not be growling in an hour or two.

To me, it's just regular Vietnamese food. That's overpriced. The flavors are nothing special and I can get the same thing for a much cheaper price. Slanted Door's food is not doing anything spectacular and out of this world.

You can say I'm paying for the service, ambiance and view, which technically, I am, but I can simply go over to Taylor's Refresher, have a better experience at a much cheaper price and enjoy a nice juicy burger.

Maybe it's because I've grown up with Asian taste buds, so the flavors of Slanted Door are nothing new to me. While I'm at it, I'll tell you I dislike Asian fusion too. It's never done right and it doesn't help that my parents own a restaurant, so I'm used to eating a lot of Asian flavors and quite picky when it comes to Asian food.

I don't hate Slanted Door, the food's not bad, I just do not believe the hype. It's not like you'll have a horrible experience, I simply think you can spend your money elsewhere and have a better time.

               

Click here to download:

Glorified_Vietnamese_tag_vietn.zip (3638 KB)

Have you ever had a Vietnamese sandwich? Also called bánh mì, the sandwich is made from a baguette and filled with meat, pickled radish and carrot, cilantro, cucumber, jalapenos and a thin layer of mayonnaise. Popular meats include grilled pork or chicken, pate, cured pork head cheese and ham. The sandwiches taste light and refreshing compared to American ones and at most Vietnamese shops, much cheaper with prices ranging from $3 - $5.

One of our freelance stylists, Joanne, also makes homemade Vietnamese sandwiches. Several coworkers and I pre-ordered our sandwiches and she brought them to our office. I was too shy to ask for a picture, but Joanne was adorable in her bright orange apron carrying a basketful of sandwiches.

She had three options: grilled pork, grilled chicken or grilled tofu. I got the grilled pork and the sandwich was cutely wrapped with a customized sticker. The sandwich was pretty good. The pork was a tad salty (I had to drink a lot of water afterwards), but it had the perfect ratio of vegetables and meat. The bread was also not overly crusty, but a soft, tender roll. When eating Vietnamese sandwiches, you have to be careful of the jalapenos, they're lethal! I had to remove several from mine because it was way too hot to handle. I tend to order mine without them since I know I can't handle the heat.

I thought it was a great idea to sell homemade sandwiches. I've always wanted to do that...have a regular job but also make some extra money on the side. Hmm..we'll see if I ever get around to it. :P

   

Click here to download:

Things_to_Try_Vietnamese_Sandw.zip (451 KB)

Last night, my friends and I went to Anh Hong on Geary x Hyde. I've never been to this Vietnamese restaurant before, but it's always crowded whenever I walk by. My knowledge of Vietnamese food doesn't go beyond "pho (noodle soup)." So, I was excited to try something new and more "authentic."

Sitting at a round table with Jason, Kate and Tony, we were all dumb-founded on what exactly to order. We looked around and checked other tables to see what they were ordering in hopes to pick the well-known dishes. We agreed on a prix-fixe called "Seven Courses of Beef" since the name was printed on the front cover of the menu. We figured, it MUST be famous and what Anh Hong's known for. I had originally saw it on the first page but immediately thought, wow, that's a lot of beef. But...when in Rome, right?

We ordered the seven courses of beef for two people ($17.95 per person), imperial rolls and a combination dinner plate of grilled/shredded pork with rice, salad and egg.

The seven courses of beef is as follows:
1. Special beef salad
2. Fondue with a special vinegar sauce (hot pot - cooking thin slices of beef in hot water)
3. Steamed beef pate
4. Grilled beef sausage
5. Beef wrapped in Hawaiian (Lot) leaf
6. Grilled beef with lemon grass
7. Special beef rice soup

The table was immediately filled with plates of vegetables and a basket of rice paper. You make your own roll by soaking a thin sheet of rice paper into the hot water to soften it, putting some veggies and the beef of your choice in it. You can dip it in two EXTREMELY fishy sauces or you can go the "American" route and dip it in the dark, peanut sauce that comes with the imperial rolls. :P

My favorite of the seven would have to be number five and beef rice soup ("congee"/porridge). The Hawaiian leaf gave the beef an aromatic fragrant and its flavor was deeply soaked into the grilled beef. The soup was a light and refreshing complement to the richness of all the meat.

The pate (#3) would definitely have to be the strangest. It was a mixture of beef, mushrooms, nuts, noodles and carrots. Interesting, but a soft, texture that I'm not used to having beef prepared.

The imperial rolls are your typical rice paper rolls filled with shrimp, vermicelli, cilantro and bean sprouts. Nothing spectacular or new. The dinner plate was pretty good, although the shredded pork was a little dry. We should have smashed the egg over it to moisten the meat a little. :P I wouldn't mind ordering it again. The dish is common at most Vietnamese restaurants.

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience...service is certainly not the best (we had a very impatient waiter), but it's A LOT of food at an affordable price ($15pp). I can't believe we ordered the prix-fixe for only TWO people and it was enough to feed all four of us! I'd go back, but not anytime soon...I think I'm "beefed" out for awhile. :P

       

Click here to download:

Anh_Hong_-_Seven_Courses_of_Be.zip (1015 KB)