Too Bad Hot Isn't a Synonym for Spicy in Chinese: Boiling Point in Monterey Park (沸點臭臭鍋)

It's really a shame that I don't make the trek out to San Gabriel Valley (SGV) for Chinese food more often. I'm constantly complaining about the Chinese offerings on the Westside, but it's hard for me to find opportunities to travel East. In my mind, Chinese is always best enjoyed communally; at a dinner for two, there isn't enough variety. That's why I cherish my trips back to the Bay Area for a chance to see my family and eat Chinese. Additionally, my Chinese is too pathetic to order anything interesting, so I've been reluctant to climb into a restaurant that caters to the ethnic Chinese. In one embarrassing incident, my Mandarin was so terrible that the woman thought I was speaking Cantonese and gave me a chicken leg instead of a pork chop. It took a Korean, Christine, to show me a hot pot restaurant in SGV. Can I get some love from any other American Born Chinese who can't read menus?

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We came on Tuesday for their hot pot lunch special. What was normally $9.99 was discounted a dollar and supplemented with a free drink. While Christine insisted on the available garlic sauce, spicy bean paste, and spicy oil, I was perfectly content with the seasonings that came in the pot.

In fact, I questioned whether it's healthy to ingest something so dark red. Christine would call me a complainer, but her idea of "complaints" are more of what I consider "observations" for my health.

Each person receives a personal pot loaded with ingredients. Pork intestines, tomato, fish cake, napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, sliced pork, fish balls, floated in the crimson soup. Below those treasures, I excavated blocks of stinky tofu (臭豆腐). This was the first time I encountered stinky tofu hot pot. It's amazing what you miss out on when you don't explore this culinary cornucopia called LA. As the name would imply, stinky tofu is rather robust in fragrance. The smell is fairly strong, but the taste is much more mild. It takes tofu to a whole new level in my opinion, since tofu is normally so bland.

I ordered the spicy pot, and it was just at the level of enjoyable for me. A milder one wouldn't have had enough flavor, but anything hotter would've been unbearable. I believe that pork intestines are best enjoyed in preparations like this--simmering in a spicy broth. Overall, I had a great lunch, but I wonder now if I'll experience any regrets the next day.

Boiling Point (沸點臭臭鍋)
153 Garvey Ave
Monterey Park, 91755
(626) 288-9876
$8.99 lunch special

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Canelé in Atwater Village: It's Pronounced Can-a-lay

As the title might suggest, I was a little slow picking up the correct pronunciation of Canelé. I'm never very good with French or Italian. So after being corrected by Christine I'm writing it here prominently so I can remember. Given that I was working in Pasadena the last week, I decided to send out an invite for a casual dinner at the restaurant I had been meaning to try for months. Of course, I realized that night that bloggers don't really have "casual dinners" and meals inevitably (d)evolve into marathons, to be chronicled in an upcoming post.

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My first encounter with Canelé was the LA Magazine Top 75 Restaurants list last year. When I first read it, I had only gone to four of those places. Now I've gone to sixteen. Still not quite as many as I had hoped, but along the way I found enough other places to keep me quite satisfied. But knowing that this was one of Mattatouille's favorite restaurants, I called him up along with Christine, Danny, Fiona, Josh, and Kevin for dinner. I guess it's safe to say since today was my last day of work, but I'm moving to New York. This was one of the last get-togethers I'd have with my foodie friends and certainly didn't disappoint.

I entered the quaint restaurant about ten to six on a Thursday night. Greeting me was Jane Choi, the manager, and Corina Weibel, the chef. Together, this dynamic duo runs the front and back-end operations of Canelé. Of course "back-end" is somewhat of a misnomer because of the open air kitchen in plain sight of the dining patrons. I could see myself coming by for a bite after work, maybe sitting along the bar, watching the cooks churn out Mediterranean comfort food. I swore I saw Andre Royo at the bar too, but none of my companions watched The Wire and couldn't identify him as that lovable drug addict Bubbles.

No reservations are accepted since the place is so small, but since I was the first person in the restaurant, I had no trouble securing the large communal table, which seats about 8-12. Eschewing the $22 prix-fixe menu Tuesday through Thursday, our group of seven picked out five appetizers, seven entrees and four desserts.


Cod Brandade
According to Matt, this is a common bistro fare. I could easily imagine it being a simple snack served on a Parisian patio. As with most French food, the dish was rich and soul-warming. A cod, olive oil, and milk puree, it had plenty of cod flavor but without unbearable fishiness. Eaten with a few slices of baguette, this could easily make a heavy first course or a midday snack. I wonder if any wine could stand up to this dish. Our syrah and chardonnay certainly couldn't keep up.


Clams and Mussels
As one of the specials of the day, the clams and mussels dish was not a typical menu item. For seafood like clams and mussels, I always like to hear that they're offered as a special. I like to think that the chef picked those out because they looked good for that night, rather than keeping them on the menu and settling for substandard seafood. What I liked about this plate of mollusks was that the shellfish had an opportunity to express its own flavor rather than simply being swallowed up in garlic butter. Definitely, the butter helped to heighten the flavor, but it wasn't dominating.


Lamb liver terrine
This was my first encounter with lamb liver terrine. Considering my deep love of anything lamb, I would've sought this out earlier had I known it existed. However, my fear with liver dishes is always that the iron taste of liver would overwhelm whatever else was present in the dish. Perhaps it was just bad liver prepared in my childhood that turned me off to that organ in particular. But this lamb terrine had a curious consistency, almost like tuna salad, and an intensity of lamb taste. Paired with the caraway-beer sauce, I could eat a tub of it.


Asparagus and egg on toast
Maybe there's a fancier name for this dish, but it is best described by its component parts. Typically, I am not a fan of asparagus, but the combination of asparagus and egg actually makes me want to buy a few stalks of the hardy green for my next omelet. I always like loose yolk preparations of egg. Good bread dipped in a runny yolk makes an excellent breakfast.


Duck liver pate
My favorite appetizer of the night, the duck pate was creamy enough to melt delicately in my mouth, but solid enough to hold up the cherry compote. This was presented to us as duck liver, but I'm curious if there is a duck liver that's not foie gras. Does the liver need to be fattened to be considered foie gras? As far as I can tell, terrine refer to the cookware, whereas pate just refers to a spreadable minced meat and fat.


Salt roasted brazino
I believe the salt roasted title indicated that the fish was covered in a salt dome to moderate temperature and properly season the fish. The resultant dish had a pleasant flavor with the perfect amount of seasoning. This was my first exposure to caperberries, which are like giant capers. From what I deduced, capers are pickled buds of a Mediterranean bush, whereas caperberries are when the buds are allowed to flower and produce the caperberry fruit. In my opinion, caperberries are much more delightful.


Duck confit
When I first heard about confits, meats slowly simmered in its own rendered fat, I thought this would surely be my favorite preparation of duck. However, in practice, most of the confits I find are too dry. Without enough moisture, the flavor is defeated and the texture flakes. This wasn't the case with the confit at Canelé. Each piece maintain its juiciness and fat.


Pork shortribs
Christine may peg me as a complainer, but I was clearly complimenting the short ribs for glistening in all that holy fat. I wouldn't blame anyone for mistakenly calling this lump of hog meat pork belly. Given its shiny, layered appearance, I was shocked that this didn't come from the underside of a pig. Do I really need to describe its flavor? Look at it. How else could it taste?


Leg of lamb
For my personal dish, I chose the leg of lamb. I'm a sucker for lamb, I just can't resist. Sadly, for all the complexity of flavor, much of it was lost by being overcooked. The meat was probably closer to a medium-well than a dull red medium-rare.

We also had a few desserts, but by then the sun had set and my poor camera couldn't capture anything that wasn't grainy and bathed in the orange glow of incandescent light. Their homemade cheesecake was my preferred meal-ender. Instead of a slice, each cake is made separately. It looked more like a wheel of chevre than a cake. The flourless chocolate cake was also one of the fluffiest flourless cakes I've had. It bypasses the problem of dense chocolate black holes of indulgence. And in case you're wondering, Jane served us Canelés on the way out. Maybe I got a bad one, but mine tasted slightly burnt and it lacked any kind of soft center.


Ah, so that's the namesake pastry

See some actual food worthy pictures and encyclopedic insight on Kevin's post.

For the brunch review and a Christine photospread, see Matt's entry.

Canelé
3219 Glendale Blvd
Glendale, 90039
(323)666-7133
canele-la.com
$6-11 appetizers, $18-22 entrees, $7 desserts

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Best Bars and Drinks in LA

Cocomero at Pizzeria Ortica

Photo Courtesy of Tangbro

Hello All,

I'm conducting a little survey for the best places to go for drinks and happy hours in LA. Please help me out by adding the places you'd take people for a night out. I'm looking for places with hip specialty drinks, great atmosphere, stellar bar food, whatever you think makes a good watering hole. My goal is to get a list of 100 at least.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Thanks!

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De 7 Mon: Seven Courses of...Goat?

Westminster--ground zero for Little Saigon. Forget the filet mignon pho, when I'm here, I want the gritty cheap food. I want the restaurant that doesn't have English translations for its dishes. I want to be served a bucket of ice and frozen mugs when I bring in my own beer. What I want is Seven Courses of Goat at Binh Dan.

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After my clumsy introduction into Seven Courses of anything Vietnamese with my Bo 7 Mon dinner, I was enthusiastic when Wandering Chopsticks offered me a chance to eat with a Vietnamese professional. Most people have heard of the Seven Courses of Beef or the slightly rarer Seven Courses of Fish, but I've never encountered goat prepared so many ways. However, Binh Dan specializes in goat and mon nhau dishes, simple food meant to be eaten with alcohol. They also source their goat locally from a ranch (farm?) in Riverside.

1. Tiet Canh - Congealed goat blood with liver and peanuts

While the first course was certainly not shocking to me, I wasn't thrilled by it. Contrary to my barbarian instincts, I don't typically like the taste of blood. It generally has that overwhelming iron taste, similar to liver, that I can do without. This plate of blood, eaten with banh trang me, toasted sesame rice paper, had hardly any flavor at all. Given the lack of taste, I could do without the crimson Jell-O.

2-3. De Nuong/De Nuong la lot mo chai - Grilled goat/Goat wrapped in betel leaves and caul fat

These two courses served together were more familiar to me than some of the other dishes. The grilled goat had similar flavors to the common grilled pork chop found in most Vietnamese restaurants. The wrapped goat was similar to one of the Bo 7 Mon courses, though Binh Dan dried out the meat by overcooking it.

4. De ca ri - Goat curry

According to WC, Vietnam has only one type of curry. Go figure. Goat seems to go naturally with curry, probably so the sauce can cut into the gaminess of the animal. I've seen curried goat in a few West Indian cuisines too, notably Jamaican. We ate the curry with plain rice noodles, though I would've preferred rice instead. Picking at the tendons in the bones of the goat in the stew was particularly satisfying.

5. De nhua man - Goat stew

I swear this is not the same dish as the last one. It certainly took me awhile to deduce that I had not accidentally photographed one bowl twice. WC couldn't identify what was in this stew, but I certainly didn't taste the heavy curry of the last dish. The soup was thinner, meant to be drunk, unlike the curry.

6. De tiem thuoc bac - Goat with Chinese herbs

I can't remember this dish too clearly. I'm not a fan of Chinese medicines so I probably didn't have that much of this bowl. It certainly smelled like a Chinese herbal store.

7. De xao lan - Stir-fried goat

As I mentioned before, I think goat is commonly paired with curry to cut down the gaminess; however, the goat at Binh Dan didn't have any strong flavors that would need the curry pairing. This stir-fry preparation reminded me of the dog I ate in China years before I started blogging. Both goat and dog are similar in flavor to pork.

De luc lac - Shaking goat

Done with the seven courses, we nonetheless ordered two more supplemental goat dishes to get even more variety in our meal. I was actually surprised that so many of the 7 courses preparation were soup based. This is a common Vietnamese dish generally made with beef. It's termed "shaking beef" due to the agitation of the wok during the frying process. Served with a saucer of lemon juice, salt and pepper, this was simple and delicious.

De vu nuong - Stir-fried goat udders

At this point I was slightly disappointed that the meat wasn't nearly flavorful enough to stand out as anything besides a half-step above lamb. I wanted something gamey as hell and hearty. Something that couldn't be interchanged with beef and be near indistinguishable. I got my wish with the goat udders. Intensely "goaty" and chewy, I enjoyed picking at this plate. The slightly charred edges gave a pleasant crispy texture while the meat was tough enough to promote proper mastication, but not so much to tire your jaw. Certainly the first time I had goat udders, but knowing how delicious it is, I might just have to search out other animal udders too.

Overall, a unique experience that I could only get in LA/OC. Well, that and Vietnam, where I'm actually planning to go in June. Hopefully, I'll get enough Vietnamese in me by then that I won't be gastronomically lost going from Saigon to Hanoi.

Thanks to WC for inviting me. Check out her experience here.
See what Kevin had to say here.

Binh Dan
10040 McFadden Ave
Westminster, 92683
(714)839-7050
They aren't too amiable to non-Vietnamese, so it might be hard to navigate without an interpreter.
$16.50 pp for 7 courses of goat

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My New Love for Ginger in Candy Form

I was searching through a Marukai Japanese housewares store in Gardena for a wire ladle for my upcoming hotpot dinner when I noticed this box on the bottom shelf of the checkout counter. I despised ginger as a child, always picking it out of my food whenever I encountered it. However, as my palate as matured, so has my distaste for ginger abated. In fact, ginger candy is now one of my favorite snacks.

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My common gripe with ginger candies is that they're too often just candied ginger. While suiting the mood for just the right circumstances, candied ginger is not what I'm searching for. It would be as if I liked orange candy but could only find candied orange peels. So seeing this box of Reed's Ginger Candy Chews, I decided to give it a try. I've had great experiences with Reed's Ginger Beer before; they don't go light on the spice.

What I found inside the box was exactly what I've been yearning for. A ginger flavored candy that wasn't just preserved ginger. Of course there was plenty of ginger kick in each morsel, but the chewy texture of the tapioca starch drew out the flavor of each bite. It's not so sweet like the candied ginger, which is commonly coated completely with sugar, but much more balanced between spicy and sweet. The website says this is a generations old Indonesian recipe. I can see that; it's certainly a candy throwback dusted lightly in starch and wrapped in wax paper.

According to the website, it seems that this is most commonly sold in health food stores. I wish they were more readily available, but give it a try next time you see the white box with the circular Reed's logo.

Reed's Ginger Beer is also good for a "Dark 'n Stormy." I believe it's some combination of Ginger Beer, rum, and lime juice. You'll have to ask Rumdood for details.

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Childhood Memories of Wonton Noodles

I recently went back home to the Bay Area for the weekend. A quick trip true, but I managed to get most of the hometown eats that I crave whenever I return. My mom greeted me with steamed cod my first night in town. The next morning I got dim sum at East Ocean Seafood Restaurant, a mediocre place, but one that I've been going to for as long as I can remember. It's nice to go back to a restaurant where you can identify various points of your life with memories dining there. All Chinese Alamedans know East Ocean.

The day I drove out to Oakland Chinatown and got four banh mi at my favorite Vietnamese sandwich place BC Deli to bring on the plane. But the best food I had while I was back at home was a bowl of wonton and fish ball egg noodles with a side of roast duck and char-siu at Gum Wah Restaurant in Oakland Chinatown.

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During the years I toiled at Saturday Chinese school, I was always bitter about missing the cartoons in the mornings. But after class, my dad would take me to one of two places for lunch--McDonald's or Gum Wah. While our repertoire surely wasn't limited to the two, all my memories are of these places. I always ordered the same thing, the aforementioned bowl of noodles. This last time I went back and had the same thing. Phenomenal. Usually it's the case where something is never as good as you remember it, but this bowl of wonton noodles had all the savory, MSG-laden, deliciousness that I fondly recalled. I'd also recommend the roast duck and char-siu over rice.

It got me to think about the "last meal scenario." Inmates on death row invariably pick something that reminds them of home. Few people really choose a decadent last meal like Francois Mitterrand. Instead, they tend to default to their mom's fried chicken or Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. While I wouldn't choose Gum Wah wonton noodles for my last meal, it would certainly be in the running. Sometimes in this hobby, it's easy to become too focused on what's universally good. The real focus should be on what makes you feel good.

Gum Wah
345 8th Street
Oakland, 94607
(510) 834-3103

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Savor Scottsdale: The Kitchen

Like a Whole Foods deli counter without the Whole Foods, The Kitchen has an incredible selection of hot and cold foods ready to be eaten or taken to go. While I was out in Arizona last month, this was the place my team was constantly returning to. Given its proximity to our client, that's understandable, but after going there the first time, I knew I would be back...a lot.

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Again, I'd like to apologize for the iPhone pictures for my adventures in Scottsdale. I was there for work, and blogging wasn't on my mind. I created this series mostly for the wandering professional who might find himself out in Arizona for a random training or conference.

The Kitchen is divided into several stations in a cafeteria style. The center island showcases their cold prepared foods (e.g. pasta salad, ready-grill paninis, coleslaw), the olive bar, charcuterie, and cheese
selection.



I grabbed a panini here once. Mediocre, but the glass cases are generally better for picking out cold sides like the dill potato salad. One night, I picked up two-foot baguette and a wedge of Gloucester chive and onion cheese and just dined on that. A word of caution, eating a whole loaf of crusty bread yourself can have a detrimental effect on your jaw. So as you can imagine, The Kitchen also has a bakery that churns out fresh pastries. Following along the wall of the bakery, there is a salad and cold sandwich station. I've heard good things about the cold sandwiches, but I never got anything there.

My attention was always on the rotisserie station. Their rotisserie chicken made a wonderful meal, more suitable for a dinner though, given the price of $11.99 for half a bird and two sides. I preferred the roasted chicken to the fried chicken, which I had on another day. The fried chicken was dry and over-priced at the same price for two pieces as a half a roast chicken. The basket of sweet potato fries is way too much for one person. Same with the French fries with cumin ketchup. Sure, add cumin to the ketchup, it makes it more interesting but doesn't make it taste any better.


The team's favorite item from the rotisserie, judging by the frequency of ordering, would be the prime rib sandwich though. Flavorful and juicy, you can't go wrong with this sandwich. Actually, you can see it in the background of the fried chicken picture.


The Kitchen also had a wide variety of dry grocery items, such as pastas, olive oils, crackers. They even cater to the gourmand with canned escargot and amazingly fruity artisanal gummy bears (Great Skott Gummy Bears from Wisconsin). I also discovered Fentiman's Curiosity Cola, an intensely herbal, deeply flavored cola somewhat like a cross between ginger beer, sasparilla and Coke.

The Kitchen is simply a wonderful place for a wide variety of eaters. You can get the sophisticated epicure picking out obscure cheeses and wines, or you can get the same turkey sandwich every day and not be disappointed. Don't dismiss it as just a high-end grocer without the rest of the groceries though. I don't know a Bristol Farms or a Pavillion's that could make a prime rib sandwich like The Kitchen.

The Kitchen
8977 N. Scottsdale Road
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253
(480) 612-0100
$10-12 for a usual lunch, but goes upwards from there

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