Sunday, March 15, 2009

Huckleberry: Pastry Gastroerotica

You wait in line for 5-10 minutes along the pastry case to place your order, staring at all the pastries. How can you not buy pastries? Staring at these:
And these:

I came in for brunch. I came out stuffed, carrying leftovers and a box of pastries to go. ("You know you want me," they were saying!)

Putting off eating the pastries, I chowed down on the Green Eggs & Ham (La Quercia Prosciutto, housemade english muffin - $12.00)
Poached eggs. Pesto sauce. Prosciutto. Arugula. A combination that I'll never turn down anywhere. Nicely poached eggs, good prosciutto. Pesto sauce was also great, flavorful but not overwhelming. English muffins were nicely toasted, except that the bottom became too hard to cut easily with a regular knife and so some were left on the table. I can eat this any day and be happy.

My friend had the Niman Ranch beef stew, which was a special that day, served with some baguette.
Hearty, and delicious! the beef was moist and tender and full of flavor. The stew was a little salty but eating it with the baguette (which was also great by itself) was just perfect.

Portions here are quite generous, I certainly came out full.

Back home, I munched on some pastries, including this Kouign Amann ($1.50)
Crispy, flakey, moist and nicely dusted with cinnamon & sugar. It wasn't too sticky nor too sweet. A great little treat. Now I just need my tea and I'm set.

The donut was also quite good. It was right in the middle in terms of dense vs. fluffy.
These pastries aren't anything 'fancy' but they are all made very well with high quality ingredients. They're also not cheap but you sure get what you pay for (although, no, I haven't been able to get myself to buy the $8.50 crostata. Can't pass that "What? $8 for pastry?" barrier). I haven't had a single disappointing thing. Yet. But again, ain't cheap (the cooked food, in comparison, was actually relatively inexpensive).

Huckleberry Cafe
1014 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 451-1322
www.huckleberrycafe.com
Huckleberry on Urbanspoon

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Shibucho Makes Me Squeal Like a Little Girl

Pairing wines with sushi might sound strange at first, but as a group of foodies experienced firsthand at the end of last year, the two make quite a pair.

Last year? Yeah I'm backlogged. Workin on it! Anyway, Fooddigger has been bringing foodbloggers and foodies around town together on many occasions last year. For their last dinner of the year, KevinEats, Tangbro, inomthings, FoodGPS, sinosoul, and I joined part of the Fooddigger family at Shibucho for a night of great sushi, and great vintage wines.

Now, the good thing about posting late is that I get 'cheat sheets' from the likes of Kevin who takes detailed notes, especially for all the wines that I can't keep track of! and inomthings who already did the background on some of the fishies we had that night.

The wines for the occasion were actually brought in by the wine collectors among us (not I), including the Fooddigger people and Kevin. Here are the red wine lineup.

Oh and when I say "vintage" wines I wasn't kidding. The youngest wine was a 1989, but everything else was older than me with the oldest being a couple 1975 wines.

We toasted the started of the night with a 1978 Dom Perignon, courtesy of Kevin and Tangbro. Light, crisp, and sweet. I wasn't a big champagne fan prior to this one glass.

Foodwise, We started with some ankimo in ponzu sauce.
This was one of the best ankimos I've had yet, the texture being smoother than most. This actually went quite well with the champagne and apparently even better with the red wine we had next, the 1982 Chateau Pavie-Decesse.

Sunomono of mirugai (geoduck clam), aoyagi (surf clam), and hotate (scallops)
Light, and sweet. The marinade was apparently white miso (thx inomthings) which explains the sweet but mild and not overbearing taste.

Next we had bincho maguro/albacore salad in ponzu sauce. Nicely prepared as the ponzu draws out the flavor of the albacore but the lettuce and tomatoes helped cut the acidity of ponzu which I normally don't like too much.

Then onto a series of sashimi. First up is some fatty bluefin tuna (chutoro)
The chutoro is not the fattiest cut, but it's very fresh and still had a nice fattiness to it.
The toro, along with the other tuna, works quite well with the red wine.
We also had some regular blue fin maguro, and tai (red snapper) sashimi, followed by buri sashimi
Buri is "old" yellowtail (yellowtail goes through 3 periods in their life cycle and are called kanpachi, hamachi, and buri, respectively). I don't think I really enjoyed buri before this, but apparently buri is fattiest during the winter, i.e. at the time I ate this, so it makes sense that I like this one better than previous ones.

Salmon salad with onions, arugula, and salmon roe, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Then we had an ... eggplant parmesan. This was a surprising dish considering we're eating at a sushi restaurant but apparently Shige-san is known for occasionally serving western-inspired dishes.
Possibly the best eggplant I have ever had. Unlike other 'eggplant parmesans' this one is lightly sauced, which makes it not overbearing (not saying that all others are) but it's subtly sweet and very delicious. Shige-san also stated that Japanese eggplants are very different and much better than any other counterpart. This eggplant parmesan was quite sweet, but light.

Afterwards was a series of delicious, fresh sushi, for example this toro sushi.
Inomthings and I both let out a squeal as this beauty went into our mouths, prompting Shige-san to ask "Oishii deshou?" *nod* *nod* *munch* *munch*

Probably even more than toro, I loooove my hamachi belleh!
Smooth, fatty, delicious melt-in-your-mouth. Mmmm.

More great sushi followed (hirame, kinmedai).

After all the sushi, we had a daikon stew with buri kama (collar).
Given that this was in mid-December, this was such a perfect dish. Buri is apparently fattiest in the winter, and daikon is in season also during the winter months. The daikon was sweet and so~ soft. I kept thinking back to this dish throughout the winter, especially when I was down with a cold. Sigh.

At the end of the meal, Will from Fooddigger was apparently craving some uni! He asked who else wanted an uni hand roll. Well, uh ... me? me? :D
Some of us split some uni hand rolls, so we each got half a handroll.
The uni was sweet and creamy. A very nice way to end the meal. Well, pre-desserts, that is.

Instead of serving Japanese desserts or mochi ice cream or fresh fruits, Shige-san served Western-style desserts, and everyone got something different (like this tiramisu)- fun!
I was happy to get the blueberry tart since I love blueberries.

A feast. A feast like no other, and I probably will not have another like this. Just the wines alone were such a privilege to drink. My favorite was the 1976 Rioja Bosconia (R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Viña Bosconia Gran Reserva ). And to top it all off with such great sashimi, sushi, and the amazing eggplant and daikon stew .... Mmmm. Not to mention sharing it all with such great foodie company. Twas a night to remember.


Shibucho
3114 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90057
(213) 387-8498
http://www.shibucho-la.com/
Shibucho on Urbanspoon

Friday, March 13, 2009

Bamboodles and the $1 Noodles (I Kid You Not)

Bamboodles has kind of been at the periphery of my radar ever since reading Exile Kiss' post on it, but when Wandering Chopsticks told me they had $1 daily special noodles ($1 ???) I immediately asked her to take me there.

The draw of Bamboodles is the bamboo-made noodles, made fresh daily. When we got there the guy was still working on some noodles, but alas, he didn't mount the big bamboo for my enjoyment. WC got a video though so hopefully she'll blog (sorry, vlog) this.I know the green tea pork noodles is supposed to be the highlight dish here, but since I came to get $1 noodles, the green tea pork will have to wait.
Since I felt kind of bad coming in and just ordering $1 dishes, I asked for an iced lemon tea also and WC got a side of spicy wontons.

Here's the $1 chicken-green onion-noodles:
Pretty good, huh? I don't think I can get this for $1 even back home in Indonesia these days ... Wandering Chopsticks said that the last time she got it, they put less chicken meat, so I guess don't always expect as much meat. But still, for $1 this was quite a meal, and quite a deal.

The noodles are quite good, with a nice chewiness and firmness. There was light fragrance to it. Parts of it were still sticking to each other but I believe these would work wonderfully in a soup. Can't wait to try their spinach noodles also.

The Spicy Wontons ($1.95) contained of eight wontons lightly covered in chili sauce.
The chili sauce itself was nothing special, but the wontons were wrapped in a thin yet springy skin. The meat was also nice and of higher quality (more meat, less bad fat) than most. This was also a nice deal for the price.
(These wontons, plus the chili sauce from YunChuan would be zomg amazing!)

The most expensive item on our check ended up being my iced lemon tea for $2.45 (expensive for an iced tea but I guess they have to cover overhead somehow)!
I'm going to be back to try their other items, but in the meantime ... guys, if you're feeling poor, just come here, get your $1 noodles, but please be considerate and tip reasonably (the dish usually sells for $5.95).
Oh, and the $1 special only lasts while the daily supplies still last, so go there early.

Bamboodles
535 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 281-1226
www.bamboodlesrestaurant.com

Bamboodles on Urbanspoon

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