“Have you eaten?” Without fail, this is the first thing out of my Lola’s mouth whenever I arrive to her house. This is also the only question she will ask you for the next 15 minutes until she sees you physically eating something or in my Lola’s particular case I feign interest in get her to show me an article from her latest Catholic Digest.

Bottom line – Filipinos LOVE to feed you.  Because of this, I think it’s safe to say Filipinos LOVE to eat. I’m Filipino, therefore I LOVE to eat. Work with me here guys, I didn’t get an A in symbolic logic for nothing…

Enter: Barrio Fiesta. At the behest of a fellow kababayan, we decided to organize a group outing to this fine family dining establishment in Eagle Rock, CA. And family dining it is because when you walk in, you definitely feel more like you’re in a family friend’s dining room, rather than a restaurant. Let’s just call it colorful.

I usually describe Philippine Cuisine to those who have asked as “a lot of meat and sauce,” which is fairly accurate. It’s also almost always guaranteed indigestion, which means it’s delicious.

We started with the lightest thing on the menu: San Mig Light, brewed in Manila. Totally decent light beer, goes well with cutting down on some of the heavier flavors. Also aids in the indigestion. Sweet.

Ahhh, lumpia, aka Filipino egg roll. Possibly the most well known fFlipino food stuff there is, and for good reason. It’s da bomb. These were thumb-sized nuggets of ground pork, carrots and onion, fried to a deep golden brown. They were served with a typical Asian sweet and sour sauce, but everyone has their own version of dipping sauce. I could have demolished this entire plate in about five minutes, but I was feeling generous. I’m definitely that one person at the family functions who eats the majority of the lumpia.  No shame in my game.

Garlic fried rice was a must and quite possibly the predominate factor in my belches in the following hours.

We ordered the Bistek Tagalog.  I’m really not sure of the literal translation of this name. What I do know is that Tagalog is the main dialect of the Philippines and I imagine that “bistek” is what “beefsteak” sounds like in a Filipino accent. I’ll have to check with my Lola on this one. I only had a bite of this as I was saving myself for the onslaught of the rest of the meal, but it was tasty. It’s a really simple recipe and consists of sirloin marinated in garlic, black pepper, soy sauce, and calamansi (southeast asian lime).

Also a must was the chicken adobo, which is another popular Filipino dish. The “adobo” refers to the style of cooking which is essentially a meat stewed in vinegar, rather then the red adobo sauce you might associate with Latin American dishes.  Like many adobos I’ve had, the meat was fall off the bone tender and you get a really nice tangy flavor from the vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and bay leaf.

Who likes peanut butter and oxtail stew?  Meeeeee!  And is that a vegetable you spy down there?  Why yes, yes it is. There are not a whole lot of vegetables that appear in filipino cooking, but kare-kare is a rich and delicious stew made with eggplant, bok choy, string beans, peanut butter, toasted rice and oxtail. Did I mention it was rich?

Kare-kare is typically eaten with bagoong (the blob of deep purple below) which is a fermented shrimp paste and quite possibly accounts for your sodium intake for two weeks. Not for the faint of heart.

And now for the pièce de résistance: the crispy pata. Yes, please!  The day leading up to this outing, all I could think of was crispy pata and Barrio Fiesta delivered. Oh my gee. For those who don’t know about this dish, it’s a poached, then deep fried whole hind leg of a pig, knuckles and all.  Fatty: check. Pork that’s melt-in-your-mouth good with crispy skin to go along with it: double check.

Here’s a pic of the plate of food before I went to town. Note that I handled that goodness with the typical filipino style fork and spoon action.  A totally effective way of transporting meat and sauce into your mouth.

Barrio Fiesta totally hit the spot this night and if you’re ever in the neighborhood and craving Filipino food, definitely give it a try.

Because I absolutely adore her, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite things my Lola has ever said, that I think helps to sum up the Filipino food culture. She was once coercing a vegetarian friend of mine to eat some meat-laden dishes, to which he replied, “No, thank you. I don’t eat meat.” To which she replied, “You can eat this one, it has pork.” Oh, snap Lola!

I know there is good food in Los Angeles and I’m trying to be more open to new things. That being said, I don’t like driving and I don’t particularly like Santa Monica, so I normally don’t travel to the west side of the city to do anything, beyond what I have to for work. On top of that, I’m not what you’d call a “beach” person, so generally I steer clear of Venice, Malibu and Santa Monica on the weekends, particularly the street that connects them all, Ocean Ave. B

ut, in an effort to rid myself of the sophomoric, cliched ennui associated with moving from New York to Los Angeles, I’m trying to embrace this city as my new home and make it my culinary bitch in my second year living here. Last Sunday, I pulled it together, faced the drive and went to the recently-hyped Blue Plate Oysterette, sister restaurant to the casual, healthy diner-style restaurant Blue Plate, located next to the ocean on Ocean Avenue.

Blue Plate Oysterette is one of the smaller restaurants I’ve been to in Los Angeles, reminding me of the boutique NYC restaurants like Pearl Oyster Bar or Prune.

With a few tables lining the street for outdoor seating, a handful of stools at the bar, the restaurant is primarily one long banquet of tables. The wait staff has a familial feeling, again, similar to what I experience in the casual, neighborhood restaurants in New York, and everyone is authentically nice.

The menu is a diner menu for pescatarians, with a heavy emphasis on local fish and oysters served in a variety of styles including ceviche, Ximemez, and Italian-inspired Crudo. The daily fish specials and selection of oysters are written on the chalk board that hangs above the bar. There were five types of oysters, two East Coast and three West Coast, although they were out of bunch of things by the time we sat down. After much deliberation I decided on a half dozen Kumamotos.

We ordered drinks, starting with St. King sparkling water. It tasted like any other sparking water I’ve had, I though the bottle was WAY cool.

Each table is set with a condiment tray, which includes Heinz malt vinegar worcestershire sauce (yes, that’s how you spell it, Google that shit). Given my love for condiments I was super impressed that each table has its own private tray.

The fishless food items that make it on the menu are few, including a hanger steak, Blue Plate hamburger,  AND “The Big Dog,” which I will be ordering the next time I’m there. “The Big Dog” is a 1/2 lb Kobe beef hot dog, topped with sauerkraut and homemade pickles and looks AMAZING. I immediately regretted not ordering it because right after I placed my order, the dog was delivered to the table next to me. However, my jealously waned once my oysters arrived.

The small pearl like oysters contain a mild, salty and perfect taste, one of my favorites in the world. Served with lemon, cocktail sauce and a shallot,champagne vinaigrette, the Kumamotos were delicious on their own and didn’t need any garnish.

Once the Kumamotos were gone I sank into a momentary, post-oyster depression, and decided to order a Hefeweizen to drown my sorrows. Blue Plate only serves wine and beer, carrying products from small yield vineyards and micro-brewers.

Emotional catastrophe was averted by the booze and the arrival of the Oysters Rockefeller. They might be the best baked-cheesey-bacony-oysters I’ve ever had, probably for two reasons. One, they didn’t use oysters the size of my hand, which many restaurants do because they are cheaper. And two, the cheese was mixed lightly with a butter pesto sauce that, surprisingly, didn’t over power the dish.

We then split a few more smalls plates including the mac and cheese, fries and spinach. Even though we ordered the mac and cheese sans lobster, it was just the taste I wanted, crispy on top and relentlessly creamy throughout, every piece of macaroni was smothered in awesomeness. The fries were totally boring, but they provided me with an opportunity to turn to my condiment platter and drown them in vinegar.

The spinach was a nice compliment to these two heavy dishes. It was freshly steamed and garnished with a bit of oil and crispy garlic slivers.

For our main course, we shared the Crudo of the day which was fresh ahi tuna mixed with olive oil, sea salt and lemon and served with chives, avocado, and crostini. It looked beautiful, however, the olive oil overpowered the taste of the fresh fish and basically made it seem like a healthy, open face tuna sandwich with avocado.

Even though I was stuffed, I ordered the hot fudge sundae, garnished with dried cherries and malt balls. As good as it looked, the sundae didn’t live up to my expectations. There weren’t enough malt balls and they used too many cherries, which overwhelmed the taste of the ice cream and hot fudge.

At this point, I was moving slowly and having difficultly thinking about the meal and forming complete sentences. I’m not sure if I grunted or said “Thank you,” when the waitress brought the check. In retrospect, I would have skipped the crudo and ordered another dozen or so oysters. As I got up to leave the Oysterette, I noticed a TV above the door. I imagine it’s a good sign that this was the first time I noticed it all night, and neither the other patrons or the waitstaff were paying any attention to it. I would like to think that the food was so good no one noticed and the waitstaff was too busy to care. However, I did get an urge to point up to the sky and say, “Ha! I told you so,” to anyone who cared (no one) when I realized what was on the TV.

It was a surf video.

*Photos by Thomas Young

**Sarah works in film production in sunny Los Angeles. After being away in Europe for five months, she is pretty much obsessed with burritos, sushi and Kogi at The Alibi Room in Culver City.

When Jade’s comes into town, it usually means trouble. Trouble in the form of drinking too much, going out for extravagant meals, and not remembering where all your money went the next morning. She’s the ultimate enabler.

So… Jade’s in town. Mix that with Yoko and Washi right up the street, and I’ve got a Triple Threat on my hands. There’s no turning back.

We all went out on Saturday, and as expected, had an epic evening at my neighborhood pizza joint, Boot and Shoe Service. So epic that none of us really quite remember the details, or timeline. It’s all a drunken haze. But that’s the true sign of a GREAT NIGHT!

The main points I remember vividly from the meal are:

1.) Excellent service: Laura, our server, is a professional enabler.

2.) Impeccable, AWESOME food.

3.) Lots of laughing. Cackling. Were we being too loud? Yoko remembers “shrieking a few times.”

4.) We went through THREE bottles of wine. See #1. She’s good.

5.) We closed the place down after being there for over three hours. What could we possibly have to talk about for that long?

That said, I’m the most disciplined food blogger ever, and somehow remembered to take pics of all the food! Lucky for you, cause seriously, this meal was one of the best I’ve had since moving back to the Bay.

APPETIZERS

Shrimp and green tomatoes battered and fried. The tomatoes were still crispy. SO GOOD!

Melt in your mouth meatballs.

Wood oven-cooked egg with pancetta and frisee. We dipped toasties in this– very simple, clean.

Perhaps the belle of the ball, the Bufala mozzarella. @jesus shed His light upon us at this very moment. It was a blob of lavish dairy delight.

Let there be light.

With the first course, we had a bottle Albariño. Light and crisp and perfect for summer. (Although it’s fucking freezing here WTF).

It was around this point in the meal that we ordered bottle #2.

Thanks to Laura’s knowledgeable suggestions, we decided on the Tempranillo.

PIZZA!

Boot and Shoe is the sister restaurant of Pizzaiolo, a super popular pizzeria in Temescal– so we knew we were in good hands.

Marinara, housemade sausage, onions, lightly shaved parmesan (?). Again, simple and clean. Light, thin crust, not too chewy, speckled with char.

Our pizzagasm, Laura’s favorite on the menu– the rosemary potatoes with moliterno cheese, pancetta and parsley.

OMG. オーエムジー。FLAVOR EXPLOSION.

At a certain point during the pizzas, we ordered another bottle of wine. Washi and I gave each other this “let’s discreetly order another bottle” look. Neither Yoko or Jade noticed. Such trickery.

DESSERT

We ordered all the desserts on the menu. The chocolate tart sprinkled with sea salt had the butteriest crust– unreal.

FLASH! God, how embarrassing. Let me be honest and say that I don’t remember the canoli or that soft serve thing at the top. Neither does Yoko. WASTED!

Ok, now guess how much all this cost us per person? GUESS. Come on. $100? $120 right? At least?

$70 PER PERSON including drinks AND tip. Is that insanely reasonable for all this, or what? Four appetizers, two pizzas, THREE bottles of vino, and three desserts? Yoko and Washi are used to Tokyo prices and Jade and me from NYC, so this was just shocking. I will put Boot and Shoe on par with Franny’s in Brooklyn, in atmosphere, and menu– but SO MUCH CHEAPER. Plus they make some great classic cocktails.

Thanks Boot & Shoe for one of the more memorable meals/nights we’ve had in a very long time! Casual, unpretentious, awesome knowledgable service, well-prepared food using local ingredients. LOVE! We’ll be back soon (I know… you CAN’T WAIT)!

Met up with fellow Umamimartians last week at The Trappist, a Belgian beer bar in “Old” Oakland, downtown. I made SF folks come out to the East Bay– and they actually did! On a school night! Such trickery.

The thing is, The Trappist is so much more than just a specialty beer bar. Oh, so much more. The kitchen serves up some dishes that really need to be taken seriously in the Bay Area food community. I had heard about their Taco Tuesdays from @serooo, who had Twittered the cute little piggy flyer. Belgian beer carnitas, could it be true???

The Trappist has nearly 30 beers on tap (Belgian, European, local microbreweries), and another 100 in bottles. If that ain’t the ultimate beer bar, well, you’re trippin’.  Among all 15 of us throughout the evening, I’m sure we ordered one of each from the tap. There’s the front bar, the Main Pub, with bar seating, which houses about half the beers listed on tap.

The rest of the beers are in the Back Bar, which is essentially the bigger back room. The beer menu is divided up between Front and Back Bar.

Yup, I ordered about four out of 12 on the list (my memory is a bit fuzzy, you’ll have to excuse me). All served in the correct glass, at the designated temperature. The Allegash Curieux was my favorite– probably because it’s aged in Jim Beam barrels for eight months. They had just run out of Green Flash Le Freak which totally bummed me out!

Ok, on to the carnitas. The Tamarindo (and newer taqueria La Calle) restaurant folks from next door set up shop in the back outdoor area of The Trappist to serve these tacos starting at 5pm. The actual carnitas are also prepared in the Tamarindo kitchen.

These tacos are delicious. Carnitas on soft corn tortillas, doused in house-made salsa verde with a squeeze of lime. Perfection. The carnitas are flavorful, with a hint of sweetness, not dried out, yet not overly fatty.

I was lucky enough to get an email this morning from Aaron Porter, co-owner of The Trappist, explaining the preparation of the carnitas:

The carnitas are basically a confit. The pork is cooked in its own fat and then beer (St. Bernardus Abt 12) is added along with some spices (orange, etc.). It’s left to cook for several hours like this. Everything else you see on the food menu at Trappist is made and prepared by the Trappist.

This is CRAZY!!!  Pork, slow-cooked in St. Bernardus?? INSANITY! Not only is this over-the-top luxurious, but it is basically GENIUS.

Packaging for Abt 12.

They stop serving the tacos around 8pm, or whenever they run out, so be sure to get there on the early side. Yoko sadly missed them.

Other awesomeness coming out of the kitchen: the housemade sausage sandwich.

This sausage was so taut and perfectly (er, fallically) shaped, that talking about the Great Weiner was quite possibly the highlight of the night. It’s seriously so beautiful though, so light in color!

Here’s how big the sausage is, to get a sense of proportion.

Served on a crisp roll with sauteed onions and housemade mustard. OUT OF CONTROL. The sausage is very crumbly once you bite into it, and just sort of falls apart in your mouth. It’s so ridiculously good.

JADE
To add to the (much anticipated) documentation and commentary on the sausage sandwich, one of the true highlights for me was getting my “pork and beer pairing” knowledge on. The gentile bartender at the back bar let me sample three beers, explaining that sausage generally pairs well with sweeter, maltier beers. It was great to try all three samples side-by-side–easier for my untrained taste buds to make a clear distinction. I chose the St. Feuillien Triple. More aromatic and fruity than sweet, the taste was impressive alone, but even better when paired with the equally impressive(-looking) sausage.

YOKO
Quite possibly one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had, the Trappist’s Salmon Sandwich was a perfect mash-up of salmon, chèvre, arugula and crispy baguette. I really don’t like beer, and I was really sad to show up too late for the tacos, but this situation allowed me to fully savor this sandwich. And for $10, the sandwich was very reasonably priced.

MICHELLE
I thought the tacos were great and the prosciutto and fig panini was excellent (well-balanced combination of salty and sweet flavors, good bread).

YOKO
I will definitely be going back to the Trappist for their awesome Harry Potter-esque interior and this amazing salmon sandwich.  I love the Trappist even though I don’t love beer.

Thanks to everyone for coming out! A special shout out to Gail, Travis’ mama, who came out for this– and who even bought Travis a beer. How awesome is that? Our very first Umamiventure UMAMIMAMA!

And of course, thanks to The Trappist for their impressive selection of beers, fantastic eats, and knowledgeable, helpful staff. We truly had a great time! We’ll be back for sure.

Next Umamiventure will be a beer tour through Sonoma County, hosted by UM’s very own beer guru, CJ. Stay tuned!

All photos by Travis LoDolce and myself.

*Umamiventures are organized monthly, traveling far and wide to find awesome, cheap grub off the beaten path.

Past Umamiventures include:
1.) Ocean Jewel Restaurant – Flushing, NYC; June 2007
2.) Red Hook Ball Fields - NYC; June 2007
3.) Taste of Jackson Heights – NYC; October, 2007
4.) Sripraphai Restaurant – Woodside, NYC; November 2007
5.) WINTERMARKET – South St. Seaport; December 2007
6.) Jackson Diner- Jackson Heights, NYC; January 2008
7.) Pacificana – Sunset Park, NYC; February 2008
8.) Puerto Alegre – The Mission, SF; March 2008
9.) Dinosaur BBQ – Harlem, NYC; April 2008
10.) Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden – Astoria, NYC; May 2008
11.) Brooklyn Banh Mi Crawl – Sunset Park, NYC; August 2008
12.) Sheapshead Bay Lobster Crawl – NYC; September 2008
13.) Flushing Food Circuit – NYC; October 2008
14.) Strong Beer Month – SF; March 2009
15.) Loisaida Throwback Crawl – NYC; April 2009
16.) Harley Farms Goat Dairy – Pescadero, CA; June 2009
17.) Tomales Bay Oyster Farm – Marshall, CA; August 2009
18.) Din Tai Fung – LA; September 2009
19.) Din Tai Fung – Tokyo; September 2009
20.) Schroeder’s Oktoberfest – SF; October 2009
21.) Fish Taco Crawl – San Diego; November 2009
22.) St. George Spirits & Hangar One Vodka -  Alameda; January 2010
22.5) Everett & Jones – OAK; January 2010
23.) Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse – NYC; February 2010
24.) Guerilla Ramen Night – SF; April 2010
25.) Knife Sharpening Workshop at Hida Tool & Hardware – Berkeley, May 2010
26.) San Pedro Fish Market - LA, June 2010
26.5.) Candytown – LA, June 2010

Mortadella, prociutto cotto, and prociutto crudo slices… in a CONE.

This is how we’ll be eating meat in the future. How about steak (medium rare please!) in a cone? Hot dog in a cone? Slab bacon in a cone?

Hmmm… I think I’m onto something. This reminds me of… this.

Anyway, LOVE THIS. Look at all these gorgeous pinks!

As a connosieur of cured meats, let me tell you that these are heaven slices. Perfectly salted, especially the prociutto cotto. The crudo is aged very nicely, so the texture is very clean.

At $3.50, it’s on par with the price of a small scoop of ice cream at Humphry Slocombe. We’ll save room for dessert.

BOCCALONE SALUMERIA
Ferry Building Marketplace
Shop 21
SF, CA
T: 415.433.6500

Confession: I bought this cone in the first place because they were neatly lined up next to the register and I thought they were FREE samples of salumi and so I touched it! HA!!!! Silly me. The best things in life are never free.

So I’m in the valley, Burbank actually, or is it North Hollywood? Depends on who you are talking to. LA native? Valley native? You’re from Hollywood? Oh, not from Hollywood? So you’re technically from the Valley, but you live in Hollywood, got it. Do the Hills start at Cahuenga? No? They start at Mulholland? You grew up in Studio City? At your mom’s place? Oh, more like your mom…

Ahhhhh, so like I said, I’m in the Valley…

After arriving at the shockingly efficient Burbank airport, I stopped for a late dinner at The Rustic Spoon. If Burbank, North Hollywood and Universal City were circles  on a Venn diagram, The Rustic Spoon is located where those circles meet. The Spoon is a small restaurant (we’re friends now, so I can call it the less formal “Spoon”), serving what the owners describe as “Thai fusion”, though, I would describe it as more of a California Thai, since the menu is light and uncomplicated.

The server was not thrilled when we showed up minutes before the kitchen closed and after about five minutes, we were the only people there. In an effort to be low maintenance customers, we ordered quickly and started taking pictures. Sensing the possibility of free press, the hospitality increased immediately.

Since it was a late dinner, we ordered light and started with the Green Papaya Salad, served with spiced lime dressing, bean sprouts, plum tomatoes, whole cashews, and grilled shrimp.

My Achilles heel– an allergy to all things shellfish, crustaceans, bivalves, mollusks and the like– forced me to eat the parts of the salad without shrimp. Though the papaya was fresh and the whole cashews added some extra flavor, the salad was pretty underwhelming and I imagine tastes much better with the shrimp.

Next we shared the Seared Tuna Salad. The tuna was lightly coated in sesame seeds, flash fried and served on top of mixed greens with a sesame soy vinaigrette.

The menu was full of traditional Thai dishes, Tom Kah soup, drunken noodles, pad Thai, and a Panang curry served with Japanese pumpkin, which looked delicious, but we decided to stop with the tuna.

At first, the drink menu looked like something they serve at an upscale Asian fusion restaurant, like Sushi Samba or something. But when I looked more closely, I realized that alcohol wasn’t a listed ingredient in any of the drink recipes and the Spoon is a dry restaurant. Despite the lack of booze, a few drinks looked interesting, including the “Bloody Lychee,”with pomegranate juice, fresh lychee and sparkling water, the less impressive, “Tangy Mint,” orange juice and muddled mint, and the real reason to go to The Rustic Spoon, the “Rose Mojito.”

Prepared with rose syrup, fresh mint, lime juice and sparkling water and garnished with dried baby roses and salt, the rose mojito is light and floral without being perfumey. It was so refreshing that I would drive back to the valley, or near there, to get another one.

THE RUSTIC SPOON
4384 Lankershim Boulevard
LA, CA
T: 818.754.8998

*Sarah works in film production in sunny Los Angeles. After being away in Europe for five months, she is pretty much obsessed with burritos, sushi and Kogi at The Alibi Room in Culver City.

Omg, I totally forgot to write about Candytown, right next door to the San Pedro Fish Market! Silly me!

After gorging ourselves with shrimp, oysters and ceviche, we finally called it quits and all walked over to Candytown. Yes, we saved room for dessert. Candytown is super cute and looks like Willy Wonka barfed all over Berth 77.

It’s so kitch– an exact replica of a candy store you would find on any Boardwalk in the 70s (Santa Cruz, Atlantic City, Coney Island, yay!). Loved it. We all went home with chocolates and saltwater taffies.

SARA
One of the best parts of the trip is dessert.  The candy store is AMAZING.  It’s like stepping into a time machine that takes you straight back to your childhood.

TOMO
All ending in Candyland, a nice wrap-up to another great Umamiventure! Aaaaaaand here are some emoticons :/

CANDYTOWN
77 Berth
San Pedro, CA
T: 310.514.2669

*Umamiventures are organized monthly, traveling far and wide to find awesome, cheap grub off the beaten path.

**Join us at The Trappist (OAK) for Umamiventure #27, on Tuesday 7/13. Info here.

Past Umamiventures include:
1.) Ocean Jewel Restaurant – Flushing, NYC; June 2007
2.) Red Hook Ball Fields - NYC; June 2007
3.) Taste of Jackson Heights – NYC; October, 2007
4.) Sripraphai Restaurant – Woodside, NYC; November 2007
5.) WINTERMARKET – South St. Seaport; December 2007
6.) Jackson Diner- Jackson Heights, NYC; January 2008
7.) Pacificana – Sunset Park, NYC; February 2008
8.) Puerto Alegre – The Mission, SF; March 2008
9.) Dinosaur BBQ – Harlem, NYC; April 2008
10.) Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden – Astoria, NYC; May 2008
11.) Brooklyn Banh Mi Crawl – Sunset Park, NYC; August 2008
12.) Sheapshead Bay Lobster Crawl – NYC; September 2008
13.) Flushing Food Circuit – NYC; October 2008
14.) Strong Beer Month – SF; March 2009
15.) Loisaida Throwback Crawl – NYC; April 2009
16.) Harley Farms Goat Dairy – Pescadero, CA; June 2009
17.) Tomales Bay Oyster Farm – Marshall, CA; August 2009
18.) Din Tai Fung – LA; September 2009
19.) Din Tai Fung – Tokyo; September 2009
20.) Schroeder’s Oktoberfest – SF; October 2009
21.) Fish Taco Crawl – San Diego; November 2009
22.) St. George Spirits & Hangar One Vodka -  Alameda; January 2010
22.5) Everett & Jones – OAK; January 2010
23.) Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse – NYC; February 2010
24.) Guerilla Ramen Night – SF; April 2010
25.) Knife Sharpening Workshop at Hida Tool & Hardware – Berkeley, May 2010
26.) San Pedro Fish Market - LA, June 2010

Made it to the Hapa Ramen pop-up yesterday for lunch at the Ferry Building. Let’s forget about the ramen for a hot second, and talk about their “random celebrity specials.” HELL YAH! How could you resist? The special of the day was…

FREE LINDSAY aka The Lindsay Lohan Sandwich! RAD! Says it’s so trashy, we’ll love it. Hope it tastes better than Lilo looks right now. Sigh. Oh, Lindsey. Tough life.

Tonkatsu, watercress, mayo, pickles on a gorgeous roll. I didn’t taste the fish sauce?

Pork was excellently fried, and the bread sorta puffed down in your hands. This was a delicious sandwich– not trashy at all! It was actually quite refined, I thought. Borderline classy, even. I would have given it trashy points had it been doused in tonkatsu sauce, which it was not.

I was obsessed with their housemade pickles, especially the jalapaños. I stacked them into my sandwich, producing a sweet heat.

Place was poppin’ by noon.

Hope they keep this sandwich on as a special for the next 90 days. FREE LILO!

HAPA RAMEN
Ferry Building Farmer’s Market every Thursday, 10am to 2pm.
Coffee Bar every Saturday night at 6pm-10pm. (1890 Bryant)
Follow @haparamen

I know a lot of folks who love to hate on Guy Fieri for reasons that include his overt enthusiasm and hair do, but I’ll be the first to admit, I think the dude is completely lovable and has the best damn job in the world. I mean, really… he won a reality TV show competition and now travels around in a red ‘67 Camaro convertible shoving piping hot deliciousness into his mouth from greasy spoons across the country. Genius. How can you not be a little enviable, regardless of the fact that based solely on appearance, he looks like a total douchenozzle?

Thanks to Mr. Fieri I was introduced to The Oinkster via an episode of Diner’s, Drive-In’s and Drives and given its LA locale, it was going down. So on a gorgeous Sunday morning, two friends and I arrived.

We got there just a little after the 11am opening and it was already starting to bustle. The Oinkster is kitschy cute with a nice outdoor seating area and the staff was super nice and accommodating to us Oinkster newbies.

I started off the morning with an Arrogant Bastard Ale.  This beer is ridiculously good, you should drink it. Enough said.

Their Belgian fries are twice fried in beef fat and once in rice oil so vegetarians beware.

They were super good, had just the right amount of crisp to them and were aided in flavor by a nice selection of housemade condiments:

God, I love sauce.  I had to stay clear of their sweet hot mustard, it was way too strong, but the chipotle ketchup was awesome.  The real winner however was their garlic aioli. I could slather that stuff all over my body, lay out in the sun and call it a day.

The Oinkster Pastrami: two-week cured pastrami, Gruyere cheese, caramelized onion and a red cabbage slaw. I only had a couple of bites of this, as I opted for the pulled pork, but it was amazing. The meat was super tender and the combo of the cheese, slaw and onion was on point. The friend who chose this, chose wisely.

When I asked how he would describe it, he likened it to a “magical food wizard ready to put an enchantment spell on your flavor-buds.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of magical food wizardry going on with my BBQ pulled pork selection.  Don’t get me wrong, I went to town on that sandwich, but I thought the pork was a little dry and I had to help bites out with more of their Carolina BBQ Sauce and the garlic aioli.

A little underwhelming, but I’ll give it another shot as there will definitely be another trip to the Oinkster for me to try their Ube milkshake and have my own pastrami.

As I’m still reeling from the garlic aioli, I’ll leave you with one of the best “would you rather” questions ever posed to me: Would you rather live in a world without boobs or without sauce?

Think about it.  It’s a tough one.

THE OINKSTER
2005 Colorado Boulevard
Eagle Rock, CA
T: 323.255.OINK

It’s happening. Ippuku, the East Bay’s premiere yakitori and shochu bar is opening on Monday 7/5! HOLLA!

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the restaurant before it opens and talk with the owner/chef, Christian Geideman. Located in the heart of Berkeley, the restaurant space is quite breathtaking (read: epitome of cool) and the menu boasts nearly 50 kinds of shochu! INSANITY!

Christian himself is not new to the world of Japanese cooking, or running restaurants. He opened Kasasoba, an izakaya in Santa Fe, before becoming chef de cuisine at Ozumo in Oakland. He has dedicated himself full time to building Ippuku from the ground up since the beginning of 2009, which is about to become a full-blown reality on Monday, as the doors will officially open on Center Street.

Christian, who once worked as a sake distributor, began exploring the world of shochu on a trip to Japan years ago. I guess you could say he was smitten, considering he decided to make it his personal mission to open a bar/restaurant devoted to this stuff (which is surprisingly little known here in the States).

Right when you walk in, you’re greeted by a long row of 24 shochu bottles– ON TAP. The bottles are gigantic, but somehow defy gravity and hang upside down. Christian said he was inspired by an izakaya in Osaka that had this, and just had to have the genius contraption. Each one dispenses an exact shot! I would say it’s the main centerpiece of the entire restaurant– it is just AWESOME.

Ippuku is an expansive, sparse space with light wood accents to compliment the cement walls and hanging pipes, painted blue. It’s as though a hip izakaya in Tokyo just landed in Berkeley. Local master builder, and ordained Zen Buddhist priest, Paul Discoe designed the 600 sq. ft space– not an easy task considering how long and narrow the space is. Bravo Mr. Discoe!

The bar is located right as you walk in. But there will be no stools– standing room only. Racer 5 on tap!!

Despite the super high ceilings, intimate and cozy booths align one wall– just like Tokyo. This is gonna be the hottest date spot in the East Bay. Hell yah!

There is an enclosed area on the other side, with several tables that will seat about 4-5 people each. NOMIKAI! (Please excuse the construction).

Walking towards the back, the open kitchen with bar seating is just delightful.

Getting all the fire codes squared away here must have been a nightmare. With all the grilling and the smoke, this couldn’t have been an simple process with the DOH. But they did it! Skewered meats will be grilled, before your very eyes, on coal, just as they are meant to. Whew.

A little bit about shochu, which is a Japanese liquor– a close cousin to the Korean soju. It is absolutely NOT to be mistaken as sake (nihonshu), and is more like vodka in profile and taste, as it is distilled with barley, rice or potato. The end product tastes clean and often earthy. The potato version can be a bit pungent, and takes some getting used to– but when sipped on the rocks, as is recommended, one begins to appreciate the different dimensions of flavor.

Also to be enjoyed with oolong tea, or with some freshly squeezed grapefruit juice!

Ippuku’s shochu menu is out of this world. With nearly 50 bottles, 12 of them will be making their West Coast debut. As in, they aren’t available anywhere around here. They also have Awamori on the menu, which is a liquor from Okinawa. Yoko wrote about it last year.

I believe Ippuku will increase shochu knowledge in the Bay Area tremendously. This is REALLY EXCITING!

Their food menu will predominantly be yakitori, crunchy parts and all, with a sprinkling of usual izakaya fare. I have an insider source telling me they make their own mayo and ponzu. Ohhhh Yahhhh.

Great story: Christian grew up in Berkeley, and told me that the actual Ippuku space used to be an art house theater (hence all the awesome vintage Japanese movie posters). He said that the very last time he was there, he had accidentally left his wallet behind. The wallet contained $650. GASP! Of course, it was never found. He told me that he’s determined to make back that money here. It’s as though he was destined to open his dream restaurant, right in this exact location. It’s fucking fate.

Ippuku, in Japanese, means to “take a break.” In slang terms, it’s more like, “take a smoke break.” Love it.

Here’s to a fantastic opening, Ippuku! Wishing you many years of success in the Bay Area, that will surely bring a community together over grilled chicken gizzards and sweet potato shochu. We look forward to many drunk nights here, and watching you grow!

IPPUKU
2130 Center Street
Berkeley, CA
T: 510.665.1969

Full disclosure: Washi, Yoko’s husband is one of the bartenders at Ippuku. Make sure to stop by and say hello to him when you’re there! He is lots of fun and extremely knowledgeable about shochu, and drinking in general. We’re all drunks here, at Umamimart, what can I say.

More photos of Ippuku here.