Chinese Food

When I was a kid in our small town in the 1950’s there was one Chinese restaurant. I think it was take out only -- I never heard of anyone actually eating there. They served Americanized Chinese food: chow mein, chop suey, chicken subgum, egg foo yung, but to us it was tres exotique. The little packets of soy sauce and the fortune cookies were utterly fascinating. We looked at the chopsticks but were afraid to use them. But the bags of food my father brought home never contained anything remotely spicy. The proprietors of that establishment probably assumed that Americans wouldn’t want anything too far out of their comfort zones. The Chinese take-out did a very good business and I’m sure the owners smiled at our xenophobia as they checked their bank accounts and then tucked into plates of spicy eggplant, shitake mushrooms in oyster sauce, and anything in garlic black bean sauce.

When I arrived in California in 1966 I was astonished by the Chinese food that I encountered. Such variety! Such taste! Spicy, salty, sweet, sour – it was an explosion on my taste buds. As the years passed I realized that we corn-fed rubes in the middle of the country had been fooled into thinking that Chinese food was bland and gloppy, when all along California and New York had been enjoying the real thing. Noodles were not just the skinny chow mein but also the chubby chow fun. There was a whole sub-genre of food that got wrapped up in other food, like mu shu pork wrapped in delicate little pancakes. There were amazing and unexpected combinations like honey-walnut shrimp. My first dim sum experience was a revelation.

Now, in 2009, those dishes that first burst into my consciousness have become mainstream. At the same time I have found that my aging taste buds need greater stimulation. I don’t want my food to be searingly hot, but I do want a bit of aggressive seasoning, whatever it is. I enjoy looking for unusual dishes on Chinese menus. Sometimes I really do want the items that are not translated into English, no matter what the waiter says. Bring me the chicken feet and jellyfish!

But when having Chinese food with my 96 year old mother, I do have to stick to the tried and true – nothing weird or spicy. So on our recent visit to Taiwan on Lincoln Avenue in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood, we had the old standbys of cashew chicken, honey walnut shrimp, and mu shu pork. I like Taiwan, and the food is very good, but I looked longingly at the dishes identified as hot by a little red pepper on the menu. And afterwards Mom said she would have preferred broccoli beef to the mu shu, as there were too many green onions in the pork, and she likes the broccoli beef “gravy” on her rice.

Only one problem at Taiwan – instead of Chinese pancakes they gave us flour tortillas with the mu shu. Not an acceptable substitute! Not even the same hemisphere! Chinese pancakes are small and delicate, and tortillas are big and doughy. Tortillas are made to enclose a burrito, not a few spoonfuls of delicate stir-fry and plum sauce.

Taiwan

http://www.taiwanrestaurantsj.com/
1306 Lincoln Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125

phone: (408) 289-8800 or (408) 289-9328 fax: (408) 289-8924

Weird Cars

Yesterday was weird car day. In the parking lot at work I saw an orange Tango. It’s an electric car that is essentially a motorcycle with a shell. Check out the web page because my picture does not really show the thinness and strange shape. http://www.commutercars.com/ It’s said not to tip over because the batteries are on the bottom, giving it a low center of gravity, but I don’t know. Looks scary to me. Also it can split lanes – you know how motorcycles can (at least in CA) go between lanes of stalled traffic? That’s lane splitting. I have always thought that was dangerous – you never know when a car is going to suddenly make a move into your path. So I guess there’s a reason why I’m not a motorcycle enthusiast. (But I love watching “Sons of Anarchy.”)

On the way home I saw a hearse that had been converted for regular use. Every bit of chrome had been removed from the surface of the car – including the door handles. How entrance is achieved I can only guess – through the window, like NASCAR? Anyway, removing the metal must have left holes and depressions, but every such hollow had been filled in and then sanded absolutely smooth, so you would never know anything had been there. The vehicle was painted a dark matte grey – like primer, but I suspect that no top coat was planned. The tail lights were a narrow strip just above the rear bumper that reminded me of the Cylons from the original “Battlestar Gallactica.” The complete effect was total creepiness, compounded by the license plate: 1 WA RIDE. I wish I had a picture, but I was driving.

Eating Out Once Again

Finally, a new restaurant to report on. Toasty is dealing well with his diabetes and is slowly learning to eat at restaurants once again. As long as he sticks to lean protein, plain veggies, and salads, he’s OK.

One of the reasons we eat out a lot is the nature of Toasty’s work. He has had an impressive array of embarrassing occupations. His first job after college and the Army was selling chemicals, degreasers for manufacturers of electronic components like printed circuit boards. When he began to work for this company he first had to spend a few months working in the warehouse so that he would have a feel for all aspects of the business. He would come home with horrible headaches, and one time he actually had an appalling bubble or blister on the surface of his eyeball. He said it was an allergic reaction to the weeds that grew next to the warehouse but I wonder. These chemicals were subsequently found to be quite toxic. Some – more than the average you’d expect in the general population – of the men who worked full time in the warehouse, filling the drums of chemicals and loading them onto trucks, later died of various dreadful cancers. That company is no longer in business. I don’t know what is now used to clean printed circuit boards.

His next job was selling “flexible packaging.” OK, plastic bags. Yeah, right, those things are biodegradable – maybe in a million years, after the sun explodes.

Next he sold cigar and smoking accessories – fancy holders and portable ashtrays and something called a CigarSavor that lets you smoke one of those delightful stogies half way and then save it and keep it fresh as a daisy for another pleasurable lung-blackening experience. Here in NorCal the anti-smoking laws are pretty stringent, but some restaurants and bars had set aside hermetically-sealed smoking rooms as private clubs to get around the restrictions. But the waiters who had to come into those rooms to serve drinks complained about inhaling the smoke, new laws went up, and the cigar-smoking culture around here died and the company was bought out.

Then he was a telemarketer. He sold products for calibrating spectrophotometers, so he wasn’t calling you at home just as you sat down to dinner, but he was cold-calling scientific labs, so maybe he got you at work. It was a tough sale, as a little bottle of this stuff cost hundreds of dollars. After a while the company decided to pay him commission only, which would have meant an annual salary of about ten dollars, so he quit.

After that he worked for me at the travel agency for a while. That almost resulted in simultaneous homicide. Then he did odd jobs – no job too big or too small, too dirty or degrading. He cleaned garages and gutters, weeded gardens, moved furniture, took loads of garbage to the dump, drove bratty kids to Hebrew school, and picked up dry-cleaning for women who were busy playing tennis. Actually, some of this was quite interesting, especially the garbage. You would never believe which sweet, mild-mannered lady puts down a six-pack every night! And, he picked up some odds and ends for me to use in my found-object collages. But that work is sporadic and back-breaking.

And finally, his current vocation: night watchman in a mortuary.

Traditional Judaism has lots of rules and rituals, some of which seem arbitrary and arcane. But the burial laws, or at least some of them, make a certain amount of sense. Jews are generally not embalmed, and hence are put in the ground as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours after death. The body is not supposed to be left alone, as a gesture of respect and decency. Some families will pay to have a “watcher” sit with the body all night. The watcher is supposed to recite Psalms all night, and keep rodents away from the body, but the deceased are actually in the cooler, and while there is a resident mouse, he is more of a companion to Toasty than a threat.

Toasty’s shift is 8PM to 8AM. Due to the nature of death, he never knows when he is going to work. He’ll get a call in the afternoon and he has to get ready. My workday ends at 5PM, so unless I have leftovers in the house there’s usually not enough time for me to come home and cook something – he has to leave by 6:30 because of the awful traffic. But I can meet him somewhere along one of the freeways and he has plenty of time to eat and scoot.

One night we ended up at Café Grillades, located in Bayhill Shopping Center in San Bruno, a good location for us to meet for dinner. The food at Café Grillades is Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern. I had really tasty lamb chops that had been rubbed with a reddish color spice – not sure what it was, but it was very good. They came with salad and french fries. Toasty had lamb brochettes and asked for extra salad instead of potatoes. Most restaurants are happy to accommodate special requests. I don’t know if I’d try it in some chi-chi pretty food chef-driven place, but a strip mall restaurant needs to be flexible.

Café Grillades has an eclectic menu. Other offerings included couscous plates, paninis, and crepes, both savory and sweet. I couldn’t help myself – I ordered a strawberry crepe brule – with a crunchy top of caramelized sugar. I felt momentary guilt eating this in front of Toasty, but he asked for and received a dish of plain strawberries.

Something about crepes causes me to go weak in the knees. I don’t know what it is. They are sublime. I once made crepes suzettes for a dinner party, and while they were a lot of work they were the star of the evening, by far. The ultimate comfort food, unctuous, rich, buttery. So I am anxious to go back to Café Grillades to try their other dishes – and to have some more crepes.

Sugar Blues

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Toasticles found out that he has type 2 diabetes. Tough diagnosis for a guy whose favorite food is, well, toast. I feel so sorry for him. He’s having a hard time dealing with it and he can’t seem to settle down and follow a food plan. Plus the medication gives him diarrhea, so he’s been playing around with the dosages. He has lowered his sugar, but he’s miserable. So we haven’t eaten out much. Our mainstays of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese are full of rice and noodles, and sugar in the sauces, which he can’t have. We went to (gasp) Red Lobster, which wasn’t that bad. At least he could get plain fish and veggies. And I scarfed their yummy cheese biscuits.

What he’s looking for is the old-fashioned coffee shop. We were raised in the 1950’s, when you could go into a coffee shop that had a Formica counter and red leatherette booths, and on the menu would be something called a “diet plate,” consisting of a plain hamburger patty and a scoop of cottage cheese on top of a lettuce leaf, with maybe a tomato slice alongside. Even back then carbs were the enemy, although we called them “starches.” Try and find that today! We’ve been to a few of the dinosaur coffee shops that still exist, but those experiences are too horrifying to describe here. BJ’s actually came through, with a plain hamburger patty and a green salad (dressing on the side) for under ten bucks. It’s still a chain, however, and that stings.

I bought a George Foreman grill with the idea that Toasty can make his own food, grill a hamburger or a chicken breast. So far he hasn’t. I’ve made salmon that was surprisingly good, and I even grilled baby bok choy after sprinkling it with soy sauce and a drop or two of sesame oil. That was great! I love bok choy – it’s a very juicy vegetable.

The main premise of “Eating El Camino” will therefore have to wait for a bit because the majority of those restaurants won’t fit into Toasty’s diet. But I still have lots of stuff to blog about, so stay tuned!

Max's

Today we travel back through the mists of time to a magical place that was known as the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Coffee Shop, unusual in that it was frequented by locals as much as travelers. The reason? Outstanding sandwiches and desserts. Back in the day when I could eat a Monte Cristo sandwich and fries at 11:30 PM and then go to bed with no ill effects, we used to go to the Hyatt Coffee Shop for a snack after a movie at the Hyatt Cinema (now sadly defunct) across the street. Turns out the food and beverage manager at the Hyatt was Dennis Berkowitz, who left the hotel to start his own restaurant empire. His first outlet was Max’s Son, a hybrid Chinese restaurant/Jewish deli. Now he has several Max’s of various types, with a Max’s Opera Café just down the street from his old digs at the Hyatt. We’ve been eating there for about 25 years or so. The food is always good, solid American fare with Jewish deli tendencies and large portions.

I inevitably order the same thing every time: Russian cabbage soup and a pastrami sandwich, partly in tribute to my dad (it was his favorite), and partly because it’s one thing on the menu that I can’t get elsewhere, at least here in NorCal. Plenty of places have ribs and chicken and steaks, but cabbage soup – not likely. It’s as good as I would make it. Maybe not as good as my Aunt Henri’s, although I only ate hers once.

Aunt Henri was known far and wide for her cabbage soup – my brother called it “string soup.” I was a very picky eater and wouldn’t even try it, a decision I regret. I finally took the plunge in my late teens and was smacked in the mouth by the soup’s awesomeness. Too late, as it turned out – I decamped for California and Aunt Henri retired from soup making.

Max’s Opera Café started out with a clever concept – the waiters were aspiring opera singers. Once an hour or so one of them would hop up to the grand piano and sing one of the more popular arias or a Broadway tune, applause applause, then back to eating. Now it’s gotten to be more like a lounge act, with a cheesy electronic keyboard and a cheesy singer crooning cheesy songs end-to-end. Don’t need that during dinner, and it really makes Toasty crispy! If you go, ask to sit in the front room, away from the singer. We keep forgetting to do this. I did notice that this particular Max’s is now called Max’s Restaurant and Bar, so I guess they’re emphasizing the bar part. Dennis, you need to get rid of the cheese!

Max’s Restaurant and Bar
1250 Old Bayshore Hwy.
Burlingame, CA 94010-1805
650-342-6297
http://www.maxsworld.com/

Expensive Dinner/Cheap View

Once a year some of the more expensive restaurants in San Francisco participate in “Dine-Around Week,” when they offer fixed price three-course meals for a lot less than their regular prices. I’ve taken advantage of this on many occasions to try the food at restaurants that I would not normally go to.

Last week I saw that some of the restaurants in Los Gatos were doing a similar program, so I thought it would be fun to take Mom to a place we would not usually try. We went to Crimson which I have looked at before but thought their prices were just too high. It’s located in a strip mall on Los Gatos Blvd., near a Trader Joe’s, a pet food store, and a Carl’s Jr., and this brings up an interesting point: Crimson is pretty inside, with red draperies and little twinkly red lights around the windows, but your view is of people strolling by in shorts and flip-flops. It’s a romantic place, but the sight of Joe & Josephine Six-Pack in their tank tops kind of spoils the ambiance.

Crimson’s special menu had three fixed-price dinners, at $25, $35, and $45. Clever marketing: the starter on the $45 menu was “Fondue for 2,” which forces both people to order the most expensive plan. But we were hooked by the idea of truffled cheese fondue, so we went for the top of the line. It was worth it: I saw the truffles in the lovely, winey fondue, but I’m not sure they added anything. Our fillets mignon were rare as requested, tender and buttery, with fresh veggies and mashed potatoes.

The waiter recommended we order one of each of the two $45 menu desserts – crème brulee and chocolate lava cake with a center that oozed hot fudge. We had to wait quite a while for dessert because, as the waiter explained, the first lava cake had burned – each is made to order. Worth the wait. The crème brulee was made in a wide, shallow dish, which maximizes the brulee in relation to the crème.

Delicious, but I don’t think I’ll go back. Too expensive – on the regular menu the fillet mignon is $44.00 a la carte! (No charge for the view of baggy cargo shorts and AC/DC t-shirts.) And Mom didn’t like the white butcher paper over the tablecloths. I tried to explain that it was bistro style and that it kept the tablecloths from getting dirty, but she thought it was “impolite.”

Crimson
15466 Los Gatos Blvd.
Los Gatos, CA 95032
408-358-0175
www.crimsonrestaurant.com

Italian Food

Last week Toasticles was craving Italian food from a typical San Francisco Italian restaurant like the ones his family went to when he was a kid. So we went to a typical San Francisco Italian restaurant – except it was in SOUTH San Francisco.

In my 40-plus years in this area I had never been to Bertolucci’s, which has been sitting at the corner of Cypress and Lux Streets since 1928. In 2005 it became Sodini’s Bertolucci’s, which is kind of awkward. The place has been renovated but still looks like an old-fashioned dinner house, with big booths and decorations consisting of columns, opera posters, and oversized wine bottles.

I ordered Veal Milanese (politically incorrect, I know) which came with a small salad with creamy Italian dressing, garlicky vegetables, and polenta, for $22.00. Toasty ordered the same thing. He does this a lot, which says one of two things: either he has no will of his own and cannot summon the energy to choose his own entrée, or we are so much alike and in sync that we are really one soul in two bodies. Either way, I’m scared. And it annoys me because sometimes I would like him to try something different so that I can taste his.

The food was good, not great. The veal was fried crispy, and even though it was kind of thin it was not overdone. I wonder if it is supposed to be THAT thin, though. We did the early bird thing as Toasty had to get to work by 8:00PM and we are rapidly turning into senior citizens (please stop me before I start putting plastic slipcovers on my furniture). The place was empty when we arrived but full when we left. We’ll probably go again.

I know Toasty felt comfortable there, and I have to admit I was also reminded of restaurants of my youth in Illinois – Italian restaurants like D’Amico’s and Al’s Steak House, places Tony Soprano would find comfortable. Tony would probably like Bertolucci’s as well.

Sodini’s Bertolucci’s
421 Cypress Avenue

South San Francisco, CA 94080

(650) 588-1625
http://www.sodinisbertoluccis.com/