More Donutty Goodness

I went back to Judy’s Donuts for some more frosted deliciousness, and this time I went with what looked like a something-filled donut bar and a maple donut. I was deceived, however, because my donut bar was filled with more donut instead of something like cream of fruit.

The bar was pretty good; it was cakey and more dense than a regular donut, and it wasn’t overly frosted either, like its bretheren that I devoured previously. I should, however, refer to the donut bar as a donut brick because after eating this one donut my stomach was full, as if the cake had soaked up the gastric juices inside my stomach like a sponge. After eating this one donut, I could barely handle the maple donut. From what I do remember, though, is that the maple was slightly more sugary than the regular frosting, and it wasn’t mixing well the th donut brick inside my stomach. I stopped after eating half the donut for the sake of staving off diabetes for another day. Maple donuts were my favorite as a kid, but I guess I never realized how sweet maple frosting was, or maybe it was because I could tolerate more sugar as a kid. Nevertheless, I will be sticking to Judy’s more lightly frosted donuts in the future.

May’s Cafe

I’ve been told that I’m quite harsh on the Fresno dining scene, if it even is a scene. And I admit that I can be snobby at times, but maybe that’s because unlike many people I’ve talked to, I don’t consider Cheesecake Factory to have good food. Hell, I don’t even like the way they make their cheesecakes, and that’s supposed to be their specialty. There are, in fact, very few places in Fresno that I would willingly frequent on a regular basis, and May’s Cafe is one of them. It’s just a shame that May’s is so far from Northeast Fresno. You see, May’s serves primarily Vietnamese food, a cuisine that has been slowly disappearing from North Fresno over the years, but there were very few in this part of town to begin with. As a kid, I remember always going to Saigon Palace on Palm and Herndon to eat their pho, starting each meal with a shrimp and pork roll and capping it off with flan for dessert. They closed quite a while ago. Kim’s is still on Shaw, although it’s moved from Shaw and Maroa to Shaw and Fresno. But’s it’s still quite a drive. Regardless, the point is that for some reason, Vietnamese cuisine has disappeared from this part of the city, and has been replaced by restaurants like Claim Jumper, CPK, Cheesecake Factory, and Logan’s Roadhouse, to name a few. So while it’s not difficult for me to get an expensive burger or overpriced pasta dish, I would rather drive 10 miles, even in light of high gas prices, for May’s.

What makes it so special? Let’s start with the pho, a noodle soup dish that uses primarily beef stock and beef products. The soup base has a surprising amount of depth of flavor composed of beef, spices, and most importantly, MSG. It’s not as bad as they say it is; it’s just a salt, like sea salt, but infinitely tastier. It’s what gives the soup it’s extra umph. Add in rice noodles, select cuts of beef, and maybe some beef balls (meatballs essentially), along with bean sprouts, some onions, a squeeze of lime juice, and maybe some sriracha sauce, and you have a dish that can be eaten on a cold winter’s night or a hot summer’s day. It’s refreshing, it’s addictive, and it’s because the soup is just able to mesh everything together so well when you stick a spoonful of everything in your mouth at once. Now, I once had a batch of pho where the soup wasn’t as tasty, but it’s highly unlikely that it is. And if such a thing happens, there are other dishes that even my family didn’t know about until I introduced them.

Another dish that they do quite well, and one that I haven’t seen done in Fresno, is bun (pronounced “bwun”), a dish more suited to summer, comprised of rice noodles, bean sprouts, shredded lettuce, your choice of pork, shrimp, or egg rolls, all topped with a fish sauce (it sounds gross, but tastes heavenly). Once my family tasted this, they’ve been ordering it everytime they visit. It’s like a mix between salad and noodles, almost like a cold version of chow mein, but entirely unique. And the fish sauce–yes, I believe it’s made from parts of fish no one wants to hear about, but there’s not fishy taste at all, it’s more vinegary than anything, so imagine a slightly sweet vinegrette–also adds an addictive quality to the dish as well.

The last thing that we ordered this time we were there was a Chinese dish, combination chow fun, broad and flat rice noodles stir fried with everything that you can imagine in a combination Chinese dish. It’s probably one of the best chow funs I’ve ever had in my life, and that’s comparing it to dishes I’ve had in Norcal, Socal, and Asia. One of the main criteria for excellent chow fun is that each noodle has to be coated lightly in sauce, and not stuck to each other in stacks in the dish. The chow fun isn’t perfect, but it comes close. The sauce coats most of the noodles, which are mostly separated, and the dish isn’t too saucy or too salty like other versions I’ve had.

There are many other Vietnamese dishes that they serve here that I haven’t seen served at other Vietnamese restaurants in Fresno, and in my honest opinion, we’re quite lucky to have May’s Cafe in Fresno because it’s probably the next best thing to driving to Los Angeles Chinatown or Westminster for Vietnamese, and I’d gladly choose driving 10 miles over 230 miles any day.

May Cafe To Go

2327 N Fresno St # 102

Fresno, CA

(559) 225-7990

Edo-ya

We made our way across town for dinner at Edo-ya, one of the restaurants we regularly frequent in Fresno. Years ago, Edo-ya used to be called Bando-ya, but I don’t think much has changed besides the name. It’s one of those all-in-one Japanese places that has a sushi bar, dine-in, and teppanyaki. I’ve rarely had a bad experience, although maybe that’s because I tend to order items that are hard to mess up. This time, we chose to have a dinner at the dine-in area instead of teppanyaki. All their dinners come with miso soup, salad with ginger sauce, and a sizeable side dish. I ordered tonkatsu, or fried pork chops. It’s a simple dish, but as I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, it’s hard to resist the seduction of fried pork, or fried food in general. It’s also easier to eat fried food when out because it saves me the hassle of trying to fry food at home; I usually stick to making rice bowls like oyakodon at home.

To accompany my main dish, I ordered more fried deliciousness–tempura–for a side. The other choices available include sashimi, California rolls, and fried chicken wings. For just a side dish, I received a good portion of tempura, much more than I expected: 1 shrimp, 1 broccoli, 1 green pepper, 1 onion, and 1 carrot (give or take whatever I may have forgotten in the past week or so). It was a nice golden color, and had just the right amount of batter that was fried to give a nice crunch, not enough to cut the roof of my mouth. I’d call it a standard version of tempura, not fried with the right technique to give it the crunch without the grease.

As for the tonkatsu, I didn’t expect it to be served in the form of little pork choplets, or oversized pork nuggets. Usually, tonkatsu is served as a single pork chop about half an inch to an inch thick and the size of an open hand, and sliced up in strips. Each of these pork choplets (about 5 or so) were sliced in half, making it easy for a picture of the innards. The panko crust that surrounds each cutlet was a dark brown, not the usual golden brown, which was a hint that the meat had been fried before. Upon taking a bite, grease, not juice, flowed out of the meat, covering everything that touched the surface of the cutlet. After discussing with my mom, who has more experience with cooking (but not eating) fried foods, she revealed that the color of the cutlet, along with the overwhelming amount of grease contained within the pork, was a sign that the meat had been fried previously, and was probably just taken out of the fridge and fried again for the meal. Now, I’m not an expert on making tonkatsu, but I’m sure it can’t be more difficult than 1) tenderize pork, 2) bread pork in panko crust, and 3) fry. And maybe they did make it fresh–then I would need to critique their frying skills, which are severely lacking. The rest of the dish was not very noteworthy, everything from the seaweed to the potato salad tasted like something from a grocery store.

My brother had the pork shogayaki, a dish that is comprised of onions, leeks, broccoli, and thing slices of pork in a ginger-based sauce, and a much better choice. The ginger flavor balances well with the saltiness of the soy sauce, and is the perfect accompaniment to short-grain rice.

I didn’t try my mom’s halibut with house sauce, but I’m sure it was also a better choice than my old tonkatsu. My own dinner experience was a large fail. The rest of the dinners weren’t as much a fail as mine, although it doesn’t inspire me to drive 15 minutes just to get Japanese food here.

Edo-ya Tokyo Cuisine

3050 W Shaw Ave # 112

Fresno, CA

(559) 275-7535

Yoshino in Riverpark

Oh how the mighty have fallen. I remember back in the day when I was a wee little boy, full of wonderment, and always excited to go to Yoshino’s. It’s almost a landmark in Fresno, a restaurant that’s been in Fresno for as long as I remember, when Japanese food embodied all that was exotic and mystic to Fresnans. It was a time when the Japanese Gardens and a handful of Japanese restaurants–all of which were big budget productions that served sushi, teppanyaki, and dine-in–were the only exposure the city had to the land of Nippon. Now, it’s been years since sushi was first introduced to the valley, and years since sushi has taken off in Fresno. But when I say sushi in Fresno, I don’t mean nigiri and sashimi–sushi in Fresno is all about the craziest rolls that people can come up with: filled with cream cheese and tempura, topped with avocado, tuna or salmon sashimi, or mayonnaise-y spicy who-knows-what. In a sense, sushi in Fresno is a bastardized version of traditional sushi that has been created to palates that don’t appreciate the subtlety of real Japanese cuisine but would still like the “healthy benefits of sushi.”

I have to admit, I had expectations when I went to Yoshino in Riverpark, something I guess I should have known better not to have, especially when dining out in Fresno. It’s best to prepare for the worst but hope for the best when going out to many of the restaurants here. The Yoshino in Riverpark specializes in only sushi, and have a conveyor belt for lots of ooh-ing and ahh-ing when you see your desired dishes coming up and hope that someone else doesn’t grab it before you. When we arrived, the sushi bar was all filled, but it was a nice day, so we decided to sit outside on the patio for an intense people-watching-filled dinner. Upon seeing the conveyor belt after stepping in, I was horrified to see the dishes that they served at this establishment. It wasn’t just the over-the-top-unhealthy-disguised-as-healthy-monstrosities that I’ve become accustomed to seeing in Fresno, it was the dishes of fried calamari and what looked like orange chicken that I saw meandering along the belt. What kind of sushi bar has fried food rolling around with sushi? According to my logic, hot food + cold food on the same conveyor = lukewarm soggy hot food and lukewarm cold food after a bit of mixing. I’m just glad none of my food ended up lukewarm on arrival.

After looking through the menu, I realized that much has changed since I last ate at Yoshino. I guess that in order to compete with all the other Korean-owned and operated sushi joints that serve this version of “Americanized” sushi, they had to adapt their own menu to the tastes of customers around here. Most of the menu was occupied by themed rolls with CRAZY~!~!! names inspired by states and random proper nouns. I went against peer pressure and ordered more traditional variations of sushi, a couple orders of nigiri and a unagi roll. On a side note, I don’t know if they’re trying to impress customers and give an air of authenticity by listing nigiri sushi with their Japanese names, but I doubt that any of the waiters there would understand if I ordered hotate and amaebi. In fact, that’s what happened.

On to raw fish! I ordered hotate (scallop), hamachi (yellowtail), sake (salmon), amaebi (sweet shrimp), and an unagi (eel) roll. I was impressed that the amaebii actually came out with the fried heads. I’ve seen it served that way in Los Angeles, but never had the opportunity to try it there. Therefore, I really couldn’t comment on how well it was made, just that they actually came out with fried heads, which I ate. Mmm…shrimp brains and shrimp poop.

The hotate was soft and gooey, and didn’t really have the seafood-y taste that comes with unfresh seafood. I was satisfied because I wasn’t eating old seafood. The same goes for the sake and the hamachi, which did not taste unfresh, but not really fresh either. It really made no lasting impression on me, and wouldn’t really come on the list of things that I randomly crave. The same can be said for the unagi roll.

BUT, if there was one thing that tipped the scale from this sushi being meh to sushi being a sacrilegious bastard child that should be locked away never to see sunlight, it would be the fact that the nigiri was made without the traditional dab of wasabi underneath the sashimi. The way sushi works with its condiments, soy sauce and wasabi, is that normally wasabi is only mixed with soy sauce when eating sashimi, and not with nigiri because it should already have wasabi. Nigiri should only require a dab of soy sauce to enjoy the fish and rice. I’ve never had nigiri sushi without wasabi, and I don’t think I ever will again. I don’t ever see myself going for sushi at Yoshino, or Fresno for that matter. I can do without mediocre sushi made with mediocre sushi rice; even with high gas prices, I would still drive to LA for traditional and well-made sushi.

Yoshino

7776 North Blackstone Avenue

Fresno, CA

(559) 432-4244‎

Chinn’s Garden

This is gonna be a quick post because we just got takeout from Chinn’s Garden, one of the only places that serves real Chinese-style cuisine (not orange chicken or broccoli beef, although I think they serve that as well). Chinn’s Garden is one of the only restaurants I would willingly choose to frequent because it’s a no-nonsense hole-in-the-wall that serves delicious, sometimes saucy, Chinese dishes that I can’t really get anywhere else in Fresno. My favorite dish is pictured here: a clay-pot dish that includes fried fish, chiashu pork, shiitake mushrooms, garlic cloves, and green onions or leeks, bathed in a brown, slightly salty sauce that pairs excellently with a bowl of white rice. It has all the essential food groups that makes a dish delicious: garlic, onions, vegetables, pork, and fried food! If I could describe this dish in a word, it’d be “NOM,” as in “This is delicious nom nom nom!” I forget what the dish is called in English, but it’s on the special paper menu at the restaurant and it’s one of a handful that’s cooked in a clay pot. Most other Americanized Chinese food pales in comparrison to this single dish.

Chinn’s Garden

8048 N Cedar Ave

Fresno, CA

(559) 323-9195‎

Masala

I remember when I first had Indian food. There was nothing extraordinary or romantic about that first exposure to Indian cuisine. In actuality, that first taste came about by way of, “Hey, let’s get Indian.” There was no elaborate story leading up to that foray, no reason for suggesting Indian to my friends, other than that I had seen this restaurant, Brahma Bull, every time I had Japanese food at Edo-ya and we were hungry high school students looking for a cheap buffet. The moment that first spoonful of curry hit my tongue, there was a moment of enlightenment–it wasn’t a Eureka! light bulb type of moment, but rather that feeling of finally being able to establish a link that interconnected many of the flavors and spices that I’ve enjoyed gorging on: curry powder. Up until then, I didn’t know that all the different variations of curry that I enjoy so much–Japanese, Chinese–came from Indian cuisine.

Now, regardless of how much I smell and how much my gut suffers afterwards, I am confident in saying that there is hardly ever a time where I am not up for eating Indian food (other foods on the list include: Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, and Southern–actually, what isn’t on this list?) However, I am in no way an expert, or even well-versed, in the cuisine. Although comfortable ordering on my own, I still welcome the opinion of my Indian friends when looking over a menu, and I’ll readily admit that my palate, can only distinguish between delicious and pretty delicious when it comes to Indian spices.

Masala was given a “Best of Fresno” award, which led me to have at least some expectations when I chose to eat there with a friend. Fresno doesn’t have too many Indian restaurants, to my knowledge, so I didn’t know what type of edge the restaurant had to win such an award over others. The restaurant was quite empty when we entered. Was it an indication of what was in store? Or was it because most people would choose to eat at neighboring Hooters and Red Robin instead? From my experience, it may have been a mix of both.

The samosas we ordered looked like any other samosas that I’ve ever had: a quasi-pyramidal chunk of vegetable matter wrapped in what seems to be a giant wonton skin. After a couple bites, subtle differences were noticeable, even by my uneducated Indian palate. First, the filling was almost entirely potato. Other versions of samosas I’ve had also had potato, but they also had a good amount of other vegetables to add a little variety to color and texture, not to mention making me feel better for eating a giant ball of fried potato. In addition, the skin was a little chewy, possibly because the samosa had been taken out of the fryer abruptly, not allowing the entire skin to be fried. I’m not so sure if that’s how they’re usually made, but that layer of unfried dough has never been evident in the past.

For our main dishes, we ordered an eggplant dish, not unlike in consistency to what I would normally get at Trader Joe’s, and malai kofta, what I would describe as seasoned vegetable balls in sauce. I’ve become a fan of malai kofta ever since a good friend of mine introduced the dish to me in college. Now, it’s almost a requisite dish whenever I eat Indian, even taking the place of a meat dish. It’s a dish that’s drowned in a buttery and savory sauce, sprinkled with raisins and nuts, that should usually be poured and mixed with any leftover rice and devoured immediately after all the substance of the dish (the vegetable balls) has been eaten. The malai kofta were softer than what I had had at other restaurants, which almost had the quality of mush, in my opinion. I would’ve preferred it to have some more density to it. The sauce, which I think gives each dish a unique personality, was too salty. Even on the rice, I couldn’t stomach the thought of eating all the sauce without popping a couple anti-hypertension pills.

The eggplant (I really wish I had a better photo and the actual name of the dish), on the other hand, was much better, because I expected it to be a dish of just mush, which is usually the state of eggplant I usually prefer to eat. I wasn’t too spicy or salty, and had a good balance of spices which lent it a strong flavor that could be balanced out by naan or rice, but it wasn’t necessarily required. I know that Indian food is usually unique because of it’s spices, which lends a bold kick to many of its dishes, but this was the best dish out of all the ones we ordered, and it was so by leaps and bounds by way of its subtleties.

My last beef (ha!) with Masala, which I believed to be an unforgivable sin, was that they served us short/medium-grained rice instead of basmati rice with our dishes. Maybe my expectations have been built up too much because every other Indian place I’ve been to has served basmati rice, but whether it is standard or not, I would really prefer to have basmati rice with my Indian food. Growing up in an Asian family, I’ve learned to appreciate and discern the different types of rice available in different cuisines. If I’m not going to get my basmati rice at an Indian restaurant, then I might as well eat some Trader Joe’s Spicy Eggplant at home, accompanied by short-grained Japanese rice. Did I mention that Masala’s eggplant was only marginally better than Trader Joe’s?

Masala Indian Cuisine

7735 N Blackstone Ave

Fresno, CA

(559) 431-0060‎