A prospective review of gustatory and taste sensations as observed in individuals with obsessive compulsive traits focused on gastronomy.
Picture from Hiroko Maisuke for New York Times
Let the Meals Begin: Finding Beijing in Flushing
Here’s a nice article that goes along well with my previous post on Asian shaved ice. It also describes a lot of other Chinese food that I really, really, really, REALLY wish we had in the central valley.
EMW Tea Co. sells Asian style shaved ice now, and it far surpasses any form of crushed, shaved, or emulsified ice from the West. Whereas the western notion of shaved ice–whether it be Hawaiian, Sno-cone, Slush Puppy, or Slurpee–uses syrup and ice to make a dessert or prophylaxis against melting, in Asia, shaved ice is taken to the extreme by adding toppings and other tasty confections. So imagine plain shaved ice, akin to a finer version of crushed ice, topped by herbal/flavored jellies, tapioca/boba, fruit, and beans, topped with syrup and/or condensed milk and/or coconut milk. Is your head spinning yet? Or is your stomach churning? When I hear about it, my mouth salivates and my brain quivers at the prospect of freezing.
Whenever I go back to Taiwan for summer, I always have to have a giant bowl of shaved ice topped with various jellies and other confections to cool off whenever its hot and humid (which is everyday). In Taiwan, people like putting jellies and beans on shaved ice, and top it off with condensed milk (which is like liquid frosting) or just simple syrup. There are other variations of shaved ice in other countries, like halo-halo in the Phillipines, and che ba mau in Vietnam (I think it’s technically a drink though).
The shaved ice at EMW Tea Co. is more akin to Taiwanese-style shaved ice, but they also have a pretty good selection of fruits if you aren’t too keen on beans. They also have the options to add a scoop of ice cream instead of condensed milk on top of the ice, for those days that exceed 110 face-melting degrees.
I topped my shaved ice with aiyu jelly, grass jelly, almond jelly, and red beans, and covered it with condensed milk. These jellies aren’t Mr. Cosby’s J-E-L-L-O, but rather, made with more unique ingredients. Aiyu jelly is made from the agar scraping around the Taiwanese fig seed. Grass jelly is made from a plant in the same family as mint. Almond jelly is probably the most tame, tasting like almond syrup, or Amaretto, for those of you over 21. Red beans are mushy and sweet, not lardy and meaty tasting like pinto beans.
So while western shaved ice is just ice and syrup, Asian shaved ice is an icy cornucopia of jelly, chewy, mushy, and syrupy that combine to make one of the greatest ways to cool off on a hot day.
EMW Tea Co. 1133 E Champlain Dr Fresno, CA (559) 434-1268It’s not really a whole week of noodles. I didn’t even have all these dishes this week. But I needed an excuse to put up excessive pictures of food porn. As an added benefit to you, the reader, I’ll add in a quip for each dish, no extra charge!
My mom and I were home one night, and my told me to take my mom out for dinner so she wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of cooking just for two. As usual, we spent a long time debating where to go because there are very few places, as you may have noticed from reading this blog, that the family of fatties will go willingly. And so, after debating the choices, we decided to just stay home and make something simple. I found some packages of ramen and thought we could make some noodles really quickly and add some choice toppings. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ramen, but flat rice noodles, or he-fen. It didn’t really matter to me–after topping it with an egg, some green matter, seaweed, and some bbq pork, it was almost like ramen, except not as declious. But as a lesson to ya’ll, as long as you at least have eggs, seaweed (nori), and maybe green onions, you can make any instant ramen (note: when I say instant ramen, I mean high quality ramen that costs more than 10 cents a bag) into a hearty bowl of noodles.
On another night, she brought home a new noodle dish from our restaurant (China Bistro) for me to try. I think the literal translation is “bird’s nest noodles,” or something to that effect. They take some thin egg noodles and fry them into the shape of a ball/nest, and you’re supposed to dump a bunch of sauce and noodle accessories (i.e. meat and vegetables) to soften up the noodles. If you wait a minute, the noodles will have wilted a bit and safe for consumption. Though if you are more of a daredevil, you can choose to just eat crunchy noodles plus sauce right after combining them for more of a textural delight–crunchy and soft–if you’re willing to risk exposing the roof of your mouth to hundreds of sharp noodle-ends. I am one to do that.
I think it’s being sold as a limited-time special, so get it soon before we stop selling it. However, I think if there’s enough good response, we may make it a permanent menu item (that’s what my dad tells me).
This past week was my last week at work, and I will miss most aspect of it (not the part where I sit down for hours at a time reading about broken necks). But one of the perks I will miss most is the location to such great eats, like May’s Cafe and other keepin-it-real taco shacks. Without work, I wouldn’t really have a good reason to drive 10 miles across town to eat a 6 dollar bowl of noodles.
I’ve been getting bun a lot during the summer, and this time I switched up the toppings (exciting!) from shrimp and pork to egg rolls (super fried-tastic!). I didn’t expect the mountain of egg rolls, but I like cha gao, so I didn’t have problems with the mountain or fried-ness.
And thus ends the week of noodles. It was a good week.
Addresses!May’s Cafe
2327 N Fresno St # 102 Fresno, CA (559) 225-7990China Bistro
2021 W Bullard Ave Fresno, CA (559) 447-8399
Since when did K become cooler than C? Was it because of Kool-Aid? Mortal Kombat? Or perhaps it’s just cute to see a kountry kitchen, and not a country citchen.
It was 1pm on a Sunday afternoon, and we were looking for a brunch place. My original idea was to go to Fresno Breakfast House, but I realized that by the time we got there, it would probably be past 1:30, and the place closes at 2. So we opted for somewhere closer for brunch, and I figured that BJ’s Kountry Kitchen, which is much closer, would serve brunch as well. Even though we go there around 1:15, I didn’t know that they had the same hours as Fresno Breakfast House: 6am – 2pm. I guess these are universal brunch hours. I’ll have to look at Country Waffles to test out my hypothesis.
Walking in, it felt like I was transported back to the South again; there was country music playing and lots of knick knacks decorating the place. But was this really Southern food or country ( aka cowboy) food? There were biscuits and gravy, but I guess that’s where the similarities end. I didn’t see any other Southern staples, like grits, but I was still expecting some hearty biscuits and gravy.
I ordered a chile verde omelette, which was topped with jack cheese, chile verde sauce, and chunks of pork. It came with hash browns and biscuits and gravy. For about $10, it’s a lot of food–enough to feed at least two people, even more if they’re watching their heart health. The omelette didn’t look like an omelette; I don’t think they folded it in half because I found out that the eggs were just one large circle covered in sauce, cheese, and meat (the hash browns covered the other half of the omelette). It wasn’t anything special, but I guess it did taste good. Then again, eggs covered in pork and cheese can’t ever taste bad.
The biscuits and gravy, though, didn’t have any flavor at all. It might be hard to distinguish gravy from biscuit in the picture, but that’s how I felt tastewise. The only difference was that one was creamy while the other was powdery. There wasn’t any meaty flavor in the gravy, and the biscuit-to-gravy ratio was unbalanced, so there wasn’t enough gravy do coat each bite of biscuit.
We also ordered some strawberry french toast, which was also unremarkable. We were expecting fresh strawberries on top of the french toast (that’s what we usually expect when you have to pay and extra $3 for strawberries), but we were given the same strawberries used to top ice cream sundaes–mushy, old, and drenched in strawberry syrup.
For the prices here, I was hoping for quality, but all we got was quantity. Or should I say kuantity? Ha! (pats self on back for being clever)
BJ’s Kountry Kitchen 6700 N Cedar Ave Fresno, CA (559) 298-5456I’ve finally knowingly eaten at Robertito’s, and I’m more convinced than ever that they are owned and operated by brothers (possibly battling it out in a classic match of sibling rivalry for the affection of their mother or just customers). How did I come to this conclusion? You will see shortly that their methods for food preparation are similar and entirely unique to these stores: their tacos are overstuffed, bordering on burrito status, and their burritos are just tacos with a larger tortilla, filled with only meat, guacamole, onions, and tomatoes. Every other place I’ve visited has made tacos that can be folded into a recognizable half-circle and made burritos filled with meat, cheese, rice, beans, and other toppings (because burritos need to be more than just oversized tacos).
And plus, there’s a portrait on the wall showing three brothers with arms around shoulders. Might their names be Robertito, Arsenio, and Alberto?
Since it’s called Robertito’s Taco Shop, I expected a lot from the tacos. I got a carnitas, and since my friend ordered a carne asada burrito, I ordered a fish taco also for the sake of avoiding redundancy. When they first came out on the tray, wrapped in their yellow paper veils, both taco and burrito were almost indistinguishable in size (the taco was only slightly smaller). With the wrapper peeled away, I could see why it was so large: the taco had an overwhelming amount of stuffing, almost as much as a burrito. When folded in half, the tips of the tortilla couldn’t touch without innards spilling out. Now if I wasn’t such a fatty and actually had reservations about eating food that fell out of the taco, I’d be sad to see such a waste of precious pork filling. And the pork was indeed precious-juicy, shredded, and soft, it was leagues beyond the fried carnitas chunks at Arsenio’s. Score one for Robertito’s.
My fish taco was similarly gargantuan in size, with a small salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and onions on top of two fried pieces of fish. The fish was a little dark, either because it was in the fryer too long or because it’s been fried multiple times. Either way, it tasted old and greasy. The fish tacos I had at Arsenio’s tasted-in comparison-slightly fresher and came with a tartar-like sauce, fitting of a product made with a fried fish. Score one for Arsenio’s. As a side note, the tacos at Robertito’s are slightly cheaper at about $2.29 or so.
The first bite of the carne asada burrito had a lot of expectations riding on it: would it be like Arsenio’s and have only meat or would it be like the burritos of famous NorCal and SoCal establishments, containing a harmony of beans, rice, and meat? It was the former, and our hopes were quickly dashed. These are just like Arsenio’s, containing essentially the same fillings of meat, guacamole, tomatoes, and onions. The carne asada itself was extremely salty, and was difficult to swallow without a couple gulps of horchata. My brother said that it wasn’t normally this salty, so it may have been a preparation difference. Anyway, I’ll have to give a both places a tie for their unbalanced burritos.
So how am I going to decide who wins their mother’s-and my-love? Will it be Robertito’s squeaky-clean interior in a new strip mall versus Arsenio’s dingy interior inside an old Burger King? No, this battle will be decided with horchata! Robertito’s horchata is a little too watery and cinnamony for my taste. I think this is what would happen if I mixed Cinnamon Toast Crunch with water and some creamer. And as we all know, water and cereal don’t mix. Therefore, I declare Arsenio’s to be winner by virtue of its superior horchata.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t be crossing Herndon and Blackstone every now and then for some good carnitas.
Robertito’s Taco Shop 4509 N Blackstone Ave Fresno, CA (559) 226-8205Note: Robertito’s and Arsenio’s are probably not related, but then that would eliminate all the drama
I don’t have much to say about Mimi’s Cafe. I don’t want to bash the place too much. This is my third draft of the review, and I don’t want to start over again. There’s some good at Mimi’s (like the carrot bread), but there’s bad at Mimi’s as well (like everything else). Photo note: the lovely shade of brown on all the pictures actually suits the taste of the food.
Let’s start with the carrot bread. Every table gets a basket of bread before a meal that consists of carrot bread and French bread. Let’s ignore French bread because–let’s face it–it’s like comparing a Honda Civic to a Bentley. No one really grabs for the French bread first. The carrot bread is soft, fluffy, nutty, and a little carroty. In fact, I wouldn’t really call it carrot bread because it doesn’t remind me of carrots at all. Actually, I don’t even know if it’s really carrot bread. All I know is that if I ever chance upon Mimi’s again, I would order a side of soup just to get bread, and then leave.
We ordered from their list of menu items that were “the right portion for the right price.” I guess they were copying TGIFriday’s version of Guy Fiere’s revamped menu. It fails because the dishes start out at 10 dollars and none of us could finish half of a dish. It’s probably because there are three servings of from-the-box mashed potatoes on each plate. By the way, we ordered salisbury steak and honey-dijon salmon (I didn’t know mashed potatoes would willingly be paired with salmon). The gravy for the salisbury steak tasted like it was made from powder, and the honey-dijon sauce for the salmon tasted of only honey (mmm…honey and mashed potatoes). We could barely finish half of each dish before we called it quits.
The one topic I do wish to talk about regarding Mimi’s Cafe, though, is its identity. Just what kind of cuisine do they serve? The place screams Cajun and Creole, and I think it even advertises itself as that. When I told my friend, she doubted me, until I pointed a giant sign that had New Orleans, Louisiana, and the fleur-de-lis on it. Yet they had no poboys! The only Cajun and Creole items I remember from the menu were a blackened fish filet and a jambalaya pasta.
Jambalaya. With. Pasta.
The last time I remembered, jambalaya is made with rice. Wikipedia also has no mention of pasta with jambalaya. Now, I know that sometimes I can be pretty picky and traditionalist when it comes to cuisines, but if I go to a place that emphasizes a Cajun and Creole theme, I would like to see more than 1.5 items resembling that cuisine. Actually, I’ll just get the complementary carrot bread next time.
Mimi’s Cafe 7660 N Blackstone Ave Fresno, CA (559) 439-2669
