chomple.com

The Ferry Building: An organic manufactured experience?

The Ferry building in San Francisco is pretty much a foodie wonderland. Several artisanal producers of delicious food have opened stores there. It's like an all-star team of food.

That being said, I know many food-types that despise this place. To them, the Ferry Building is some sort of contrived Food Epcot where some bastardization of artisanal food has been cobbled together to create a fake theater-like experience for tourists. Hey, fat mayonnaise eating Midwestern foodie wannabe idiot that watches Food Network, come to our little food theme park where you can try a bunch of stuff you've only ever seen on television.

I think that's bullpucky. Makers of anything need to sell their stuff somewhere. It's not exactly a bad idea to open your storefront near others selling similar goods. It doesn't mean you've created some sort of contrived place, it just makes it easier for me to blow my vacation budget at once instead of wandering the streets of SF and Oakland trying to find the hidden alley storefront of the guy that makes the best saltines in the Bay Area.

Our first stop was Boccalone, a salumeria based in Oakland. Before they opened this outlet, the only way that you were able to sample their stuff was to join their pork club and pick up deliveries every few weeks as your products were ready. Luckily for the rest of us that don't have a budget that accomodates a subscription to cured pig they opened an outlet in the Ferry Building.

Note the jawsome meat slicer...

They also do deliveries, apparently. This is the custom bike that they use.

Here are our $3.90 meat cones. The two on the right are sampler cones. They contained a variety of different dry cured salamis and a portion of some sous vide city ham. The cone on the left was their prosciutto cone. Last time we were here their house prosciutto wasn't ready yet. It's finally here and was as luscious as we expected it would be. Depending on your taste in prosciutto, this is either as good or better than most of the offerings from San Daniele or Parma. It's not as good as full-acorn Iberico, but nothing really is.

Of course, you can't eat all of that meat without some bread, so we headed to the Acme bread outlet down the hall. For once the line wasn't obnoxious, although as usual they were out of 50% of the sandwiches they sell. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone gets a sandwich here as Boccalone also offers sandwiches, and I'd much rather buy a sandwich from a meat producer than a bread producer. 

Next stop was Cowgirl Creamery. This place is always so packed you can barely move... it's like the bastard child of a cheese shop and a Ginza sidewalk. Their selection of cheeses is pretty huge and they have a team of very knowledgeable cheesemongers. Actual decided to skip the aged cheeses and went straight to the fresh cheese cooler. We got to try most of what was in there and the cheeses were all amazing.

So here's our final haul. The brunello we brought from home :)

Here's a closeup of the Nduja. There's seriously something very right about spreadable salami!

Thai Chili: Virtual Mother Actual vs. Bad Thai Food

We went into this restaurant suspecting that it might be a total disaster. The Chomple team usually picks restaurants by consulting yelp.com. Once in a while we will find a restaurant that has obviously fake reviews. We first saw this disturbing trend regarding Guy Fieri's Exxon Valdez of a restaurant, Johnny Garlic's. The reviews for this temple of fail were 1-2 stars until a bunch of five star reviews showed up out of the blue. All of them were very short and none of the users had pictures or profiles. The best part was that none of those "reviewers" had any other reviews. Apparently they were so taken by the slop served at Johnny Garlic's that they took the time to register on Yelp to review only one restaurant, and never again return to the site. Yeah, right. One of these fake reviewers actually took the time to report me to Yelp for... get this... pointing out that their restaurant had a bunch of fake reviews.

This reminds me, I promised you guys I would put on a disguise and go back to that compost pile. I will do that soon...

In any case, Thai Chili has the same thing going on their Yelp reviews. Not as many as Johnny Garlic's, but it's the same MO. 

As most of our readers know, I have a strange idea of what constitutes a good restaurant and what constitutes a bad one. In a corporate sense, one would describe my restaurant taste as using significantly nonstandard metrics. 

The women in my life also have what one would call nonstandard metrics. Girlfriend Actual has the least nonstandard standards as far as I'm concerned, and my mother probably has the most skewed worldview when it comes to restaurants.

Because of this, I can't really think of a single restaurant I've ever eaten at where all three of us would theoretically agree one way or another.

As far as I'm concerned, I really don't care whether the restaurant is good or bad. It just has to be interesting. I hate boring restaurants and I despise mediocrity. As long as I leave a restaurant with a good blog post and a few entertaining stories, I don't really care.

The women are more discerning.

When it comes to Girlfriend Actual, she wants good service and bold flavors. Being anosmic, overly subtle flavors are lost on her. 

And for my mother... well that's more complicated. Let me paraphrase her rules for "good restaurant". Forgive me for the engrish, but that's how she sounds in my head and I'm trying to be a good journalist:

MOTHER ACTUAL'S RULES FOR GOOD RESTAURANT:

1. No good decor. If good decor then instead pay for food you pay for decor. You go eat to pay for food. If you want pay decor then go decorate your house. (Remember that most "good" restaurants in Southeast Asia are concrete enclosed dives packed to the gills with hungry people... there's no such thing as a restaurant that people actually go to where they will admit the food is mediocre but they still go anyway)
2. No cheap food. You can eat rice and chicken at home. If you go outside eat should get something that cost money like shrimp. (Thai people always compare foods based on their unit worth to shrimp, I've never understood this)
3. Thai food should be taste better than mine. Otherwise just pay me to cook for you.

Now, before you ask, Mother Actual was not with us at the restaurant. But having eaten at countless restaurants with her, I have sort of an internal Virtual Mother Actual that critiques restaurants real time as I dine. It's pretty funny or pretty disturbing, depending on how you choose to look at it. 

The Decor

Me: This is the interior. Nice space... looks like every other neo-Asian restaurant in California. But I'm not going to fault them for decorating

Girlfriend Actual: This is comfortable. The tables aren't cram packed in like some Asian restaurants. The decor is cute.

Virtual Mother Actual: You see? They spend money at decor store and charge stupid price for Thai food. This is Thai restaurant. I feel like we are eating Ikea. Also is very dark in here. You pay extra to eat in Ikea cave. If this place is own by Thai they are living America too long.

  

The tom yum soup

Me: This is disgusting. Tom yum should be sour and spicy and this is neither. It tastes like hot water with a little bit of chili flake and water thrown it. If you rinse out a pot that you've used to make a proper tom yum, it might taste like this. Foul. I had one bite.

Actual: Um, I don't like tom yum but I super don't like this. It doesn't taste like anything. They've even managed to make the tofu taste more bland than normal.

VMA: [insert Thai swear words] This horrible. You know, when he's kid, Yod call this soup "Wake up soup" because the soup have such big flavor. This soup I think make from water and grease. Maybe call "Go to sleep soup" or something. Is strange they are serve tom yum, everyone know that white people only want to eat tom kha gai soup make with coconut milk.  I bet they too cheap to using coconut milk, so they just make tom yum, except they are so cheap so no spice, so I call this Thai water soup. When we leave I will yelling at Yod for pay money to eat here.

The Potstickers

Me: roflcopterz they are serving Chinese style potstickers at a Thai restaurant. Guess they're too lazy to make Thai kanom jeeb. WOW they are bland. Obviously made in-house, no company would mass produce dumplings this bland and be able to stay in business.

Actual: Yay potstickers! Wait, these suck. Ewww.

Work: They even managed to mess up the dipping sauce. That's just ridiculous.

VMA: Ever since he was teenager I tell Yod to meet nice Thai girl for wife. He never meet Thai girl, not even Asia girl, always white girl. Maybe he wanting to eat hamburger for the rest of his life. So I laughing when he complain that his girlfriend order potsticker everywhere. White people don't know different kind of Asia, they just think all look same and have same food. Potsticker is like order chicken finger at every restaurant. Is so sad, Thai people have their own kind of dumpling, but this place do not serving. Also no flavor, it tasting like eat plain rice. This food is so bad. I think they needing Gordon Ramsays television person to yell at their kitchen.

Yellow curry with chicken

Work Girlfriend: Here, I arranged it all nice for your picture. Let me taste it... omg... this sucks. It doesn't taste like anything. I ordered this mild but it's actually really spicy, but that's the only flavor. This is just spicy yellow water, no coconut either, which is why it's so watery and bland.

Actual: That's seriously disgusting. It's almost as bad as mine.

Me: Maybe they think yellow food coloring has its own flavor?

VMA: No way there is Thai people in the kitchen. Is not possible to make a yellow curry with no flavor and no smell. It taste like nothing. Just water curry. You know, if Yod follow direction and marry nice Thai girl, she can make good yellow curry and he is not pay ten dollar for bad curry like this. I try to tell him...

Me: Girlfriend Actual makes better yellow curry than you do, mother.

VMA: Ok, but she have career instead of make you curry all the time. Then you have to pay for yellow water curry at bad pretend Thai restaurant.

Me: That's not a wife, that's a servant.

VMA: Yes... you right. Even servant can cook better curry than this place that you pay for decor.

Me: Um, that's not...

VMA: Next dish, please. I want to see what else disgusting you waste money on eat.

Green curry with pork

Actual: This is disgusting. The pork is so overcooked it's like jerky. Even Ebby wouldn't be able to chew through this.

Work: That's gross.

Me: It's very bland. What flavor is there, isn't very good.

Actual: I can't eat this anymore. It actually tastes like I vomited in my mouth.

VMA: Good job, son. You pay money to eat somewhere tasting throw up. If you want to taste throw up you can eat Mack Donald and then throw out and taste same. Is cheaper. This is not good Thai restaurant. You pay for Ikea decor and then pay for eat throw up. This must be new American restaurant concept. I bring you somewhere look nice and then you throw up. Then you pay me and I very happy. Maybe I opening this throw up restaurant, you can come spend money on mom's new business. I call "Mom's Throw Up Thai". At least I know you will come eat and throw up every day.

Panang curry with beef

Me: No surprises here. Overcooked beef and the curry is so bland I can't taste a hint of peanut. Considering peanuts are a huge part of a normal panang, that's really disturbing. Oh, and this is what I would consider "Medium Hot" even though I ordered it mild. Maybe when I said mild they thought I meant mild flavor instead of mild heat. I ate maybe 4 bites of this.

Actual: That's like a big bowl of nothing.

Work: That doesn't taste like anything.

VMA: Of course my son order something with peanut. In America everyone thinking if peanut then must be Thai. But peanut very small part of Thai food. But white people eat the same Thai dish like pad thai and satay, and they having peanut, so white people always assume Thai is have peanut. Anyway, this curry have no flavor like everything else. This restaurant, I think they make you choice, do you want no flavor or you want throw up flavor. They should just ask when you are order. "Bland or Throw up?"

This place is called Thai Chili and it's in Rocklin. I'm not giving you the address or the number because I want any of you to go there. I just need to make sure that people googling the restaurant see this review.

And I rarely post bad reviews on here period, as I prefer to feature places you will actually want to go. And I'm rarely this harsh. But this place was horrible, and the clearly fake reviews they have on Yelp really piss me the f*ck off.

Thai Chili Restaurant
2164 Sunset Blvd
Rocklin, CA 95765
(916) 780-6555

VMA: You doctor or engineer yet?

Me: No. I work in business process reengineering.

VMA: No real job and like to eat at throw up restaurant!

Me: I'm turning you off for a while...

Borobudur: Nine courses of rijsttafel heaven!

I've been looking for a good rijsttafel for what seems like decades. It actually has been close to that long.

Now, before I get into what a rijsttafel is, let me remind you that I am far from what you would consider a proper food historian. Although I don't really believe that food history is anything but an entirely elastic dance with recorded truth, I would feel bad if someone cited me in a paper and got yelled at by their knowitall teacher with a MFA in "watching Food Network"...

Rijsttafel means "rice table" in Dutch. The story goes something like this: back in the days when Indonesia was a Dutch colony, once in a while the Dutch Colonials would decide that they had a hankering for some local food. Not knowing what the white people would want to eat, their staff would just arrange a huge number of dishes on a table, letting the colonials taste a wide variety of dishes and hoping that at least a few would strike their fancy.

Most proper Indonesian restaurants will offer a version of rijsttafel. I've had rijsttafels of up to 50 dishes. But I haven't lived in a city with a good Indonesian restaurant. Luckily, we spent the weekend with F+ Girlfriend (named so because she's the only teacher/professor I've ever known who has admitted to giving a grade of F+) and her hotel happens to be around the corner from San Francisco's best Indonesian restaurant: Borobudur.

I'm going to make a plug right now for F+ Girlfriend's hotel: The Mayflower Hotel. It's situated in a remarkably awesome location if you're a foodie. From the front door, turn right and you'll find yourself in the financial district. Keep going and you're at the Ferry Building. Turn right then left, you're in Chinatown. Turn right then right, and you're in SOMA. Turn left and you're in Nob Hill. There are so many phenomenal restaurants within a 1 mile radius I can't even begin to think about how long it's going to take to eat at them all.

A full writeup of the Mayflower will come in a couple weeks when I have the energy to roam the property and take enough pictures to do the place justice.

Back to the business at hand. We headed to the restaurant which was basically around the corner from the Mayflower. The group consisted of yours truly, Actual, F+ Girlfriend and her husband: Finnish Blues Boyfriend. Note that I wrote Finnish Blues Boyfriend NOT Finnish Metal Boyfriend. Apparently Finns can do crazy things with a guitar no matter what genre of music they're playing. We had the pleasure of hearing him play with Lady Mem'fis the night before at an art exhibition.

We arrived right at opening and were glad we did. The place was packed solid twenty minutes after we arrived.

All of us got the rijsttafel. Nine full courses of awesome.

Course #1 consisted of lumpia with a dipping sauce. The lumpia were pretty standard. On the other hand, the sauce was crazy amazing. I can only describe it as a best-outcome forced genetic pairing of satay sauce and thousand island dressing. F+ was freebasing this stuff as we waited for the second course.

Course #2 was a lemongrass soup. This was honestly pretty boring. It looked cool, though.

Rice was brought out to go with the main dishes. This was of the standard Asian restaurant medium grain blah blah blah variety rice. I don't know which distributors are pushing the use of this rice, but it sucks. It's too dry, isn't clumpy enough, has NO flavor and also isn't very absorbent. Using quality rice is not noticeably more expensive on a per-diner basis but is significantly better on the meal enhancing scale. Places that use this cheap McRice make me wonder what else they are skimping on.

Courses #3-5. The one of the left was a braised beef in chili sauce dish. This had a surprisingly complex flavor. The sauce had a sweet entry followed by a low burn, then ending with something like the aftertaste of a good natural oyster sauce. In the middle was a pretty standard chicken satay, although unlike most other places that serve chicken satay, this satay was actually moist. On the right was a tofu stir-fry. By my guess the tofu cubes were a combination of fried regular tofu cubes and cubes of dense pressed Chinese tofu. Both were cooked in a very interesting sauce that had slight plum notes. My favorite dish of this flight.

Course #6-8. On the left were chicken thighs in a very spicy sauce. These were phenomenal. Although there were two chili pepper icons next to the chicken on the menu, I didn't remember this until Actual laughed at my poor sweating visage. The middle plate was some sort of shrimp stir fry. It looked pretty standard but seasoning was spot on and really brought out the flavor of the shrimp. On the right was some sort of vegetable and brown sauce concoction which was much better than it looked. Note F+ Girlfriend's "Can I #$#$^#$ eat some food already" pose.

Course #9 was dessert. Black rice cooked to a perfectly viscous texture was the base. I've cooked black rice for a dessert before and it is extremely difficult. Undercook it and it is just foul. Overcook it and it turns to mush and your diner doesn't get the awesome individual grain texture. There's a three minute window when cooking black rice that will result in the perfection that was served to us. On top of the rice is a coconut milk mixture which was sweet and delicious. Although I'm sure it was just a phantom flavor, it tasted like some sort of genetically enhanced Nestle Quik was added to crank up the flavor even more. We loved it.

This is another rare "Run, don't walk there" reco from me! 

View Larger Map

Mizu: The "good enough" sushi buffet

Having worked in the tech industry for almost a decade now, I've become intimately familiar with the concept of "good enough". The logic goes that nobody really occupies the low or high rung in the industry. With the industry being as commoditized as it is, there really is no low rung. The middle is the low rung. Nobody occupies the top rung either (except for maybe Apple). Diminishing returns are something you have to be perpetually aware of, as your customers are very likely to not appreciate whatever feature  you spent the extra money on, but are going to be very grumpy about having to pay extra.

So the competition becomes about not who can come up with the best product, or the cheapest product, but the company that can best deliver the "good enough" product that hits that happy inflection point between cost and quality. Some companies do it very well, and in crappy economic times they do even better.

Unfortunately, the "good enough" zone of the restaurant world is populated with an endless plethora of chain restaurants with generic menus and consistent if not impersonal service. It's not all that exciting. Recently, more and more restaurant types are starting to explore the good enough space. Mizu is one of them.

Most regular readers of this blog know that I have local access to one of the best sushi places in the world, Sakuran Sushi. I would eat two meals a day there if I could, but the bottom line is that despite what a lot of you think, my food budget is not unlimited. Sometimes I just want some sushi, but I don't have a pile of money lying around so I can moan my way through a plate of toro. When I'm in this kind of mood, Mizu is where I go.

The Mizu we went to today is actually the renovated space of a really dirty, disgusting "Asian Seafood Buffet" that was put out of business by the first Mizu that opened a few miles away. I'm happy to report that the change in ownership has brought with it a completely new space and food that's actually pretty good.

This is my first plate of sushi. A smattering of different rolls, a bunch of nigiri (they use the fattiest salmon on Earth at Mizu) and some seared tuna. Nothing was mind blowing, but it was all high quality stuff and nothing like the denatured cat food that passes for sushi at most buffets.

This is Actual's hot food plate in the foreground. Along with the two dipping sauces she has potstickers, tempura shrimp and vegetables, chicken teriyaki and some other stuff. Her plate of sushi is behind it.

My second sushi plate. They put handrolls out that contained fresh deep fried shrimp. They were amazing.

Section one of the sushi bar. The top row items from left to right are mackerel nigiri, tobikko, some sort of octopus concoctions, then some varied sushi made with various salads. Bottom row starts with tamago. This is a fluffy chunk of egg on rice. Many traditional sushi mavens will tell you that the tamago is the true test of a chef's skill. It was actually pretty good here... as good as it would be at any traditional sushi place which means it was phenomenal for a buffet. Then there's inarizushi, rice that's been stuffed into a tofu skin. Last two items are seared tuna.

Section 2 of the sushi buffet consists of straight up single fish nigiri. All of the choices were fresh, again, surprising for a sushi buffet--although the turnover here is enough that they can keep things fresh. The aforementioned salmon is so fatty I think it had to have been farmed in water spiked with lard (this is not a bad thing... fish fat is tasty and good for you). The tuna is very generic, fresh, but like a slab of McFlesh. 

Sushi bar section three... the roll section. Too many to list here, but all of the usual suspects from a usual sushi menu are present. They have a particularly good tempura roll, something I usually hate at most other sushi places.

For the non sushi eaters with you, there's a hot food bar that's better than most small Chinese buffets that don't have a sushi component. This is a really good thing if you have someone in your lunch group that hasn't made it to the 90s yet and doesn't eat "bait".

This is Actual's dessert assortment. In the foreground is her green tea ice cream. The plate contains some moist cake, a cream puff and a smattering of fruit. She says it was pretty good.

So, back to the whole good enough thing I was talking about. How much does this place cost?

$30.00?

$15.00?

How about $8.95 per person for lunch!?!

I love California.

View Larger Map

Utopia Grill: The place where I actually ate a healthy meal.

Anyone familiar with my eating habits knows that I don't tend to eat food that one would describe as healthy. Also, I'm not really one to consume food that would be categorized as American. So the fact that I had a meal at a place that serves healthy American food might strike you as a bit odd. 

That is, unless you know about why Barbie Girlfriend was recruited in the first place. You see, Girlfriend Actual was tired of eating ethnic food for every meal. On top of that, Actual was tired of eating at places that had very few healthy eating options. Barbie Girlfriend, being as close to a flesh and blood Barbie as we have on staff, exists as Actual's quorum winning vote when it comes to getting healthy American food.

So we found ourselves at Utopia Grill. Or at least I was there with Actual. For the second time in a row, I told Barbie the wrong destination for lunch. Barbie drove over and we went inside.

The interior is standard California Healthy Grill. This kind of put me off, only because most restaurants of this genre have horrible food. Generic salads, baked everything, all the meats dry as sin. I wasn't encouraged at this point. Boy was I wrong.

Showtime started with their bacon fries. They actually have a name but all I can remember is the bacon. I don't know who their bacon supplier is but the bacon they are using is phenomenal. It's listed as applewood smoked bacon on the menu. Trust me, I know my bacon. I used to be a member of the absolutely indulgent Bacon of the Month Club from Grateful Palate. The bacon is that good. Unfortunately, since this place is a healthy restaurant, they won't just serve you a giant plate of bacon. Actually, they might. I'll have to try next time.

This is one of their Awesome Sandwiches. I don't remember what the name of this sandwich is, other than that both Barbie and Actual described their sandwiches as "AWESOME!". I took a bite and agreed. And I HATE sandwiches. The bread was great and the meat was even better.

Here is my platter. Had you just laid this down in front of me without Barbie and Actual watching I would have gotten up and headed to the nearest BBQ joint. But I was on my best behavior. Once I tasted the food I was happy. The mashed potatoes were perfectly creamy and spiked with garlic. The roasted vegetables were great. The tri-tip had megaton beef flavor and was moist. And the chicken? Despite my natural impulse to hate it, it was moist and tender. These people work magic with low-fat meat.

The food should have stopped there, but on the way in I spotted a wood burning pizza oven. I can't turn down an honest to goodness wood fired pizza. This is their bacon, parmesan and artichoke pizza. It was the best pizza I've had since Fosco's closed down a few months ago. I'm just going to let the picture do the talking. It tasted about 450% better than the picture looks, and the picture looks super tasty. You're going to want to click and enlarge this picture. 

If you want a restaurant that can make magic, this is your place. That is, if you think making me eat a healthy meal and liking it is a magic trick. I would say it is.

View Larger Map