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Pasta Village: Roseville's "Steve Approved" Lunch Deal

Meet Steve. He's my REALTOR and he rocks like no REALTOR has ever rocked, ever. I met him through his wife Heather, who you may know as the intrepid @RosevilleRockLn on Twitter. They're super cool folks and probably two of the most hilarious people I know. 

And unlike most of the REALTORs I've dealt with in the past, Steve actually uses email and text.  If you need a house in the Roseville and Rocklin area, definitely give him a call. Just wait for me to get my house first! Check him out at www.RosevilleAndRocklin.com

 

Steve is a hungry guy and reads Chomple to try to find new places to eat. But he has a problem. All of the good meal deals I ever find are the kinds of food he doesn't really like. I find a great cheap sushi buffet (two of them even)... and Steve doesn't like seafood. I find a cool noodle place, but Steve likes clean bathrooms and servers that speak English. 

One day, we were touring a foreclosed house with an especially fragrant and biologically dangerous swimming pool filled with a dark green soup of chemicals and algae. As we started getting dizzy from the fumes, Steve had a question for me.

Steve: Yod, do you ever find any good lunch deals that I would like?

Yod: What's wrong with the ones I've already found?

Steve: I don't like seafood. And I don't care for restaurants where I feel I need Heather to spray me with Lysol after we eat there.

Yod. Hmm... you know, you're right. All of the good deals I find are either seafood or marginally hazardous to your health.

Steve: Well, I'm going to find you a good "Big White Guy" meal deal you can send everyone in town to. Trust me, I know all the good spots.

As my balance started to fail me, I retreated to the interior of the house, which thankfully smelled more like carpet cleaner than tear gas. I wondered what kind of restaurant Steve would find. Where do REALTORs eat anyway? The way I saw it, REALTORs never ate or slept, and perpetually just wandered the world in their large four door sedans. 

A couple months later, the Chomple crew was headed to a Chinese dive down the street from Steve. We arranged to meet up with him there. Thankfully (for Steve) the Chinese dive was closed on Mondays. (this dive will never see a single review here... ever. We ate there the next day and it was horrible).

We called Steve and told him the place was closed. He said no worries, he had the perfect place:

PASTA VILLAGE

So we headed there.

Upon entering, we were confronted by a sign that advertised their lunch box deal. $7.99 was a great price... but what did you get for eight dollars? According to the sign:

-"Small Salad" assembled by them from your choices a la Plutos/Jack's Urban Eats
-Pick a pasta, sauce, and two vegetables
-Pick an appetizer
-Cookie
-Bread
-Drink

All that for eight dollars? We were expecting microscopic portions. 

We were so wrong.

Here is my "small" salad. That plate is a dinner plate, it's not a small bowl. My salad was romaine, black olives, and peas with a spicy peanut dressing. Everything was fresh and flavorful. 

 
 

Actual's "small" salad of spring mix with tomatoes and cucumbers topped with Caesar salad. She loved this salad, and she's really picky about Caesar dressing.

 
 

Saucy's salad of romaine with tomatoes and tortilla strips in a lime and herb dressing. She licked the plate clean (she loves sauce of all types, ya know).

 
 

Here's my main plate. Rigatoni with garlic butter sauce, mushrooms, and black olives. By garlic they meant GARLIC. Deep fried mushrooms with ranch. Slice of bread and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie. SO GOOD... and it made me full.

 

Actual's bowtie pesto with mushroom and broccoli, side of cheese sticks. She thought this was awesome, I would have thought so as well if I liked pesto, but I don't.

 
 

Saucy opted for penne alfredo with tomatoes and italian sausage. Probably the best of the three.

 
 

Here's Steve with his "small" salad. He's so happy! I guess we've finally found the elusive STEVE APPROVED Roseville meal deal!

 

So, for all of you guys that wanted a great lunch deal free of seafood and unsanitary conditions, here you go, courtesy of super REALTOR Steve Ostrom. He finds great houses and great meals. Maybe I'll have him pick my next pet too.

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Sakuran Sushi: I should just get waterboarded for charity next time.

As many of you remember from my fundraising adventure that ended up with me going raw vegan for a week, there was a whole list of other things I had to do at certain dollar amounts. One of these tasks was to go to my favorite sushi restaurant on Earth and have a meal consisting of California roll. I could not accept anything they decided to comp me because they felt sorry for me. Of course, Girlfriend Actual and Saucy Girlfriend were free to order and eat whatever they wanted. And that they did.

Nothing against California rolls or the people that eat them, but I find them kind of boring. With all of the scrumptious options at a sushi bar, why would you ever want to get a California roll. It's like going to Peter Luger's for a hamburger. Sure, the burger might be crazy good, but wouldn't you rather have the dry aged prime porterhouse every single time?

In any case, you guys paid to see me do this. I sat down at the sushi bar. Our favorite sushi chef started taking our orders. He got to me and I said "California roll." He stared for a second and turned his head sideways. I repeated "California roll!" He shook his head and said "ok... ok ok California roll." On his way back to the sushi making area of the bar he gave a big shrug to the restaurant owner who was in attendance. 

You can tell as he's making it for me that he's wondering what the hell happened to me. Check out the look on his face.

 

And here's his standard California roll. I have to admit, it was really good. And I mean really really good. Their sushi rice is perfect as always. Perfect salt level on the crab salad. Perfect ripeness on the avocado. And rolled to a perfect tightness that held everything in while not compressing any of the ingredients. You know what they say about hiring an architect to build a doghouse: it's a waste of talent, but that's going to be one damn fine doghouse.

 

We didn't explain my forced circumstances to him, so I can't blame him for causing 40 or so of the most painful food minutes of my life. But after he was done with our California roll, the chefs specials started coming across the bar. And of course, I couldn't eat any of them. Charities are a cruel mistress when you sacrifice your palate to help needy kids.

So while I was dining on perhaps the best California roll in California...

Seared diver scallops with raw marinated tiger shrimp. The scallops weren't even really seared, more kissed with the blowtorch. The raw tiger shrimp were crisp and sweet (so I was told) and marinated in some sort of ponzu based mixture. I've feed spectacular amaebi (raw sweet shrimp) to Actual before and she said the flesh of these shrimp was even sweeter. That's actually pretty scary considering that tiger shrimp aren't necessarily the sweetest fleshed shrimp.

 
 

No, seriously, it was that good.

 
    

I was ready to riot at this point. Yes, we get food like this every time we come here. But this time, I couldn't eat it. SUSHI FAIL (for me).

Next up was their take on the much loved pepperfin dish. Some version of pepperfin is on most sushi menus and is usually the only sashimi dish that the California roll crowd will usually try. A traditional pepperfin is some sort of whitefish in sesame oil and lemon juice with some jalapenos (hence the pepper) thrown on top of each slice. Sakuran's version (for today, at least) consisted of yellowtail (I don't know where the hell they get their yellowtail, but it's way better than anything you've ever had guaranteed) in a sauce that was simply out of this world. We could taste ponzu and extra virgin olive oil, but past that we were mystified. Amaaaaaziiinnggg...

 
 

At this point I felt he had to be messing with me a little. Take a California roll, take out the avocado and replace it with tuna. Then put three different kinds of fish over the top and then add tobikko. Yes, it tasted phenomenal. Yes, the girls had to tell me how it tasted because I couldn't have any today. 

 

And then we had the Sakuran Moment(tm).

During almost every meal we have at Sakuran, there's a moment near the end of the meal where something completely unexpected gets handed to us. One time it was a egg salad (the eggs being sea urchin, quail, flying fish, and salmon). Another time we got spanish mackerel sashimi served on deep fried spanish mackerel. Then there was the time they created the much loved and much ordered Japanese Nachos which consisted of tuna tartare on tempura fried shiso leaves (these are now, thankfully, on the menu).

If you're an Apple fan (like me, and UNLIKE Miss Apple HATER Girlfriend Actual Macdeath) this moment is akin to watching a Steve Jobs keynote and seeing that slide that says "One more thing..." pop up behind him. Well, except the last time, which was kind of lame.

This is the plate that was handed to us. We couldn't figure out what it was at first. Saucy refused to eat any before someone else tried it. Girlfriend Actual tried to figure out what it was and said it had to be some sort of sea monster. 

 

But once we had some... oh my God. Saucy, who was completely full, ate three pieces anyway because she couldn't stop.

We jokingly named this dish "Yod's Boss's Favorite Dish" although he has yet to ever have it (obviously). My boss loves two things and two things only at Japanese restaurants: teriyaki and shrimp tempura. If I had come in one day and told the Sakuran crew that my boss was coming in and to create something that would blow his mind, this would probably be the result.

For this dish, they take their perfect tiger shrimp and wrap some tasty vegetables around it. Then they wrap some Korean bulgogi (marinated thin cut steak... see my reviews of Oz Korean BBQ) around that. Then they cover the entire thing in panko crumbs and tempura fry it. For these guys to blow our minds (well most of ours, not mine, since I was eating California roll to benefit the Active 20-30 Club of Greater Sacramento #1032) with a cooked dish is even scarier. I didn't think this place could get any better, but they have. Cooked foods are their bitch now too (raw foods, been bitched for a while now).

Here's what the end result looks like. What kind of mad genius comes up with this kind of thing anyway?

 
 

Not going to link the map and address and phone number, by now you people should know how to get there.

Every night that Mikuni's stays packed while this place is only moderately full...well... it makes me hate this town just that little bit more. And you guys wonder why Chris Webber called Sacramento a cowtown.

Sabores Mexican Cuisine: What is this place doing in Roseville???

For some reason, the Roseville and Rocklin area seems to attract way more spectacular restaurants than would befit a medium sized suburb of what is not necessarily one of the better cities to dine in. If you like sushi, Roseville and Rocklin have a place as good as any in any major city. Want Cantonese food? You actually have more than one world-class option. For Mexican food, the area already has Rudy's. Time to welcome the next "What is this place doing in Roseville?" restaurant: Sabores Mexican Cuisine. For you Sactown people, this place is owned by the people that own Tres Hermanas.

 

The decor is pretty cool. When I sat down I took off my glasses and the wall hanging in the back looked like it had Dora the Explorer printed on it. Stuff looks really strange when you're nearsighted.

 

The usual salsa and chips. Salsa was pretty good, chips were nice and warm. Nothing out of the ordinary, but a solid start to the meal.

 

Saucy Girlfriend's salad. Yes, the veggies really were that colorful. The salad came with a creamy cilantro dressing. Saucy is addicted to cilantro. She guarded the plate like it was jail food until she had consumed all of the dressing using our tortillas.

 
    

Actual and I opted for the soup option, which today was an albondigas soup. The flavors (and not the spicy level, I mean the actual flavors) were cranked up to 11 here. Absolutely spectacular.

 

To the entrees! First up, Actual's still sizzling beef fajitas. The meat was tender and perfectly marinated. Best fajitas we've had in a long time.

 

Fully assembled fajita. Oh, their guacamole is amazing too. But you probably guessed that already.

 
 

Saucy went for the carnitas enchilada with verde sauce. They also offer a mole sauce which is out of this world (I asked for some on the side). Note the jealously guarded plate of creamy cilantro dressing over there on the right :)

 
   

This is my carnitas and chile relleno platter. The carnitas were the best I've had in at least two years. Cooked perfectly and with absolutely megaton nuclear porky flavor. Fork tender and juicy as an orange. Better than the stuff I had on the street in Mexico.

 
 

Even their salt and pepper grinder/shaker is cool.

 

As you might have guessed by now, we're giving this place our RUN DON'T WALK, RUN THERE! rating. Good lord, this place is good. We'll be back, want to come along?

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A day of my food life captured by the worst camera in Chomple history

This morning, I was trying in vain to finish my epic Raw Vegan Week in Review post along with my equally epic All the Dead Animals I Ate After Raw Vegan Week post. Needing to snap a couple pictures for the post, I grabbed my camera bag.

Now, the Chomple camera bag is not like a normal camera bag. A real camera bag would contain a Canon 7D or 5D Mark II along with a bunch of nice L-glass (Chomple fans, remember, Christmas is coming up! LOL). My camera bag is actually a bag of cameras.

The one camera that isn't forced into the squalor of the camera bag is my Canon SX200IS. This little monster produces eye popping pictures with the ease of a Fisher-Price camera (if you have liked any picture I have taken in the last month, it was from this camera). Additionally, it has full manual controls, which is a complete godsend in restaurants. No camera is really smart enough to successfully figure out the lighting conditions in most restaurants (those of you about to post pictures on here from the inside of a weirdly lit restaurant that were taken in Full Auto mode... don't bother. You were lucky, and that's only if your picture is actually good). 

In the camera bag itself you will find a six year old Kodak CX6330. I carry it around because it actually has a pretty great (and foolproof) macro mode. At group dinners, this is the camera that I pass around so those that want to can take pictures of their meals. Believe me when I tell you... this three (yes, three) megapixel dinosaur does wonders with food.

 
 

Also floating around the camera bag is a Sony Webbie HD. I keep it around for when I need to shoot 1080p low motion video, like my nephew playing sudoku. If I need to shoot video I will usually opt for the Canon unless I need 1080p.

And then there's the Mustek. The most useless camera on Earth.

The Mustek MDC4000 arrived as one of the items in a woot.com Bag of Crap (google it!). So I paid approximately two dollars for this camera. That's two dollars wasted.

This is the front of the camera. Note the sticker showing off the very leet features of this digital monstrosity. Digital camcorder! 4x digital zoom!!!!!

 
 

The view from the back. Note the camera's failed attempt at picture playback on the LCD. Also note the extremely ergonomic shape and button layout. Ooh la la!

 
 

The top. Chromed plastic power and shutter release. And check it out... that concrete grey color is actually paint or something... the real color of the camera is dull metal. I guess the paint has been rubbing off on the other cameras.

 
 

Ok, so now you're familiar with the worst camera I've ever owned (and that includes a piece of crap Advantix that I had in college). What do the pictures look like?

A day of Yod's food life, as captured by the greatest camera of them all: The Mustek MDC4000.

Kelly Cline, stop reading here. These pictures will probably decalibrate your eyes and mess up your next week's worth of shoots.

These are some of the drinks I had this morning. Note the... well, everything. AWB is especially awesome in this picture, as I really enjoy everything having a tinge of Incredible Hulk green.

 

This camera supposedly has a macro mode, so I turned it on and took a picture of my vegetable soup.

 

For lunch, we headed to my favorite Mongolian BBQ place, Sizzle. Here is the front of the buffet where you get your meat and veg. Probably the best picture the Mustek crapped out today. Mind you, this picture was taken with blazing daylight streaming in. It looks like a cave in there.

 
   

The guys grilling my food. Apparently a guy slowly rotating around a grill is too much motion for the Mustek.

 

Here's our table full of food. Can't make out what we were eating? I can't either.

 

After work we headed to Grocery Outlet to do some shopping. This is Girlfriend Actual trying out the reindeer horns. Check out the auto white balance performance.

 
   

They have some great name brands at Grocery Outlet. I found this tag on a $20 fleece.

 

Really super healthy cereal.

 
 

This drink is big pimpin.

 

No spa uses 1-ply toilet paper.

 

Finally, I was tempted by this Ultimate Storage Set. Does it come with the hot Natalie Imbruglia clone? I'm guessing not. Boo.

 
    

Raw Vegan: Day 4

 

That's about all I have to say about it today.

 

Raw Vegan: days 2/3, musings on evolutionary theory and cashews.

Remember, I'm doing all of this for charity. You guys raised $750 for a great cause and going raw vegan for a week was what I said i would do. Please consider making a donation to Project Birthday in the name of my gastronomic misery this week,. 

First off, I have to say that if I had to go full vegan without the raw part it wouldn't be a problem. For a week, a month, the rest of my life if all the other animals disappeared I wouldn't have a problem. There are plenty of things to eat and tons of delicious preparations available even when you cut out every animal product known to man. In fact, there's a pack of vegan sausages in my refrigerator that I'm deliciously eyeing for breakfast on Monday morning. I will be able to eat meat again by then, but I think they are stupendously delicious and I don't really care what they are made from.

I have been doing a ton of reading about raw veganism in the past week and have realized that in a way, the entire thing is based off of a very narrow and grossly inaccurate interpretation of evolutionary theory. When it comes to food, I'm a firm believer that you will be much healthier if you eat what your ancestors ate. Pre 1950-ish, people ate whatever grew around them. If your mix of genes allowed you to prosper on your local diet, you lived longer and most likely reproduced more. If your mix of genes didn't work well with the food around you, you probably died younger and may not have reproduced at all. Over any amount of time in this situation, it stands to reason that the local population would be genetically selected to do well on the local grub.

They tried this with the Hawaiian diet. When placed on a diet of traditional Hawaiian foods, Hawaiians lost weight and greatly improved their health. Similar people that tried the diet but were not from the same geographic area didn't do nearly as well.

If you're looking for a diet, I would start with this approach first. Although the more mixed ancestor group you are, the harder it is to isolate which diet you should be following. Girlfriend Actual lost three dress sizes on the Mediterranean diet, eating the same stuff that the Italian side of her family had consumed for centuries. She hasn't tried a Scottish diet yet, and I'm not sure there is one, unless you are to eat nothing but oats, haggis, and the severed limbs of Englishmen.

A great many raw vegan websites and books try to use this approach to justify why raw veganism is healthier for you. They claim it's how humanity has been eating for thousands of years and what our bodies really want. But this isn't necessarily true.

• Humans have been cooking food for a long, long time
• Humans have been eating meat for a long, long time
• Humans have been hybridizing crops for a long, long time. Modern corn is a man-made creation. Nature did NOT give that to us
• You would have to claim that no evolution (food wise) happened since the modern human popped up on Earth. To think that natural selection based on local diet didn't occur during at least the last 4000-5000 years is ludicrous and marginally ignorant

In addition to all that, it seems many raw vegans (and the majority of raw vegan bloggers that I've found) aren't even really raw vegans. Most of them hover around 75-80% raw vegan (by calorie) and reserve 20% for cooked vegan food. In addition, it seems most raw vegans have to go regular vegan or vegetarian during pregnancy to ensure that they have the right mix of vitamins for their baby. Now, call me an ass, but pregnancy and childbirth are sort of your biological imperative. Shouldn't The World's Best Diet(tm) accommodate pregnancy? You would think.

Of course, I tried to find answers to these and many other questions on the many raw vegan forums that are all over the internet. However, that wasn't even possible because every raw vegan forum I went to was full of people arguing whether this product or that product was raw vegan. How much was it heated? The water was heated before being added to the fruit, does that count? Do I need to get a blender with a blade that doesn't heat up while on puree mode? Fermentation of this sort of tempeh will go over 118 degrees... what about that?

And then there was this hilarious discussion on whether freeze drying constituted "cooking".

On and on it went. I wanted to ask how many of them use salt. While traditionally made sea salt is sun evaporated, rock salt is routinely blasted from the earth using explosives (I'm not kidding). Pretty sure that temperature gets above 118.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think a raw vegan diet is a bad idea. I just don't think it's the best idea for most people. Your body is not meant to have a diet this restricted. Vegetarianism and regular veganism are both things I'll probably try for a while in the future, and for a lot longer than a week. Perhaps I'll even try raw foodism without the vegan restriction. 

Don't want to eat other animals? I'm sort of with you. Want to swear off processed food? Great idea. But heat? Heat?

My raw vegan friends out there, you guys really do have my utmost respect for sticking with this lifestyle and remaining healthy. You guys probably put a lot more work into it than I am. 

Nevertheless, you guys paid for it so I'm sticking with it. So, what have I been eating?

These are some wonderful dehydrated shiitake mushrooms. Best snack ever! (not counting beef jerky)

 

Raw cashews. 

 
 

About those cashews... Back when I was a kid, my mother told me never to buy whole cashews. She said that there was no such thing as whole cashews, that the halves naturally split during processing. Whole cashews, my mother said, were just cashew halves that were put into a special gluing machine that sorted like halves and pasted them together. The "glue" was some sort of cashew butter so that the producer didn't have to declare another ingredient on the label. 

I always thought this story was sort of crazy until on one trip to Thailand we visited a factory and lo and behold, there was the cashew sorter gluer machine. Now, I know people in the nut industry (really) who tell me whole cashews really do exist and that what I saw was some scammy nut wholesaler trying to sell his cashew halves at whole cashew prices. Apparently cashew growing and processing techniques have improved of late and the plants now yield a much higher percentage of whole cashews.

But every time I see a cashew like this, I wonder.

  
 

Another raw coconut macaroon, this time with raw cacao added. These things are spectacular. I would eat them regardless of my self imposed dietary restrictions. Note the "yummy tax" bite inflicted by Girlfriend Actual.

 
 

Raw broccoli and Vegenaise. Ok, folks, Vegenaise is a revelation. I'm serious. Vegenaise is the third best mayo I've ever had (behind Trader Joe's and the obvious best mayo in the world, Duke's). And it's this good while remaining vegan. I could eat the entire jar with a spoon. If you love mayo you have to try this stuff.

 

Actual made me sliced english cucumbers with salt, pepper, and chili flake. Amazing. And no, they weren't yellow, I was messing with the white balance on my camera and failed like a total photon00b :(

 
  

I'm feeling ok for now. My energy level has been sort of low but it has improved steadily as my body gets used to a completely different set of foods. I'm sure it will keep getting better as the week goes on.

Lastly, I had to replace the snow leopard default wallpaper on my Mac. The leopard looks way too hungry and has a smidge of blood around its mouth. Every time I saw the picture I thought about steak.

It's been replaced with a much cooler picture :)

 
 

Raw Vegan: Day 1

You all know how hard this is for me, Sir Meatatarian. 

This was my breakfast. I forgot to plan for my raw vegan meal and the company cafeteria didn't have anything but bananas and apples that were raw vegan. Silly me.

 
 

This was my attempt at assembling lunch from the cafeteria salad bar. Two controversial foods in this bowl. The first are the black olives. Most likely they came out of a can, which means they were definitely heated above 120 during the canning process. Also, along with the cold pressed olive oil I used some balsamic vinegar. The grapes are heated at some point in the process of making balsamic vinegar. Whatever. I was hungry!

 

I was still starving by the time we left work hours later. We ended up stopping at three different stores to assemble my raw vegan fantastic dinner.

 
  

Organic raw lemon garlic dill sauerkraut. Amazingly good. Almost overwhelmingly sour between the natural fermentation and the lemon juice. 

 

Raw macadamia nuts. A little harder than the roasted variety but much sweeter. 

 

Kohala won bok kim chee from Hawaii. Not very sour and doesn't contain fish sauce like traditional kimchi (yay for this, so I can eat it this week). This stuff has the perfect salt level for me.

 
   

BEST DESSERT EVER. Raw vegan coconut macaroon. Chewy and wildly delicious.

 

Look at that texture. Now, it's not the best coconut macaroon I've ever had, but it's in the top three. I'm eating the other one RIGHT NOW.

 

Lastly, my wine pairing. Best four dollar wine I've had in a while!