Todd36

They like using a small cast iron frying pan to serve things in, and probably cook them as well. The Gyoza were quite good, thin skinned, true Japanese style. Dining friend was Japanese, from Tokyo. We also had the BBQ chicken, which was served skin on, in the same kind of pan. Cold pumpkin was also quite good, as was the pancake. Overall, at least as good as any Izakaya in NY. probably better food. It does not have an extensive Sake list, probably six kinds. Enough, probably keeps things fresher. It describes itself as an Izakaya. Seems to be proud of its pig trotters, which we didn't sample. I also suspect it may be run by a husband and wife. Husband handlesthe fish, wife (I think) cooks in the open kitchen. I'll be back.

It's at 11 Barrow Street. Odd hours, closed Mondays, opens at 6PM, open until 1-2 AM. Very Japanese. Not a Ramen place, just two types on the menu (and I didn't try it today, Minca experience was still on my mind). It's an Izakaya. More later.

Pretty poor assumption that all of us are white folks. Yes, I am familar with Ramen. The Japanse consider ramen to be Chinese food (it's a fairly recent import), although it sure is popular among Japanese. I had lunch today at Minca, which was a bad idea because their soup is too greasy. Matter of fact, I eat Korean food about twice a month and Japanese food twice or three times a week. Japanese food is less salty than Korean. For one thing, while Japanese cusine has pickels, you tend to get about an oz of them, as opposed to the mountain in a Korean meal. Plus Japanse cooking doesn't usually include the pickel in the food itself, it's a condement on the side. The dominant flavoring ingredent in Japanese cooking is probably dashi, which is not soy sauce or fish sauce; it's water boiled with dried kelp and dried fish flakes which is then drained. Among other things, it's the base for miso soup. It's not as salty as Southeast Asian fish sauces or soy sauce. Japanse soy sauce is also usually not as salty as its Japanese counterpart. The one really salty thing in Japanese cooking is miso. The sodium issue with Korean food is that it is very difficult to find dishes that are not either served with hot pepper paste (all BBQ and rice dishes), or a soy based dipping sauce (dumplings, pancakes and the like), or pickels (lots at every meal, and included within some dishes) or is not marnated in a salty sauce (most BBQ). I have a rather large group of Japanese friends, they all thing Korean food as served in NY is salty. I also have lots of Korean friends, most of them think Korean food as served in NY is salty. I am serious, the salt level I think is a major factor in limiting Korean foods popularity. I'm also rather less than convinced about the low fat thing, at least the versions we get in NY. I just had dinner tonight at Rockmeisha, and their BBQ chicken is served skin on with plenty of fat and their menu includes dishes such as Fried Chicken and various Katsu dishes, not to mention the general Japanese like of fried food, such as tempura and crocettes. And last time I looked, Korean cooking featured things like Pork belly and lots of beef. They can both be salty and fatty. I actually usually don't take food home with me from restaurants, because I usually don't go staright home after dinner. Therefore, if the dumpling portion is too large, I simply will not order it. I can't imagine taking a Korean pancake home, that would get rather nasty I am afraid. Thai food is not a fair comparasin to anything, coconut milk makes anything taste good (which is why I think Thai food is popular in the US) and I sure wouldn't describe Thai food as lowfat. Countryside Asian cooking may be low fat, meaning a bowl of rice with a bit of cabbage pickel and steamed fish. Or as some of my friends who grew up in Bejing vintage 1980 said, it was a typical winter meal. They don't serve that sort of thing in NY......

It's not the family style concept that bothers me, it's the fact that in 9 out of 10 NY Korean restaurants, starter type dishes come in one size, and that's large. Dumplings and seafood pancakes come to mind, 10 inch diameter panckaes and 15 dumplings to an order. If you have two people, it makes it very hard to order either one of those and then have something else as a main and then finish it. I can't tell you how many times I've asked if it comes in a smaller size and been told no. Most Chinese restaurants have 4-6 dumplings to an order. The sodium content in the food adds up...every dish is salty because as far as I can tell, everything used for flavor in Korean cooking is salty. And some quick research on the web indicates that your average Korean main dish seems to have over 2000 milligrams of sodium, and that's in just one serving of the main dish alone.....

Korean hot pepper sauce is very salty. The typical American hot pepper sauce has medium to low sodium (Tabasco has almost none). It's a very salty cuisine and every flavoring ingredent (soy sauce, miso, red bean paste, pickels) is very salty. That's got a lot to do with why it isn't a best selling cusine. And given people's views of carbs and white rice, I wouldn't hold my breath on bibimbap. The dish that has the most breakthrough possibility I think is Bugoil. The problem is that someone already did a dumbed down version of grilled meat Asian style served over rice with a sauce, it's called teriyaki and you can find it in many food courts.

The pricing issues are partially related to portion size---for example, the concept of an appetizer size portion of dumplings in your average Korean restaurant does not exist. You have better want 15 dumplings for $12, because that's all they have. It's a cultural thing according to my Korean friends, when you eat out you are supposed to spend money and have excess food. Ever see a couple on a date with six dishes, most of which they waste? I see that everywhere I look in a Korean restaurant. In terms of Honolulu, the cultural background of its residents is not representive of the US as a whole, so I would not make broad assumptions based on what sells there. With respect to pickels, sure, we have them in the US, but the fact that you can't easily get a high qualtity fresh pickle in most of the US makes me wonder how many people want most of their meal pickeled....... Look at your typical Korean meal......sallty pickeled vegetables and unusual fish products to start, followed by a spicy and salty soup (lets say Sun Du Bu Chigae), followed by BBQ yourself meat, to which you are supposed to add salty soybean paste, followed by bim bop (to which you are supposed to add salty and spicy red pepper paste), which includes more of those pickeled vegetables. Most of what you'll find on your table is salty or spicy or pickeled or all of the above. It's not just a slice of pickel on your burger.

The manager I was talking about is named "Choi". He told me tonight that he's been working at Oriental Garden for 23 years. I stopped there tonight for a quick dinner with a friend. Pea Shoot and Seafood dumplings. The best I've had in NY, better to be had in SF. Two softshell crabs (they were alive in front as we walked in). Deep fried with garlic. Choi's recomendation. $8 each. Very good. Steamed sea bass, with ginger and scallions. Very good, but not as exciting as the crabs. We wanted a noodle dish, and Choi said get the lo mein, which I thought odd. It was very good lo mein (chicken and scallion BTW). Very little use of oil. Prior to tip but with tax, $61 for two. It was a fairly light meal. They get all of 75 cents for a bowl of rice.

Its very salty, one of the most salty cusines I know of. It's also very spicy, and heavy on meat. It's also generally fairly expensive, it's possible to drop $50 pp on 32nd street. It also has portion size problems, they tend to be large, which is a cultural thing according to my Korean friends. Finally, also according to my Korean friends, no Korean restaurant in NY is particially good.

Decibel is believed to be owened by the same guy who owns Sobaya, Eibsu and Char An (all on the same block) plus Sake Gura uptown plus several other unidentified Japanese places in town. I think much of the food at Decibel is prepared at Eibsu and then carried over. None of my Japanese friends describe Decibel as being that great, I've been disappointed recently at Eibsu and Soba-Ya managed to spill hot water on my ex-girlfriend. For an interesting Japanese pub type place, my current recomendation is Ariyoshi Japanese Restaurant, 226 E 53, although it doesn't have a giant sake list. I think Seiki Sushi has a good sake list and some of the freshest Sake in town, as well as very good sushi. I should add that I first was in Decibel in 1997, and it was not viewed as a place to eat by my Japanese friends at the time (I was a grad student at NYU law).

If you hunt ariund Fairway, they have various dried chilli's for sale in th epriduce section, tied around the support poles. Might have what you want, close to home.

I subscribe to the Mark Bittman method----take a cast iron skillet, get it as hot as possible, toss in steak. It seems to work rather well.

The Union Square farmer's market is far and away the best of them in NY, based on my experience. A fair number of the farmers at the Ferry Market appear to be fairly large operations, for example Kashiwase Farms, whose stuff I loved, has 220 acres of trees according to various web sites. The farmers just were not running out of things, cases and cases of fruit and strawberries and whatever. You also have things like Hog Island Oyster, which is a pretty large commerical operation. They are clearly larger operations than most of what you have in NY. It just feels different. No dirt encursted garlic...things are clean and pretty. No pet duck runing around in the back of the truck. And as I said, I didn't notice microgreens or to my surprise, much in the way of Asian vegetables. Most of the stuff Yuno sells at Union Square was not to be found. You can find a list of the farmers at the Ferry Building at http://www.cuesa.org/markets/farmers/ One striking thing is that quite a lot of the farmers, perhaps 1/3, grow fruit on trees, both stone and things like apples. That is more than you see in NY. I did stop in a couple of other California farmer's markets, one in Sonoma and one around San Luis Obispo. Those were closer to what you see in NY, in the sense that they were less polished and seemed less commerical. Given SF's location, they have many farms to choose from and I think while there are many great things at the Ferry Building, it has a commercial feel to it. In the Ferry Building itself, check out the $30 hats at Farmgirl Creamery..... In the interest of science, I just ate a white nectarine from Fairway, at $3.99. It probably ranked in the lower third of the Ferry Building farmer's market.....

I first ate at Chanterelle in 1998, and didn't think it was that good at the time. From 1998-2005, I had lunch there perhaps a dozen times, with someone else's money. It was fine, but never a top restaurant in my mind. I don't know when the decline begain, but it most have been a long time ago----or perhaps it wasn't that good to begin with....

There were flashes that show I think that a well run restaurant in California can take advantage of good ingredents. Maya for example was serving very high quality greens in its salad, on a level of say Cafe Grey in NY. Their web site is http://www.mayarestaurant.com/main.html BTW. Maya is operating at a price point about half that of Cafe Gray. On the other hand, Sefton Pistachios sold by Zabar's are significantly better than what I bought at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market (note, I sampled about 6 of their products and were impressed by none, I bought the pistachois as a souvener). I also sampled stone fruit and strawberries from at least 10 stands. All were at least good, but only a couple were noticable better than what I can get in NY. Prices were also high. This may tell you about the taste buds of the masses: plenty of people are buying good, but not great stuff, while clearly better stuff was being sold 10 feet away. I also wasn't stuck by the selection as being particularily exotic, it was rather white bread in fact, except for those stone fruit. I didn't see anyone selling microgreens and fresh eggs seemed to be sold by only one stand. There was also little of the fresh meat that you see at Union Square. Acme bread, which is quite well known, and is a store inside the building, had almost nothing whole wheat, which suprised me. It was a very nice farmer's market, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't gee, this is great beyound what I have experienced before...except for some of the stone fruit. Truth be told, my favorite restaurant for the money, and which also takes advanatge of local ingredents, is Hominy Grill. I admit that I did not sample high end CA cuisine.

Yes, it was a Saturday morning!!! Lost track of which day. Another thing I got at the farmer's market were pistachios from Alfieri Farms, which were not impressive.

Check out the NY board for some results on what I found.

I recently went on a drive from LA to Sonoma, mostly on the Pacific Coastal Highway, over the course of about ten days. I couldn't really make this into a food trip, but I did come way with a couple of observations. I figured to put this in NY, partly because I am comparing this to NY. 1. I had the best strawberries I have ever had, and they were large, violating my usual theory about size and strawberries. They also did not come from a farmer's market, but rather from a fruit stand in the middle of a strawbarry field in Castroville. The interesting point was that the strawberries did not come from the field, a discussion with the person in charge indicated that someone else owned the field that the stand sat in, and those strawberries were under commerical contract. The strawberries that the stand was selling actually came from 7 miles away, had not been cooled (something that seemed to be important to her), were sold within 36 hours of delivery and were selected by her based on taste. Further web reseach has shown that the person in charge was the owner and the name of the stand is Dominic's Farm. These were significantly better than any of the strawberries being sampled at the SF Ferry Building Farmer's Market. They were also way better than anything sold at the Union Square market in NY. By the way, did I mention that they were $1.25 a pint? 6 pints for $6. 2. Oh yes, the SF Ferry Building Farmer's Market. The building itself has quite a few nice food shops in it, and reminds me of a cleaned up Reading Market (the one in Philly) or a larger version of the Portland, Maine market. For example, Cowgirl Creamery, who makes some very nice but expensive cheese. It also has a branch of Taylor's Automatic, a well known burger place from Napa. I think Shack Shake makes a better burger, and the ones at Taylor's are almost twice as expensive. Acme Bread was also very good. Overall, the Ferry Building itself just blows the Grand Central Station food market and food court off the wall. One catch is that everything in the Ferry building is quite expensive, even by Manhattan standards. I made it to the farmer's market itself on a Friday and it's a little misnamed. At least 15 different stands were acting as essentially mini-restaurants, for example selling BBQ ribs, burgers and the like. The farmer's market is tightly run and clean, you see none of the sprawl of some stands of the Union Square market and no dirt covered things, no Ornery farm types. It's almost corporate. I actually didn't see all that much in the way of unusual things being sold, all of your standard things of course, but not 15 kinds of eggplant or the like. Quality, with one exeception, didn't seem to be different from Union Square. The exception was stone fruits, which were both plentiful and much better than anything we can get in NY. Kashiwase Farms was the standout. White nectarines that cannot be described. I was able to sample stone fruit from about 10 places, and their was the best. 3. In a purely random attempt at locating a decent tamale, I stopped at Lucy's Tamale Factory in Watsonville. Yes, they were better than anything in NY, and cheap to boot. Light, with a nice flavor. Name of Lucy's notwithstanding, downtown Watsonville is not a tourist area. 4. For bizzare reasons best not explained, I ate twice at Ton Kiang in Richmond in SF. Even more bizzare, and I don't know how well known this is, the owner of Ton Kiang is Burmese (although ethnic Chinese). This was discoverd when I figured out that our waitress couldn't speak Chinese, she admitted that she spoke Burmese and that we should try the tea leaf salad next time we stopped in!!!! Anyway, they are one of SF's better known dim sun places. They only use one cart, for congee. Everything else is carried on trays. Focus is on dumplings, didn't see much else. Steamed pork buns were too sweet and I've had better in NY. Stir fried greens and few other random dishes were good, but not better than Oriental Garden. Su Mai were fine. Dumplings however are a different story. Much better than any I've had anywhere else, tender, not sticky skin with good bite and mouth feel. They taste good too. My favorite were the shrimp and green chive, which were lightly pan fried. The waitress said they were her favorite as well. Potstickers were also great. Various steamed shrimp dumplings were also the best I've ever had, for example, shrimp with pea shoots. I did have a chance to walk though the main area of Chinatown. It's cleaner than any NY version, including the live chicken market. Next time I'm back, I'm going to have to do more exploring. It didn't have many obvious not for the locals restaurants. 5. An ordinary faux Mexican place in downtown Sonoma, Maya, was better than anything we have in NY, for example Rosa Mexacana. 6. I had dinner at Cafe La Haye in Sonoma, It's good, with very good vegetables, local I am sure, but it's priced like a two star and I think it's basically a two star, but with better vegetables. It manages I think a 27 in Zagat's..... I don't think it could get that rating in NY.

New York of course. Only Upper West Side I know.....

Cafe Grey is misnamed and I think the early PR effort was misguided, and some of it is still hanging around, creating a false image. Cafe Grey looks like a glitazy three star restaurant and is priced like one. According to their web site, the prix fix is gone. The dinner menu is expensive by any standard, the cheapest starter on the current web menu is $19, while the cheapest main is $36. The starters seem to be more expensive than Bouley ala carte (I mean regular Bouley), and mains are at roughly the same price point. Calling Cafe Grey a "cafe" is like calling the Breakers a "cottage". It's simply not accurate. Upstairs at Bouley can add up. However, it's possible to have a burger and a beer there, with tax and tip, for less than $25. You can have 2 starters and a main upstairs for less than $50, with tax and tip, and you may have enough left for a beer. Upstairs is a very small, informal place, you can see the guy washing dishes. To me, it's a bar with very good food and it is priced very competivity.

I'm driving a one way road trip from LA to Sonoma, at the very end of this month, huging the coast to the extent possible, over the course of about 10 days. Hotels in LA and area, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, San Fran and Sonoma. While food is not the principal reason for the trip, it is an important component. Looking for interesting use of local ingredents, stores and farmer's markets. Wine is not the key compenent. Dim Sum (so I can see how much better it really is than NY) in San Fran will be one stop, I'm also booked in at Cafe La Haye in Sonoma and in the interests of insanity, I'm probably stopping for Breakfast at the LA farmer's market between downtown and West LA. Suggestions?

Upstairs feels like dining in a bar, literally. A bar with very good food.

Had a quick dinner at Sugiyama Saturday night, before the ballet. In the interest of time, tried the 5 course option, which is $52. That is the cheapest meal I have ever had there. First course was the monkfish liver mouse (which I always like) and grilled eggplant, which was good. Second course was sashmi, which was very good. Third course was boiled octopus with miso sauce---very good. Fourth course was assorted seafood, great shrimp, on a hot plate. This was not a cook it yourself on a rock deal. Also included white rice, very good miso soup and pickels. And grapefruit jelly for dessert. It's very good, although it doesn't include the super expensive ingredents and doesn't show the kitchen to full advantage. On the other hand, at $52 you are basically competing with a complete meal at a local sushi joint, and Sugiyama us much better, even in the $52 version.

The below was my PM, it's kindof a mess. My other secret is that their dim is pretty good too: The most important thing is to look for the manager---he's going to be wearing a suit, fairly tall, late 40's maybe. He speaks English well, most of the staff does. He is friendly, look for the friendilist guy in a suit. Taller guy in suit is not as friendly and not as helpful. There is also a very good waitress, but it is hard to describe her---maybe early 30's, also friendly. Tell him what you are interested in---and he'll provide advice, including cooking style. He told me the cooking staff is mixed, from various areas of China, it is not really a Catonese place. Good dishes include fresh scallops, those are served in their shells, several dollars a piece. Cooked plainly, but very good. You'll see them, and other interesting seafood as you walk in. Steamed shrimp by the pound are also good, very plain, do have to peel and clean them yourself, many tables get them. Razor claim in black bean sauce is very good. Also, any kind of crab, but that can get expensive. Basically, you see what looks good and alive when you walk in, and then ask what are good ways to cook and how much does it cost. Avoid anything on the menu that looks American. Peking Duck was however quite good the one time I got it. Tofu with crabmeat is better than what you get elsewhere, it actually contains crabmeat. They also do a good job with lobster. Their dumplings are also lighter than most. Abolone is also good, if they have it. Warning, they only take American Express and cash. Also, it can get expensive depending on what you order. But bascially, I would find the manager, order some scallops and razor claims, and ask him what else is good today and how he would cook it. They also do a good job with things like bok choi and other fresh vegetables. Just order them stir fried or plain. Noodle dishes are also good.

I've eaten here twice. Their sushi is actually quite good, and the sushi assortment at around $30 or so is a good value, its better than almost any place in town at that price point. I haven't had anything bad, and I think I've had around 10 dishes from the menu. Were they featuring the Italian menu when you went? It had some new dishes and I saw it about ten days ago. The halibut is quite good, as other people have mentioned. It's not transdecent though, I 've had better in NY, for more money and in a much smaller size. It is not a place for dessert. They have good sake, but I can take you to plenty of places with an equally good selection. I like this place quite a bit.

It is one of the better places in town, I've eaten there at least twenty times. The staff is better than most, and helpful. It also has low turnover, I see the same faces over and over. When the NYT recently reviewed it, two stars I thnk, they commented that it has been around for a long time, like 30 years. For some reason, it stays off of most people's radar.