3 bowls in Kyoto

Been a while since I posted anything.  Life happens.

Was in Kyoto for just over 24 hours, and it was a few days after the largest typhoon to make landfall in Japan in like 25 years.  It rained the entire time.  On this trip, I wanted to checkout some udon places.  It was too late in the day for Yamamoto Menzo that I heard about, but Okakita that is right next to it should still be open.  Walked in the rain for about half and hour to get there, got a little wet, and it was of course fucking closed early for the day.  On the way back to the hotel, stopped in this place near 紙園 called Mimikou.  The shop was empty when I got there, maybe not surprising as it is Sunday night and the weather is nasty.  Enjoyed a bowl of curry udon here, nice thick and chewing noodle, thick flavorful soup that is a bit sweet and a little spicy.  They have 4 different kinds of peppers you can add if you want it spicier.  A few groups of tourists trickled in during my visit, not surprising given its location (the restaurant has english and chinese menu).

The next day I was up early because of the time difference, so had breakfast at one of my favorite place to eat here, 本家 第ㄧ旭 (Honke Daiichiasahi).  Everything is the same as usual, the Tokusei Ramen did not disappoint, the scene is again pretty interesting at 5:30 am, old dude drinking large bottle of Asahi, couple of big truck driver dudes crushing ramen with a side of rice, plus a couple tables of young people that may have stayed up all night doing whatever (one girl fell on her ass on the way in).  I did something that I have not done here before, that is adding condiment about half way through.  This chili paste is quite thick, and took a bit of stirring to get it dissolve.  It wasn't very hot but added a nice kick.  

I didn't have to work until later that day so for lunch, I visited Fumiya near Nishiki market for another taste of udon.  This is described as Kyoto style nabe-yaki.  It was served in a ceramic pot like what I ate is Nagoya, but the stock was dashi instead of a chicken based soup.  The broth was a bit sweet for me but has a nice rounded flavor, especially after you break the egg into it.  The grilled rice cake has a nice chew and the piece of mushroom is super meaty.  You can tell right away that even though this was only 680 yen, the ingredients were top notch.  The only slight disappointment for me was that the noodle is on the softer side and I like my noodles a bit more chewy.

Wish the weather was better but enjoyed my visit to Kyoto once again nevertheless.  Being solo has it advantages, but perhaps next time I will share the experience with family and friends.

miso udon in nagoya

I was in Japan for a couple of days recently and had to make a train connection at the Nagoya station on my way to Gifu.  My Japanese colleague took us to this spot under the station that serves one of the local speciality, thick udon noodle in thick and hearty chicken miso broth.

Not much to say about the place itself, pretty typical of a nice Japanese train station eatery - clean, bright, wooden table and benches, courteous and efficient staff.  I didn't even look at what else was on the menu, just ordered the noodles, I got the seasonal selection with a couple different kinds of mushrooms.  The noodle soup was served in a very nice but clearly well used clay pot, on a round wooden tray.  It came to the table boiling hot and the pot helped to keep the broth stayed nice and hot until the end.  There was also a plate of raw, undressed, thinly sliced red onion and napa cabbage to give you some crunch and some contrast from the broth and noodles.  I thought about adding it to the broth at some point but my colleague and everyone else around us were eating that separately, either with some of the soy sauce on the table or just straight.

I saw some people using the lid as a serving bowl, but I just dig in directly from the pot.  The noodle was quite thick and chewy, it is probably the best udon noodle I have had in terms of texture.  As is common with noodle soups in Japan, the broth is a bit salty, but well balanced.  And in the case, it has a real fantastic depth of flavor, earthy and a little funky.  I had to eat really slowly because I was wearing a white shirt and the long and thick noodles were not easy to deal with if I wanted to avoid having broth on my shirt.  But that less than half of my usual noodle eating speed really helped my enjoy this bowl (or pot).

I hope something brings me back to Nagoya.  As good as this place was, there has to be other joints in town that serve this dish in other variations and incarnations that I would love to try.

Taipei layover

I had to be in Singapore last week for work.  With the EVA Air flight from YYZ to TPE that landed on Saturday morning, I had a choice to stop in Taipei for 24 hours or go straight to SIN, it was an easy choice to make.  The idea here was to eat, and see the family, in no particular order.

The first thing my wife wanted to eat after being away for 3.5 months and 15 hours trapped in a giant metal tube with wings was a traditional taiwanese breakfast: hot soy milk, taiwanese pancake with egg (蛋餅), and stuffed glutinous rice ball (飯糰).  I was too busy eating so don't have any pictorial evidence of this.

A couple of hours later, we went to my favorite breakfast/lunch spot in the entire city.  I have posted about this place before, a noodle / fish ball soup place next to my old high school.  Busy as ever on a chilly saturday morning, a meal here never disappoints.   If we ever move back to Taipei, I would look into moving into the neighborhood so I can eat breakfast here all the time, although I have a feeling I can't afford the apartments around here. 

  

Sometimes it is fun to be a tourist in a city you (sort of) know.  So after lunch we went to a famous shop selling a Taiwanese specialty pastry.  This very nicely appointed space which is always mobbed sells this pineapple filled pastry (鳳梨酥) that can be found at a lot of places in Taiwan, but theirs is supposed to be one of the best.  This operation is a bit unusual, everyone who walks into the door is welcome to sit at a table, and a nice cup of tea and one of these pastry is brought to each person, free of charge.  It seems that most folks who came here usually purchase at least one box of it to take home, freeloading is not the norm.  Clearly the business model works because the place has been around for a while and is now a tourist destination (we were told by our uber driver, and a couple of camera toting Japanese girls sat next to us at the shop).

   

After the tea and pastry (I wanted to be a freeloader, but my wife bought two boxes ...), we walked around a neighborhood near the smaller Taipei city airport (TSA).  There were a few nice boutiques selling Japanese made clothing, furniture etc, but what was interesting was that a few piece of empty plots were converted into urban vegetable gardens.  Each person who registered gets what look like a 12' x 4' piece of land to grow vegetable and flower.  Most of the urban farmers we saw tending to their miniature farms were older folks.  I think it is not only a great way to find a good use for unused public land, but it is also good for some retired folks to get outdoors and exercise a bit.  A interesting tidbit from this urban farm was that there were a lot of CDs hanging on hooks over the vegetables, my best guess is that they were there to scare away birds or bugs. 

(My wife and her friend Sophie ate waffles at a near by coffee shop while I did some work on the laptop)

 

On to spicy hotpot dinner with the family, again too busy eating and catching up so no pictures.  Then ~4 hours of zzz later it was off to the airport again.  I can't think of a more pleasant and fun layover than this.  

 

  

my favorite breakfast

I may have posted about this in the past, forgive if I did (not that anyone is paying attention).

During my two years of high school in Taipei (I finished high school in Vancouver WA), I ate breakfast most school day mornings at a road side noodle stand next to my school.  They had two things on the menu, 'dry' noodles (means noodles not in soup) seasoned with fish sauce, and fish balls in broth.  The noodles are fresh, cooked just right, with a bit of scallion on top.  I usually put in a bit of dark rice vinegar and chili sauce available on the tables.  The fish balls are 福州魚丸, the kind that has ground pork stuffed in the middle.  These are by far the best fish balls I have ever had.  You can get a poached egg in the soup, and of course that is what you want to opt for (this was 20 years ago, well before people started adding soft eggs in / on everything).

I visited the place on this recent trip back to Taipei, the operation is still run by the same nice couple.  But instead of just a cart with couple of road side tables, it is now a small shop, with a few tables inside and a few tables on the covered sidewalk.  They also have a few helpers now.  The noodles and the fish balls were exactly the same as I remembered.  I never knew the exact hours of the place, because in the past it was always already bustling by the time I showed up for school at around 7:00 am.  And they used to shut it after noodles they made for the day were sold out, usually before lunch time.  I think they now stay open for lunch, but for me, it will always be the best breakfast I can ask for.   

a bit of Taiwanese food

While most of things we eat in Taiwan are essentially Chinese food, and you can find great examples of regional Chinese dishes all over, there are things we eat here that are particular to this island.  Couple of examples here, one is 米苔目, it is a kind of chewy, stubby rice noodle served in broth, often with chives and a bit of caramelized shallots in oil (this is called 油蔥 - oily onion, a common condiment in Taiwanese cooking).  This noodle soup is typically eaten with a couple of side dishes such as braised tofu, pig intestine, lightly pickled cucumbers etc.   The noodle at this place near 林森北路 in Taipei (sort of the red light district) was especially good, and the shop is open and busy late into the night.  The food tasted pretty damn good even though I was sober, it would be even better if I was not.

Another, probably more famous, example of Taiwanese dish (besides the stinky tofu) is the oyster / pig intestine noodle (蚵仔 ／ 大腸 麵線).  This is a very thin rice noodle (usually brown in color, I don't know why) in a thick soup.  The soup is often flavored with dried fish (sort of like a dashi) and thickened with corn or sweet potato starch.  Some places add chunks of pig intestine, some add oysters, and some have both.   This place we stopped by in 竹山, a rural town in central-south west Taiwan, let you choose to have one or the other, or for a little extra cost, both (the shop is right across the street from the police station if you are ever passing through there and want to try this place).  The oysters were very small but has a lot of flavor and has the right texture for the soup in my opinion.  They added a dab of satay sauce on top that was a bit unusual (apology for the blurred cell phone photo, I was a bit excited to dive in).   

Taiwanese foods are typically humble dishes that can be found in small shops and road side stands, but these are time tested dishes that utilized the local bounties to great effects.

$15 noodles

A minor rant here.  While it is nice that we can get good Japans style ramen in many major north American city nowadays, they don't usually come cheap.  One can expect to pay ~$15 for a bowl of noodle soup.  It is certainly true that you can charge anything that people are willing to pay, and line up out of the door to pay they do, but that is 40-50% more expensive than a good bowl of ramen cost in Tokyo (1000 yen or less in general).   I just don't see it is possibly more expensive to operate a small business in any American city than it is in Tokyo.

mixed boil - leftover

Used the leftover broth and meat from the boiled tongue/brisket to make a pseudo pho.  In the middle of winter, few things are better than a steaming hot bowl of noodle soup.

Cheap food in Tokyo

Tokyo is no doubt one of the most expensive city in the world.  It is really easy to spend a lot of money there, fast.  Of course one can spend a small fortune on pristine and exotic seafood, fattiest and most tender slab of beef, and fine wine and liquor.  But it is also possible to eat well and not spend much at all.  Enough has been said about the ramen scene, but it is worth mentioning that most places charges around 800 yen ($10 at today's strong yen) or less, and the quality is generally quite high, with decent amount of care and time putting into the products even at the humblest shops.

one of my favorite on a recent trip there, Marusuke near Shinjuku station 

But it is not just ramen, other good meals like Japanese curry over rice, soba, and udon can all be found at low prices.  Even the food at fast food or semi fast food chains can be quite alright, and really cheap.   At this slightly nicer than fast food joint (ceramic bowls and plates instead of plastic), breakfast that consist of rice (free refill), raw egg (to go into the rice), miso soup, natto and a small piece of salmon cost $6.  And it is better and most likely better for you than most breakfast I can think of back here in north America (try getting that at a Denny's or an IHOP ..).

cheap breakfast in Tokyo

momofuku noodle bar toronto

there are probably tons of tweets, blog post, yelp reviews etc already on the new Momofuku Toronto, so this will be brief.  The ramen was a pale imitation of what is served at the NYC noodle bar, the noodle had barely any chew, the broth no depth and tasted slightly burnt/bitter.  Chicken in the chicken bun was dry and had little flavor, the pork bun on the other hand was really good.  I will certainly eat at the NYC noodle bar next time I am there, but I am not eager to go back to the one here in Toronto.  I understand some things are not easily duplicated and wasn't expecting it to be the the same, but I was certainly not expecting to eat a bowl of noodles frankly that was not good.  Sanjay put it rather well, 'if he was serving this bowl of noodle when he opened in NY back in the days, he will just be another Chang.'

Bucatini

I love rice, I also love noodles, if you don't know that already. But only recently I discovered the awesomeness of bucatini. It is a thick, long and straight noodle with a hollow center, that gives spaghetti an extra dimension (literary) of texture.

I have tried to make this classic dish of all'Amatriciana a few times now, and as you would expect for a simple dish like this, the quality of the ingredients counts a lot. After I got good San Marzano tomotos, good Bacon (pork jowl is not easily found here), I got end results good enough that I can would eat this three nights in a row.

asam laksa

I have been seeing nice fresh mackerels in the market in the past weeks, and since there is nothing better than a bowl of spicy soup on a cold day (-12 celsius right now), I have decided to make a feeble attempt at this dish for the first time today.

Although I have never been to Malaysia, but I have tried dishes with 'laska' (generally a spicy, sometimes curried rich noodle dish) in their names at various southeast asian restaurants in the past. Nothing ever really stood out, but then I started following this wonderful blog called EatingAsia, I got a bit more familiar with what this is about and really want to get a taste of authentic laska dishes.

From what I can gather, asam laksa gets sourness and fruitiness from the use of tamarind in the stock, and fresh pineapple as one of the garnishes. The stock gets richness and flavor from mackerel and shrimp paste, plus aromatics commonly used in southeast asian cooking (shallots, lemongrass, mint, etc). It is made spicy with both dried and fresh chili.

I didn't want to get a pineapple in the middle of winter, but I think I pretty much had the rest. The result was pretty wonderful, although I would be less timid and use more tamarind next time.

not typical thanksgiving

I was going to pick up a cornish hen for my solo thanksgiving dinner this year in canada. But the butcher at Kensington didn't have them on wednesday and I got off work too late on thursday.

So I had my pretty typical improvised weeknight dinner. I made a noodle soup using the left over braising liquid from the braised pork knuckle last week and some roasted pork belly from a few days ago, plus some king trumpet mushroom I had in the fridge and an egg. It was good, but it just feels a little weird not to be eating a dead fowl of some sort.

good pho in toronto?

Phe Tien Thanh

I have not been to Vietnam, but I do love a bowl of pho, especially when I have a severe hangover or when it is miserably cold outside. I had pho for the first time when I was a freshmen in college in Seattle. My dad's friend Uncle 劉 who has lived there for more than 20 years welcomed me to the emerald city by taking me out to lunch at a pho joint that is known as the 'pink shack' (as I found out later), located just north of the chinatown. To me, that experience was right up there amongst the times I first tried delicacies like Foie gras, hairy crabs, aged Bordeaux, truffle, etc.

I have had countless bowls all over the places since then, some good some not so good, most simply serviceable and none I can think of that surpasses the pink shack. It is possible that the 'pink shack' is that good (many in greater seattle area swear by it), but the power of that first jilt probably had something to do with it.

In SF, I ate pho at the places in the loin, and sometimes go to the place on Broadway that opens until 4 am when I am good and drunk. Pho became something of a utility meal, not something I seek out. Perhaps it really is just meant to be a simple morning / midday (or late night for me) meal as it is supposedly in Vietnam. But the potential for greatness is there, like steak frites, when all the components are thoughtfully, correctly rendered, the combined affair can be uniquely delicious and satisfying.

I have tried pho at all the shops in the downtown/chinatown area in Toronto in the last two years or so, the best was average, none of them inspire a visit when I have the inclination to boil my own noodles. But only until recently, I have not been to either of the two places on Ossington that I have heard good things about.

The pho at Pho Tien Thanh is good, not pink shack good, but way above the downtown places. What you get here are: slightly cloudy and deeply flavored broth (not too much MSG), standard rice sticks but cooked just right, not a tangled mess (less common than you think), rare beef that is pretty much raw, slices of tender brisket with good amount of fat, tendons/tripe that are not tough but still retain their unique texture. In addition to the lime wedge, basil, sprout, they also give you a whole bird's eye chili, and couple leafs of saw-tooth coriander (regular coriander in the broth). One key thing about this pho that I really appreciated was the temperature of the broth, it stays piping hot even after you add the herbs, sprouts, hot sauce and stirred it all together; lukewarm pho is not good pho in my books. You can tell that a good bit of care was put into constructing this bowl of noodle soup that I would travel to Ossington for, even in the winter.

Rua Vang Golden Turtle

I waited a full two weeks before I checked out the Golden Turtle because I wanted to give it a fair shake after such a good showing from Pho Tien Thanh. But that didn't help. The pho at Golden Turtle was just okay, really pale in comparison next to Pho Tien Thanh. The broth was sweeter and fattier but has less flavor. Rare beef was not as raw nor as tender, brisket was good, but the tripe was way too chewy (I didn't get any tendon for some reason). Coriander of any kind was absent in the soup or on the side; I don't know if that is traditional, but I liked it very much at Tien Thanh, so now I want it in my pho. And finally, the soup did not come to the table nearly as hot as it should be, big minus.

you have to take this with a bucket of salt (n=1), but at Pho Tien Thanh, I saw one white person in a full restaurant (the rest of the patron were vietnamese or chinese), at golden turtle, there were maybe three asian dudes there include me. I am really not a fucking racist, nor do I believe that you can't get good and authentic asian food at a restaurant full of white people, I am just reporting something that I found intriguing.

All I know in the end is that when I feel like a bowl of pho next time around, I am going to Pho Tien Thanh.

noodles in Kyoto

About 6 years ago, bunch of us (including the columbian, duan, curly, Janine etc) went to Kyoto for a conference. While we were lost searching for our hotel (google map either hasn't been created or we just didn't know about it), we stumbled upon this little noodle shop near Kyoto station. We had ramen there for breakfast nearly every morning during our visit, it was that good. I don't think Kyoto is known for its ramen, but what was served at this place was awesome. They also serve pot-stickers and a couple cold dishes (a plate of pickle vegetables, or think slices of pork dressed in sauce and green onion), but everyone is clearly there for the Ramen.

I was fortunate enough to return to Kyoto earlier this month and I went there the very first chance I got. I was able to grab a seat at the 3 seat counter facing the open kitchen a couple times during the 4 visits on this trip and I got a closer look at what made this humble bowl of noodle so delicious.


There are three pots, two of them have broth, one with just boiling water for cooking noodle. Pig parts (large bones and slabs of pork belly) bob up and down in one of the broth pot. A slow drip of cold water runs into the noodle pot to keep it calm and at the right level. They only cook about 4-5 servings at a time (well, the place seats 25 at the most, uncomfortably). When order(s) come in, they line up the empty bowls to the right of the pots, ladling some boiling water into the bowls to warm them. Fresh noodles from wooden crates go into the water and swim freely (no wire baskets here). They don't take their eyes off the pot while the noodle is cooking. when the noodle is nearly done (no timer, no tasting), the bowls are emptied of the water, then bit of a dark sauce (most definitely soy based), and a small spoonful of what looked like lard are put into each bowl. Noodles are added next, then bean sprouts and slices of pork are arranged on top of the noodle, then comes the broth. A pile of very thinly slices green onion finishes them.


What I love about the noodle and the place is the simplicity: No bowl crowding toppings, just perfectly cooked noodle with the right chew and a deeply meaty, salty broth and decent, fatty pork; super friendly efficient service (just one dude) and not expensive (650 yen for a regular size bowl). I am sure that even a soft cooked egg will not improve this bowl. On my last day in town, I ate a small bowl of noodle there before taking the shinkansen to Tokyo, one of the dude cooking noodle who have seen me coming in a couple of times during the week, try to say goodbye to me in chinese.

As ramen places popping up in large cities in north America, I really hope there will be one as good as this (I don't think that has happen yet), so I don't have to go too far to enjoy a good bowl of it.