Me So Hungie!

Terribly sorry for not updating in a LONG time - I’ve been busy! Busy eating, busy not trying to eat…the endless struggle.

Having a job that puts you in the center of Midtown with all of these restaurants around PLUS going out to lunch happens quite a bit, equals some poundage. Gone are the days of college and college drinking, but hello bigger sizes? Somehow, this does not compute. One would think that not drinking 4 nights out of the week with a pitstop at Woody’s at 2am would make you LOSE weight. In fact, its quite the opposite. Although I have a great gym membership and having been going fairly often, sitting on your butt for about 6 to 8 hours a day really does not help in the “Battle of the Bulge”.

Going out to eat has died down considerably which means that the reviews have gone down quite a bit also. We still have the CSA box although I think its wearing off its novelty considering that week after week after week we get the same things. We have long seasons in California! Its great that we have local and organic produce, but its become routine.

Since this is supposed to be all things food, I felt that bringing up the bulge issue is a must. I’m venting and writing in a non-sensical form right now…

Tuk Tuk has really raised the bar for the suburban sprawl that is Natomas. Never before has any restaurant in the Natomas area been able to bring in an upscale quality. On Friday, I went to Tuk Tuk for the fourth time. What makes Tuk Tuk very distinctive amongst the throng of Thai restaurants is the ambiance. Many others have decorated their restaurants in classic Thai decor; warm woods, Buddha statues, old photographs, etc.

Most importantly, the food is fantastic and they have a great selection of custom cocktails. The drink that stands out the most on their menu is their Kiwi Cilantro Mojito. It is very refreshing with its use of bright green cilantro with a nice touch of tartness from the kiwi and lime. Dan hates cilantro, but loves this drink since it does not overpower it. Large, ripe pieces of kiwi are found throughout the drink and is garnished with strawberry. What is also great about this drink is that it does not give you the air of a TGIF/Chili’s/E-Bar/chain restaurant feel. I like that a lot. What is even better about this cocktail is that it helps to cool you down after you take a nice spicy bite.

Most importantly is the food — it has always been on point, great presentation and incredibly flavorful without being heavy. This time, we had ordered the Roasted Duck in Red Curry and Pad Kee Mao (think flat rice noodles). Our server was very sweet and paid just enough attention to us. (Pet peeve: Either way too much attention or not enough…most people probably feel this way) The duck was fantastic although there was just a tad bit too much duck fat (:: gasp ::) attached to the meat. Duck fat is might tasty. The medium spice level was just right, although I added more for myself.

The Pad Kee Mao was beautiful. A downside to cooking with rice noodles is that if they are not done well, you end up with a mass of rice noodles stuck together without any seasoning. The noodle would still be white if this happens versus a nice brown color from the seasoning. The veggies that were stir fried with the noodles were nice and tender with a crisp. I realize that the comment that I am about to make is completely subjective, however, I will still make it: Pad Kee Mao trumps Pad Thai.

Tuk Tuk has amazing curries. In fact, I would suggest to them to do a “stoplight flight” of curries; red, yellow and green. Each curry is distinctive and so flavorful that it would be great to experience them all together. We had the yellow curry one night and it came out with this flakey, amazing “pancake”. When the server brought it over, I thought it was a mistake at first since I have eaten a lot of yellow curry and have never seen said pancake. It was the best pancake of my life. It was very similar to filo dough with tons of flakey, buttery layers. Dipped in the yellow curry, it was heaven. Their green curry is served out of a fresh coconut shell! The curry also flavors the coconut meat which you can pretty easily scrape out and eat. Very tasty.

Last, but not least, is the Thom Kha Gai — my litmus test for any Thai restaurant. This soup is absolute heaven for me. The perfect blend of coconut, lemon grass and the ever so fun, galangal. Their TKG was very good, although my flavorite still lies with Thai Bistro in Davis. I really enjoy the tang that hits your palette. I chose to eat mine with rice because I feel that the rice is a great carrier of flavor for the soup.

This is a restaurant that everyone who loves Thai food should eat at.

Oy! I am so behind on posts! Urban Family Dinner #2 magically turned into a 9 person dinner party. This was our lovely menu:

Spinach Dip w/ Crusty Bread (Nick brought this)
Heirloom Tomato Caprese Salad
Lemon-y Green Beans (We love lemon apparently!)
Fall Roasted Veggies
Baked Poletna with Gorgonzola & Cremini Mushrooms
Mixed Green Salad
Chicken Parmsean
Spagetti w/ Garlic & Mushroom Sauce
Apple Pie a la Mode (Claire made this)

The Caprese salad is pretty self explanitory, easy and very delicious. The green beans were dropped in boiling water for a moment, shocked, then sauteed with lots of garlic and lemon juice topped with a bit of parm. The fall roasted veggies consisted of potatoes, carrots, turnips and the squash. They were seasoned with S&P, olive oil and a hint of cinnamon for that nice autumn touch.

My favorite part of the meal was the baked polenta with gorgonzola cheese and cremini mushrooms. Start off with a basic polenta receipe, season to taste and add in the gorgonzola cheese. Meanwhile, slice up creminis and saute in olive oil w/ S&P to taste. Personally, I like a bit of balsamic in my mushrooms, so I added just a touch for some bite. Let that reduce down for a bit. Mix in half of the mushrooms into the polenta, then pour polenta into a baking dish (I put mine in my Citrus Le Creuset “braiser” pan….) top with mushrooms and bake for about 15 minutes or so until the top gets nice and brown.

Mixed green salad was pretty much the same as last week since its an easy crowd pleaser. The chicken parm was baked in the oven since there were so many people coming! But it came out moist and not as fatty as frying which I like. What goes better with chicken parm than spagetti? Nothing!

The apple pie that Claire had made was really great because the apples came from Apple Hill. The crust wasn’t too flaky, not too thick — it was just righ. What is apple pie without ice cream? We topped the warm pie with a nice, vanilla ice cream from Dryers. (Personally, I dig Breyers, but that’s another story).

Between nine people, we pretty much ate everything and drank about 5 bottles of wine. Not too shabby.

Since we have so much produce, we decided to share this amongst our good friends who also live in the Sacramento area. Please welcome Shawn & Claire into the picture. Shawn is a good buddy of Dan’s from AEPi, lives in Downtown, and is a tree hugging, green friendly dude. Claire is another friend of Dan’s who is Ms. Politico Activist and a not so dirty hippie girl. These are the members of our new urban family.

Our first box of yummy, fresh organic produce was ready to be made into a delicious dinner on Friday evening. (See previous entry for contents). However, due to being busy people, we could not make dinner until Monday night for everyone. Some how, someway, this dinner turned into six people. Let’s introduce Nick & Tiffany — Nick is an AEPi (of course) whom I met on Houseboats 2007 and Tiffany is his awesome girlfriend. They have both moved to Natomas and have become more Davis Ex-Pats; Dan and I both forgot they lived in Sac b/c we always saw them in Davis.

Enough of that….on to the food!

Due to the random mix of foodstuff, how could I put it together? Since we had so many root veggies, I figured a roast was the best way to go. We made two roast chickens, stuffed with rosemary, thyme and lemons. I had seasoned the cavities with olive oil, kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. On the outside of the bird, it was very simple — olive oil, kosher salt (okay, all of my salt is kosher) and pepper. I had made a mix of flat leaf parsley, basil, thyme and rosemary to put in between the skin and the breast meat (after seasoning of course). On a tip from Jamie Oliver who likes overcooked thigh meat, I slashed the thighs, rubbed in the seasoning and extra herbs. We preheated the oven and the roasting pan so that we could place the chicken breast side down to give it ahead start on cooking. After about 10 minutes, we switched the chickens to the other side and repeated.

Meanwhile, I cubed up all of the potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips (we bought turnips…one of the few ingredients not in the box) to go with the chicken. Seasoned liberally with olive oil, S&P, plus the same herbs to maintain flavors. After the chickens got their headstart, we lifted them out of the roasting pan, dumped the root veggies in to create a rack for the chickens to rest on top of. In the oven they went to finish.

As the chickens were in the oven, we started to make the babaganoush (this was Dan’s project of the night). Dan roasted the eggplants in the oven because that is what you do. We blended the roasted eggplant with garlic, tahini, flat leaf parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika and lemon. The flatbread was placed in the toaster oven to warm through. As a first course, it was quite a hit since everyone asked for more flatbread to finish up the ‘ganoush with.

We also had these lovely, heirloom tomatoes that we ate with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Claire ate most of these tomatoes and Shawn was left without. Tragic.

First Urban Dinner Menu

Heirloom Tomato Salad

Mixed Greens w/ walnuts, cranberries, apple w/ a balsamic vinegrette

Herb-Lemony Roasted Chicken w/ roasted root veggies

WINE

…lots of wine! In the end, it was a fantastic evening with friends which then turned into….the monster. More to come.

In the spirit of good food and cooking, we have decided to subscribe to a CSA farm which in turn, gives a box of local, organic produce every week. What do we get? It depends on what is in season which is great and it means not cooking the same old boring thing. Our box comes from Terra Firma Farms out in Winters, CA (http://www.terrafirmafarm.com/index.html) and its delivered to 555 Capitol Mall, which is right across the street from us! We get a medium sized box which is supposed to be for 3-4 people. We are only two.

How are we going to use up all of the produce?

Urban Family Dinner — of course! (See next posts to find out how they went)

We’ve had some beautiful tomatoes, squash, red bell peppers, green beans, persimmons, grapes, new potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, mesclun greens and last, but not least, spinach.

Having great, local, organic produce practically delievered to your door is fantastic. It cuts down on grocery shopping as well as supporting the community.

This is very green of us.

I <3 Midtown.I <3 Midtown restaurants that are fun, young, and have outdoor seating. After a tiresome beginning of the work week (aka Monday 6/11/07), I decided that I wanted a DATE date. With that, off we went to Dragonfly right in the heart of Midtown to enjoy some Asian fusion cuisine.

Note: I am usually hesistant to eat at such places since they tend be “off” if you will. However, past experiences at Dragonfly have always resulted in pretty good fare. It also helped that I had a nice D-Fly gift card to boot.

Dan and I arrived to our destination circa 7PM when the light outside during the summer time is just perfect. There was a gathering of the Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce going on which was quite rowdy….goooooooooooo commerce! My homie, Pat Fong Kushida, however, was not present although she is the Pres of the organization. We were seated outside by a very friendly hostess and gave us a good table placement. The chairs on the otherhand, were QUITE low. Maybe if I were say, a Kings player, this would be fine but I almost felt like I needed a booster seat!

Enter our server, Katlin.

Sweet, dear Katlin….not the sharpest tool in the shed. We made some witty comment about the menu that completely drew a blank on her face. We were responded with the ever so popular MTV generation reply: “Whaat?” She asked if we’d like anything to drink like a good server should, she I believe tried to upsell on a cocktail, but we just wanted some water to start.

We ordered fresh spring rolls (since I am going through this crazy fresh spring roll kick…and this involves another entry), the Ron Artest Roll (the menu boasts: “See if you can handle it!”), and the Sacramento Roll. Here’s the thing about the D-Fly sushi menu; if it doesn’t have tempura in it, it has cream cheese. I love both items, however, I like my cream cheese on my Noah’s bagel and not everything needs tempura to appease the palatte.

The fresh spring rolls were extremely dry and bland. Not so fresh in my opinion! Who puts in chopped WHITE BUTTON mushrooms in a rolled up spring roll? Where’s the mint? Mint is essential in a fresh spring roll! It was served with a very cliche yet tasty, sweet chili sauce very common to Thai cuisine. Also, the rice wrapper was quite dense and not light and delicate like it should be. All in all, don’t bother. The mark up on this plate was ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I dig eating out and understand the mark up on things, but c’mon! WB mushrooms, carrots, ICEBURG lettuce and a rice wrapper really doesn’t cost $7.95.

The Ron Artest Roll is quite good with shrimp tempura and spicy tuna topped with albacore and “one million scrovils”. The kick on that roll is mighty powerful, yet tasty.

The Sacramento Roll is all about the tuna (my fave!) and not about deep fried business. Fresh salmon, spicy tuna and cucumber topped with more red tuna and yellowtail. Oh and of course the “special sauces”.

I love how the term “special sauce” really equates to “mayonaise with other shit mixed in” to make things tasty. Which it does…however, mayo all over the place? I think not. Especially since they lay it on pretty thick. Again, to appease the palette?

The food in itself is not the worst part of the evening. The worst part of the evening was the poor service we received. We asked for water in the beginning which should always be automatic anyway and we received our dry appetizer first. I politely asked for the water and she said, “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” quickly ran to grab a glass and handed it to me. Hmm…table for two yet one glass of water. She never returned with the other glass. Since it was so nice and warm, I drank half of the glass pretty quickly and shared the other half with Dan. I set the glass in the middle of the table to see if she would notice. She did not. The food arrived and as hungry people would, began to eat. The second glass still had not arrived. Considering that I have a very high tolerance for spicy foods, I was fine; just thirsty. Dan, however, was in dire need of some cooling refreshment. We had finished our water and still waited. When Katlin finally returned, Dan asked her for a glass. She again said, “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” She retrieved another glass which was quickly consumed. We finally finish our meal and she returns with the water pitcher.

SUCCESS!

Or so we think. She refilled my water and was trying to not let the ice into the glass. In doing so, she was pouring this water over the second chair (why?) which had my purse sitting on it (WHY!?). End result? Wet purse. Thanks. She then saw that we were done and quickly picked up all of plates with Dan’s glass unfilled.

“Babe, can you hand me that pitcher please?”

“Why of course, dear.”

Katlin comes back with the bill and asks if we wanted any dessert. She however did not address the fact that we had the pitcher of water on our table. No jokes, no apologizes, no “Its my first week!”. Nothing. (Second note: It was not her first week…I’m pretty sure the last time I had poor service, I had her.) We declined any dessert options.

With the bill squared away and an awfully annoying table next to us (which one of the patrons insisted on parking in the “loading zone” and got a ticket w/o noticing…yippee! Please be a law abiding citizen, thank you.) we bolted.

We stopped by Zocalo’s to see if my friend Emily was bartending. She fortunately was and made us some very stiff yet wonderful mojitos. The Giants were winning and I was watching it in HD. At least Zocalo’s knows what’s going on!

BBQ + Sushi = ???

Tex Wasabi opened its doors to the public last Friday after a disastrous fire amongst other problems (read: location, strange food combo, etc). After wanting to go for quite some time to check out Guy Fieri’s brainchild, we finally went. (We, as in myself and my boyfriend Dan). What I experienced that evening was what made me want to start a blog because I was so put off by the entire experience.

Lets talk about ambiance. First off, it has a terrible location on Arden between Bell and How. It looks like the ghetto. A very large, poorly designed logo welcomes you to the parking lot which is quite small and borders a housing project of some kind. But that’s the least of the problems. Once you walk in through the double doors, you are not quite sure what to think. It felt like you walked into a strange Chevy’s meets Tahoe Joe’s affect. There are not any Japanese influences in the decor except for the Sapporo, Kirin and shoji inspired candle votives on the table. You see the sushi bar on one side, the regular bar on the other. Note: It is pretty LOUD in there although it wasn’t necessarily THAT full. This could be to the acoustics or the fact that they have music blaring as well as have news, sports and misc Chinese movies playing.

Chinese.

This brings me to another point of confusion: If the menu boasts to have Texas BBQ and California Style Sushi, why the Chinese stuff at all? Don’t get me wrong, I love Chinese food and all of its glory between the Americanized lunch specials to the oh so yummy chicken feet that you can get at yam cha. So again, what gives?

The food itself was mediocre. I ordered the BBQ & Sushi combo which gave you a 1/4 rack of BBQ ribs, wing and thigh of BBQ chicken, two sides, plus your choice of either the California Roll or the Jackass Roll. Yes, the Jackass Roll. Since I am not partial to California Rolls to begin with since they are generally made poorly and cheaply, I ordered the Jackass Roll. Apparently, the Jackass Roll comes off of their “Gringo Sushi” menu which I have to say, weird for me, but great for those people who hate sushi but want to attempt to make nice. It was bbq pork inside of a roll! It was….interesting. It was made better after a touch of soy sauce and wasabi to give it the Japanese essence that it was missing. The two sides I ordered were coleslaw and the seasoned fries.

Seasoned fries are generally quite glorious for me since they’re chock full of spices and pepper. The fries that I ended up with appeared that they have been purchased at the neighboring Micky D’s and dumped on my plate. They were cold and hard pretty quickly. I asked our delightful server, Sunni, if that they were indeed, seasoned fries. Her response? “The first time I tried them, I thought they were from McDonald’s!” To which I replied, “ME TOO!” Anytime you can connect with your server that way, I say its a good thing. She insisted that I should try something else and I asked her what her favorite was. She replied that the beans were actually her favorite. They were quite tasty. In fact, out of everything that we tried, it was probably the tastiest. The coleslaw wasn’t bad either since it wasn’t weighed down with tons of mayo.

Dan had this unagi roll business that wasn’t that great either. The funny thing was that we ended up switching rolls because we preferred each others.

The wait for the food, the crappy fries, and the moody hostesses weren’t what made me so mad. What made me so mad was Guy himself. We were anxious to see if he was going to show up and shake hands with his customers since it was opening night. Well, I’m not the kind of crazy fan who’s…well, a fanatic. I’m more of the whole, “I’m going to make eye contact, smile and show you that I know who you are and YOU know that I KNOW who you are. The end.” Guy made a round to various tables and returned to the kitchen. Then he came out again and did some more. The entire time he was out and about schmoozing, he NEVER CAME TO OUR TABLE. There were two of us, sitting at a six person table yet we never got to get our personal meet and greet and tell him how crappy his fries are. (It would have been nice and constructive, not mean and pissy).

In the end, the food wasn’t great, it was over priced, and Guy, you’ve lost a fan and a patron.

“The Truth Never Tasted So Good”–Homer Simpson

The TV King of Gluttony was the inspiration of the title of this blog. There is an episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes on a hunger strike to prevent the minor league Isotopes from leaving Springfield. After twelve days of starving, he gets in front of the mike and says, “Me so hungie,” in a very pittiful way. A very appropos statement considering that its hard for me to go twelve hours without eating.

After many thoughts of starting a food blog, it finally happened.

What changed my mind?

Very simple, a not so great dinning experience (which you will read later on). This food experience was not what it was supposed to be. After being angered by the incident, my ever so faithful food partner in crime, Dan, decided to set up this blog for me. (Thanks Babe!)

This blog is meant for all food purposes; eating experiences, different food profiles, cooking successes/disasters, and anything amusing that is related to food.

Happy reading!