muracci's japanese curry & grill

Have you had Japanese curry before? It's delicious and really simple to make, because all the spices come prepackaged in a box! However, when Jess (J on this blog!) told us about this place that makes curry from scratch in the city (SF), we knew we had to try.

We went to visit Harmonious for lunch one day and on Jess's recommendation, we ate at Muracci's. This hole in the wall is unassuming, one in a whole street of restaurants catering to the employees in the bustling SF financial district.

It was so crowded. I was prepared (thanks Yelp!), so N ran to claim one of the few tables in the place. I think it seats maybe 10 people overall? We shared a mild chicken katsu (deep fried chicken cutlet) curry.
The curry comes separately in a plastic container, so as to not render the fried katsu soggy.

Ta-da! The cutlets were fried perfectly, with thick cuts of chicken and good amount of breading.

The star is definitely the curry. Their menu boasts, simmered for two days straight with vegetables and spices. And it certainly tastes that way! The spices kind of creep up on you and build in your mouth with each bite. If you've never had curry made from scratch, you definitely should. I don't know if I can go back to boxed curry as delicious as it is.

N went back with J Woo and they got chicken kara-age, which she'll tell you all about!

This is their chicken kara-age. This was really good, though I thought the chicken was a bit over fried, but still very yummy. The lunch set comes with miso soup, potato salad, and salad, so it was very filling and good.
Murracci's Japanese Curry & Grill

http://www.muraccis.com/

San Francisco, Financial District
307 Kearny Street CA 94108-3204

sumiya part 2

When D saw my last post, he demanded to see the other pictures.

"What other pictures?"

"You know...from the other time we went!"

He then proceeded to email me said pictures.

I'm glad he did, because this time, we didn't just do meat dishes.

Exhibit #1: Bacon wrapped mushrooms

This... yeah. I'm speechless. The bacon was perfectly crisp and had a wonderful smokey, salty flavor that blended really well with the chewy, soft mushroom. A must get. Seriously.

Exhibit #2: Hamachi

This was grilled yellowtail. It was good too, and the negi (green onions) and masago (salmon roe) were a nice touch.

Exhibit #3: Nasu (eggplant)

I loved this too. Eggplant, a lot of times, absorbs too much of the oil that it's cooked in, but this was perfect. Soft and delicate, it melted in your mouth without the heaviness of oil. It was topped with bonito and a light soy sauce. Yum!

And now, the obligatory meat dishes:

I don't remember what the first one was...though I'm sure it was very good. The darker meat is kalbi (beef short rib) and the back skewer was chicken with ume (plum) sauce. I didn't like the flavor of the ume very much, but I'm sure for those who do, it would've been delicious.

Verdict? If you're not salivating by now, I don't know what kind of food you eat. But please consider bringing me along.

sumiya yakitori

I love Japanese food. It always feels so clean and fresh and best of all, delicious! Even when you eat something like yakitori, or (loosely) grilled skewers, it never feels heavy at all.

D took me to this place in Santa Clara called Sumiya, a restaurant that specializes in yakitori. The restaurant itself is quite small, and very popular. We managed to get 7pm reservations (I don't know how that happened, but I'm glad it did!), and we were pretty much right next to the diners adjacent to us on both sides.



I've had yakitori before, but not as a full blown meal, so D did most of the ordering. We ordered pork belly, chicken with yuzu sauce, and a yakitori donburi. (A donburi is, loosely, a rice bowl.)

Both meats were tender and well seasoned. The pork belly can be a bit much for people because it's so fatty, and I have to say, I was glad it was the only "fatty" thing we got. I'm not sure if I could've handled more, as delicious as it was. It's how I feel about bacon. Delicious, but can be much. The sauce on the chicken was unexpected; I'm not sure if I liked it, but it was good.

The highlight was definitely the donburi. It came with a wonderful, chilled poached egg that lended a creaminess to the skewers and rice... I'm salivating just thinking about it! So, so good. Eggs are amazing.

We finished off the meal with a dessert--green tea creme brulee. Yes, more eggs. I love custard, and this was light and creamy with a hint of bitterness from the green tea. It was gone in seconds.

Isn't the raspberry on the side so cute?

If you're in the South Bay, definitely check it out--but get reservations early! It's almost impossible to walk in. Also, it can get pricey! Skewers range from $3 to $12 dollars depending on what and how many you get. There's a wide variety of food, from vegetables, to meat, to seafood. They're all really, really good, so if you want to try them all, bring lots of money!

Sumiya Yakitori
2634 Homestead Rd
Santa Clara, California
http://www.sumiyakitori.com/

tokyo table

My family plus dan and jwoo came here for dinner during winter break. Its in the Diamond Jamboree plaza which is the plaza with 85°C, the super popular place. Well it was an interesting place, kinda fusion-y, maybe owned by a Korean? I can't be sure.
There were a lot of people waiting, so we didn't get an actual table, but settled for a bar table...kinda. Very hard to describe. Well we got several appetizers, because actually they are pretty slow... But this is shrimp or spicy tuna summer roll (we got both) and a scallop dynamite. The summer rolls were okay, very ordinary. The dynamite was not a traditional kind, it kinda reminded me of nachos, but it was good.
This is yakitori. It was normal and just tasted like chicken teriyaki.
This is bacon wrapped asparagus. Well, anything wrapped in bacon is yummy. But normal...
My dad ordered a kaisen don plate which was marinated diced tuna, salmon, and yellowtail topped w/ ikura (salmon roe) on a bowl of sushi rice. This was yummy.My mommy got an assorted nigiri plate. Normal, normal but at least their fish was fresh.

The rest of us got udon, ramen, yakisoba, and a roll. Nothing too special. So the table next to us got this dessert which was flambéd in front of them. Because it looked so cool, we asked the waiter what it was and order it.

So cool! So it was a banana flambe. This was baked bananas drizzled with caramel and chocolate, topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

It was pretty dericious. But I can never resist ice cream.

I guess it was overall alright. It's pretty pricey but good.

Tokyo Table

http://www.tokyotable.com/

2710 Alton Parkway

Irvine, CA 92606

taiwan madness: japanese eat till you're full

So these places are super popular in Taiwan. It's kinda like a buffet, but instead of going and getting them yourself, they give you a menu and you order what you want. You can keep ordering, but if you don't finish the food that you order, they won't bring you more food.
Pictures are self-explanatory...
Really good fish.

Okay so this is like a chicken roll or something like that...they had a lot of random beef and pork ones...meh, they're alright.


Omgggg. These are super yummy. I really like them. Willie had like 6 of them. Haha

Okay...so I didn't eat these...but I dunno, my cousin seemed to like them.
Duuuuuuuude. The tofu was soooo good. It was just super yummy.
Uhhh yeah, chicken heart? I did not eat that.
There was a lot more...but yeah. So full just looking at the pictures. They also have ice cream and drinks that you get yourself. Super popular in Taiwan and super worth it.

Soto 日本家庭料理

811台灣高雄市楠梓區後昌新路38號

http://www.soto16888.com/

gochi japanese tapas

For our two year, Dan took me to this place in the South Bay called Gochi. He had been raving it about it for weeks, but I made sure that every time he said something good about it, I ignored it or blocked it from my mind. I didn't want to be disappointed you see (yes, I am crazy).

I shouldn't have worried.

It's located in a nondescript strip mall, but the atmosphere completely changed once we stepped inside. The decor mimics a modern Zen garden, and the space opens into a raised seating area where you take off your shoes. To the side is an aisle with regular tables, and to the side of that are private tatami rooms. It was busy, and there were waitresses and hosts running around calling out orders in Japanese. We were seated in the regular table and chairs section, but I didn't mind, because I don't like taking off my shoes.

The menu is extensive. Don't be fooled by what they show online--that's only maybe an eighth of their menu! They have everything from traditional Japanese fare to super fusion-y food, like kimchi pizza. Dan and I opted for the more traditional options with a small twist.

We started with oyster shots and a seaweed salad. The oyster shots were by far the highlight of the meal. They dressed it with a citrus-y ponzu sauce and green onions and cilantro, etc, that made it so light and fresh tasting, and not heavy at all, as oysters are prone to taste. The seaweed salad was good too, but there was too much lettuce and not enough seaweed.

Next, they brought out our hamachi sashimi. The hamachi was good, also really refreshing (the lemons helped), and the texture wasn't quite melt in your mouth, but it was still good. (I think the best hamachi sashimi I've had was at Wayo, this little sushi place in SF.)

Then we had age nasu tofu. It wasn't quite what we expected--it was deep fried eggplant with deep fried tofu dressed with soy sauce grounded pork and green onions. The eggplant was much too oily, but the tofu was amazing. The flavor and texture were so smooth and silky (it wasn't fried for too long, because the outside was barely browned), I wished there was more than four pieces! The pork was good too--they had taken out the fatty parts, so we didn't feel too bad eating all that deep fried food. Haha.

Last we had the black cod with asparagus. This dish was good too, particularly the texture of the fish. The outside was crispy, the inside was buttery, and the sauce complemented it perfect, albeit a little on the salty side. It would've been perfect with white rice, but by that time we were too stuffed to order more.

Dan had really wanted me to try their Earl Grey creme brulee, but unfortunately they weren't offering it that night (though they had green tea creme brulee). It's okay though, because we went to Fremont later to get dessert with Jess. But that's for another post!

Overall, I would definitely recommend this place--if I get to go again, I would want to try their clay pot rice! And their fusion food.

Gochi Japanese Fusion Tapas
http://www.gochifusiontapas.com/
19980 West Homestead Road
Cupertino, CA 95014-0556

making maki

Growing up, one of n and my favorite meals was making maki sushi. A maki is a type of sushi, a hand roll in a cone shape. Kind of like ice cream. Except the cone is nori, or dry roasted seaweed. (Of course, back then, our maki rolling skills were next to none, so we ended up making cylindrical sushi most of the time.)

The way we make the sushi isn't exactly traditional--being Taiwanese, we had to put add things like pork sung (which is a Taiwanese dry shredded pork with a savory sweet taste--we love this stuff! We put this in everything! N even has a humongous jar of it in her apartment!). My mom also likes to put salmon skin and imitation crab.

We were ambitious one day and decided to make this together with our friends, with limited resources. This is what we included:

• Rice (look below on how to make sushi rice!)
• Nori sheets, halved
• Masago with mayonnaise (salmon roe mixed with mayonnaise. Mmm cholesterol.)
• Shredded carrots
• Shredded cucumbers
• Tamago (Japanese sweet egg omelet; I will also detail how to make this!)
• Spam (this girl insisted on putting spam haha)
• Sriracha (a Vietnamese chili sauce--also her idea)
• Fish sung (I didn't have pork sung at the time--n was quite disappointed)

To make sushi rice (a lot of it is trial and error, taste and season. This is how my mom taught us):

1. Make short grain, white rice in a rice cooker! (I don't know how to make it any other way...sorry!)
2. Take out the rice, and preferably outside, add some white granulated sugar and rice vinegar and stir in the wind! (I think the reasoning behind stirring in the wind is to cool the rice down as you mix the ingredients; I do have fond memories of my mother yelling at us that we didn't have enough wind in our rice.)
3. Taste. If it's not sweet or vinegar-y enough, add more! Always start off with just a little bit (relative to how much rice you have)--you can always add more later!

To make tamago:

1. Beat however many eggs you want until they are well mixed and fluffy (don't overbeat!).
2. Add some sugar (some is also relative to the number of eggs you have) and mix again.
3. Add oil to a hot pan, swirl, and turn the heat down to medium.
4. Pour in some of the mixture.
5. As it starts to cook, push it to one side of the pan and add more of the mixture.
6. Repeat until it's cooked!

As with the other ingredients, you want to make sure the egg is cut into medium size strips, so it can fit in your maki!

Once the ingredients are assembled, you can start making your maki! Take a sheet of nori, put a small ball of rice on the sheet and carefully spread it. You don't want to put too much, or your maki won't roll! Then add small amounts of whatever else you want. Then roll!

Mmm.

Edit 3/11:


Here's another picture of a time we were more ambitious--we mixed imitation crab with Kewpie, a Japanese mayonnaise (I totally recommend buying this) and also added takuwan, a Japanese pickled radish.

ajisen ramen

During Thanksgiving break, my family and Woolie's family went to eat at Ajisen Ramen cause apparently they had this special that was their 'Ajisen ramen' was only $6.95 or something like that. I forgot. So all of us ordered that cause this place is actually pretty pricey. That is me and 姊 with chopstick and napkin. Yes we are silly.

Anyways, we also ordered the fried tofu which was not bad. Crispy and not soggy. The ramen itself was very salty and the noodles were not really ramen noodles. I guess its cause they're Chinese and not Japanese.

Sorry Ajisen, I think I've had better.

18253 Colima Road, Unit #104
Rowland Heights, CA
http://www.ajisen-la.com/welcome.html

peace all
- n