Morimoto

Morimoto, Japanese cuisine from the famed Iron Chef in downtown Philly

We first tried Morimoto's restaurant several years ago on a visit to Philly. At a recommendation from my father, we sat at the sushi bar, and ended up right across from the station of the chef himself. It was a real treat to watch him work, illuminating for us that he loves the "chef" part of being a celebrity chef more than the other, and that likely he started a restaurant mainly so he could cook more. He seemed to be having a great time preparing at his station, tossing scraps into his mouth from time to time. When one of the staff came over to request a picture, though, he grimaced, or looked resigned, then smiled for the camera and the tourists, and as soon as possible went back to preparing.

That's the kind of place you want to go back to. It helped that the sushi was the best we've ever had. So when Mark and I found ourselves in Philly again in December, we dragged Ned, Laura, and Brent there for sushi and other delights.

The interior is decorated with gentle waves. The lights cycle through a rainbow of colors, slowly enough that you look up halfway through the meal and say, "wait, wasn't the lighting blue when we came in?" It seems like a very late 80's-early 90's decor (if "modern" is now the sparse, clean look of a place like Citrine--very different restaurant, I know), but that's not to say it's bad. It is certainly a very relaxing atmosphere, if not what I would think of as Japanese.

The service was not quite as good this time as on the previous occasions, when we were at the sushi bar (the last time, we got the "omakase" or chef's dinner, and the server asked about our dietary preferences, explained each of the courses, and handwrote them out on a paper for us when we asked for a menu, explaining that there was no fixed menu, it was just whatever the chef was preparing at the time). Still, we had no real complaints about it, and the food more than made up for it.

Sushi. Oh, the sushi. Creamy octopus that didn't taste rubbery, heavenly tuna, divine fatty tuna, shrimp, yellowtail, mackerel, red snapper, salmon... plus a spicy tuna roll, a tempura shrimp roll, and another I can't quite place. We ordered the $100 sushi plate for four and it probably would've been a good dinner for the four of us (Brent doesn't like raw fish, and opted for the "Morimoto Surf'n'Turf," which he pronounced excellent).

However, we were greedy, so we also ordered tuna pizza and cha-soba, cold soba noodles with sauce, as well as a mushroom and seafood soup that we were advised to eat by eating the solid vegetables and meat with chopsticks and then drinking the broth. The tuna pizza, we'd heard, was something he insisted on putting on the menu despite the advice that "Philadelphia isn't ready for it." It was delicious, though I thought the soba noodles were a bit better, and the soup had a great blend of flavors: fish and seasonings, nothing overpowering or too strong.

Though we were pretty full after that, we couldn't resist dessert. There's a sorbet trio, which turned out that night to be coconut, chocolate cardamom, and some kind of berry. Laura got the chocolate-caramel parfait, which was declared the winner, although the chocolate cardamom sorbet was amazing as well. They were so good that they obscure the memory of the dessert Ned got, which I'm sure was delicious as well.

We can't wait to go back. It's funny that, living in the Bay Area, our favorite sushi is from a Philly restaurant. We can only hope that Morimoto opens a place out here by the Bay sometime soon. Until then, we'll have our memories...

Nos Ancêtres Les Gaulois

Nos Ancêtres Les Gaulois, veggies, roasted meat, and cheese in the heart of Paris
The Ile de la Cité, behind Nôtre Dame, consists of one main street running the length of the island. It's a great place to shop and eat, with little wine shops, chocolate shops, and the famous Bertillon's ice cream (which is worth the trip by itself). During our 2001 trip to Paris, we were referred to this restaurant and enjoyed the baskets of raw veggies and dried meat, and the all-you-can-drink wine. The Ile de la Cité has a heavy American/English population, so the staff is fluent in English, and it's got a fun atmosphere that we really enjoyed.

The interior is all broad timbers, firelight, and copper cauldrons, in keeping with the restaurant's name ("Our Ancestors the Gauls"). The first thing you get when you sit down is the aforementioned basket of veggies: celery, cauliflower, carrots, bell pepper, radishes, and more. You can nibble on those while deciding on your main course, which comes down to beef or lamb, generally (the night we were there, we also had the choice of duck). Once you've placed that order, you can go to the all-you-can-eat salad bar, which is pretty euphemistic, because it consists of a couscous salad, duck paté, another pasta salad, corn, and a basket of sausages that you cut whatever you want off of.

The meat itself is nothing special, either kebabs or off a spit, but the ratatouille that accompanied it was terrific. After the meats came a cheese plate that included a blue cheese, Emmenthal, Camembert, goat cheese, as well as another softish cheese we didn't catch the name of. All very good as well, even if we were nearly completely wrong at identifying them. The blue especially was very popular (again, there was a ton of cheese, and I presume they'd refill it if you wanted more). Desserts were good as well, a traditional French apple tart, chocolate mousse, shaved lemon ice served in a lemon, and an ice cream dish that had walnuts on top of and a dark fruity sauce beneath the ice cream. By that point we were all pretty full, so we took a long time to finish dessert.

But the real hit was the all-you-can-drink wine. We ended up chatting for about an hour and a half of our four-hour dinner with a woman at the next table. She was bored by her company, I guess, but as she spoke only French, I had to translate for everyone. Also, she and most of our table were rather tipsy, which made the conversation even more entertaining as I had to repeat a lot of things that drunk people were saying in various languages. Her husband, a retired police officer, dragged out his wallet at the first opportunity to show us his police ID and his organ donor card. Next to them, a Brazilian who spoke English and followed the NBA talked about the French players in San Antonio (Parker) and Phoenix (Barbosa). But Huguette (if I'm getting her name right) was the chattiest. When she found out we were from San Francisco, she said it inspired her to dream. We told her that Paris inspired us to dream, too. It turned out that she lives in a suburb of Paris and had never been to this restaurant before, but like us, she enjoyed herself immensely.

I think that exemplifies the dinner experience. Nos Ancêtres Les Gaulois is a nice, casual, friendly place, and if the food isn't of great quality, it's at least French (the bread is therefore amazing) and so it's pretty darn good. You go more for the atmosphere than the cuisine, but that atmosphere is really worth it.

Blue Mango

Blue Mango, Thai food in a small Santa Clara location

We love Thai food, and yet there isn't really one Thai restaurant that stands above the rest. We go to Amarin a lot because it's the closest one. We used to go to Thai Pepper because it was the closest one (and they made a mean pineapple fried rice). The only other one we've reviewed in this blog was Siam Royal in Palo Alto, a restaurant we've visited exactly once.

But Blue Mango had come up in Best of Silicon Valley a couple times, and when a friend of ours came back into town and suggested it, we jumped at the chance to try it.

It's located on El Camino in Santa Clara, in a small space that used to be an Italian restaurant (they still haven't changed the glass on the partitions). The kitchen faces right out into the dining room a la Banana Leaf, so you can see and smell what's cooking. The friendly hostess surveyed the small room of twelve or so tables and told us that there was one party that was almost finished and could we just wait for them? Even though we said that would be fine, she apparently reconsidered and cleared off a table near the back for us to be seated earlier.

The menu is impressively varied and interesting-looking, with a vegetarian menu accompanying the regular one. They had a pumpkin curry special, which I tried, while Mark opted for the mango curry, and we started, of course, with tom kah soup. When you order, they ask for you to rate your spiciness level from 1 to 10 (some dishes have a higher minimum). We opted for three, the lowest the curry could go, while our friend went for five (which he would later regret).

The tom kah was quite good, with the usual landmines of cilantro and lemongrass, but not too spicy. Good coconut flavor, mushrooms, and moist chicken. Both the curries were slightly on the spicy side; not too much for me, but I had to take breaks. They were just right for Mark. I'd also gotten a Thai iced tea with soy milk, which was interesting to watch them make. They use half and half regularly, and seemed to put a lot less soy milk in mine than the half and half in our friend's, but it tasted just as good and did a nice job cooling the fires from the curries.

I enjoyed the pumpkin taste and would get the pumpkin curry again. The mango curry was less distinctive but still good as well. Overall, though, I don't think anything jumped out at us that would make this place worth the drive. The Bay Area's Thai restaurants are generally top-notch, and this one is no exception. However, there are two or three closer ones that we'd go to more frequently simply because they're closer. I wonder if this one won "Best of Silicon Valley" just because it's nearer the center of Silicon Valley, and something had to win.

I Tapas, Palo Alto

I Tapas
Traditional and "new" small plates off University Ave. in Palo Alto

Emerson Street in Palo Alto, where it crosses University, is a great place for eateries. There's the Peninsula Fountain Creamery Diner and A.G. Ferrari on Hamilton and Emerson, and Gordon Biersch, Buca di Beppo, Mantra, and Empire Tap Room in the next block away from University. On the other side of University, there's Patxi's Chicago-Style Pizza (the most authentic on the Peninsula), Evvia (the best restaurant in Palo Alto), and a new place called I Tapas that sits in the former location of Left at Albuquerque, a favorite of ours for a little while, until the food started to decline and they closed.

I can't even remember now what was there in between that incarnation and this new one, but I hope I Tapas will stick around for a while. It's fairly modern inside, with nice artwork on the walls and a close, but not crowded, dining room. We were told it would be a forty-five minute wait, but we got called not ten minutes later to come back to the restaurant for an available table.

We've done a few tapas places lately: Solera and Cascal are high standards to live up to. But I Tapas holds its own, with a nice assortment of small plates for different palates. We really enjoyed the grilled asparagus with Manchego cheese and serrano ham, the Spanish olives with roasted nuts and cheese crackers, the pulled pork BBQ with lettuce cups, and the Pinchos Morunos (skewers of lamb). The asparagus had great flavor, with just enough cheese and ham to complement it without overwhelming it. The barbecue sauce for the pulled pork was nice and tangy, and we enjoyed the innovation of putting it in lettuce cups. It was satisfyingly messy. And the lamb skewers proved to be the good kind of lamb, with some lamb flavor (not too gamy) and a really nice mix of Mediterranean spices.

If you like tapas, this is one of the better places to get it. There are so many good places to eat in Palo Alto that it's hard to get on our list, but I think we'd definitely go to I Tapas again. It's worthy of being on Emerson Street, that's for sure!

Citrine

Citrine, a new restaurant with diverse cuisine

Citrine is affiliated with Safeway, though at the moment that relationship's only effect is that they serve "O" brand organic products, and some particular combinations you might recognize from your Safeway shelves. Asked whether Citrine serves as a testing ground for future Safeway products, like packaged meals, the knowledgeable cashier said, "Not yet, but we're not ruling it out."

Everything about the interior is sparse and elegant, clean in line and surface. It's set up like a quick-serve cafe, where you order and pay at the cash register and then your food is brought out to you. They have an impressively diverse menu, innovatively cross-organized by type of cuisine and dinner course (appetizer, salad, etc.). Some of our group found this rather confusing (having to read across to see all the salads, for example), but overall we liked the layout and the selection.

The items we ordered came out as they were ready, so main dishes appeared before salads, in some cases; the attentive waitstaff don't really worry about whether everyone gets their dishes at once, nor whether you're done with one before bringing another. But that's what you expect in this kind of diner, and it didn't bother any of us.

So how is the food? Overall it got high marks. The flatbreads were particular favorites, but everything we shared around was good, and everyone cleaned his plate (with the exception of one friend who asked for no side salad and got it anyway--special orders are always tricky). The spicy pasta dishes actually had a good level of spice to them (to my bland palate), and everything had a nice, robust flavor.

If you're in the mood for a good, quick meal, check out Citrine. Chances are you'll find something you like there. Worth a return visit for sure.

Afton House Inn

Afton House Inn, little bed and breakfast in Afton, MN

During our tour of the midwest, we focused on two kinds of eateries: brew pubs for dinners, and brunch buffets on weekends. The Afton House Inn offers a delicious spread for Sunday brunch, so we talked our hosts into taking us down there (my stomach illness having run its course, apparently).

Reservations are recommended, and when you step into the dining room, it's clear why: it's very "cozy." Maybe fifty people could be seated around the central buffet island. The flip side of this is the excellent service: not only our server, but the host and another person in charge (the manager?) came over to ask how our meal was going. Along with the rustic charm of the building itself and the understated decor, simple dark woods and lightly patterned fabrics, that completed the hospitable feel of an old-style inn.

On to the food itself, where we certainly had no cause to complain. They were just swapping the pancakes out for more lunch-like items when we arrived, but we got the last of the breakfast and first of the lunch. The apple-stuffed pancakes were delicious, fluffy and thick, and they have a custom Belgian waffle station, which was very nice, but disappointing compared to the delightful mini-waffles at the Broadmoor. For the size, though, the selection of food was surprisingly large, and the quality excellent. In true midwestern style, they shone brightest in the pastry and dessert section. We loved all the cakes and cheesecakes we tried, the chocolate-dipped strawberries and the small tarts.

Fortunately, the inn is located near a lovely park for walking, because you're going to need to burn off a lot of carbs. Good food, but really the attraction here is the service and the feel of an old-style bed and breakfast in the crisp fall air. Definitely worth a trip from the Twin Cities for a nice brunch.

Jack Stack BBQ

Jack Stack BBQ, just what it sounds like, behind Union Station in Kansas City

When you go to Kansas City, you kind of have to get either barbecue or steak. Mark has relatives in Kansas City, by marriage on his sister's side, and when we asked her to recommend a place near Union Station (which we were visiting to fill out our list of the AIA's 150 most popular buildings in the United States), she and her husband came up with Jack Stack.
It's got a real "barbecue" feel to it, brick walls and high wooden beams, with wrought-iron ceiling fixtures from which lanterns dangle. The service is very hospitable and friendly, too, on which more in a moment.
Since Tim doesn't eat beef, we were careful to order pork ribs, salad, and the turkey/ham sliced lunch. The waitress talked us into the baked beans ("they're famous") and out of the "cheesy corn casserole," which we'd misheard her talking about at the next table as "cheesy cornbread," which sounded much better. Alas, it was not to be.
Well, we got our salads, and then waited for the rest of the meal. Our waitress came by to check on us a couple times, and when the meal still didn't show up, she got very exasperated, and finally found out that because we'd arrived late during the lunch/dinner changeover, our order had not made it back to the computers in the kitchen. Because of this, she not only brought us cheesy corn casserole, but told us that our whole meal would be comped. Try finding a place in California that will comp you for a late meal!
The turkey and ham slices were fine, the barbecue sauce on them pretty good. Tim was wary of the shreds of meat floating in the baked beans, with good reason, it turned out. He and Mark were less wary of the enormous ribs Mark was served, having just had a conversation with a friend who had said that the distinguishing feature of Kansas City barbecue was not so much the sauce as the cuts of the meat. The taste was mostly just barbecue, so it wasn't until the waitress came back and confirmed that there was beef in the baked beans that we found out that they had also mistakenly given Mark beef ribs rather than pork. (The funny thing was that the pork ribs were HER recommendation.)
Our waitress was very concerned about whether Tim was going to "flip out" at having mistakenly eaten beef. He assured her he wouldn't. She brought a pork rib over to try, and we found it vastly superior to the beef. If only they'd actually brought those in the first place!
The baked beans were very good, the cheesy corn casserole slightly disappointing. The salads, it must be said, were quite tasty, with a nice raspberry vinaigrette that was sweet, but not too sweet. Overall, we'd certainly go back there again, practicing a little more vigilance. Those of you who don't avoid beef should try the beef burnt ends--supposedly those are terrific. Burnt ends are something I've never seen at another barbecue place, and if we do find ourselves at Jack Stack again, we'd probably order the pork ones. Though knowing our luck, they'd probably bring us beef.