Mai Truong/Staff

When the question “What should we eat?” crops up, my first response is usually izakaya.

Some people refer to izakaya food as Japanese tapas, but I think of tapas as “Spanish izakaya” because izakaya includes a wider range of dishes, from the small appetizers that serve as drinking snacks to the filling rice and noodle dishes to be had after drinks. Izakaya plates are also designed for sharing, which sets the perfect atmosphere for get-togethers, and the restaurants should be casual and affordable, with more emphasis on taste than artistry of the food. In the Berkeley izakaya scene, not only does Kiraku fit that bill, but it is also conveniently located on Telegraph Avenue to cater to the student community on the Southside.

In an izakaya, it’s a good idea to start off with something cold and adventurous, knowing that you can always return to the warmth of fried chicken and potstickers if all else fails. Although the fermented firefly squid, with its strong sea flavor, will not appeal to everyone (it wasn’t for me), “spicy” jellyfish and “spicy” boiled baby octopus (iidako), which looks fiery red, are not spicy at all but mildly sweet, springy and fun to eat.

Some of the starters are best enjoyed as nibblers throughout the meal. On one end of the spectrum, there’s takowasabi — raw octopus chopped and marinated in a light wasabi sauce, which appears slimy but tastes clean — to refresh your palate between heavier plates, like barbecued spare ribs and grilled beef tongue. And on the other end, there’s renkon chips, thinly sliced lotus root deep fried and sprinkled with celery salt, a light snack to be enjoyed while waiting for the seared albacore tataki, which is a whole different kind of delight dressed in ponzu and onion sauce.

The fried dishes at Kiraku are always sure bets. Corn tempura with green tea salt and kisu tempura (whiting fish) with umeboshi salt is airy enough to make you forget that it is deep-fried. Karaage (fried chicken) comes piping hot, and deep fried rock shrimp with spicy mayo is both visually inviting and texturally addicting, as the shrimp is still moist and firm inside the light, crispy batter.

After indulging in tempura, I always choose the omelet salad to give myself the illusion of healthy eating — shredded cabbage with sauteed pork belly blanketed with a thin omelet, topped with katsuobushi (bonito flakes), Japanese mayo and soy sauce. The salad looks big and fluffy but not too filling, and it leaves enough room for an “after-sake” (shushoku) dish.

Actually, by the time you get to the after-sake, you’re typically a bit inebriated (izakaya are Japanese drinking establishments, and Kiraku has more than 40 choices of sake, shochu, chuhai and beer). That means your palates are either dulled or totally dead, so the shushoku just has to be filling. Kiraku’s shushoku does just that. Literally. While filling, the oyako don, rice with simmered chicken and onion omelet, was a little too mushy, and the yaki udon did not leave a strong impression despite featuring many flavors — small bits of octopus, hearty noodle and salty katsuobushi with a sweet basil pesto twist.

What the shushoku lacked, the spare ribs made up for perfectly with tender, fall-of-the-bone meat in a savory orange marmalade barbecue sauce. It’s a dish that I can always recommend, for it is not an acquired taste and would please every palate (except vegetarian ones) — just like Kiraku is the perfect middle-range restaurant that everyone would like, regardless of your preference to stay in the pork-belly zone or venture into the fermented-squid zone.

And if, by some miracle, you still have room after the shushoku (there’s always room for ice cream, right?), there’s grapefruit yogurt with fresh blueberries and green grapes. The tartness woke me right up from my food coma, a bright note that kept me smiling all the way home in the crisp air of the Berkeley night.

Kiraku is located at 2566 Telegraph Ave. Call 510-848-2758 to make reservations.

Mai Truong is the editor of Eating Berkeley. Contact her at mtruong@dailycal.org.

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Looking for something to do this weekend? How about a trip to Gilroy for some garlic rosemary chicken sandwiches or garlic lumpia, with garlic ice cream for dessert?

You got it. The Gilroy Garlic Festival is running its 35th celebration this Friday through Sunday. We all know the charming smell of garlic browning on a skillet, the vital role of minced garlic in a brine for chicken and how that creamy roasted garlic can liven up a margherita pizza. There’ll be no shortage of lip-smacking savory dishes with garlic at the festival. Besides, there are garlic desserts. Not something you can get every day.

What’s even more special about this year’s festival, to us Cal-ers at least, is the garlic-infused cream puff and garlic almond brittle from two of our very own Cal Dining executive chefs, Ida Shen and Mary Ferrer. Imagine a baked choux pastry filled with a creamy blend of ricotta, orange zest, whipped cream, sugar and grated garlic. It most definitely will not be too sweet or too strong — it’s just screaming awesomeness. They are entering a competition on Friday, and if they win, they will make their recipe public. In the mean time, cheer them on while nibbling some garlicky finger foods.

Check out the booths that will be at this year’s festival. Tickets with 20 percent discounts are available to the entire UC Berkeley community on the Garlic Festival ticket website (promo code “Bears”). And really, what’s a better way to wind down after your exams than taking a drive south in this beautiful weather and eating a load of good food?

Image source: Allan Chatto under Creative Commons

Contact Mai Truong at mtruong@dailycal.org

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Mai Truong/Staff

Once a week last spring, I took the 51B line to Teance at 5 p.m. so that I could make it to TeaCal by 5:30. TeaCal is a DeCal class on tea, and last spring was the first time it was organized at Teance. Actually, after the first few weeks, I started taking the 4:30 bus, sometimes even the 4 p.m. bus, because I wanted to arrive early to talk to the bartender and enjoy more tea before the class started. That’s right, Teance has a bar for tea and a staff member to make tea in front of you in gongfu style and talk a bit about the tea, its production, its steeping method, its health benefits and sometimes even its history.

The tea bar at Teance is unique in Berkeley because it’s round. Most tea houses don’t have bars, and most bars are long rectangles at which you can’t talk to anyone except the people next to you. I’ve lost count of how many amazing conversations I’ve had at this round bar. Its smooth, cool-yet-earthy shell-and-glass surface usually surprises the customers, who begin conversing in mutual admiration.

Complete strangers share one another’s bewilderment as they inhale the gardenia aroma of freshly infused Baochong oolong or share a cup of Yunnan Gold and nod in agreement when one person joyfully exclaims that she detects a peppery note in the tea’s sweetness. Then they go on to share business dreams, youthful memories, their children’s performance in school, political and religious beliefs. They bond over the tea bar. “The roundness brings people together,” says Winnie Yu, Teance’s director and founder.

Every year, Yu travels to the fog-shrouded tea mountains in Asia and hand-selects whole-leaf teas from award-winning tea farmers. She says one connection always leads to another while she searches for the best teas.

“Asians are all about connections — otherwise, they wouldn’t talk to you anyway,” Yu said. “You know one tea master. Then they introduce you to a farmer. A lot of farmers connect to other farmers, family members, their friends in the industry. Through years and years of legwork and introductions, eventually you find some good farmers.”

Yu’s motivation for opening Teance was simple: to create a public environment where tea drinkers could gather and share teas.

“Let’s say you want to drink tea with your friends — where would you go?” she asked. “You go to a cafe? A coffee shop? It’s horrible tea there, and it’s usually teabags. It’s also a different kind of environment. Coffee shops smell like coffee. They’re not very tranquil. They’re not aesthetically the kind of place that I would like and that I’m used to in Asia.”

So with her friend Fu-Tung Cheng of Cheng Design, Yu strived to make Teance the serene oasis that shoppers on Fourth Street could duck into to seek shelter from the hustle and bustle outside and at the same time still feel connected with the outdoors through the abundance of sunlight, the water cascade that showers from the ceiling into a small pond with goldfish in it, the fresh flowers and even the bamboo coasters.

It’s no surprise that Teance’s calming atmosphere attracts many artistic patrons: designers, musicians, poets, dancers. It also hosts a number of book-signing events, Lunar New Year festivals and spring harvest tea parties, at which teas are served with artisan snacks such as mochi, tea-flavored ice cream, tea-flavored truffles and cookies all handmade by Teance staff members and their friends, all of whom embody the “slow food” concept that defines Berkeley cuisine.

Yu’s wish is for people to “think about tea as fine dining, as produce, a world of excitement, something very sophisticated but also extremely accessible.” Currently, Teance carries roughly 65 types of tea across all categories: white, green, yellow, oolong, red, pu’er, herbal. These teas come from Japan, China, Taiwan, India and sometimes Korea, depending on the season, considering that, just like those of wine, the tastes of the teas change from season to season.

All this may seem daunting at first, but TeaCal is a good start for students like me. For everyone else, the bar and the knowledgeable bartenders make it easy to taste everything and find out what one likes. The more enthusiastic tea learners can also make a reservation for a private tea lesson with an experienced bartender, and the cost is just the regular bar cost.

“We try to carry the highest grade of each type of tea,” Yu says, “so that the tea bar is the place for (customers) to be adventurous and try different teas and train their palate (for the high-quality teas).”

The more I learn about this beverage, some of which comes from trees that are hundreds of years old, not to mention the yixing teapots and the porcelain gaiwans in which it’s infused, the more I realize how much there still is to learn. The range of taste alone is overwhelming.

There’s the simpler Anji Baicha with a buttery note or the somewhat complex Honey Jialong that tastes sweet like jicama with an aroma of chamomile and plumeria. Then there’s Song Zhong Phoenix, in a single sip of which you can taste pine nut, unburnt cigar, malt, clove, the black tip of a young banana and something sweet, aged, smoky, resinous that you can’t exactly pin down with a name. And you know that this tea is high in quality because you can steep it again and again, sometimes more than 10 times, and the flavor remains strong or new flavors emerge.

One evening, I asked Mr. Moghaddam, one of the managers of Teance and the bartender that evening, to tell me the name of the tea that I was enjoying. Refusing to say its name, he told me to enjoy its flavors and the moment because even for the same tea, it will never be the same again. That may sound too philosophical, but there’s a bittersweet fact behind it.

In 30 years, these kinds of artisan tea will be history because of pollution and climate change and, most importantly, because the tea masters are aging. The youngest tea master in China is about 60 years old, and it takes a few decades to master the art of growing, picking and producing the tea, which does not yield enough financial benefit to entice the young generations to take up the art.

“Now is the time to drink tea,” Yu said.

Teance is located at 1780 Fourth Street in Berkeley.

The post The time for tea appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Mai Truong/Staff

A full bar and a wildly successful sister establishment in San Francisco could be the reasons for the huge line outside Burma Superstar in Oakland’s Temescal District on a Wednesday night. But for me, the restaurant’s main draw is its fresh coconut, for which they charge a whopping $5. It brings back childhood flavors from the tropics, though, and that justifies everything.

It wasn’t a young coconut, and I didn’t expect it to be, given that we can’t grow coconuts in most of this country. But this middle-aged coconut had such rich water and a sweet fragrance from the husk that I thought I was drinking sugar cane juice, so it was doubly nostalgic. The rest of my meal at Burma Superstar followed smoothly through every sip of that coconut water.

Burmese food is a cross between Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines, with some dishes showing the influence of one culture more than the others. For example, the curry pork with potato has a strong Indian touch of cumin and shines with chili oil like Szechuan mapo tofu, but it isn’t sweetened by coconut milk like other Southeast Asian curries. Thus, its perfect match is the sweetened coconut rice topped with fried shallots. In fact, the coconut rice is so fluffy and flavorful that it stands well on its own and it enhances everything.

In hindsight, the curry pork was the weakest link in the meal for several reasons. The description said that there was pickled mango, but we detected neither mango nor pickle. It had too little potato and too much pork, and the big chunks of pork could have used some more cooking time or fared better in smaller pieces to reduce the fibrousness of the cut.

But whatever slight disappointment we had with the curry was quickly drowned in the dense, confident garlic and chili sauce of the sauteed eggplant. The shrimp served their purpose of keeping the name of the dish not so simple as “sauteed eggplant,” but they were hardly noticeable next to the perfect eggplant — tender but not mushy, and firm but not rubbery.

The nan gyi dok was a pleasant surprise. I expected thin rice noodle like in pho, served warm, but Burmese rice noodle is thick, smooth and so fragile. It was also served cold as a noodle salad with fried shallots, boiled egg, cilantro, chickpea flour and coconut chicken curry, tossed together at the table after a squeeze of fresh lemon.

As if to reward the customers for the long wait, the kitchen turns out dishes very quickly and in big-enough portions that my friend and I had to ask for three to-go boxes at the end. However, that did not deter us from dessert. We hurriedly drank up the coconut water and asked the server to chop off the tops so that we could scrape off the coconut meat inside, a joy I hadn’t had in years. Meanwhile, we ordered another nostalgic comfort food — warm black rice pudding with coconut ice cream. Well, sliced almond isn’t exactly authentic Southeast Asian, but its toasty crunch earns it a home with the creamy ice cream and the gooey rice.

In the end, I wouldn’t say that Burma Superstar shines as bright as its name suggests, but the food was just as pleasant as the staff. We were full and happy when we walked out, a little slowly so not to burst. Our jackets also smelled like sauteed onion for the rest of the night, but that’s never a bad thing.

Burma Superstar is located at 4721 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.

Contact Mai Truong at mtruong@dailycal.org.

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Mai Truong/Staff

Dungeness crab season is on. It was delayed twice in the Pacific Northwest because the crabs there weren’t big enough, but not here in the Bay Area. What my companions and I got a few weeks ago were two-pound crabs, roughly one-fourth of which were meat, tossed in garlic and butter to perfection. More on that in a second.

First, what defines good crab? It has to be fresh. Its flesh should be tender and sweet, qualities that are also defining characteristics of Dungeness crab. You also want the flesh to be firm, somewhat springy, and easily pulled off from the shell. If the meat sticks to the shell and if the shell is too hard, the crab is old. Dungeness crab is best enjoyed steamed, then tossed in garlic, butter, salt and pepper, to maximally preserve the sweetness of its meat. It’s not hard to turn a good fresh crab into a good cooked crab, but it can be messy to cook, eat and clean up afterward. So if you dislike cleaning as much as I do, the place to satisfy your Dungeness craving is Thanh Long in San Francisco.

The restaurant is three blocks away from the waterfront in the Sunset District. Be sure to make a reservation because the line gets long, and waiting outside in a cold foggy evening while entranced by the smell of butter and garlic is torture. Even with a reservation, it still takes roughly 30 minutes to be seated. And forget about sending half of your party to the restaurant first to place an order. The restaurant is so packed that it refuses to seat you unless the whole party is there.

The wait is the best time to study the menu. Once you’re seated, you should know immediately what to order, given that Thanh Long is known for its crab: the roast crab (one whole Dungeness “roasted with An’s garlic sauce and secret spices”) and the garlic noodle (noodle tossed in, you guessed it, An’s “garlic sauce and secret spices”). The garlic noodle is a good starch base to give you the pretense of a healthful, balanced meal. There are other crab options on the menu for the same price, such as drunken crab (whole Dungeness simmered in Chardonnay, sake and brandy, seasoned with scallions, chives and black pepper) and tamarind crab (whole Dungeness simmered in a tomato and tamarind melange, seasoned with dill and green onions and flambeed with cognac), but fresh crab is best when it’s simple. Garlic, butter, salt and pepper bring out the crab’s flavors more than any other combination. In fact, I found the Drunken Crab lackluster.

Fried calamari and the broiled New Zealand green-lipped mussels are sensible choices to start off the meal before cracking crabs. The former is served with superb grilled green onion bulbs while the latter, drowned in a sweet Asian pesto, is already cut so that it can easily slide off the shell onto a baguette crostini.

After we ooh-ed and ah-ed and wiped the appetizer plates clean, the waiter arrived with big plastic bibs and carefully put them on everyone — one of those moments that justifies eating crab at a restaurant instead of eating crabs at home. The conversation stalled when the crabs came, as everyone became focused on taking every last piece of meat out of those legs. These crabs were so young that some of the leg shells could be broken by hand. Several bowls were placed and replaced for the crab shells.

Once we were done, we were also given hot wet towels to clean our hands. This is not the ideal first-date dinner because you just have to get downright messy. But who knows, that might be the perfect first date for some.

Thanh Long is located at 4101 Judah St. in San Francisco. For reservations, call (415) 665-1146.

Contact Mai Truong at mtruong@dailycal.org.

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Isn’t there always that one restaurant that you pass by a thousand times, think about trying every of those thousand times but just never do? For me, that restaurant was Bistro Liaison. Its rustic red canopy shines brightly at the corner of Shattuck and Hearst avenues, often draws my attention. Almost three years ago during an event in North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, I sampled a cup of quenelle souffle — salmon and scallop mousse in a shrimp sauce (think clam chowder but fishier and cheesier and surprisingly good) — but the timing was just never right for an all-out dinner until a few weeks ago.

We walked in without reservation, half-worried that there wouldn’t be a table for us, half-worried that there would be a table for us, which might have meant the restaurant wasn’t good enough to fill up on a Friday night. But we were a party of two, perfect to squeeze in a table at the end of the room. When the hostess at the front desk offered to take my friend’s coat, we began feeling the warmth of old-fashioned restaurant service. And it only got warmer.

Our waitress paid a great deal of attention to our table, coming by every 10 minutes to see if everything was all right. The frequency of her visits increased as she politely tried to push us through the entree (appetizer) so that the plats principaux (main dishes) could be served. It was partly our fault for taking time with the entree, but the portion was by no means appetizer-sized. The Pate de Campagne ($12) is a half-inch thick slab of pork pate (minced pork and fat), two slices of toasted baguette, a black truffle deviled egg and plentiful radish and curly endive salad. Although the pate was firmer and grainier than I expected, the deviled egg was pleasant because it didn’t have the pungent smell of truffle that I dislike, and the toast was crunchy with just the right fattiness. This entree by itself was enough as a meal — combined with water and conversation, it got us full.

A minute later, the serious course was before us.

Nicely grilled Loch Duart salmon, still moist inside, on braised leeks, olive oil mashed potatoes and black truffle butter. Three thick but tender slices of seared pork loin dressed in a sweet plum sauce and what appeared to me like potato knöpfle spätzle. While the saumon paillard ($25) seems to be a staple on Bistro Liaison’s dinner menu, the pork loin was a special of the day, and both exceeded my expectations and were taken home almost in their entirety for the sake of dessert.

You would need a heart of stone to refuse desserts at Bistro Liaison because instead of asking if you would like dessert, the waitress will stamp the dessert menu onto your table. It’s there. In your face. You can’t even take it away. Every night has a slightly different list, but it’s guaranteed to include a creme brulee, a molten chocolate cake, a seasonal sorbet and because you’re in a French bistro, an Ile Flottante. As the name suggests, the main part of the dessert is a meringue island floating on creme anglaise, topped with roasted sliced almonds and a lacy tuile cookie to complement the meringue’s fluffy texture. The Floating Island is rich and light at the same time, harmonious and comforting enough to justify its $8 price.

If I had to nitpick an otherwise enjoyable experience, I would say that the waiters were a little too pushy about us finishing our appetizer, and the tables were placed too close together. The latter situation is a common practice in Berkeley, and considering how the waiters kept our main courses warm until they served them, their patience is commendable. Everything was well-seasoned, the fish was not flaky and the pork was miraculously still a star even after I reheated it the next day.

Although Bistro Liaison may not be suitable for the everyday lunch rush due to both its price and its atmosphere, it’s the kind of place to consider when you want to pat yourself on the back or treat someone special for a warm evening.

Bistro Liaison is located at 1849 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley.

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