Food: April 2006 Archives

Went to Your Place Thai restaurant on University Avenue today for lunch. Berkeley has lots of Thai restaurants; Plearn and Cha Am tend to get most of the attention, but I've always had a soft spot for Your Place. It seemed cheaper, but just as tasty if not more so, and there was never a line to get in (unlike Cha Am.)

I'd never been for lunch before, but was meeting a friend today who lives nearby. I got one of the lunch specials: tofu with friend shitake mushrooms. It came with a choice of white or brown rice, plus a fresh spring roll. I opted for the brown rice, and also asked for a cucumber salad. Due to a misunderstanding, the salad ended up being instead of rather than in addition to the roll, but it was tasty anyway.

The tofu/mushroom dish was terrific. The mushrooms were nicely battered and very crunchy (I've never had them that way before!), the tofu went very well with them, and there were also an assortment of bell peppers in the mix, along with chili sauce, basil, and some other flavors. I'm still thinking about it four hours later. The rice was really good too — some kind of wild purplish rice, with a great nutty flavor.

I think Your Place is my favorite Thai restaurant again. Wonder if they offer that dish at dinner?

OK, maybe not such a tragedy, but... I used to love Round Table's Pizzatatoes, and it seems that they've been discontinued. A search online shows them on five-year old menu pages in Hawaii.

Anyone know how to make them? I'm so tempted to write to Round Table and beg for the recipe... though I suspect the ingredients list might horrify me...

Recently, King Yen on Piedmont Avenue was sold, and has now become Holly's Madarin. A friend called me and raved about how fabulous the meal she had there was, so naturally, I had to try it. We went on Friday, a couple days after they opened, and ordered won ton soup, chicken salad, Yu Shiang chicken and stir-fried green beans. They offer a choice of white or brown rice, a nice touch.

The won ton soup: nice light broth, not too salty, with lighter-than air won tons floating in it and some fresh spinach leaves. One of the best won ton soups I think I've ever had.

The chicken salad: barely qualified as salad. Deep-fried pieces of chicken arranged over a bed of iceberg lettuce dressed with a vinagrette and some ground peanuts, and garnished with what looked like a couple of maraschino cherries. The chicken was nicely fried but flavorless. Not what I was expecting at all, and not something I'd be likely to order again. (When they asked how we were enjoying our meal, I expressed my ambivalence about the salad, and they said that it's a similar recipe to one at Uncle Yu's, where the new owner used to work, and that it was a top seller there. No accounting for taste, I suppose.)

The Yu Shiang chicken: julienned carrots and some other vegetables I didn't recognize (was seaweed in the mix?) combined with strips of chicken. Nice spicy sauce. I liked this one a lot.

The green beans: also nicely spiced, not too salty, with flecks of chili and crunchy beans.

Overall, I was happy with what we got and would definitely go again — and I'll definitely be getting that won ton soup!

After dinner, we rented Crash. The same friend who had told me about Holly's had told me how much she enjoyed this film. Sadly, I didn't share her high opinion. The cast was good and it was definitely an interesting movie, but not especially enjoyable. It felt rather contrived to me — so many scenes of person of racial group A encountering person of racial group B and within two minutes, saying something very cartoonishly stereotypical.

Maybe that's part of the reason I enjoyed Brokeback Mountain so much — far less dialogue, with many scenes having no conversation whatsoever!