Restaurant Review 2

The Mission
Mission Beach, San Diego

Mmm, breakfast: mission accomplished. What some call a “fetish”, others know as a local joint whose long lines duly reflect its uncommon food at a common-man price. Three pie-sized fresh fruit pancakes with delicious, chewy bacon and two eggs: $8.00. I couldn’t even wait long enough take a picture before I settled in. Waits can be long, but you’ll spend longer thinking about how good the place is: French Toast is made with thick, fresh-baked cinnamon bread; crispy, rosemary potatoes accompanying their egg breakfasts; sweet corn tamales covered in roasted tomatillo sauce; plus a full specialty coffee bar and fresh fruit smoothies.

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Salmon Cakes

Wahoo! These were good. And they took a good while to make, too - but they could be easily made ahead of time and stored in the fridge, as the actual pan time is under 10 minutes. Once again, I went to the Best Recipe series for this meal, choosing from the "Best American Recipes". Some prep work required, but it's easiest done ahead of time - especially the tartar sauce with diced capers and cornichon juice, which is a must.

The salmon is chopped small and mixed with a blend of mayonnaise and fresh herbs, then put into the freezer for 15 minutes or so to evaporate any surface moisture and improve the fry. I imagine the same effect would be accomplished if the cakes were made early and stored for the day in the fridge (I wouldn’t recommend storing them for much longer than that). Other than lots of handling of lots of raw fish – which can make the knife handle dangerously slippery – the trickiest part of this recipe is the factory line set up of the flour-egg-breadcrumb pre-fry coating. Very messy. And you will need a lot of panko. Panko, aka breadcrumbs – very crispy, dry, “specialty” breadcrumbs that are worth going out of your way for.

Anyhow, so you dust your pre-formed momentarily frozen salmon cakes with flour, coat them with beaten eggs, then smother them in panko and gently lean them into a medium hot fry pan laden with lots of vegetable oil. 2-3 minutes on each side and you have yourself a delicious, hardly fishy, very filling meal of salmon cakes.

Directions: Drench in fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Eat.

Restaurant Review 1

Clay Pit
Addison, TX

Cuisine: Indian

Status: delicious. Plus, you know it must be a good restaurant when it's actually full of Indian people. A full menu complete with a large selection of vegetarian options, curry spiced to order, many scrumptious appetizers, many equally scrumptious martinis, and risqué items like "bone-in goat curry" for the more courageous diner. I, for one, am not nearly so brave.
Started off the meal with a lychee martini, not too sweet, and some chicken samosa appetizers. A sucker for the details, I was disappointed when my martini arrived not with a sweet, chewy little lychee floating on the bottom as I had remembered from prior trips, but only a lay lemon slice. But we did get to sample one of their trendier drink selections, a spicy martini freshly infused with ginger and chiles (and really, a martini sample? It's not every day you come across that). It tasted like strong ginger ale, and actually would have been great were we not about to eat a spicy meal along with it.
Dinner was malai kofta (potato dumplings) in an onion-coconut curry, and jeera saag with lamb, "medium spicy". Jeera saag is a delicious dish of well-seasoned, pureed spinach that I prefer with paneer, the home-made soft-cheese staple of every Indian restaurant. And of course it's a must to pair any curry dish with fresh naan (Indian flat bread) and basmati rice pilaf, steamed with cardamom, coriander and cloves.
Dessert was an impromptu decision of their home-made mango ice cream, which, like most ice cream decisions, turned out to be a good one - drizzled with mango puree and pistachios.

Syrup

Did you know that Cracker Barrel serves 6% of the world's supply of pure maple syrup? I read that on one of their menus this morning and thought it was crazy. Not that Cracker Barrel is the greatest joint, but as far as roadside breakfast joints go, it'll do.

Oy. Full.

Burger Joints

Sometimes I do some barrel-scraping and check up on those fast food joints I always drive by but never drive through. Partly out of sheer culinary curiosity, maybe partly for novelty, as well, but hardly ever out of normal hunger cravings* do I go to these icons of American cuisine. (And never, ever, do I go to fast-food venues with the word "taco" in their name). Recently my forays into our Fast Food Nation have been, in order of regretted consumption, Dairy Queen, Whataburger, and Sonic.

1. Dairy Queen: Not good. This does not include their chocolate/vanilla swirls cones which are, in fact, good. However, the unusual scarceness of chocolate soft-serve I've noted in DQs across the country is cause for alarm. Does anyone have an answer to this? One fateful road trip in Virginia, searching for chocolate soft-serve (without which no swirl cone would be complete, or would even exist), my father and I stopped at no less than three Dairy Queens along the same route within an hour and were left entirely unrewarded. Unbelievable. Oh, yeah, and their burgers are horrible. If you're ever, say, driving North to San Antonio from Corpus Christi and the drive is getting unbearable, trust me, do not stop and get a DQ burger. Do not do this. You will regret it. And besides, San Antonio really isn't that much further away.
2. Whataburger: This joint is on every corner in Texas, it's orange and white stripes proudly symbolizing its family-owned lineage and 24-hour service. I had it and it wasn't bad. They had just cooked the fries and so they were, of course, really good. However, in my evaluation of this restaurant, some restrictions apply. See asterisk.
3. Sonic: "America's Drive-in". America's drive-in that truly you cannot eat at, but not in a nostalgic way like the first In'n'Out Burger in Baldwin Park, CA (opened in 1948). In a surrounded-by-car-exhaust way. Considering that I really don't like to eat in the car, I really am not a good candidate for the expansion of Sonic's customer base. I also, so I've learned, don't like ordering food through a drive-through-like apparatus unless I'm actually in a car going through a drive-through. The only way to order food is to press a greasy, red button and talk into a machine that is no where near face level. There's people right next to you in a building you can see into, but instead you talk to this machine, and then you swipe your credit card there, too. Sonic burger has this weird gimmick whereby there is no place you can go into at all. Not even to go to the bathroom (maybe there's some outside somewhere). Now, that would be similar to the first In'n'Out were it not for the fact that Sonic has several tables set up outside, suggesting that you can and should eat there. You can, I guess, but indeed should not eat there. Unless you like the smell and the thick heat of car exhaust. Oh, yeah, and the food: double patty melt with cheese, so-so; fries, room temperature. But 99-cent root beer float made with soft serve? Yummy. I'd go again for that - only this time I wouldn't get out of the car.
   

*"Normal hunger cravings" to mean those not occurring as a result of impaired judgment from several hours at the bar.

Advanced Sushi

Want to impress your boss at the next business lunch? Looking to score some points on a first date? Ask for shiso with your ahi sushi. Or flounder sushi. It's a pungent herb with a strong flavor like rosemary or maybe even mint. Almost floral. I was hipped to this insider information by a real-deal sushi chef, Keiichi Nagano, who just opened his own place in Denton, Texas. Considering Denton's culinary standards, his eponymous restaurant, Keiichi, is an impossibly exceptional gem. It seats only ten (or is it eight?) around an elegant, minimalist, and gleaming sushi bar. Handwritten menu changing daily depending on what fresh fish was available. Anyhow, so this herb sits on top of the rice and that tingly pinch of wasabi, below the ahi or flounder, and pointedly on top of the heavier taste of meaty fish.

Shiso, aka:

• beefsteak leaf
• ooba leaf
• perilla
  

Coleslaw

Summertime is time for Sunday evening barbecues. I'm no expert at grilling, but I'm good at accepting invitations, and making side dishes is no problem.
For this weekend's cook-out I brought a fresh, home-made slaw, taken from The Best American Classics (from my old standby the Best Recipe series). It's really hard to believe just how much coleslaw a single head of cabbage can produce. Half a head was more than enough for ten people, easy. The dressing was a classic, creamy buttermilk with some sour cream for texture and apple cider vinegar for tartness. Though the recipe calls for only 1/8 tsp. of apple cider vinegar, I would have definitely used more in retrospect. The fresh parsley adds a stronger "green" taste than in your typical road-side barbecue styrofoamed side dish, but don't forget just how pungent shallots are - go easy! I erred on the larger side for my choice of a "medium shallot" - compared to an onion, their size can be deceiving! A super easy salad to throw together, and keeps for days in the fridge. Also, if you're especially short for time, look for matchstick carrots in the prepared produce sections.

Note for lazy chefs: Painful as it may be, definitely clean up any remaining shreds of cabbage or shallot left on the counter. I didn't, and my kitchen was permeated with that weird, acrid smell of cabbage by the time I got back from the cook out.