Jasmine Restaurant Review: Trying not to eat the apple

Reviewing Jasmine Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant, I gave myself a parameter that I would try not to compare it to Tamarind Tree. It’s a little like Adam and Eve resisting the apple. It’s so easy, ripe, delicious, low hanging fruit. To use Tamarind Tree as a reference point when describing Jasmine would allow me to describe with out effort, but also with out poetry. Anyone can compare two like things, I am challenging myself to describe from the beginning. And it just isn’t fair–Tamarind Tree is one of the best restaurants in the city, and we want to compare just because it is also a Vietnamese restaurant. I like Nishino, but if someone opened a sushi restaurant near me, I wouldn’t write a review comparing it to Nishino. Ok, piece said. Here’s my take.

I first found Jasmine because I had forgotten that my much loved Lao-Thai restaurant, ViengThong, was closed on mondays, and the newly opened Jasmine was right next door. Recently, I returned to review it again for Restaurant Review 360. I had received and email from a fellow participant that she had a terrible experience there and would not be writing, and I panicked. Did I pick the wrong place? Aside from the ambience, I had rather enjoyed my meal there, but she had enjoyed the ambience and disliked the food. I was concerned, as I was bringing my family.

I shouldn’t have had a second thought. While the service seemed to lack a little professionalism, I appreciated that it appeared to be more out of naivety and sincere effort, as oppose to bad service from wanton apathy. Unfortunately they were out of ‘333′, the Vietnamese beer I had heard good things about, and offered us Tiger instead, a Singaporean beer which we declared the South East Asian Bud Light. From there on in things looked up. We started with a few appetizers, prawns on sugarcane sticks, baby clams with rice crackers (a favorite of mine, with just a hint of spice) and green mango salad. The green mango salad did have mangos, however they were fully ripe, not green, so they were a touch sweeter than they should be. Each dish came with its own distinct sauce, a peanut based one for the clams, a slightly sweet one for the mango, and I don’t know what the prawn one was, but it truly made the dish a much better one when dipped.

Our first two entrees had both had great flavor, thought they were a touch chewy. It was not enough that it made a difference to us, as they were delicious (”its pretty hard to screw up when you have this many dishes entitled “chile something”–mama gastrognome). That was the chile lemongrass beef and the chile garlic squid. I would definitely sit down to both of those again in a heart beat. But the true winner was the grilled eggplant, which were impressively good. Soft and melty on the inside, with a nice char on the outside, these were wonderful.

One thing I wanted to address was the portion size. These are quite small portions compared to the dishes you would order family style at many Thai or Chinese restaurants. For me, this is perfect, because the four of us were able to share a large number of dishes, but I would warn a big eater that they will need to order many things. Luckily you can keep ordering, the prices are not very high. For the four of us, including beers, it was $70 (before tip). Guys, my friends, that is very cheap. And very good.

The ambience is…odd. Some aspects are very fancy (piano in the corner), some are gaudy (stuffed green chairs on the raised level down the side) and some are downright strange (flat screen TV playing rotating images of art, some classic. Some not). 

Overall though, this is a delicious, cheap restaurant where you are served by heartfelt servers. The owner was walking around, inspecting details with the care in his eye that you can sense as a diner. It does make a difference.

A Thai Treat

On the street that I work, like so many in Seattle, there are multiple Thai restaurants. I happen to prefer Samui over Jamjuree, but my boss and the controller disagree. So when we take the occaissonal lunch outside of the office, it is usually to Jamjuree, as was the case today.  It was the usual fare, nothing out of the ordinary, fairly Americanized Thai fare. What stood out to me was not the food, nor the service (which was actually a cut above, friendly, prompt and overly curteous).

Everything on the menu, in classic Asian lunch special fashion came with rice, except for the noodle meals, which made it difficult for me to order anything. It is, you see, Passover, the Jewish holiday during which I am forbidden to eat anything with wheat or grains, basically. No rice, no noodles. I ordered the Tom Yum noodle soup, a seafood soup (yes, I eat shrimp, yes, I see the irony), but with out the noodles. When it came, lo and behold, there were no noodles, which in and of itself was impressive.

As I began eating I noticed a ton of bean sprouts. You know, the kind that they give you too many of on bad phad thai. But instead of annoyingly being in the way of my noodles, here they were amazing. I looked over at J’s soup, as he had ordered the same thing, but with the noodles. Nope, no bean sprouts. The restaurant had kindly realized that my soup would be lacking without the noodles and replaced them with the nearest noodle like vegetable. My heart was warmed. So was my mouth, but that was more due to the amount of hot sauce I added.

Bush Garden

Today I was invited to join the MSG150 crew. I had seen that their previous post was Ocean City, and given that they have a planned out route, was hopeful that this would mean I would get to eat next door at Shanghai Garden. We used to call Shanghai Garden “chinese crack” because of our addiction to the hand shaved green noodles. But alas, when the call came in, it was a different garden that I got to eat at–Bush Garden. I arrived a bit ahead of the others and peeked into half of the dining room. Booths were so tall you couldn’t see over the top, allowing for the ultimate in privacy along one wall. The other half was an enormously long sushi bar. The size of the sushi bar gave me a little bit of hope in regards to the food.

Let me back up. Bush Garden is not a place where I had high expectations for the food. Mostly known for being a karaoke lounge, I was a little surprised it even bothered being open for lunch. In fact, there were quite a few people milling about and eating lunch. The entrance way has a small bamboo seating place and an indoor garden area that looks like it come out of a miniature golf course. We were taken back to the karaoke lounge area. I ordered, full of confidence from the size of the sushi bar, a sushi special.

For $6.95 I was served a miso soup, a small salad, 5 nigiri sushi and 2 hand rolls. That is dirt cheap, my friends. For $6.95 you get the pieces of square shaped half frozen tuna maki at the grocery store. And this was definitely better than store sushi. It was clearly made on the spot, the rice was made that day, though not too recently. The fish quality was definitely not top notch. It was cut into odd shapes and was slightly grainy. It tasted fresh though, not old, and they did not skimp on it. My 5 nigiri were ahi and albacore tuna, salmon, shrimp and a white fish that I didn’t identify and can’t remember. One hand roll was cucumber and the other was spicy tuna, a favorite of mine.

Overall, I have to admit I was pretty impressed at the amount and quality of sushi I got for 6.95, though I’m not sure I wouldn’t just rather get cheap food elsewhere and save sushi for the splurges!

 

Homemade Cheese and Gnudi

Last week, while waiting for my duck to cure (yes, it is like watching a pot boil), I made cheese. I made a whole milk cheese, using organic milk and breaking it with lemon juice (slowly bring milk to a rolling boil, add lemon juice, strain with cheesecloth) and a goat cheese. The goat cheese was far tastier. I broke that with rice vinegar (because the only vinegars I had were that and balsamic), to add a sweetness to the goat-y stink, but the sweetness wasn’t really present. The goat cheese was delightfully light and faintly goatish, and was perfect for spreading on toast or baguettes. The milk cheese was less so. It was a little chalky in texture, and not very flavorful. I chose not to salt it because it was already so chalky, but then it was also bland.

The only thing I had come up with for it was that it was quite tasty replacing the mozzarella in a caprese salad, especially since the dry cheese absorbed so much balsamic dressing. Then it hit me, I could make little gnudi-gnocchi things! And I did!

Here they are, sauteed with salt, pepper and rosemary in brown butter.

I have no real recipe for these, I went by feel. I used what was left of the cheese (probably 2/3 of the original output of a carton of milk) added one egg, then added flour until it had a pasta dough like texture.

I broke off small pieces from this, rolling them out the way you made a snake out of playdough back in the day, then cutting that up into gnocchi size pieces. Then I dropped them all into boiling water, pulling them out as they floated to the top. That was it. It was so quick, so easy and amazingly delicious.

The Best Grilled Cheese

“I came home last night to make a sandwich,” B told me last night…”and there was no provolone left?” I finished. Yeah, what happened to that provolone? I made it into my favorite grilled cheese sandwich. Inspired by a dish I ate in Uruguay (I know that people who know me are shocked that I say this, but once, I did eat good food there). The dish involves melting an entire round of provolone with spices and slicing it into pieces to eat with bread. This is just the Americanized verion.

Begin by melting the cheese (2 large slices should do) just enough that some grease slides off. Using a spatula, lift the cheese back off for a minute and toast the bread quickly, til golden, then flip one, piling on top the cheese, and removing the second piece of bread for a sec. Sprinkle the cheese with spices of your choice. I used red pepper flake, rosemary, salt and pepper. Then, with the toasted side toward the cheese, complete your sandwich. When the bottom toast is browned on the outside, flip it over and brown the other outside.

Delicious cheesiness with a bit of an adult flavor.

ViengThong: Wow, its actually Thai…

“Wow, it’s actually Thai” was the recurring theme of our dinner last night. We headed out to ViengThong, on MLK Jr Way, just past the Loews. And by we, I include my brother, who spent three weeks at Muay Thai training camp in Thailand, and his friend who lived there for a time. These boys snottily laugh at the Thai food we eat here in Seattle, comparing it to the delicious stuff they got in their time living on the beach there. As I reminded my brother, I think he has told me about the sticky rice like fifty times.

They opened the menu and seemed pleased at the options. The waitress giggled when they thanked her for water in Thai. They ordered a bunch of stuff, not all of which I can remember. The soup was the first to arrive, and it is the best soup I have ever eaten. I am not always prone to hyperbole, but when Aaron, the guy who’d lived in Thailand (and who is slightly more prone to hyperbole than me) echoed this sentiment, I felt a little more comfortable. It was spicy enough to push you to the edge, without ever losing flavor nor feeling like flavor is sacrificed for heat. A hint of coconut milk was present, but it wasn’t overly creamy as so many tom kai gais are.  (or tom yum gai. which ever one has the coconut!).  Next up was som tum, the green papaya salad that is ever present in Thai cuisine. This got another round of favorable comparison to true Thai food, though with the stipulation that it was (thankfully) missing the fish sauce which “no sane american would get anywhere near”.

We shared a pile of main dishes, a decent green curry, a chicken dish that turned out not to be what the boys were hoping for. Then we had two stand out dishes. At the waitresses suggestion we ordered a plate of barbecue chicken. The flavor was perfect, the chicken, cut like they were ribs, was amazing. It melted away in your mouth. The other stand out dish was the steamed whole fish. In a thin brown soy based sauce, the fish fell apart on the fork. It was, I believe a sea bass. And it was, I believe, delicious.

We also ordered the Phad Lao, which was similar to a phad thai only far less sweet (always my biggest problem with pad thai). I enjoyed this, though it was much closer to dishes I had had before. Then of course, was the sticky rice. As I said last night, rice is one of my favorite foods, but I really enjoy food more when I can use my hands. Sticky rice has solved this probelm for me. It is meant to be eaten with the hands. And shovel it in is what I did. You can use it to pick up chunks of fish, sauces whatever. Similar to injera at an Ethiopian restaurant.

Everything we ordered was so far superior to dishes at any other Thai restaurant, it was a quite pleasant surprise. And all through the night the boys just kept echoing “Just like in Thailand!” and reminiscing about sticky rice from street carts and choose your own fish stalls on the beach.

Another great deal too: $100 with tax and tip for the six of us, beers included!

Jerks and Mozzies

No they aren’t rival gangs, Jerks and Mozzies is what B asks for when he wants to go watch football at Wingmasters. In an effort to save some money and spend more time at home, I told him that I would make him Jerks and Mozzies while he watched football. Unfortunately it was an exciting game, and as such I neglected to write down what I put in to the dishes. Luckily I took a picture of the ridiculous mise en place I had for the jerk sauce, so I hope I can tell you approzimately what I put in there.

Starting with the bowl in the center, which is one bunch of scallions. The red in the one oclock position is 2 habanero peppers, working clockwise that is the juice of one lemon, an entire package of thyme (about 1/8 of a cup maybe?), about 5 cloves of garlic. These little ones are hard, but I ground all the spices myself, so I really don’t want to mess these guys up! A tablespoon of oil–I used a bit of sesame, a bit of hazelnut and a little olive. Then cinnamon, the flat chinese dish has a bay leaf, the bowl at the 11 oclock is ginger, next to it is nutmeg. of the four small spoons, I know one is salt and one is pepper. Okay, only two more spoons to think of. Um…one is coriander and one is allspice. Wheew. Remind me to right these down next time!

I put all these in a cuisinart and made them into a paste, I stuck them in the power marinater for about 20 minutes (equivilent to overnight) and baked the wings in a 375 degree oven for about an hour. What I didn’t do, which I think would have kept them a bit crispier, was to put them on a rack in the dish in the oven, as they ended up poaching a bit in the sauce.

So there they are in all their glory. Spicy and delcicious and way healthier than the ones at Wingmasters. The mozzarella sticks were way easier than I thought. I bought mozzarella string cheese, cut them in half, dipped them in egg beaters and rolled them in premade bread crumbs. Then I put them all in the fridge for a bit and repeated the process, then baked them at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them, because a few did burst before I got them out of there.

Wingmasters: Revisited

Many months ago I wrote about a favorite bar here and here. Due to being a bit more conscious of what I’m eating and no longer living in Ballard, it has been a while since we were there. I had written of the leaving of Todd, THE wingMaster. But last night we went back and things were great. A slimmed down, far less alcoholic looking version of Todd was back in the kitchen. The jerk wings were as spicy and tasty as I remembered and the mozzarella sticks (pictured above) just as huge and melty. The place appears to have been cleaned up (”There isn’t a trough in the bathroom anymore! There is REAL toilet.”–B), and there was a lower ratio of dirty old men drunks to normal people. Overall the place has only improved in my opinion. Little bit more expensive, but still on the cheap end of the spectrum. I’ll definetly be back here again for all my sports watching needs.

La Carta de Oaxaca

Oooh, I waited along time to try this place. After repeated attempts to eat here botched by the rumbling of my tummy after hearing that it was a one hour wait, I dragged my parents out here for my Dad’s birthday on a monday night. It was still a ten minute wait, but at least this time I could enjoy a margarita at the bar while I waited.
All the plates are fairly small, so we ordered about half the menu and dug in. Started with chips and guacamole. The chips were great, but the guac was not as good as I hoped. It was creamier than I am used to, no big chunks of deliciousness. The salsas from the salsa bar were fairly good though, especially the pico de gallo-esque fresh veggie one. Next up was the Albondigas, a beef meatball soup. It was very authentic–just like what I have had in Mexico. But then I remembered that every time I order I wonder why I didn’t just order an extra taco al pastor! We had the tostadas con camarones. They were alright, but the smallness of the shrimp pieces (all chopped up) meant a little less shrimp flavor coming through everything else. The two kinds of tacos–al pastor (a personal fave of mine) and halibut were both quite good. I would say that I would prefer them more in the style I am used to–less sauce, more allowing of the lamb and fish flavor–than with the creamy sauce. Last but not least, the Mole negro oaxaqueno. Unreal. Now I understood why everyone raves about the place. Everything else was good, this was unbelievable. I get it. If I went back, I might skip straight from the chips to a few orders of Mole Negro.
and the price? Well, my dad’s comment was “This is pretty much as good and as cheap as the food we had in Mazatlan”
Now, I’m not going to make fun of him for Mazatlan being his source for Mexicanity, but it makes my point. Good, cheap mexican food in Ballard. Not an easy find in these parts!

Thai-ger Room

Holy hell, its been a while since I posted! Ski season (aka hibernation) has in fact set in. In the meantime I have moved into a new house and got a new car (courtesy of the lady in the giant SUV who slammed into me). So all is good now. Last night the man was craving a little bit of Thai, and, inexplicably to this girl who grew up frequenting Siam on Broadway, Thai-ger room is what he likes.

To me, Thai food means a big table full of various dishes all passed around family style. At Thai-ger Room, I’m limited to my one dish. Well that clearly wasn’t going to work. I admit that it is nice that I know I can get my meal for $6.75. But still, I want that variety.

I started with the ‘Crab Wontons’ which were basically Crab Rangoons, though the sauce was so overly sweet I felt a little like I was eating cream cheese and jelly. Not too bad once I dropped the sauce, but a little more crab flavor would not have hurt. The boy tried to have the wings as a started, but they showed up moments after our main dishes (which admitadly were quite quick). The wings were served with the same overly sweet sauce, so I clearly had no dipping intentions. However, the flavor of the wings was basically non existent. You know the old joke ‘tastes like chicken’? Well, these tasted like chicken. Now think of the last time you had wings that tasted like chicken? Exactly. I want my wings to taste like buffalo, or jerk, or some kind of exciting thai spice!

For my main dish I fell upon the classic, Drunken Noodle. I love them. I have no crticism of the noodles themself. They were tender, the beef was delicious, the 5 stars had some semblence of heat (which is not something I find often). All in all, very good. My only question: Who serves a noodle dish with a side of rice? I would so much rather have had more noodles. Or a bit of broth. Some veggies, anything! I don’t need more starch! The BF had garlic peppers with beef. It was also quite good.
And went well with the side of rice.

Moral of the story: At Thai-ger Room, stick with the basics. A meat dish, eat it with your rice, and go home happy with your cheap meal!