Still craving Taiwanese food and tried Betty

After that pork belly bao I was still thinking about Taiwan best mart, so I went back on Saturday lunch with Smiller to try dining in. It only has two tables and both were full but within a few minutes of ordering both opened up. While I was waiting for a table I poked my head in Osaka Ya. There was a line of people for the mochi, but I noted that Osaka Ya is looking careworn. Using this word made me look it up and it means "tired and unhappy because of prolonged worry" so I am somewhat using it incorrectly. I guess I mean "worse for wear". They have that broken window that's been boarded up for a long time. Anyway, wondering what is going on and hoping Osaka Ya is thriving.

At TBM I ordered an oyster omelet. It had 5 or 6 big oysters in there, strong-tasting ones. I would describe the texture with the gravy, and rice flour out-muscling the eggs as "gloppy". It's my first oyster omelet and I ordered it due to being bummed to not have the opportunity to order an oyster omelet in Thailand, so for me it was swing and a miss but interesting! I'm sure it is quite different from a Thai oyster omelet so I think my ordering motives were not pure. 

One of the main dishes commonly associated with Taiwanese food is beef noodle soup. I have had tastier versions, including at Yang's (RIP) but this was good. The seemingly house made noodles were the best part. The bok choy was too chunky to be able to get good bites of it.

Smiller got sesame noodles with the same noodles above and he purported to like it, that dish is a bit plain if you don't add anything to it.

It was fun to eat there, and I am very stoked on Taiwan Best Mart and trying more of the dishes. 

I know you are marveling that I posted this here rather than saving for the Gram. This is like Instagram gold right here so feel privileged. This is the back patio at new Southside wine bar Betty. I hesitated to go in because I am ride-or-die on Good News and I always feel like I should spend my wine money there. A friend said Betty was really cute so I had to go. It is indeed, cute as hell. Smiller was wondering aloud who created the wine bar/store as pantry/larder concept? Who was the first to decide that a wine bar should sell foodstuffs such as drum roll please....tinned fish! I know Ordinaire has been hugely influential on natty wine stuff but they pretty much focus on wine, so it's not them.

I respect the vibe of the Betty selection, particularly in the store part. It's tough to order a glass when a place picks one wine for each category (like one white, one rose, etc.) because if I want a white wine but not the one they have on offer then what the heck do I order? But I loved the classic Euro feel of some of the picks on the shelves. I feel like it is respecting the greats and has lots of natural wine but is not trend chasing. It has such a female feel to it, due to the name, the owner being female, and the crowd when we were there being 80% female, so it's like the antithesis of natty wine bro. 

Due to the limited selection, I had to order an Italian orange wine (shudder), this is an orange version of a pinot grigio and it tasted mostly just like a glass of white PG. I am kinda kidding when I say shudder but I find orange wine to often have off flavors and mouth textures (didn't say mouthfeel) that I don't enjoy. For my first glass I got an Italian white,

Betty is a cute (did I say mention it's cute?) new addition to the "scene" and hopefully Sac is big enough for all these places to find their niche.

Happy Lunar New Year I ate some dumplings

 I still want to post more about the food in Thailand, but I wanted to do a quick post on recent food "adventures". I have a new year's resolution to lose weight (I know) but also to eat more Asian food (in general and specifically in Davis when I am at the office) and to do more fine dining this year (trying out some fancy places is actually smiller's resolution but I am in favor) so those resolutions are really at odds!

Dating back as my time to SNR as food critic, I get news releases from people. A lady who flacks for Black Angus sends me stuff (I don't have the heart to unsubscribe, I guess I'm like what if I'm the last person left on her list who has not opted out of news releases with the subject line BLACK ANGUS STEAKHOUSE LAUNCHES NEW MOBILE APP), and also Paragary's related places. So I got an announcement that Centro is having crab month. That has set me on a seafood craving path. I def do not eat enough seafood (I mean if I see food....right?) Centro is really close to our house yet I never eat there. I was determined to go there for CRAB MONTH. I made this happen and these are Dungeness crab tacos. We discovered that they now have a tomatillo salsa with the free chips and not the pico de gallo we all remember. I got an excellent Oaxaca margarita with mescal. This food was very bland (I mean duh it's Centro). This made me realize that it may have been these specific black beans that made me think back in the day that I did not like black beans. They just tasted like salt. Now I know that black beans can be very rich and delicious and are the backbone of some regional Mexican food, like in Oaxaca. But when I was  young (days of yore) this was my intro. Also this rice is just...white rice, with maybe a little oil. No seasoning! We had a great time and don't worry Centro is exactly the same and was crowded on a Tuesday.

A friend (CH) recommended I try these juicy pork buns from Tasty Dumpling (Crocker Village). I was skeptical because some of these dumping chains seem really meh. She said it was not a chain, which seems to hold up upon Google research. Their specialty seems to be XLB soup dumpling; their menu is very interesting. She warned me that these juicy guys are squirters, and indeed they are! Make sure you let them cool before you get your juice bath. I put on an apron, but some juice squirted on my phone. They are a two-bite dumpling. They come with chili oil and vinegar. I will be back to this place! I got takeout but would like to eat there because the bready wrapper was steaming in the container and had collapsed

As part of the aforementioned resolution to eat at a fancy-ish place once a month, we ate at Mulvaney's. I def have affection for and support these people behind this restaurant but boy was this a disappointing meal. The entire cute main restaurant was reserved for a private event (I had made reservations for "dining room", which I assumed was the restaurant), so we were in the other area, which has kind of a warehouse feel. Not bad, but not cozy. I won't belabor all of it but it was an off night. We ordered this app, smoked salmon and brown bread, which is a Mulvaney's classic. It was good, although the onions were a bit strong and plentiful. But it's not like they can control the onion strength, I just avoided them. Although on second thought I do control the strength of red onions by lightly pickling them :) Our food all tasted good, but the beverage choices were not exciting.

DUDE LOOK AT THIS BAD BOY. I already knew Taiwan Best Mart was the bomb from semi-regularly getting their rice bowl with stewed pork, pickle and stewed egg. But today I thought: I should try something new. I saw this gua bao for only five bucks (it's about the size of a fist): pork belly, pickled mustard greens, cilantro peanut powder on steamed white bun. DAMN SON this is just as good as the one I got at cool guy LA spot Pine and Crane. I'm excited as you can tell. Fine dining is hard to deal with price-wise, because it's rare that anything you get for say, $38 is as delicious as this was, IMO. Here's an article on why fine dining is unsustainable in its current form. Many think pieces of this kind are coming out now due to Noma's announcement of their eventual closing.

I also got Zha Jiang Mian which they describe as zha-jiang (ground pork, beacurd, edamame, sweet flour sauce and bean paste) on noodles with cucumber and scallion. The noodles stuck together (this would be a better dine-in dish) but the zha-jiang was nicely salty/savory.