Monthly Archives: September 2009

Albany Bowl’s restaurant

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Entrance to Albany Bowl in Albany, California

I admit it:  I love to bowl.  I hold the key to locker #1 at Albany Bowl (540 San Pablo Avenue), the bowling alley in Albany, California, a city with only about 17,000 people but boasting both a pool and a bowling alley, for crying out loud.

They keep it nice in there.  It’s sparkling clean but still has that retro feel, what with all the black and white photos of famous visitors, a dark, secluded bar, pool tables and a pro shop.  Patrons include various league members there to practice, and kids from the Albany school system walked over in groups.  While there are video games for teens who use the Bowl as a hang-out, it never gets out of control because management keeps a lid on it.

Since I had to go renew my locker for another year, Matt and I thought we’d have something to eat at the cafe, which serves Thai food in addition to the usual suspects, like burgers and cheese fries. There’s a counter and a half-dozen or so tables, and you order from a board behind the counter.  Honest to God, you can get a very decent pad Thai at Albany Bowl for $7.50.  There are ample shrimp and tofu cubes in this large, hot portion of noodles served with a slice of lime on the side and ground peanuts on top.  Matthew ordered the cheesesteak for $6.95, which had plenty of meat, cheese, and, I think, green peppers and onions, but he got mad when I wanted all the details so I left it alone.  His sammie came with criss-cut fries, which was a nice touch.  We also shared a fried calamari for $6.75, served with sweet/hot sauce.  It was all strips (no tentacles) but nice, thick, non-uniform pieces that were not overcooked and not greasy.

Fried calamari at Albany Bowl in Albany, CA

The food here is cooked to order and handed to you right out of the tiny kitchen, so you can’t go wrong, and the proprieters of this little diner are super-friendly, too.  If I were you, I’d check it out and bowl a couple games, too.

Albany Bowl is a remnant of a mostly-lost world, where cocktails, Brunswick machines and Formica tables still happily coexist.  While the smoking part of the equation is no longer allowed, they do have free wi-fi.

Lunch at Berkeley Bowl West

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Matthew at Berkeley Bowl West cafe

Berkeley Bowl West (920 Heinz, Berkeley) is a good place to have lunch, but we like to buy stuff in the market and bring it into the cafe, rather than buy cafe food.  The eating space is much nicer here than at the Shattuck location, because it’s in another building and you don’t have the hustle and bustle of shoppers all around you as you eat – though it does get crowded at lunch.

So far we have not been thrilled with the cafe food, but they may just need some time to work out kinks.  My Mom had a Cuban sandwich there a couple weeks ago that was so skimpy and cold (they never pressed or grilled the thing) I though she was going to have a conniption.  I dragged her back there when Matt and I went so she could see the kinds of things we select.

Here are the things we like:

1)  The store-made sushi, in particular the spicy tuna roll.
2)  The egg salad at the deli, which Matthew loves.  We get a container and then select a couple of rolls from the bread department to go with it.
3)  The turkey meatloaf from the deli counter.  The texture is gluey, but I like this stuff.  I swear there is the flavor of liver in there.  Despite the fact that many people in the food business never order meatloaf from anywhere (you never know what evils lurk in a product that is ground and formed), I get it here.
4)  The Chinese food at the hot food counter.  You can’t go wrong, for the most part.  The potstickers are pretty good.
5)  The pecan roll.  At a buck fifty, I can’t believe they even make money on this thing given the volume of pecans on top.  They can be had at the pastry counter and are usually in the cafe, too.
6)  A little piece of cheese from the cheese counter.  (This is another place the rolls come in into play…)

Take your goodies across the little divide to the cafe, grab some utensils and napkins and set up shop.  You may purchase a beverage, but we usually just have water.

Oh, before I forget:  the house-made potato chips at the cafe are to die for.  Even my Mom had to admit this.

Red Lentil Curry

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Red Lentil Curry in a red bowl

I purchased a large bag of red lentils recently and was looking for a good red lentil curry recipe when I came upon this one, posted by Emma Maher, on allrecipes.com:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Red-Lentil-Curry/Detail.aspx

From the looks of the allrecipes.com legalese, I may not be allowed to post the text of the recipe – and who has time to decipher all that? – so please forgive me for sending you to another site.  However, this is an excellent curry and I highly recommend that you give it a try.  It’s a savory, complex and substantive dish, which, if served with rice and some chutney and a thick plain yogurt, would make a good dinner.  If you made the curry paste I posted yesterday, it will work well in this recipe.  Meat eaters, fear not; nothing watery or wimpy here.

Indian curry paste

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My jar of indian curry paste

One good reason to have a mortar and pestle around the house is to help keep you in various curry pastes.  I always have a jar of homemade Indian curry paste on hand, for example, because I find that it works better than the commercially-prepared kind.  I never make more than can fill my little 8-ounce glass canning jar so that I’m forced to make fresh batches ar regular intervals – though I do run through the stuff at a quick clip.

Here’s my recipe, in case you want to try it yourself.  You don’t need a huge mortar and pestle.

RV’s Very Basic Indian Curry Paste

6 tablespoons canola oil
1 very small onion, finely chopped
8 garlic cloves
5 teaspoons peeled/chopped ginger root
3/4 teaspoon dried ground chili peppers (buy the whole, dried ones and grind in a coffee grinder)
1-1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1)  Grind the coriander and cumin seeds into a powder (fine or coarse, as you prefer)  in the mortar and pestle
2)  Add the garlic and ginger and pound until the mass is a course paste – then set aside
3)  Heat the oil in a small pan and saute the onions until golden
4)  Add the mass from the mortar and saute for 3 minutes over medium heat
5)  Add the turmeric and chili and saute for a moment or two
6)  Transfer to a small jar and allow to cool
7)  Cover and refrigerate

Taki Sushi has no sushi for lunch

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Matt and I wanted to grab a quick lunch near home the other day, so we went to Taki Sushi (10889 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito).  They’re located in one of those cursed locations where things have come and gone – a really unattractive part of a generally unattractive stretch of San Pablo Avenue, in my opinion.  Problem #1, they don’t have sushi for lunch.  Problem #2, the food inspector arrived as we sat down to eat.  We were not happy about a place with “sushi” in its name not having sushi for lunch, and they were not happy about the food inspection, but we did wind up having quite a nice lunch. 

Taki Sushi is nicely decorated, has a sushi bar and is clean as a whistle. 

We ordered one of my faves, agedashi tofu ($5.50), which is like tofu tempura served in a rich dashi, a broth made of bonito (tuna) flakes, with mirin and shoyu added.  This was a very generous portion and it arrived boiling hot.  Nice. 

Matt had a lunch bento with tempura ($8.25).  The tempura was crunchy and obviously of fresh shrimp and veggies fried at the right temperature.  The portion was nice.  Tempura – check!

I ordered the chicken curry donburi (I do not see this on the take-out menu, but I recall it being about $8 for lunch) and it was very good, with a nice, rich, curry sauce with ample chicken and carrots.  It was a hot day and I still enjoyed it, so that says something.  Curry – check!

Service is friendly and prompt and the food good, so we’ll go back soon and try a few other things, but they should have sushi for lunch!