Category Archives: Restaurants & Reviews

Tuk Tuk Thai in Berkeley

The only food item of note involves our lunch today at Tuk Tuk Thai Cafe (2466 Shattuck, Berkeley).  I have enjoyed their lunch special for some time now and almost always order the BBQ chicken with sticky rice and green papaya salad.  Transliterated, that’s gai yang and som tum.  Fact is, Tuk Tuk produces superior som tum.  Being a student and lover of Issan-style cooking, I know my som tum, and this is tops.  The papaya is grated coarse so it retains its texture, and all the ingredients meld into that sweet-sour-hot-pungent flavor profile that is the hallmark of Issan cuisine.  The grated papaya and condiments are pounded together in a wooden mortar, you see, which brings the salad together.  Traditionally, dried shrimp, lime juice, fish sauce, dried chili pepper, tomatoes, palm sugar, green beans and sugar are used.  If you want to try to make it there are about a zillion recipes on the web, but try to find one that uses the ingredients I list.  Until I got the Thai mortar and pestle, I had some luck using big wooden spoons to smash the mass into the bottom of a large stoneware bowl.  Now, if only I could get Matthew to stop ordering lunch special #1, the chow mein.  No matter how I try to steer him, he is a stick of furniture.

Shanghai Gourmet in Richmond going downhill

We ate at Shanghai Gourmet at Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce) in Richmond today and found that the place had gone downhill.  How sad!  No more chicken with chestnuts — it was taken off the menu.  The braised meatballs (often called “Lion’s Head”) had limited richness of sauce, which was markedly lighter than in the past and floury.  The pork with bean curd sheets — which should be pork belly and bean curd knots braised in a clay pot with the usual suspects, like wine, rock sugar and soy sauce — was a memory of its former self.  First off, half the pork belly was replaced with another cut of pork, which sent my mother into a tailspin.  Second, the sauce was weak.  Stuff was missing or the dish was not given enough time to braise – maybe both.  All I know is that it should have been obscenely savory but fell flat.  Matt ordered pan-fried bean curd with shrimp roe, which was very good, but none of us were able to detect much roe flavor.  When we talked with our server about the state of the food, he claimed there had been no change in ownership nor chef.  Then what the hell happened?  This calls for some investigation.

Number 5 in Bingoland

 The five of us – Marie, Nicole, Lynn, Holiday and myself – wanted a badass meal tonight so we went over to Number 5 (33 S. Washington Street, Binghamton) for steaks.  Number 5 was fire station #5 for 75 years before becoming a restaurant, so there is ambiance aplenty.  Service was good if a bit pretentious:  this is clearly a place that thinks much of itself.  The server, for example, was explaining to us what a “wine flight” was, as if the five of us had just fallen off a turnip truck and Number 5 had invented the wheel.  I wanted to say, “We know what a wine flight is.  We are restaurant people.  I’m from California, for chrissake!”  Lynn ordered a wine flight that later showed up on the check as “sweet white flight.”  Interesting.  Anyhow, the French onion soups tasted good and so did the steaks, which were cooked properly.  Since I wanted USDA Prime tonight I had the cowboy cut, my only complaint being that the caramelized onions were too sweet — as if they had added sugar — which you never do unless you are in too much of a rush to go the normal caramelization route.  And there were so many of those damned things they infused the whole plate.  One person ordered salmon, which was dry.  If I wanted dry salmon I’d overcook it myself at home for a third of the price, so I almost never order it out, and held back my “coulda toldya so.”  The chocolate decadence cake, not made in-house, was in no way decadent, unless you get off on dry cakes.  The bill, including drinks, one appetizer, three soups, three coffees and two deserts was $254 before tip.  There was plenty of leftover steak to haul out for later, too.  After the meal we went out to a bar for a few drinks.  Nicole did not want to go and we pretty much dragged her along despite protest.  Marie and I would have gone on drinking and partying and playing bar trivia all night.  We were laughing and carrying on and tried to ignore the look on Nicole’s face, since she had about had it hours before and was not amused.  We made a last ditch attempt in the parking lot to go to another bar, but this never panned out, for obvious reasons.  We were forced into Nicole’s SUV and promptly escorted home.

The Departed

This evening we went to see The Departed, the new Scorsese film, at the local zillion-plex in Binghamton with Marie and Nicole and company, which was fun.  It was nice to get away from the nursing home and pretend that life had not turned to crap.  We then ate at The Spot Diner on Front Street before heading back in the rain to my dad’s studio on Exchange Street.  Matthew is leaving in a couple of days, which is a bummer.  Then Steve comes for a week and after that, my Mom.  The visits are staggered to offer maximal support.  Once that visit with my Mom is over I’ll be on my own here.

Grande’s not so good in Binghamton

The restaurant known as Marinelli’s (not sure if I am spelling this correctly) had closed awhile back.  My understanding is that this was an institution of sorts and that they had good sauce.  Apparently the sauce lives on at Anthony’s (4 W. State Street, Binghamton, NY) where the former Marinelli’s chef is now in residence.  This is not something I confirmed, by the way, just what I was told tangentially by our server while dining at Grande Bella Cucina with Matthew this evening.  Grande’s, as it’s known, sits on the former site of Marinelli’s (1171 Vestal Avenue, Binghamton).  I can’t say the meal was grande.  The mixed hot appetizer we ordered came right before the entrees and was no great shakes.  At $22.95 you’d expect better.  The chicken marsala was good, but the mashed potatoes it came with were merely OK.  It is not difficult to make great mashed potatoes, so I don’t get it.  If you can manage to make a good marsala sauce and not overcook chicken breast, how do you destroy mashed potatoes?  My main gripe was the salad, though, which had so many mushy green and brown parts it should have been in the trash.  Yuk!  Never again.