Perci "When God closes a door, he opens a dress" N.'s Profile

The yogurt must be decent if it's going to survive in a mini mall with two other Asian froyo dessert shops.

Flavor break down of what I tried:

Tart - It's apparently Italian. A bit runny. Very milky, and not very tart.
Mango - A bit powdery tasting.
Green Tea - Not sweet or tart. Very strong matcha flavor.
Cherry - The only flavor I liked. Complex flavors, not like fake cherry cough syrup.

Three stars for the cherry. Otherwise meh.

I've tasted better vomit.

1. Cow meat -- all meat -- should not come in squares.
2. Who in the world thinks steamed gray squares of processed cow parts taste good?
3. Hell, who in the world thinks it's even edible?

I would say their burgers are tasteless, but I'd be lying. There's a cloying aftertaste -- not really taste, more like Exxon Valdez disaster -- in your mouth that you just can't scrub, scrape, or burn off.

Dead baby seals. Every time you have a Wendy's burger, think dead baby seals floating in your mouth.

/cry

Kukje is like the anti-Asian market. Unlike most Asian markets, which have a myriad of food from different nations, Kukje only has Korean food, which has a heavy overlap with Japanese food. Chinese bok choy is so ubiquitous, one could find it at Trader Joe's or Safeway -- but not here. One will find, however, lots and lots of garlic. Considering how much garlic Koreans consume, one would imagine they sell some decent garlic. Surprisingly, the garlic here isn't fresh at all. On close inspection, you'll easily find that a lot of the garlic has already started to grow mold -- especially the peeled ones in tubs. The produce section is extremely limited -- one will surprisingly find a wider selection of portable grills here than leafy greens. Hell, they don't even offer basic staples like fresh chicken. The only chicken they sell is frozen drumsticks, frozen wings, and some very scary unrefrigerated chicken thighs that have been marinating in the open air forever.

Do not touch the seafood, especially the thawed "fresh" shrimp. Virtually all shrimp in the US is frozen at the farm. If it's thawed, it's already starting to go bad. Kukje's shrimp sit out all day, and by the afternoon, they've started to turn colors and smell foul. Basic rule: if fish smells fishy, it's rotting. Don't believe me? Go walk up to the shrimp here and take a whiff.

I might go here for the dried Japanese goods and basic Asian pantry stuff like soy sauce or rice, when I can't be bothered to look for parking in the Ranch 99 center nearby. I'm never touching the meat and seafood here ever again. Last time I did, I was sick for two days.

P.S. Someone needs to tell the management here to hire a nanny, instead of letting their kids run around the store all day, and dear gods, at least a single person who knows proper English. Kukje's signs would make them an all-star on http://Engrish.com.

Small 46-seat Northern Chinese restaurant in an only mildly ghetto neighborhood, with free parking and a cheap $5.50 Whitey rice (sweet and sour chicken etc.) lunch special as the primary draw.

Quick to seat, slow to serve. At least it's clean. The tea's free, though they might as well call it hot water -- tea? I don't taste any tea...

House special Beijing style noodles -- the noodles were soft and lacked any kind of expected chewiness. The miso and beef sauce was very strongly flavored. What stuck out was the large amount of celery. Locavore fail -- I'm sure it's not a regular ingredient of the original dish. Not Western friendly.

Onion pancakes -- very flavorful scallions, but instead of a thick, chewy dough, this dough was like a spongy raised bread, like a very thick pita. I suspect it's similar to the recipe they use for their steamed buns.

Shanghai dumplings (xiao long bao) -- these aren't the thin skin dumplings you're looking for. They're large, fluffy steamed buns (baozi), seven to a basket. Any tangy, savory sauce inside has been soaked up by the dough.

Cumin beef -- typically lamb, but we went with the beef. I've had the dish many times, but this beef was definitely the strongest tasting. The beef was practically breaded with cumin. Do not order unless you're a huge fan of cumin -- it's the sole flavoring of the dish.

Overall, it's palatable, but there are better Northern Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area.

Fugetsudo. Over one hundred years of family owned Japanese American tradition. Known for mochi. Famous for more than likely inventing "Chinese" fortune cookies. Benkyodo in San Francisco has an exactly identical pedigree. I've lived in SF and LA, and I've eaten at both.

What are the differences?

Benkyodo is smaller, lower volume. I'm pretty sure both shops exist primarily because of their sales of prepackaged goods to local stores. The actual in-store traffic for both is very, very low. Still, you'll find dozens of types of mochi and manju in each store, made that day.

Without having eaten dozens of different types of confections from each store simultaneously, I just have to work from memory. Benkyodo's mochi are larger and firmer. Overall, the mochi at Fugetsudo is significantly softer than Benkyodo, which goes for a slightly more chewy texture. At the same time, Benkyodo opts for a thinner skin on things like their daifuku -- more finesse required.

Selection-wise, Fugetsudo has a larger selection, with definitely more modern, Western-friendly flavors. Benkyodo is more traditional with mostly Japanese flavors.

Which is better? From a technical perspective, the mochi texture and presentation is better at Benkyodo. Fugetsudo wins out on flavor and selection. I'd love to try an impromptu mochi throw down. Maybe the next time I fly down to LA, I'll bring a box of Benkyodo's finest and give it a shot.

A Chinese ramenya? In DC? *Shock* -_- Ramen is Chinese anyway, so it's fine... What sucks though is no chahan. Come on folks. You're Chinese. There's nothing more Chinese than fried rice. Sell me some fried rice! And a cup of mugicha. Do that and I won't care that you're in a strip mall filled with more 2nd gen fobs than parking spots.

Beyond ramen though, they've got okonomiyaki! That already puts them about 2 stars above the average California-rolling "Japanese" restaurant in the Bay Area. It's not true okonomiyaki. They make it in the back and the choices are limited to chicken, corn, or beef. Do not order beef. It's ground beef(?!). I'd say corn. Most authentic. (Though my DIY okonomiyaki at home are always shrimp bacon cheddar. ^_^) And definitely get the mix modern yaki -- okonomiyaki with yakisoba on top. The yakisoba's the best part.

As for the ramen, I recommend the tonkotsu. It's no Santa Ramen broth -- thinner, less bones used, less fatty -- but it's still flavorful and better than, say, Himawari's. The noodles are solid. The shouyu is nothing to write home about. And absolutely stay away from the spicy garlic miso. Every mouthful is overwhelmed with oil and the taste of burnt garlic.

Oh and the karaage is meh. Flour batter = no crunch.

This place isn't rockstar, but it's definitely better than the sad bowl of Shin Ramyun in front of me right now... I'll be back for the tonkotsu ramen, when I don't feel like driving down to San Potato and waiting in the line at Santa.

Locavore - an elitist who consumes only locally produced food.

The argument is that local products are more nutritious, fresher, and more environmentally friendly.

A major assumption is that local foods are grown organically, and organic is better. Of course, there is no way to assure the person selling you those organic heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market is selling you anything that is even organic or local -- he might not even be a farmer. And then there's the fact that "organic" is a label with almost no government regulated definition. One could raise tomatoes in human waste alongside marijuana plants and reasonably call them organic.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the veracity of the claim. Too bad organic still means nothing. A groundbreaking study published this year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition proved that organic food has no health benefits compared to regular food. The UK Food Standards Agency study analyzed the data from 162 separate studies on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years and found no evidence supporting any nutritional claims of organic food being superior to non-organic food.

As for the freshness claim, assuming you are not a farmer yourself, odds are you own a refrigerator. Unless you cut your produce off the vine and hand pick your eggs every morning, you are not consuming your food fresh each day. You can go to the farmer's market and assume the farmer has picked his crop that morning -- but the farmer's market is only once or twice a week. For the majority of the week, you must go harvest your fresh organic produce from your refrigerator -- a refrigerator not unlike one at the supermarket, or the freezer truck that got the food to the supermarket overnight while you were asleep. And if your food is not in season here, then they can get you fresh produce from South America or Asia -- better than locally frozen.

And as for the environmentally sound fallacy -- this one is the worst falsehood of the bunch. Growing locally is worse for the environment by far. Small local organic farmers do not farm at the same level of efficiency as large international farming conglomerates. Local farmers do not have the same efficiencies of scale. They do not use high yield crop on optimal soil. They use what can grow in the local soil, which is more than likely not ideal. This results in small yields that require large amounts of natural resources. More water is used to produce less food. More topsoil runs off into the local waters. And when local farmers ship these small yields to their local markets, they do it in small passenger vehicles, which are the most polluting, least efficient means of transportation. Per food serving, an international operation can ship you food overnight by land, air, or sea using far less resources, via much cleaner methods.

Now for the more insidious aspects of the locavore movement. It's nationalistic, classist, and unhealthy.

Eating locally means removing one's belly from the larger world. In an international economic era, it is the equivalent of turning one's kitching into North Korea. Competitive regions are verboten. No more ethnic foods, as one just cannot get all the ingredients locally. Only our approved food is fit for consumption. The movement has really taken off in the SF Bay Area. Supposedly open minds, but closed mouths. It's easy -- and a bit racist -- to use the locavore excuse to turn up a nose to shun foreign and strange foods.

The locavore movement strives to limit food consumption not only by distance, but by ZIP code and car make as well. America, unlike the rest of the world, enjoys an unappreciated luxury. We pay far less for food than anywhere else in the world. Only about ten percent of our income annually goes to food -- half that of fifty years ago, thanks to industrialization and government policy. And here the locavore movement works to counter this progress and go back in the opposite direction. Raise the price of food. Take basic food commodities, brand them, and turn them into luxury goods.

And lastly, I submit that eating only locally is not just bad for your wallet or your environment, but for your health as well. A local ecosystem can only support so much diversity. Everything worth eating cannot be produced within a one hundred mile radius. It's just not possible. And from an economic standpoint, only certain foods can be produced sustainably within a region -- as in profitable enough from year to year to continue production at a level more than just for personal consumption. Eating only a limited diet is bad for the human body. We're omnivores by design. The greater the diversity in our diet, the healthier we are.

El Pollo Blando.

Tasteless and dry grilled chicken. Why is this place so highly regarded? Either Yelpers have never heard of El Pollo Loco -- more than likely, considering most Yelpers are locavores and/or abhor chains (at least in public) -- or they've never actually grilled a chicken themselves. Actually, I'd guess both.

And my god, the worst beans and rice I've ever had. You thought the chicken was bland and dry? Try the beans and rice. It makes for better wall paste than side dish.

Kudos for having a parking lot. In this hood, that's like being the only guy in the tribe with a daughter worth not just one, but two goats.

MYO is proof that frozen yogurt by the ounce is no longer an Asian thing. It's pronounced, "MY yo," and stands for "Make Your Own." And I don't think it has anything to do with Asians or kitschy Korean chains. I swear, we were the only Asians inside. XD

45 cents an ounce. Dirt cheap. 8 flavors. Tart, pomegranate raspberry, vanilla cupcake, mango, choco, cookies and cream, and I'm forgetting something. Candy toppings. I don't remember seeing things like lychee or boba or jackfruit or agar absurdities.

I've been around the block with these places. My taste buds say MYO uses YoCream, a huge supplier of frozen yogurt mix. YoCream's tart runs on the icy side, tastes more milky than not, and is not very tart at all in comparison to places like PinkBerry. Overall, it's not bad.

Pomegranate raspberry is my fav flavor. And their most popular flavor. Mango is one of the least favs -- it's got all the worst flavors of mango. Very chalky. The cupcake is very, very eggy tasting. And the cookies and cream taste isn't so memorable so much as the color: puke gray. They swap out flavors every two weeks.

Nice folks. Gave us a locals discount. If you need froyo and you're in Monterey, sure, go for it. They've been around for three months, and hopefully they survive. It's definitely not the be-all-end-all of froyo, but it's one of the few decent places on Cannery Row.

The Fish House has been around 15 years, far away from the touristy parts of Monterey in a small 60-ish seat building just down the street from the Navy school. The owner's Japanese-Sicilian, from a long line of Monterey locals. The waiters are friendly and knowledgeable. And every seat in the house was filled -- on a Tuesday evening! -- when I went for dinner. I truly wanted to like this place, but the quality of the food just couldn't pass muster.

Huge Hama Hama oysters on a half shell from Washington. Great flavor, but a few freshness issues. The chewy adductor muscles had detached from the shells completely, and the oysters were brought to the table actually too cold to eat. The flesh felt and tasted too cold, possibly from being stored in dry ice, which is colder than regular ice. I had to wait awhile for them to warm up to non-ice cube levels before eating.

Greasy crab cakes. Flat, shapeless, and completely soggy with oil. Mostly fresh crab, but it's overwhelmed by a mouthful of grease. They need to use cooking rings, a higher heat, and a lower percentage of liquid in the batter.

Rib-eye steak, medium rare. It was medium rare, but lacked complex flavors. The meat itself was tender and juicy, but the steak was bland. They definitely didn't use salt and pepper on the steak. It was dressed with finely chopped parsley and then seared to a crisp in an oak wood oven. The problem was, they used a short cut and probably steam seared the steak on a grill -- the skin was evenly gray. And then atop the gray, a thin level of blackened crust. The steak spent so little time with the oak wood that it made no difference -- zero woody, smokey flavor in the meat, even though one could smell it throughout the restaurant. The overall appearance was unappetizing.

And seriously, meat with not even a dash of salt should be outlawed. If you follow my posts, you know I call every instance of food being over salted. I almost never ever claim that something is under salted. This is probably a first.

One service complaint: we never got an iced tea, even though we asked twice. One huge plus: the place is dirt cheap. The food is a steal for these prices.