Archive for hawaiian

I’m back!

January 23, 2008 at 9:02 pm · Filed under asian, bbq, burger, hawaiian, smoothie

So it seems whenever I change jobs I end up forgetting about my blog for a bit of time. I’m sorry. 😦

But I’m back! The new job is settling down (at least I hope it is by now), so here’s a new post for your enjoyment. The first second of the new year. 🙂

Eva’s Hawaiian Cafe
731 Clement Ave. (x. 8th Ave.)

Photo: none. Still trying to get into the groove of things here.

Red A Bakery closed? No matter! Walk a couple blocks down Clement and you’ll find Eva’s Hawaiian Cafe. If you’ve ever been to L&L Hawaiian BBQ, then there are no surprises here. It seems that Eva’s is just another name for L&L as there’s L&L stuff throughout the place. I don’t really get why they call themselves Eva’s, maybe it’s a fancier version of L&L? Identity crisis? A franchise exercising independence? Mysteries abound, that didn’t stop us from trying.

Enter the place and you are immediately faced with a choice: take out or dine in? Cash register’s up front, so you could easily do either. In fact, whilst we ate many customers picked up food. The interior is brightly painted and pretty clean. There’s Hawaiian music blasting constantly, ranging from traditional sounding stuff to aloha-ized versions of pop songs. How could one not feel the aloha spirit here? The place tugs at your heart strings the entire time.

The menu is filled with Hawaiian favorites: loco moco, mix plate, pulled BBQ pork, etc. On this particular venture, bbg ordered the mix plate – rice only! And I had the teriyaki burger with fries and salad. All plates come with rice and the option of salad or macaroni salad. For myself, I picked the salad only because I thought burgers and fries AND macaroni salad would be overdoing it. My heart can only take so much! The menu also features tons of tropical drinks – smoothies and juices. I was loading up on fats, sugars would have to wait until next time. On a previous visit, bbg ordered the same thing (it’s his favorite) and I got the chicken katsu (the chicken version of my all time favorite Japanese dish).

The food! I thought the teriyaki burger would come with a slice of pineapple, but surprisingly it doesn’t. It did come with a single piece of tiny lettuce, a slice of tomato and onion, and the biggest glob of mayonnaise you’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong, I like mayo, but seriously, this was ridiculous. The burger was tasty, but I didn’t really get how it was Hawaiian since I didn’t really taste the teriyaki. I was disappointed with the lack of lettuce, but the other veggies (all two of them) were fresh and added to the flavor. I ended up scrapping off some of the mayo, but other than that, it was great. The fries reminded me of Ahn’s burger fries. They were crispy and plentiful, but not very flavorful. They needed more salt. The salad was average. It consisted of your general mixed greens, some shredded red cabbage, and some shredded carrots. The veggies, again, were fresh, which is great. The salad was tossed in a light dressing, so light that I couldn’t really taste it. I think it was ranch, but I’m not sure.

The mix plate, I’m told, was excellent. The beauty of a mix plate is that you get every type of meat: pork, chicken, and beef! All BBQ’d in the same sauce and grilled to perfection. Higher quality of meat than the Red A, but probably just as tasty since it’s cooked in the same sauce. My small bite of meat (chicken, I believe) was drowning in the BBQ sauce flavor and a bit chewy, but mostly tender.

I remember the chicken katsu being a big sub-par the time I went there. I think Hawaiian places don’t really get how to make the katsu without drying out the meat.  It’s either really dry or really greasy, never in between unless you go to a high end Japanese place.  The chicken katsu here was on the greasy side, unfortunately.  The chicken came with a layer of fat under the breaded/fried layer of goodness.  It came with the standard dipping sauce and sides of macaroni salad, rice, and salad.  Salad was the same: forgettable.  The macaroni salad was more or less noodles smothered in mayo.  Not very tasty, just squishy and bland.  There were bits of (probably) carrots in it, but that didn’t do much.  I wasn’t impressed.

The service is incredibly fast and friendly.  Both times we went we had the same waitress.  She seems to be the person usually in charge.  On our last trip, I overheard her talking on her cell phone, saying she had worked all week and long hours.  She had a migraine that night, but you couldn’t tell it by talking to her.  Very sweet and polite and attentive.   Nice, but if you don’t like leaving tips, you’ll hate this place!  I couldn’t help but leave a little more than usual since she was so nice and basically running the sitting area and register by herself (looked like one other person was there, just working the kitchen).

I’ve never been there earlier than 9pm, so it’s never crowded.  I think it’s a spot used by locals to pick up a quick and late bite.  Some drunk-ish people came in, but didn’t stay long.

Overall:  Ok food, nothing really special.  Tasty and reliably fattening.  Nice service, probably better items on the menu I haven’t tried yet. Open late, fast, and consistent, so I’ll be back.  Definitely nicer than the Red A. Mixed plate is supposed to be really good.

Rating: 7/10

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welcome to japantown

August 22, 2007 at 11:08 pm · Filed under american, asian, breakfast, brunch, hawaiian, japanese, sandwiches, sushi

May’s Coffee Shop08150712352.jpg
Kintetsu Mall, Japantown
1737 Post St. (near Buchanan St.)

So as stated in the last post, I got a new jobbie. Whoo hoo! While I’ll miss working in Chinatown (because, face it, where else will you get a nice lunch for under $1?), Japantown is my new love. I knew going into the area would be dangerous, it always is. You can lose an arm and a leg out there what with the good, expensive food and all the stuff you could buy! Never have I been so sad to have my cell phone – it doesn’t have a place to hook on a charm! And here I am, amongst a gazillion amazing charms. Life is rough.

Anyway, back to the food. Japanese food is a hardcore favorite of mine. When in doubt, Japanese will do just fine. Sadly, it’s almost always pricey. It would be a challenge to find an affordable lunch place…. We’ll see how I fare.

My first day consisted of a tour of the several different office buildings my organization is housed in. On the way from one to another, my supervisor took me on a detour and showed me a few things. We walked by May’s Coffee Shop and it looked less pricey than the rest. Sweet.

At lunchtime, my first official “working” lunch in Japantown, instead of opting for Denny’s (probably the most affordable place in the area, but not, uh, up to snuff for the area), I went back to the mall and checked out May’s menu. Lo and behold – they serve eggs! May’s became my new favorite spot.

The place isn’t really a restaurant.  It’s a little like an eatery with a counter you order at and picnic style tables surrounding it.  It’s nice in that it’s under skylights so it’s bright and sunny.  Not so great when it’s warm out, though.   You get the mall foot traffic walkin by and looking at you, but whatever.  This place is much better than any food court in any mall.  Ok, well, except for maybe the Westfield mall downtown.  It’s quaint and not intimidating at all (compared to the fancy Japanese restaurants throughout the mall).

Let’s back up for just a second. Last week bbg and I went to Mazatlan, Mexico for vacation. While there I had an epiphany: breakfast is my favorite meal. I love scrambled eggs with tons of pepper and a little bit of ketchup. Other than that, who doesn’t love sausage and pancakes and waffles and potatoes and everything else that comes with breakfast? Part of it has got to be sentimental. When I was growing up (and even today, though I don’t live there anymore) my dad would always make breakfast on the weekends. We’d have eggs and fried rice or potatoes and sausage or pancakes or whatever. So it’s a bit nostalgic for me. But seriously, most of it is because it tastes great. And it’s really difficult to mess up, so it’s always gonna be pretty satisfying.

Anyway, so yeah. For just under $5 you can get a combo with the following: eggs how you like them, toast, potatoes as you like them (hash or home fries with peppers and onions) or rice, and your choice of meat (sausage, spam!!, ham, bacon). Pretty amazing, I think, so I order that. The wait is about 10 minutes.

Beyond what I got, there are a variety of other combos to choose from and breakfast is served all day (again, hella awesome). You can order other breakfast items like waffles and omelettes. And of course, there are lunch items, the usual diner fare: sandwiches, salads, and hamburgers. There are Asian things like curries, Asian type sandwiches, hawaiian stuff, different udons, shaved ice (!), and spam masubi! There are specials everyday like spaghetti and stews, so basically it’s pretty hodgepodge (note the plethora of tags).

Like I said before, breakfast is easy, so no big complaints here. It was a bit greasy, so the shop on the whole is more of a diner than anything else. Or I guess coffee shop. Go figure. The eggs weren’t really fluffy, but they were good and cooked well. The home fried potatoes come cooked with slices of bell peppers and onions, which I tend to avoid in general. I tried a couple of the veggies, blah. Skipped the toast and the meat (I wasn’t that hungry), which was probably smart since those items would’ve increased my grease intake. Strangely, I couldn’t find any black pepper around for my eggs. I thought it’d be in the shaker next to the salt, but its contents turned out to be sesame seeds. Huh. Didn’t matter, they had ketchup and that’s just fine with me.

Overall: Probably your best bet in the neighborhood for lots of good-tasting food for a more than reasonable price. The menu’s filled with your basics, plus some Asian stuff, though a little greasy. But hey, I’m ok with that. I’ll be back. A lot.

Rating: 7/10

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saturday night = date night

May 6, 2007 at 1:29 am · Filed under asian, bakery, bbq, date night, hawaiian

Red A Bakery0505071929a.jpg
634 Clement St. (x 7th Ave.)

BBG LOVES HAWAIIAN BBQ. We eat dinner on Clement a lot and this is a perenial favorite simply because he likes it so much. I myself am not the biggest fan, but on date night, you gotta be nice to your date. And I didn’t have to say yes twice.

The Red A Bakery doubles as an Asian bakery and a Hawaiian BBQ spot. It’s a semi-odd combination, but that sort of embodies what the place is all about. The interior is furnished with modern style tables, chairs, and carpet. It’s small, with about ten tables, and a counter in the back. The counter has the cash register plus a big display case filled with different kinds of pastries. There’s also a display fridge with not only drinks, but also cold baaus you can take home and re-heat yourself. Neat.

The pastries are mostly Asian. You can get your regular sponge cake in the form of a cupcake, red bean filled cookie thingys, egg tarts/dan tat, etc. Even the less Asian pastries (mini apple pies, for example) look like they’ve had an Asian twist. The baaus are gooooooood. We bought a six pack awhile back, and even though it was mislabled as BBQ pork, we enjoyed the regular chicken filled baaus. All in all, a pretty good selection of small pastries and cakes.

The restaurant part features mostly BBQ plates and some other easy Hawaiian or grill foods. There are different types of BBQ’d meats that come with rice and macaroni salad (which is how they roll in Hawaii). The BBQ is more or less teriyaki style, sweet and tender. They give you more than enough, which is always appreciated by BBG. While it’s not the best quality, it is the best in quantity, especially for a dish under $7. BBG says it’s like the Steve’s Korean BBQ of Hawaiian BBQ, a reference for all you Berkeley folks out there.

Since I’m not a big fan of Hawaiian BBQ, I’ve tried other plates. I love tonkatsu. It’s a Japanese dish that’s made of either chicken or pork meat, which is breaded then fried and served with a thick, dark A1/Worcestershire sauce. It makes sense that many Hawaiian places serve the dish, and the Red A Bakery is no exception. Their tonkatsu is made with chicken and overall, it’s pretty gross. There’s a lot of fat and thus a lot of grease that comes with the dish. The breaded outside is crispy and flavorful, and the sauce is good, but after a few pieces I got a little queasy. They give you a ton, though, so that counts for something.

Not to worry though, I found something on the menu I liked: cheeseburger and fries. At $3.50 for both, you can’t go wrong. The fries are thick and crispy, much like what you’ll find at Smokehouse in Berkeley (another reference). The burger looks like it’s actually grilled. Mine was medium-well done and slightly charred on the edges, which is perfect for me. It’s served with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, mustard and mayo. A little heavy on the mayo and onions, and the lettuce was a little limp, but otherwise a classic combo that was yummy. Can’t resist a good burger.

On this last visit I noticed they have fish and chips, which is also a long time favorite of mine. I saw it on a sign right after I ordered, so I’ll have to try it next time. For drinks they have milk tea (no boba! 😦 for shame), coffees, and a nice selection of milk shakes. They have classic flavors for shakes as well as a green tea flavor and a mixed fruit flavor. Sounds interesting, but I’m hesitant to pay $2.50 for something I might not like.

Every time we’ve been there a teenage-ish girl has been working the counter, so it seems as if this is a family operation. They talk on the phone or watch the TV, which is a good sized flat screen always playing kid cartoons (I’ve seen Dora and SpongeBob, plus weird PBS cartoons) – something we’ve found to be pretty strange. While the eating area looks pretty clean and simple, the back area is not so nice. I had to use the restroom on one occasion and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Down the hall to the bathroom the floor was greasy and slippery. The bathroom was small and felt grimy. The back area/kitchen was big, as if it could be used to cook for a much larger restaurant, but filled with junk and boxes of stuff. The whole area felt dirty, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a loooooong time only because it wasn’t used for a long time. If that makes sense.

If it’s any consolation, I’m sure most restaurants look like this behind closed doors. And I didn’t see any mice or insects, so there’s a plus. Every time we’ve gone the place is pretty empty, with one or two people eating besides us. Since the place opens and closes so early (their hours are 7am – 8pm), it looks like their money maker is the bakery.

Overall: An ok Hawaiian BBQ place that’ll give you the most bang for your buck, especially if you don’t think about what goes on behind closed doors or are concerned about your health.  If you’re not into Hawaiian, though, use the place as a bakery.

Rating: 6/10

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