Eureka! and Malay Satay Hut

Met my friend for lunch at Eureka! at the University Village.

Hadn’t been to U. Village for a while and it was absolutely booming.

Molly Moon opened up a store there, Din Tai Fung had its second Washington location, and a Starbucks Reserve store that was supposed to have food and liquor.

Eureka! had a lovely outside seating, and on a sunny day, it was fantastic!

Looked like Eureka! was a California chain restaurant, and the U village location was the first one outside of CA.

Burgers were the main stake of the restaurants, and Eureka! used all natural, no hormone and no antibiotics beef.

At the end, my friend picked the bison burger, since it was infrequently seen at restaurants and the vegetarian burger sparked my interest.

We ended up waiting for a very long time for our food, even though the restaurant did not strike me as particularly crowded on a weekday lunch time.

The waiter was really nice and brought us complimentary fries while we waited for our food.

The fries had ok flavor, on the softer side and not super crispy.

Both burgers arrived looking fantastic and the buns looked soft, nice and appetizing.

The bison meat turned out decent and the burger was well-flavored with bacon-jalapeno jam which gave some smokiness and very mild in spiciness.

The onions and peppers gave a southwest-feel to the dish.

My problem was the buns.

It was soaked with butter and made the burger greasy and heavy.

The buns themselves actually tasted a little sweet and fluffy.

The reason that the vegetarian burger peaked my interest because the patty was made with red beet and beans.

When I was in New York couple year back, I had 5-napkin burger’s vegetarian burger and it was out of this world!

The best I ever had, which incidentally also had red beet.

I remembered loving it — the color of the patty looked almost like a rare beef burger, and the texture was awesome and similar to a meat patty with great flavors.

I was hoping the Eureka! one would be a substitute to a trip to New York — unfortunately no luck.

Aside from a little sweetness and the striking purple color delivered by the beets, the patty was a bean patty that was relatively soft — resembling many other vegetarian burger patty.

Along with zucchini pickles, tomatoes, onions and arugula, overall flavor was decent, but not something I wanted to shell out $12 for.

We had far and few Southeast Asian restaurants in the Greater Seattle area, long-standing Malay Satay Hut being one of them.

My favorite from Malay Satay Hut was their roti and chicken satay.

The roti was one of the most buttery treat there was.

It was fairly fluffy (of course, not as fluffy as the ones in Malaysia) with crisp tops and bottoms, super delicious.

Over the years, the curry sauce went through its iteration: it used to be a lighter chicken curry sauce, now it was a thicker perhaps vegetarian curry sauce with potatoes.

The curry flavor was still very nice and I enjoyed the roti all the same.

Chicken satay was another excellent dish.

I believed dark chicken meat was used and it was one of the most tender satay I had in town.

Always well marinated with garlic, turmeric and other spices, cooked to perfection with a little char, the chicken satay was a delight.

They also served beef satay which was not as fantastic as the chicken, and I had not tried the new lamb satay yet.

The chunky peanut sauce was very delicious as well with likely garlic, onion and soy, I could eat bowls of rice with just this savory additive sauce.

That particular dinner, we also had Tom Yum soup per my friend’s request, which was sweeter than my preference.

I generally stayed away from ordering anything non-Malay/Indonesian dishes at Malay Satay Hut; this was my first time having their Tom Yum soup.

I found it interesting that they used peppers which had a strong flavor that I did not associate with Tom Yum.

I also dislike the small baby corn; I found the flavor often soapy and non-food like.

We also had their Chow Kueh Teow, Malaysian fried wide rice noodle.

It was a little disappointing that night as it was a bland in flavor and just did not have the complexity of the aromatics and the flavors of the ingredients that was supposed to make this dish great.

How I missed the Malaysian food at Johur’s food court!

I could still taste the kueh teow, satays and belachan in my head!!

 

Good Eats in Remond — Flying Saucer Pizza and Now Make Me A Sandwich

These 2 good-eats places were nestled in business parks in Redmond and were only a block away from each other!

First off, Flying Saucer Pizza.

This funky spaceship-alien themed pizza joint served up delightful pizzas.

I was most surprising to find deep dish pizza — something that was very uncommon here and reminded me of my days in the Midwest.

Flying saucer pizzas offer quite a few different flavors including great selection of vegetarian pizzas along with salads and pastas.

The pizza names were geeky and hilarious, they included Andromeda, the chickenator and crop circle.

On my first visit I had the deep dish Thai fighter without cheese to go.

The crust was made of soft, yeasty bread that carried a light sweetness and baked to a slight crisp.

My pizza passenger along the way home was just taunting me with this sweet savory peanut aroma.

The sauce was sweet, mildly spicy and delicious; the slightly charred thinly julienned carrots and cabbage with sprouts and cilantro gave pleasant and aromatic flavors.

The pizza without cheese was still tasty.

The next trip I had a regular cosmic clucker and a deep dish luau.

The regular crust was bready inside and appropriately dry crisp bottom and top.

I loved their twist of adding artichoke in this bbq chicken pizza; while the luau was Hawaiian pizza with extra bacon on top of Canadian bacon.

I did not skip cheese the second time, and I did find that both the pizzas were too heavy-handed with cheese that was distracting the main flavors and increased their greasiness.

I would go back again for sure and perhaps cheeseless would be my main stay.

Went around the block, one would find Now Make Me A Sandwich every Thursday stationed at West Willows Technology Center.

The guys made very delicious sandwiches.

I loved their unique vegetarian sandwich with roasted yam, spinach, mushroom, peppers and the great addition of manchego cheese and garlic tahini sauce; the best part, it was called Buddha Call.

It was tasty with lots of flavors, fresh and the yam gave texture.

Another one I had and enjoyed tremendously was the Vahalla pork — tasty tender pulled pork, dressed with a coleslaw with a surprising twist – apple jalapeno;  sweet and quite spicy, delicious with a crunch.

I also had their Viking stew, which had generous amount of vegetables but the day I got it was a little cold which made the creamy stew heavy.

There were many more sandwiches to try with fillings such as roast beef, ham, chicken and turkey, I shall be back!

 

 

Tutta Bella and Sunrise Donuts

Doof Out

It was probably 10 years ago when I first heard about Tutta Bella from a co-worker of mine.

Since I was not crazy over pizza in general, I had not been back since.

Tutta Bella was the first restaurant in the Pacific Northwest to receive the highly regarded VPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) certificate from Italy.

The VPN has strict rules on the ingredients of pizza dough, the process of dough-making, including the dough characteristics, fermentation, and cooking temperature.

Any restaurant wanting to get VPN certified has to apply, and to be assessed and inspected by the association in addition to rigorous amount of pizza-making training.

Recently, Tutta Bella opened an outfit on the eastside, and my Dad likes pizza, we went to check it out!

When we got there, it was Happy Hour.

We got an extremely delicious bruschetta with plump cherry tomatoes.

They were garlicky, a little on the greasy side but tasty.

I was very hungry, started eating them and had completely forgotten about picture!

Once my stomach stopped protesting, I had my phone in hand, and ready for pictures of other dishes.

We had fried calamari.

Flavor was good but unfortunately I did not like the coating.

The calamari was a little soggy and greasy, without the springy-ness of a good fried food.

The salumi plate was great.

Meat was tasty and not overly salty; with pickled peppers and olive, it went really well with my Sofia.

A delicious cocktail with vodka, limoncello, mint and fresh berries, a wonderful summery drink which was perfect in sweetness and could seriously made me drunk before I knew it!

Now, for the reason we went to Tutta Bella — pizzas.

We had the goat cheese with marinated peppers and eggplant and the salsiccia calzone.

L: Salsiccia calzone — R: Meditterranea Pizza

The pizza crust was AMAZING!

There was the reason why Tutta Bella was certified.

The crust was crispy on the outside as if they were fried but in fact wood-fire baked, light and without grease.

The crust was also very thin, which usually yielded a harder dense texture in many other pizza joints, and managed to feel fluffy, airy and moist in texture.

Soft and a little doughy inside, just enough to remind us that, yes the crust was made with flour and yeast.

The crust in calzone application just augmented the greatness of the crust, as the baking resulted in a very crisp and light skin on the surface without sauce and cheese interference.

Fresh tangy tomato sauce, spice sausage and little bit cheese and mushroom, the calzone was to die for.

I am very glad that there was a great pizza joint on the eastside now!

 

My father LOVES donuts.

Every time he came to the States, we went to look for donuts that he liked.

I brought him to Top Pot, Mighty-O and Krispy Kreme before.

Our search had stopped after we found Sunrise Donuts last year.

This small store on West Lake Sammamish in Redmond,  opens at 5:30am in the morning and used to close by noon.

Apparently they have changed ownership 6 months ago, and now they open until 2pm.

The donuts seemed to be the same great flavor, taste and quality as before, and we could only hope it stayed the same forever!

Sunrise donuts offers a large variety of donuts.

My favorite was the red velvet cake donut (with or without cream cheese on top);  unfortunately with the new owners, they had stopped making them.

They kept the blueberry cake donut which was also very good, and looked like they took away all the cream cheese topping.

I loved the denser yet fluffy texture of the cake donut, and with the abundant blueberry flavor in it that the donut almost screamed healthy!

My second favorite was the chocolate frosted custard-filled donut.

The custard was creamy, eggy with a fluffy donut and nice chocolate frosting.

Another star was the lemon curd donut — the sour sweet lemon curd gave a zing and huge lemon flavor to lighten up the oily donut flavor.

Their raised twist donut, particularly with sugar sprinkles were very light, fluffy, tasty and crunchy with the texture of sugar granules.

A lot of people liked their bacon maple bars as well.

I usually don’t eat donut, but I will eat Sunrise donut with great company!

 

La Isla

Doof Out

Brought my parents to La Isla since they never had Puerto Rican food before.

I had been to La Isla long time ago at the Ballard location, and the new one in Redmond just opened under a year ago.

Taking into account of preferences and dietary restrictions, we ended up getting empanadillas, ceviche, tripleta sandwich, a seafood soup and maduros on the side.

L: seafood soup with tostones — M: tripleta — R: Maduros

The seafood soup was a hit for my parents, surprisingly with my Dad since he was generally a “meat-kind-of guy”.

The soup had plenty of salmon and shrimps, bright lime flavor and probably cilantro as well.

Once I tasted it, I knew why my Dad loved it — it was sweet!

The soup had a nice sweet, salty and tart tastes, and quite addictive!

The tostones, green fried plantains, had firm texture, starchy with the fantastic Michael sauce.

My Dad’s favorite had to be the Tripleta.

It had lots of meat; chunky grilled ham, marinated steak and most importantly, the pernil — the long-marinated, slow-cooked pork shoulder.

With light cheese, the sandwich was delicious and serious meat load.

The bread was ok; it was a little on the soft side for me and I wish it had a little more substance to it.

The maduros were tasty!

Lovely riped fried plantains were sweet and melted in the mouth.

The super garlicky mojito sauce was a perfect companion to the maduros.

Back: ceviche — Front: Empanadillas with rice and beans

I ordered the empanadillas with the pernil.

There were 5 kinds of fillings to choose from, ranging from meat to cheese to potatoes.

The outer layer of the empanadillas were crispy fluffy flaky dough, which was a surprise to me.

I expected more doughy and dense layer similar to the ones I had encountered in Peru and Argentina.

Perhaps this flaky dough was authentic Puerto Rican style?

I welcome any feedback from my blog readers!  I need some Puerto Rican education!

Back to the empanadillas, the pork shoulder was fantastic, and the flaky though was a delicious compliment to the pork filling.

The rice and beans on the side was extremely tasty — once again, a little sweet; even my non-vegetarian father was happy to consume it.

Lastly, the ceviche.

Nice zing from the jalapenos and habaneros, coupled with the fresh lime flavor and tartness, the ceviche was really firm in texture.

The menu said they used rock fish, which might explain the firmer texture of the fish.

Every bite was flavor explosion of all the fresh ingredients including bell peppers and red onions as well.

While I appreciated the delicious food, I noticed with my limited exposure at the restaurant, Puerto Rican food seemed to contain lots of meats and fried food.

I was not sure whether we were having the Americanized version of Puerto Rican food.

I supposed I would need to make a trip to Puerto Rico to experience the real food for myself!

More Than Honey and Eastern Pearl Dim Sum

Doof Media

I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary More Than Honey.

The short 95-minute documentary was both educational and beautiful.

We could not live without bees – the little critters did their jobs for us to have vegetables and fruits.

It was quoted that Einstein said human would die about 4 years after bee extinction.

Bee colonies had been dying off in the past 15 years with unknown causes.

One piece of good news from this documentary was that perhaps there was hope for human being after all.

The movie followed the “bee business” from around the world.

It showcased traditional bee keeping in the Swiss Alps, a small and a large commercial bee keeper in the US.

I loved that the tone of the documentary was amazingly neutral and non-judgemental – viewers could draw their own conclusions and kept their own opinions on the styles of bee keeping, the bee keepers’ relationships with the bees, and their environmental impact.

Sprinkled in between the bee keepers were knowledge and current bee situations in other parts of the world.

The movie provided some possible causes for vanishing bee colonies.

They also interviewed researchers who had spent their work and time to understand bees, and how bees communicated in a colony.

One stunning fact shared in the movie was that some part of China had no bee.

In turn, people were hired to gather pollen from one area, transport and then sold pollen to another area.

The pollens were then hand-painted by humans onto the flowers that required pollination – essentially humans were doing bees’ job.

I was utterly dumb-founded — the situation was just incredibly wrong.

Aside from delivering knowledge and education, the cinematography of the documentary was stunning.

Not only that it showcased the gorgeous landscape from the Swiss Alps, American desert or even almond farms in America; there were large amount of footage dedicated to filming the bees in exceptional close-up.

With my personal bee encounter, the normal tendency was to avoid, or stood completely still hoping that the bee would not sting me.

There was no chance to admire or observe these little hard-working bees.

One could see almost every eye, hair, and tentacle of the bees, plus the tinier bee mites that caused infestation to colonies.

Viewers had a chance to observe the birth of a queen bee, a busy work day by the worker bees in the hive, and bees feeding bee babies.

These were all priceless footage, and they gave us an opportunity to respect the work of the underappreciated yet extremely important being.

I hope as human beings, we were wise enough to get ahead of the deteriorating situation – to save the bees and to save ourselves.

Doof Out

My friend told us about this new dim sum place on the eastside called Eastern Pearl in Redmond.

Since most dim sum places on the eastside were lack-luster, we were always up for checking out a new spot.

The only place on the eastside I would attempt dim sum was Top Gun; however, it also came with a high price tag especially when compare to my favorite place in the International District – Jade Garden.

The dim sum menu in Eastern Pearl was fairly small, with congees and soy milk listed as dim sum items as well.

We had shrimp dumplings, sticky rice, pork shu mai, bbq pork bun, soy skin wrap and tripe.

The shrimp dumplings were surprisingly good, dare to say even better than Jade Garden’s.

However, the BBQ pork bun was dry on top with more bun than pork; the tripe was also dry on top.

Both the tripe and soy skin wrap were average but the price tag was extremely high.

Dim Sum were about $3.50 a plate, even more expensive than Top Gun.

With this quality of dim sum, it was not worth the money at all.

We also got the sweet soy milk, thousand-year old egg and pork congee and the special pan-fried noodle.

The soy milk was average, and the congee was exceptionally tasty.

I would get to-go for their congee anytime – it was flavorful, smooth and creamy.

The pork was tender with generous amount of thousand-year old egg and pork in the congee.

The pan-fried noodle on the other hand was inedible.

It was super salty, and heavy on soy sauce flavor, which was not exactly authentic.

I was not impressed with their food.

Perhaps the restaurant would improve as they worked out their kinks from being newly opened.

Eat Local and Iyara Thai

Doof Out

Went to Eat Local for some food preparation help.

Eat Local has several locations in the Greater Seattle area that sells prepared frozen meals.

They have everything from appetizers, soups, entrees to side dishes and desserts.

They also carried frozen fish and meat for purchase.

The dishes came in different serving sizes with meat options and vegetarian options.

Their dishes are on the pricey side.

In turn, they do use fantastic ingredients such as 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken, sustainably caught fish and local vegetables.

This was my first visit to the Capitol Hill locations. My prior visits were at the Queen Anne location.

This store was hip and fun!

Rows and rows of refrigerated cases with delicious wholesome frozen food!

The store person gave me a sample of the chicken nicoise and I was sold!

That day, I bought cottage pie and chicken nicoise.

DH gulped them all down by the time I came back from the retreat!

It is a fun place to check out!

 

Visited Iyara Thai in Redmond after a bit of hiatus.

Sad to find out that they have changed ownership.

They no longer serve some of the unique appetizers/street foods, which is very unfortunate.

I believe the small bites made the restaurant stood out from the rest of the many Thai restaurants around town.

One of the yummiest of these unique appetizers were these small ball shape bites that were made with ground pork, herbs and ground peanuts inside; wrapped with an opaque chewy mochi-like dough outside.

Each one of them was served on a spoon.  They were wonderful!

The menu now is the regular Thai restaurant fare, except with 2 dishes I have not seen before.

One was the Suki Haeng.

Turned out it was a stir-fry noodle dish with narrow mung bean noodle and lots of napa cabbage, shrimps and chickens.

The sauce was delicious.

The restaurant called the sauce chili bean curd sukiyaki sauce.

It tasted like Chinese fermented tofu with chili paste and perhaps sweetened soy sauce.

The flavor was strong and extremely appetizing and delicious.

There was another Suki dish as well but I was not able to see it on the online menu.

We had their Tom Yum with shrimp which was excellent: it was flavorful with lemongrass, red onions green onions, ginger and cilantro, and light.

We had a basil dish, Panang curry and Pad Thai as well, all were very tasty.

Particularly the Pad Thai was flavorful yet dry (not too saucy) and the noodles were done exactly right for their texture.

Mandarin Buffet and Tea

Doof Out

My last hurrah before starting detox last week was going to Mandarin Buffet and Grill.

It was the Chinese me realizing that I could not have soy sauce for many weeks.

I did not give much thoughts to All-you-can-eat Chinese Food Buffet before.

Since Mandarin Buffet has opened its door, I have been back quite a few times.

The visits usually coincided with my Americanized Chinese Food cravings.

Lunch for about $10, the food is decent.

The restaurant charges a higher price for dinner, but they incorporate seafood dishes at night.

What I love is that they have a large variety of food.

An appetizer bar usually with some salads: lettuce greens, cold tofu, seaweed salad etc.

Sushi bar with lots of rolls (too many of them have cream cheese).

Mongolian grill type bar with self-serve meats, vegetables, noodles and sauces where the cook will make the dish for you behind the grill.

Hot entrée with meat and vegetables, soups (usually 4 kinds), rice, noodles, a few steamed dim sum and usually a few American food such as fries, pizza, garlic toasts.

For desserts: self-serve soft serve machine, strawberries or marshmallow for chocolate dip, cakes and fruits.

It is safe to say that most everyone can find something to eat there (as long as they are not on my detox diet).

They are doing brisk business, so most food at the Buffet bar stays hot and dishes turn over quickly.

My specific mission there:  satisfy craving for hot and sour soup (vegetarian).

Then, I went for salt and pepper chicken wings (they did not have that for my last hurrah.  A little disappointed.  However, they made salt and pepper tofu which I also love).

Then, I picked out broccoli from either the orange chicken or General Tso’s chicken and from the broccoli beef.

Filled up the rest of my plates with dishes like eggplants, fried rice noodles, stir fried Bok Choy and little bit of other hot dishes if they looked good!

Doof Media

Tea: A global history by Helen Saberi

So much to learn from this book!

The book is broken down by regions in the world.

Chapters devoted to China, where tea was originated.

Followed by other Asian countries that had tea steeped deeply in their culture such as Japan, Taiwan, Korea.

It talked about how tea traveled through Silk Road and Tea Road to the Mediterranean, Russia, Middle East.

Importation of tea into Europe, America and India.  The history of tea crop in Sri Lanka.

Teas were prepared differently in different parts of the world.

For example, most striking to me was that tea was prepared with milk, butter and salt in Tibet with a churn.

I did not know that the words “tea” and “pekoe” were phonetically Chinese!

In both Cantonese and Mandarin, the word for tea is “Cha”, which is closer to “Chai”.  I have always thought that “tea” was an English invention.

Turned out the word was based on Fujian dialect “teh”, and it was a word that I grew up with!

The book also contained information on tea tree types; the processing technique for tea leaves yielding the different types of teas such as oolong, white tea or scented tea such as Jasmine.

At the end, the book contained several tea recipes.  From the preparation of Moroccan tea (tea with mint) to tea jelly, green tea ice cream and Chinese tea eggs.

I am going to make the tea loaf (tea, orange, cinnamon and raisin) after detox!

Coconut Ice Cream and Spazzo

Doof Home

Tried different coconut ice cream products to satisfy our dessert craving during detox.

We had the Coconut Bliss Cherry Amaretto which was exceptional.

There was a big cherry flavor hit with the first bite of the ice cream, followed by nice coconut flavor that lingered.

The mouthfeel was very smooth and creamy.

Their Strawberry Love bars had great mouthfeel as well, but the flavor combination did not work as well.

The strawberry flavor was overpowered by the coconut.

What was there was not the same bright tart berry flavor that one would expect from regular ice cream.

I had their dark chocolate ice cream before and it had excellent strong dark chocolate flavor to satisfy chocolate cravings.

We also tried the SO Delicious vanilla bean ice cream to accompany the cherry pistachio cookie.

The vanilla flavor was nice but the mouthfeel was oily and slick.  Not very pleasant.

We are staying with Coconut Bliss brand for the time being.

Doof Out
Before detox, we went to Spazzo for dinner with friends.

The last time we were there was probably 2 or 3 years ago.

My Minestrone soup and Linguine Pescatore did not taste bad but could tell that they were not of high quality.

The Minestrone had ample chickpeas, zucchini and pasta in it.

It was very hearty. However, it tasted like the soup was just made with reconstituted tomato paste.

My linguine was a little overcooked. Noodle was soggy.

The seafood was fresh enough, and the tomato sauce had nice simple flavor.

If I would guess, I believe the seafood was not cooked with the sauce; but separately boiled and later tossed with noodle and sauce.

The sauce flavor was not through and through in the seafood.

DH ordered the Mediterranean pizza with olive, salami and artichoke. Because of me, he opted for no cheese.

After the awesome Veraci pizza and good Pomegranate firebread, this was the worst.

The crust was bready and not-in-a-good-way chewy.

Maybe because of the lighting, the pizza did not look very appetizing. The salami color was this unnatural Chinese sausage color.

There was barely any tomato sauce on the pizza. It made our no cheese option pizza tasted pretty grim.

I had gotten plenty of no cheese pizza but none this bad.

Mostly I was distracted by the chewy breadiness since there was not enough topping to distract me otherwise.

D

Pomegranate Bistro

Doof Out

One of the few good American restaurants on the Eastside.

I have been to Pomegranate Bistro plenty of times since they opened.  Never disappointed.

Food has always been delicious and fresh.  I love that their menus change with seasons.  Although sometimes dishes that I like disappeared.

First thing when I got into the store was to purchase my favorite cherry chocolate scones.

They were the only other scones I would purchase and consumed aside from Murchie’s (see post on “Eating out in Victoria BC“).

Their scones were not as soft and fluffy as Murchie’s, but the flavors were very good, particularly the deep dark chocolate with the chewy dried cherries.

They often sold out of this particular flavor scones as well.

The three of us shared a firebread (Thai peanut lime flank steak), salad (Dueling Wedges) and calamari appetizer.

The firebread was tasty with fresh ingredient and tender flank steak on top.

After having Veraci’s pizza though, the firebread was not quite up to par.

The dueling wedges was a fun presentation on lettuce salad two ways.

One side with buttermilk dressing with bacon and egg, the other side with tomatoes and cucumber with a sweet onion dressing.

Vegetables were crisp and fresh, and the dressing were light and packed with flavors.

Lastly the calamari.  They were fried crisp, tender and very flavorful.  Perfect.

The coating was not thick and had spices on them.  It was served with fried artichoke as well.

I wish the dipping sauce would be something a little more tangy.

All in all, delicious meal with great company!