Chomp N' Swig

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Chomp N' Swig has finally moved into a brick and mortar location on the sleepy side of Clement St right next to Hot Sauce and Panko (see post HERE).  With a huge list of beers, they have the "swig" part covered and a small menu of "chomps" that include mostly sandwiches.   

The spicy beef sandwich is made with seasoned beef, lots of sour cream, cilantro, sliced jalapenos, red onions.  The beef was a little dry and not as flavorful as it sounded.  It wasn't spicy at all.

The bacon butter crunch is made with organic white cheddar, tomatoes, and Uhm bacon butter.  For an extra $1, a generous helping of avocado can be added to the sandwich.  The sourdough bread is well toasted and extra crunchy.  Unfortunately, I couldn't taste any bacon flavor from the bacon butter, but the melted cheese was delicious.  It melted in a perfectly gooey consistency.  A well picked cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich. 

Address:                Chomp N' Swig
                               1541 Clement St.
                               San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                      sandwiches

Popular chomps:    bacon butter crunch
                                spicy beef sandwich

Chomp worthy:       bacon butter crunch        

Loving Cup

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I never thought I'd ever be a fan of rice pudding until I tried Rice to Riches in New York (a very long time ago).  I didn't become a super fan, but I did think about it time to time while back in San Francisco.  Loving Cup in Russian Hill apparently has been serving up rice pudding all this time!  It doesn't have the funky decor or even the wide selection of flavors that Rice to Riches has, but its a decent substitute, especially since this is the first I've seen of flavored rice pudding in the city or even the Bay Area.

If you don't like rice pudding, they do make frozen yogurt a la Dairy Queen Blizzard style - meaning you pick a flavor and some toppings and they whirl it around for a special custom flavor combination.

Loving Cup only has about 6 or so flavors so don't come expecting the Rice to Riches massive selection of funky flavors.  I think the small cup is actually quite large and you can pick up to two flavors to fill the cup.  One gripe is I hate how they scoop the pudding.  They layer one on top of the other so to even taste the second flavor you have to dig deep.  With most of the rice pudding flavors being white in color, you still don't really know what to expect as you spoon into the rice pudding.  I prefer Rice to Riches method of halving the cup by piling the flavors on each side of the cup.  The cookies and cream flavor had bits of cookie pieces mixed into the rice pudding.  This was probably the best of the four flavors.  The Madagascar vanilla, which is somewhere mixed into this cup, was a little bland and didn't have that punch of vanilla taste that I associate with Madagascar vanilla.

Another white gooey concoction, but really its toasted coconut piled on top of English toffee.  Surprisingly the English toffee was not a standout at all.  I could barely taste any type of toffee flavor.  The toasted coconut, however, had shredded coconut to add more texture to the rice pudding.  It was more of a subtle coconut flavor.

   

Address:                   Loving Cup
                                  2356 Polk St.
                                  San Francisco, CA  
 

Type:                         dessert

Popular chomps:       rice pudding
                                  frozen yogurt
 

Chomp worthy:        cookies and cream rice pudding
                                  toasted coconut rice pudding    

Tin Pot Creamery

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Artisanal ice cream is finally making its way outside of San Francisco.  So far I've tried Treatbot in San Jose (see post HERE) and now Tin Pot Creamery on the Peninsula in Palo Alto's Town and Country center.  The shopping center can be a little difficult to maneuver around, but this ice cream shop is located next to CVS.  It's actually really close to Asian Box (see post HERE).

The flavors include a wide spectrum including the standards (chocolate) to a little wild (sweet cream with honey balsamic swirl) to the fruity (mango sorbet).  They even have a vegan ice cream, which (from eavesdropping on the crowd) sounded like it was pretty spot on.  As always, they offer free tastings of all their flavors.

 

The sweet cream with honey balsamic swirl was delicious.  Not Bi-Rite status (see post HERE), but definitely a welcome treat outside the city.  The flavor profile of this creamy concoction first started of a sweet note, then you get hit with even sweeter (probably from the honey), then the last remnants of your lick ends in a tangy zing.

At first glance, this looks like a mushy mess of ice cream, but they seemed to have had the ice cream outside of the case so I cannot verify if this actual ice cream is very soft or what.  That being said, the salted butterscotch was something different, especially when everyone seems to be doing their own play on Bi Rite's salted caramel.  Not exactly the same, but somewhat similar in flavor.  A little sweeter than the salted caramel, but still delicious in its own way.  Also, their cone has a fudgy surprise and the end of the cone.

   

Address:                   Tin Pot Creamery
                                 855 El Camino Real Ste 121
                                 Palo Alto, CA
 

Type:                         ice cream

Popular chomps:        salted butterscotch
                                  TCHO chocolate ice cream
                                  sweet cream with honey balsamic swirl

Chomp worthy:          salted butterscotch
                                  sweet cream with honey balsamic swirl     

Tokie's

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Tokie's has long been a favorite sushi restaurant on the Peninsula.  I'm back on the Peninsula again searching for lunchtime options... 

Although the miso soup was of the standard fare, there was a surprising presence of noodles.  A first for me, but I can't say that I hated it.  Odd, but it made sense in a weird way.

The Rainbow roll was rather skimpy, both in size and in the amount of softshell crab.  The fried softshell crab was overcooked and dry. 

I'm not a fan of chirashi on a plate, its just not the same.  Various fish on top of rice that didn't taste much like sushi rice.  The unfresh fish made for a disappointing lunch.

There are a list of lunch specials on the board in the front of the restaurant.  The katsu curry was one of the specials of the day.  The curry was thick and flavorful with the katsu fried perfectly.  Not the greatest, but it was decent.

Address:                  Tokie's
                                 1058 Shell Blvd. Ste G
                                 Foster City, Ca  

Type:                       Japanese

Popular chomps:     sushi

Chomp worthy:        miso soup       

Long An

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I'm a big fan of nem nuong, especially the ones that I can wrap myself, but its a rare sight in the Bay Area.  I have yet to discover one in SF.  I finally found one in San Jose.  It's not even close to that of Rosemead's Nem Nuong Ninh Hoa (see post HERE), or even the famous Brodard Restaurant (see post HERE), but its the best the Bay Area has to offer.  While the menu is quite large and serves up everything from rice plates to various soups, I'd recommend sticking to just the roll your own nem nuong cuon.

Banh beo is another one of those Vietnamese dishes I wish the Bay Area offered more of.  I'm not talking about the ones premade for take out.  I want the ones that are steamed up fresh in little dishes waiting to be slurped away!  While Long An gets points for serving up these freshly made, they are missing the crouton on top.  Also, the banh beo is fairly sweet due to the copious amounts of coconut milk.

The rice paper is essentially for good nem nuong rolling.  Here the sheets tend to be rather thin and doesn't hold all the ingredients well, but with quick fingers and holding your breath, it gets the job done.

The nem nuong comes with the usual veggies (mint, cucumber, pickled vegetables, lettuce, and herbs).  My favorite part of nem nuong, the "crispies", are also included.  The nem nuong (bbq pork) are grilled to order and pretty fantastic with just a hint of sweetness.  The biggest gripe here is the meager servings of vegetables.  You need to ration properly to get all your vegetables in each roll.  I'd suggest asking for extra vegetables when ordering for a better nem nuong experience.

The banh hoi doesn't come with the nem nuong, but I suggest ordering them with nem nuong.  Banh hoi are intricately woven vermicelli rice noodles that are steamed and mixed with fish sauce and topped with green onions.  These light rice "cakes" give the nem nuong a light, spongy texture.

The orange sauce is obviously not at the level of Brodard's, but its still pretty tasty.

Besides nem nuong rolls, Long An has a variety of spring rolls on the menu. The summer rolls are made of carrots, jicama, egg, Chinese sausage, dried shrimps with a peanut sauce for dipping.  Not bad, but nothing special, especially having the nem nuong cuon on the table.

  A rice plate option just to see if there was anything else that was worth ordering besides the nem nuong.  The broken rice (com tam) was dry and the toppings were somewhat sparse in comparison to other com tam places in San Jose.  I think broken rice is better eaten at places like Com Tam Dat Thanh (see post HERE).

Address:                  Long An
                                 3005 Silver Creek Ste 112
                                 San Jose, CA                                  

Type:                        Vietnamese

Popular chomps:      nem nuong
                                  banh beo   

Chomp worthy:         nem nuong
                                  banh beo 

Town Hall

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Town Hall has made itself a permanent home in the San Francisco dining scene.  Their Downtown location makes it a popular place for happy hours as well as business dinners.  Its one of the few restaurants in the Bay Area that serves up Southern style food.

Normally, I would have never looked twice at this item on the menu, but I'm still attempting to knock off some of the items off the 2013 7x7 list (see post HERE).  Faith's warm ham and cheese toast with a poached egg and jalapeno cream doesn't exactly sound like a dinner item.  The white glob served on a white plate wasn't very eye catching either, but this dish ended up being the best dish of the night.  The "toast" drenched in the jalapeno cream (not spicy) just barely blanketed the bread making for a biscuits and gravy effect.  Its soft and creamy bites oozes flavor with fried okras adding some much needed crunch. 

I need to eat biscuits when I'm at one of these restaurants.  The biscuits are served with prosciutto di parma and red pepper jelly.  With a giant pile of prosciutto, its hard to figure out if you should eat the proscuitto on the side or make a sandwich out of the biscuit.  That being said, the proscuitto was just an afterthought compared to the tasty biscuits and red pepper jelly.

The buttermilk fried chicken here is their to die for dish, but I found this a little underwhelming considering all the delicious fried chicken I've eaten in the past couple years.  The batter is underseasoned and fails to give the exterior any crispy crunchiness.

As a noted Southern style restaurant, they had jambalaya on the menu.  The best thing about the jambalaya was it was served as a side order so I didn't have to miss out any main attractions.  Smokey, spicy sausage along with cajun herbs made this jambalaya one of the better ones I've had in the Bay Area.  I do prefer mine a little drier, this one is served almost as a thick soup.

One of the most popular desserts here is the butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme.  The size of this dessert is quite large (the size of a regular bowl) and a good sharing size.  Automatically, when I hear butterscotch, I think of something sickening sweet, but smoothness of the pot de creme and the blend of chocolate keeps this dessert light.  The toffee like pieces of butterscotch are a nice contrast from the creaminess of the dessert.

updated - Working my way through the 2013 7x7's SF big eat 100 things

 

Address:                  Town Hall
                                 342 Howard St.
                                 San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                        American/Southern

Popular chomps:      fried chicken
                                  butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme
                                  duck

Chomp worthy:        butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme
                                 cheese and ham toast     

BIX

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BIX is one of those restaurants that I imagine how SF was back in the days - classic with a touch of mystery and romance.  Its located in probably the only alley in the city that doesn't have a homeless person loitering around.

BIX is probably the only restaurant I've ever seen that prepares and serves beef tartare tableside.  How classic!  Fresh rare beef, a raw egg, and some seasonings mixed in makes this one of the best beef tartares I've had in a long time. 

Not the biggest fan of this preparation of roasted bone marrow because of all the effort to get the fatty marrow out!  Not bad, but it takes a lot of work.

Its not apparent when you first glance at the menu, but there are actually two burgers on this menu.  The $28 black truffle cheeseburger is the one listed in the dinner entree menu.  This burger is served open faced on rye bread along with truffle fries.  The truffle lends both the burger and fries some earthiness.  The burger was juicy and ultimately satisfying, but the only complaint I had was the huge conundrum of how to eat this burger elegantly.  This fancy restaurant with their fancy ingredient burger and a hefty price tag left me wondering if I should eat this like a piece of toast or civilized with a fork and knife.  I think the latter was the right answer, but I couldn't bring myself to eat a burger with a set of utensils so the burger ended up sliding all over the place.  It was still delicious, whatever way it ended up in my mouth.

Bix Club Burger at BIX-  2013 7x7 SF's Top 100 Eats

The more hidden burger option is their cheaper club burger.  Not quite as fancy as the truffle burger, this burger is still made with quality ingredients that compared to its fancy counterpart makes it a standout option.  The bix burger is advertised on both the lunch menu and bar menu.  The $18 burger is sandwiched between a poppyseed bun for proper burger handling.  Its juiciness competes with that of the truffle burger.  Which one is better?  Hard to say, both are really tasty, but if you are feeling fancy, then opt for the truffle burger.  If you want a solid, no frills burger, the the bix burger will satisfy that burger craving. 

The desserts here aren't very risque.  In line with the classic architecture and entrees, the desserts are very modest.  Although, they do a bananas foster tableside.  The warm chocolate brioche bread pudding was rich and chocolatey.  Nothing extravagant, but it ended the meal on a nice sweet note.

updated - Working my way through the 2013 7x7's SF big eat 100 things    

Address:                    Bix Restaurant
                                  56 Gold St.
                                   San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                          American/burger

Popular chomps:        Bix Burger
                                    steak tartare

Chomp worthy:           steak tartare
                                    Bix Burger     

Grubshack

Pin It Now! San Jose is home to a large population of Hawaiians so its never a surprise when another Hawaiian spot opens up.  Hawaiian food is already an mashup of different foods and cuisines, but Grubshack takes Hawaiian food to another level of fusion.  They even offer low calories dishes like low cal loco moco (?!) served with brown rice and a turkey patty.  Weird, but true.

First thing I noticed about Grubshack is that majority of the items have kalua pork.  The kalua sliders are set on soft Hawaiian rolls and mozzarella cheese.  I actually wasn't able to identify any cheese on this.  The kalua pork was tender and flavorful  throughout all the pork dishes.

The dungeness crab fries was one of those dishes that sounds really great on the menu, but in reality you want to kick yourself for ordering.  These fries were topped with meager chunks of plain crab meat and supposedly lobster sauce, but again, I couldn't distinctly tell anything seafoody about this dish besides the very plain crab meat. 

 

A Hawaiian rice plate is a must when eating Hawaiian food.  The GS special comes with Kalua pork and garlic shrimp.  Its topped with a runny, fried egg and served with a side of rice and mac salad.  While the kalua pork was already confirmed to be a solid choice, the garlic shrimp was plain and rubbery.  Decent mac salad though.

Along with burgers, Grubshack also serves hot dogs.  The kalua dog (aka death wish) is made of a hot link (or polish dog) cut in half and grilled for a nice charred, crispy taste then dressed with the go-to kewpie mayo, glazed onions, and seaweed.

By this time, I realized that almost everything on the menu was a mix of the same ingredients.  The kalua fries were the best dish of the meal and that wasn't saying much.  The fresh cut fries were topped with kalua pork, green onions, jalapenos, and their special sauce.

I saw a pic of this dish before I came here and its the one dish I was most excited to eat.  It had me at runny egg.  The taco is layered with kalua pork, mozzarella cheese then topped with a fried egg.  The flavorless taco was a huge letdown.  It was missing something, but nothing a squirt of sriacha couldn't fix.

Address:                    Grubshack
                                   93 E. Santa Clara St.
                                   San Jose, CA  

Type:                          Hawaiian/Asian Fusion

Popular chomps:        loco moco
                                   kalua fries
                                   kalua sliders
                                   cukui tacos

Chomp worthy:          kalua fries      

Hard Water

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Hard Water is not the average Charles Phan restaurant.  Its a take on Southern/Creole/Cajun cuisine, a far cry from his usual Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine, like Out The Door (see post HERE).  Admittedly, I'm not a big Charles Phan fan, but his diversion intrigued me.  Hard Water does have a pretty amazing location, right along the pier, which makes it a popular happy hours spot.  Unfortunately, they don't allow reservations so the small space does get very crowded. 

Most of the seating is around the horseshoe shaped bar with some seats along the perimeter.



Having just had Trick Dog's chicharrones (see post HERE), it only seemed right to order up Hard Water's version.  Both are fried very similar, but Hard Water's version was the veritable winner of the two.  Each bite sized morsel was fatty, chewy, and had just the right amount of spiciness.  The perfect amount of saltiness to enjoy with drinks.  

 Their hot homemade house is similar to Trick Dog's.  It adds a slightly tangy, but spicy kick to the chicharrones.



The milk braised celery hearts dish is exactly what it sounds like.  They are hearts of celery, so the tender inner stalks of a celery bunch.  Its deep fried and served with a aioli dipping sauce.  The first time I've seen deep fried celery, but I suppose you can deep fry anything so why not celery.  Not raveworthy to me, but definitely something different.

Another popular dish here is the fried chicken.  The extra juicy fried chicken is very lightly battered with a pepper jelly dipping sauce.  Although the meat is extremely well cooked, I just don't think I categorize this as a fried chicken.  The "batter"is almost nonexistent and not crispy at all.   



The braised rabbit comes in a mini cast iron pot with buttermilk dumplings and sage.  I had high hopes for this dish since it sounds so appetizing, but everything just seemed like it clumped into one mushy bite.  Not much flavor either.

I didn't know what to expect when I ordered the scotch kisses.  At $1.25 each, its a no brainer just to see what comes out.  These soft, gooey, toffy candies had a layer of sweet syrup that I want to say may have been caramel?  Sweet  and somewhat hard to eat (it sticks to the wrapper), they reminded me of the after dinner treats I had at Manresa (see post HERE). 

The banana butterscotch fried pies were the sweet dessert choice of the night.  These crispy pies had a nice banana flavor inside, but the butterscotch dipping sauce was a little too sweet for me.  Not exactly the McDonald's fried apple pies of my childhood, but not bad either.

Address:                  Hard Water
                                 Pier 3
                                 Ste 3-102
                                 San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                       Cajun/Creole

Popular chomps:    fried chicken
                                 chicharrones
                                 pork belly
                                 celery hearts

Chomp worthy:      chicharrones