Northwest Tofu Inc. in Central District

Northwest Tofu Inc., located in a warehouse-looking building on Jackson St., specializes in the production of, not surprisingly, tofu. It’s quite a bit away from the rest of Chinatown, and it’s not open for dinner, closing near 5pm if I remember correctly. But make some time in your schedule to stop in, because it’s well worth it. NW Tofu Inc. doesn’t simply serve tofu dishes. The small restaurant/factory serves up all sorts of classic Chinese morning streetfood cuisines, including dim sum, congee, and big hearty bowls of soy milk.

And while all these delicious foods may come from the same base ingredient, eating here is definitely not a one-note experience. Imagine it being more like a judge at the Iron Chef Soy Battle. Soy milk can be sweet or salty (the salty is rather exceptional), tofu can be firm, soft, fried, braised, etc. It only makes sense that people so devoted to the creation of tofu curds would know how to cook them. No sauce, seasoning or spice is used to hinder the taste of tofu, only to enhance its freshness and texture.

The non-soy offerings were also pretty good. Dumplings were warm and soft, filled with an appropriate amount of stuffing and meat. The Chinese donuts were crisp, though I think they’re made off site at another bakery. All this is cheap too, with three dishes plus some soy milk coming in at about ten dollars a person.

The timing may be unfriendly to those of you with day jobs, but if you find yourself in the CD hungry for some lunch, NW Tofu should be at the top of your list.

Teriyaki Madness on 15th

Teriyaki is a terrible excuse for a meal. But sometimes, like when you can’t bear to walk more than a block from your apartment,  you make compromises with your beleaguered digestive system and settle for less. Fortunately, I happen to live next to one of the better places to get a quick meal, Teriyaki Madness.

The key to their success is in the sauce, which isn’t runny like most places. Their sauce is a thick glaze that sticks like glue to both the rice and the chicken, coating every bite with a balanced combination of salty and sweet. The pieces of chicken they use aren’t too thin and aren’t too thick, and are never, never cooked dry. It still tastes like meat! Also, the salad, a generous portion of brine-sweetened sliced cucumbers, is much more satisfying than the normal iceberg lettuce with nominal dressing provided at most teriyaki places. They have other offerings which are all acceptable, including fish and chips strangely enough. But the real star of the show is the Chicken Teriyaki.

Teriyaki Madness gives you a large portion of chicken for a good price ($6.50 for the house special), doesn’t skimp on the sauce, meat or rice, and comes out of the kitchen incredibly fast. It’s the bar where I set my teriyaki expectations, and so far no other place I’ve been has come close.

Toyoda Sushi in Lake City

Toyoda Sushi has been a sushi staple of mine for as long as I can remember. I’ve been coming to this cozy sushi restaurant with my family for a good 12 years. And I know I’m not alone, I’ve seen other familiar faces repeatedly enjoying Toyoda’s handiwork.  Friendly service, a cozy setting, and a dressed-down homestyle setting is always a recipe for repeat business.

There’s no gimmick or catch to Toyoda Sushi. The menu is your basic sushi restaurant menu, a listing of rolls and nigiri, a couple sashimi combinations, and a few cooked meat dishes and sukiyaki. Not the fanciest, but a complete menu.

These cuts may not be exceptional, the style may not be flashy, but there’s something to be said about consistency. I think I’ve ordered the sashimi platter over 30 times in my life and it’s always look as good as this:

Just a rainbow of different cuts of fish, all the standards I love and each piece distinctly remarkable in its freshness and flavor. You wont see modern plating like Kisaku, and you wont see huge slabs of fish meat like Musashi. But you wont be disappointed either, and its comforting eating at a restaurant where expectations are always met.

Coastal Kitchen on 15th

I’ve walked by this place over 100 times but never had the urge to stop in and eat. The Coastal Kitchen does pretty well, especially on Sunday mornings, where lines out the door and people desperately searching for parking is a common occurrence. The restaurant is part of the Chow Foods series of establishments, featuring a rotating global menu as well as a decor that’s somewhat uniquely Seattle.

The region of the day was Venezuela. I do not know much about Venezuela or its cuisine. It sounds coastal. This is a Coastal Kitchen, so I hope it’s coastal.

There is a section on the menu reserved specifically for Venezuelan dishes, with the rest of the menu being the classic morning fare that you would find in most brunch-focused restaurants. Eggs, toast, pancakes, meats, all the good things that make mornings worth waking up for. Wanting to expand my horizons a bit (at least as far as a diner on Capitol hill can take me i suppose), I picked a scramble laden with regional peppers, Dungeness crab and shrimp. Sounded like a winning deal.

The scramble was light and fluffy, very little grease or gristle which was nice. Not an enormous amount of crab/shrimp but it was ample for the $12 price tag. However, I wish it had a little more seasoning. Usually, reaching for the pepper/salt is just fine for a morning meal. But I felt underwhelmed at not only the overall flavor, but my options for adjusting the dish. Salt wasn’t enough.

I also ordered a side of bacon to go with, but unlike the ethnic liberties taken with my main dish, there really is no excuse for under-salted bacon.

Musashi’s in Wallingford

Hey! It’s another “no shit sherlock” post. If you like sushi and you live in Seattle you’ve probably been to Musashi’s, or at least driven by it’s super long lines. The restaurant may be the size of my bathroom, but Musashi’s continues to have the best bargain in town for real cuts of fish. No fancy fusion rolls, no mayonnaise rolls, just (huge cuts of) fish and rice and tea. Oh they have some meat dishes and bento boxes but who cares about that!

And since it’s summer, waiting outside isn’t a trial so much as a mini-vacation.

This chirashi bowl is only twelve dollars or so. Look at those cuts of tuna! They’re even bigger when ordered as nigiri. There’s some scallops and some albacore and some hamachi in there too. Definitely a full meal.

Just a simple yellowtail roll. Copious amounts of gari, all for less than 2 dollars. It’s clean, the rice has that hint of vinegar that is so necessary.

The place is cash only so remember to stop by the bank before heading there.

Bonus trivia! You know why most sushi places are closed on Mondays? It’s because they can’t get fresh fish on Monday. So be wary of places that do serve raw fish on Monday, you might leave with an unpleasant experience.

Quick Bite: These waffles will save your family

Just make 1 every day and share the love.

http://www.cloer-jp.com/products/waffle/index.html

Kanishka Cuisine of India in Redmond

The heart of Microsoft runs on lunch buffet curry. There is no shortage of Indian restaurants immediately residing in the vicinity of Microsoft. I’ve been to 4 so far, and they’ve all been within 8 blocks of one another. But, are they any good?

Kanishka’s, right off of Redmond way (about a block from Redmond Town Center) is the best I’ve had so far, especially for a lunch buffet. The price is quite reasonable (around $9 without tip), and their offerings go a little farther than your normal butter chicken/naan/random salad that a substandard lunch buffet would offer. The buffet is small enough that the curry is never given a chance to congeal, but deep enough that you’re not waiting in line for them to reload on the naan.

I’m not very good at remembering names of Indian curries (is it uncouth to not bring a notepad to lunch if you’re a food blogger?), so bear with me. However, I’m pretty good at loading my plate up at a buffet. They have a nice, creamy spinach curry with bits of cheese hidden within. The tawa chicken really packs a punch, like a really spicy sweet and sour chicken. Not greasy at all either.  There’s a light cheese curry, I believe it’s a Marsala but I’m not sure. It was good though. Butter chicken is glowing red in the center there, if you’ve had a butter chicken once you’ve had them all. No better or worse than what I’ve had from any other restaurant.

Many a time I’ve found that the tandoori chicken at lunch buffets are subpar at best, with the restaurant rushing it out, panicking to refill the rapidly depleting trays on the cart. Kanishka’s does a fine job, however. The tandoori chicken is cooked thoroughly to the bone, and is slightly crisp on the outside, just the way I like it. The pieces are also large enough that you don’t feel like you have to grab 5 chicken legs to satisfy your quota.

One of my tablemates ordered a specialty naan for us. I forget what it was called but I’ll make a note to ask him. Anyways, it was filled with garlic, lentils, and various spices. It was good, but nothing beats a good spinach naan (note extra glob of spinach curry just for this reason).

While the meal is definitely a lunch buffet, I’d like to explore eating here at dinner (I hear there’s live sitar), just to get a sense of how exactly it stacks up to Seattle stalwarts Taste of India and Cedar’s. Since those two restaurants are quite overpriced and lacking in any sort of distinction that would justify a $13 dollar price tag, I’m projecting that Kanishka’s may compare favorably (we’ll see).

 

Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, TX

Warning: terrible pictures ahead

Going to SXSW for the first time was exciting enough, but the chance to finally eat some honest-to-go Texas BBQ? My hands were jittery with anticipation. After asking maybe two or three locals, they pointed me to Stubb’s BBQ (whose backyard also happened to be a rather large venue for the festival itself), right on Red River and everything. The place was packed, of course, but the in-and-out seemed pretty rapid so we decided to stick around.

My exposure to the sweet, smoky meats of Texas bbq only go only as far as the Roadhouse BBQ on the eastside, which isn’t really saying much. Eating there is culinary equivalent of being told about the Mona Lisa. I understood what the meal was supposed to taste like, but it left much to be desired. Getting a slab of tender, sweet, and authentic brisket was high on my list of priorties for this trip.

The restaurant is, like most restaurants in Texas, laid out with a western rustic theme, complete with reproductions of paintings of various Americana on the wall and the longhorn mantelpieces festooning every doorway. The place is large, crowded, but not chaotic, which is a surprise.

I ordered the brisket set with a couple sides and a beer. I hadn’t really done my research when it came to the local brews, I thought Lone Star was a really classy brew (it’s not). This “real” pale ale wasn’t that great, a little toothless for my taste.

My brisket set was surprisingly cheap (I forget how much, it was south of $10), and though it wasn’t a big hunk o’ beef it did the trick. The collard greens were really tasty, hot from the vat complete with bacon bits and that briny stench that I love. The potato salad was good but nothing special really, a serviceable side for a good ol’ fashioned bbq.

Now the brisket, that’s what I’m talking about. Tender and smoky, with the look of Chinese bbq pork. The meat fell apart at the touch of my fork. The dryness and the sweet sauce really work well together, and if my mouth got too dry a forkful of collard greens did the trick. I only wished there were more, but for the price I couldn’t really complain.

My friend got a bowl of the chili and a block of cornbread. The chili was good, with bits of tender beef in a sweet and spicy concoction. But the cornbread was something else, light and golden, like something I’d been missing for a long time.

I’m a simple man at heart, and things like a really well done bbq just set my heart a flutter. Now all I need to do is find a place that serves big ol’ slabs of brisket up here.

LOOK AT THIS CAKE

 

Have a look at this beautiful motherfucking cake. It was last seen in Taiwan, like 3 years ago, on a classroom desk. I don’t know where it is now, probably returned to the earth like most food.

Quick Bite: The Cheesecake Factory and Asia

I had a conversation about The Cheesecake Factory over the weekend, pondering exactly why the place is so popular, especially amongst Asians. I mean the place boils down to a high class Sizzler, featuring an above-average dessert menu for those whose 5 pounds of entree didn’t satisfy. It’s an expensive restaurant, but eating there doesn’t really represents baller status. To boot, their cuisine is lacking in any sort of identity, serving up such culturally-vague recipes that boil down to meat + starch + sauce. 

Maybe the key to understanding why people eat at the Cheesecake factory is this neutral, non-commital dining philosophy. Getting a large group to agree on a place to eat is difficult, so why not take them to a place that doesn’t define it’s cuisine whatsoever? And everyone loves cake (especially asians (see previous post)). If you’re looking for a place to get full and that resembles an adult version of Chuck-E-Cheese, why not head to the Cheesecake Factory (or PF Changs for that matter).

The thing is, this distinctly American style of restauranteuring is wildly popular in Asia, China espeically.  I remember there being a dozen places pretty similar to cheesecake factory, serving pseudo-American food based around dessert options with a classy yet family friendly atmosphere. If the portions were reduced a bit, I think an Asian chain of the store would do pretty well!

Maybe the NBA should broker a deal with the owners of TCF and push hard for expansion. According to this post, basketball players LOVE the cheesecake factory. It’s like the new Benihana’s! And since David Stern gets wet every time you mention China, getting TCF established in Asia would be a huge step in at least getting the players interested in going across the Pacific.

There’s no place like home. Or at least a chain representation of “home.”