News - Assault With An 8-Inch Sausage

(Fresno, CA) A man reportedly broke into the home of two farmworkers, stole cash, rubbed one of the men with spices and hit the other with a sausage before fleeing.

The weapon of choice for a burglar -- an 8-inch sausage which he used to attack his victims after waking them up with some Pappy's spice seasoning.

Some information from the police report:

Before fleeing the residence, Vasquez, for some reason, removed his shorts, which contained his driver's license, credit cards, school IDs, and cell phone... Cops were unable to recover Vasquez's principal weapon. "I asked Santiago where the sausage was," Deputy George Ozburn wrote, "he advised his dog ate it."

I would have liked to see him claim that he saw someone do it in a video game.

Source: The Smoking Gun

Beverage - Starbucks Sorbetto

2.95 for what, you say?
No, my hands are not abnormally large nor small. You only have one option as the size of this Sorbetto drink, and it's pretty freaking small. In a bizarre twist of events though, Starbucks is actually using the Pinkberry brand to sell a product, and not the other way around!

I'm not sure why they think Starbucks patrons would want a drink that is super light, free of caffeine or cream, and costs almost $0.25 per ounce. It tastes okay, but I don't see anyone telling their friends to buy this, too.

Quick, go for this now before Starbucks takes it off their menu!

Restaurant - Spoon House

Spoon House Bakery & Restaurant
1601 W Redondo Beach Blvd
Gardena, CA 90247
(310) 538-0376

I have never had an unpleasant experience at Spoon House. A local favorite of mine since my elementary school days as an Asian kid with a bowl cut, it's a convenient place to stop by if you are interested in Japanese style pasta. Best of all, the understand what al dente means - a source of relief in a city where most Italian places will serve you a plate of crunchy spaghetti if you utter those two words.

Bacon, shiitake mushroom, shrimp, and spinach pasta
Their bread isn't bad either, but you are better off only eating a couple of bites if you want to avoid baguettes that are loaded with butter even before you take your butter knife to them.

Spaghetti bolognese with meatballs
I would personally recommend their spaghetti bolognese with sausage and egg, or if you prefer a creamy (but not buttery) sauce, their chicken cream sauce spaghetti. For the adventurous, their cold California pasta (avocados, vegetables, and canned crab meat in a light cream sauce) or spaghetti neapolitan (ketchup instead of tomato paste) may be to your liking.

As long as you don't go during a time they are super busy, you will get relatively fast and efficient service, and don't forget to pay at the cash register at the front of the store. You can buy some of their bread to take home, if you are so inclined.

Restaurant - Pizza Port

Pizza Port
135 N Hwy 101
Solana Beach, CA 92075
(858) 481-7332
http://www.pizzaport.com

If you are looking for the kind of pizza shop that you went to as a kid to get your ass kicked in Street Fighter II (or because of Street Fighter II), Pizza Port may provide an answer.

Their menu boasts a variety that, while not boring, is not too exotic in their toppings. Most of their pizza seems to be topped with garlic and basil, and you are probably going to enjoy your pizza a whole lot more if you get a pitcher of beer on the side, as they have over a dozen brews on tap.

The Solana Pizza - shrimp, fish, and shellfish?

If you want to take someone here and enjoy a small pizza and a salad, it'll set you back around $15. I doubt you will feel ripped off here.

The service is pretty standard fare; you order your pizza, take a number, and then pick up your pizza when your number is called. A few rows of long benches fill up the interior, so you'll have to sit next to some strangers if the place is crowded.

Sadly they do not have any Street Fighter machines, but they have a few arcade games that you can indulge in if the atmosphere is a bit boring for you.

And if you still want to get your ass kicked, they have an online jukebox that gives you the liberty to, I assume, put in some really shitty music that will rip through the entire establishment before. There's even a dark, unused booth towards the back of the restaurant that doubles as storage for unused pizza boxes - the perfect stage for a round of some real street fighting action.

Restaurant - Ryo Zan Paku

Ryo Zan Paku
2589 Pacific Coast Hwy
Torrance, CA 90505
(310) 530-8720

A recent visit to the Torrance area a dozen or so miles south of Los Angeles put me face to face with some of the newer Japanese Izakaya establishments set up in the area. Longtime establishments such as Iccho and Musha, it seems, no longer enjoy their oligopoly over the izakaya-starved Japanese businesspeople that wade through the South Bay.

One such location is Ryo Zan Paku, a retro-style izakaya that boasts a decor similar to the kind of Japanese bar that Japanese businessmen would escape to for a few beers after a long day at work. As it turns out, it's a US location of an izakaya chain that originates from Japan.

The food was probably a hair below the standard as far as what Japanese businessmen would find acceptable. Not that anything was particularly bad; the place boasts a menu with a wide variety of assorted sushi rolls, yakitori sticks, rice dishes and fried dishes. Then again, everything was sort of not good. If a Japanese businessman were to eat these dishes and you asked him how he felt, he wouldn't say it was bad, but he would look at you apologetically, narrow his eyes a little bit and subtly shake his head.

Hiyayakko (cold tofu)
Did they try to dress it up too much? I personally am not a fan of tofu on ice.

Tamago yaki (eggs cooked like a layered omelette)
The big slices are usually how izakaya showcase their tamago when they make it themselves; it is actually difficult to cook well, and the strangely lukewarm nature of the tamago made it clear to me that they don't make their own. And it really doesn't taste as good when you have to eat a huge chunk of it, like in this picture.

Calamari salad
No, those aren't chicken strips. They have small pieces of squid inside, surrounded by lots of fried batter. Lots and lots of it.

By the way, if you notice that the food is decorated by either parsley or sprouts, that's because all of their dishes come out like so. Except for their crab cream croquettes, I suppose (which were actually somewhat decent).

The waitress at our table was energetic and was helpful in helping us select our order. I would imagine service would get rather sparse during busy hours, but fortunately Sunday night did not seem to be one of their busier nights. I was not too sure why she recommended we get some American-style sushi rolls when we said we wanted to order a rice dish or two. At $2.00 to $2.50 per pop, one of their onigiri (rice balls) would have sufficed, but we paid three to four times that amount for a salty clump of rice and assorted vegetables. And there was very little rice in those sushi rolls.

Unfortunately the retro music playlist is analogous to an entourage of some of the sadder oldies tunes that our grandmothers probably cried to, such as "Nature Boy" by Nat King Cole or "In The Ghetto" by Elvis Presley. There were few songs that were similar in mood to Frank Sinatra's livelier tunes, making the dark, lonesome stool at the edge of the bar counter an appealing place to drown one's sorrows in.

The tab came out to $26 per person, which seemed a bit pricey considering we didn't have a single drop of alcohol between the five of us. If I was a Japanese businessman, I would only come here if my wife had left me for the young college student next door, since the dim lighting, depressing music, and dishes that will leave you wanting something just a little better forms a solid foundation for any depressed Japanese businessman's Shangri-La.

It's the kind of place you would go to with a crestfallen sigh, when your options really have run dry and want to go to a place that you know won't be crowded. It looks nice, the service is friendly, but the food isn't that great.

Restaurant - Tofu House

Tofu House
4646 Convoy St., Ste 116
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 576-6433
http://www.tofuhaus.com

Tofu -- it's what's for dinner. Or so it seems when the spicy bowl of soon doo bu whacks you on the side of the head, and you have no choice but to give in to your desires. Fortunately, San Diegans have a plethora of options to choose from, and Tofu House north of Balboa is one such establishment.

Notice anything strange with the menu?
With a name as enlightening as BOILED MYSTERY TOFU, I couldn't help but give in to my curiosity and order the pot of soon doo bu which promised to give me some ???. Because that's what it says on the menu.

The mystery tofu.
The mystery tofu does not disappoint! At first glance I had no freaking clue what I was getting myself into. I'm almost positive that they just throw in the leftovers from last night, and I got to feel like a big man for chomping through the mystery dish. Not that it's any scarier than the secret sauce that gets squirted on to the Big Mac sandwich at McDonald's everywhere.

Honestly the food is kind of mediocre here. The soup stock used in the soon doo bu is rather bland, and the rice is not very tasty (pictured below). Considering the high level of competition on Convoy St., they had better step it up a notch if they want to stay in business. Right now the only thing that Tofu House has going for it is its location between a bar and Yogurt World; food-wise Convoy Tofu House a few blocks away does better for around the same price.

The not-so-tasty rice.
I was pretty happy that I got to play with a little bit of danger for $9 plus tax. It's probably just as unhealthy as the other soon doo bu offerings at Tofu House, but the added excitement clearly makes it a better deal than everything else there, even the soon doo bu with intestines.

Gasoline for car trip: $1.50
Boiled mystery tofu: $9.00
Injecting some culinary danger into my life: priceless

Restaurant - Curry House

Curry House
123 S Onizuka St. # 204
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 620-0855
Genre: Japanese

Curry House is the El Pollo Loco of Japanese style curry. It's been there forever, you rarely go there, and when curiosity gets the better of you and you sit down at one of their locations, you do you notice that prices have gone up, some curious seasonal items have invaded the menu list, and you end up leaving without any real desire to return at any time in the near future.

My last such trip to a Curry House location produced the following dish above. I think it was a spicy ginger chicken curry. I had never seen it before, but the 11.00+ price tag didn't seem so expensive compared to the price of their regular curries, which had inflated to 9.50 and up.

It seemed like a better choice than getting a curry wrap, but I'm not sure. Like marinara sauce without any garlic, you're left with a distant feeling of something missing from your tastebuds, searching for a taste that isn't going to hit you any time soon.

At least the service wasn't bad; not to say that it was great, but it's what I expected from having paid $11.00 plus tax and tip for a plate of spicy ginger chicken curry.

Restaurant - Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant

Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant
145 N Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 308-2128
Genre: Chinese

A co-worker once told me that weddings come in two waves. The first hits you right after college, when lovestruck twenty-somethings wrapped up in ideas of what love should be, or those actually lucky enough to find someone who is worthy of a lifelong fit, end up tying the knot and reveling in the swirl of gossip that surrounds their newfound happiness.

The second, which hits before you and your peers turn thirty, is the kind that happens when people mature and are lucky enough to meet the person who is truly right for them, or, after attending plenty of friends' weddings, get tired of being the drunk single friend who ends up left alone by his peers.

Luckily enough I had the chance to celebrate two friends who decided to tie the knot in the legitimate version of the second way, which makes it okay for me to talk about it here. Meanwhile I dutifully played the role of the drunk friend in a sea of 500 people, downing more than a standard amount of cognac. Thankfully, nobody left me alone though.

I had never been to a Chinese wedding before; not only was I surprised by the number of female attendees donning white dresses to such a joyous occasion, but the entertainment was quite something else, sans the distant male relative who, as the MC, made cruder and cruder jokes as his blood alcohol level rose.

Special Roasted Suckling Pig Platter
Until the very end I wasn't sure if the gelatinous matter in the center of the plate was really some part of the suckling pig, or some random jellyfish pieces that was called in as some kind of magical filler material. It was quite good, actually, and it was nice to enjoy the meat cooked in four different styles.

Stir Fried Scallop Double Style
I'm not sure what to say about this dish, other than the fact that scallops were both stir fried and deep fried for this "double style" dish. It was tasty, and it made me smack my lips, wanting more. But there was none left.

Minced Shrimp Stuffed Crab Claws
Talk about strange bedfellows. Imagine being caught (or probably farmed), killed off, have your body minced up and then ending up in the shell of a completely different creature. I'm not sure what that would feel like, the shrimp that gave up their livelihood to be in this dish would know. If I could, I would tell them that they were quite succulent, and their friend the crab claw made them easy to enjoy.

Braised Shark's Fin Soup with Crab Meat
Most, if not all, of the shark's fin meat in the soup was legitimate. Or at least it tasted that way to me. Although the prohibitively high price tag for this delicacy keeps it out of the range of hapless graduate students like me. Perhaps if I was able to attend another Chinese wedding of this scale, I would be able to enjoy shark's fin soup in the same guilt-free, unconscionable air of ignorance that helps us live with ourselves when we eat other foods such as foie gras and baby back ribs. Let's face it -- dickery tastes good, and that's why it lives on; people like us are able to live with guilty pleasure. We all do it.

Sliced Abalone with Mushroom and Vegetable
Much to my dismay and delight, the others at the table did not seem to enjoy the Chinese-style abalone so much. My dismay, because I fail to understand how anyone could not make a run for their fare share of the shellfish, but delight, because I got to finish all the abalone that nobody else wanted.

Deep Fried Squab
None of us knew what the heck we were putting into our mouths when this dish was placed in front of us. The entire squab was deep fried, and the chefs were kind enough to leave the heads on the plate for us to think about as we tried to extract as much meat as we could. The meat tasted rather tender but in a healthy way; one could tell that these birds were far more fit than the fat, well-fed pigeons seen waddling around any public area in the world. No, they do not taste like chicken.

Baked Lobster with Ginger and Scallion
My only gripe with this dish was the lack of any efficient apparatus to get the lobster meat from the shell. The meat that I did manage to dig up justified the effort, though.

Steamed Live Fish
I thought my dismay / delight combination had peaked at the abalone, but it was trumped by what I experienced with the fish. Almost 3/4 of a fish was left virtually untouched after everyone had their pickings from the dish. And only a few seemed inclined for seconds. Steamed whole fish that had absorbed all kinds of flavors from the sauce that is typically poured over such dishes is definitely one of the best dishes one could enjoy at a Chinese seafood restaurant.

Four Treasure Special Fried Rice
Ordering fried rice at a Chinese restaurant is like ordering prime rib sandwiches at Lawry's. You know what you're getting into -- that is, a filler dish with bits and pieces of leftover meat; only this time around, the leftover meat was the unused portions of the suckling pig that came out at the beginning of the meal. Not that I have anything against this sort of deal; if anything, meats should be used to their full potential, much like the bento boxes you can find at any Japanese supermarket, which use meats that were left over from the meat section. It was just like any other fried rice you can make; hence the lack of a photograph here.

Dessert
Okay, maybe traditional Chinese weddings are supposed to have red bean soup at the very end, but this was handed to us after everyone had enjoyed a piece of the wedding cake. Needless to say only a few people had enough space to try more than a couple of bites of the red bean soup, and I was so full I even forgot to take the freaking picture.

Conclusion
It's quite a feat once one realizes that, in addition to its regular Saturday night business, the chefs at Ocean Star had to cook up enough food to feed around 500 hungry people. I'm curious to see how big a kitchen one needs to prepare such a huge meal, but overall they did an excellent job given the busy conditions.

Of course, the wedding itself was a pleasure to attend as well -- my gratitude congratulations goes out to my two friends whose wedding was a cause for celebration by so many people.