I'm not a (Ramen) boy... not yet a (Ramen) man...

Japanese ramen has been in vogue for the past several years in New York, Hong Kong and London.  Since Philadelphia is so close to NYC, and we do get NYC’s hand-me-downs, I was wondering why the ramen tornado hasn’t landed in Philly yet (after all, we do have kabob carts now...).  As I was wondering around town over the weekend, heading to Sang Kee in Chinatown (not that Sang Kee in University City, and you know why I won’t go back), I noticed a new ramen joint along the street. My companion and I decided to abandon Sang Kee and gave this new place a shot.  

This brand new place gave me the trendy ramen house vibe.  Wooden chairs, open kitchen, and Japanese greetings from the waiters were are hallmarks of Ippudo at NYC.  Here’s an interior shot:  

Here’s a copy of their menu.  

Seeing that they put their store name on their “ramen boy classic” ramen with tonkotsu soup (see soup choices on wiki), pork loin charshu (wiki here, not to be confused with the Chinese charsiu or barbecue pork in American lingo.  Just like their countrymen, the charsius are really sensitive so don’t get their origins confused!), naruto (a type of Japanese fish cake roll), menma (pickled bamboo shoots), boiled egg, and other fixings, I decided to order that to try it out.  My companion ordered a gyu don (Japanese beef rice bowl).  

After some waiting, the food arrived!  Here’s the ramen: 

So far, so good.  The soup base had a milky-yellow appearance.  Although the charshu on the menu had more roasted surface area, I wouldn’t say I got jipped based on the what I got.  I went ahead and tried the soup first.  The taste test gave me a “it’s almost right, but not quite there” feeling.  Flavor-wise, it was fairly rich, but not quite making it.  My companion made a comment about how it tasted like chicken fat.  I’m not averse to the chicken fat taste, but I think there’s a grain of truth there.  The “meaty fresh” flavor was missing in the flavor profile, hence to my companion, it tasted more like chicken fat.  I think the pork to chicken bone ratio may need to be adjusted.  The soup was also a bit on the salty side, but that’s more of a personal preference.  The charshu had a layer of fat on top of the meat.  The fat was not chewy-- which is a good sign-- but it was a little bit shy of tender and in need of a bump in the cooking time.  Here’s a shot with the ramen from the bowl:  

It wasn’t overly tender but it’s not really al dente either.  When I bit into the noodles, there wasn’t a lot of “bounce.”  I expected something a bit more bouncy.  

Comparing to Ippudo NYC (wiki on Ippudo here, official website, yelp review), everything is almost there but a bit lacking.  Granted, Ippudo is one of the best ramen places around, and there may be some regional difference (Ramen Boy’s Yokohama vs. Ippudo’s Fukuoka) which can explain what is lacking in my mind. Ippudo’s ramen was very bouncy and the soup was rich with a balanced flavor.  Ramen Boy’s rendition just doesn’t quite cut it.  

I would like to make a special mention of their spoons.  See the pictures below:  

To prevent the spoon from falling, these spoons have a notch cut out on the side so you can hang it on the side of the bowl.  Genius huh?  

Onto the gyu don!

It looked decent in the bowl.  I liked that the beef was thinly sliced, but it wasn’t quite thin enough.  However, there wasn’t enough fat on the meat so it ended up a bit drier than it should.  I think it can use a little more punch (not salt-wise, but flavor-wise) in the marinade as well.  The rice is just normal short grain rice, but it was a little bit on the moist and too soft side.  This is a personal preference though.  Adding shichimi tōgarashi (Japanese seven-spices powder, wiki here) definitely enhanced the flavor and I compulsorily recommend you add it.  Speaking of gyu don, I have always had a soft spot for it.  I had my first gyu don at the ripe age of 11 at Yoshinoya (wiki here) in Hong Kong and I was hooked.  While Yoshinoya probably isn’t the best place for gyu don, I liked their slightly fatty beef in their razor-thin slices and their soft but not overly moist rice.  I always begged my parents to take me there whenever we went out, but after the plastic gloves incident, we didn’t go back anymore.  After moving to the states, I didn't have an opportunity to hit a Yoshinoya for several years due to lack of availability in my area-- until I hit Los Angeles. The Yoshinoya in LA was at a very sketchy neighborhood (If I were to come to Hollywood, I don't wanna make it in the neighborhood...).  I went there with my crew... crew... crew... crew... before a Rave dance... dance... dance... dance... several years ago (FYI:  your love music is my drugs.  I don’t do drugs and drugs are bad, m’kay?) to use their bathroom, but they had a coin-op door and we witnessed homeless people sponge-bathing in there.  I didn’t remember their gyu don being very good.  This speaks to the power of how memory changes the taste of food... anyway, I digress.

Overall, I think Ramen Boy has potential, but just like the namesake of this post, it’s not a boy... not yet a man... (Miss Britney sometimes hits the nail right at the head.)  Ramen Boy is stuck in between like Bieber gets stuck in teenage awkward years, where his sweats start to stink, his adam’s apple grows by yards each day, and he can no longer sing “Baby” in a boy-voice to woo the cougars, but some of you not-so-secretly hopes there is no other superstar you know that he’ll be once he’s all “grown-up.”  This is the methadone to Ippudo’s heroin:  if you have intense ramen craving and can’t get to NYC just to wait 1.5 hours (on average) to get ramen, this would alleviate some of the symtoms, but it will not get you high.  I’ll likely go back there and try their other ramen combo to see if they do a better job on those.  Being the only ramen-only joint in town now, I would probably make a visit occasionally, but I won’t be raving to other people about it.  

By the way, Ramen Boy is on its soft launch right now, so expect things to change in a bit.  Also, this place is opened by the same people that opened Yakatori Boy.  Thank you intertubes!  (see news article here)

Easter egg:  See how many music/artist references you can find in my post!  Post it in the comment and I’ll tell if you if you got it all!  

Diners? Mais Oui!

Though I live right next to the diner capital of the world (that’s New Jersey for those who don’t know), I rarely go to diners.  Somehow, diners seem to be all about greasy breakfasts and burgers, but not much else. When I visit a diner, I usually order a meatastic breakfast with eggs (over medium please!), bacon, sausage, and hash browns and regret every bit of it after the meal, when I feel my arteries slowly clog up as a queasy feeling escalates.  That is the quintessential experience of American diners.  According to Wikipedia, diners offer “a wide range of foods, mostly American, a casual atmosphere, a counter, and late operating hours.”  Other food cultures also have diner-like places.  The Hong Kongers have their cha chaan teng.  In the French/Belgian world, it would have been bistro.  Bistrot du Coin (official website, yelp review) would fit squarely in the French diner category.  


My brother came to DC for a conference and asked me to join him for the weekend.  When I arrived to DC, it was already 8:40pm -- pretty late for dinner, especially since we had to get up early to set up on Saturday.  We decided we would like to go to a place with lighter bites and chose Bistrot du Coin (official website, yelp review) located around Dupont Circle.  We got to the restaurant at about 9pm, and there was a line going out the door!  Thinking that we needed to be in line to put our name down, we went in line and waited.  We stood in front of the cheese platter for a while when we were in line.  I’m very verbose so I’m sure some of my saliva may have ended up on the $10 4 cheese plate that someone ended up eating.  After waiting for 20 minutes in the line, a girl came by and asked whether we needed to wait in line to put our name down. Our orderly sensibility took over our instinct of pushing everyone down to get a name on the list!  We ended up putting our name down about 20 min later and were seated at the "chef’s table" -- that is, the table right next to the kitchen door -- in another 10-15 min.  

After scanning through their extensive menu and the yelp review, we decided to go with the foie gras frais poele (avec) risotto de sorgo truffe (sauteed fois gras with barley risotto and truffle sauce), escargot a la Bourguignonne (snails with garlic butter), and Moules au pistou (steamed mussels with pesto, prosciutto and French ham) as our “main course.”  My brother tagged a beer on with the order.  Their beer/wine/cocktail list is not as extensive, and the beer cost considerably more than other joints.  Unless you really wanted a beer, I would stay away from ordering beers there.  We took the time catching up and checked out the decor.  It was undeniably trying to transport the feeling of a bistro in France to DC:  wooden chairs, small, crowded tables, tacky plastic table cloths on some tables, small strips of mirror around the restaurant, yellow light, posters and memorabilia from the yesteryear of European French culture, and the centerpiece at the bar.  From the writing on the mirror at the bar, I also found out that the restaurant was in business for 11 years.  This is no small achievement -- especially since there is a lot of competition in the DC area.  This speaks volumes to their product quality.  The bread arrived first and there was nothing special about it.  Just good ol’ room temperature baguettes.  My brother, being a genius, didn’t eat anything for the whole day except a small snack in the morning.  He and I started chowing down on the bread, mostly because he was hungry, and my teeth itch when I don’t chew on something.  While we were chowing down, the foie gras arrived.

Foie gras frais poele, risotto de sorgo truffe 
(sauteed fois gras with barley risotto and truffle sauce)

For those of you who are against foie gras on humanitarian ground and want to burn my place to the ground, I apologize.  I do realize that there were some unsavory practice in the foie gras raising industry.  However, I would like to point out that some geese and ducks would fatten their liver naturally in preparation for migration. and there are outfits that “grow” foie gras naturally.  I’m not sure exactly where Bistrot du Coin gets their foie gras from, but I would like to think they obtain their raw materials from a reputable outfit.  The foie gras slice was about the size of half a fist and just shy of half inch thick.  I have had larger piece of foie gras, and it usually comes with a tart tasting sauce to neutralize the queasy effect of foie gras.  This foie gras came with creamy, al-dente risotto in a “truffle” sauce.  As much as I like to go for “bigger is better” mentality on certain things, foie gras isn’t one of them.  A big piece tastes amazing, but I would feel my arteries clogging like I was eating eggs and bacon in American diners, especially without a tart sauce.  This fois gras size was perfect for a non-tart sauce.  It was crunchy on the outside, soft like custard on the inside -- a perfect balance.  The salad was a nice touch as well-- it cut down the richness of the foie gras.  The mushroom sauce was good though it was definitely lacking of truffle taste.  It wouldn’t have been too hard to throw some synthetic truffle oil to impart the taste (at the price they’re asking for, I do not expect to see anything that resembles real truffles in the sauce).  This is a matter of correct representation!

Next up was the escargots.  

Escargot a la Bourguignonne (snails with garlic butter) , front.  
Part of the Foie Gras dish , back.

The method was pretty traditional -- garlic, butter, probably some aromatics, and a generous dosing of salt.  The escargots’ texture was tender:  not chewy, not ultra soft, but my brother would have preferred a bit more al-dente texture.  As we finished our foie gras and escargots, the mussels arrived.

Moules au pistou (steamed mussels with pesto, prosciutto and French ham)

Mussel dishes are typically pretty hard to screw up provided that the ingredients are fresh.  With that said, mussels (and by extension, other bivalves) tend to have a mind of their own.  Time management is the most important factor in bivalves cooking.  The bivalves would need to be pulled from heat right when they opened up, exposing the succulent, soft flesh inside.  Shell thickness and size both contributed to the cooking time.  While most cooks cannot control the shell thickness, they certainly have some controls over mussel sizes.  At Bistro du Coin (official website, yelp review), they certainly didn’t pay close attention to the mussel sizes.  As you can see in the photo, some were about the size of 2 AA batteries, while others were about the size of 2 of the small round batteries.  This contributed to uneven cooking:  the big mussels were soft and succulent, while the small ones shrunk like certain phallic symbol faced the bitter cold.  Shrunken mussel meats were usually a bit chewy.  The menu stated that the mussels were cooked with basil, French ham, and prosciutto.  There were plenty of ham and basil in the mixture, but I didn’t see much prosciutto at all.  Most of the broth flavors were carried by the ham.  The basil felt like certain Chinese pickled leafy vegetable (Traditional Chinese, google-translated-barely-comprehensible English) added into the broth, probably caused by a combination of color and the savoriness of the ham.  I should have listened to my brother and ordered the moules Normande (Steamed mussels in cream sauce with celery, leeks, mushrooms, potatoes and bacon) instead.  

Creme brulee, without flash.  Notice the dark, charred center. 

Creme brulee "closer-up" with flash for better color contrast between center and side.  

Usually creme brulee uses ceramic ramekin with a fluted exterior.  A fluted exterior increases surface area and heat transfer into the creme brulee.  Ceramic and bain marie act as a large heat sink so that the edges would cook at a pace closer to the center (side note:  making creme brulee is one the the best demo you can do to illustrate the nuances of heat transfer.  If you replace the fluted ceramic container and the bain marie with a fluted metal container and a bain “air”, you would get chewy on the outside, uncooked on the inside “custard”-- if you could even call it a “custard” at that point.  Trust me:  I have tried that before in high school and that was exactly what I got.  My appreciation of heat transfer class skyrocketed when I made successful creme brulee and understood why it works in college.  I can go into a little bit more detail on the science behind creme brulee, but That’s Another Show.  I know, I’m such a geek...)  Eggs can be very temperamental with respect to heat.  Slow and steady is the name of the game when it comes to creme brulee (and by extension, a lot of custards).  The bowl was a bit warm when the creme brulee came out.  The “brulee” part, consisted of torched up sugar, was crunchy, but maybe a bit too thick.  The sugar ended up sticking to the teeth as we crushed the sugar apart.  The custard was perfectly executed-- soft, tender, and fairly fluffy.  Personally, I prefer my creme brulee’s texture to be more like a soft ice-cream and less like a custard, but what they made was very good.  Interestingly, there was a significant temperature gradient across the little bowl.  If I recall correctly, the center part of the custard was actually warmer than the perimeters generally, even though the ceramic bowl edges were a bit warm when the creme brulee came out.  Judging from the distribution of chars on the sugar crust, it made a lot of sense-- the center of the creme brulee saw more heat than the outskirt, which caused the center to be more charred.  

Even though Bistrot du Coin (official website, yelp review) would technically be classified as a “diner,” its food certainly exceed the realm of usual greasy diner food.  In fact, I would rather let foie gras be the cause of my clogging arteries than Crisco with mystery-meat sausages and eggs.  There was a good reason why they stayed open for 11 years amongst tough competitions and extremely expensive beer selection.  With its rustic charm and better than average food, I’m more than willing to say “mais oui” on this gastro- and faux-visual journey to a French “cha chaan teng.”  

How can a chicken run around without a head?

I feel like that headless chicken right now.  Life has been keeping me very busy so I can't write the DC restaurant reviews as fast as I would have liked.  Good news is that at least one of them is coming!  It should be up in the next 24 hours....  Feel like you can use some Coin lately? I definitely do!  

Sang Kee vs. Sang Kee

I’m sure most people have encountered someone with the same name as them at least once in their lives.  Sometimes, strangers confuse you with a celebrity; other times, you happen to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list.  In the first case, you may be flattered.  In the second case, you may curse your parents, or your evil “twin”, as you as an TSA agent pads down every inch of you, feeling you up for bombs.  With small, local restaurants, I occasionally encounter places with the same name.  I usually assume that they’re sister restaurants, or a part of a local chain.  I felt the same way when I encountered Sang Kee in University City (yelp review, official site).  Isn’t this the same Sang Kee as the one in Chinatown (yelp review, official site), which is the same Sang Kee in Reading Terminal (yelp review, “official” site), and countless others dotting the greater Philadelphia area?  As it turns out, Sang Kee in UC is more of a homonym to the Sang Kee in Chinatown than sister institutions.  The Sang Kees in Philadelphia are known for their roasted ducks.  In fact, two out of three Sang Kees have a logo similar to Huey, Dewey, and Louis in the famed Scrooge McDuck cartoon, stylized in psychedelic colors.  Copyright infringement is a Chinese strong suit.  The one Sang Kee that decided to steer clear of copyright infringement was in UC.  I have tried the roasted duck at Chinatown’s Sang Kee, and found that they offer one of the more properly-made Cantonese-style roasted ducks in the US.  I will go into a bit more detail on what makes a great roasted duck in the future, so stay tuned.  As it turns out, UC’s Sang Kee also touts their roasted duck as one of the best.  

On a Wednesday night, I went with a fellow foodie (JP) to Sang Kee in UC (yelp review, official site) because I didn’t feel like cooking.  I have been to this Sang Kee before, but I really didn’t remember anything remarkable about the place except that the prices were a bit higher than the one in Chinatown.  Usually, if a place is exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad, I would remember them.  I tend to purge middle-of-the-road restaurants from my brain as it has a finite amount of space.  JP was here with another friend a couple nights before, and they ordered the pan-seared pompano with soy sauce, the XO sauce tofu, and the piece de resistance -- roasted duck.  She raved about the roasted duck and to some extent the tofu, but gave the pompano a thumbs down.  Being adventurous, we decided to go with the saute satay chicken and the plum roasted duck after mulling over the little pictorial menu on the table and the regular menu.  Being dyslexic when it doesn’t count, I ordered the Hong Kong plum roasted duck, thinking it was roasted duck with plum garlic sauce.  

While we waited for our meal, JP and I talked about why the pompano was a failure.  As she derided the chewy skin on the pompano, I watched the wait staff served other tables around me.  With the pompano, the idea was that the pan-sear would crisp up the skin while the soy sauce added a salty, moist contrast to a crunchy exterior, a la tempuras.  Under correct execution, it would have been perfection -- except perfection would only be within the 2-3 minutes after the chef pours on the soy sauce -- tops.  By the time the bus staff brought out the dish, placed the dish onto a serving tray on a stand, and the wait staff brought it to the table, a good 5 minutes minimum would have passed before they brought the dish to the table, all the while the pompano was basking in its own soy sauce juice, the skin soaking up the liquid, and getting soggier by the minute.  No wonder the skin was chewy-- there is no way it would have arrived any other way with their rendition.  The only way to get around that was to serve the dish, preferably on a hot cast iron plate, with seasoned soy sauce served on the side, and the diner would add the sauce to the sizzling plate at the table, or dip the fish into the sauce.  

The duck arrived while we finished our discussion on the pompano.  It was undoubtedly a Hong Kong style roasted duck, complete with brown jus on the plate and on the side.  The brown jus was the favorite part of my roasted duck ritual.  I would add it to the accompanying rice, mixed it up, and downed the rice like I have been starved for days.  The duck was tasty, but where was the plum garlic sauce?  I tracked down 3 different wait staffs for the “plum sauce,” as I would called it.  The first one gave me the brown jus that came with the duck.  I kept the sauce because it was delicious, but I told them that wasn’t what I wanted.  The second one brought me hoisin sauce.  Finally, I asked the third wait staff, who took our order, in Chinese for the plum sauce.  She then told me I didn’t order the duck with plum garlic sauce but instead ordered the Hong Kong roasted duck.  My dyslexic self finally had an epiphany-- no wonder I didn’t get my plum sauce!  I ordered the wrong stuff!  The waitress then said, no problem though, I’ll bring you some to try.  She then brought out this brown color, partially translucent sauce with numerous garlic floating inside.  I tried the sauce:  plenty sweet, not a lot of sour, and certainly tasted nothing like plum.  JP and I sat there, bemused, tried to take that all in, when the saute satay chicken arrived.  

The little pictorial menu depicted the saute satay chicken as a dry saute dish -- no sauce, just satay and chicken with vegetables.  This plate of satay chicken was floating in a sea of brown gravy.  The button mushrooms were still whole, scattering around the dish along with some green vegetable and carrots.  If there were rules against false advertisement, this dish would have made the cut with the brown gravy alone.  I don’t mind mushrooms so the addition was not troublesome-- or so I thought.  I bit into the mushroom and it felt barely cooked, maybe even raw, inside.  The good news was that mushrooms can be consumed raw, I told myself.  The chicken was marinated and had some flavors, but where was the satay?  I said to JP, “I’m depressed right now” as I looked into her eyes, asking for reassurance.  There was no satay taste with the dish!  She then tried it and said the same thing.  We wondered what happened to this dish while we picked out the vegetables so we would get some greens in our diet, drowning our sorrow with jus-soaked rice and roasted duck.  At the end of the meal, I tried the brown gravy again just to make sure my first impression was correct, and it turned out I wasn’t too far from the truth.  While there was satay flavor in the brown gravy, it only made up maybe 10-20% of the gravy’s entire flavor profile, and I wouldn’t even have tasted it had I not tried it after flushing my taste buds.  If this dish wasn’t violating any FTC rules on false advertisement before, it certainly would have been by now.  The duck’s flavor was so strong that it overwhelmed any sense of satay in this dish -- not that there was much to begin with.  

While we waited for our check, I looked around the dining room filled with patrons.  Some were celebrating their birthday, others stopped in for a quick bite before getting back to the grind.  I felt bad for the patrons, especially the birthday celebration table there, who spent their hard earn money at a mediocre place on their special occasion, but I felt worse for the Sang Kee in Chinatown (yelp review, official site).  That Sang Kee would only attain such popularity on weekend lunch and dinner -- they would never dream of having this kind of crowd on an uneventful Wednesday night.  Yet, the quality of the Chinatown Sang Kee’s saute dishes were far superior to this Sang Kee in University City (yelp review, official site).  The Sang Kee in University City would not have survived under the wheels of gastronomy outside University City, just like the saute satay chicken couldn’t hold up against the flavorful duck.  Simply put, there were no better Chinese options in this neck of the woods.  

As we paid our bill, our waitress informed me that this Sang Kee is not owned by the same folks as the one in Chinatown.  No wonder they don’t bear the same psychedelic duck tale logo as their counterparts.  The University City Sang Kee is a homonym to the Chinatown Sang Kee indeed.