Adventures in Tea Blending, #1

Type: Personal Tea Blend
Rating: At first, 2/5, but after making it into milk tea, 4/5
A bit too flowery at first despite adding twice the amount of Formosa oolong, but adding milk proved to be a fair idea.

I am slowly but surely learning that experimenting with my cupboard full of teas will result in many failures, but I have some hope that I will be able to garner some information from my mistakes. This is the first documentation of my soon to be numerous attempts.

This time around, I felt like making myself a milk tea. I do so enjoy making myself a milk tea to store in a nice glass bottle, chilled for the next evening. Most of the time, I forget that I do this, so it’s always a pleasant surprise, knowing that my past self made my future self a lovely present. I usually go for a nice, strong cup of TARDIS tea, made with two generous teaspoons of the stuff, steeped for five minutes to make it as dark as possible. But tonight, I felt like making an oolong milk tea, probably because I had stopped in at Plentea earlier. Put off by their usual lackluster service, I wondered how hard it would be to make a sea salt cream tea of my own. That will be an experiment for another day, though.

This time around, I rummaged through the tea cupboard to find something that was close to depletion. I thought about finishing off my beloved Luna Lovegood blend, which is no longer available through Adagio in the original form with guanabana, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Thankfully, Adagio had sent me some samples, kind as they have been to me in the past. I pulled out the Formosa oolong sample. I’m still learning to appreciate the scents and fragrances that I can pick up from teas, but unfortunately, all I know is that it definitely smelled of oolong, and I hope to hone those senses with some direction sometime in the future.

As an afterthought, I grabbed my tin of My Fair Lady from Leland Tea to see what would happen. This is a rooibos tea that is overpowering with its berries, roses, and hibiscus. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to add about half a teaspoon to the two heaping teaspoons of Formosa oolong I had already added to my infuser. I let the tea steep for 5 minutes in 196°F water. I grabbed my tiny tea-tasting cup from last year’s SF International Tea Festival to have a sip, hoping the fruity-floral tea would give the oolong a nice little note.

It was not a note. At all. I did mention it was overpowering, didn’t I? I did not realize that it would overpower two heaping teaspoons of oolong. It may have blended better with a black tea, perhaps, but I wish I could experiment more. I had purchased a mad scientist set sometime ago, but I can only assume that my brothers have put that to good use. In any case, I was very sad to know that I may have just wasted tea. I decided to press on and continue making my milk tea for tomorrow, hoping it wouldn’t be too terrible.

Amazingly, though, after I added my usual blend of Coffee Mate and honey to the tea, it actually started tasting more like a blend of tea and berries and not a terrifying glass of flower juice. I can see why adding berries straight into tea can be a bad idea, but somehow, the addition of a milk substance made everything come together. It may not have made a good cup of regular tea for my own tastes, but it made a refreshingly lovely milk tea that I’m sure will taste even better once it’s been chilled for a day.

I would probably make this again if I knew it was going to be a warm week. The blend makes me feel like I’m taking a fruity milk tea, and it is quite pleasant. Definitely not a blend I would have thought of making as it’s not to my usual tastes, but there you go!

Sausalito

Type: Location
Rating: 3.8/5
A lovely place that is worth a visit, though it depends on what you’re after; may not be worth it on its own.

Scott’s friend Tatiana visited us for ten days, and she is one helluva traveler. That girl has energy for a trip to Sausalito to Sonoma to Napa and back to San Francisco in one day, and can manage to get it all done before everything closes even if she was off to a late start. Unfortunately, I got sick on Thursday evening, but I mustered up all my strength since it was her last day visiting. The next few posts will be about some of the places she visited that I went along with.

When I’m showing folks from out of town around, I don’t usually think to take them to Sausalito. It’s sort of like taking someone to a regular place, but more dolled up for touristy things. This little place is adorable and reminds me of a place in Maryland – some sort of downtown area that I can’t remember in my feverish stupor. What makes this place so nice is that it is pretty chill. If you’re lucky enough to have a sunny day for about an hour, the drive there takes you across the Golden Gate Bridge (be sure to be the one driving if your guest wants to take pictures) is lovely. If you’re especially lucky, there won’t be too much traffic heading over. Alternatively, you can also take the ferry over, which is pretty sweet. Or, if you’re the cycling type, you can also bike the whole way down. I clearly would not join such a venture, but hey.

Sausalito is a picturesque little town with a bunch of ice cream shops and burger joints. I don’t know why. But seriously…if you walk around, you’ll see that there are three or four ice cream shops in a row. There’s also seafood, not surprisingly, but I noticed a lot of the food there is overpriced. Probably for tourists, really. Alas. There were loads of places that looked mildly interesting, but if you’re the type of person that likes looking at the sea, this will be a nice change of pace from the hectic city life in San Francisco. Really, its similar to Main Street in Disneyland. It’s that unreal.

There’s dogs everywhere, so if you love squeeing at every puppy face you see, chances are you’ll get it all squeezed out of you by the end of the short main street. Plus, I’ve never seen so many cigarette disposal boxes. They seem to be very fond of putting the word “butts” everywhere, so the immature part of me was thrilled. Yes, okay: this is what I got out of Sausalito. Cute dogs, ice cream, burgers, and butts.

We didn’t spend too long on the main street, but there is a fair amount of shopping to be had if that’s the aim of the trip. We walked along the waterside for food, but many of the places either were too expensive, were burgers (we were planning to go to Umami for dinner that night), or not breakfasty enough. Eventually, we found ourselves at Cafe Tutti. I joked that this place served breakfast pastas because of their neon signs, but we were actually in for a pleasant surprise when we got in.

Cafe Tutti was everything we needed. Since we were on Tatiana’s time-crunched schedule, we required a place that was quick, delicious, and relatively cheap. This cafe served all of the above! I’ve reviewed it on Yelp, but I will say that they had massive pastries which were super cheap at around $2.50 a pop. Oh yes.

Another tip: this place houses a fair amount of old folks. If you’re driving, kindly watch out. We were in a parking lot, waiting for someone to back out…and some guy right in the middle tried backing out, too. Which would have been fine if they weren’t aiming for the middle of our car. The young parent-locals, which we met at the cafe, were kind enough to point out where the house boats were located. So, for the most part, people were kind.

If you have never seen a houseboat before, I highly recommend it. They’re like floating art exhibits and you can walk the docks as long as you’re not disturbing anyone. I’m unsure if they’re actually floating, as many of them seemed rooted to the ground below with a slab of concrete, but who knows…in any case, it is pretty cool. There’s also a museum that houses a model of the bay. We went on a Sunday so it was closed, so try and visit it during their business hours.

All in all, it was worth the trip if you have more plans afterward. As long as you’re in good company and you don’t park under a tree (the birds there must eat French fries and ice cream, which probably do weird things to their avian digestive systems), this is a nice little spot. It’s also en route to Sonoma, so it’s a great place to have breakfast. If you plan on visiting a vineyard in the same day, grab a sandwich from one of the shops here for a makeshift picnic if nothing was packed beforehand. If I’m rich one day, I’d consider living here, or at least opening up a tea shop of my own.

The EZ T-Cup

Type: Object (Tea Cup)
Rating: 2/5
Not something I’d use again for its designed purpose.

I love tea. I’m not saying I’m inexperienced in drinking tea, because hey, chances are, we’ve all probably had tea for quite a long time. It was when I worked at the bookshop that I realized I really, really love tea, and when I started getting some decent income, I found that I’m someone who really loves tea to a probably unhealthy degree. Half of my boyfriend’s cupboard is all the loose tea that I’ve purchased in the past year. I’ve finished maybe four or five bags, tins, and jars of the stuff. Before I discovered loose leaf, I was the person who would yoink tea bags from hotel breakfast lounges. After I discovered loose leaf, I went to Daiso to pick up disposable do-it-yourself custom tea bags so I can have a quick and easy way to make my fancy teas at the airport (without having TSA stop me). Then it went to tea balls and tea strainers and temperature-specific tea pots and my goodness I have a problem.

Anyway. This is a pretty cool-looking tea mug. The brand here says it’s by company called Samadoyo, and it’s sold at the Wild Tea Qi store as part of their tea stuff collection. It’s made of sturdy glass, which is a huge plus, and it’s a really convenient way to steep tea perfectly. In the right circumstances, I’m sure I’d use this more often than not. Unfortunately, this time around, I don’t think I’m dazzled enough to use it daily (though it was definitely a cool thing to have at work – my coworkers have grown accustomed to my new “tea contraptions” that I bring in from time to time).

I haven’t yet tried my teas from Wild Tea Qi because this strainer combo wasn’t what I was expecting. I mean, to be fair, physics should have told me that the amount of tea this wonderful 400mL mug would hold would only be…well…less than half of the mug. Which, you know, is fine. If I wanted to do a tea tasting.

But work is stressful and horrible and I need mugs of tea at a time, and less than half a mug of perfect tea is not enough to keep me awake and relatively peaceable during the day. The best case scenario at work would be me having my boyfriend’s fancy perfect Bona Vita variable temperature kettle, my Adagio tea steeper, and my lovely Ren and Robbin in the Morning mug. But this is too much for me to carry on a 2.5 mile walk out to work. And I don’t like the idea of people touching my tea stuff. Which is why having one relatively good piece of tea steeping equipment is extremely important to my daily life.

Basically, this mug is awesome if you use it as a mug by itself, because it’s one of those cool clear glass ones and it holds a fair amount of your choice of wonderful hot beverage. But then it’s also branded, and some people might not care much for that. And in terms of tea, yes, it’ll probably be perfectly steeped, but it’s only going to be a small amount. If I want that amount small amount of tea for tasting, I’ll get a gaiwan. I do not what that small amount. I want so much tea that by half of my day I think to myself, “Huh, I did not know the human body could hold that much liquid.”

For $18.20, I think it would be better to find a different mug/infuser combo on Amazon. Most glass mugs minus the infusers are around $25-$30 for a 4-pack, so you can even have fancy tea in glass mugs with a friend or three.

Super Duper

Type: Restaurant (Burgers)
Rating: 5/5
Would definitely return.

When most people think of burger places in California, I imagine that a majority of Californians like myself will say, “Well, of course you’ve got to go to In-n-Out.” While this is true, I have learned that you can actually go one step further when it comes to the fast food burger that isn’t quite fast food, but is reasonably priced and immensely satisfying: Super Duper.

I’d never been to this place until this past weekend, and I feel silly for not having gone even though it’s relatively close to work. We’ve got a bunch of great burger places in San Francisco, so it can be difficult to figure out what’s worth going to. My top three are Umami, Roam, and now, Super Duper, all of which are extremely excellent for different reasons. In the end, I would go to Super Duper if it’s a) time for some fantastic fries, b) it’s on the way, and c) I want to be in a place where parking is relatively easy. So I guess most of my reasons are related to location more than anything, but even that plays a huge part in deciding where I want to go to eat.

Going backwards from my list, the one at Yerba Buena means I am pretty much guaranteed to find parking within a 5-block radius. There’s the 5th and Mission garage, there’s the garage next to Crunch on 3rd and Harrison, there’s the 25-cent-an-hour parking on 3rd and Bryant (when the Giants aren’t in town), and probably a whole lot more that I haven’t found myself. This is good news. Secondly, if I’m in this area, I’m probably going to Target. This means I can either eat beforehand to get my Target on, or afterwards to feel good about my Target run. And lastly? Fries. Oh my goodness. These fries.

Oh my. So much goodness. These garlic fries are even better than the ones I had at the garlic festival, mainly because a plethora of sweaty drunkards and too-hot weather weren’t involved. The other positive point to these fries is that they are covered in cheese, which makes it even more delicious. And there is garlic in every wonderful, beautiful bite. I mean, the fries were more of a highlight than the burger to me, and the burgers were pretty damn fantastic on their own.

These bad boys are the “mini” burgers, which, on their own, are a sweet $5. A super burger is this plus one more quarter-pound patty for $7. A mini was perfect for me, and they’re cooked to a nice medium (I’d prefer them medium-rare, but this was still pretty tasty). You can add stuff to your burger according to their menu, and even if you add stuff, it’s still probably going to come out to be cheaper than Roam (and definitely Umami).

If it matters, everything here is organic. You can even bring your veggie friends here, since they also make veggie burgers, which are apparently also quite delightful. They’ve got some housemade pickles (things I don’t like, but the boyfriend says they are really excellent), and their ice creams and shakes are made with Strauss, which is one of the most legit still-in-a-glass-bottle milks you can find at places like Whole Foods.

Oh…and…yes. So we did get a super shake. Because Strauss. And cookies ‘n’ creme. Anyway, in terms of food, everything was delicious and of excellent quality. The burgers are a solid choice in the world of sandwiches with beef patties in between them; they are infinitely better than In-n-Out, in my opinion. But don’t go expecting something that can compete with Roam and Umami. Roam beats SD out in terms of the dozens of things you can add to their burgers; Umami is king when it comes to burgers being made exquisitely. Super Duper is good when you don’t want to seem overly-accidentally uppity, but still want to be the bearer of good food times. Plus, their fries are the best out of these three, anyway. I’m not overly fond of Roam’s, and if I’m at Umami, I get their cheesy tots, so there you go.

To summarize, Super Duper is, in fact, super duper. Now that I know it’s just about two blocks away from work, I know that I’ll be going here for my burger cravings. Or, to be more accurate, my garlic fry cravings.

New Nagano Sushi

Type: Restaurant
Rating: 5/5
Would definitely return.

I came back to San Francisco full of heavy thoughts. I wanted to place those thoughts elsewhere and decided to go for a drive. I invited the boyfriend to come along if he so chose, and we drove down to the Inner Richmond since I was hoping to clear my mind a bit. Originally, I wanted to find Okina Sushi. Though I found it, I also found that the parking around there was terrible, so we decided to try our chances on Geary to see if anything looked interesting. With the help of our smart phones and excellent parking on a Friday night (to be fair, it was 2 January, which meant most people were still playing hooky from work), we found ourselves less than a block away from New Nagano Sushi.

It was hard to miss with the bright yellow sign. I’d seen it before and wondered what it was like, so I was happy to see that the interior was very warmly designed. It’s not overly artsy, and it was nice and quiet since there was only one other party in the restaurant. Now, I know that usually an empty restaurant isn’t a good sign, but I figured since almost the entire block of Geary had suspiciously easy-to-find parking, I decided that it was probably due to the city still being in vacation mode. We were seated right away by the sushi chefs, and the waitress brought us menus and water right away, followed by some tea while we were browsing through the vast menu. It’s nice when restaurants aren’t crowded; as you’d expect, you get really excellent service.

After about 15 minutes of perusing through the menu (we had to figure out what I could eat, since I don’t react well to large amounts of mayonnaise), we decided on three rolls: the Zebra Roll, the King Kong Roll, and the Salmon Delight Roll. After a final look at the menu, we also ordered the Salmon Skin and Snow Cone handrolls. The waitress was also patient and kind while she checked with the chefs to see what had mayonnaise and what didn’t.

The waitress was quick and attentive, and the food came rather quickly. The Zebra Roll came out first, which was basically a crab roll with seaweed salad on it. This was tasty, though we were a bit worried at first since she informed us that anything with crab in it had a bit of mayo to hold it together. Thankfully, whatever amount they used was perfect. I could still taste the wonderful mayo flavor and I didn’t get sick. The next ones were the King Kong and handrolls and the Salmon Delight…oh my goodness. So delicious. I wish I had taken pictures, but we were hungry and the food was gone within minutes.

The King Kong roll was definitely my favorite. It had everything I loved in a roll: a bit of crab, some unagi, some snow crab, avocado, tobiko, unagi, and unagi sauce. Perfect. I didn’t even have to worry about the mayo drizzle that many sushi restaurants usually use. I had a bite of the boyfriend’s Snow Cone roll, which included some hamachi…which was excellent. I’m not entirely educated in the raw stuff yet, but I am happy to report that I’m a new convert to it. Boyfriend confirmed that the hamachi they had was the good stuff. What I really enjoyed about the food was that they didn’t overdo it with the rice. Some restaurants use way too much rice and it becomes filler; they use just enough, and it tastes just right.

All in all, everything was delicious. The service was also excellent, and I hope that it will continue to be excellent whether the restaurant is busy or not. They treated us very well, and I felt like I was back at my boyfriend’s favorite sushi place back in his hometown where everyone was extremely kind and wonderful. Good service really makes food taste better. I will definitely be coming back, especially now that I know they have ramen as well!

Cabin Pressure

Type: Radio Show
Rating: 5/5
Absolutely fantastic.

Radio shows! Who listens to those anymore, eh? I do. And I highly recommend that you pick this up, especially if you’re a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, since he plays one of the primary characters in this comedy of airlines.

If you are not familiar with John Finnemore, now is the time to do so. This guy is a comic genius, and he is one of the people I’d most like to meet, even though I can say with complete certainty that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I did. I’d have no words aside from, “You’re John Finnemore. YOU’RE JOHN FINNEMORE,” and that’s all I’d be able to do, so I really shouldn’t meet the man. In addition to the flights of fancy presented in Cabin Pressure, he also writes the British sketch show John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, which is in itself an excellent time. But today, I want to acknowledge these statements:

• Opinion: Cabin Pressure is one of the best things I have ever had the pleasure of listening to
• Fact: The series has ended as of 25 December 2014, so you can sit down and listen to the whole thing
• Opinion: Radio shows are an excellent way to pass the time when you’re on a road trip
• Fact: Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Roger Allam (V for Vendetta), Stephanie Cole (Open All Hours), and John Finnemore (yes, this same guy) play the main roles. Later on in the show, Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) joins the cast as well.
• Opinion: Chances are you like or know of at least one of the above people

The show follows GERTI, the single, relatively run-down plane of MJN Air, owned and operated by Carolyn Knapp-Shappey; an airline captain, Martin Crieff; his first officer Douglas Richardson; and Carolyn’s dopey but lovable son Arthur Shappey, who serves as the steward. It’s a story of survival, in some ways, because seriously…how can a single plane get any sort of job? How does the crew get paid? Why do the do it? Why is there only one jet, anyway? Yes, there is a single plane. As Carolyn mentions in the first episode, “I don’t have an airline. I have one jet. You cannot put one jet in a line. If MJN is anything, it is an air dot.”

The episode listings go from A-Z, cleverly listing the titles as the destinations of the crew; the first episode is Abu Dhabi, then Boston, Cremona, and so forth. Each episode is full of that wonderful British humor that I’ve come to know and love. The crew tends to pass the time with word games, which is a delight to listen to (and figure out yourself).

For example, in the episode “Limerick”, they…well, they make limericks. My personal favorite game was the one where they took the last letter from the title of a book or movie to change the meaning in its entirety. Try it. It’s ridiculously difficult. I know the whole point of the games is so they can pass the time during the long flights, but it’s incredible that the characters could come up with these things in general! (I know, I know. It’s a script. STILL, I don’t think I’d ever come up with – “Of Mice and Men” became “Of Mice and Me”. How bloody brilliant is that?!)

Beyond all the laughs and joking about, the real gem of the show is the character growth. It’s what kept me listening. The near-thirty minutes of each episode were never wasted, in my opinion. Someone always learned something. And by the final episodes, the culmination of their time with MJN Air made everything worthwhile. Finnemore managed to put those pesky life lessons into every episode, so even though you may not be the pilot of an aircraft, you somehow still get away with feeling a little better about yourself. In short, this show has a lot of heart.

If you’ve got a long road trip or flight ahead of you, I suggest loading up your music player with these files, or downloading them for offline use, or whatever you do to get some stuff to listen to in the car. There are many resources available; I imagine with Benedict Cumberbatch’s presence, the radio show has quite the fanbase. Have a look! Give it a try! You may find that radio shows are just as entertaining as regular TV shows. And if not, well, you get to listen to Benedict Cumberbatch all up in your eardrums, which is really not a bad thing.

Ramen Underground: Japantown Location

Type: Restaurant
Rating: 1/5
Would not go back.

Sigh. There is nothing more puzzling or disappointing than a good place turned bad when a new location is introduced.

This review is for the SF Japantown location of Ramen Underground. It is an enormous shame to have to write this, but first thing’s first: the location in FiDi is a million times better, and it is incredibly weird to write that. There are few things that I consider better in FiDi, but please, for the love of all things delicious, please, do not go to the one in Japantown.

We should have been warned by the lack of people that were there. We originally wanted to go to Yamadaya Ramen, but the place was completely crowded. The same went for Sha La La, Suzu Noodle House, and almost every single noodle restaurant in Japantown. To be honest, I was rather surprised that there were so many people present on a cold Tuesday night. Must be something to do with being the day before New Years Eve. The fact of the matter was, almost every single restaurant was crowded beyond belief, and Ramen Underground had no wait time at all. Usually this is a good thing, but we decided to take our chances anyway.

We were seated right away in a corner booth with a strange-looking painting of a fish that looked like it was supposed to be in a children’s book. The place looked pretty similar to the location in the Financial District, but bigger. It was a very cozy seating, to be sure, but I always worry when I’m sat in the corner like that. It’s the easiest place to accidentally forget about someone. Or on-purpose forget about someone. Though the place wasn’t busy, we still had to wait while before someone took our order. This wasn’t too bad, as most people who don’t know what to order could take about that long. But of course, since we were in the corner, no one could have seen us looking ready to order. Anyway.

I don’t understand how it is possible that a place with the same owner could have food of such differing quality. The menu looked the same, but the one in FiDi doesn’t have kakuni. The addition of pork belly in the Japantown location should have been awesome. I definitely ordered it in my miso ramen and made sure to ask them to hold the green onions. The boyfriend ordered shoyu ramen with a boiled egg and kakuni as well. Thankfully, because my company was my boyfriend, I had a good chat – so good that I didn’t realize that half an hour had gone by before our food finally came in.

At first, I was happy to see that there was spinach and mushrooms included in the broth. Unfortunately, the food itself was just okay. The kakuni was mainly fat, with barely enough meat to be worth eating. The chashu was ridiculously rubbery, and I couldn’t chew through most of it. It was so tough that I’m pretty sure I could have bounced it off the walls. The noodles were all right; there was a very good quantity of them, but this was the first time I’ve ever disliked a bowl of ramen so much that I didn’t finish the ramen. There was nothing special at all about them, and I don’t think I would have been able to distinguish it from ramen made from a bag.

Boyfriend’s ramen was very clearly missing an egg. No one even came to check on us after we got our food, so we had no chance to say, “Hey, so, uh, we ordered an egg with this…?” which was obnoxious. In fact, they didn’t come back until the group next to us was ready to order. We had finished our meal for some time now. Usually I would raise my hand to flag someone down, but it was impossible to see where the waiter went. With a place that big, they should really get more wait staff. I wouldn’t give it another chance, though. They still charged us for the egg and didn’t give us a chance to say anything else as he just whipped off in a flash. Disgruntled, we paid in cash so we wouldn’t have to wait for him to get back to us, as that would have probably taken another five minutes before we could escape.

We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Lesson has been learned: there are few places where the new locations are better than the original. If you want Ramen Underground, go to the one in the Financial District, where the service is quick and the food is a hundred times tastier. Which still doesn’t make any sense.