Pine Tree House: Korean Food, Pork Belly N' Oysters, Angler Fish Optional

Pine Tree House
9205-D Folsom Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95826
(916) 366-3323

Sacramento's Folsom Boulevard is our Korean food gulch, boasting a number of tofu-soup joints, Korean grocery-video store-lotto ticket emporiums, and the mysteriously titled "Chicken and Pizza Love-Letter" shack. Among all this is the Pine Tree House, a Korean restaurant considerably more upscale - and tasty - then the exterior might suggest. Turns out the owner of the Pine Tree is the brother of the man who owns Arigato on Howe. We discovered this because he recognized us from Arigato (land of the temptingly bargain-basement priced half off sushi roll) and thanked us personally for patronizing his place. He's a nice guy.

The menu is extensive and has some dishes beyond the usual bi-bim-bap and bulgogi selections, including an interesting seafood selection - angler fish was on the menu last time I stopped in. Prices are high for what most Californians have come to expect from Korean food in the wilds of suburbia, but portions here are somewhat monolithic and ingredients quality is high. Regardless: don't come in here expecting the bargain of the century.




The Pine Tree house offers a truly impressive assortment of banchan, brought out on a special cart and replinished if you ask nicely. All the usual suspects are on offer (read: copious amounts of kimchi), and other treats include a savory egg custard, a Korean style potato soup, and a romaine salad jazzed up with an absolutely delicious sweet red-bean and chili dressing. The only thing missing were those odiferous and delightful dried fish, the stinky little bastards I recall horking down in my youth as I marveled at their little sugar glazed eyeballs - why don't restaurants around here offer them up with the banchan plate? Is it because I am whiter then the Stay-Puft marshmallow man? Is that it? Sometimes I buy them from the Korean grocery store and merrily eat them in front of the TV. I brought them to a class once and well, never repeated that particular experiment again, since I had to spend the day with tiny little fish spines caught in my teeth and breath that could actually summon housecats from the air itself.


Pork belly BoSsaam with napa lettuce and oysters

Pork belly is all the rage right now, but the Koreans have been slinging the stuff for generations, and in high style to boot. This dish, needless to say, is Weird. Whoever first thought of combining pork belly, spicy slaw, oysters, and cabbage must have had a hell of a empty refrigarator (or larder, or whatever Koreans used back in the day in their hill-side shacks). The result is in my opinion curiously delicious, but your mileage may very well vary. Certainly the combo of fatty five-spice flavored pork-belly (boiled) wrapped up with spicy slaw and cabbage, punctuated with the occasional mildly shocking flavor of a nicely sized raw oyster is a different taste sensation from the usual. Goes well with beer, of course. Korean restauants may actually just be a means via which proprietors sell lots of O.B. More research is needed.


Korean soft tofu soup with seafood (Soondubuchigae)

Korean soft-tofu soup is one of the cuisine's standbys, and I always love to get it. The combination of soft and creamy tofu with seafood and spicy red chili broth is a near perfect one, and produces a rich and delightfully slippery textural experience. This is superior winter food, but I'll take it any time of the year. Pine Tree House also offers Korean beef soups, as well as gigantic seafood stews that can feed three or four eaters. The big soups include sea-squirts. I wish there was a sea squirt in the smaller version. There are few more amusing things to have at the dinner table then a sea squirt, let me tell you. The restaurant's version could stand to be a little spicier. Ask them to bring out some spice-enhancing agents if you're like me.


Stir-fried squid with hot bean paste (Ohjinguh bokkeum)

Stir fried squid is real Korean drankin' food, and this was defnitely the best rendition of the classic I've had in Sacramento. A good combination of not overcooked squid bits, green onions, and a spicy and slightly sweet sauce made this a truly addictive dish. Of course it's not good for you, but again, we are discussing Devices That Makes You Want to Drink Beer. This is not the point.

The Pine Tree's wood interior is scrupulously clean. Korean reality TV series and news shows play on the interior flat-screen TVs - the last time I came in I was transfixed over my kimchi by a period style soap opera featuring a bunch of Koreans in traditional dress shouting at each other in a stand of perfect, swaying, pine trees. Last time featured remarkably gender ambiguous youths shaking their groove-thang in the most sparkly fashion imaginable. You won't be bored!

The Pine Tree House is definitely my new favorite place in town for Korean food other then grill-it-yerself BBQ. The combination of high quality, interesting menu choices, non-snarly staff and a nice dining room make it a real winner on Folsom Boulevard. Now go out and order the angler fish and tell me all about it.

Red Lotus: Billy Ngo Makes Dim Sum Cool

Red Lotus Kitchen and Bar
2718 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816-4314
(916) 231-0961


Red Lotus is the latest Midtown venture of Kru chef Buu "Billy" Ngo, whose fascinating riffs on Japanese food have won him a not-inconsiderable following at his J Street sushi joint. Red Lotus represents Ngo's decison to apply his creative hand to dim-sum, an Asian food genre that hasn't quite managed to transcend the old carts-and-Cantonese-verbal-abuse dynamic. (Course', that's part of dim sums charm for some of us infidels, but, regardless). The menu features a bunch of old dim-sum standbys updated for the late-night hipster army, alongside some specifically Ngoesque dishes. The result is a fun and undeniably interesting evening out on the J street strip, albeit with the ambience of P.F Changs done through some sort of hipster filter. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we want to eat upscale dim sum in a nice clean place where no one will shout at us in machine-gun bursts of Cantonese while we desperately attempt to hold onto chicken-feet with plastic chopsticks, okay? Is that really so wrong?

(Good lord, the entire culture is obsessed with hipsters, my generation is obsessed with hipsters, we engage in hipster witch-hunts although it is entirely a given that we are all hipsters, that our status is both unchangeable and endlessly embarrassing. How sad.)


Green papaya salad with ika, carrot, mint, water cress, and fish sauce (6.50)

This is the kitchen's version of the dearly beloved som tum. It's a lovely palate-cleansing dish, but this ultra light version was barely there, both in terms of portion size and taste. I really do hate to use this phrase in polite company, but perhaps Red Lotus should contemplate kicking it up a notch. You know how we do.


Silken organic tofu with baby shrimp, avocado, snow crab, rice puffs, wasabi, sweet chili sauce, and a soy reduction (8.00)

Silken tofu doesn't exactly get most folks palms sweaty, but this was the standout dish of the evening. The creamy block of tofu melded perfectly with the salty baby shrimp, the sweet snow crab, and the creamy avocado. The various sauces on offer mean that every bite of this "salad" is different from the next, producing a real adventure in texture and taste. The soy reduction sauce should rightly be sold in bottles so fans can spread it on anything they desire, from fairy cakes to pliable Argentinean pool boys. Delicious.


Spiced beef marrow bone with Chinese red vinegar, Sichuan pickles, mustard, and crispy five spice flatbread (11.00)

Marrow bones have experienced a helluva revival thanks to the ongoing Offal Revolution, and Red Lotus is serving up the tastiest version I've found in Sactown. The fatty, chunky interior is seasoned with five spice and cooked until bubbly and delicious, served with various accompaniments and condiments. You're supposed to spread the marrow on the flatbread crackers and doctor it up with pickles, vinegar, and mustard, but I'm perfectly happy to denude these bad boys straight. You are doing it/Red Lotus wrong if you fail to order this dish. (I'll be in my bunk. With the marrow bones).


Salt and pepper soft shell crabs (11.00)

Salt and pepper soft shell crabs are beautifully presented in this dish, and they tasted pretty good too. Lightly fried and obviously fresh, I enjoyed the creamy and spicy sauce pool the little crustaceans were served in. They came out hot, which is the usual horrible and depressing downfall of soft-shell crab dishes.


Chinese broccoli in garlic oyster sauce (7.00)

Chinese broccoli sounds fairly pedestrian but is among the foods closest to my heart - the sort of thing I seem to cook on a tri-weekly basis to devour in front of my laptop in my college apartment. (Good lord, those days are over). Red Lotus serves it up with a soulful and extremely strong house-made garlic oyster sauce, and the result is pretty old-school Chinese delicious. Avoid if you're not the sort of person who does backflips for in-your-face servings of oyster sauce.


Mongolian glazed oxtail (7.00)

Oxtails are done beautifully in Chinese cooking, and these sweet-glazed oxtails were a lovely specimen of a classic dish. Very rich and very meaty, these guys justify the foodie world's recent and single-minded allegiance to less-charismatic animal parts. Tasty.


"Yee Sang" thinly sliced albacore with popcorn shoots, Chinkiang vinaigrette, and crispy garlic (12.00)

I think the Sacramento City Council actually shuts down your restaurant and breaks your knee caps if you fail to include at least one raw tuna dish on the menu. It's true.

Regardless. This was a perfectly fine Raw Tuna dish, and the addition of popcorn shoots (whatever those are) lent it an interestingly grassy flavor-kick. There's more interesting stuff lurking on this menu, though.


Pork and shiitake dumplings "Siu Mai" with soy cured salmon roe (6.50)

We decided to have some siu mai for dessert, served in the traditional and adorable little bamboo steamer. The kitchen brings out vinegar and Chinese mustard in twee serving devices for these little guys, which tasted no different from other dim-sum parlor siu mai I've had. This is by no means a bad thing.


Billy Ngo has done a fine job of domesticating dim-sum, turning China's beloved Sunday morning-scrum cuisine into refined bites suitable for both J Street-crawling foodies and those hipster palates only slightly dimmed by endless, endless packs of Pall Malls. (If you've been to China, well, you've seen how they smoke). The menu is interesting, and due to the restaurant's extreme youth, will doubtless be changing in interesting ways over the next year or so. If Ngo's creativity and competency at Kru is any indication of Red Lotus's upcoming trajectory, the future is bright indeed.

Aziza: Super Refined Moroccan Food, Still Superb

Aziza
5800 Geary Boulevard
San Francisco, CA 94121-2005
(415) 752-2222


Aziza is nothing if not distinctive. This restaurant is unlike any other ultra high end restaurant in the Bay Area, departing from the cookie-cutter Seasonal Sustainable Fusion Menus that infest the area and focusing on something different: Moroccan food, interpreted with an artist's eye. That artist is chef Mourad Lahlou, who opened Aziza roughly ten years ago and has seen its impressive rise in ensuing years: he faced off against Cat Cora on Iron Chef in 2009, and will star in a public television television show featuring Moroccan food in 2010 (Is PBS hip among the foodie cognoscenti? Is it tolerable? What's the deal here?)

The menu has undergone a lot of tweaking in the past few years, and has been simplified since my last couple of visits in 2008, which is by no means a bad thing. Menus change very often to reflect seasonal ingredients, and the kitchen works closely with local farmers and producers - one fun aspect of eating at Aziza is exposure to some fairly esoteric local produce. Yes, I had to look up "minutina." This may be related to San Francisco restaurant's minor obsession with out-locavoring the competition, but I feel a bit under-qualified to comment on that.



I love the unctuous, interesting flavor of fresh sardines, and Aziza does a really lovely job with them, serving them simply grilled on top of a fresh brioche crouton, with shaved artichoke, a delicate oyster infused sauce, and minutina greens (10.00). A gorgeous presentation as well, which I didn't exactly notice until reviewing the photos.



This is basteeya, the delicious and surprisingly hard to find Moroccan chicken and almond pie (18.00). It's an ultra rich and very unusual dish, combining meaty chicken with a slightly sweet almond filling in a flaky puff pastry crust - which is then dusted with powdered sugar. The combination of sweet and savory is really pretty superb. It is traditionally made in the homeland with pigeon. Surmising the kitchen didn't have any on hand. San Francisco eaters are probably the USA population most likely to be down with eating pigeons, come to think of it. (They love it in China).



I am what may be defined as a "scallop whore" and find myself almost unable to resist them when on the menu, especially in coastal regions that actually know something about seafood. Thus I picked out the scallops with prawns, savoy cabbage, turnips, and a passion fruit sauce (28.00). This was a delicate and very well executed dish, but I regretted ordering it: it wasn't particularly different from any other scallop dish served in the Bay Area. Big meaty dishes are where Aziza really shines and innovates, in my estimation.



My mom picked out the chicken after an enthusiastic recommendation from our server. Chicken is one of those things generally best avoided at high-end restaurants, but Aziza really redefined the whole dry chicken paradigm here. The chicken is cooked at high heat to give it a crispy, ultra rich crust, then is served with a thick pork cheek, wheat berries, carrots, and snap peas. The combination produces some sort of unholy and delightful alliance between chicken and pig, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins - in a good way.



My dad chose the lamb merguez sausage with charmoulla, black garlic, and swiss chard. Merguez has an excellent spicy, dense flavor and these were some lovely specimens - the vegetables were pretty much gilding a meaty, lamb fat infused lily (25.00). (Christ, now there's a metaphor. It's early).



Desserts at Aziza (last I checked) are done by Melissa Chou, and they are pretty excellent. One of Aziza's strengths is its always innovative and unusual dessert selections - I went with the citrus option this time, featuring meyer lemon cream, a blood orange flavored meringue, some preserved kumquat, and a warm huckleberry cake (9.50). Quite nice and very refreshing, and in accordance with spring ingredients and flavors.

Another perfectly executed meal at Aziza. Still, I had a curious sensation of not being full when I left - whether this may be attributed to our ordering decisions or some sort of odd lightness about Aziza's meaty Moroccan cuisine, I can't say. There could be more substance to some of the dishes, certainly - I recall my earlier visits (back in 2008) evidenced a more robust, if less refined cooking style from chef Mourad. Figuring this out naturallly warrants a future visit, probably one where I order half the menu. Weep for me.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa Round Two: Everything Soup! Central Vietnamese food!

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa Round Two
6450 Stockton Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 428-3748



Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is a lovely Vietnamese place on Stockton Boulevard, Sacramento's resident Cavalcade of Asian Restaurants. Living in New Orleans has made me appreciate Sacramento's culinary diversity a lot more then I did before: we have great local cuisine in NOLA, but we definitely don't have the incredible variety of international foods here that we do in California. Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is a good example of this diversity - it specializes in the food of a specific region of south-central Vietnam, Ninh Hoa. The food in this part of Vietnam is spicier then that of the North (which is where pho comes from) and relies more upon side-dishes. Translation: Don't expect pho at Quan Nem Ninh Hoa. Americans do tend to fall into the trap of assuming that the "standard menu" at a given ethnic restaurant, be it Indian, Chinese, or Vietnamese, is a good representative oft he cuisine of an entire country. Far from it: pretty much everywhere possesses super-distinct and interesting regional cuisines that just don't make it to American menus, primarily because a lot of these "weirder" dishes don't sell. (I am perenially amazed that some of India's more approachable regional cuisines haven't taken off in the USA, but that's another story).

The restaurant is famous for their house special pork spring rolls, which I've reviewed before. This time, I decided to try one of the regional seafood soups and a Vietnamese style salad.




This is the Hu Tieu Nam Vang, a soup composed of small bits of pork, ground pork, quail egg, rice noodles, pork liver, poached shrimp, squid, and God knows what else. The surprisingly delicate seafood broth is given an interesting tang with the addition of all those extra ingredients: it's fun to eat. I was, to be honest, expecting something a bit more "difficult" tasting, but tossing in a whole bunch of chili paste made me a happy camper. Pork blood, however? Acquired taste. God speed.



This salad is a standard Vietnamese preparation: shredded vegetables, chicken, shrimp, and a lot of fresh herbs. But what a gorgeous preparation! Quan Nem Ninh Hoa really excels both in attractive food presentation and in maintaining a super-clean and peaceful dining area: that's evident here. A very tasty representation of a favorite. Also dig that gigantic rice cracker.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa remains one my favorite places in the region for clear-tasting, attractive Vietnamese food. Give it a try soon: you won't regret it. Look beyond the pho, my children, look beyond the pho.

Dosa on Fillmore: Southern Indian Food? Yes!

Dosa on Fillmore
1700 Fillmore Street,
San Francisco
(415) 441-3672

Dosa, a trendy Southern Indian restaurant already popular in San Francisco's Mission District, recently opened a second location on Fillmore. We decided to visit the new location for lunch recently, finding ourselves struck with a sudden urge for out-of-the-ordinary Indian food in an airy and attractive setting.

So what's the big deal about Southern Indian food? Well, it's drastically underappreciated in the USA. I spent some time in Bangalore and other locales in Southern India, and the food in these balmy stretches of the Subcontinent is very different from the heavy, meaty dishes of the North. What most Americans consider to be "Indian" food is actually northern Indian food - this is because most Indian immigrants to the United States hail from the Punjab region of India or more Northerly climes. Southern Indian food differs from its northern counterparts in a few drastic ways. It's much more vegetarian oriented then the food of the north, and is more reliant upon fish and seafood then it is upon lamb and chicken. It is a cuisine that depends heavily on rice, coconut, and chili, lending it a flavor that is more reminescent of foods associated with Southeast Asia then with India proper. This seafood-heavy and coconut milk loving style of cooking is especially predominant in Kerala, India's lovely southernmost region.

So why is Dosa called, well, Dosa? Easy. Southern India's most popular dish is the dosa, a large rolled pancake made of rice and black lentils. One can order a dosa just about everywhere in Southern India, usually filled with a mixture of spiced potatoes and vegetables. Dosas are usually served with sambar, a broth made of tamarind and toor dal, and a variety of chutneys, usually derived from cilantro or coconut. Dosas are by far Southern India's most popular 5:00 in the morning drinking binge snack, in case you found yourself in a pinch. Dosas come in a startling array of cooking techniques, flavors, and fillings, and it's that versatility that Dosa's menu capitalizes on.



We started with the chickpea channa (garbanzo bean salad) with onions and cherry tomatoes in a spiced lemon dressing - an interesting Indian riff on a typical salad. I never encountered anything much like this in India- a country with really terrifyingly bad water doesn't tend to eat a lot of salad - but this was a refreshing and delicately crunchy dish.

We sampled the rasam or "fire broth" as well, which is simply Dosa's version of a very common Southern Indian soup of tomatoes, tamarind, and lentils. It's a nice and authentic tasting variant on a staple food in the region, and I liked it very much.



Next up were Dahi Puris ($6.00), which are a very common street snack or chaat in the district of Maharashtra. These beauties were made with puris, a kind of puffy, crispy Indian fried bread. They're then filled with tart yogurt and a couple of varieties of chutney. Dahi puri is an excellent combination of creamy, crunchy, spicy and sweet all at once in the grand tradition of Indian snacks, and it's nice to be able to get these things in a more salubrious environment then a Mumbai street-stand. Though nothing really comes close to an evening on Chowpatty Beach with the sun going down, women in saris striding down the beach, and the dulcet tones of stray dogs fighting behind you as you enjoy your afternoon snack. Good old India.



This is a "spring" masala dosa made with the standard spiced potato filling and a variety of fresh vegetables. I was disappointed to find that this was more of a burrito-type dosa and not the gigantic plate spanning beast I generally think of when I contemplate dosa - the restaurant needs to make this plain on the menu. However, the bready, gently spicy flavor of the dosa came through nicely, and the crisp vegetables provided a nice counterpoint to the usual potatoes. I was very taken with the restaurant's version of sambar. It immediately filled me with food nostalgia for the stuff I used to eat almost daily in Southern India, and I considered (and should have) ordering another bowl. It came with some nice, fresh coconut chutney and a slightly sweet and tasty tomato chutney. You can order additional chutney varieties if you're a chutney freak like yours truly, and I enjoyed the eggplant and tamarind variants very much.

Dosa usually does offer one meat-based dish a day (as well as some chicken rolled sandwiches) during lunch, and today's special was baingan bhartha, a dish made with chicken and lots of spiced eggplant, served with yellow rice. This was nicely done and reminiscent of the stuff I used to eat at Punjabi dhabas, although it could have been more spicy. I imagine the kitchen can easily up the chili quotient if you ask first. Southern Indian food isn't really known for knocking you on your ass with spices anyway. I didn't encounter much in the way of truly spicy food in India - rather heavily spiced dishes - and I suspect the macho Anglo-Indians of old began the beloved British tradition of curries so hot that they can kill at five feet. But that is theory. I also am not big on lime pickles, which are typically used to add assertive heat to curries and other things.

After a couple of nice enough passion-fruit bellinis and an Indian spiced bloody mary (not my cup of tea, but my dad liked it well enough), we paid up and were on our way, smelling vaguely of Indian spices for the rest of the day. In my book, that's a good thing. Now if only some enterprising specimen would open a mobile chaat truck or two in downtown San Francisco. Takers?

Ambience Restaurant: Carmichal Fancy Schmancy?

Ambience
6440 Fair Oaks Boulevard
Carmichael, CA 95608-4019
(916) 489-8464

Prix Fixe Only: $45.00

Fine dining and the Sacramento suburbs don't seem immediately synonymous. But into the Jim Boys, thrift-store, and loitering punk-rock kid void steps executive chef and owner Morgan Song, whose original success in Redding led him to open a high end restaurant right here in Sacto. The restaurant took over what was once a cops-and-robbers themed doughnut place (really) and began as Maritime Seafood. The restaurant was not as successful as Song had hoped, and Maritime was recently re-hauled as the prix-fixe only Ambience. The five course, 45$ menu indisputably looks like a heck of a deal for high end dining: but how's the food measure up?



The dinner began with a complimentary amuse bouche. The menu listed it as a "Salmon Scallop Mousse Brioche with Tomato Casino de Paris and Smoked Mozzarella," but all I tasted was buttery pastry and a vague sort of hint of something seafoody. This wasn't much above a zap n' serve Pepperidge Farm hors d' oeuvre for me.



Second courses. I, being a member of a decadent and debauched society, chose the lobster for a $3 supplement. (And Jesus Christ, how often in life does three dollars bring you lobster?) The dish was somewhat bizarrely served in two separate segments: a lobster creme brulee came first.




This was followed by a dish of seared lobster on cucumber with Wasabi coulis, green caviar, and fondue sauce (whatever that means). The lobster creme brulee was tasty enough, if innocuous, but the seared lobster was delightfully fresh and flavorful, avoiding the perennial trap of overdoing the wasabi.



My dad chose the eggplant stuffed with albacore and served with whole grain Dijon mustard. This was a inventive and rather tasty dish, giving a heavy, meaty weightiness to the old standby of albacore tuna.



My mom selected the Ahi tuna sampler with tomato-ginger coulis, cilantro oil, pine nuts, and spicy green tobiko fish eggs. The combination of flavors was really quite spot-on, and the super fresh fish worked in elegant concert with the other ingredients. It also looked lovely - Ambience is definitely the Sacramento region's hands-down champ when it comes to drop-dead gorgeous plating techniques.



The fourth course was Dungeness crabmeat and vegetable ragouut on a polenta crouton. This was rather underwhelming: seemed to me more like a pretty good fried crabcake with some mildly interesting accompainments. Not that there is anything WRONG with a crabcake, but...



I picked the special, which was rabbit cooked three ways - braised leg, seared tenderloin, mousse, accompanied by white corn, pearl onion confit, and whole grain mustard cream. This was a very interesting dish from an intellectual standpoint, engaging three different preparations, but it also tasted excellent. The tender meat had a delightfully earthy flavor, and the mustard sauce had enough kick to keep things interesting. The reduction sauce on the seared tenderloin seemed to be an ultra intense combination of meat stock and balsamic: a real winner.



My mom went with the braised white veal shank on a bed of parsnip potato puree, accompanied by creamy tomato vegetable ragout and fried golden beets. The dish is somewhat offputtingly pale but had an excellent long-cooked flavor, and the accompaniments worked very nicely. This was very much akin to similar dishes I've had in Italy.

My dad chose the seared elk flank steak with sauteed chard and arugula, black wild rice, and a herb balsamic glaze. The photo came out so awful that I would be run out of town on a rail if I posted it, but he assured me that the steak was delicious. Ambience seems to be doing very nice things with game meats.




My dad picked the apricot creme brulee with apricot brandy and fresh berries. Another two part dish - I am still assessing how, exactly, I feel about that. Regardless, the creme brulee had a pleasingly spring-like apricot flavor, and the plated presentation was, of course, gorgeous.



I picked the raspberry and mango mousse cake with ladyfingers, as I am occasionally partial to a good tiramisu when the mood is exactly right. This was a pleasantly light and ethereal dessert, with plenty of concentrated fruit flavor and a nice bit of chewiness provided by the ladyfingers.



My mom picked the chocolate sabyon cream parfait with candied almond and coffee chocolate truffles. This was an interesting chocolate dessert with a good concentration of intense cocoa flavor, but holy god, check out those....tendrils...emitting from the center. They were edible and made of sugar. Awesome.


The interior of the restaurant is serene, quiet, and intensely private - almost to a creepy extent on a slow night. Make sure you actually like your dinner date or things could swiftly get awkward.

On the whole, Ambience is a great addition to the Sacramento dining scene - and at 45$ a prixe fixe meal, an incredible deal to boot. I wasn't as enraptured with the food as some other critics have been, but the kitchen is masterful when it comes to its specialties. Keep an eye on the wild game and Japanese-accented seafood preparations. It's a pleasure to have a restaurant turning out ambitious and interesting cuisine in Carmichael's strip-mall hell, and I wish them all the success in the world.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa: Make Your Own Springrolls! In a Boat!

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa
6450 Stockton Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 428-3748



Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is one of Stockton Boulevard's small army of Vietnamese restaurants. This neat, simple little place specializes in regional menu items ranging beyond the standard chicken pho-and-noodle-bowl selections of most area restaurants and to excellent effect. The restaurant specializes in food from Ninh Hoa, a district in Southern Vietnam's Khanh Hoa province, and it's a delight to see regional Vietnamese cooking transmuted to Sacramento's neighborhoods. And tasty, did I mention that?

We ordered what everyone orders here: the Dac Biet Nem Nuong or the make-your-own-spring-rolls with ground pork skewers. This dish is usually massive and usually delicious, and Quan Nem Ninh Hoa's presentation definitely didn't disappoint. A variety of tasty things are brought out in a large boat-shaped bowl, and one order was more then enough to happily satiate my mother and I.



You take the hard spring-roll wrappers, dip them in warm water, then spread them out on a plate to fill with the ingredients - this requires entirely more expertise then I possess, and I glanced with envy at the Vietnamese folks the next table over who appeared to have been executing the maneuver since birth. There's a variety of different ways to combine the sweet, slightly smoke pork skewers, crispy shrimp rolls (great for texture), vegetables and sweet, slightly gelatinous peanut-chili sauce. Interactive food never really gets old. The very lazy can of course order pre-assembled spring rolls, but really, now?

For dessert, there's a foil-wrapped nugget of pickled pork with a nice, astringent little hit of jalapeno: very nice, in my estimation.

Besides the spring roll special, the restaurant also offers banh beo - tiny rice cakes with shredded shrimp and onion ont op - and a distinctive seafood noodle soup with pork, poached shrimp, sauteed ground pork, a quail egg, rice noodles, calamari strips, and a small crab claw. There are also bun (noodle) bowls with various toppings if you're not feeling inclined to branch out.

There ain't no pho here. Be warned. Man up.

Plan B Restaurant: French Noshes, Mussels and Stuff

Plan B Restaurant
555 La Sierra Dr (Intersection of Watt and Fair Oaks)
Sacramento, CA 95864
(916) 483-3000

Plan B Restaurant is located in a rather unassuming Carmichael area shopping center, contending for the upper-middle-class dining out crowd that can't quite summon up the energy to drive all the way to Midtown. The restaurant was originally located in the Pocket region of town and was quite successful there, and, judging from the convivial crowd gathered here the other night, success has followed them. The owner originally hails from Provence and has attempted to transplant some of the food and ambience of his homeland to Carmichael, God bless his soul.

Plan B specializes in casual Frenchish bistro food, with a menu that focuses on small plates, salads,"tartelettes" (glorified pizzas), and a considerable assortment of mussel preparations. There are usually some larger, shareable plates on offer, as well as various and sundry side dishes. There's even a Frenchified burger with wild mushrooms jambon de paris, emmental, butter lettuce, and béarnise, which sounds nothing if not compelling. (Or overwrought, can't quite decide).



The mussels provencale in a spiced tomato sauce were quite good, with a piquant, briny flavor and a nice undertone of basil. The sauce was definitely considerably thicker then I'm used to in mussel preparations, but was still appealing. As every review of Plan B since the beginning of time itself has noted, the bread served on the side sucked. Let's get that over with now. (But yes, really, guys, you might want to rectify that. Gotta have good bread to go with mussels). The accompanying frites were pretty good and crispy, though not earth shakingly awesome or anything of that nature.



The short ribs, somewhat to our surprise, turned out to be served in a shepherd pie like format. This was a bit disappointing as the primary allure of a short rib is (to my mind) the enormous Fred Flintstone like bone the meat is presented to you on, with marrow intact if you are really quite lucky. This was a perfectly fine Shepherds pie with some fairly rich meat and a nice flavor, but it wasn't particularly remarkable - and could have been a smidgen warmer. Still, it functions nicely as pure comfort-food. The roasted vegetables on the side were quite tasty, though admittedly I am a perennial sucker for butternut squash.



The sea bass was also in the pleasant-but-unremarkable category, with a rich butter sauce and an accompaniment of mashed potatoes and fairly pedestrian vegetables. I'd shoot for more pizazz with an entree in that price point, personally - a bit too much of a hotel food thing going on here.

We also sampled a pleasant mache salad with brie, apple, and a light mustard vinaigrette, as well as the buttery (but small) tartlette.

The space is urbane and hip, which is quite a feat for a strip-mall located eatery - think minimalistic yet comfortable and you're not far off. Service was attentive, but rather slow - which is not necessarily a bad thing when one is relaxed and enjoying a good bottle of wine. Keep that in mind when considering Plan B as a pre-movie option.

On the whole, Plan B serves up good but not great French food in a convivial and friendly atmosphere. It's a very serviceable neighborhood hangout, and I do think I'll return for some booze, snacky items, and mussels.

Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant: Pea Shoots and Crab! Oh boy!

Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant
9555 Folsom Boulevard
Sacramento, CA 95827-1207
(916) 369-8915

Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant is an outpost of authentic Chinese food away from the usual Sacto strongholds of Broadway and Stockton boulevard. I'm glad its there: the menu is extremely interesting, the family who runs the place is friendly, and the space is unusually salubrious for a Cantonese joint. Prices are higher then bog standard for Cantonese food, but I think on the whole, its worth it.



On our recent visit, we decided to sample the steamed scallion chicken, a delightfully subtle Cantonese speciality. I've made it before, and it's not a tremendously difficult thing to prepare: the trick is boiling it with the right combination of spices, just long enough. I like the subtle anise-scallion-ginger-soy flavor infused into the chicken meat, and the yellow, unctuous fattiness of the skin - it's all gravy to me. In classic Chinese style, the chicken is whacked apart into about fifteen thousand pieces prior to serving. Don't bite down too fast.




This is the spicy eggplant seafood casserole ($12.49), your standard Cantonese style hot-pot in a claypot. This one was composed of prawns, scallops, squids, eggplant, ginger, and scallion in the restaurant's speciality sauce, and was about standard-issue for this dish. For me, I like this kind of dish but it gets a little greasy for my personal taste: in any case, Hoicin's version is high quality and full of a lot of different stuff.



Steamed pea-greens with crab meat egg white sauce ($14.49), one of my favorite vegetable dishes. Something about the combination of leafy greens and sweet crab meat with a bit of egg is delightfully comforting, possessing the particularly Cantonese combination of squashy and crunchy and oily in one dish. They give you a rather gigantic amount of vegetables and crab for your money, which is always nice (and reminiscent of mainland China, where ginormous portions are pretty much de-rigeur). It's a seasonal dish, so nab it quickly.

Keep Hoicin in mind if you find yourself seized for a desire for Chinese food away from the oases of Midtown and Stockton. I believe they do take-out as well, which means you've got no excuse for failing to upgrade from the usual chow mein and sweet n' sour emporiums that dominate the area.

Pho Hien Vuong: Lotus Root Salad, Mysterious Snail Soup

Pho Hien Vuong
6835 Stockton
Ste 400
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 391-8538

Pho Hien Vuong is one of Stockton's multifarious pho joints, located right across the street from the (dearly beloved) SF supermarket. I am not entirely sure if I can identify anything in particular that differentiates the space within, other then that it is clean and Nickeloden cartoons are usually playing for the benefit of little-kid diners. The food, however, is quite tasty, and the menu provides some interesting selections that don't always make the cut at other Vietnamese eateries.



A lotus root salad with shrimp and pork. Delicious, light and fresh, and presented extremely attractively. This is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes - something about the interplay of sweet tangy fish sauce dressing, crunchy lotus root, shrimps and pork is just the perfect thing, even more so on a good hot day. Which it wasn't when I ate this, but, ah, no matter.



My dad went with the perennial classic of beef stew, complete with the tendony bits that give him so much pleasure. A nice rich beef broth, with a good amount of flavor, and plenty of miscellaneous "stuff."



I always seem to order the same thing here: the special noodle soup, with snails, crab, ground pork, and some other miscellaneous stuff (including congealed blood cubes, which i am distinctly ambivalent too). The soup has a gamy, seafoody, delightful flavor that is rather hard to find in another dish, and is elevated any ore with the addition of shrimp paste/sambaal/large amounts of hoisin. I am a big advocate of Soup With Stuff In It and this really fits the bill.


Pho Hien Vuong is a nice option for a good Vietnamese meal if you're out hunting for weird Asian food products on Stockton, or just need some snail-and-crab soup in your life. Check it out.

Tuli Bistro: How Cool are You Feeling?

Tuli Bistro
2031 S Street
Sacramento, CA 95811-6819
(916) 451-8854



Tuli Bistro is a relatively new entry into Sacramento's dining scene, a place that has gained a not inconsiderable following among Sacramento's food geeks. Chef Adam Pechal's largely small-plates menu attempts to rely on sustainable, local ingredients, and the laid-back, neighborhood ambiance makes a pretty solid attempt at attaining midtown coolness. Signage is minimal: you better know it's there, or you'll miss it. This is probably instrumental in insuring the place remains cool. I couldn't say.



We began with the beet salad,featuring roasted toybox beets, arugula, endive, orange, blue cheese, and a tangerine vinaigrette. I'm a big advocate of the beet salad and this was a nice effort, with an interesting variety of baby beets and a fresh, light flavor from the citrus vinaigrette, the cheese lending matters an appealing funkiness. Nothing innovative here, but very enjoyable.



Our second selection was the wood roasted Smokey Goat pizza, which is (rather entertainingly) rolled out and produced before your eyes if you happen to be dining at the bar. This ain't always a foolproof practice: the guy manning the wood oven managed to char our first one, but hey, we were feeling pretty relaxed. Once the thin crust pizza did appear, it was a nice effort: crispy, nice blackened crust, plenty of zing from the jalapeno, bacon, and goat cheese.



We decided to go with the poultry for our larger plates. First up was the twee titled "Lil' Bucket of Chicken," which is actually exactly what it says it is: a dimunitive bucket of scaled-down fried chicken, produced from a poussin. (Folks, it's a baby chicken. Check your sentimentality at the door). The chicken was pretty darn tasty, however, with a light, flaky, and not too greasy crust. The coleslaw was all right, but the accompanying mashed potatoes were either ironically produced to taste exactly like KFC instant potatoes or actually were KFC instant mashed potatoes, and either way, I'm not thrilled.



Second was wood fired quail with andouille stuffing, Southern greens, and a pomegranate sauce - a pretty tasty dish, with tender teeny little bird meat and a rich interior stuffing. The stuffing did get a spot dry, but that is simply what happens when one cooks things inside of a bird. The greens were good, although I am not entirely sure what was Southern about them.



Finally, we selected the bread pudding with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. A pretty good effort, if not on par with the good ol' stuff in New Orleans (needs some buttery ass whisky sauce, or some nuts, or something) but the portion was ginormous and the vanilla ice cream tasty. Simple, satisfying.

Tuli Bistro is a swell addition to downtown Sacramento, and is a good, hip place to hang out, eat high-end food, and enjoy a casual, downbeat sort of setting. Sitting at the bar is a good way to go if you enjoy hearing chef banter and seeing the food put together - it's a fun look into the restaurant biz. I'll be happy to return again.