Tea at the Interval / Trying Yakitori
As you might recall from my last entry, we had just spent a few hours wandering around various exhibits in the California Academy of Sciences. Next up was the Interval, a teahouse where dracosphynx has a bag of 25-year-old vintage Pu-erh tea held for him by the proprietors.
They had an orrery out front that has been designed with mechanical gears to compute the relative placement of the planets. Interesting, but I admit one drawback is that it moves very, very slowly so you'd have to be watching quite a while to note any movement from the gears.
So how was the tea?... I had to ask dracosphynx, who described it as 'mild' and 'earthy'. These are true. It was pretty decent, in my opinion, but I think I prefer regular green tea, or perhaps chai if I can ever find a reliably delicious version.
Now this was an interesting drink. It looks like your usual fruit drink, maybe some sort of lemonade, right? Well, it was actually made with a strawberry vinegar. Apparently drinking vinegar used to be quite a thing in olden times, and they updated the drink for modern sensibilities.
I noted that it was a very dracosphynx sort of drink. He pointed out that I didn't have to drink it if I didn't want to, whereupon I indicated that I was in fact drinking it, wasn't I?
It was served with some sort of grain crackers and a spread which was mostly cheese (fromage) and creme fraiche, with the detectable flavors of smoked trout. Both were pretty good, but killed our appetites enough that we weren't quite ready to go for lunch. So we targeted an early dinner instead: Sumiya, which served yakitori, a form of Japanese cuisine I hadn't yet sampled.
We began with a reasonably tasty salad topped with crunchy, delicious chow mein-style noodles, and then it was on to the main dish: yakitori!
From left to right: chicken breasts with yuzu ('spicy citrus') that made my face get all funny, according to dracosphynx, chicken thighs with salt (my favorite of the bunch), wings (least favorite) and meatballs flavored with sauce. The soup was a mild chicken broth.
It was followed by a yakitori donburi, which is a rice bowl with a layer of shredded lettuce, some fine crispy super-thinly-sliced garnish, a poached egg, and two portions of yakitori (the chicken breasts, I believe). This was pretty decent, but the cold lettuce made me think for a bit that the egg had been drastically undercooked and worry about bacteriae.
We headed over to Tous Les Jours (warning: music plays, stop the video at upper right), a Korean bakery that dracosphynx has been frequenting of late. I decided to get a loaf of this 'whipped cream bread' that he had been raving about, as well as the double-chocolate mousse cake for dessert.
The cake was pretty good! As for the bread... Well, according to the nutritional facts, two slices of this is 446 calories. Yipes. Dry and toasted, it's okay. Buttered, it is also okay. Perhaps I'm not doing it quite right? I should try it with honey and butter. I've put the rest into the freezer in any case.
In all, a pretty busy day of culture and food. ^_^
They had an orrery out front that has been designed with mechanical gears to compute the relative placement of the planets. Interesting, but I admit one drawback is that it moves very, very slowly so you'd have to be watching quite a while to note any movement from the gears.
So how was the tea?... I had to ask dracosphynx, who described it as 'mild' and 'earthy'. These are true. It was pretty decent, in my opinion, but I think I prefer regular green tea, or perhaps chai if I can ever find a reliably delicious version.
Now this was an interesting drink. It looks like your usual fruit drink, maybe some sort of lemonade, right? Well, it was actually made with a strawberry vinegar. Apparently drinking vinegar used to be quite a thing in olden times, and they updated the drink for modern sensibilities.
I noted that it was a very dracosphynx sort of drink. He pointed out that I didn't have to drink it if I didn't want to, whereupon I indicated that I was in fact drinking it, wasn't I?
It was served with some sort of grain crackers and a spread which was mostly cheese (fromage) and creme fraiche, with the detectable flavors of smoked trout. Both were pretty good, but killed our appetites enough that we weren't quite ready to go for lunch. So we targeted an early dinner instead: Sumiya, which served yakitori, a form of Japanese cuisine I hadn't yet sampled.
We began with a reasonably tasty salad topped with crunchy, delicious chow mein-style noodles, and then it was on to the main dish: yakitori!
From left to right: chicken breasts with yuzu ('spicy citrus') that made my face get all funny, according to dracosphynx, chicken thighs with salt (my favorite of the bunch), wings (least favorite) and meatballs flavored with sauce. The soup was a mild chicken broth.
It was followed by a yakitori donburi, which is a rice bowl with a layer of shredded lettuce, some fine crispy super-thinly-sliced garnish, a poached egg, and two portions of yakitori (the chicken breasts, I believe). This was pretty decent, but the cold lettuce made me think for a bit that the egg had been drastically undercooked and worry about bacteriae.
We headed over to Tous Les Jours (warning: music plays, stop the video at upper right), a Korean bakery that dracosphynx has been frequenting of late. I decided to get a loaf of this 'whipped cream bread' that he had been raving about, as well as the double-chocolate mousse cake for dessert.
The cake was pretty good! As for the bread... Well, according to the nutritional facts, two slices of this is 446 calories. Yipes. Dry and toasted, it's okay. Buttered, it is also okay. Perhaps I'm not doing it quite right? I should try it with honey and butter. I've put the rest into the freezer in any case.
In all, a pretty busy day of culture and food. ^_^