Hanging On To Summer

There is a point every summer, usually shortly after the first week of August, when the light shifts just so, when the days are just a tad bit shorter and you look at the color of the sky and think 'Wow, it's only 8 o'clock?'

Thursday night, Elizabeth and I were at the South Pasadena farmers market. There are very few things in life I enjoy more than that market. It's nowhere near as good a place to buy produce as the Victory Park market on Saturday mornings; at least half the stands are places to buy prepared food. But there is a certain charm in that as well. In the summertime it seems less like a farmers market and more like a celebration of summer. We change what we buy every week with the exception of two things: we always get some flowers and Elizabeth always gets some cotton candy. It was about 7:30 by the time we got to the stand to buy the latter.

We received the cotton candy. The sun was gone but not gone. A tobacco colored halo still in the sky. A remembrance of a day now gone. We stopped by and looked at the cookies, three dollars for one and five dollars for two. We bought one. We cut through the line at a Middle Eastern stand. A famous actor was cutting through the line from another direction. I resisted the urge to quote a line from a long-ago movie of his that he probably would not have appreciated. We walked by Nicole's. A friend was on the patio with a Belgian beer and he waved. I waved back. His girlfriend was sitting next to him but did not see me. We share a birthday three weeks earlier and they had taken a trip to Catalina. I thought about walking over to inquire about it but did not. We exited the market.

[You may think I completely ripped off Hemingway for that paragraph. That's because I did. It was fun.]

As we were walking back to the car the sun was completely gone and there was a bit of a chill in the air. I felt it and then Elizabeth mentioned it. The next day while talking to my friend Tracie she said "Did you feel that the air was different last night?" I said that I had. Yesterday, Tracie came over to our place to lend us her vacuum cleaner. I was sitting on the couch watching the Angels get crushed. She barely looked at the TV but thought I was watching football.

"Oh man," Tracie said, "football has started already."

"No," I said,"this is baseball. No football yet."

Later in the evening I was flipping through the channels and came across the Hall of Fame Game, the first preseason football game of the year. I did not realize it was time for that yet. I sent Tracie a text letting her know that yes, it was football time.

"Oh man, "she replied, "summer's over."

Those words made me a bit sad. Summer is of course not over, and there will probably be a couple more heat waves. But June was such a gloomy month, so many overcast days, that it feels like we lost an entire month of summer. I was resolved not to concede the summer's end just yet and invited her over for a drink. The three of us opened a bottle of the Oreana ? wine from Trader Joe's. (Actually, everything we had this evening was from TJ's.)

I cut up some bread and spread some cheese on it - English cheddar with caramelized onions. TJ's has quite a few cheeses I love, and this is probably my favorite. We contemplated what to make for dinner. We had several options but decided to keep it simple: I fried some pancetta and tossed it with spinach while Elizabeth boiled pasta. We mixed it all together and I cut up a few balls of fresh mozzarella and put it on top on mine.

It was oustanding. I have never been a big fan of pasta but this might have been the best I have ever had. I added a touch of my Sicilian chili oil to give it a little more spice. By the end of the bowl the pancetta - and more deliciously, its fat - had gathered at the bottom with the wilted spinach, and I ate all of it. It was a beautiful way to hang on to summer for at least another evening.

South Pasadena Pizza, Volume 9: Round Table Pizza

I have always liked Round Table, and, when I was young, I thought it was great. This was before I'd eaten New York Pizza, of course, and probably before I'd figured out that Domino's and Pizza Hut aren't good. (I used to eat those with a disturbing amount of frequency.) Round Table always felt like a step up from Domino's, although it was rare I ever eat anywhere besides King Arthur's when I was a kid.

In junior high and high school, there was a Round Table a block away from my school, and I often would go there during the couple hours between school and basketball practice. Sometimes my friends and I shared a pizza but usually we would just play pinball and drink soda, and occasionally get in fights with kids from other schools who hung out at Round Table to roll dice and smoke cigarettes.

My best friend from high school worked at a Round Table in San Jose when he was in college and I would go up and visit him a couple times a year. After he finished work he would make us the largest pizza he could without getting in trouble with his boss. Sometimes these pizzas had enough pepperoni to cover the entire table. That and a pitcher of beer would cost him about 5 bucks, always a good deal.

I have not eaten at Round Table in several years, though. With places like Mamma's and Nonna in South Pasadena, I never have any need to eat Round Table, not to mention the fact that I love making my own pizzas in the oven with Fresh & Easy dough. But I was at Vons next door and I was hungry, so I thought I should give Round Table's $6.99 buffet a try.

I paid the cashier and took a plate. There was only one pizza out, pepperoni, so I grabbed three slices of that and made myself a salad. Neither of these were particularly good. I wasn't expecting much out of a buffet salad bar, but the pizza tasted like it had been sitting out for quite a while, which is definitely possible. The last time I was at Shakey's, the place was packed and they kept putting out new pizzas every couple minutes. Round Table was not very busy at all, so there was no need to.

After I ate those three slices I went back to the bar. There were two new pizzas: sausage and pepperoni, and cheese, so I grabbed two of the former and one of the latter. These were much better. The sausage and pepperoni was the pizza I have always liked from Round Table: hot, crispy, and a little bit spicy. The cheese was fresh but bland; with a few shakes of the red pepper flakes it tasted better but not great.

I made another trip. They had put out a pizza with Canadian bacon and pineapple so I took a piece of that and another piece of the sausage and pepperoni, both good. I didn't really need to eat these but I was trying to lower my cost-per-slice. I was quite full after eating both of these, but when I went to get a refill on my Pepsi I saw they had put out a supreme pizza as well, so I took a slice of that. I don't like tomatoes or mushrooms but I still took the slice. It was fresh, but I am not a big fan of pizzas that have so many toppings. Too much going on.

I finished that slice and sat there for a moment to contemplate the lunch. It wasn't bad but it wasn't anything special. I don't think I will be eating here again. It was a good deal, though. For under $10 I had three glasses of Diet Pepsi, a salad, and nine slices of pizza. So I didn't have to eat again for a long time. Almost three hours.

Tokoro Japanese Restaurant

(Note: The quality of these photographs is not good. I used the high sensitivity/no flash feature on my camera. It looks in the second picture that the restaurant is empty and very light inside. And, at the point I took that picture, it was both. But for almost all of the meal the place was packed and the shades were drawn. There is no way I will ever use flash photography in a dark, crowded restaurant, so I took these admittedly not great photos.)

The other night, Elizabeth and I were trying to come up with a dinner plan and she suggested sushi. I had no desire to go up to Old Town, and the last time we tried a new place, Ai, I wasn't very impressed. We went online and looked at menus at a couple of places we'd never been and settled on Tokoro.

It was packed when we walked in. There were a couple tables open but we still stood around for a few minutes while several of the people working there glanced at us but ignored us. (Why is it always Japanese places where this happens? I've never been to Japan, but when you go into a restaurant there do you have to stand around for several minutes without being greeted?) Eventually someone deigned to seat us. I ordered an iced tea, Elizabeth had a hot saki.

There were several menu pages with color photographs. I ignored Charles Kuralt's maxim never to eat in a restaurant with photos of the food on the menu, because several of the things looked very good.

We started with an order of Gyoza. They were good, although no different from Tani, or Maki & Sushi, or probably any other Japanese place I have been recently. As long as these places serve gyoza that are straight out of the fryer I will enjoy them, and these definitely were.

We got an order of popcorn lobster: battered and fried pieces of lobster (or more likely langostine) on top of a crab roll, with a spicy sauce. They were very good. Nowhere near as good as the popcorn lobster at Tani, but we ate every bit of it and I would not hesitate to order it again.

We ordered two sushi rolls: cucumber and spicy tuna. The cucumber roll was very fresh. I have to say I have certainly changed my opinion on cucumbers in the last few months. I have never cared for them; their sweetness has always made me cringe a little. But after having had several cucumber rolls with Elizabeth - not to mention the cucumber water we had at Wurstkuche, perhaps the most refreshing water I have ever tasted - I enjoy them a little bit now. I probably would never order a cucumber roll without her, but I do not hesitate to eat some when she gets one.

The spicy tuna roll was one of the best I have ever had. It's a measure of how bland I consider most spicy tuna rolls to be that I was pleasantly surprised that this one was actually, you know, spicy. We briefly considered ordering another one, but knew that in a few minutes we would be hit with that "Oh my God, I'm full" feeling that often happens when you don't realize how much sushi you have eaten until after the fact.

The service was very poor. Well, perhaps I should say more accurately, our sever was not good. She seemed lost in a world of her own. There was one waiter who was doing all the work. We've all seen that before: sometimes one server is not only handling his or her tables, but dropping off food and filling requests for all the other tables. That's what was going on here. This guy was working his butt off, seemingly handling every table in the house, while our server just did laps around the restaurant with a blank look on her face, not making eye contact with any of "her" tables. From the time we were ready to pay, it took about 15 minutes to get our check, and that's only because I called out to her when she walked by on one of her laps.

I will definitely go back to Tokoro. There are a lot of things on their menu that I would like to try. They have a $19.95 all-you-can-eat lunch deal that, while not seeming like a good idea, is something I might have to try one of these days.

Fast Food Review: Wendy's Boneless Buffalo Wings

Back in June I tried Wendy's boneless Asian wings and thought they were very good, if not exactly great. I planned to try the buffalo wings at a later date, which I thought would be a week or two. But then the weather finally turned nice and I started grilling at home much more, and I just didn't have any desire to go out and get fast food for dinner, so it turned into almost a couple months.

I love hot sauce, so I usually love a nice buffalo flavor. But lots of restaurants, both fast food and casual dining, use a type of buffalo sauce that I can't stand that contains high fructose corn syrup. Instead of a vinegary, spicy flavor, it tastes like an over-sweet, fake butter with a tiny amount of spice. When I was 21 I would sometimes help out my buddy who managed a restaurant. (By "help out" I mean do half of his chores so we could make it out to our favorite bar in time for Trivia Night.) I once walked in to the pantry and saw what happens to those gallon containers of sauce when they are dormant: they separate into a sediment and a liquid, neither of which are colors of this world.

I cannot recall any fast food joint ever serving a buffalo item that I thought was any good... until I came across the Wendy's "flavor-dipped" chicken sandwich last fall. Now there was a sandwich that didn't mess around: it was spicy without any of that cloying aftertaste of inferior, buffalo-drenched items. Unfortunately it was a limited time offer and when I went back a couple weeks later it was gone. I was hoping the boneless wings would use the same sauce.

I ate at the Wendy's in Alhambra. Anyone who doubts that fast food restaurants are booming during the current economic crisis should have been with me that day. It was only 11 AM and the place was packed. There were only two tables available in the dining room and a line of about 15 cars snaking out of the parking lot and down the street. Unfortunately, it was obvious that a lot of these people eat fast food every day, possibly more than once. I was one of the smaller people in the house, and that doesn't happen often.

Happily, this was the buffalo sauce I was hoping for. (Of course, reading the ingredients on the Wendy's website, I see the first one listed is "corn syrup," but I promise you it does not taste that way.) There was the biting, sour taste of vinegar and a buffalo flavor that was actually quite spicy. The quality of the chicken is relatively poor. If you're expecting more than that for $3.99 at a fast food joint, I'm not sure what to tell you. It would be ideal if you could get this exact buffalo sauce as a side for Wendy's chicken nuggets. Those are only 99 cents on the value menu and better quality chicken.

I do not anticipate eating these again. The sauce was very good, the chicken was not. I enjoyed the buffalo flavor more than the Asian. I don't plan to try the honey bbq.

Panda Inn

I have eaten many meals at Panda Inn in my life, as far back as I can remember, but I have not been there in several years. Yesterday I made plans to go to lunch with my mom and I suggested Panda Inn. (Some of my cousins were in town last week and they went to dinner at Panda with my parents but I wasn't able to go. They got 11 dishes in total and said they were all great, and I have been thinking about going to Panda for the last week.)

Like many Chinese restaurants, Panda Inn has several lunch specials. With the entree you get soup, a salad, rice, and an egg roll. I was torn between the orange chicken, lemon shrimp, and "spicy trio." I also considered for a moment ordering the sweet & pungent shrimp entree off the regular menu. That was always my favorite item. But I didn't need a full entree and I was craving an egg roll, so I decided just to stick with a lunch entree. Panda Inn, the precursor to Panda Express, is well known for their orange chicken, but you can get orange chicken lots of places these days. I opted for the spicy trio: chicken, beef, shrimp and vegetables in a spicy garlic sauce.

The waiter came over to our table. "Hi," I said. He gave me a dirty look and barked "OK, you ready to order?" People are so annoying sometimes.

I first got my hot & sour soup. This was good but not great. It was the thickest hot & sour soup I have ever had, almost gelatinous. I much preferred the soup at Fortune just down the street back when they were good (which hasn't been for years.) My plate arrived and I was impressed with the amount of food. The salad was great. The egg roll had a delicious filling. Unfortunately there wasn't very much of it.

All of my meat was good, as were the veggies. The shrimp was the best but, not surprisingly, there wasn't very much of it. I think there were only three of them. The beef was good and the chicken was really good. The garlic sauce was excellent. It wasn't spicy but it was very flavorful. There was plenty leftover and I used some of it on the rice.

My mom had the mango duck salad. It was a very large portion. She kept offering me some but I do not like either mango or duck. Eventually she put a piece of duck on my plate and told me how good it was and that I should try it. So I did. It was better than almost any duck I have ever tried, but I still didn't like it.

After we ate we received two complimentary white chocolate fortune cookies. These are reason alone to eat at Panda Inn. I remember being younger and my parents buying these by the dozen. They never lasted long; sometimes they would be consumed before we got home.

This was a really nice meal and very reasonably priced. Although I have not been to Panda in years, I intend to return soon to try some other lunch specials.