Food

Last night, I made the best Persian rice (with tadiq, the burned crunchy bits at the bottom of a rice pot) that I’ve ever made! Chowhound helped a bit, but this was all me. Previously my tadiqs haven’t been quite as uniform, nor the saffron as diffuse. So freakin’ delicious. Also, one of the benefits of working at home is that I get to cook lunch in my own kitchen if I want to. The other week I made this…

So after trying Monica’s favorite burrito place in the East Bay, Chavez Market in Hayward this weekend, I still haven’t found any burrito superior to the ones from El Ojo de Agua in Fruitvale. I just found a January 2006 piece from the Chronicle talking about how awesome the taco truck and blue-collar Mexican food scene is on International Blvd. “Ojo de Agua (on Fruitvale Avenue at E. 12th Street). Legendary for its al pastor tacos, but they can be…

Stolen from my post at Chowhound: Four friends and I gathered together last night for a Frutivale five burrito showdown. We usually hit up El Ojo de Agua about once a week. Their burritos are the best that we’ve found in the neighborhood, and it’s well-worth the trek from the confines of Rockridge to get some mind-blowingly amazing burritos. But we often forget that El Ojo is but one taqueria amidst many in Fruitvale, so we decided to give some…

So today I was digging around the interwebs for some info about burritos. Three items stick out: 1) I found this 85 burrito odyssey in the Chronicle from last September. 2) I found a possible reference to myself in UrbanDictionary.com, under the entry “california burrito”. Guacamole may be substituted for sour cream, though this not a true Cali burrito, just an imposter (known as a Cyrus Burrito). This is strange, because I almost always order my burritos without sour cream,…

Its new location in Oakland was just confirmed today! It’ll open in Spring 2007! That means this new one will be about 0.2 miles closer to my Rockridge house than the one in Emeryville. Huzzah!

Xeni at Boing Boing brightened my day with a link to TacoTrucks.net a site devoted to Oakland taco trucks, one of my favorite places to get a cheap and amazingly delicious meal. I’ve known about Burritoeater.com and Burritophile.com, which are dissapointing because the former is exclusively focused on San Francisco, and the latter’s reviews are too spotty. I was just at El Ojo de Agua #3 (pictured above) last night, and seriously, I don’t think you can get a better…

A New York friend is coming to San Francisco for a weekend to attend a wedding. She’s staying in Union Square and only has one full day to tour the city on her own, and this is what I recommended: 1) Get up whenever, stroll around Union Square/Market St. 2) Optionally check out Yerba Buena Gardens and the Museum of Modern Art, or the California Historical Society Museum, or the Cartoon Art Museum. 3) Around lunchtime, make your way to…

Wikipedia, Bière de Chimay: As with all other Trappist breweries, the beer is only sold in order to financially support the monastery and some other good causes. The brewery business pays rent for use of the property within the abbey, which is used to support the monastic community. All of the profits from the sale of the beer is distributed to charities and for community development around the region.

Go find your nearest Ben & Jerry’s. Wait about 20 minutes. Enjoy said free ice cream.

I’m a Trader Joe’s kid. When I was growing up in Santa Monica, our nearest TJ’s was the on National Blvd. in West LA. By my high school days, one had opened up in our fair city. Without exaggeration, 80% of the foodstuffs (and other random items, including laundry detergent and shampoo) came from TJ’s — the only things that we didn’t get there were things that couldn’t be had there. Back in the day, this included any fresh produce…