In the Grant Road Nob Hill Supermarket shopping plaza, there's a sushi restaurant called "Sushi 85", The 85 apparently comes from their location close to the 85 freeway entrance, and Sushi, because if you run a Japanese restaurant in the United States, even in a multicultural area like the Bay Area, people naturally assume that Japanese Restaurant equals sushi. The truth is, the Sushi restaurant is a specialized type of Japanese restaurant -- the other types are things I wish we'd see more of in the Bay Area, like places that specialize in food items that aren't sushi. Sushi 85 is not one of those places. They do sushi, and they do it enmasse, as in "All-You-Can-Eat Sushi".

If you're looking for a genuinely Japanese Sushi experience, don't come here, for it is run by Chinese people and as an All-You-Can-Eat place, the concept is not really a Japanese one. While the chef will greet you in the traditional "Irasshaimase", but don't expect much conversation if you're trying to polish your Japanese skills. I've done my fair share of All-You-Can-Eat Sushi, and I can probably cram more rice and fish down my throat as much as any other competitve eater. They run this place efficiently -- a laminated menu and an dry-erase pen to mark down your choices and the orders arrives quickly, fresh from the sushi chef. Tea arrives with its own pot, allowing you to serve yourself, and servers come back to snatch up the dishes almost as soon as you've finished the items on the plate. They allow ordering three items at a time, a marked difference from places that allow you to order three for your first order, and one each for each successive one.

Their lunch menu is diverse in offering nigiri, rolls, and temaki (hand rolls) but also feels constrained as far as selection goes. It seemed that most items on the menu were deep fried or slathered with sauce. They use a thick, sweet brown sauce to top several of their rolls -- their worst offender was the spider roll and the rolls containing eel. Their fish is fresh, but you won't be seeing any of the more expensive fishes in the rolls -- only in the nigiri. Their crab is the imitation type (except in the soft-shell) mixed with mayo.

While I've definitely had better All-You-Can-Eat sushi, I've also had a lot worse. If you're looking to fill up on sushi for lunch in Mountain View, and you don't work at Google, and you don't want to spend more than $20, give Sushi 85 a try. If you're a real sushi connoisseur, you'll get better use out of your money by spending $10 to $20 more at a real sushi place.

Sidenote: It's been a good seven or eight hours later and I'm still burping up the remnants of lunch.

Flickr: Sushi 85

Time-lapse video of the construction of the Walt Disney World Gingerbread House.

After reading the NYT article on Tcho, a chocolate start-up in San Francisco started by Timothy Childs and Louis Rossetto (one of the co-founders of Wired), I knew I had to pay a visit to their office on the Embarcadero.

From the outside, Tcho looks like any ordinary pierfront office, with smoked glass and a company sign on the side of the door, and inside it looks like any start-up I've ever set foot in -- a row of folding tables holding up computers, a reception area with a candy bowl, a conference room and a whiteboard. The difference between this office and any other startup office is obvious the moment you step in as the pleasant aroma of warm chocolate fills the air.

The chocolate mixture is version 0.10 -- they haven't yet finalized the mixture, but 50 gram bars are already available for purchase online from their website as long as you're willing to go to pick it up from their offices in San Francisco. Next year, they hope to start doing mail order as well as set up their storefront.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Going to school in Berkeley, I always heard the name Chez Panisse bandied about. Chez Panisse was the place for special and momentous occasions -- while one might go to Henry's for a round of birthday drinks or splurge on sushi at Kirala, but Chez Panisse was the right answer whenever anyone offered to treat you to dinner, because meals there were expensive. There are things I wish I had known while going to school in Berkeley -- mostly to do with food, because I ate out constantly, and cooked little. There are some that will balk at Chez Panisse for having $65 - $85 dinners (these were more like $40-60 when I was going to school) and on a student budget, you'can't really drop that kind of money on a meal when each of your textbooks cost that much.

Alice Waters is one of the founders and co-owner of Chez Panisse, and is also one of the strongest advocates for locally-grown and sustainable agriculture. She's just published a new cookbook called The Art of Simple Food : Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, and this afternoon did a book signing at Books Inc. in Palo Alto. I was slightly disappointed that it would simply be a signing, and not a reading, but the Palo Alto Books Inc. is not large, and accommodating large groups of people with sitting space would be nearly impossible at this location.

When I was growing up, carbonated beverages were a special treat. We'd get them when we ate out or got them as part of kids meals, but my mother never bought them in flats from CostCo. Even now as an adult, I don't have them all that often, but when I do drink them, I am all too aware that what I'm drinking is mostly corn syrup, diluted just enough with water so that it remains a liquid, which is why I find Diet Coke Plus so intriguing. First of all, Diet Coke Plus is Diet Coke -- it tastes nothing like Coke, but it's more guilt free because instead of odious amounts of sugar, it uses a sugar substitute. Secondly, Diet Coke Plus is essentially Diet Coke with vitamins. It's like the excuse ultimate drink for people who want to indulge in drinking unhealthy soft drinks -- not only can they say it's sugar-free, but they can also say they're getting their vitamins too. Seeing how successful energy drinks are, I suspect that this is one Coke variation that will likely stick around.

If you've ever watched the anime Naruto, you know that Naruto loves ramen (and is occasionally bribed by his teachers with promises of all-you-can-eat ramen). A promotional event for the release of Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution at the Nintendo World Store at Rockefelller Center in New York City will have as part of its activities a Ramen eating contest, sponsored by Major League Eating. As part of the competition, contestants will be required to use chopsticks to consume the ramen, to keep with the traditional way of eating ramen.

I've been to a ramen eating competition once. It was a torturous affair for the contestants, dealing with hot ramen broth (as the broth was required to finish in order to count) and undercooked noodles, so I'm curious as to see how the pros approach it. I'd so be there (watching) if I was in NYC.

Press Release in the extended.

In the Mission District, near Delores Park is Bi-Rite Creamery. Bi-Rite Creamery is a small ice cream shop; they make the ice cream in the back, and there's a small countertop with stools for patrons, but the shop is probably half the size of your living room. They have a small selection of ice cream standards, but they also carry flavors like Strawberry Balsamic, Honey Lavender and Salted Caramel. While it is possible to get scoops and sundaes there, we opted for the pre-packaged pints to bring back home. Prepared in small batches, these artisans use local organic milk to create their ice cream, and the result is a smoothly textured and richly flavorful ice cream.

Located inside the Ferry Building is a small avenue filled with small boutique shops and restaurants that are often specialty stores. One of the stores within is a cheese shop callled Cowgirl Creamery.

Cowgirl Creamery is a locally made cheese (in Point Reyes) which uses natural, organic milk. In addition to selling their cheese inside the Ferry Building, Cowgirl Creamery Cheeses can be found in many local markets and restaurants, but for the full cheese shop experience, I highly recommend visiting the store; filled with a dazzling array of cheeses and other food products, the sales people are more than happy to help out in selecting a cheese that fits your tastes and feeding you samples of their wonderful cheeses.

Flickr: Cowgirl Creamery

For someone who lives in the Bay Area, I don't travel to the city all that often, and I probably don't give it enough props for what the city offers. I often say things like "Why do I need to go all the up to city to have sushi when I have sushi restaurants right here on the Peninsula that are equally as good?" or my favorite: "I can't live without my car, and San Francisco punishes you for owning one". Indeed, without a car, life in San Francisco is a lot easier. Muni and BART will get you where you need to go within the city, without the horrors of driving and parking.

Saturday mornings in SF in the fall are much quieter than the summertime. The tourists are gone, and what remains are the locals heading to the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building. I've been to the Ferry Building only a few times since they've renovated it, with most of my memories are from my days at Berkeley, where the buildings beside the Pier were largely vacant and decrepit. Seeing a lively San Francisco's Ferry Building again on a beautiful autumn day was in stark contrast to the paint-peeled abandoned buildings and parking lots that used to be used as overflow for Pier 39 in my undergraduate days.

It was at the Ferry Building that we had lunch at the Slanted Door, a Vietnamese-fusion restaurant headed by chef Charles Phan. Slanted Door separates itself from other Vietnamese-fusion restaurants with the use of local and organic ingredients in their cuisine. At 11 in the morning on a Saturday, we were the third party in the door, and we were seated quickly after queuing outside for half an hour. Those behind us, may not have been so lucky, as a good majority of the tables were reserved, and the waiting area and the bar quickly filled up.

The restaurant is family style, and the food is meant to be shared, even if the primitive, hunger-starved portion of your brain wants to selfishly hoard it all because it all tastes so good. Their bar, I am told, holds a rather impressive selection of wine and spirits, and I could not leave without sampling a cocktail. I chose the sweet and citrus French 75, made with Grower Cognac and Tissot Crémant du Jura, fresh lemon and served on the rocks ($10). meta ordered a Blue Bottle organic Wotona french press coffee ($4) to go along with the Summer on the Danube (Prosecco with a splash of Nikolaihof biodynamic elderflower syrup - $10). These drink of course, were not nearly half as interesting as the table show given by littlestar's Heavenly Flower tea, which blossomed as it released its flavor into the hot water.

We started off with an order of crispy vegetarian imperial rolls and Manila clams. Served with lettuce, mint leaves, and a dipping sauce, the Imperial rolls were filled with taro root, cabbage and glass noodles. They were perfect in their crispness, and wrapped with the leaves and dunked in the dipping sauce, they proved to be challenging to eat without falling apart, even with the amount of skill our party had with chopsticks. The Manila clams were served with thai basil, crispy pork belly and fresh chilies in a shallow ceramic dish, and the restaurant was conscientious enough to provide us with a dish to dispose of the clamshells.

One of the things that I notice about eating well-prepared organic foods is that you can taste the difference between organic and conventional; organics have a little more flavor to them, and this is especially more apparent in the meats more than anything else. In eating the Grilled Niman Ranch double-cut pork chops with ginger-soy-shallot sauce and crispy potatoes, one is reminded that this is exactly what pork should taste like.

For the seafood portion of our lunch, we had cellophane noodles with fresh dungeness crab meat, and caramelized tiger prawns with garlic, onions and chili sauce. These two simples dishes are staples for Vietnamese restaurants like the Slanted Door, and they did not disappoint; the taste of the crab accompanied the texture of the noodles well, and the tiger prawns were big and juicy.

The Slanted Door has a large selection of desserts on their menu, and we indulged ourselves with the following: Warm chocolate cake, Warm fig-goat cheese tart, and the E. Guittard dark chocolate pot de crème. All were beautiful presented, and quite tasty. The dark chocolate pot was rich and chocolately, and the warm chocolate cake was light and fluffy without losing any of the richness. Small scoops of ice cream accompany the warm desserts, to contrast the warm with cold. Vanilla bean with the fig goat cheese tart, and coconut with the warm chocolate cake. The fig and goat cheese tart was probably my favorite of the three, owing to the crispy tart crust and the sweetness of the figs.

The Slanted Door: Food: 5/5, Service 4/5.

Flickr: The Slanted Door