Shabu Ya

Sometimes I just feel like eating something light and simple.

An aromatic broth, thinly sliced meat, and an abundance of vegetables.

When I'm in that mood, I often seek out shabu shabu (Japanese), or hot pot (Chinese). Although shabu is much cheaper to make at home, sometimes it's just a lot less hassle to pay the $10-$20 and have someone else take care of all that slicing, chopping, and washing of ingredients (not to mention doing all the dishes afterwards!).

The other day while we were in Harvard Square, I was craving just that - something simple, hearty, healthy, and warm. Our favorite shabu place felt just a bit too far away that day, so we decided to check out this local one within walking distance of our home.

The interior is bright and colorful, with trendy lamps, modern furniture, and tons of light. There's a sushi bar to one side, a huge "shabu" bar in the middle, and tons of other seating. The place seems to be filled with Asians, not a surprise considering the cuisine.

Things look promising in the beginning. Tiny bits of condiments such as fresh horseradish, habanero peppers, scallions, and Chinese "Satsa" sauce (BBQ sauce) come on this cute, modern plate.

The tables are equipped with induction stoves on top, which you can control by touching the nifty flat buttons. We order a spicy hot broth (check out that color!).

Most of the shabu plates come with meat of your choice, assorted vegetables, tofu, and noodles. The prices range from $12.95 (vegetables) to $20.95 (surf and turf). Although the presentation of everything was nice, I was not particularly impressed with the quality of the produce. The carrots and the broccoli reminded me of pre-chopped refrigerated vegetables that come from a bag. The other vegetables were average - sort of like vegetables you'd get in Chinatown, not ones from your local organic farmers market.

If you really want to splurge, they even have Wagyu beef from Australia ($29.99) and Oregon ($39.99). Our server wasn't very knowledgeable, and had to go back several times to ask about the difference between the two types.

After one round of questions, we learned that the Oregon beef was "better".

Bryan said, "can you tell us why it's better?"

She looked a bit confused, and then said, "hold on a minute."

She came back a few minutes later and declared that the Oregon beef was "more marbled."

Although it wasn't much information to go by, Bryan decided to spring for it. He's predictable in that way.

After having tried it, we both agreed that it's worth skipping. The Oregon wagyu beef, although tasty, wasn't that earth-shattering and probably not worth the significant extra premium price. It's nothing like the incredible kobe beef shabu that I had in Japan, which I would argue, is well worth the money (even if it was over $100 a person).

Because I had ordered a Korean dish, I was thrilled to get all the "freebies" that always come at the beginning of a meal in a Korean restaurant. These were solid, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.

My simple tofu stew ("suntofu") was delicious. It had tons of seafood inside, making the soup super flavorful, rich, and very, very comforting. It was exactly what I was craving. I was even content to ignore the bits of dirt (probably from the clams?) at the bottom of my bowl.

At $12.95, it wasn't a bad price at all.

The sushi, on the other hand, was below average, especially considering the price. Almost all of the fish (with the exception of salmon) had virtually no flavor and were reasonably bland. At $8.95 for 5 pieces, you can definitely do better elsewhere.

It seems like their sushi bar focuses more on the fun, creative rolls that rely more on spicy mayonnaise, tobiko, and various sauces for flavor than the actual fish. If I ever had to order sushi here again, I would choose to order rolls instead of straight up nigiri, which really needs quality fish to taste good.

Concluding Thought
I guess we had mixed thoughts about Shabu Ya. I really enjoyed simple yet flavorful tofu stew, which perfectly hit the spot. For simple Korean food, I may considering coming back.

However, I really was not impressed with the sushi, and definitely would not order it again.

The shabu is average. It's serviceable, for sure, but overall we just were not super impressed with the quality of the ingredients. I definitely would not recommend springing for the Wagyu. I think you can get a lot better meals in Boston if you're willing to spend close to $50 for your entree!

If you're in the area and you're hankering for shabu, the place will deliver. The broths are OK, the condiments are authentic, and the produce is acceptable. It's not terribly expensive (as long as you don't get Wagyu), and it's reasonably authentic. You can get your hot pot fix.

However, if you're willing to travel just a bit (we're talking maybe 1-2 miles), there are definitely much better places in Boston for shabu.


Shabu Ya
57 JFK Street
Cambridge MA

Korean Bulgolgi

Up until I was around eighteen, I was woefully unenlightened when it came to certain Asian cuisines.

My family rarely, if ever, dined at Korean restaurants when I was growing up. I still remember finally visiting a local Korean restaurant with my parents while I was in college and being tickled at all the lovely free "appetizers" or "tastes" that came out (think various types of pickled vegetables, tofu, and other little bites).

Ever since college, I've learned to love Korean food. The rich, fiery, and complex flavors of this delightful cuisine borrow influences from China and Japan yet maintain much of their unique originality.

Alas, since Bryan's not the biggest fan of Korean food (and we've been together essentially since college), I have never really explored cooking the cuisine that much (notice the dearth of Korean restaurants and recipes on this blog?).

Thankfully, I still get my fix at times. I hit the jackpot when my sister married a Korean (Hi Mike!). Mike's a fantastic cook and knows how to make all sorts of amazing Korean dishes.

One favorite I've always been dying to make is bulgolgi, Korean barbecued beef. Perhaps you've seen it at Korean restaurants where they have the grill right at the table. Mike was super kind and shared with me his recipe for making this timeless classic.

This dish is a huge crowd-pleaser. I've made it at various potlucks and it's always super popular. It even won a competition at my church years back.

Try it out - you won't be disappointed.

Start with thinly sliced sirloin or ribeye beef. The best way is to pick this up at a Korean market because it's already been perfectly pre-sliced really thinly for this exact purpose. Chinese hot pot pre-sliced meat may work as well, but I've never personally tried it. If you must, you can try slicing your own, but I would recommend semi-freezing it before trying.

There are many aromatic ingredients that add to the flavors of this dish, such as onions, garlic, and ginger.

But the key ingredient? The "secret" ingredient?

Coke!

Just kidding! Well, half kidding. You need something acidic to help break down the proteins so that they become more tender during marination. Pears or apples are common, but some people actually use something carbonated, like Coke!

I used Korean pears, but you can use any sort of ripe pear. According to Mike, canned pears work just fine as well (and they are easier to mash!).

Combine all ingredients together in a bowl (except the sesame oil).

Mix!

Mike suggests adding the sesame oil the next day. This allows the marinade (sans oil) to better penetrate the meat.

I find it easiest to get my hands dirty and really mix it up well. Since I usually make this in large volumes while entertaining (ha ha, certainly not at home when it's just me and Bryan), it's pretty impossible to adequately mix up everything with just a little spoon.

Let marinate overnight.

The next day, add sesame oil to the mixture, either the morning of or up to just before cooking.

Fire up the grill or oven broiler, and cook accordingly!

To serve, pull apart some gorgeous Boston lettuce.

Let guests assemble their own bulgolgi wraps. I like to provide some rice and gochujang sauce mixed with sesame oil.

Enjoy!

Korean Beef Bulgolgi
prep time 20 minutes | cook time 15 minutes | serves 4
total time: 36 hours

Ingredients
1 to 1 ½ lb thinly sliced sirloin beef

Marinade
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon minced ginger
3 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 ripe Asian pear, mashed
2 small onions, sliced
3 tablespoons sesame oil

Fixings
3 cups of rice, cooked
1-2 bunches of Boston lettuce leaves

Sauce
1/3 cup gochujang sauce (Korean red pepper paste)
1 tablespoon sesame oil

Combine all marinade ingredients except the sesame oil. Add the beef to the marinade and mix well. Refrigerate overnight. Right before grilling, add sesame oil, mix well. Ideally cook on a grill or in the broiler. The beef is ready when it is nicely charred and a little crunchy on the edges.

You can also cook this on a grill pan or even on the stovetop in a hot pan, but it might not get as charred and may steam a bit more.

Mix together gochujang sauce and sesame oil. Set aside.

Serve with Boston lettuce leaves, rice, and sauce.

Moksa

Edamame potstickers

It's been hyped. And continually delayed. For months.

I walk down Mass Ave in Central Square every day on my way to work. Ever since early summer last year, I've passed by a sign in front of Moksa that says, "opening late, late, late summer."

People have wondered for awhile now what Chef Patricia's Yeo's new project would look like.  After Ginger Park (her first Boston venture) closed, she joined Om as their executive chef. Meanwhile, in the background, she's been planning an Asian fusion izakaya which features small plates inspired by street foods from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

Edamame potstickers

In Japan, an izakaya is a drinking establishment that serves casual, small plates meant to go really well with the drinks.  Here, Chef Yeo has taken that concept and melded it with the street food idea. Moksa serves appetizer sized portions of a variety of dishes, many of which are inspired by street dishes from Asia.

It's only been a few weeks since the restaurant has opened, so I'm sure the kitchen is still trying to figure things out. Nevertheless, here's a recap of my first visit there. We got the unusual opportunity of sitting outside on their patio (in the middle of March!!) due to unseasonably warm weather.

Kimchi fried rice with a poached egg and gochujang 

Dishes here are meant to be shared, and the portion sizes are a bit smaller so that people can try more than one dish. We ordered about two dishes per person and it turned out to be just about right. Some of the dishes, such as the rice and noodle ones, are a bit larger while the items from the grill are much smaller. Order a mix of everything and you should be fine.

Chef Yeo liberally borrows ideas from all sorts of Asian cuisines. The kimchi fried rice, for example, resembles a bi bim bop because it is served with a perfectly poached egg and gochujang (Korean sweet chili sauce) on top.

I love the homemade edamame potstickers (pictured above). The skins have a nice chewy texture, and the mashed edamame filling tastes just like you expect. If you love the flavor of Japanese edamame, you'll enjoy these dumplings.

Beef tartare and oyster "roti"

The roti (commonly seen in Malaysian and Indian cuisine), is more like a small taco.  Don't expect the "roti" part of the dish to be fluffy, light, and slightly chewy like traditional roti. Instead, the texture of the roti is really more like the skin of a Mexican soft taco shell (more dense, less fat). Yeo veers quite a bit from traditional Asian fare by topping the "roti" with beef tartare and a fresh, raw oyster. This dish turns out to be one of my favorites of the evening. It's nicely seasoned, uses very fresh ingredients, and tastes delicious.

Duck bacon (I think? I can't remember) is one of the smaller "grill" items, coming on just two skewers.

Kurobota pork belly ramen with 5-minute egg 

The "kurabota [sic] ramen" (called such presumably because it uses Berkshire pork, known as kurobuta in Japanese), gets its twist from being served with a 5-minute egg and high quality pork belly. I am disappointed that the noodles resemble packaged ramen noodles (curly and quite mushy), and the broth is very, very salty. This is not the first time I've found Chef Yeo's food to be too salty, so perhaps that first time was not a fluke after all? The pork is reasonably tasty, but the overwhelming salt levels make it hard for me to enjoy the soup.

The menu offers a variety of shaobings. Unlike the traditional Chinese shaobing, which is delicate, flaky, and nicely toasted, this "shaobing" more resembled a dense English muffin. It's thick, dense, and a bit dry. Frankly, I think I would have preferred a traditional shaobing.

Shao Bing: spicy beef short ribs

The flavors of the fillings for the shaobings are decent. The saltiness of the short ribs is tempered by the thick and dense shaobing bread.

Saigon Fried Rice

I am woefully uneducated when it comes to Vietnamese food, so I have no idea how authentic this "Saigon" fried rice is. I do know that Chef Yeo traveled to Southeast Asia in 2007 to study the cuisine, and I'm sure some of these dishes were inspired by that trip. This fried rice reminds me a bit of ketchup fried rice, but a bit sweeter with the addition of the pineapples. It is OK, but not something that I love.

Chicken Pad Thai

The chicken pad thai is not bad, nicely augmented with a colorful assortment of vegetables not typically seen in pad thai. The flavor is decent, and it's one of the few dishes that isn't too spicy for our spice-fearing guests.

Twenty vegetable fried rice 

The twenty-vegetable fried rice is balanced in flavor and reasonably light. It's a nice, healthy alternative to ordering normal white rice.

Dan Dan Mien

The dan dan mien is a very polarizing dish. Although it's deeply full of flavor (strong umami generated by the pork, mushrooms, various aromatics, and chili spices), I (again) find the dish to be too salty. I yearn for a larger portion of baby bok choy to counter the saltiness in the meal. The noodles themselves are unremarkable, a bit too soft and mushy for my tastes.

First Thoughts
I have to be honest. I was disappointed after my first visit. I had been really, really excited about a cool izakaya serving high quality "street food" at reasonable prices. Although some of the dishes were quite promising,  several were oversalted and lacked the finesse in flavor I was looking for. Perhaps it's too much to ask, but I yearned for fresh, chewy handmade noodles.

Our lunch came out to be about $25 a person, not exactly cheap considering we only drank water (it was lunchtime) and we were mostly eating street food. Granted, Moksa does source high quality, often local ingredients, and the rent in the area is not cheap (plus there's that liquor license!).  It's natural that prices will be a bit higher.

I've read that Moksa has a fantastic mixologist on board, so maybe you won't notice that the small bites are a tad salty if you're enjoying them with a fantastic cocktail. After all, an izakaya's foremost purpose is to be a place to drink.

Perhaps Moksa will turn out to be that cool, trendy place in Central Square where you can get a fantastic cocktail, a tasty small plate, and enjoy a really cool vibe. The ambiance is pretty nice, with lots of bamboo, clean lines, and modern simplicity.

Moksa
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

Foumami

You know it was bound to happen right?

It's an ingenious concept that was just waiting for someone to pick up.

First, start with the Chinese shao bing, a flaky, savory pastry that the Chinese have been eating for centuries as a outer "shell" to wrap you tiao (Chinese fried crullers) or beef and scallions.

Next, fill it with all sorts of different creative, non traditional but tasty Asian meats and vegetables.

Finally, open up a trendy sandwich shop where people can pick and choose what they want.

It's like a creative Bao Haus, but applied to shao bing sandwiches. Imagine a shao bing sandwich with Korean bulgolgi inside, or maybe filled with a Japanese pork cutlet (tonkatsu)?   The possibilities are endless.

If executed right, it's a clear winner, no doubt.

Guess what? Michael Wang, a son of restaurant owners in China and an MBA from Harvard, has done just that in Foumami.

Foumami is just a single shop right now, though Michael Wang has grand plans. He hopes it will become the next Chipotle or the next Pinkberry, a high quality, popular concept that takes the nation by the storm.

After graduating from Harvard, Wang decided to open his first Foumami in downtown Boston.

Foumami is a combination of two words. The word "Fo" sounds like Buddha in Mandarin Chinese, and "umami" is a Japanese derived word that refers to the fifth sense of savory goodness.

At Foumami, the interior decor is modern, clean, and colorful. You enter and you feel relaxed and cheerful. The menu is witten on a chalkboard behind the counter, with various specials hanging below on random sheets of paper.

If you're an Asian snack junkie (like I am!), you'll be tempted by the random assortment of snacks up front, everything from standards like Koala Yummies or Pocky to unusual offerings like Sriracha Peas.

The place definitely caters to the business lunch crowd, and is packed between 12 and 1pm. You can easily order various shao bing sandwiches to go, or get a variety of salads.

I was so intrigued by the menu, it was hard to choose just one. The chicken katsu sandwich ($7.35) uses the same breading and sauce as a tonkatsu (Japanese pork cutlet) sandwich.  Of course, it differs from a Japanese sandwich because it uses Chinese shao bing as the bread.

I thought the sandwich was very flavorful. All the ingredients were freshly prepared, and the overall flavors were quite addictive.

The Spicy Pork Sandwich ($7.95) was equally tasty but quite messy to eat. Seriously, unless if you have the whole thing wrapped up and you're eating it on the go, the sauces will spill out as you bite into these sandwiches!

The flavors reminded me of kalbi, although Michael told me he was more inspired by a Vietnamese Banh mi when designing this sandwich. It's true, it's filled with pickled vegetables like a traditional Banh mi. I guess that's what Asian fusion is all about, borrowing flavor profiles from various cuisines and putting them all together into one big sandwich.

All sandwiches come with the house scallion pancake, which was a bit crispier, less oily, but also less flaky than a traditional scallion pancake.
They had a wide variety of salads as well, such as this glass noodle salad ($7.55). The glass noodles (undoubtedly inspired by the Korean glass noodles chap chae), were addictively spicy with tons of umami. I thought the salad part underneath was only average and seemed more like a vehicle in which to serve the glass noodles than something worth eating on its own.

Michael Wang and me

I really think Foumami is onto a neat concept. I have always loved Asian flavors, whether it be Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese. The Chinese shao bing is an excellent vehicle on which to enjoy any of these flavors.

I personally hope it takes off. I've already tried convincing him to open his next one in Cambridge. He was totally mum about any details, but he seemed to imply that it was definitely a possibility.

Foumami
225 Franklin
 Boston, MA 02110


Disclaimer: I did not pay for my meal at Foumami. It was provided by Foumami.

Bon Chon Chicken

Korean fried chicken.

It's crunchy, savory, slightly sweet, and spicy all at the same time. The skin is paper thin, the fat having been mostly rendered out of it (not unlike Peking duck!). It's almost always served with pickled radish, and most people like to enjoy it with beer or soju (Korean distilled alcoholic beverage, sort of like vodka).

Bon Chon Chicken is one of the most popular South Korean chains that serves this addictively delectable snack. Korean fried chicken differs from American fried chicken in that the skin is smooth, there is a slight glaze covering the chicken, and it's much less greasy.

The stuff reheats amazingly well, and (of course), tastes even better straight out of the fryer.

Lucky for us Bostonians, Bon Chon Chicken finally opened up in Boston in 2009 (first inside another restaurant Privus and then on its own in 2010 when Privus closed).

I'm a bit of a latecomer on this one, but I finally had a chance to try Bon Chon Chicken more than a year after it opened.

Of course you have to get the fried chicken - that's what they're known for! My friend and I got a small order of the chicken as an appetizer. You can either order the "soy garlic" (slightly sweet) or the "hot spicy" (self explanatory!) one. Although both are good, I can only take so much of the spicy one before I need to take a break! Therefore, for all practical purposes, I like the soy garlic one better. Plus, that slightly sweet glaze is irresistible!


If you're not a fan of fried chicken, the restaurant has a lot of other standard Korean and Japanese options. On the Korean front, you can order classics such as bulgolgi, kalbi, bi bim bap, and seafood pancake. On the Japanese front, you can order a variety of sushi and sashimi as well as cooked dishes such as okonomiyaki, katsuu-don, and takoyaki (octopus balls).

Honestly, it's an extensive menu, of which only a small portion I have tried!

Overall, we were quite happy with our food. The fried chicken, of course, is the true star. However, I thought the other dishes were quite enjoyable as well. The bi bim bap was tasty and the seafood salad was decent. In general, the prices were quite reasonable (most items were in the $10-$15 range), and the restaurant is (overall) a pretty good value for what it delivers.


Bon Chon
123 Brighton Ave
Allston, MA 02134




It's still not too late to enter the Chinese Wok Kit Giveaway!