Tea for Two

Ernae took me out for afternoon tea at T on Fairfax as a belated birthday present. After carefully counting the hours before my bedtime, I ordered the pu-erh wang, a highly caffeinated black tea that conjured espresso and chocolate on my tongue and blended well with milk and sugar.

The vegan pumpkin cheesecake was divine. The staff had no idea how Urth Caffe made the creamy cheesecake without using butter, milk or eggs. Wired for the rest of the afternoon and night, I went through various recipes in my head. I guessed that the filling might have been a puree of tofu and boiled pumpkin. The crust made of ground nuts was simultaneously crunchy and moist. The cheesecake was a big culinary advancement from the dry carob candy that the vegan delis used to sell in college.

Canele Chaos

Eileen told me about a new French restaurant in Atwater Village that was opened by a friend of a friend. The 20-table joint takes its name from a French pastry that tastes like a cross between a cassava cake and the burnt caramel from a creme brulee. Eileen and I were the third party to arrive after the restaurant opened at 6 p.m. The restaurant is simply decorated, with herbs on the table and a big chalkboard on the wall that listed the starter, middle and end dishes.

Our roasted beet salad with goat cheese was tasty, though I secretly wish that restaurants in Los Angeles will do something more imaginative with roasted beets than to toss them with a soft goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. After promptly cleaning the salad plate, Eileen and I waited 30 minutes for our entrees. The open kitchen was bustling but I couldn't figure out why it would take them so long to prepare Eileen's grilled snapper and my beef tenderloin. I thought that perhaps the kitchen had a late start in baking the pommes anna that were served with my beef. The potato gratin usually requires at least half an hour in the oven. The restaurant's co-owner and chef, who was Eileen's friend's friend, was rather stressed behind the counter, yelling to her staff that she needed a snapper in seven minutes. When the food did arrive, it was delicious.

The restaurant's standard for beef is a medium rare (people who eat beef well-done should be shot!), chilis gave the mushy broccoli roasted in olive oil a surprising kick and the pommes anna were creamy and hot. Still, we waited so long for our main dishes that we had drained our glasses of sablet and Spanish sexto by the time our dishes arrived. The evening ended on a pleasant note when the hostess offered us some freshly baked caneles. I took two.

Taiyaki

Tai, or red snapper, is often served in Japan on special occasions. After covering a black tie event with Todd, I treated him to sashimi because he had to run around and take photos while I sat down to hobnob and dine with a bunch of fashion designers, architects and random people with artsy-fartsy pretensions. Happy that he got some great pictures and that I scored some good interviews, I ordered the taiyaki in lieu of an entree. Translated as "snapper fried," taiyaki is a sweet pastry filled with red bean paste. The cook pours the batter into a mold over a fire, spoons a dollop of bean paste in the middle and pours more batter on top. The lucky fish is flipped repeatedly over the heat until it is golden and crispy.

Eating Viet Food with a White Boy

Todd is a photographer who has worked on several stories with me. He is adventurous, curious, savvy and intrepid. That applies to both his shooting technique (standing in the middle of a street for a better angle of a building) and eating philosophy (trying everything at least once). The first time he ate pho, he squeezed at least a tablespoon of hot sauce into his broth. My male cousin, who's also named Khanh, and I were impressed. His gastronomical fearlessness convinced me to forgive him when he made a bunch of inappropriate comments that insulted my religion and culture (i.e., "Why does Buddha have man-boobs?"). Today he tested a restaurant called Huong Giang in Garden Grove, Calif., the center of Southern California's Vietnamese-American community, with me. The eatery specializes in cuisine from Vietnam's ancient capital of Hue, including bun bo Hue, or a spicy noodle soup topped with pig's feet, blood bouillons and beef brisket, and sweet and savory dumplings steamed in banana leaves.

The soup wasn't to Todd's liking because it wasn't spicy enough and the meats were too weird. He said he liked pho better. He insisted on ordering the most intriguing salad on the menu, which was served with grilled beef, tarty pink ham, rectangular noodles and boiled bean sprouts.

Neither of us liked the homemade ham, but the grilled beef paired nicely with the lettuce and herbs. I loved the dumplings stuffed with shrimp and pork.

It was a chore peeling the aromatic leaves off the sticky dumplings.

But they were yummy.

Mi Signo Es Escorpion!

My birthday was last week. Like a true Scorpio, I rocked it hard every day starting the day before my birthday through the weekend. This is the birthday cookie I received from a company I work with. The giant cookie arrived the day before my birthday because I took my actual birthday off.

I got white roses from my great friend Eileen, who showered me with love, attention and offered to be my chauffeur on my birthday.

I blew out lots of candles over three days. This is the pumpkin bread pudding and slice of yellow cake layered with dark chocolate frosting that Eileen, Emili, Missy and Melissa got me at BLD after my birthday dinner. I celebrated the new year with hemp seed-crusted tofu, roasted parsnips and button mushrooms and home fries made of potatoes and chorizo sausage. There was no candle on the tofu steak so I didn't have enough light to take a picture of it. Emili got me an awesome black silk shirt with heart-shaped cutouts circling the neck from the uber-cool Viktor & Rolf [heart] H&M collection. A day like this makes me feel happy for being me and having such wonderful people in my life.

The day after my birthday I got gourmet donuts from my co-workers. I made a flippant remark last month about how cupcakes were so 2005. So my co-workers broke the tradition of treating the honoree with cupcakes and got me these fried cakes instead. They were yummy with the prosecco.

The donuts' flavors ranged from cranberry and maple sugar to chocolate with coconut frosting and pumpkin spice. These pastries weren't as light as Krispy Kreme donuts but they weren't greasy either. A couple of us thought that the donuts were possibly baked.

This is me taking a picture of our photographer taking a picture of me at my office party.

This is the invitation for my birthday party on Saturday. The theme was champagne and cholos. My friend Isabel, who hosted the party at her house, didn't look like a happy chola-showgirl. But several people said they came to the party just because of the photo, which was taken by Alexis.

Keeping with the party's theme, I bought a stack of temporary tattoos based on paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and lady and man bling. The men's watch read Nolex instead of Rolex, and the women's model substituted Feiko for Seiko. Scorpios rule!

R&R=Rain & Recreation

I've been telling people that I went to Seattle for some R&R. That means rain and recreation, as there was nary a dry day or a moment of rest in the Pacific Northwest with two rambunctious girls, ages three and six, as my weekened hosts. I christened the younger sibling as Tornado Lucy. A room, plate of food or coloring book loses any semblance of order and cleanliness once she gets her hands on it. You hear the cyclone before you see it descend on the quiet plateau. Her brown bob is perpetually knotted because she always shakes her head like a crazed banshee.

Witness the devastation she caused in my guest bedroom with the help of her boyfriend Luke, who's also 3 years old but is a category 1 natural disaster compared to her category 4. Even Lucy's favorite My Little Ponies fell victim, sideswiped on the bed by her overzealous playing.

Tornado Lucy is kin to Tropical Storm Greta, who's mellowed with the passing years. After all, she's in kindergarten. She's also a little more self-conscious now than she was two years ago when I last visited her family. This is Greta wearing her birthday tiara and T-shirt.

When I wasn't taking walks in the rain and eating good food with Rob and his brood, I was doing those deeds with my friend and grad-school pal Phammy. I started The Food and Music Club after Phammy moved to Seattle from the San Francisco Bay area. So she was slightly irritated by the ghetto photojournalism at the Boat House Cafe. The lapse in good manners produced some fabulous shots, however.

This is the down-to-earth table setting comprising a petite pumpkin and artichoke floating in a glass of water. I have tableware like the Boat House's, except that mine isn't as white and pristine.

I had a tough time choosing between the custard cake and the tomato bread pudding. Phammy helped me make my decision by ordering the custard cake, which had a cornmeal crust underneath a smooth, creamy filling. I thought the bananas were a little random, but they were the concession to some sort of healthy fruit on the comforting and rich dish. They were the edible doppelgangers of the plump cylinders of apple sausage.

My bread pudding was called a strata on the menu. It was a blob of bread crumbs, green and red peppers, eggs, cheese and juicy cherry tomatoes, one of which squirted redness all over my cup of tea after my fork forcefully pierced it. I'm glad I didn't order the custard cake as it was awfully sweet and I can't handle too much sugar in the morning. But I do want to replicate the recipe somehow for future brunches that I might host.

Besalu Breakfast

All sorts of fashion designers are turning to dancers as their muses for forthcoming spring collections. Here's one of the inspirations, 3-year-old Lucy, who's fresh from twirling and pirouetting in her ballet class. The preschooler can give trendoids a lesson in comfortable fashion by the way she paired a black bodysuit with bright red ladybug Wellies.

Greta and I walked the three-quarter mile from her house to the community center where Lucy had her dance lesson. Carrying umbrellas to shield us from the drizzle, Greta and I were able to take a leisurely stroll and admire the Japanese maples, holly bushes and other verdant foliage growing in front of Queen Anne and Craftsman homes. After meeting Lucy and her dad, we walked to Cafe Besalu, which makes the most scrumptious croissants, danishes, schneckens and other pastries that require multiple layers of flour and butter. If I were a big enough of a francophile, I would move to Seattle just so that I can have breakfast at Besalu everyday that it is open. My only complaints are that there aren't enough tables to accommodate the patrons, who hover over occupied seats like famished vultures. What's more, diners' conversations and the kitchen clang bounce off the tile floors, metal roof and hard-topped tables. But the din certainly covers up the excited chatter from tykes like Greta and Lucy. This is Besalu's pastry cabinet.

Spending a weekend with two little kids can work up an appetite. After a leek quiche made with goat cheese, I satisfied my sweet tooth with a plum danish seasoned with frangipane. My soy chai latte not only washed down the tasty delicacies but also fortified me with some caffeine and sugar to survive the afternoon's Tumble Bus birthday party.

Greta had a cheese brioche. I was too far to capture the crumbs dusting her little lips.

Stockpiling Salumi

Rob and I made plans to have lunch at Salumi today. I arrived in downtown Seattle a little early. To kill some time, I ducked into an art gallery run by Gary Kucera. Hidden in one of the backrooms were lithographs of blueprints created by a Los Angeles artist named Michael Bennett. A former postal worker who's also represented by Mark Moore in Southern California, Bennett draws detailed floor plans of the homes of TV characters such as the Beverly Hillbillies, Bruce Wayne and Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Here's the blueprint for the Jetsons' circular space abode.

Here's the layout for Perry Mason's detective office.

At the assigned meeting time, I strolled over to Salumi from the art gallery. Rob told me that I looked like an Ewok in my black hooded cape. All I needed was a slingshot, some rocks and a braided rope around my belt. I wondered if Ewoks eat salumi. For the uninitiated, salumi is the plural form of salami. I know this because during some downtime during L.A. fashion week, Missy and I quizzed Giovanni, the sweet photographer who travels the world from his home base in Florence, Italy, with his wife to shoot fashion shows for our newspaper. "Giovanni, what's the difference between salami and salumi?" we asked him. Giovanni was quiet for a few seconds, presumably to translate the sentence from English into Italian and then figure out an answer. His explanation: "Salami--one meat. Salumi--many meats." Why, of course! This is the rain-drenched sign advertising many meats on Pioneer Square.

The shoebox of a restaurant has two long tables where diners plop down, pour their own wine and gobble up plates of precisely sliced meats, chunky balls of fennel sausage and the soup and vegetable of the day (on Nov. 3, it was lentil soup and roasted Brussel sprouts with prosciutto). The tables were covered in a waxy table cloth printed with paintings of figs. As Salumi is owned by chef Mario Batali's father, it was inevitable that conversation at our communal table touched on the opening of the younger Batali's new restaurant in Los Angeles. My neighbors didn't know the name of Batali's new establishment. It was a good thing there was a fashion journalist/foodie/Angeleno in their midst!

Rob treated me to a meat and cheese platter for my birthday. A Scorpio and salumi, what a combo! While Rob took care of our lunch order, I got salumi for me, Missy, Marcy, Missy's parents, my sister and own parents. (Everyone else gets Parasite Pals from Archie McPhee.) Warned by another friend who lives in the Emerald City about how the Salumi folks could be food Nazis and limit the amount of meat customers buy, I politely asked the woman behind the counter if there was a maximum number of salumi I could buy. She said I could buy as much as I want. So I stockpiled the signature Salumi salami, mole salami, paprika salami and oregano salami. Everything is priced the same by the pound so it's easy to mix and match.

This is a little plate of many meats. Though the mozzarella wasn't of the Buffalo variety, it was handmade that morning in the restaurant. It had a sweet flavor that helped cleanse the palate.

After lunch, Rob took me to a Japanese teahouse called Panama Hotel. The location used to house a sento, or Japanese bathhouse, before World War 2. Japanese-Americans stored their belongings in the Panama Hotel's basement before they were shipped to internment camps. To remind patrons of the hotel's history, the teahouse owner built a glass floor through which they can see the storage area. Reclining on white puffy pillows, I sipped a matcha latte made with rice milk.

Because I passed on the lentil soup at Salumi, I had enough of an appetite to try the elliptical pie made of sweet potatoes.

The teahouse reminded me of the hyper-stylized cafes in Tokyo. Check out the soaps that resembled river rocks next to the Zen-white sink.

Even the sign reminding everyone to wash their hands after using the toilet couldn't be plain and boring.

Noshing to Avoid the Rain in Seattle

I'm in Seattle for the first of many birthday parties this month. My own naissance is next week (Scorpios rule!). But this weekend is all about feting my buddy Greta, a kindergartener who is turning 6 years old tomorrow. Until we board the Tumble Bus, a schoolbus that has been gutted out and padded so that kids can jump, scream and roll as much as their little hearts desire inside, I did my own tumble as part of Seattle's art walk in Pioneer Square. A couple of cool sources from the action sports biz took me to this basement bar called Marcus' Martini Heaven, where I started with a chocolate cake martini (Stoli citron vodka, Frangelico and a sugared rim) and a ginger martini (ginger vodka, lime and club soda). Then we walked in the rain to Snowboard Connection, a local shop that was throwing a sticker party for a Seattle clothing brand called Spacecraft. When I was first told about the Spacecraft party at SnoCon, I thought the technogeeks here were building their own space vehicle. It was a logical assumption considering that Seattle and its neighboring 'burbs are home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, Nintendo's U.S. ops and Real Networks, among other tech companies. Alas, the peeps at Spacecraft were a lot cooler than the Web wonks. They baptized me into the world of local brews, including Rainier beer.

After comparing dark nail polish with some chicks at the party, I went to get a late dinner with Greta's dad, Rob, whom I met in Japanese class during my sophomore year of college. My nails, painted Mac's Nightfall, blended into the velvety mole at La Carta de Oaxaca, the latest great eatery to open in Ballard, the Western neighborhood that has been the locus for Norwegian and Swedish families in Seattle for generations. I first bristled at the thought of an Angeleno getting Mexi food in the Pacific Northwest. But good food brings good times. Plus, Ballard is getting hip. Rob, who's lived in Ballard for some eight years, said you'll get a blend of twentysomething hipsters who frequent Archie McPhee's shop on Market Street and geriatrics who get medical check-ups at the Swedish Medical Center a few blocks away.

I've never had tamales with mole before. For the regular mole, I selected pork, which was so tender that it fell apart with little goading from my fork. For the tamale, I ordered the chicken. The banana leaf was so fragrant that when it was brought to the table my senses were tricked in thinking that I was about to dig into some Viet grub, which also uses many sheaths of banana leaves to cook dumplings.

Rob said I might gain a few pounds this weekend, what with all the dinners and birthday parties I have lined up. But I'll be walking the calories off en route to Salumi Artisan Cured Meats in Pioneer Square, Cafe Besalu in Ballard and in fleeing Greta and her 3-year-old sister Lucy. The kids are like tornadoes. Condensed bundles of limitless energy, they are heard before they are seen.