Stunned by Stanbury - Raleigh, NC

In case you couldn't tell from my previous reviews, I might be the tiniest bit cynical. And if you really couldn't tell from my previous reviews, you haven't been reading my previous reviews. My latest reviews have been centered around my cynicism about me, but sadly, that's just the tip of the iceberg. My skepticism spreads far and wide, to all corners of the earth, especially to Raleigh, North Carolina, the city I used to call home.

I love visiting my family, but I need a pretty stiff drink to get through anything over a week. The Maple Leaf does the trick. A burly bourbon, smoothed by maple syrup and frothy egg whites will take the edge off of just about anything.

isn't a bad place, but my frustration centers around stagnation. I didn't exactly complain about being sandwiched between mountain and beach, but the chefs tend to play it southern-and-safe. I've had many a Grilled Quail, for example, but BBQ sauce didn't make for a pleasing variation. When combined with collards and rice, the dish is fine dining with a southern flair, but the BBQ overshadows the delicate quail entirely.

But sometimes better-safe-than-sorry still applies. I bake on a beautiful beach every summer, and I visit the Blue Ridge Parkway every fall because they take my breath away every time. The fall leaves are a deep autumn orange, like the butternut squash Crostini and with pumpkin that lent its toasted seeds. The whipped ricotta peaks like ocean waves, and the bread crunches like sand beneath your flip flops.

Turns out, not everything stays the same. Things have been changing slowly but surely in recent years, and Raleigh has been raising the bar. Places like Stanbury have popped up in obscure areas, and their food has started to shift.

I didn't think I'd ever see Crispy Pig Head in this pristine, white-bread neighborhood. The duck egg adds richness and moisture, and the bed of field peas gives it a little texture, a tried treasure beneath a sharp, bitter arugula.

Raleigh isn't exactly tobacco-spittin' backwoods, but I couldn't see them venturing into the risky territory of non-skeletal muscle without some push-back from the white-meat-only clan. But plenty of people go for the Braised Pig Cheeks for the tender texture, well-balanced with tart kimchi on crispy, bitter brussel sprouts and soft, chewy mushrooms.

A lot of my cynicism stops at Stanbury, but cynicism isn't my only issue. Did I mention how judgmental I can be? One dish I will always judge is Steak Tartare. I've never disliked it, but vinaigrette just isn't my thing. The steak is irreproachably fresh and flavorful, but vinaigrette gives it the look and taste of ketchup, an American tradition I detest. Plus it feels incongruent with the cilantro and crab chips.

I also easily get bored, and when I saw the entrees at Stanbury, I almost fell asleep. Seared Scallops with roasted turnips and creamed greens? Where will I ever find something so unusual? Oh wait, at every restaurant by every southern beach. But these are exceptionally seared...(not sure if that's a thing)... After one bite into a fresh, tender scallop with a taste of sweet turnip and hint of creamy green stuff, I didn't care how many times it'd been done. All I know is it has rarely been done this well.

The scenery is breathtaking but so much of it boils down to trees. Miles and miles of monotonous treeeeees. But the color scheme is always a little different from one fall to the next, and small variations of a solid theme are nothing to sneeze at. When you make a good pasta like the House Made Tagliatelle, it hardly matters that it's not original. When coated with a pistachio pesto of pure genius, and scattered with fall favorites like kale and butternut squash, this winning combination is anything but boring.

My time in Raleigh had a definite beginning, middle, and end, and I think the best part was the end. Same goes for my Stanbury splurge. The Apple Tart is a delicate, down-home comfort with a flaky crust, sweet, polished apple slices in a cinnamon-y, fruity finish.

Pig parts aside, I saw mostly southern at Stanbury and was starting to think that they could only cook country with an occasional change-up in the ingredients. After all, you can only heart "y'all" so many times before you start to reckon it ain't a real word. But then Stanbury surprised me. The S'Mores features chocolate between dense cookie-crackers and a marshmallow charred to the max, a campfire favorite with a modern, new-age spin. 

I'll never believe that people can truly change, but apparently cities can. Raleigh was always so static in my motorized mind, but Stanbury proves that a slow but steady shift is forming in the world of food. I don't re-visit Raleigh very often, but I'm excited to see what evolves now that Stanbury is leading the way.

Milk - Los Angeles

Everyone gets a guilty pleasure. I've whittled away hours laughing at the lists on Buzzfeed, my friend Tariq sings Taylor Swift. And who doesn't get hot and bothered at the sight of Oberyn Martel every time they watch Game of Thrones?

Well Milk knew just how to cater to all my guilty pleasures. The Thai Tea Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich was a sweet drink in melty, solid form with a ton of tea-taste in a golden Oberyn-orange, reminiscent of the dusky hues of the tunic he would so readily remove. 

I do love gawking at a good-looking man, but sometimes being a girl is best. There's nothing that makes me laugh more than shaking it off around my kitchen and telling the haters to just hate, hate, hate. The Vanilla Bean Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich is as lightly vanilla as Taylor Swift, carefree and only moderately sweet, the perfect treat to burn off with a little dance.

When I'm done dancing, I start trying to get sleepy before bed. But one episode of Law & Order SVU leads to another, and next thing I know I'm up half the night, as if I had an entire Strawberry Shortcake Shake before bed. It's a sugar-load for sure, with piles of strawberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream, layered with cookie crumbles and sponge cake sin.

Some may argue that Milk can be a bit too much, but IMHO, a guilty pleasure is supposed to feel like a cardinal sin. The way I see it, there are much worse sins than getting fat at Milk so I'll be milking it for all it's worth.

Jtyh Restaurant - Rosemead

In case you couldn't tell by my previous review, I don't have the best luck with men. Clearly I cling to the crazies, but there are other problems beyond my control as well. For example, I tend to go for manly men. By manly, I mean a wood-chopping, beer-guzzling guys with shirt-ripping muscles acquired from something other than a personal trainer who looks like Ben Stiller in Dodgeball.

I don't know how I'll find this man, but when I do I'll know. And when we dig into a dish of hand-rolled cold Noodles in House Sauce at an unpretentious cafe-style setup like Jtyh, he'll really dig in. No dainty dabbing of the lips here, just stuff so many noodles into your mouth you have to bite them and let the rest fall onto your plate. Bonus points if you drop some into the lap you forgot to put a napkin in because you're a bad Asian like me and never mastered chopsticks. And if I hear you slurp this ropy round with its unpretentious soy-based sauce, I'll kiss you by the end of the night no matter how many crudely-chopped cubes of garlic you just ate.

A dude-bro once told me that no one can be a bigger man than me. Unfortunately, it's hard NOT to be the bigger man in a city where the guys manicure their lawns AND their toes. Fortunately, Jtyh dishes out a good dose of MAN with the dao xiao mian. 

A guy who shaves noodles into a boiling broth with a huge knife? I will slurp him up even faster than the Beef Stewed Noodle Soup. This hearty, rugged broth is meaty minus the greasy and the stewed chunks of marbeled beef break apart in your mouth.

I'm not really a fan of non-facial hair...or facial hair, for that matter, but the SoCal pretty-boys could use a little more on the chest. It adds a little character with some texture and depth, the same way a little more thin-sliced lamb would have enhanced the Lamb Fried Noodles. But make no mistake, these stir-fried noodles have shaved sides curl like waves of sweaty hair after a day of lifting at the gym, and that glimpse of gamy flavor will fill you up like the Chinese version of a Hungry Man dinner.

It's hard to find a manly-man in a city where the guys are paying up to have their cuticles clipped and their chest hair removed, but Jtyh kind of restores my faith. Unsurprisingly, there are only five knife-shaved noodle houses in the LA area, where manly-men are about as common as unicorns. I guess you can wish me happy hunting because the minute I find one, I'm never letting him go.

Convinced by Kantaro Sushi UPDATE - Torrance

Online dating is a new thing for me, but I like to think I learn something on every date. Unfortunately, I went on one of my first online dates at Kantaro, where I learned that overexposed profile pics can hide a lot of acne, and unlike the omekase at Kantaro, it's been going downhill ever since.

Like the lonely man who tried to invite himself on my two-week April vacation on the first date, Kantaro cuts to the chase. No polite fillers of silence, just a stunning Sashimi Plate to start. The black seabass slices are transparently thin, and the fatty parts dissolve. The tuna is a sophisticated cut with a flavor as deep as the red, but the monkfish liver pate has delicate liver-savor flavors that come to life on the tongue.

The tuna is pretty, and the monkfish is just a boring beige, but personality is what matters in the end. Some personalities are as rich as the fatty belly ofToro, and others have a more subtle polish like the Amber Jack. It really just comes down to what you prefer, but desperation is never desirable. That said, you can't force someone to like you. "I love how much he stalked me after the second date", said no woman ever.  Oh, and no woman is going to marry you because you accused her of leaving you hanging... While she was asleep.

Good things don't have to be deliberate - they have a tendency to reappear. The black sea bass sashimi-garnish makes quite the encore as lightly battered boxes of flaky fish and grainy seeds of fish egg. You can also break off chunks of bone for a fish n' chips-like crunch.

If there is no chemistry, or if something just doesn't feel right, nothing anyone does will change the outcome. A real connection is pure, smooth sweetness with just the right blaze of fire and tinge of tang like the Halibut and Scallop nigiri with yuzu pepper and a drop of lemon.

If you're lucky enough to find a true, mutual connection, be sure to never let it go. That said, some things are better left unsaid. Ignorance is one such thing. When asked why you have no desire to leave the country, for example, you may want to make up with a better excuse than, "You know, those Mexican drug cartels, they murder people." Never feeling the rays of a tropical sun burst over your skin like pearls of Salmon Roe on your taste buds is a crying shame, and never immersing yourself in a culture unlike your own is almost as sad as never tasting the sweet grit of a good Blue Crab.

The worst date I ever went on lasted a grand total of ten torturous minutes. I'm usually pretty non-confrontational, but this time I used constructive criticism. I actually SAID... Aloud..."You can't be ugly AND mean. You have to be ugly and nice, hot and mean, or rich and any combination of the above... And you'll never be rich enough."

What was rich, however was the deep-fried white-fish Maki and small Chirashi Bowl. The octopus was a temperate, firmly-soft flap that released a little fragrance with each chew. The tasty tuna made a welcome reappearance, and an amaebi reared its ugly head.

But unlike that disaster-date, they can take the amaebi head back to the kitchen to fix its flaws. The head has a crazy, craveable crunch when they bring it back battered and fried, and don't let the idea of head freak you out - it tastes a little like roe.

Unlike all my dates, my dinner at Kantaro actually ended well. The Yellowtail Hand Roll didn't fall apart under my sarcastic bite, a slimy-appearing Eel turns sweet with the right boil and a brush of sauce, a smooth Tamago finishes with a fine touch...

And Green Tea Ice Cream is a lightly-sugared encore to the perfect meal.

Online dating isn't what it used to be. You never know if you're getting what you paid for nowadays, and the only thing I've learned is that I wasn't getting my money's worth on Match. Twenty-five dollars a month can't find me a man that doesn't look like a nightmare, but a mere $45 gets me the omekase of my dreams. From now on, I think I'll put my money where my mouth is.

Kotohira - Gardena

My hospital feeds us while we work, and for the resident swimming in debt and drowning in loans, three free meals a day is a pretty sweet deal. I'm hardly one to complain about an added bonus, but nearly two years of intermittently exclaiming "Wow, that was really edible!" has made me a little less enthusiastic about cafeteria food...until I went to Kotohira.

Kotohira is a Japanese cafeteria-food restaurant, dishing up culturally classic staples while hiding in a small strip mall in Gardena. Their ingredients are basic, their prep is simple, and the food even comes on a lacquered tray, but I get the feeling I could eat here every day and not get bored.

The hospital cafeteria specializes in various amorphously-textured blocks of firm tofu in some sort of very strong sauce. Be it curry, pineapple, or jerk, it's only a matter of time before every crumbly bite starts to taste the same. Kotohira serves tofu too, but the Agedashi Tofu, a simple staple with crispy, chewy skin covering melty silken-ness, soaking in a light, shoyu-ish broth adds dimension by mixing textures with the flavor.

The one decent thing the hospital cafeteria serves is fried chicken. The chicken stays moist inside the breading, which is very acceptably seasoned. The Japanese have their own version of fried chicken, and Kotohira’s Chicken Katsudon comes with chunks of dark meat aren't just coated with a little spice. The sauce seeps all the way through the marbling mix of meat and egg over rice. All that chicken gets me pretty thirsty, but I’ve never been a huge fan of tea. Fortunately, the Mini Katsudon Combination comes with Tanuki Udon, a light broth with thick, carb-y noodles, topped with chewy fish cakes and a lattice of tempura lace.

The one thing the hospital cafeteria makes consistently well is the soup. The lentils are hearty, and the chicken tortilla soup has a detectable southwestern spice. But it's hard to appreciate cafeteria soup when we’re surrounded by the authentic ramen of Torrance.  My ramen consumption is starting to reach overdose status, and the Pork Udon, a sparser, thick-noodled, Tanuki-esque-but-heavier soup was a brief breather after years of thick, fat-droplet-filled tonkotsu.  

I’ve spent a lot of time savoring the best offerings of the South Bay’s Japanese population so it’s no surprise I’m not always content to savor my sad chicken or enhance my soggy enchilada with pickled jalapeño at work. But I had accepted that cafeteria food could only be so good, so I figured I could at least watch my savings account grow with every bite. Now thanks to a hole-in-the-wall in Gardena, I see just how much better it could be, and every time I'm hungry at work I have to go to Gardena or starve.