Accidental Hedonist

Yummy Teriyaki
4746 California Ave SW
Seattle, WA 98116

This here is the first of hopefully dozens reviews of teriyaki restaurants found here in Seattle. I’m going to try to publish these primarily on Saturdays, when traffic is a little slower on the site, and the readers tend to be more from the Pacific NW. This is me giving back to my community.

I have to say that writing reviews on Saturday mornings is fraught with distractions. First, my head is full of cobwebs from sleeping in. The caffeine (in the form of a latte from the local cafe) has yet to fully take affect. Instead of the words jumping out from the page, they’ll more likely wave, or perhaps give a simply nod of acknowledgment.

It has been my experience that the great majority of teriyaki restaurant in the Seattle area work on two premises which can summed up in one sentence: We must sell cheap food served in as short of a time as possible. As “taste” or “quality” never really make it into consideration, I have found that there are teriyaki establishments so bad as to be comical. A discovery of an adequate teriyaki restaurant is akin to winning five dollars on a scratch off lottery ticket: It’s a little unexpected, but not unheard of, and in several days the experience will be forgotten.

Which brings me to Yummy Teriyaki. The oxymoronic phrase “perfectly mediocre” describes the place wonderfully. The reasons are listed below.

Chicken Teriyaki:
Chicken: (2.5 point) The chicken was charbroiled, which was good. It was also borderline dry, which was not good, but acceptable. It was rather apparent that the chicken had not been marinated in the sauce, but rather was dipped in the sauce after cooking.

Teriyaki Sauce: (3 points) The sauce was sweet but it was used sparingly. This could have worked if the chicken and rice tasted better. Since this was not case, it made the weakness of the chicken stand out, and there was little to no sauce left to mix with the rice.

Rice: (2.5 points) It was your typical white sticky rice. Sticky, but a little underdone, making it nearly crunchy.

Side Dishes: (4 points)It was a rather nice cabbage slaw, a nice turn from the iceberg lettuce salads that usually accompany teriyaki dishes.

Menu: (3 points)
It was a fairly standard menu. It did include the Korean dish Bulgogi, which typically indicates to me that this was not a “traditional” teriyaki restaurant.

Other Entrees: (2.5 points)
Tara had the Spicy Chicken, and found it not great, but acceptable. She also had the gyoza which was not made in house, but rather obviously started the day frozen.

Intangibles: (4 points) Service was good and the presentation of the food caught us off guard (in a good way).

Total score? 21.5 out of 35 possible for an average score of 3.1. See? Perfectly mediocre.

If one to visit Seattle, one might notice that the most popular type of restaurant found in the area is not the ubiquitous franchised fast food joint, but rather the independently owned teriyaki Chicken stands. Often these places blend into the various urban commercial zones throught greater Seattle, hiding in various plazas and strip malls, or next to other more ‘sexy’ restaurants.

One may not realize just how many of these places exist until they sit down and count them. For example, within a 4 block radius from my home in West Seattle there are six teriyaki restaurants. As a comparison, within the same area there are three fast food restaurants, two pizza joints, and ten coffee shops.

Yes…ten coffee shops. I am not lacking for caffeine.

Tara and I have often asked the question “which teriyaki restaurant in the Seattle could be called ‘The Best’, or at least ‘Pretty Damn Good’?”. But teriyaki places are often ignored by the local food media. There are probably several good reasons for this, but it still leaves me with my question unanswered.

To that end, we’ve decided to go on our own little quest. We’re going to visit dozens of teriyaki restaurants and then rate them. By the end of the year, we should have a good idea on what criteria makes a good teriyaki joint and which places meet those criteria.

Here are our ground rules:

1. We have to eat at the restaurant. No take out.
2. I have to order Chicken Teriyaki. Nothing else except for a drink.
3. Tara has to order something other than Chicken Teriyaki.

Here are the aspects of the meal which we will rate:

Chicken Teriyaki:
Chicken: (0 – 5 points) Was the chicken moist? Fresh? Or was it rubbery and tasteless?

Teriyaki Sauce: (0 – 5 points) How was the chicken to sauce ratio? Was the sauce too thick or too sweet?

Rice: (0 – 5 points) Sticky? Has it been sitting out for a while? Does it complement the chicken and the sauce?

Side Dishes: (0 – 5 points)
What other foods were served with the Chicken Teriyaki? How tasteful were the dishes?

Menu: (0 – 5 points)
Did the restaurant have an extensive menu or did they have a limited selection of options for those not in the mood for chicken teriyaki?

Other Entrees: (0 – 5 points)
Did the other menu options meet or exceed the quality of the Chicken Teriyaki? Was the food good?

Intangibles: (0 – 5 points) Was there something that the restaurant offered that set it apart from other similar businesses?

Expect the teriyaki posts to start in two weeks or so, as I’ll be out of Seattle next week.

Technorati Tags: Teriyaki Restaurants, Restaurant Reviews

It’s been a long while since I’ve written a restaurant review here at the Hedonist. This was originally written for The Stranger, but they’ve decided to pass on it, for reasons I quite understand. I now find myself with a review and no place to put it.

At any rate, this review will mean nothing to any one not living in the Seattle area.

From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, I knew this place was going to be trouble. The sky was gray and the rain helped form little psychedelic puddles of motor oil and water upon the pavement. Looking up for the sign of the restaurant, the color within the name Van Loi seemed to have partially drained upon the rusting aluminum backdrop. I was half expecting a flash of lightening and a clap of thunder to help complete this visual cliché.

Van Loi is the kind of place that often gets missed by the various food guides and newspaper reviews. Instead, it is a place that caters almost exclusively to the Vietnamese community. The popularity of Van Loi is best described by the vast swathes of empty chairs that greeted Tara and myself during the Saturday dinner rush. Out of the 40 some-odd chairs within the room, two were occupied by two gentleman finishing up their Café Den Da (French Iced coffee), while in the back of the room three gentleman were involved in a game of Chinese chess.

One of the chess gentlemen was the host and waiter for the Van Loi, and he quickly sat us down at a table next to a row of mirrors that looked as if they were last washed back in 1997. He handed us menus and quickly departed to get us some ice water.

The cleanliness of a restaurant can often be determined simply by looking at two items: the restrooms and the menus. At Van Loi the menus complimented the décor of the place quite well, as each were sticky, unwashed, and carried a dull, yellow tinge about them. I decided then and there to not take a look at the washroom.

When the waiter came back, we ordered some Café Sua Da ($2.00) and waited for our food. The sweetened dark coffee was palatable enough, but failed to keep my interest. Perhaps I was missing the ritual of watching the fresh coffee drip into the condensed milk, as the coffee had arrived pre-mixed.

We started with an appetizer of Banh Beo Bi ($3,00), a collection of shredded pork and chopped green onions scattered atop of a bed of steamed rice cakes. The rice cakes were okay, and it was clear that they were made on site, but the pork was dry and coated with what I presumed was a dusting of rice flour, which made the dish unnervingly gritty. While fish sauce had covered up some of the dryness of the dish, no amount of flavor could get rid of the grit.

The Bahn Thit Nuon ($5.25), with its rice noodles , cucumbers, roasted peanuts and barbecued pork on a stick was marginally better. With the rice noodles carrying little or no flavor, it contrasted the sweetness of the pork fairly well, although it was difficult to ignore the fact that pork itself was dry.

While waiting for the various dishes to arrive, we noted that although we were the only diners in the place, they did do a fairly steady take out business. With the fresh rice noodles and cakes shoved delicately in the display counter, it looked like they make the vast majority of their money outside of the dining room. Perhaps the regular patrons of the place knew something that I had only just learned – the food is good enough to eat, just as long as you don’t stay in the restaurant for too long.

By the time the final dish showed up, I was hoping that things would get better. The Banh Cuon Thit Nuong ($5.50) didn’t make me love the place, but it did allow me to see the possibilities. The rice flour crepes, with the barbecued pork rolled up like a jelly roll convinced me to not to hate the place. But even this dish had a bit of the grit which gave this dish an odd mouthfeel. What pushed the restaurant out of the dregs and into the “mehˮ column was their use of mint in their side salad that came with this dish. Outside of their ubiquitous use of green onions , Van Loi was notable in it’s lack of use of herbs or foliage for flavoring, making the mint all the more striking upon its discovery. It was a nice touch, but if the best thing I can say about a place is that their side salads are “not badˮ, then there are clearly problems with the place.

Not that I think that the regulars mind. As we were leaving, I counted three cars pull up to the restaurant, the drivers having that “I must get dinnerˮ look in their eyes. As long as they were planning on take-out, I foresaw little problem.

Van Loi
3226 Rainier Ave S,
7 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Wed.,
6 a.m.-7 p.m. Thu.,
6 a.m.-7 p.m. Fri.-Sun.

We’ve talked about comps and how reviewers can abuse the system for their own benefit before. I believe thise NYPost Page six item illustrates this point rather well (login: login@accidentalhedonist.com password:hedonist)

After the wine-y critic was seated, Morfogen visited his table to confirm that everything was satisfactory. Given another opportunity to vent, Passmore obliged.

“The food is great, however, I didn’t like my treatment at the door,” he said.

Morfogen said he was dumbfounded. “Food writers come in unidentified,” he said. “You never know they’re in the room. This guy did everything the opposite. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was surreal.”

Things only got worse when Passmore was presented with a check at the end of the meal.

According to Morfogen, Passmore growled, “I do not pay when reviewing a restaurant. If I pay this check, I will write an unfavorable review about Philippe.”

“I’m not going to pay for a review,” Morfogen said he replied. “My policy is that I don’t comp for reviews.”

For better or worse, comps are part of the food industry. The ethics for taking comps is a matter that certainly lends itself for interesting discussions, but it doesn’t change the fact that comps exist.

However, some people have forgotten that comps are short for “complimentary”. They are a bonus, an addition, nothing more. Anyone who requires a comp to do their job has missed the point of food writing. Anyone who demands a comp is abusing their position and the privilege of that position.

However (and I’m only putting this out here to not convict Mr. Passmore outright), if I had a new restaurant in New York city and wanted to get noticed, what better way to get publicity than to manufacture an episode that paints their location as a victim while putting any review of the place by a specific critic under the category of “compromised and biased”?

It’s a cynical thought to be sure, but one that should at least be acknowledged, even if only to dismiss it as “too contrived”. Personally I tend to believe the restaurant’s story, if only because it’s the one more likely to happen. As Occams Razor states: Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler. A critic acting like many humans act when they have presumed “power” is far more likely than my own conspiracy theories. But innocent until proven guilty, I suppose.

If you want to read the entire article, I’m posting it below the jump, as I have no idea on how long the link above will work.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Food Writing, Ethics

Read more! »

John Mariani tells his side of the story in regard to the Critics vs. Comps issue I talked about a while back.

The a variety of interesting things he writes about, but the one I focused on is the following:

The reason comps exist is simply BECAUSE media cannot afford the money required to make food and travel sections possible. It is on record that the NY Times spends well over $100,000 on its restaurant critic’s expenses each year. I doubt very many newspapers, excepting the very biggest, have paid $20,000 and more for their restaurant critics to spend in one year. I’ve had such jobs, and believe me, if I went over $1,000 a month, I heard about it from my editor. How many other papers or magazines, now with chronically reduced bugets and staff, can afford to spend anything close to that amount? Which is why they pick up so much freelance and syndicated material and never asked who paid for what.

This is something that Steven Shaw had mentioned as well. For all this talk of ethical standards that the New York Times and other similar institutions put on their payed staff, these standards not only do not apply to freelancers, but cannot. For if the freelancers were forced to pay their own way, they’d never be able to work as food or travel writers.

He also touches upon the Moto comments as well as the Cleveland comments. For those who are interested in this story, his posts (and the subsequent ones) are a must read.

Kudos to eGullet and to Mr. Mariani for helping clarify this episode.

Which reminds me. From here on out, I will endeavor to let you guys know of any influences that may bias my own opinions. I’ll codify into a post the same way that I documented the PR Agreement post.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, John Mariani, Journalistic Ethics,Food Writing

Now comes a discussion on one of several topics that makes me all heeby-jeeby — ethics and food writing.

For those of you not prone to following the times and travails of food critics, there’s been a bit of a brou-ha-ha of late revolving around one John Mariani. Mr. Mariani is a food critic for Esquire Magazine and his word carries a fair amount of weight in the food industry.

He’s also been recently bitch-slapped by Chicago Chef Homaro Cantu, where Cantu accused Mariani of sending Cantu’s PR people “a four-page list of requests before dining at moto (Cantu’s restaurant) last year, asking the restaurant to pay for everything from cab fare to his hotel bill — requests the restaurant did not honor”.

Mr. Mariani and Esquire magazine have both denied these accusations, but Esquire hedged their bets by stating that Mariani is a freelance correspondent for the magazine, not a restaurant critic. Which would be all well and except for the recent column in Esquire where Mariani has penned an annual list of the nation’s “20 Best New Restaurants“. Pardon me for saying, but the title smells oddly like a backhanded compilations of reviews, unless the initial title of the piece was “20 Best New Restaurants that I, John Mariani, Have Eaten In and Have Not Compared Against Any Other Restaurant”.

Call me crazy, but when you say one restaurant deserves to be on a “Best of” list, and another doesn’t, that’s a review — an oversimplified and inferred review, but a review nonetheless. But I am picking at nits here.

The real issue comes down to what is the ethical standard when doing reviews? The Association of Food Journalists recommends reviewers dine anonymously when possible and not make reservations under their own names, and a list of several other behaviors to which critics should adhere. According to this piece in the LA Times, Mariani misses the mark on several of these activities.

But I don’t think that Mr. Mariani is at fault here. As I’ve started dabbling my toe or two into the Food Press, there’s an underworld at work that the general audience doesn’t get to see, that of the publicist and various PR firms. Their job is to get their clients — whether it’s a chef, restaurant or a product — noticed. They do this because a chef, restaurant or producer go out of their way to get those with a voice (like John Mariani, or on a much smaller scale, this site) to notice them.

Also, as Steven Shaw noted in an eGullet forum thread about Mariani:

Paying for a meal doesn’t necessarily make a writer unbiased. Accepting a comp doesn’t necessarily make a writer biased. Those who sell out deserve the disapprobation of all; those who write with integrity don’t deserve to be dismissed just because they accept a subsidy….

…the travel and food media would contract to a fraction of their current size if comps were eliminated, and what would remain would be the old money, unimaginative, increasingly-irrelevant-and-biased-despite-unlimited-budgets old media. Comps are the basis on which smaller, newer media outlets and freelancers exist.

To which I’ll add, sometimes getting comped products can be a good thing, especially when you get something great that you hadn’t expected. Not to bring it back to me, me, me, but I felt oddly good writing about Adagio Tea the other day. Not because it was a free product (which it was), but because it’s a damn fine product. Does the fact that it was given to me by the tea company change the quality of a product? Not at all. What is at stake here is how you, the reader, interpret a review and the perceived biases of the writer.

Granted, there’s a huge difference between restaurant review and product reviews. But the real issue is the matter of trust built amongst the readers of the reviewer. Mariani writes damn fine reviews, well thought out, and perceptive. That he has built a credit line of trust amongst his readers is undeniable. Whether his reputation will be tarnished by this incident remains to be seen. His biggest unproven crime, it seems, is not that he accepted comps, but that he started asking for them — and here’s the biggest point — got caught doing so. Do you believe that he’s the only food writer out there that asks for comps?

I’m not trying to deny that there’s a fine line here, as there most certainly is. The skill of a reviewer comes not only from their writing, but also from their ability to navigate what compromises their stated ethics and what doesn’t. Without the former ability, readers won’t come to the writer, without the latter, the readers won’t stay.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food Writing, Journalistic Ethics, Reviews

The Seattle PI gave a negative review to a local restaurant (Villa Cosenza, for those who want to know).

When the PI pans your restaurant, you know you have problems.