Wagamama, Boston, MA

On a trip with some friends, I ended up eating at Wagamama in Boston, and checking out their modern and funky flair. I only ordered some cheesecake, but the lovely humans around me were more than inclined to share their dishes, too! The restaurant had a bright, bustling family style atmosphere of eating, with benches on long tables, and during that time, I got really close to the people I was with.

First on the menu was the ebi chilli mein, ordered by the wonderful Lily and eaten, for a good part, by me! It's a shrimp and noodle based dish with lots of veggies and a red chili and tomato sauce on top. The vegetables were roasted and charred to perfection, and the noodles were both tender and firm, perfectly covered in sauce. There was a good deal of vegetables and a wide range within the dish, but I mainly got peppers, which had a good char, but not as much of a crunch as I'd have liked.Because of the stir fry method of cooking, every single piece of food got dunked in this fantastic chili sauce, which was savory and bright red. Although the sauce had tomatoes in it, I found it slightly egregious that they billed it as a chili sauce when the predominant flavor was tomato, but the sauce had a light kick and a different consistency than your run of the mill marinara.

Of course, there's always a protein in these dishes, and in this case, it was shrimp. Having never been a fan of shrimp because of some bad seafood at a hibachi restaurant some six years back, I've always stayed away from the little crustaceans, but in this dish, it was hard to resist. In my portion alone, roughly 1/3 of the plate, I had at least five big, beautiful, curled shrimp, perfectly pink and bursting with juices. With the noodles and the sauce that they'd soaked up, they had the consistency and moistness of a good cooked chicken breast, with that shrimpy texture, slightly corrugated, and a nice burst, they were a perfect addition to the noodle and vegetable medley, even better than chicken.While I was eating all of that goodness, my cheesecake came. It wasn't just any cheesecake, though. It was a ginger cheesecake on a biscuit base, with white chocolate sauce on top. It was a pretty hefty slice for $3.95, and immediately, I could smell the fresh ginger coming up from the cake. The cheesecake was very moist and creamy, but the texture was different. Within the creamy part, there were little strands, almost like eating an orange, with a similar palatable tang and mouthfeel. That was the ginger, and it juxtaposed the cream cheese base with a spicy POW of heat and that wonderful ginger flavor. I like that this wasn't just a regular cheesecake made with ginger extract or powder, because with the strands of silky ginger, it just went that extra step to making it perfect and firmer than your average cheesecake.

The white chocolate, though thinly drizzled, added a big flavor to the cheesecake as a whole, too. I thought imparted a slightly sweeter flavor to the cake and, like powdered sugar, made it slightly sugary and gave a nice little texture differentiation to it, too. I think that the only part of the cake that I wasn't gushing over was the biscuit crust. While it was definitely an original crust, reminding me of arrowroot biscuits, it was thin and mushy underneath, unable to handle the liquids from the cake, and wasn't crunchy or exciting at all.Now although that was the dessert section of the meal, a few friends and I had ordered the Japanese flatbread as a side and it arrived late, so it was free! So, technically speaking, we had that for dessert. What I thought would be a pillowy, naan resembling bread with toppings on top, hence flatbread, was actually more of a Japanese quesadilla. It was stuffed to the gills with toppings, with monterey jack cheese, chicken, scallions, and sweet corn. The cheese, which is supposed to be sharp, was bland, though gooey, and was more flavorful with the chicken added to it. That was moist and covered in soy sauce, with nice little chunks for easy eating. I was expecting a lot more sweet corn in the bread, as that was what really drew me to it, along with the dipping sauce, but the amount was scattered and sparse, but still sweet when I bit into it. No scallion flavor to be found, rather, they were used as more of a garnish than a flavor additive.

The dipping sauce was strange. What was supposedly chili sauce was more of a paprika tasting, mayonnaise/salad dressing conglomerate with a strange aftertaste that I wasn't able to quite place. I wasn't a big fan of that and favored the plain flatbread over the bread with the sauce. A shame because generally sauces at restaurants are tasty, but this one was off. All in all, I'd love to try more of Wagamama's offerings, and thought that dinner with friends was fantastic and fun. I look forward to more of it in the summertime.

Amano Dos Rios 70% Dark Chocolate

All right, kids, dorm week is over and I'm back to my regular reviews. Coming up from Amano is another artisan chocolate bar with beans from the Dominican Republic.This bar is hand crafted and has a nice, consistent color, reminding me of coffee before cream is whisked in. Slightly dry, it's a softer chocolate, but still has a fantastic snap, and as soon as I popped a piece in my mouth, I got an immediate sensation of licorice- less of the heavy black stuff you can tie in braids, and more of an intense, planty flavor mixed with the heady sensation of a nice dark roast. The texture isn't as moist or creamy as some, but for a 70% dark chocolate, it manages to sap away a good part of the bitterness, which imparts itself upon your tongue as the finish, a long and drawn out finish at that, secedes to a creamy, herby tang with notes of cinnamon and an overall warm sensation.This chocolate is very evocative of warm weather and the flavor is layered perfectly. I think that with the texture of the chocolate, how it's soft and melts so evenly, it's an excellent and beautifully complex chocolate that would pair well with a smoky Côte-Rôtie or a good, strong dark coffee. I loved this bar and thought that the flavors stayed really well within the layers of the bar and maintained a smooth, chocolatey flavor amidst all the different tastes.

Fuel

I'm not one to count calories, but I do try to put healthy foods into my body at most meals, so can appreciate the health conscious, everything-under-500 calories menu at Fuel.

Now, be careful with those calorie counts printed on the menu. Those numbers don't include bread or tortillas if you opt to get an item as a sandwich or wrap. And, of course, a bit more oil here or a bigger piece of chicken there than the original recipe calls for, and those numbers mean nothing.

And, muscle jocks, note that protein grams are printed on the menu, as well.

I also appreciate that many of Fuel's menu items are vegetarian or have an option of adding tofu, but am miffed that subbing tofu for chicken is the more expensive option. Tofu is dirt cheap.

Fuel, the East Passyunk casual eatery owned by radio host, DJ and trained chef, Rocco Cima, is decked out in minimalist black and bright red and green. Add the too loud pop dance music that's constantly rocking and music videos playing, and you might thing you're at a Christmas rave. The music is pumped onto the street, as well, making the uncomfortable slatted metal bistro chairs the least of your al fresco dining pains.Smoothies are part of Fuel's juice and coffee bar menu, and the Fruit Fuzzion with strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, and bananas was solid.Fuel's menu and table-top display calls attention to their many "award winning" items. We suspect Fuel was handing out the awards themselves, but decided to take the bait on the "award winning" sweet pea wonton dip.
The vibrant green, chunky green pea dip topped with sun dried tomatoes is evenly tempered, not too garlicky or salty, but certainly not bland. The grilled wonton chip are delicately thin, keeping carbs and calories low. The Thai tofu wrap had a pleasantly light and tangy peanut sauce, fresh cucumbers and carrots, and a surprise crunch from noodles. If basil had been included, as the menu suggested, the wrap would have been better. The uncooked and unseasoned tofu was a huge disappointment, though.

Tofu aside, the Thai wrap was pleasant, but not outstanding. Marinated tofu either grilled or baked would have added much flavor and a more pleasing texture without adding too many extra calories. Something Fuel might want to consider.

The accompanying side salad was simply mixed greens dressed with a maybe too vinegary balsamic vinaigrette.The Fuel Stacker was ordered as a pannini, probably doubling the calorie count printed on the menu, even though the bread is a low fat loaf specially baked for Fuel at neighboring Nino's Bakery. Grilled portabello, zucchini, eggplant, squash, tomato, melted Mozzarella and pesto make for a sizable, if standard vegetarian sandwich.

Fuel is not a destination dining spot by any means, but makes for a decent, everything-under-$10, casual lunch, dinner, or weekend brunch (egg white omelette, any one?) stop when cruising the Avenue...as long as you can stomach the pumping jams. Skip the bread if you're truly calorie conscious.

Fuel
1917 E. Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19148
215-468-FUEL
Mon-Sat: 11am-10pm
Sun: 11am-9pm

Red Baron Meat Trio Singles

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, this is how they immortalize you?

Imagine this. 80 kills in combat, while flying, with the potential for many more unconfirmed, and this is your prize. Forever being recognized as the crappy microwave pizza, second, always, to Freschetta. Oh, and also being turned into a vampire in a crappy bodice ripper.It's like putting General George Patton on second-rate toilet paper or Hitler making an appearance in Pearls Before Swine. If it weren't for the distinguishing light-hearted characteristics, history would be completely left in the dust.

Don't even get me started on the jokes about his airplane, the Fokker Dr.I.

But let's move onto his pizza. I got the meat trio, which has cubes of ham, pepperoni, and sausage in it. With my first pizza, the one in the photo, I definitely overmicrowaved it. With these pizzas, it's necessary to watch them or else the deep dish crust gets caustic and bubbles all over the crisping tray. The cheese basically evaporated off the crust and it was chewy on the inside and cracker like on the outside. I couldn't taste the meat because my tongue had burnt off. It then became a meat quadruped.However, with the second pizza, I watched it carefully, and at the first hint of bubbling around the edges, I whisked it out of the microwave oven. This time, the cheese was all intact, despite being slightly unmelted on the inside, and was slightly gooey and all right. There wasn't a lot of meat, and there was no meaty texture, but the flavor of meat was there. Meat essence. The cheese was rubbery and mixed with the sauce, which was definitely the dominant flavor. With the sauciness and the chewy crust, it reminded me of a cheap Grandma pizza.All in all, there was nothing special about this pizza. I'd have definitely cooked them in the oven, like the premium singles I tried last August, but I won't be buying this again for a quick snack. The flavor is nice and the crust is thick enough to hold, but I wasn't impressed.

Chocolate 101 @ UMass

Yesterday, through the help of my boss, Martha Monaghan and the generous UMass Dining, I had the opportunity to take a chocolate-making class with eleven other students and the head pastry chef at UMass, Chef Simon Stevenson.

We got there and went to one of the dining commons' showrooms, where we got a little briefing about what chocolate is, where it comes from, and how it's made. Chef Simon passed around a whole dried cocoa bean and a split one, with the seeds rattling around inside. He told us about the five ingredients required to make chocolate- ground cocoa beans, soy lethicin, sugar, chocolate liquor, and cocoa butter, and we went through the process that chocolate goes through to become the form we all know and love.

After getting an education into our beans, ha ha, we went down to the Hampden Bake Shop, where all of UMass's desserts are made on site, and got a feel for the kitchen and had a chocolate tasting. Chef Simon wanted us to get all of the notes and tones of the chocolate's flavors in their variations, much like a fine wine. As you can imagine, this was no daunting task for me, having sampled many chocolates and wines, so I knew the drill.We tried nine different chocolates from Felchlin, starting with cocoa butter. That was waxy and tasted like eating lotion straight out of the bottle, and it had a very slow and fatty melt. The next one was a 100% dark chocolate, and it was very bitter and had a coffee flavor, like eating the straight, dark roast beans, and a nuttiness to it. Not my favorite. After that was a 74% dark, which was preferable to the 100%, and had a more developed chocolate flavor. It wasn't bitter at all, and although it melted slowly, I found that the finish was nice and long, and very clean, and the bite was similar to the coffee notes in the last one, but richer. The next one we tried was voted the best chocolate in the world, the Grand Cru Maracaibo 65%, which was sweet and dark and smooth, with a long finish and a raisiny aftertaste. It was sweet and the flavors were intense and delicious.The next few were similar, but I don't remember their percentages aside from a remarkable 58% dark chocolate that was sweet and caramely and had a great, milky, creamy flavor and a softer crunch to it. That was my favorite out of all of them, because it tasted a lot like a milk chocolate but was still dark, with no milk or milk solids added at all. We tasted an entire spectrum, ending with Felchlin's milk and white chocolate, which were also sublime. And then we got to the stars of the show- making chocolate!

On the bar today was a chocolate ganache for hand-rolled truffles, chocolate lava cakes, and tuxedo strawberries. We started out by gathering the chocolate for our ganache and boiling the cream, and then gently stirring the two together. After we whisked the ganache and let it cool, we were shown a table with different flavorings that we could add to our ganache. Once we'd tasted them all, orange and lemon being the general favorite, our group decided that banana would be the best, and once we added it in, boy, was it good! It tasted like chocolate chip banana bread soup.

We set that aside and let it cool and got everything ready to make chocolate lava cakes. Chef Simon explained how, in an industrial kitchen, they use formulas, not recipes, with measurements by weight so everything turns out the same. So we got started with that, whipping sugared egg yolks and eggs into a full, puffy volume and adding our flour and melted butter and chocolate until we had a very mousse-like, fluffy batter. That alone looked good enough to eat, but we had to scoop it into ramekins, add the frozen ganache insert and let them bake. While those were baking, we started on our tuxedo strawberries with a little lesson on writing chocolate. Chef Simon told us about how having a higher concentration of vegetable oil over cocoa butter makes it easier to pipe from a paper cone and write with. He drew us an impressive, loopy alphabet with chocolate and demonstrated a beautiful strawberry, and then we all got to work. We each got three big, beautiful berries, which we dipped in white chocolate first, and then two sides of dark chocolate for the tuxedo jacket. Once that dried completely, we took the little piping bags and drew on little buttons and bow ties. All of a sudden, the lava cakes were done! We took a break to take a taste of our little cakes and see how they came out. They were amazing and hot, fresh from the oven! The tops were crunchy and the inside was fluffy and moist, with a fantastic and light chocolate flavor. They were so fluffy, like little clouds, and the ganache was rich and plentiful. I was so proud of myself for contributing to that success, and we definitely reaped the benefits of our labor!We had to leave the cakes to eat later, because it was time to hand-roll our truffles! We took them out of the freezer, where the ganache rested in squeeze bottles, and we piped the ganache into chocolate shells. They looked like little olives. After piping, we flash froze them and got a tutorial on chocolate tempering and how to fill and dunk the truffles, and then we did that ourselves. My first group member handed me each truffle, and then I got chocolate all over my hands and gave the truffles a bath in melted chocolate, then passed them to my partner, who rolled them in cocoa powder and put them on parchment paper. And then, we ate!The truffles were elegant, delicious, and looked like the real thing! They were delicious and solidified well. We got 21 to take home. By the time those were done, though, we were out of time and sadly had to leave the beautiful kitchen and beautiful KitchenAid mixers I was drooling over. I have to get myself a tangerine mixer before I hit 21, goddammit! And we left with Felchlin bags, information and goods in hand, as well as two extra chocolate lava cakes, frozen and ready for baking!It was probably one of the best experiences I've had so far at UMass, and I look forward to trying out the other culinary classes here. Thanks, UMass Dining, Chef Stevens, Jean, and Martha!

Next up on the roster: My first trade show: trials and tribulations!

Pepperoni Pizzeria Hot Pockets

Gamers, agoraphobics, college students, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Hot Pockets, not to praise them.
The evil that men eat lives after them;
The good that is oft interred with their appetites;
So let it be with Foodette. The noble Hot Pockets
Hath told you Foodette was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievious fault,
And grievously hath Foodette answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Nestle and the rest-
For Hot Pockets are an honorable food;
So are they all, all honorable foods-
Come I to speak in Foodette's funeral,
She was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But the Hot Pockets say she was ambitious;
And the Hot Pockets are an honorable snack.
She hath brought many groceries home to the refrigerator
Whose nutrients did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Foodette seem ambitious?
When that the hungry have cried,
Foodette hath wept:
Snacks should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet the Hot Pockets say they were delicious;
And Nestle is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the website
I thrice presented her a Kinder Egg,
Which she did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet the Hot Pockets say she was ambitious;
And, sure, they are an honorable snack.
I speak not to disprove what the Hot Pockets spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love her once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for her?
O judgment! thou art fled to freezer burnt favors,
And men have lost their taste.
Bear with me;
My heart is in the freezer there with Foodette,
And I must pause till it come back to me.Hot Pockets are absolutely gross, dishonorable, and stab people in the back. There. Now you have the equivalent education of someone with an English degree. See how helpful this website can be?My particular Hot Pocket, that of the pepperoni pizzeria variety, was a hollow shell of a snack, with about 25% of the pepperoni depicted on the box, and none of the cheese. The sauce was slimy and cold, and the gaping maw of the crust, tho' filled with authentic herbs and spices, depicted a shallow dearth from whence there is no return. The taste- Satan's pubes, I dare say! Alas, to die, to sleep; no more- for I now wander the planes of indigestion and stomach pains.

Tirol Premium Roundup

Premium Tirol are rather difficult to locate in the United States. Many Japanese stores in the Midwest carry the regular assorted Tirol packs, but I have never seen the premium variety in stores.

The flavors in this review are Cream Anmitsu, Vanilla Yogurt, and Hokkaido Cheese, and they were purchased from napaJapan. Premium Tirol are slightly larger (and supposedly of better quality) than the standard variety, and the flavors are changed more regularly, much like KitKats.


First up was Cream Anmitsu, which was a Tirol version of a popular Japanese dessert that is somewhat like a fruit salad with jellies, red beans, ice cream, and sometimes mochi. The piece smelled like azuki and mochi, and the gel and syrup were slightly sweet. The gel inside was like the agar jelly in the dessert - the texture reminds me of chewing on the inside of your cheek. The chocolate was smooth, creamy, and carried most of the bean flavor. The syrup gave the whole thing a fruity feel, and was a great representation of the actual dessert! A-


Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, is known for its dairy products, thus we have Hokkaido Cheese flavored Tirol. It smelled and tasted just like cheese spread and not like real cheese. There was no sign of chocolate here, just a processed cheese flavor with a crunchy biscuit. If that's your thing, you'd probably like it. I was surprised at the uniqueness, but not impressed with the flavor, and my husband thought it tasted like Combos. C


Finally, there was Vanilla Yogurt (and a different light source in my photo). It had a strong vanilla scent, and a cool vanilla taste. It was like a creamy white chocolate homemade candy (think a meltaway mint without the mint) that melted in my mouth. The syrup inside was basically simple syrup infused with vanilla, and the center piece felt like meringue on my tongue. It was quite tasty, but I didn't really taste yogurt, just vanilla and white chocolate. I have never tried the actual product on which it is based, but I did like the chocolate. B+

Orchid64 of Japanese Snack Reviews has also reviewed all three of these flavors, so have a look at her take on Hokkaido Cheese, Cream Anmitsu, and Vanilla Yogurt. For a positive review of Hokkaido Cheese, check out Tasty Japan.

Tirol website