Eating Japanese Inn Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating Japanese Inn Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) loved it that I was a little exchange student in Japan in the 1980s.  She agreed that it would be fun to learn about the cuisine of a Japanese grill and sushi bar.

So, my husband Laurent and I bundled up Florence for a blustry, rainy ride out to Robata Grill in Carmel (California).

The following is the article I wrote for the Monterey County Weekly:

“Honored guests are here,” says Robata’s owner in Japanese that is loud enough for her staff to hear as she seats patrons at their tables.  The affect is to make the Japanese surroundings even more inviting in a restaurant whose name means “fireside.”

Fireside dining is always available on Robata’s patio, but when we visited the restaurant, my husband, Florence, and I chose to eat in the cozy indoors with dark, woodwork, ricepaper covering false windows and hanging red lanterns.

Laurent picked up on the Japanese genius for design by noticing how one table would be covered with a blue tablecloth, while the table next to it was covered with two blue cloth napkins laid out to look like diamonds.  Japanese music played softly.

Robata’s menu reflects the steakhouse and sushi bar tradition that became popular in the U.S. as chefs applied Japanese cooking methods to items such as beef that rarely show up in Japanese cuisine.

The appetizer Laurent ordered, called kushiyaki, was a filet mignon kebab with teriyaki sauce that qualifies as a Japanese steakhouse tradition.  Green peppers separated the tender, grilled chunks of meat that the chef glazed with a sauce made of say sauce, sugar, and sweet, rice wine.

Sesame seeds decorated the kebabs along with wisps of fresh ginger, adding a lively flavor to this delicious combination.  The kushiyaki came on a dark, green ceramic dish with Burgundy beef, which accented the color of the peppers.

A fresh, green leaf along with slender, lemon slices recalling summer decorated the dish of octopus sashimi I ordered.  I shared the raw octopus with Florence, and we both agreed that it was chewy without being tough.

I could taste the ocean in the octopus slices.  I am wary of raw octopus, though, since my first try left a sucker attached to my lip; I like fresh food, but not that fresh.

Sashimi serves as the typical prelude to sushi.  I followed suit with an order of hachi machi, yellowtail, tamago – egg omlet, and nigiri sushi – a specialty of Tokyo represents what most of us associate with sushi: small rectangles of vinegar rice topped off with raw fish or other toppings.

Robata’s deft sushi chefs were busily developing carpal tunnel syndrome during our visit.  The yellowtail sushi was silky and had a faint fish flavor.

The one thing missing from the hachi machi I ordered was the thin layer of wasabi, ground green horseradish, that usually goes into its making.

The wasabi helps hold the sushi together.  The only reason that I could think of for not including it is that most people load up on so much wasabi dipping sauce that they kill the delicate flavor of the sushi.

There is a trick to keeping sushi from falling apart – dip the topping side in soy sauce and not the side with the rice.

I learned to eat tomago – Japanese omlets – when I lived in Japan.  The taste of the omlet disconcerts you a bit at the beginning, because sugar goes into the omlet’s preparation.  The flavor of the rectangular slice of tamago, held onto the rice by a strip of nori seaweed, reminds me of French toast.

The Japanese love for sweet flavors came out in the dipping sauce that Florence ordered as well.  This seafood-flavored sauce had sweet red wine, sugar, and soy sauce added to its seaweed and dried bonito stock.

I suspect that the batter for the tempura that Florence ordered contained egg as well as flour and water, since the golden coating tasted so rich.  A plain flour and water batter makes a crispier version of this dish.

My daughter had a plateful of shrimp and vegetables and asked me to help her out.  I particularly liked the sweet potato tempura.  The shrimp tasted sweet, even without dunking them in the sauce.

The trick to keeping the shrimp nice and long when frying them is to cut along the underbelly, so they do not curl.

Laurent loved the grilled sanddabs that he ordered.  They had a salt-and-pepper breading that made them irrestible – like eating a bagful of potato chips.

Laurent drank a Sapporo beer with his dinner while I sampled a Kirin beer.  I think the Kirin tastes sweeter than the Sapporo beer and goes better with the sweet sauces and glazes on the food.  We also drank the warm house sake that had a sweet finish to it.

A rich, green tea ice cream put the finish on our meal.  It was easy to say, “We have eaten well as we left our table.”

End of Article

You can buy green tea ice cream balls at Safeway now.  “We started a trend!!!” I tell Florence now.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sampling a Hawaiian Luau with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling a Hawaiian Luau with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Rut Paget

My editor at The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) called me and said she would like my husband and me to go out on a date at Hula’s Hawaiian Restaurant, so I could do an article on that. 

“Florence can go out some other time,” she joked with me.

Blue lights outlined the bar and colored lights framed the windows.  It is fun to be seen in this noisy, party-time restaurant that fascinates children and adults alike with its Hawaiian – inspired décor.

My husband Laurent and I began our meal by ordering some festive pupus or “appetizers’: surfrider sticks and tiki torches.

The surfrider sticks, which looked like surfboards sticking up in the sand, are chicken breast pieces threaded on skewers and planted in a thick slice of roasted pineapple.

Both dipping sauces tasted great.  One was a slightly, sweet Thai peanut sauce and the other was a mildly, salty soy-teriyaki sauce.

Six meaty miniature drumsticks that came bathed in a spicy, sesame-hoisin sauce made up our tiki torch dish.  The hoisin sauce, molasses, and Chinese hot sauce gave the chicken a luscious kick.  The sour cream dipping sauce made the already rich chicken very filling.

We drank one of Hula’s eclectic beer choices with our appetizers: Longboard Lager produced by the Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii.  Co-owner D. likes to offer out-of-the-ordinary items to make eating an exotic experience.

Co-owner D. proudly says that Hula’s offers five choices of fresh fish nightly and that the restaurant never uses farm-raised fish.  He notes also that Hula’s only offers fish selections that the Monterey Bay Aquarium lists as existing in safe numbers for harvesting.

The four fish that show up on the menu most of the time are ahi (a slightly, strong-flavored tuna with light, pink flesh), ono (a sweet tuna with white flesh), mahi mahi (sweet-flavored dolphin fish with white flesh), and hapu (delicately flavored sea bass, also known as grouper with lean, white flesh).

Diners have a choice of how they would like to have these fish prepared, including styles as diverse as coconut-encrusted, Cajun, lemongrass-encrusted, pan-fried with onions, macadamia-nut encrusted, or blackened.

For his dinner, Laurent chose the wasabi fish with mahi mahi, which is one of the most popular items on the menu.  The mahi mahi arrived blackened on a bed of pale, green wasabi mashed potatoes (made with Japanese horseradish).

The mashed potatoes were delicious and the sweet flesh of the mahi mahi hardly needed the wasabi-cream sauce, but it did taste good with it.

I ordered the luau pork plate that came with coleslaw and rice.  Co-owner D. told me that in Hawaii, a pig for a luau would be roasted in a pit for several hours.  Hula’s does not go to quite these lengths, but they do roast the pork for several hours with teriyaki and molasses and add pineapple at the end for flavor.

The pork tasted almost like a dessert except for the saltiness of the meat.  I wished I had not ordered appetizers, so I could have devoted my full attention to the pork.

We drank a good wine with our meal as a lark: the Maui Blanc.  This wine is made from pineapples and has a mild flavor and wonderful pineapple bouquet.  The pineapple wine went extremely well with the sweet-fleshed mahi mahi and luau pork that we ate.

Co-owner D. says that it goes well with most of the items on Hula’s menu.  The wine has been made for twenty years on Maui by Tedeschi Vineyards.

Co-owner D., who opened Hula’s with his brother, lived on Maui for twenty years where he operated restaurants after graduating from college.

When the two came to Monterey seven years ago, they saw that there were no Hawaiian restaurants and decided to fill the void.

His brother had the food expertise as well as the eye for knick-knacks – he is the one who has gone to garage sales to find things like the hula girl lamp stand which graces the bar.  The brother is the design man.

Together the brothers D. have created a rollicking, good-time restaurant that evokes the aloha spirit on the Monterey Peninsula.

End of Article

We did take Florence to Hula’s after our date, and she loved it.  We had fun posing by all the fun decorations and doing hula dances.  We all laughed about a dish called a “pupu” platter.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sampling Swiss Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Swiss Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Lugano Swiss Bistro in Carmel (California) is an oasis of Old World European charm in Monterey County.  My family has celebrated birthdays and anniversaries there over two decades.

My editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) absolutely wanted an article from this Monterey County “happy times” restaurant.  The following is the article I wrote for the Weekly:

When my husband Laurent and I yearned for some Old World charm on our recent anniversary, we headed out to Lugano Swiss Bistro in the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel Valley.

We liked to sit on the German side of the restaurant, enjoying its carved wood and beer tankard decorations, but we now prefer the Italian side with its painted street scenes of gelati vendors and florists.

The night of our anniversary, we ordered Swiss onion soup and the original Swiss Fondue.  I cannot detect a difference between French and Swiss onion soup, but I will say that the melted gruyè cheese on Lugano’s soup had a tang to it that you do not get when you use “Swiss-style” cheese.

We continued our cheese test with fondue, a dish said to have originated in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.  The creamy texture made from bubbling gruyère, emmenthal, and appenzeller cheese makes it tempting to drop the bread cube into Lugano’s fondue.

The penalty for dropping your bread in the fondue according to A Little Swiss Cookbook by Jacqueline Martinet is to buy another bottle of wine for your party.

Laurent’s favorite wine for fondue at Lugano is the Père Patriarche.  This slightly sour wine perfectly cuts the rich cheese flavors of the fondue and aids in digestion.  When we go to Lugano with a large group, we like to order the Swiss Fendant du Valais for its perky flavor that can stand up to the cheese like Père Patriarche.

After dinner with Laurent, I came back a few days later with my friend C., who was looking for restaurants with locals’ specials.  Lugano fits the ticket on Tuesday nights.

We started our meal with a Swiss specialty Buenderfleisch, air-dried beef.  These thin slices of beef taste like a meaty, prosciutto, but not as delicate.

This was the first time my friend C. and I ate buenderfleisch, and we both liked it.  Usually buenderfleisch gets served before fondue or another specialty called raclette, which I ordered as my main dish.

Raclette’s history evokes Switzerland’s pastoral heritage.  As snow melts in the spring, cow herders take cattle higher up on the mountain slopes until they reach the lushest pastures at the foot of the glaciers.

The herders stay on these high pastures all summer and make rich cheese.  Villagers go up to the pastures where they heat half-wheels of the new cheese over branch fires.  They scrape the melted cheese over steamed, new potatoes making raclette.

Lugano’s raclette lived up to my foodie musings.  Generous amounts of Swiss cheese covered the potatoes finally.  Sour, cornichon pickles added crunchiness and a sour taste to the rich, cheese dish I had ordered.

C. took advantage of the special night to order a roast rack of lamb with demi-glazed, seasonal vegetables.  The tender lamb was juicy with a slight crust to make perfection.  It takes decades of roasting to make this dish look simple.

I will definitely order this for myself when I come back to Lugano.  C’s large side dish of Swiss roesti potatoes merited attention.

Roesti roughly translates as “potato pancake,” but roesti are more than a side dish in Swiss cuisine.

The Swiss eat them for breakfast along with milky coffee.  To make roesti potatoes, the cook boils waxy potatoes, peels them, and then rubs them through a grinder.  Finally, the potatoes are fried in lard with a little bacon until they form a sturdier version of hash browns.

Lugano offers several interesting beers.  We drank a Spaten Oktoberfest from Germany and a Czechvar Lager from Czechoslovakia with our meal.  The Oktoberfest beer is a smooth beer while Czechvar has more bite to it.  Beer and cheese just seem to go together.

After we had eaten, the co-owner insisted that we try a chocolate fondue that usually comes as part of the four-course fondue dinner.  The light chocolate in no way resembled the thick chocolate concoctions I create at home.

I was skeptical about how cantaloupe dunked in chocolate would taste, but it was good.  Musk melon, bananas, and strawberries tasted wonderful with the warm, chocolate coating as well.  Part of the reason for this may have been that the fruit was perfectly ripe.

The food is the obvious Old World European attraction to Lugano Swiss Bistro, but the restaurant literally exudes genuetlichkeit – German friendliness and coziness.

The restaurant employs accordion players and German Alpine Trio players once a month.  I have even heard yodeling when this group takes the stage.

End of Article

When Florence would come along to this restaurant, the waiters would pick up the Alpine cow sculpture and run around with the bell clanging on her birthday - Silly stuff, but fun.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Lunching at Steinbeck's Childhood Home with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Lunching at Steinbeck’s Home with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I moved to Monterey County (California), one of the first things I did was try reading all of John Steinbeck’s novels that I could get ahold of at the library. 

My favorite John Steinbeck novel remains East of Eden, which is set in Salinas (California), a little bit east of where I live now in Marina, California.

I was happy to learn that his childhood home in Salinas was a restaurant.

I called the editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation:  200,000) and asked if I could do a story on lunch at Steinbeck’s birthplace in Salinas.

She thought that would be grand, especially for getting visuals for the article.  I called and made reservations for lunch.  (Florence was at school, so I lunched alone.  I worked on some projects while I was waiting for my meal.  I always have large post-it notes with or a small notebook with me for this purpose.)

The article I wrote follows:

The Steinbeck House in Salinas offers homey meals and a chance to tour the author’s birthplace.

On a visit last week to the Steinbeck House Restaurant in Salinas, I snuck a peek into the room where John Steinbeck was born.

The 19th-century manor immediately made me think of childhood visits to my great-aunt’s Victorian house with its dark, wood furniture, lace curtains in floor-to-ceiling, and brown flower print tablecloths reaching to the floor.

Thanks to the labors of the Valley Guild volunteers for the past thirty years, lunch in this landmark establishment provides the seasonal offerings of the Salinas Valley at a reasonable price.  Meals change on a weekly basis.

Lunch with rolls, a starter entrée, and beverage are reasonably priced.  For those interested in lighter fare, the Steinbeck House offers a soup and salad special.  There are desserts and wine by the glass.

The chef plans out all the meals one month in advance, so that guests can check out what is being served before making reservations.

The day that I ate at the Steinbeck House, I had a molded cranberry fruit salad, chicken cacciatore with tortellini, the house iced tea, and a slice of lemon tart.

While waiting for the starter to arrive, I helped myself to the homemade rolls that the waitress brought.

The rolls were as soft and moist as brioches without the sugary taste.  Instead, the chef had brushed the tops with a butter, garlic, and dill mixture that made them taste even better than dessert.

The slice of red, molded cranberry fruit salad that came served on a lettuce leaf was much more elegant than plain Jell-O.  Cranberries, along with thin slices of celery, chopped walnuts, and crushed pineapple went into this tart gelatin.  This starter did the job of “opening the appetite” as the French would say.

Chicken cacciatore always amuses me when I order it.  This dish is also known as “Hunters’ Chicken” as I learned while perusing the Joy of Cooking one day.  I wonder what kind of hunter would carry tomatoes, mushrooms, and chicken around to create this dish.

Apparently, the genius of an unlucky hunter has given the rest of us a dish of moist chicken sautéed in olive oil and simmered in a mixture of tomato paste, white wine, and chicken stock flavored with thyme, basil, marjoram, and mushrooms.

The Steinbeck House version of this dish is sweet tasting.  I liked the sauce with the homemade tortellini.  I sipped the delicious Steinbeck House iced tea made with lemonade, black tea, and a “mystery” ingredient.

Brown-tinted photographs of John Steinbeck’s parents, Olive Hamilton and John Ernst Steinbeck, hang on the walls in frames in gilt ovals around the photos.

A large, red bow for Christmas decorated the right side of each photo.  A Nutcracker-worthy Christmas tree stood in the room where Steinbeck was born.

They have a volunteer-run gift shop with books and other Steinbeck-related items.

End of Article

I brought Florence back to the “Nutcracker House” for a tortellini lunch with hot tea.  I showed her Steinbeck’s room and told her we would also visit the Steinbeck Center downtown, too, to see the camper that he traveled around the U.S. in for Travels with Charley.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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