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New movie, old friends, New place to have noodles

Gladiator (2000) dgfg
Gladiator (2000). Cool poster for a Best Picture film.

Gladiator was released in 2000 and won Best Picture.  I remember seeing it in the theatre with two friends I first met when I began working in politics.  

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Gladiator II, saw it in IMAX!

24 years later, Gladiator II was released, and I drove down to San Jose to see it with the same two friends I met when I began working in politics.  

What can I say about the film?  I like it. It’s a good sequel; it ties up many of the loose ends from the first film and leaves one loose end dangling at the end of the film. It’s a Ridley Scott film and I’ve been a big fan of his films since before my USC days.  These are my faves, all for different reasons that could come up in future posts.

  • Blade Runner (1982)
  • Apple Commerical (1984) 
  • Aliens (1986)
  • Black Rain (1988)
  • Thelma & Louise (1991)
  • Gladiator (2000)
  • Black Hawk Down (2001)
  • The Martian (2015)
  • Blade Runner 2049 (20`17)
  • Gladiator II (2024)

Guess why I like these!

It’s really sad that to get much of the Chinese/Asian food I like, I have to leave San Francisco. Why? Because the experience and quality of the food in San Francisco is generally lacking.  Why? Because more often than not, it’s overpriced and underwhelming.

(Stands on soapbox) San Francisco, THE home of the Chinese America diaspora, should do better with its Chinese food. I understand the difficulties of running a restaurant here, with all its bureaucratic nonsense, taxes, hostile business environment and lack of parking. Still, that should be incentive to do better. Despite this, I will continue to endeavor to find good places to eat here. (Steps down from soapbox) Amen.

So that’s why a lot of the good food has migrated to the South Bay and dinner often requires a drive and an entire evening. Anyway, enough about work.  Let’s look at Duan Chun Zhen (AKA, that “Taiwanese noodle place in Cupertino”).  

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Pinched from restaurantjump because when we arrived it was already dark.

It’s newish, clean and modern.  It wouldn’t look out of place in Taipei, except for the size (It’s too roomy for Taipei).  It’s located in one of the many ubiquitous mini malls that populate De Anza Boulevard from end to end and its next door to a Pacific Market with good parking.  There was a good mix of customers, us and families out for Saturday night dinner.  

You get different degrees of spicy beef noodle soup.  Regular, (one hot pepper), Mala (two hot peppers) and Sichuan (three hot peppers).  You can also have thin, thick or housemade (wide) noodles.  Naturally, I went with the housemade.  

The noodles came out with steaming hot broth and an acceptable amount of noodles and beef stew.  The beef was a good in-between; more tender than Hon’s and not quite as scrumptious as Yin Du (see post here to get what I’m going on about).  

Chicken broth soup with noodles

We also ordered two appetizers; xiaolongbao and red oil wontons.  The xiaolongbao isn’t the usual ones like you would get at Din Tai Fung or Paradise Dynast with soup inside the wrapper; these are instead standard dumplings that have soup soaked steamed pork inside.  Tasty, but not a XLB.  The red oil wontons are a home run.  They came out hot and the red oil that they soaked in had several different kinds of heat, including some numbing.  Yum.  The wontons were devoured so quickly that I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture…cos my mouth was full.

Definitely worth eating here if you’re in San Jose.

Duan Chun Zhen
10118 Bandley Drive, Suite H,
Cupertino, CA 95014

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New (and only) Soba shop in SF

My iPhone has a “helpful” feature called the Journal App. Basically, if I take pictures of something, somewhere, it will prompt me to write something about it. Of course, since I have this blog, I don’t need to journal on the Journal App.

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Screenshot of a “helpful” prompt.

It’s not perfect; this is not a mailbox, although the soba restaurant I was at was next to one so I guess it’s accurate. And about soba in San Francisco Japantown…

We had a go to place for freshly made soba called Mifune inside the Japan Center for years. I remember it from high school days. Was the place named after the actor?

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This is Toshiro Mifune, the actor having lunch.
This was Mifune the soba restaurant. I don’t see a resemblance.

Mifune was a go-to for a quick dinner or lunch special. Freshly made kake soba (soup noodles) or zaru soba (cold noodles with dipping sauce) was the specialty here and was the place to go for a noodle fix since ramen wasn’t a big thing yet. They’re no longer around, having closed due to the plandemic.

Since then, many ramen shops have opened up in Japantown to sate the need of noodle slurpers but sometimes you want noodles that aren’t overloaded with toppings and rich sleep inducing broth. You want noodles that are freshly made. And are healthy. You want soba. And there’s a new place where you can get it.

The queue for Sobakatsu. From Yelp because I forgot to take a picture of it.

Sobakatsu. A very low key, very small (4 tables with 2 seats each and a 3 seat counter) soba shop. It’s so low key, it doesn’t have a website of its own and to find information about it you go to Yelp or DuckDuckGo to do the internet search. Here’s a review; read for some background of the place and a hint of something upcoming.

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Wasn’t kidding, those are the eight seats and four tables

Because of the size of the restaurant and their hours, you will encounter a queue for lunch and dinner. They’re open from 12:00 until 19:00 (or when they run out of soba). I showed up at 13:00 on a Thursday and I waited for 30 minutes before being able to order and then be seated. Your options are cold or hot soba and variations on same.

Menu from Yelp

Wound up getting an order of cold soba, the Ten Zaru with tempura (because soba and tempura ALWAYS go together).

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The Ten Zaru
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Why I’m here

Yes, it’s freshly made soba. It tastes as good as it looks. Snappy, firm and springy all at once. And although I usually associate soba with soup, the cold soba is better for warm days (of which it was when I went). The tempura was bite sized as was the token green vegetable which was also coated with yummy tempura batter which made it edible. Will I return? Yes, but maybe later in the afternoon. And for the promised katsu in the SF Standard review earlier. I still hate queueing. But this was worth it.

Sobakatsu
1700 Laguna Street
San Francisco, 94115

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How to tell the Americans are back in Japan

So I returned to Japan with Bon in tow last March when the USD-JPY exchange rate was 151.50. That made puttering around in Japan cheap for us. And made delicious meals even cheaper!

For many tourists, the first stop after arriving is Tokyo Station where there’s a Ramen Street in the basement mall. Delicious!

For us, this was our last meal in Tokyo as we were there to catch the Narita Express on our first leg back to SFO. So sad!!

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Tonkotsu broth with char siu MADE OF PORK
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Look at that perfect egg! And those scallions! And that broth!!
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The bowl I had was 1190 yen or 7.91 USD!!

Do you see the big sign above in English that is posted on top of the ticket machine? It’s in English I’m guessing because enough stupid Americans were asking if their char siu had pork in it. They don’t have a “our ramen is not vegan” sign yet though. Ha!

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Yes! And it’s on Amazon…

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

Airplanes, trucks and trains, fire engines, boats and ships and building and wrecking machines. This run on sentence is the title.

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A Polestar weekend (another EV post)

On my last visit to Los Angeles when gas prices were spiking, Hertz was offering a nice promotion for renting an EV. Being the savvy shopper I am and as a former EV owner, I jumped on it, knowing the special needs of renting an EV. I planned my trip accordingly, staying at hotels that have either free EV Level 1 or paid Level 2 charging stations. Many of the errands I was running that weekend also had EV charging stations available where I wound up going. My Chargepoint and EVgo accounts were current (pun!) so range anxiety would not be an issue. I wound up with a black Polestar 2 and had to watch the special video that Hertz had about how to start the car and to do other things (it’s automatically on when you sit in the driver’s seat. No start button required).

The first leg of my trip was going from LAX to Anaheim in the Friday rush hour. Since we either sat in traffic or went really slow, this is an advantage for the EV. When you’re not moving, you are not using energy, unlike a normal car because when you’re not moving, you’re still using gasoline cos the car is idling (unless you have one of those stop start things).

I spent the weekend at the Anaheim Marriott where they have Tesla superchargers for a large fee and assigned EV parking spots with a free 110v wall socket (Level 1 charging). Since it’s Level 1 charging, it took 2 days to charge the battery up to full from 60%. But it was free!! While in the OC, I met up with my former SC roommate and we caught up on things. The restaurant was in a shopping center with EV charging available so if I needed to, I could top up here.

The second part of my trip had me heading back to Los Angeles where I stayed at the Hyatt House at the USC Health Sciences campus on a Free Night certificate. In the adjacent parking structure, there was free Level 2 charging during off peak hours. That was very convenient and a welcome surprise. Errands included picking up pastries at Porto’s and indulging in my annual Tommy’s fix (previous post) on the way back to LAX.

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Polestar at Tommy’s. And yes, I have a placard.

The thing I’ve always appreciated about EVs is that they usually drive well and they have the latest technology inside. They’ve come a long way from my $100/month Volkswagen E-Golf. Polestar is positioned in the market as a Tesla competitor because of it’s swish design and high tech features. The android based infotainment system worked well, especially its integration with Google Maps. It also has Apple CarPlay and that worked flawlessly as well. The seats were comfortable and the driving position felt like a cockpit, a neat trick considering this is a physically large crossover. Storage in the rear was fine and the frunk was a nice touch. The Polestar 2 is fast off the line but the handling was tuned for comfort more than performance, being a bit more splashy than I’d like.

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Despite it’s chunkiness, it’s not bad looking. Kinda like a buff guy in a snug suit.

Despite all these positives that enrich the driving experience, I don’t see myself throwing down $60 grand for one. Why not? First, the range was about 290 miles. Considering the price segment that this car lives in, it’s lacking. Second, because of this limited range, it’s a perfect car if you live in San Francisco or Los Angeles which are both built up cities with suburbs on the fringes. Generally, it’s not an issue to find a charger (but finding a working one is a different issue). Try doing a road trip further afield, and you will still run into our old adversary, range anxiety, and the time that it takes to reach an 80% charge using a Level 3 fast charger. Lastly, the Polestar 2 won’t fit in my garage.

Having an EV for a weekend trip makes sense, especially with the price of gas. I spent $9 for charging for going about 250 miles over the weekend. That’s 2 gallons of gas that would have probably gotten me 60 miles at most. I still can’t justify buying an EV over a PHEV…and they’ve gotten better since I had the C-Max Energi almost 10 years ago. Right now, I’m still rolling with my E90 diesel, slicing and dicing Bay Area roads and for now that’s just fine…

However, the new Prius Prime looks interesting. 40 miles on EV mode and about 500 in hybrid mode. How does it drive? Does it have a soul now?

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Time stands still at Beverly and Rampart

I was down in LA for a conference this weekend. First time I’ve been back since the plandemic. I haven’t had a Tommy’s Double Chili Cheese since 2018 so off I went on my way back to LAX.

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Double Chili Cheese, extra onions and with mayo

It tastes the same, it makes the same mess and your fingers still smell like chili afterwards. Yum.

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Always open. They take credit cards now!

This is a real bubble in the time space continuum. For real. Here, time has ceased its inevitable march toward the future and things are as they were three decades prior. How did we eat two of these at a time back then? Especially after midnight??

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The original shack at Beverly and Rampart. There is no other.

Original Tommy’s
2575 Beverly Blvd (@ Rampart)
Los Angeles