Dining in the Bay Area can mean lots of optimized salad bars and grain bowls inhaled between meetings. Here, KQED staffers share recent meals that demanded we slow down and enjoy them thoroughly.
Tokyo Fish Market's Onigiri
By lunch, the selection of onigiri at Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley is sparse, so I’ve made it a point to go in the morning. The first time I did, I was delighted by the sheer diversity of onigiri I had never seen before, including takana (a chopped and pickled mustard green), ume (salted, pickled plum) and okaka (a delicate smoked tuna). Last Friday, I deliberated these choices and ended up with shrimp tempura, my favorite, and takana. What sets Tokyo Fish Market’s onigiri apart from others is how well the rice is seasoned in a light rice vinegar with a faint saltiness. The shrimp tempura in particular is such a delight of textures and flavors—a satisfyingly crunchy seaweed wrap with pearly sushi rice and a protein treat in its center.
By my math, one onigiri is a perfect snack, and two will hold you down for lunch. While at the market, I also grabbed a can of UCC coffee with milk from their well stocked refrigerated section. I’m an advocate of coffee as a social beverage more than a utilitarian one, but coffee in a can has an elegant appeal—especially when the can is so beautifully designed. UCC’s coffee was pleasantly milky while still delivering the rich taste I expected. I’ll certainly repeat some version of this market run in the near future.—Ruth Gebreyesus, food reporter and visual arts columnist
Kuku Sabzi at Komaaj
On a dreary Saturday morning, I found myself driving across town in pursuit of a dish that would make up for the physical distance between me and my family. Sometimes, you seek out food in order to feel a little closer to home. I found just that at Komaaj, a pop-up restaurant in North Berkeley’s Caffeinated Coffee, a new cafe that opened this spring, offering single-origin coffee beans from women farmers around the globe.
Komaaj, the vision of chef Hanif Sadr, joined the cafe shortly after (the two businesses share the space). It offers regional dishes from Northern Iran, including maast labou (a Greek yogurt with roasted beets, basil, mint and sumac), as well as a saffron pastry made with rice flour and yogurt, and served with honey and rose petals. Komaaj also offers one of my favorites, baaghali ghatogh, a white bean stew with dill, radishes and a handful of herbs served with thick sangak bread.