Condiment Review: Frank's RedHot | Nashville Hot Wings Sauce

I personally find my food bland and boring, but one can only eat Sriracha hot sauce for so long. Thus, I have amassed a collection of condiments to be added to my food, and this is going to be first of various condiment reviews. 

Frank's Red Hot is a whole family of hot sauces, and this one is supposed to be good on chicken wings. Personally, it goes well on everything. 

From the back of the bottle: "hot 'n spicy with a touch of sweet" and "kicked-up flavor from Aged Cayenne Red Peppers, Mack pepper, and a hint of sweet molasses". According to the ingredients list, the primary ingredient is distilled vinegar, and you do taste the tartness. Next is aged cayenne red peppers, then sugar, canola oil, and water. 

Visually, the sauce is a very orange and thick sauce with a LOT of flecks of black pepper. If you taste the sauce alone, your tongue will feel the tartness of vinegar first, then the individual pepper bits as if you hit specks of sand. THEN the heat of the cayenne pepper hits the back of your throat and tongue. But the heat is relatively subtle, yet it will make you feel you are sweating somewhat, but the sweetness counterbalances the heat. 

If you put it on meat or other food, the thickness of the sauce allow it to cling to various surfaces, which is very helpful in retaining the sauce where they are needed. However, one tablespoon is 30 calories, and 340mg of sodium (about 15% of DV), and you probably need a bit more than that. 

Better than Tabasco or similar type sauces, IMHO. 4/5

Restaurant Review: Taqueria El Farolito (North Beach, 1230 Grant)

El Farolito is reputed to be one of the two restaurants in San Francisco that invented the Mission-style burrito. I live in Chinatown, so I can't really head down all the way to Mission to the original location, but I *can* get a burrito from their North Beach location. 

The door and the shop is a bit on the small side, and the door is facing Grant, not Columbus, which makes it a little hard to find. Got in. There are many seats available, but I needed to head back to work. So I ordered a superburrito al pastor to go. It took 5 minutes, as I did watch them cook it. I also ordered an horchata. I guess I was thirsty, and I finished the horchata before burrito arrived. The horchata has visible spice bits and was quite delicious. 

I got the burrito wrapped in foil, plenty of napkins, and small cups of red and green salsa, all in a nice and thick plastic bag with their logo and verbiage. 

Got back to my "office" (only a few minutes away), and started to unwrap the burrito by tearing off the foil on one end. Strangely, the inside seems a bit... dry, but then, that's why we have the salsa. It's wet enough with the salsa, then I started to worry I don't have enough salsa.   

Then I started to notice red oil dropping onto my desk... Huh? It seems the burrito foil wrap developed a leak at the bottom. I had to hold folded napkins against the bottom of the burrito, while I unwrap and consume the top. It is a bit dry without the salsa, as the pork seems overcooked and dry, or did all the juice went to the bottom? 

I ran out of salsa when I consumed 3/4 of the burrito. There was a little "crunch" with the pork... I seemed to have gotten burnt bits of the pork. Should I have ordered carnitas? As I was full, I dumped the rest into the trash. 

Overall, the superburrito is merely... average. The horchata was good, but it can't really raise the overall score. I probably should try Taqueria Zorro again. It's been a while since I've been there. 

Taqueria El Farolito (North Beach): 3/5

Quick Review of Zen Yai and its Boat Noodles

Got out of CPMC Van Ness and needed late lunch, and decided to try Thai food, and Larkin has a bunch of Thai restaurants. Picked the closest, which happens to be Zen Yai, at 771 Ellis St.

Sat down, staff recommended beef "boat noodles", reasonable price of $15. Take a look at its picture to the right. 

You're looking at pork skin (chicharones), meat balls, mixed meat (with beef organs?) thinner rice noodles (even thinner than typical pho noodles), and some slices of beef (not visible). 

I have never had boat noodles before, and my closest point of reference would be Vietnamese pho, and there are definitely some similarities. However, these boat noodles have more organ meat, more complex flavor, and a lot of water spinach/kangkong? Very dark broth with a lot of mixings, not very beefy (or at least, not the kind of Vietnamese pho broth beefy), and not that salty either. 

Will probably go back to try some of the other dishes they have.

They also have pork boat noodles, which I guess would have more pork-based stuff than beef-based stuff. 

Restaurant Review: Ikea Food Hall San Francisco, specifically the Ikea Cafe (will try others next time)

The Ikea Saluhall opened in San Francisco (5th and Market) back in April, and I've been inside Ikea before, but never visited the food hall. Well, I'm going in today, as I've read about it in both the SF Standard and SF Gate, and apparently it gets rave reviews... if you pay for the top-end entrees. Being a relatively poor guy, I want to see what the low end taste like. 

It's NOT great. 

Photo by Jueun Song on Unsplash

I went inside and walked around. The ground floor has 2 bars with food, and a soft-serve stand. As I don't drink and don't need a softserve, I headed upstairs... Only to find out that the elevators are back OUTSIDE. I had to walk up the stairs, yikes. 

Okay, got up to 2nd floor... Seems half of the food upstairs are vegan. I have no problem with vegan food, but they don't exactly come cheap. Fortunately, the lines to each are minimal, and choices are certainly eclectic... Vegan tacos, Sichuan noodles, open-faced vegan burger (made with Beyond Meat), mushroom nuggets... Indian street food curry, Algerian dish... But as I said, they ain't cheap. So I opted for the cheapest option... Ikea's own stuff. 

I was going to order the meatball, but in the end, I chose "pulled pork sandwich" with mac and cheese on the side, a diet pepsi, a regular hot dog, and a cinnamon roll, for about $12+tax. 

I think I made a mistake in choosing these items. 

Apparently so few people chose the pulled pork sandwich, they have to toast the brioche rolls from scratch, and that takes an extra five minutes. By the time I got the sandwich the rest of the items are cold (and the diet pepsi is warming up). 

This is what it looks like, BTW...

Pulled pork w/ mac and cheese,
hot dog, cinnamon bun, Pepsi
at Ikea Saluhall, San Francisco

The mac and cheese... tastes a little strange. The first few bites are okay, but the last half of it got a strange chemical taste to it I can't quite describe... a certain... funk? 

The sandwich itself... the roll is okay, it's toasted so the wet pulled pork didn't soak through, but they also squeezed quite a bit of liquid out of the meat so it's a little dry and thus, a bit short on flavor, mostly sweet, not much salt or spice. Pretty much tasteless. 

The hotdog was 6 inches long, and extremely thin. Like a fat-fountain-pen type of thickness, nowhere close to American hot dogs like Nathan's or Bar's or even Oscar Meyers. There's almost no snap to it, and when paired with tasteless hotdog bun, means there's also no flavor in the dogs. I ended up munching on the dogs alone, without the bun, and that made it slightly more palatable. I guess I could have tried to drown it with mustard and ketchup, but there's really no point to that. Sure, it's cheap, but Costco have no need to be concerned. They are are in no danger from Ikea dogs, regular, veggie, or plant versions. 

All in all, not fun to eat, but it does fill the stomach. Will have to go back and try the other places, even if they're vegan. 

Ikea Cafeteria: C+

Oh, and the cinnamon roll... It's tiny. While it's only 1.50, I should have just sprung for the cake. The rolls by that time is room temp and hardened up, sweetness barely showing, and icing no longer sweet. 

Restaurant Review: Tommy's Joynt (1 star out of 5, do NOT recommend)

I was at CPMC Van Ness, and for lunch, I decided to try Tommy's Joynt, supposedly a San Francisco institution with a 75+ year history. Never been there, and now I've tried it, never going back. 

(Tommy's Joynt is at 1101 Geary, cross Van Ness)

I decided to try a "slim dinner plate", which is a meat entree (I picked "brisket"), and 2 sides (I picked mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables). 

This is what I actually got: 

Instead of "brisket", what I actually got was shredded beef. 

The mashed potato gravy have sweet bits, doesn't taste like gravy. 

The dinner roll was COLD. COLDER than the butter it was served with. 

And the "steamed vegetables"? I got BOILED string beans (yes, I saw him fished it out of a steel vat.)

I am NOT going back, EVER.