Food

By Yi Lu
Staff Writer

Flywheel Coffee Roasters is located a convenient seven blocks away from the Parnassus campus, next door to Whole Foods. Look for its name on a sandwich board outside the entrance — the facade is plain and easy to miss if you’re not paying close attention.

Flywheel’s interior décor can best be described as warehouse-chic, with a cement floor, exposed beams and hanging light bulbs. Because the tables are small and sparse, the place feels pretty spacious. However, the trade-off is that there is not a lot of real estate for your laptop or textbooks.

In addition, while there are some straight-back chairs and benches, some tables only have stools — OK for the first legs of a date or a catch-up session with a friend, but not so great for that study marathon the day before your test.

By Dawn Maxey
Food Editor

The clinical years of medical school have arrived in all their glory for me: waking up before the sun does, endless questions that require answers you don’t know, and, of course, a newly opened hole in your vulnerable psyche that can only be filled with fats, sweets and carbohydrates.

Luckily for those who work at San Francisco General Hospital, there is a shop nearby that precisely fills such cravings: Dynamo Donut. Located at 24th and Hampshire, the small shop offers a daily selection of freshly baked doughnuts and Four Barrel coffee.

The store has acquired a bit of a cult following amongst foodies and Mission hipsters (the place was featured on Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”) and routinely sells out of certain flavors before noon. It’s known for having inventive flavor combinations such as Banana de Leche, Saffron Chocolate and Molasses Guinness Pear.

By Geraldine Tran
Staff Writer

One of the healthy habits that I’ve adopted since eating vegan is not buying sweets at the grocery store. The typical desserts at your Safeway have milk and eggs. Instead, I enjoy discovering new desserts as part of my city-roaming, neighborhood-scoping free time. 

For example, throughout this year, I have got to know our local coffee shops and bakeries and to sample most of their freshly baked vegan goods.

Eating dessert is a risky business. You really want that cookie to delight your tastebuds and be worth the calories. Because I don’t want you to risk buying an overpriced, high-calorie vegan dessert only to be left unsatisfied, I’ve tried all the major vegan cookies in the area and described them below.

Arizmendi Bakery
1331 Ninth Ave. (between Irving and Judah streets) 

By Heather Dinh
Contributing Writer

Trứng vịt lộn—hard-boiled duck embryo—is a delicacy popular in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.  It is most commonly known by the Filipino name balut.  But you don’t have to fly to Manila or Hanoi to experience this exciting and delicious dish. 

Here is my recipe for trứng vịt lộn, Vietnamese-style.

Buying ingredients

Go to the downtown Oakland farmers’ market Friday mornings on Broadway. Find your friendly trứng vịt lộn vendor and then choose how old you like your duck embryo. I prefer 20 days old, when the bones and feathers are present, but still soft and tender. Also, pick up some coriander leaves for garnish.

Directions

FOOD ISSUE

By Matthew Nordstrom
Staff Writer

The dinner table has always played a central role in my life. An evening in my childhood would start with me at the table doing my homework as I watched my father make dinner every night.

Then, in no time at all, I was being yelled at to clear the table of all my crap and set the table, which happens when you abandon your homework to wrestle the dog.

When the food was ready and the table finally set, we would all eat the deliciously prepared food together while chatting about our days. The dinner table was where we learned about each other lives and stayed close as a family.

This tradition did not start with my generation. My great-grandmother was the cook at our family’s restaurant, which closed long before I was born, but she continued to cook. She passed her love of food and of her family on to my grandmother and father. And they have passed it on to me.

FOOD ISSUE

By Matthew Nordstrom
Staff Writer

You know that moment when you’re sitting around the house with a friend or partner, starving, yet paralyzed by your inability to choose a restaurant?

 Each of you wants to be more flexible and spontaneous than the other, so you just sit there looking at each other with broad smiles to mask the hunger pangs, and say, “I’m fine with anything, it’s up to you.”

Ugh, it’s exhausting, right? Well, imagine that scenario. Then imagine finding a restaurant that is so delicious, consistent and cheap that you never have to experience that again.

Do you feel that weight just slip off your shoulders like that soggy pizza you wish you hadn’t eaten last night? That’s how I felt when I found Vik’s Chaat Corner at Fourth Street and Channing Way in Berkeley.

FOOD ISSUE

By Alexandra Greer
Science Editor

One of the many treats of living in the Bay Area has to be its proximity to the Wine Country — with so many wineries so close by, there are a multitude of opportunities to learn more about wine varieties, the craft of winemaking and to determine which ones suit your tastebuds the best. But did you know that there are also opportunities to do the same with spirits?

I had never considered spirits tastings myself, but was introduced to St. George Spirits distillery in Alameda by a vodka-loving friend who was looking for a fun birthday adventure.

If you’re up for a great way to spend a weekend afternoon and you enjoy spirits, check out St. George Spirits, where $15 gets you a 30-minute tour of their distillery and complimentary spirits tastings. St. George is best known for its Hangar One vodka, which is also the name of their location — Hangar One in Alameda’s old naval base.

FOOD ISSUE

By Jenny Qi
Staff Writer

For the first time last month, I entered one of the small Chinese groceries dotting Clement Street, in search of black vinegar.  What a strange moment of nostalgia!  The vaguely bitter herbal smell in the corner, the strawberries so ripe I could taste them in the air, the colorful assortment of snack items — fried dace with black beans, cappuccino hard candies, seasoned rice crackers in the same old green and orange packaging. 

If I squinted, I can almost see my mother picking through the bruised fruit, chatting up shopkeepers, indulging in sticky rice balls covered in sesame seeds while bratty teenage me scrutinized little trinkets next door.  How we hated those grocery trips then!                 

FOOD ISSUE

By Geraldine Tran
Staff Writer

Running a fitness blog has its perks, like getting samples of healthy foods.  Recently, I tried a one-day raw, organic juice cleanse from Urban Remedy, a small business from San Rafael, in Marin County.  Although I love making green smoothies (my favorite combines avocado, grapes, pears, broccoli and spinach), I never thought about undertaking a liquid cleanse. 

But, hey, if a trendy brand wants to give me a full day’s supply of meals and snacks, I may as well try it. If worst comes to worst, I can just supplement with solid food. I decided on Urban Remedy’s Signature Cleanse for a single day.

This consisted of six individually packaged juices, which were to be spaced two hours apart. Urban Remedy prefers cleansing with just its juices, but suggests eating raw vegetables and drinking water if you feel hungry. How did it go? Would I do it again?

Keep on reading to find out!

FOOD ISSUE

By T. Booth Haley
Editor

The Hing Wang Bakery keeps it real. 

Just three blocks from our ultra-modern biomedical campus, it still sells zongzi wrapped and served in pungent tropical banana leaves and cooked in big bamboo steamers. 

While other Chinese restaurants might be famous for their way-too-sweet chicken wings, Hing Wang has regulars lining up out the front door to buy chicken feet by the pound.  Between Eighth and Ninth avenues on Judah Street, Hing Wang is the easiest way to travel to 1960s Guangdong for less than $5, and less than a five-minute walk from UCSF.

Dim sum is sold at three pieces for $1.90, making it possible to heap your plate high with steaming dumplings without worrying about the bill.