A new herb for my noodle soup? Ngoc Mai is known for its dishes from Hue, the ancient political and culinary capital of Vietnam, and from that section of its menu I chose bun oc ($6.50), a "clam noodle soup" also rife with pork, squid, and shrimp. The namesake "oc" literally refers to golf-ball-size...

Interesting broth. It smacked of vinegar, and it was ever so slightly more viscous than a clear soup. The fish balls ($3) — a fish-and-pork version is also available — were fine-textured, and their irregular shape strongly suggested that they're made in-house, but the English-speaking staffer wh...

At first I was hung up on the name. Hung Zhou crab and pork steamed dumplings (eight for $8.95), seemed to be none other than Shanghai steamed dumplings (the very next item on the menu), except, perhaps, for the crab. In New York, xiao long bao (sometimes called soup dumplings, steamed juicy buns, o...

"Placerville omelette" just doesn't have the same appeal. No knock on the California city, which long ago changed its name and linked its fortune to gold prospecting rather than frontier justice, but it's hard to match the romance of a waitress's singsong call for a Hangtown fry ($13.95). (When she ...

Knife-peeled noodles, too. I missed my chance to try them in Beijing, and now again at this Fujianese noodle shop, where I spotted them on an auxiliary menu only as I was leaving. My hand-pulled noodles ($5, including fresh and pickled greens and a complimentary off-menu egg) featured fish balls tha...

Hands off! Spines aside, the prickly pears at Santa Rosa's Luther Burbank Gardens, and the ripening red "tuna" atop the cactus paddles, will almost certainly be spared from harvest. Gelateria Naia does, however, rely on fresh, local fruit — often prunings and farm surplus — to produce its artisa...

Superthin slices of eggplant, plus peppers and provolone, are at the heart of the Valentina ($7.95 for a "half" that was nearly a foot long). The original, Brooklyn location of Defonte's (shown at bottom) is virtually cut off from Carroll Gardens by the BQE and the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery T...

Back home, in New York, I'd have left the store with a different breed of Oriental groceries. But I was visiting family in Santa Rosa, and some things — even thoroughly frozen, discreetly wrapped, and intended solely for my own consumption — just don't belong in an unsuspecting cousin's ...

While I was visiting my cousin and her family in Santa Rosa, we never did eat at Abyssinia, the city's one Ethiopian restaurant, and if we had, it probably wouldn't have been for a weekend breakfast. On a walkby, I saw that on Saturday and Sunday mornings, Abyssinia serves dishes including kinche, c...

That rude-sounding specialty might better be written "beef ball noodles." Soong Kee is "the king of KL's beef noodle stalls," in business since 1945 according to the Makansutra guide to Malaysia (unfortunately out of print). An order of beef ball noodles (large; rm 4) arrives as a set; the ramen-lik...