The RoboGourmet

The De Afghanan Kabob House is one of those little hole-in-the-wall places which boosts my willingness to give other random restaurants a chance. This is a solid kabob place located in a little unassuming space next to a key-cutting place on the south side of University Avenue just east of San Pablo. I drove around in circles the first time I was looking for it. The place is well-kept and clean, but simply furnished, with pictures of Afghanistan and handmade fabrics on the wall. The dining room does get a bit chilly in the evenings, but I usually order take out so it’s not a problem for me. I’ve never seen more than a table or two occupied, so I imagine most people do the same. My orders have typically been ready within about 15 minutes. I imagine the distance from the university prevents students from coming to check it out, which is a shame. My encounters with the staff have always been pleasant in person, but their cordless phone definitely leaves something to be desired as calls are always muted and fuzzy. Somehow they always seem to have the correct order, though.

The entrees run from $9-$15 and the backbone of the menu are the kabobs. Beef, chicken, and lamb (chupon) are pretty much what you expect, chunks of seasoned grilled meat, tender and tasty. They also have their “famous Chaplee kabob” which are seasoned ground sirloin patties which carry more of a seasoning kick than the other kabobs. All are pretty good and are a safe choice for most diners. All are served atop fluffy Basmati rice with a fresh chopped tomato and onion salad, a tangy chickpea and potato salad, and some Afghan bread which is a flatbread with a good chew. Serving sizes are pretty generous and will fill the heartiest appetite.

On the appetizer list, I recommend the bolani (alo parata), which is a flatbread stuffed with potatoes and spices. Very tasty. I have yet to try the bolani kadoo, which involves pumpkin rather than potatoes.

Of their specialty dishes, the quabili pallow is pretty good. This is a lamb shank with basmati rice baked with raisins and grated carrot. However, the lamb is separate from the rice and some have complained that the best quabili pallow should have the lamb cooked with the rice so that the juices from the lamb flavor the rice.

The mantoo is a dumpling dish which tastes pretty good, but something about the texture and presentation is not entirely appealing to me.

For dessert, they offer firni, which is an Afghan pudding which includes milk, rosewater, cardamom, and pistachios. I don’t really care for it. Cardamom in a cold dessert doesn’t seem right to me. On the other hand, the hot cardamom tea they have is quite nice, especially on a cold, foggy day. The proprietor will often offer some tea if your take out order isn’t ready when you arrive.

A good place for a filling meal of kabob. And when you’re feeling adventurous, you can try something a bit different.

Here’s a scan of the current menu, picked up in August 2010. I don’t think it’s changed much in the time I’ve been going, but their website seems to be down so it might be a good resource.

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So, now that I’ve got my new phone up and running – activated, resynced, apps, photos, videos transferred – a few comments on my impressions thus far, particularly in comparison to my old iPhone 3G.

The screen is pretty. The high resolution makes everything looks extremely crisp. I’m comfortable using smaller font sizes than before. The minimum font size in iBooks looks to be about 5-6 point and I can read it fine, though it looks like I’m reading microfiche. Definitely not something I’d do for long-term reading. Photos and videos are great too. The exception to this nice high-res-ness is all the apps which have not updated their graphics for the iPhone 4. You’ll see apps where the text is rendered very nicely, but then there are sprites scattered here and there which are painfully low-res in comparison. It makes for a somewhat patchy visual experience. After using the iPhone 4 for a bit, going back to my iPhone 3G feels like I’ve gone back to the Stone Age. Seeing a bit of yellow at the bottom of the screen. Hopefully this will go away as some have suggested as the epoxy attaching the screen to the glass cures.

Voice signal quality appears to be much better. I’ve made a few phone calls from my living room, which previously was impossible. I have experienced the issue with the “Death Grip,” as some are calling it on the web. This is where you hold the phone in your left hand such that you bridge the gap in the lower left side of the frame, typically with your palm. Essentially you’re connecting two of the antennas together and signal strength stops off markedly. In my living room, I can make the signal drop out so that it says “No Carrier.” The bumpers are supposed to solve this, but I think a carefully designed and placed skin will solve the problem.

The responsiveness of the phone is great. Snappy, without any significant lag – I’d been getting increasingly annoyed with various delays and long app load times on my old 3G and I’m very happy with the new phone. The bloody New York Times app, which previously was mind-bogglingly slow, is now mostly tolerable.

The camera definitely appears better in low light situations. The LED flash generates a strong hotspot, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. It does a red-eye pre-flash which seems effective. The front facing camera is nothing to write home about, especially in low light. Because it’s so close to your face, the perspective isn’t great. I haven’t tinkered with FaceTime yet.

The speaker is much louder than before. I might actually hear my phone ring now. The sound quality is about on par with what it was on my 3G. Cranked up all the way, music still sounds pretty good.

The feel of the phone is of course, very different. It’s a bit weightier, and the thinner, squarer profile is a bit less comfortable in the palm. And until the “death grip” issue is resolved, I’ll be holding the phone more with my finger tips than resting it in my palm. The buttons are clickier and the mute switch seems a bit harder to activate.

So far, this is turning out to be a great upgrade from my 3G. We’ll see how things pan out long term, but I’m pretty impressed thus far.

UPDATE (July 2, 2010): The yellow patch on my screen disappeared after a few days. Images from the camera are significantly better than my old 3G and are good enough that I don’t carry my point and shoot as often. Calls over Bluetooth seem to be louder than before – I actually dialed down the volume on my car kit. Previously with the 3G my car kit volume was set to max all the time. The experience is getting better as apps update themselves to support the higher resolution screen and other multitasking options like fast app switching.

While transitioning from my old iPhone 3G to my shiny new iPhone 4, I ran into an issue where some of my photos weren’t transferred to my new phone. No matter what I did – fiddling with photo sync settings, resyncing both phones – I couldn’t get those photos synced.

After a bit of research, I discovered that strictly speaking, photos taken on your iPhone and stored in the Camera Roll aren’t synced with iTunes, except in the sense that when iTunes backs up your phone, the Camera Roll is part of that backup. So what had happened was that when I’d setup my new iPhone, I hadn’t backed up my old phone recently enough, so there were a dozen photos that weren’t transfered.

The only photos that are really “synced” are any additional photos that are in the folder you select in the Photos tab of the iPhone sync settings in iTunes. Incidentally, this is how you can have additional albums on your phone aside from just having everything in the Camera Roll. The subfolders are the albums.

The solution was to plug in my old phone and copy off all the images to the synced photos folder on my PC. This gave me the opportunity to put them in albums as I mentioned above. Of course, when I went to sync them back to my phone, nothing synced. Apparently, iTunes doesn’t like NTFS when it comes to the photo sync process and this bug has existed for many, many versions of iTunes. The workaround is to have your synced photos folder on a FAT or FAT32 formatted partition. A convenient device for this is an external hard drive or flash drive, which are typically FAT32.

One upside to moving everything off my Camera Roll is that when iTunes backs up my phone, it should go faster.

While waiting for my shiny new iPhone 4 to arrive, I updated my iPhone 3G to iOS4. I have no idea how long this took as I started the process before I went to bed and it was done by the next morning. No real issues to report, everything pretty much worked fine. Engadget has an article on what is/isn’t supported in iOS4 on a 3G.

Folders are great – I’ve compressed about 6 pages of apps to 2. I do wish Apple would allow the selection of an icon for the folder so I don’t have to stare at the labels. Digital zoom doesn’t seem particularly useful, but I guess if you hate cropping photos, this is for you. I couldn’t figure out how to use it without the internet, though. You have to tap on the display just above the shutter button and a slider will pop up.

The ability for the Photos app to display your photos by location (Places, as it’s called in the app) is quite nice. It generates a map with pins for where your photos were taken. As you zoom in, pins split into multiple pins. For example, zoomed out I can see I have photos in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. As I zoom in on the Bay Area, that pin splits into the individual cities, San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose. Further yet, and I can see which neighborhoods in a city I took photos in. If you zoom in too far, you’ll see errors in the geotag locations where your phone wasn’t able to get a good GPS lock when you took the photo.

Threaded mail and unified inboxes are sorta nice, but I’m really used to Gmail where my side of the conversation is included. Also, I wish I could see the Gmail tags on my messages in the Inbox. Basically, I want better Gmail integration without the ridiculous load times of the HTML5 mobile site.

I’m not sure when I’ll use the spell check functionality – the autocorrect still works as it used to and I generally either accept the autocorrect suggestion or override immediately. Being able to disable search categories in Spotlight is nice. Have no idea why the 3G can’t handle orientation lock or custom wallpaper. For the former, I suspect Apple didn’t want to override the double click with just the orientation lock and iPod controls without the multitasking app manager.

All was working well up until this evening, when my phone locked up. The normal power-off sequence didn’t work, I had to do a hard reset with the power/home button combo. Seems OK now. Most of my apps are being updated for iOS4 support, making for a seeming endless set of updates.

Heading back to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, I happened to spot a sign for a Le Creuset store at the Gilroy Outlets. Now, I’m not your typical shopping/outlets kind of guy, but I had no idea that Le Creuset outlets existed! Needless to say, after pinning down the location with my trusty iPhone, I stopped off at the Gilroy Premium Outlets and wandered into the Le Creuset Factory Store.

The Le Creuset outlets are where you can find discontinued colors and factory seconds. The seconds are of quite good quality with only minor finish problems. These are fully covered by the lifetime warranty as well (And I see at least one person has successfully sent a piece in). Pricing runs around 15-50% off retail depending on the condition. This is nice, but for those penny pinchers and those who don’t really care about the color, they’re currently taking an additional 20% off all pieces in Caribbean, which is a sort of sky blue/teal color.

The other trick is that if you’re willing to sign up for their mailing list, they’ll give you 35% off one piece, provided you purchase two other items, and these two items can be anything, including little things like spatulas or potholders. I walked out with a 6.75qt oval French oven in cobalt for $148, which at retail is $270. There’s a little bubble in the enamel, but nothing major. They even tossed in a coupon for 40% off another single item, so I’ll have to think about what to get next…

I’ve always wanted a Le Creuset oven, but made a hefty investment in All Clad Stainless some years ago at the annual All Clad factory sale in Canonsburg, PA. This included the All-Clad Stainless 8-Quart Stockpot which works pretty well as a Dutch oven in a pinch, but doesn’t retain heat quite as well as cast iron. I figure the oval will be nice for handling large pieces of meat.

You can find your nearest Le Creuset Factory store here. Le Creuset also has Signature Stores, which is where they show off their latest and greatest stuff.

If you’re looking for the Le Creuset store at the Gilroy Outlets, it’s located on the southeast side of the 101/Leavesley Road junction. Exit on to Leavesley heading east and turn right at Arroyo. Enter the shopping complex on your right. The Le Creuset store is next to the Nike outlet.

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When I’m too lazy too cook, I often get takeout so I can eat and watch TV. Poulet is one of the places I frequent. They’re located in the Gourmet Ghetto, the area of North Shattuck near Cedar Street, which is home to a significant concentration of the good food in Berkeley.

As the name suggests, they specialize in chicken. In some ways, they’re essentially a fancier version of Boston Market with a French twist. The chicken is of better quality, but it’s not as juicy/tender as the best prepared rotisserie. A lot of this has to do with the way they just have chicken sitting around in the open, slowly drying out. From the photos on their website, they appear to do oven roasting. I suspect that they don’t brine their chickens and are erring on the overcooked side in their roasting. Still, the food is OK for a weeknight.

They have a decent teriyaki chicken, as well as adobo and lemon, garlic and rosemary versions that I have yet to try. There are also daily specials, including a chicken schnitzel which I really like. Chicken pounded flat and deep fried. Their version is pretty juicy (and tasty!).

The roasted vegetable sides are decent. I don’t recommend the mac and cheese, which is pretty bland. The meat lasagna is OK. Expect to have to reheat everything when you get home.

Pricing is a bit on the expensive side for what you get, but that’s not unusual for the non-student side of Berkeley. I typically do takeout, but there are some tables they’ll serve you at. I think you still order your food at the counter, though.

Oh, and be warned – they tend to run out of a lot of stuff by 7, even though they close at 8.

UPDATE 8/12/2010 – The lemon, garlic, and rosemary chicken has a good flavor profile, but the breast is stick-in-your-throat chokingly dry. Go for the leg quarter.

Recommended with strong reservations.

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Bui is a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant in North Berkeley on Solano Avenue, next to the where the best sushi place in the East Bay, Sushi Sho, was (it’s coming back soon!). That place is now a Nepalese/Indian restaurant.

I went for the first time this evening with a friend. The place was mostly empty when we arrived at around 6:45p. A few other diners came in as the evening went on, but they never were very full. Simple, contemporary ambiance. Our table was by the open window, which brought in some of the nice, refreshing summer evening. Service was pretty good – the waiter was fairly attentive and friendly, though my entree was brought out before we finished our appetizer. Partially forgivable since I ordered a fried fish dish which should be eaten immediately, but it would have been nice if they’d timed things a bit better.

My friend and I split what was a decent-sized order of the Saigon wings, which are fried chicken wing sections in a sweet chili sauce with garlic and fried basil. Very tasty. I would have been interested to see if a light brine would have helped give it a bit more flavor.

For the entree, I had the pan-fried whole red snapper special, which was served with the fillets stacked on top of a bed of spinach and brown rice, with the rest of the fish on the side. The fish was good, and pretty well cooked, but the rice was drenched in a sweet sauce. After the sweet wings, it was just too unbalanced. My friend had the clay pot Chilean sea bass, which he said was good, but again, came in a sweet sauce. I wish the waiter had said something.

Compounding this, I’d carelessly picked a rosé to go with my meal – it was a warm summer’s day and I was about to have some fried fish. Had I known, I would have gone with a drier wine, maybe the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc they offered.

Aside from the sweetness problem, the meal was pretty good. We didn’t need dessert, though, after all that sugar. There wasn’t anything inspiring on the desert menu anyhow (tiramisu, creme brulee, flan?). I’d probably come back to check out other things on their menu. Perhaps their lunch menu, which has pho and rice plates. Price-wise, Bui is on the somewhat pricer end of the scale, with appetizers around $8 and entrees running around $15.

Recommended with reservations.

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I’ve had an iPhone 3G since the day it was released almost 2 years ago. It’s been awesome and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to “dumb” phones ever again. In the last few months, I noticed that my phone developed two cracks in the rear casing – one from the dock connector radiating upwards and one from the mute switch headed inwards. Over time, they got worse and worse – by the time I got it fixed, the dock connector crack was about 1 inch long.

Incidentally, I’ll mention that my iPhone always rides in my front pocket on it’s own.

Fortunately, when I bought the phone I also picked up the 2-year AppleCare warranty. As this writer at MacWorld did, I setup an appointment with the Genius Bar of my local Apple Store, brought it in and got it replaced. I’m really glad I made an appointment, because the day I showed up the place was packed and there was a long wait list for the Genius Bar. I simply breezed up to the bar, told them I had an appointment and they took care of me right there. The tech gave the phone a once over for signs of abuse, scoped the headphone jack to check for moisture damage and told me that the cracks were “between a covered defect and accidental damage,” but that they’d replace the phone anyway. A few minutes later, he brought out a refurbished unit, popped in the SIM from my old phone, activated it, and a few signatures later, I was on my way.

Painless. And pretty much guarantees I’ll get the AppleCare Warranty when I pickup the iPhone 4G/HD/whatever they call it.

Henry’s is a gastropub in Berkeley, attached to the Hotel Durant a block north of Telegraph on Durant. It consists of a sports bar attached to a dining room. The interior is dark woods and crisp lines – a modern take on a traditional bar. I’ve been there for a number of games of this season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, in which my Sharks made it to the conference finals before being run over by the Chicago Blackhawks (sigh…). They have a good number of flat screen TVs, typically tuned to the games of the local sports teams. There are some Sharks fans on the staff, which ensures that those games will be on.

Wikipedia says that the gastropub label means that it’s a pub focused on good food and in that respect, I’d have to say that Henry’s succeeds. I haven’t been disappointed with any of my meals there so far. The menu is pretty solid, consisting of mostly New American with some international touches and emphasis on pub foods like burgers, sandwiches, wings, and shepherd’s pie. Standouts include their pork chop, which is perfectly cooked – tender and juicy – and served with a very nice mustard sauce and whipped potatoes. Also of note are the Antilled-spiced wings. Unlike most wings served at bars, these aren’t fried. In addition, they’re marinated with a spice rub that reminds me of satay. Very tender and very tasty.

The only caveats are that the menu is a bit pricey and that the quality of the food slips a bit when they’re really busy. One time I was there and it was the conjunction of Cal graduation week, a Sharks playoff game, a Celtics playoff game, a Giants game, and an A’s game. The kitchen was a bit off their game that day. Not terrible, but not up to their typical standards. Back to the first point – $11 for an order of wings is a little steep. On the upside, the relatively high prices ensure that the local student population doesn’t really frequent the place, leaving the more die-hard sports fans. Also, they have daily specials which are somewhat more reasonably priced.

All in all, a great place for a nice, yet still casual meal, within easy walking distance of the UC Berkeley campus and a great place to watch the Sharks in Berkeley if you don’t have cable/satellite.

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