Thanks to our coworkers and groups of foodie friends across the country, we came up with our “wish list” of restaurants and food carts to check out in each city. Goal: pace ourselves, eat as much [variety] as possible, and meet as many restauranteurs and artisanal producers as possible.  Find out what everyone else is cooking on the west coast, get menu ideas, and take notes on restaurant  flow/layouts- all in one week. We obviously didn’t hit every spot, but I think we got a pretty good bang for our buck.

Tentative Itinerary:

Seattle, Washington:

Din Tai Fung, Lemongrass, Seattle Deli, Thanh Tam, International District

Portland, Oregon:

The Grilled Cheese Grill, Ping [pok pok], The Dump Truck, Kim Jong Grillin, Namu Killer Korean BBQ, Korean Twist, Boolkogi Korean BBQ, Koi Fusion Truck & Restaurant, Pho Sam, Vietnamese Banh Mi, Frank’s Noodle House, Huong’s Viet Food, Clyde Common, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Powell’s Bookstore, Kin Restaurant, Tanuki, Slappy Cakes

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada:

Guu Japanese Yakitori, Gyoza King, Sea Harbor dim sum, Fortune House dim sum, PanDa Fresh Bakery Truck, Sha Lin Noodle House, Japa Dog

San Francisco/Berkeley:

Fancy Food Show, Spice Kit, Shangai Dumpling King, Ton Kiang, Minako, Le Sanctuaire, R&G Lounge, Bund Shanghai, True Sake, Mission Chinese, Spices, Grand Harbour dim sum, Teance, Slanted Door/Out the Door, Namu, Hodo Soy Beanery, Yong Kee, Li Po Cocktail Lounge, Buddge Lounge, Samovar Tea Lounge, Chez Panisse

More on where we DID go… did I mention this was a one week trip?

annarbor.com writes a blip about it here:

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/downtown-home-garden-expands-with-commercial-kitchen-open-air-food-cart-vending-area/

We’re practicing with the cart using Zing employees as guinea pigs over the winter out of it’s temporary home until it stops snowing and gets warmer, then we will be taking it downtown to street corners, and  farmers markets. There is also a possible street cart location behind Downtown Home & Garden where there might be a gathering of different street carts at a permanent outdoor urban garden constructed specifically for this purpose.  Welcome the street cart food scene to Ann Arbor, spring of 2011! (hopefully)

let the revolution begin

http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/food-drink/tracklements-features-ann-arbors-hottest-food-talent-this-saturday/

including a video of Ji Hye making Korean style dumplings.

I dragged a paranoid Ji-Hye across the border with every personal identification document in hand, into a foreign country where our iphone service- namely our GPS/Restaurant searching capabilities were halted at the Ambassador Bridge. Yeah, we kind of forgot about that, and didn’t bring good old-fashioned paper maps or pre-map-quested out directions. We pretty much winged it after the bridge.

This post will be short. We came, we saw, we ate too much, and we found our way back to Detroit. My fond memories of Wah Court were squashed when we approached the front door, which was deceptively open. We walked in and was greeted/bounced out of the front door by the owner, who was closing the restaurant down for good to retire. She directed us to the sister-restaurant, May Wah Inn a few blocks away.

The place was packed, and we waited about 15 min to get seated in the neverending path of dim sum carts. As soon as we were seated, the carts came, and we picked a variety. After the 3rd cart came of repetitive dishes, we wondered where our ordering card was. By the time we found a waitress to ask if we could order things not on the carts, we were full. We never got a card, and not sure if that was a mistake, or they thought we would just verbally order the rest of the items, but we left a little disappointed and full on dishes we didn’t actually come to eat, but because they were right in front of us and we were hungry. All in all, a couple things were noticeably better than anything we could find in Michigan, but the rest was the same frozen re-heated short cuts, or worse. Definitely not worth the 1+ hour road trip, traffic on the bridge, and unsettled paranoia from my not-quite-a-citizen-yet partner.

the pan-fried turnip cakes were delicious.  The texture wasn’t too mushy like it tends to be, and there were actual chunks of turnips which I haven’t found much in the states. yummy. Wish they would’ve brought hoisin to go along with it.

a deep fried tofu dish with mushrooms and a gravy-like sauce. I honestly don’t remember the name or what exactly was in it besides tofu and mushrooms, and for this I suck.  I do remember though that it is unappetizing when cold because of the gravy-like sauce. The dish in the back is a shrimp filled rice wrap in soy sauce. It was also not memorable and I get it every time I order dim sum.

Deep fried sesame balls filled with sweet lotus paste. Awesome. I think they use liquid crack in their fryer instead of oil. That is the only explanation I have come up with for these being vastly better than in the states.

steamed bbq pork buns. these look so good, but were so disappointing after we took a bite and the meat tasted like old feet. The bbq sauce was really thick and pasty, maybe as a result from being oversteamed? The dough was really soft and fluffy, but almost artificially too soft and fluffy.

After May Way Inn, we headed over to Jade Chinese Cuisine for another round of tasting dim sum. My belly was already busting at the seams so we ordered two dishes this time. A congee, rice porridge dish with pickled veggies and beef, and a seafood wonton soup. The congee was way overcooked to the point where I couldn’t recognize grains of rice. The seafood wonton soup had one giant wonton with assorted seafood inside covered in broth. It was extremely fishy and the wonton had a bright yellow “wonton” wrapper that almost looked like fried polenta. It was the first time in a long time I actually left full dishes of food after paying for the bill, but I feel like we didn’t get off to the right start, and I’m willing to go back and order off the dim sum menu. For now, we’re just friends.

On our way out of town, we stopped by a couple bakeries that must not bake on Sundays because all of them had almost completely empty cases in the middle of the afternoon. Poo, I wanted to take home some Asian baked goods. We also found a Chinese BBQ store that roasts ducks and chickens whole and BBQ’s them- then hangs them in the window like in a real Chinatown BBQ store. We ordered half of a roasted duck to smuggle, and scraped up enough Canadian coins to make the purchase. Here is a horribly taken photo of the store front, and hanging roasted poultry just to give you an idea if you haven’t seen it before. Sorry for the reflection:

We decided one day to visit Wei Wei’s in Toledo based on a friend’s suggestion, who is conveniently a restaurant reviewer. We were pleasantly surprised by the delicious food we tasted in the middle of… Toledo, Ohio. Yeah, Toledo. Not exactly the food mecca of anything, really, but as we drove down the main boulevard looking for Wei Wei’s restaurant among run down gas stations, and boarded up vacant buildings reminiscent of downtown Detroit, Ji Hye and I got distracted at exactly the same time by a donut shop and a row of adult video stores.  I’ll let you guess who got distracted at what as we both exclaimed “DONUTS!”/”ADULT VIDEO STORE!”. We were immediately disappointed- again at exactly the same time- that they were both closed and boarded up as we pulled into a parking lot to turn around when we  drove past the restaurant.

Not to fear though, the market is saturated in a 2 mile radius of the restaurant’s location and you can get your fair share right across the street:

Like we always do, we ordered a variety of dumpling and noodle soup dishes to share and talk about while enjoying. The first dish that came out was a sze-chuan style dumpling/won-ton. These were amazingly good- the skin of the wrapper was the perfect thickness, the filling was tasty and an enjoyable proportion, and most of all the sze-chuan pepper sauce was REALLY good.  It’s hard to find an all-around good dumpling and THEN have it topped off with an amazing house-made sauce.

Next up was the traditional fried potsticker. Also delicious, but just your average, well made dumpling. Nonetheless, we ate the whole dish, and ordered a second. We believe the dumpling sauce (often mistaken for straight up soy-sauce) was also house-made because it too was delicious and had a unique flavor to it.

For good measure, we got an order of spring rolls… we were just really hungry.

Okay, this Pho was the best pho I’ve had [in America]. I admit I have never been to Vietnam, and doubt that I’ve actually tasted authentic pho, but this was damn good, and we ate every last drop. Usually I opt to get a more Chinese traditional beef noodle soup over pho because the broth tends to have no depth and the meat tastes gamey. This was not the case with this bowl. I’d order 100 of these right now if I could.

The meat came out rare, and the heat of the broth cooked it slowly, preserving the tenderness and not over-cooking the meat. The broth was extremely flavorful and spiced well. The raw bean sprouts and cilantro came on the side to continuously add a refreshingly cold crunch to the soup until the end.  AWESOME. Better than Viet town in Chicago I must say.

I tried unsuccessfully to have the waitress hook us up with the owner/chef to teach us how to make some dumplings, but she just laughed in my face.

We were fortunate enough to be included as one of the caterers for The Ann Arbor Observer’s customer (donors) appreciation party at Top of the Park today. We had a table right next to our good friends, Sarah and Amos of Cafe Memmi (another new aspiring Zingerman’s restaurant). It was a ton of fun, and a ton of work! We realized how much our catering inexperience led to wasted energy, but it all worked out smoothly in the end.

Previously for events, tastings, or private parties, we had been buying frozen buns to steam for our pork and shiitake buns since we were still trying to develop the recipe for the dough. With the MUCH APPRECIATED time and help from Shelby from the Bakehouse/BAKE!, we were able to crank out 600+ house-made buns to steam. Also a big thanks to Pete from Marketing & Graphics for designing and printing our menu hand out.

Ji Hye and Shelby started at 9am at the Bakehouse making the dough for the steamed buns by coercing yeast to come out and play in this big machine:

I think it would give Capt. Hook the Napoleon complex…

After a series of resting and kneading, this high-maintenance dough was ready to portion out:

The dough was made with real lard, as all good things are, so we tried out a small portion of purely vegetarian dough using oil.  It didn’t turn out as good, naturally, but Ji Hye gave it a good punch down:

After portioning all the dough out into equal weights, we rolled them into perfect doughy spheres and let them rest yet again:

Ji Hye with our formed buns ready to steam:

yeah, we really need to get commercial steamers… our home bamboo ones took a while to steam 600+ buns:

steamed buns lining up like soldiers in parchment paper:

Ji Hye’s new BFF, this extra puffy cute bun. She didn’t want to see it sacrificed, so she ate it:

neverending buns:

In addition to pork and shiitake buns, we pickled an insane amount of veggies with different brining spices. We had 3 refrigerators filled with pickling veggies:

Making ginger scallion sauce. a ton of it:

Ji Hye and our lovely sous-ninja, Somie, setting up at the event:

hot Asian buns (semi-mini).

porkies:

shroom sliders:

Finally a minute to breathe before the masses come: Somie, me, Ji Hye

assorted pickled veggies:

cook it, and they will come:

our neighbors and friends, Cafe Memmi, the aspiring Zingerman’s Tunisian restaurant that Sarah and Amos are working on (Heli, Sarah, Jordan, Amos):

Ji Hye constantly refilling- a good problem! (notice our menu hand outs!)

Great Oaks CoHousing is an amazing community of 37 households in Ann Arbor that live in a close-knit neighborhood, which includes a community house. Each night, a different member of the community is responsible for organizing dinner. Luckily, one of our incredible coworkers and IT extraodinaire resides here and hooked us up with the opportunity to provide dinner for 50 people.

Since it was June, and not many people are craving steaming hot ramen soup, and we haven’t gotten our noodle recipe to a place where we felt comfortable cranking out 50 bowls in less than 15 minutes,  we went more toward the Korean style of meat, pickled veggies, lettuce wraps.  The meal was light and fresh on a humid, sunny day and a bit easier to execute with our lack of experience serving 50 people at a time.

slow roasted pork shoulder with an Asian spice rub, being pulled apart by our helpers

MENU (printed coop menu)

Entree:

1. start with one of these:

-slow roasted pork shoulder with Asian spice rub

-Sauteed assorted mushrooms

2. wrap with one of these:

-lettuce leaves

-Korean perilla leaves

-guao bao steamed bun

3.  add a sauce

-ssam jang (Korean miso based dip)

-gochujang (Korean spicy miso)

-ginger scallion sauce

-hoisin sauce (black bean base)

-japanese spicy mayo

4. add rice & etc.

-white short grain rice

-rice mix (white short grain, black forbidden, red Bhutanese, rice germ stored brown rice, barley)

-quick pickled cucumbers

-quick pickled daikon radish

5. enjoy lavishly

SIDES:

-fresh, raw,  carrots, cucumbers, zucchini and peppers to dip

-tea soaked eggs in puh-er tea and asian spices

DRINK + DESSERT

-Iron Goddess of Mercy iced oolong tea with ginger simple syrup

-fresh Asian pear slices

Ji Hye sauteing mushrooms

steamed buns

pork shoulder pulling

Overall, it went well, we received a good amount of feedback, and best of all, another notch in our belt with another tasting and experience with mass producing food.  We hope to do it again in the near future after we’ve mastered some more of our recipes and cooking/serving systems down.

Zing’s spin-offs:
After building a reputation around reubens, olive oils, macaroni and cheese, and other deli and gourmet delicacies, Zingerman’s is cooking up something different: staffers are lobbying to add a Tunisian eatery and an affordable Asian restaurant to its “community of businesses.” Zingerman’s stated goal is to have fifteen to eighteen businesses in the Ann Arbor area by 2020, up from eight today. “We have a few in the pipeline right now,” says co-founder Paul Saginaw, who cautions that many ideas never come to fruition. However, Maggie Bayless, managing parnter of ZingTrain, told a recent training class that the Tunisian and “Asian street food” concepts were on the “path to partnership.” Employee-advocates research new ideas, then work with a senior partner to refine and test a business plan. The decision to go ahead requires consensus among all sixteen Zingerman’s partners- it will be “a minimum of twenty-four months,” says Saginaw, before either could open its doors.

For clarification, we’re not technically on the “path to partnership” until we submit an application, which we’re working on, but we haven’t submitted it yet. After that, we go through a long process to try to get approved as partners, and to get our new business approved. That is just one big hurdle in the adventure of opening our first restaurant!