As a Korean-American, I'm naturally partial to the spicy, sinus-clearing cuisine of my heritage. Luckily, Telegraph Avenue in Oakland -- a mini-Koreatown -- is only a few minutes away from where I live in West Oakland. I'm able to get a fix pretty quickly when I'm missing my mom's home cooking.

But there's a new Korean restaurant located beyond the borders of Temescal, Be Bop, that's recently opened its doors in the past 2 weeks in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood. The name seems to be a jazz-pun that riffs off of the name of a popular traditional Korean dish, bibimbap, which means "mixed rice." The menu lists 17 variations of the dish, including "dol sot bibimbap," where rice and other ingredients are piled into a heated, stone bowl. (I should mention here that this is one of my all-time favorite Korean comfort food dishes to eat, so I'm pretty thrilled at the prospect of there being 17 options to choose from.) Then you slather on as much "kochujang," a spicy chili sauce, that you can humanly handle and mix it all together with your spoon. Then dig in; this hot and hearty bowl brimming with food will keep you sweating and gulping down big glasses of water for the duration of your meal.

My husband and I both ordered the "bulgogi dol sot bibimbap" (barbecued beef), and I was able to order mine with mixed-grain brown and black bean rice instead of the typical short-grain white rice. You could also add other non-traditional ingredients such as quinoa, walnuts, fruit and more. (Not sure how Mom would feel about these modern flourishes, but I'm willing to try these additions the next time around.)

We were served a variety of appetizers including two fine soups (one pumpkin, one radish), pickled vegetables and of course, kimchi. This pungent pickled cabbage dish is a must for any Korean table. Surprisingly, the restaurant only serves a milder incarnation: "baek kimchi," or white kimchi.

Korean restaurants usually cover the entire table with dozens of banchan, or small complimentary side dishes to accompany your meal, but Be Bop only offered several plates. But with our order of jeon, an assortment of fried delicacies, we wouldn't have had room for much more besides our main courses.

Our servers carefully set down the hot and sizzling stone bowls on our table (the bowls are placed on a thick wooden plates to protect the table from getting burnt). We were a little disappointed that the dishes were not served with the usual topping of a sunny side up fried egg, the yolk of which is cooked by the heat of the ingredients and the dol sot. Still, the dishes were delicious. The vegetables were fresh and well-cooked (each ingredient should be individually sauteed). And the housemade sesame dressing ("dul-kkae" sauce) was excellent. A complimentary sugary red bean gelatin dessert was served following our filling meal.

The restaurant's interior is a brightly-lit, newly renovated space that's best for groups of two or four. Everything on the menu is $15 or less. Be Bop also promises that there's more changes to come with their menu in the next few months, and that they'll be adding on more entrees. And they're still awaiting their liquor license, so no alcohol is being served yet.

Be Bop
Address: map
2975 College Ave
(between Ashby Ave & Webster St)
Berkeley, CA 94705
Phone: (510) 848-8081
Lunch: Mon-Sat 11am - 3pm
Dinner: Mon-Sat 5pm - 10pm, Sun 5pm - 11pm

Chances are if a restaurant has pork belly on their menu, I'll show up on their doorstep faster than you can say, "I'll take a second helping, please." When Hawker Fare, the new casual Asian street food-inspired restaurant from James Syhabout (Commis) added dinner hours late last week, I organized a food posse to check it out.

Hawker Fare is the latest addition to the Uptown dining district in Oakland, with Picán, Trueburger, and Luka's Taproom & Lounge nearby. Located within an airy space decorated with Oakland-themed art (and former home of Manyda Thai Cuisine‎), Hawker Fare offers a simple menu of starters, rice bowls and desserts made with local, organic, and sustainable ingredients when possible. It's all affordably priced as well, with everything listed for less than $10.

I began with the green papaya salad, a classic Southeast Asian appetizer from their list of starters, or "snack aisle." It had a spicy kick with more emphasis on the fish sauce essence, which slightly overwhelmed the citrusy hints of lime. Still, it was a crunchy delight that paired well with the superb beef "larb," or grilled beef salad with red onions, mint, cilantro and toasted rice powder. Several friends ordered the chopped salad, with lettuce tossed with pickles, fried shallots and lotus root. It had a gentle sour tang from a light vinegar dressing that nicely complemented the mix of crisp and fried vegetables.

Then the main attraction arrived: the rice bowls. It was no surprise to my friends that I ordered the 24hr pork belly bowl, which came with three glistening slabs of tender belly piled on top of jasmine rice, sauteed greens and an optional luscious fried farm egg. I was hoping to substitute the jasmine rice for their "Kao Mun" rice that had been cooked with chicken fat and broth since I was already throwing caloric caution to the wind, but alas, I wasn't able to swap it out. (Next time I'll do myself a favor and order it as an additional side dish.) The pork belly bowl was accompanied with a homemade five-spice, sweet soy and preserved vegetable mustard sauce that elevated this dish to heavenly status. When my spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, I lamented the fact that more pork belly didn't magically reappear before me -- but that just means I'll have to return for more pork deliciousness. Our vegetarian comrades chose the "Vadouvan" tofu bowl that was made with homemade tofu and "braised in coconut milk with taro, bamboo shoots, and aromatic herbs" and pronounced it delicious.

Dessert centers around Straus Family Creamery condensed milk soft serve ice cream, which is served in three ways: on a cone, in a sundae or "affogato"-style (paired with a shot of Thai coffee). It seems that Hawker Fare doesn't have their liquor license yet, but their website promises that beer, wine and malt liquor -- "Yes, malt liquor" in case you felt you read that incorrectly -- will be offered in the near future.

Hawker Fare
Address: map
2300 Webster Street at 23rd Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 832-8896
Lunch: Monday – Friday: 11am – 3pm
Dinner: Thursday – Saturday: 5pm – 9:30pm
@hawkerfare

If there's one thing you need to eat in Spain, it's paella. And that's exactly what I planned to do once I got to Valencia during my recent trip to Europe -- eat all the paella I could get my hands on. After all, paella originated in Valencia; hence the fact that most recipes call for Valencia rice, a short-grain white rice from the same area.

Unfortunately, my trip to Valencia succumbed to the whims of the mercurial travel gods, and I ended up spending an entire week in Barcelona instead. Not one to be dissuaded from my dream meal, I was determined to have my paella anyways, even if it could only be had a few hours north of where it originated. I set about the gorgeous city of Barcelona to find the perfect place to eat, but noticed a problem right away: many different restaurants had these funny signs with ten or so photos of paella, all labeled with a brand name: Paellador. Others had a difference brand, Paella Maxima. As one who likes my food so fresh that it would almost be breathing, my foodie-tuned spidey sense went off.

After a little digging, it turns out that these are pre-fab frozen paella companies. Restaurants buy the dishes frozen, then heat up the paella to serve to customers, who think they're getting the real thing. Um, no. No. Great big capital NO. Frozen paella? In Spain? Are you kidding me?

I polled the staff of a few restaurants and eventually turned up a handful of places that served fresh paella. I ate at three or four of them, and indeed the dishes they served were freshly made with some of the finest seafood the Aegean sea has to offer. I never did try the frozen paella, and you know what? I never will. Yikes.

For those of you not currently cooling your heels in Barcelona, I recommend making paella at home. It's a very simple dish to make, and the ingredients are easy to rustle up. If you're in the East Bay or near Mill Valley, I highly recommend making the short trek down to your local Spanish Table shop, where they not only stock Iberian imported foods, but they can also school you in the magical ways of paella making and recommend a Spanish wine to pair with your meat selection. Can you say staycation?

Okay, enough with all the pho.

I think it's time for folks to try some other Vietnamese dishes. There are hundreds of snacks and soups, both in Vietnam proper and in Little Saigons around the world, but for reasons I'm still trying to understand, both restaurateurs and diners settle into predictable menus.

Savory bits of shrimp, mung beans and scallion oil top little steamed rice cakes.

Vietnamese cuisine today is where Chinese food was in the 50s, though some decade soon I'm sure restaurants will begin expanding beyond summer rolls, spring rolls, shaking beef and sizzling/happy/singing crepes. Perhaps it will be when we let go of the Western kitchen's saute line, or when the rubber plantation decor finally goes the way of the tiki room, or when tourists from Vietnam can visit here as readily as we fly there.

Until then, I'd like to encourage you to try two of my favorite hot-weather dishes.

Now that you're familiar with rice noodles in broth, go enjoy a plate of banh cuon and banh beo. Vietnamese cooks coax rice grains into endless shapes and textures, and these two dishes are classic ways to enjoy the cuisine's distinctive layering of flavors.

Banh Cuon

The best banh cuon are made to order. The set-up is simple: thin fabric stretched over the mouth of a wide pot, a few inches of simmering water, an oiled surface for rolling. A flat ladle and a long wooden stick are the only gadgets you need. Unfortunately, the skill required to coax a thin rice batter into a transparent round of edible silk must be passed from generation to generation.

Watch how a master steams and rolls an order of banh cuon:

Wrapping savory fillings, such as pork or mushroom, is the most common way to use the steamed rice sheets, though other versions have ingredients sprinkled above plain rolls rather than wrapped within them. Fresh herbs, like young mint leaves, and fried shallots should appear somewhere nearby. Just before you eat the rice rolls, you'll flood them with a dilute version of that ubiquitous dipping sauce made from nuoc mam.

Banh Beo

If you steam rice batter in tiny dishes rather than on a thin layer of fabric, then you'll have piles of cute banh beo. Something magical happens in the steamer to create a dimple in each round, perfect for holding bits of flavorful ingredients. The classic toppings are delicate in texture while concentrated in taste: dried shrimp cooked to neon orange, mung beans ground to golden fluffiness, perfect dice of crisp pork rind, or scallions wilted just until sweet. The same thin sauce flavors these lovely dimpled rice cakes.

My fleet of dipping bowls -- only 39 cents each at Kamei on Clement -- serve double duty as molds for banh beo.

Here's the easiest way to eat banh beo: use chopsticks to nudge each round onto a soup spoon, make sure there's a representative amount of sauce and topping included, and then slurp the generous mouthful in one, happy bite.

EATING OUT

If you live in Oakland, you're not far from a restaurant that serves both banh cuon and banh beo.

Tay Ho Restaurant
344 12th Street (@ Webster)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 836-6388

COOKING CLASS

If you want to learn how to work with rice batters and how to make banh beo in your own kitchen (so easy!) then join cookbook author Andrea Nguyen and yours truly for a special hands-on cooking class. It's a weekend class sponsored by Slow Food at Terry Paulding's amazing teaching kitchen in Emeryville.

In this class, we'll also teach you how to work with dried rice paper and how to make truly crisp banh xeo. Vietnamese salads, sweets, beer, and salty plum limeade round out the menu.

Vietnamese Transformations of Rice
Sunday, May 20, 2007
5 pm to 8 pm
at Creative Kitchen
1410D 62nd Street, Emeryville, CA
Slow Food members $50/nonmembers $60.

Andrea has a detailed flyer (pdf) at her website. You can also contact Frankie Whitman at fwhitman at pacbell.net for more information or to register.

Hope to see you in class!