Martinson Traditional Coffee

Making Coffee in America from David Woo on Vimeo.

Martinson Traditional Coffee
Free (USD$1.99 for large can from the supermarket)
Home (Livingston, New Jersey)

I had no car by which I could easily drive to Starbucks; and in the house I had no instant coffee -- only grounded coffee; so my mom suggested that I try out my younger brother's coffee-making device for a nice, hot, free cup of coffee!

The Price of Food at Work in Silicon Valley

Subsidized food is pretty popular here in the valley of computer chips. The goal is to provide somewhat cheaper food to employees as a perk of working at the business. It is not as reasonable as the cheap and tasty food I used to eat at the CityU canteen when I was an exchange student, but it is a similar idea in that the food is right there and it is low price. Google boasts free food all day for their employees. The up and coming Zynga (the start-up that brings you Mafia Wars and Farmville on Facebook) advertises on their job board free lunch and dinners. The Oracle 600 cafe has nine reviews on Yelp right now. Because the food is subsidized by the company, these types of corporate cafeterias (or canteens as HKers say) have delicious food for a very low price. I will have to follow up on Oracle food, but I am pretty sure an adventure over to their canteen is in the near future. That is because Oracle is only a 15 minute walk from the building where I work at EA (Electronic Arts). EA also has subsidized food but unfortunately it isn't free like at Google or Zynga but it is fairly low priced. I thought I would share a couple of the offerings I have had lately. Our cafe is really delicious, with about six or so entrees to choose from daily with an additional salad and soup bar, a sandwich bar and a pizza bar.



Here we have a lasagna set with a side salad and a side of grilled squash. (I hope Chef Javier doesn't mind me posting on his food creations). Note that the drink I have there did not come with the meal, so it wasn't a true "set meal" in the HK style sense. The lasagna was called "free form" lasagna where the chef would layer a noodle with Riccota cheese and your choice of sauce: fancy mushroom red sauce or a fancy meat based red sauce. The majority of the ingredients at the EA cafe are organic. This entree came to around 7.25 USD. The sodas on campus always cost 25 cents so we could say this meal was roughly 60HKD. For an almost entirely organic meal (ok I know the Diet Dr. P totally kills it) I would say you can't go wrong with that price. The lasagna was delicious and it was quite a reward after sitting in the San Mateo DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) for three hours waiting to get my California driver's license and plates for my car.



We also have soups and chili on a daily basis. Pictured here is tortilla soup and a side salad. I think this cost about 7.50 USD. I think that is a little too high for just soup and salad. A large bowl of soup or chili is 2.25 USD, so clearly it isn't the soup that is pricey. The salad bar is probably the most expensive thing you can eat at EA because it is priced by weight. My salad always ends up being pretty heavy because I pile on the organic beets and a little pasta salad. The salad container here is a small one but I have to exercise a lot of self-control to get it under 5 USD.

I think this post definitely deserves a follow up with my first trip over to the Oracle cafe. To be honest, I am not sure if it is open to the public, but I won't hesitate to post here considering there are reviews on Yelp already and my EA friends venture over every now and then. If you read the Yelp reviews, they even inform you on how to keep from "standing out". I think the Oracle employees probably dress like an average executive, and since I work at a game company, I never have to dress up, so I guess I will have to plan ahead so that I can sneak away some relatively cheap, delicious, corporate food. And besides, what the heck does Oracle do anyway?

Yogurttime in America

For those of you who do not know, my name is Jason and I have known Dave since kindergarten. Anyway, after reading Dave's yogurt entry I shared some thoughts about the Asian inspired yogurt craze in America and Dave wanted me to guest blog.

Basically I have been a frozen yogurt fan ever since I was a young and frozen yogurt in America consisted of sandy and chemical tasting yogurt such as TCBY and the original Columbo's recipes. Back then frozen yogurt makers attempted for yogurt to resemble its higher calorie cousin, ice cream. Usually they failed at that quest. Supposedly when I was even younger, frozen yogurt resembled regular yogurt in America (i.e. it was tart), just colder. However, it was not as smooth as the yogurt of today. I do not remember this. By about the late 1990s, American frozen yogurt makers improved the quality of frozen yogurt, but in doing so added a great deal of sugar and/or fake sugars to create flavors that did not resemble yogurt at all (or even conventional ice cream at times).

All the sudden in the last couple years Asian inspired tart-tasting frozen yogurt has become a huge fad in America. In the beginning, Pinkberry was only available in Los Angeles, CA. Los Angelenos would crash their cars to get a parking spot near Pinkberry. Then with great fanfare Pinkberry arrived in New York City. After that many supposed copycats opened up. One of those supposed copy cats, Red Mango, is supposedly one of the most popular brands in Asia which the founder of Pinkberry (a Korean-American) copied. Another popular New York City brand, Yolato, promises yogurt-flavored gelato (a combination of Italian Ice Cream and Asian-style yogurt). Over the last year tart yogurt has become so popular that you do not need to go to New York City or Los Angeles to find it. In the winter, I found a great place called Ellie's Yoberri Park, in of all places Santa Fe, New Mexico which sold tart Asian-style yogurt. Ellie's even offered to sweeten the yogurt with agave, a popular Native American sweetener.

Still even before this tart craze, Bloomingdales had quietly been offering great tart yogurt for years. For those of you who do not know Bloomingdales is a department store known for its high end clothes and not its yogurt. Still its 40 carrots cafe (found in New York City as well as many suburban malls) offers some of the best yogurt available anywhere. Few people will go to an upscale store just for frozen yogurt, but it is worth it, even though it is $4.50 for a small.

The funny thing about Pinkberry is that it contains so few yogurt cultures (the bacteria which makes it yogurt) that Pinkberry is legally unable to even call itself yogurt in America. Instead it must call itself a "frozen dessert."

For more go to

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-pinkberryaug04,0,7985455.story

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local&id=5294057

Jason