Jai

So Wolfgang Puck thinks he can just waltz in and plop his fancy restaurant on our campus, competing with such well-established restaurants like Hi Thai Cafe, Panda Express, and Rubios? Hmm, I guess there's not a whole lotta competition. On the other hand, those other places tend to offer decent portions of food (or something that resembles food) at a price that college students can afford. After all, this is NOT an Ivy league school, or even USC...

Ignoring the business strategy of catering (mainly) towards La Jolla Playhouse patron, which I discussed with the cute bartender earlier today, at this blog, we care (mostly) about one thing: food. (service counts, too!)

I started out with a glass of the Riesling, which actually was one of the nicer Rieslings I've had, so props to the sommelier. Then I watched some of the Cubs vs. Mets game. Seriously, walking a guy for the tying run in the top of the 9th? Ugh.

Yes, so anyway, I ordered the Tuna Tartare and Beef Carpaccio, cuz you know, I'm just a raw food type of guy. The tuna came in custom-made sesame and miso cones topped with salmon skin. The fish was very fresh and excellently flavored. The cone also provided a nice crunch with sweet tones. The beef came with a bit of salad garnish, halved grape tomatoes and a ginger vinaigrette. I'm not sure what purpose the radishes serve, the raw beef and tomatoes provided plenty of red color already. The beef was very very good, flavor-wise and texture-wise. The salad dressing was overly salty, so I couldn't even finish the salad, and without a very gingery-flavor. I'm not actually a big fan of ginger, but I don't think a good ginger vinaigrette is that hard to make.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, but I will bring it along next time. Still, my feelings about Jai are mixed: some things they appear to accomplish really well (the tuna, for instance), and others, not so much. I don't think it's particularly difficult to create good-tasting dishes with quality ingredients (kobe beef, in this case), but I think the whole fusion aspect adds a bit of a challenge. On the one hand, there are traditional recipes that have been tried and true and present a nice balance of flavors. On the other hand, adding zip to traditional recipes by substituting new ingredients makes the flavors harder to manage. It's not simply a matter of throwing ingredients together and calling it fusion. Just cuz you add truffle oil to your shrimp tacos doesn't make you a fusion chef. (though it is, in fact, delicious)

Sushi Ota

I've heard multiple people tell me that Sushi Ota was a place for good, cheap sushi suitable as an inexpensive alternative to Sammy Sushi. So, M and I, along with M's sister T, and her boyfriend went to check it out earlier tonight.

It was pretty busy, even for a Thursday night, with about a half dozen guys working behind the bar and maybe 10 waitresses. Mmm, gender stereotypes. Somehow, we were able to get a table immediately.

For a first-visit, I opted to get a variety of favorites spanning the culinary range. (nothing from the kitchen, though)

Here's what I ordered:
- ankimo (monk fish liver)
- live amaebi (sweet shrimp, sushi-style)
- toro special (tuna belly tataki style)
- salmon belly
- soft shell crab roll



The ankimo was priced at $7.50, about midway between Sammy Sushi and Izakaya Sakura prices. The texture was a little too smooth, and the subtle exotic flavors I'm used to just weren't here. Sammy's version is pretty top-notch in my book, although expensive, and Sakura's version is a very inexpensive alternative. For the price, I thought it wasn't worth it.



At the same time, I got my toro special. When I ordered it, I thought it would still be sushi-toro, with some special garnish or something. Instead, it was just toro served tataki style. I don't know why they didn't just call it toro tataki. Anyway, it still had that creamy richness of toro, but after searing, it had more of a steak-like quality. I feel that this kinda defeats the purpose of having toro in the first place. Moreover, the slices were all fairly thin, so there was only a bit of uncooked meat on the inside. So, it was actually more like rare or medium-rare toro than tataki-style toro than anything else. Next time, I think I'll just have the plain toro sushi.


Our big platter of sushi came next, including various rolls, sushi, and my amaebi. For the price ($10.50), two amaebi is a pretty solid deal. I'm more used to the $10 or $12 apiece that Sammy and Sakura charge. Then again, those are much larger amaebi, and the heads are deep-fried after being dipped in batter, something that makes the head much more easily eaten. Anyway, a general complaint we had about the sushi was that the rice wasn't soft enough. Actually, it was pretty standard rice, I think we just are used to sushi rice that is a little bit softer and maybe a slightly higher fat content to make it a little creamier, as well. It could be that the rice we got was just dry, but that's a poor excuse, at least at these prices. The amaebi was good, but there is a reason why the larger ones at Sammy and Sakura are more expensive, just having the large cut of meat makes those a much more satisfying order.



And the deep-fried heads were all right, they came with a ponzu-soaked shredded daikon rather than a dipping sauce, which is perfectly acceptable. Actually, the best would probably be a ponzu dipping bowl with shredded daikon and green onions, but no place that I know of does that, though Sammy probably would if I asked...

The rolls as a whole were disappointing. I think the variety of textures just wasn't there, and neither were the flavors. The Diego (spicy tuna, cilantro, sesame oil, with serrano peppers on top) roll we had just wasn't spicy. There was a mild kick at the end, but I was pretty much scooping the minced peppers into my mouth to no real effect. The soft shell crab roll was also a little funky, being wrapped in tofu skin. It was also very different texturally, than soft shell crab ("spider") rolls I've had at other places. I expected it to be crunchy and loaded with flavors, not really needing any dipping, but this one was more on the soggy, falling-apart end of things. Disappointing, given the potential for combining the ingredients successfully.

Finally, the salmon belly, a sushi that I am in love with at Sammy's, was the worst. The cut resulted in more fish than expected, but in the lengthy direction, so you had this long piece of fish trailing behind the rice. The second piece I had was also chewy, which of course is a far cry from the firm, creamy goodness I expect. It's a little cheaper than Sammy's at $4.50, but I'd much rather spend the extra dollar to have a delicious version.

I will probably go back and give some other things a whirl, along with the kitchen, but I'm not terribly impressed so far.

Sushi Ota (reservations recommended, restaurant not so much)
4529 Mission Bay Drive
San Diego CA 92109
(858) 270-5047
(858) 270-5670

the SACD side of the equation, and why Sony sucks

After investing in a decent audio setup, I then discovered the world of SACD, where thousands of classical albums were available with better audio and multi-channel output. That's great, I thought, how do I get started?

Well, besides the hardware requirements, one should be aware that SACD discs usually have multiple audio formats on them, a regular layer that plays fine on a normal cd player, and a new layer that contains HD content that can only be played back on an SACD player. Oh, but the fun doesn't stop there, the SACD layer is encoded in DSD, which outputs only through HDMI (or some obscure thing predating HDMI). (I'm not clear yet whether this is because of bandwidth limitations, DRM, or both). Regardless, this means that you can't use optical (either due to bandwidth limitations, or processing power to convert a DSD signal into DTS). However, most SACD players will output in analog, but this requires conversion into linear PCM format, which is not quite as nice as DSD.

Oh, and then you need the hardware to playback DSD. If you're just using analog, then any standard hardware will do, but as of now, it seems as though most A/V receivers that play DSD are rather expensive. Although, the Yamaha RX-V661 is pretty inexpensive at < $400, but it doesn't seem to have HDMI 1.3 spec, so it may not do SACD over digital (HDMI). (I'm still a little confused about this issue.)

So where does Sony fit in with this picture? Besides the fact that Sony dropped backwards compatibility on the newer PS3's (even after moving from hardware to software emulation), they dropped a bunch of other features as well: flash card readers, and SACD support. "Fine Hao, so buy an older PS3, or trade a newer one for an older one." First, the only real advantage to a newer PS3 is that it is produced on 65nm instead of 90nm, reducing power usage and probably fan noise. (Well, I guess you could also have an aversion to chrome trim.) Another issue is the fact that the PS3 has never supported DSD playback for SACD, but converted to PCM. There were hopes that Sony would release a firmware update to enable DSD for SACD over HDMI, but that seems unlikely now that the new PS3's no longer play SACD's at all.

That being said, I am optimistic about future prospects. Right now, if I had to buy an SACD player, I would go with the Oppo 980. Yes, the 981 and 983 do a slightly better job of upconverting video, but the 980 does a much better job of SACD. (There are issues with enabling DSD over HDMI in the 983.) Plus, it converts to analog for my current needs, but also supports DSD over HDMI for any future receiver purchase.

the problem with education

is that it is not a single-fold issue, but ridiculously complex, kinda like climate change. The "problem" cannot be solved by any single solution.

As I sit here, grading stats hw late into the night, it really really really bugs me that for some of these homeworks, the quality is just abysmal. I will admit that my motivation to grade is affected dramatically when I see sloppy organizing, sloppy handwriting, unfinished answers that are just put on paper so students can make a half-hearted grab for partial credit. There really is a bimodal (or trimodal) distribution here between those that "get it", those that "don't get it", and those that "don't get it" and "don't give a damn".

I don't understand how you can be at a school like UCSD, paying money to take a course over the summer, and not try and do better. Why do we have financial aid that is independent of merit? Wouldn't it be better to put those millions into better schools for the motivated, but underprivileged grade school kids? $10k+ per year goes much longer in an elementary school than it does for an unmotivated college student.

The issue of motivation gets discussed a lot, and again, a lot of the proposed solutions are narrow-minded. Yes, consistent punishments and rewards are good as external motivations, but ultimately internal motivations are more important. I'm sure it does work for many students, and may even result in change of hearts, but I think there are definitely some that just stop trying in the absence of the appropriate reward/punishment framework. Again, I think a lot of people blame things like our culture and society (let's free tibet, and save Darfur! Screw Bill Nye and Reading Rainbow!) But that's still only one facet of a complex problem. My friend K thinks that motivation issues can be solved by making high school voluntary, which is a not entirely novel idea that is wrought with implementation issues. Trying to apply motivation psychology research to teenagers just doesn't sound like a brilliant way to fix education...

Of course, any attempts to engineer a culture that admires hard work and effort on a governmental scale is also easily seen as government interfering with things they shouldn't mess with. The problem is, though, that without intervention, we end up getting stuck with reality shows, celebrity coverage, and sometimes the two combined together.

Chalk this up to my late night cynicism. I'll feel much more optimistic in the morning. At least until I see the stack of ungraded homeworks...