MOD Pizza

MOD Pizza in Vallejo, March 1, 2018. 

Great customer service and great pizza at a really cheap price!

I'm on a tight budget, so it's nice that we can get lunch for half the price as normal.

Pizza at MOD Pizza in Napa, California.


I feel like we're living in some sort of un-dreamed of future.  More and more restaurants of every type are using local, seasonal ingredients. Thirty years ago it was practically unheard-of to find Thai, Peruvian, Burmese, Interior Mexican, Vietnamese, & Lao restaurants, and most ethnic restaurants you could find were toned down. I certainly never would have guessed that *regional* cuisines would become such a huge thing all over the United States. And now, there's new kinds of traditional American cuisine popping up, McDonalds, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, and Taco Bells are closing stores in many cities, and they're being gradually replaced my much better hamburger, pizza and mexican chains.

And there's some chains that completely blow my mind. I've already raved in previous blog posts about FarmBurger and SmashBurger. Now it's time to sing the praises of MOD Pizza, the fastest-growing restaurant chain in America for many good reasons. First, despite the fact that Old School Ska from the 1960s was part of music mix when we visited, MOD stands for Made On Demand. I noticed they had all their pizza doughs all set up and ready, over on the side.

Notice that the worker is rolling this tube with spikes on each pizza. This way, once your pizza is loaded up with the ingredients you choose, it'll cook quicker and more evenly in the pizza oven.

See, there's the pizza oven in the back. Your pizza will be done quickly. We had roughly 8 people ahead of us, but we still got our pizza in less than 10 minutes. Probably would have been more like 3-4 minutes if nobody was in line ahead of us. This is one thing about these New Breed restaurants. They've really done their research in terms of Food Science. MOD Pizza is so organized these guys are unfazed by any sort of rush.


So anyhow, the whole set-up is simple. Three sizes/types of dough, each pizza priced according to the size of the dough, and you can load up your pizza with whatever ingredients you want. Or of course they have specialty pizzas. We got one with pesto, garlic rub, roasted mushrooms, mild Italian sausage, basil, roasted garlic, artichokes, red bell peppers, ricotta, mozzarella & parmesan cheese. Same price, no matter how much stuff you order.

They also have salads, shakes, beer and wine. Also fountain drinks and teas.

We don't eat pizza very often, but this will definitely be one of the places we'll be returning to in the  future. The sausage is exceptionally good, definitely minimally processed. There's nothing about this place that reminds me of Papa Johns, Domino's or Pizza Hut. That's an $11 pizza, by the way. Pretty sure that's the biggest/most expensive one on the menu.

Once again, here's the closeup.


These other great chains we like also do exceptionally good shakes, so we decided to get one to share.

See how thick it is? Great shake, but not something I'd normally get.

Turns out MOD Pizza's got an interesting back story, giving opportunities for people who need a Second Chance. Robin found a couple of great links which I'll share here. I'm sure there will soon be one near you.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD_Pizza

https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2018/02/05/how-mod-pizza-americas-fastest-growing-restaurant-puts-people-first-including-felons-ex-addicts/#6041d90d6dda

Ruthies Caribbean Kitchen in Vallejo

Visited Ruthies this week (8/13/18), above are the Jerk Chicken Wings, below is an Oxtail platter with Plaintains and Red Beans & Rice.

Bread pudding with ice cream.

Been dying to return to Ruthie's, and we finally did so tonight (5/23/18). We ordered three dishes, and we got totally stuffed, all 3 were superb. Above and below is the Roti with Goat (above you can see the Roasted Vegetables we got as the side). Big juicy chunks of boneless goat with potatoes, seasoned with curry.

Above: Mild Jerk Chicken Wings, with Sweet Potato and Plaintain. Very spicy chicken wings, a tad  on the salty side, but even though there's a lot of spice to the Mild Jerk, it isn't spicy hot. The sweet potato side was spiced with some nutmeg & allspice, really nice that way, and the plaintains were spot on. If you want jerk, Chicken Wings is definitely the way to go at Ruthie's.

Above: Spicy Jerk Shrimp with vegetables and red beans and rice. This version of the Jerk sauce is incendiary, I was all sweaty from the liberal use of scotch bonnet in this dish, so good, permeating shrimp and vegetables. Red beans and rice were solid, but a nice plain carb side to offset the heat of the Spicy Jerk.

Oxtail Platter at Ruthies Caribbean Kitchen in Vallejo.

When I first moved to Vallejo, I noticed this place on Sonoma Blvd. called B&W Cafe. I never went there, and about a year or so back it closed. Recently we saw signs of a new place setting up shop, and right now, Ruthies Caribbean Kitchen is in Soft Opening mode. They've got a bunch of interesting juices (including Sorrel, Sour Sop and Sea Moss), but I opted for Gingerade, which tastes like a gingery lemonade.

We took a peak at their menu yesterday, so we already know what we wanted. Goat and Oxtail. I joked that they probably source their meat from our favorite neighborhood Carniceria, Mi Ranchito. Sure enough, after we placed our order, in walks the owner of Mi Ranchito, with two bags of Oxtail!

Here's the Oxtail Platter, with Roasted Vegetables and Red Beans and Rice. 

Unctuous, tender, fall off the bone meat, with a sauce that tastes of Caribbean spices, though nowhere close to the aggressively spiced Chettinad Indian restaurants we've been to recently. It seemed like I could detect the faintest flavor of Allspice.

Roasted vegetables were perfectly done--softly sauteed but not hammered, very flavorful. Red Beans and rice done just right too, I loved that the beans were perfectly done, not too wet, so that they made a nice top on the rice. I recommend this dish to sop up the delicious flavors from the Oxtail sauce.

Here you can see Robin got the Goat Curry, Plaintains and Red Beans and Rice. Once I tried these, I knew this place wasn't based on the cuisine of any of the usual suspects. I've never had plaintains done this way by Dominicans, Cubans or Puerto Ricans. The Goat Curry was similar to the cuisine from Trinidad, but not quite spiced that much. This wasn't Jamaican cuisine either (though the menu does feature a sort of "Jerk" Chicken). 

More shots of the delicious Goat Curry Platter.

Beef Roti. Tender, spicy & delectable. 

So once we were done and I was paying for our scrumptious meal, I had to ask our hostess: where does this cuisine originate? St. Lucia?! Where the late great Poet Derek Walcott hailed from? We'll I'll be. 

I highly recommend this new restaurant in Vallejo, and we'll certainly be returning for more.

Ruthies Caribbean Kitchen

2632 Sonoma Blvd

Vallejo, California 94590

(707) 731-0452

www.ruthiescaribbeankitchen.com

Anjappar Chettinad Indian Restaurant in Santa Clara, CA

Some of the dishes we experienced on our most recent visit (8/25/18). Above: Mushroom Tikka Masala appetizer. 

Deeply rich Mutton Masala curry.

Prawn Biryani.

Fish Thali at Anjappar Chettinad in Santa Clara.

Mutton Thali.

Vegetarian Thali.

Deer Masala at Anjappar Chettinad Indian Restaurant in Santa Clara.

So apparently branches of this restaurant are all over the United States, including Newark, NJ, Bellevue, WA, Houston & Plano, Texas. All these place have high tech workers from India, and although there are many solid Indian restaurants in all these places, given some of the horror stories I've heard from friends in the industry, it is no wonder that we're starting to get even more truly great Indian restaurants in the United States. This is one of those that doesn't ask how spicy you want the food. Which means: it's going to be very, very spicy.

Above, you can see it looks like another Indian restaurant in a strip mall. Below, check out the interesting decor.

We arrived just in time for lunch, and ordered up a couple of Thali plates. Above: the Mutton Thali plate: clockwise from 9 o'clock: lime pickle, yogurt, coconut porridge, spicy Indian beets, rasam, kootu (mixed vegetables), carrots, Mutton Curry, rice, chapati.

Above: Mutton Biryani Thali, with Raita, coconut porridge, Chicken Masala, and a chapati atop the Mutton biryani.

Deer Masala. Tender and exquisite.

The level of spice here is otherworldy, because of the amount used, the fresh flavor of the spices both in ground and whole form. If you don't like spicy food, go somewhere else. Based on our lunch today,  and reaffirmed by the leftovers we just finished, the chefs here are operating on a very exalted level. This is currently my favorite restaurant in the Bay Area. Looking forward to trying their other restaurants, and yet another great-sounding Chettinad restaurant for comparison sake. 

Anjappar Chettinad Indian Restaurant in Santa Clara, CA

777 Lawrence Expy, Santa Clara, CA 95051

Phone: (408) 243-5500

Longo Seafood Restaurant in Rosemead, California (Dim Sum)

Scallop Dumpling with Roe at Longo Seafood Restaurant in Rosemead, CA

Robin & I were eager to check out this new Dim Sum place after Jonathan Gold's glowing review, but also I've been hearing for years that this entire area, east of Downtown Los Angeles, is crawling with world class Dim Sum restaurants, and that the competition for business lunches here makes this the best Dim Sum scene on the planet. The over-the-top decor seems so LA to me, especially the massive  High Definition Television on the wall on the left, which was constantly showing video footage of Chinese folks catching fish, harvesting herbs, gathering shellfish from the shore with huge nets, dispatching a sheep and cutting it into pieces, then grilling the pieces over live coals. Some of it seemed a tad bloody to me, but nobody else around batted an eye. After all the food on the video looked beautiful and delicious.

Speaking of dispatched animals, check out the carcasses draining just beyong the kitchen doors.

First Dim Sum Offering: Mixed Mushrooms inside Tofu Skin. Silky texture.

This was the one Entree selection we made: Salt & Pepper Squid. Absolutely perfect on many levels. The Squid was the perfect texture, cooked exactly the right time, the breading was light, and not too salty with just the optimal amount of black pepper. Even better, these were served with thinly-sliced scallions & chiles, the red jalapenos were a particularly delightful piquant touch.

Above & below: shrimp & chive dumplings. Similar to good ones I've had in SF, except the ingredients, especially the shrimp, is of particularly good quality. All the seafood I had at Longo was top notch, with a nice sweetness.

Pork Dumplings, above and below.

Above & below: shrimp and fungus dumpling.

Shrimp dumpling.

And, at last, scallop dumpling with roe. Scallops were very sweet. 

Longo Seafood Restaurant

7540 Garvey Ave, Rosemead, CA 91770

(626) 280-8188