On a whim, I stopped by Off the Grid, a Bay Area food truck meetup, in Berkeley. I had heard great things about The Chairman truck and it was at tonight's event. You can't miss it; it's big, bright red, and has a long line of hungry people. The line was long relative to the other trucks, but nowhere near what the lines were like when the Kogi Truck first opened up in LA. I remember waiting at least 2 hours for a few tacos, but that's beside the point.

The Chairman features baos, which are basically Chinese sandwiches on steamed or baked buns. They were out of baked buns, but that was not a problem because I love steamed buns. I was going get straight pork belly, but for the sake of journalism, I also ordered a Coca Cola braised pork bao.

I tried the Coca Cola braised pork bao first. This bao was packed with goodness - braised pork, a cabbage slaw, mustard seeds, and sauce. The pork was moist and tender. The Coca Cola they braise it in definitely lends great flavor to the pork. You get the great savory elements of Coke, but without the sweetness. Everything else in this bao complements the pork nicely and the mustard seeds really brighten everything up. It was good, but quite frankly, after eating the pork belly bao, I don't remember too much about this one.

This bao lived up to the hype. Dare I say, the pork belly was succulently sexy. Not only was it tender as the name says, it had a bit of a crunch from getting finished on the flat top. There was just enough fat left, post-rendering, to give great flavor and juice. Maybe my mind was over exaggerating the greatness of the pork from sensory overload, but this was one of the best pork bellies I've ever had. Everything was perfect from the textures to the flavors, and I was happy. The pickled daikon cut through the fattiness of the pork and acted as a breath of fresh air, not that the pork belly was bad in any way.

Everyone has to eat a pork belly bao from The Chairman. Preferably more.

The Chairman www.twitter.com/chairmantruck (415) 813-8800

My lack of posts as of late has been a result of moving up to college! I'm up North now and wanted to do a quick post about the food I've been eating outside of the dining commons. My comments on the food will probably be very concise and general. Upon arrival, we stopped by the Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant.

We had some dim sum, honestly, I don't know what everything is called, but that's how it usually is at dim sum places. We had the pork and shrimp shumai, various dumplings, rice paper rolls in XO sauce, and the taro cakes.

This was the amazing view out of the window that we were seated next to.

The food was good, pretty much on par with the other dim sum that I've had in the past; there was nothing that really stood out, minus the view. The rice paper rolls in XO sauce were fairly new to me, I've never had that dish at a dim sum restaurant before, but my mother had made it at home once, so I was familiar with it.

Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant 3199 Powell St Emeryville, CA 94608 (510) 655-3388 www.hkeo.us

On our visit to San Francisco, we went to the Pier Market on Pier 39.

We started off with some calamari. I've had better calamari in the past, but it was definitely good.

The rest of my family had their famous clam chowder. I tried a little bit and wow, it really was good. Definitely different from the chowdah that I had at the Black Pearl in Rhode Island (which was also great).

I had the fish and chips. The fish was pretty good, but a tab bit over-battered. I definitely got full fast. The fries (or chips) were reminiscent of Burger King fries, not a bad thing at all.

Pier Market Seafood Market Pier 39 San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 989-7437 www.piermarket.com

More posts to come. I still have to cover two more restaurants.