BLUF: Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage Site cultural and geographic feature in Vietnam but the closest I’m likely to get there is the soup from Tamarine at 546 University in Palo Alto.

BLUf2: but i’d lump Dumpling Time and Ramen Nagi in the same boat, so to speak, in that there relatively young, and hip and cheaper than Tamarine which is elegant and older.

There’s a great dumplings place on or below Portreo Hil called Dumpling Time. One of the categories is Xiolongbao, which I recalled as “long bao”. I think my hip proto-Asian nephew said that hipsters call it “XLB”.

Today at Tamarine on University I splurged on some yummy soup for lunch. It was a curry soup with coconut and quails eggs, and noodles. But the lady next to me ordered what might be worth coming back for — and what caught my eye — other than being an Emersonian all -seing eyeball — is that she snapped a photo of her soup. And then, as I later posted to Elena K’s PAW column, I asked my server — Anna? — whether that soup not taken was called “long bay” as a transliteration or cognate of the Chinese dumplings, which I called “long bao”. She said she was Vietnamese (like her boss, Tanya Huynh Hartley) and said, “no, it’s just ‘Long Bay’ like Long Bay in Vietnam, a long bay”.

I could edita with a photo.

I could eat another bowl. Tomorrow.

But If I haven’t told you this personally or mentioned it below in Plasty, the best bowl in town is Ramen Nagi in 500 block of Bryant near City Hall: for $15 you get the pork ramen with literally 300,000 variations, or 4 main categories. Kudos to Steve Young the manager — but not the lefty Mormon footballer turned VC or lawyer. Different Steve Young.

There’s also now an Ike’s on Lytton at Kipling, Lytton of the great unwashed, Kipling as in the Jungle Book. (Lytton was also of the “dark and stormy night” although so far Ike’s is only open until 3, ie day hours.

and and: speaking of Emersonian eyeball, I am writing about Laurene Powell Jobs media empire, located here in Palo Alto above the Keen store — in what was once poet laureate Al Young’s studio, “the Nevada Building” in that she according to Kara Swisher in the New York Times bought Atlantic Magazine and then hired Gunn grad George Packer (“the unwinding”) away from New Yorker mag presumably to edit such. And — if you are reading this Laurene — you can make Plastic Alto your next purchase. At such a price.

I also flashed to Jeff Morgan the Cubberley grad and brother of my classmate Mary Morgan Finnegan — a doctor, Paly grad — who runs a global NGO protecting World Heritage Sites — I presume he’s been to Ha Long Bay and likely Dumpling Time as well. Unless its a different Jeff Morgan — there’s also Morgan Family Foundation which did or does have Palo Alto offices. To me, “applied materials” means using spoon, chopsticks, fork, straw — by any means necessary — when there is soup in need of slurp. I am applying material on my bowl, as tools. Try the fish.