food genius

A Fat Kid's Guide to Chicago

2011-08-07T21:54:00.020-04:00

I'll be the first to admit that my time in New York has perhaps instilled in me a slightly obnoxious city snobbery when it comes to other U.S. cities. "Oh yeah, [insert U.S. city name] is nice...for a huge, sprawling suburban town" or "It's great - reminds me of Jersey." Plus I haven't really explored cities that don't fit neatly into my bi-coastal domestic travel patterns.

But Chicago has remained one big unknown. Everyone I know loves it (in the summer) but it only brings to my mind unsettling images from The Jungle or Native Son. To settle this cognitive dissonance once and for all, I decided it was time to venture into the Great Unknown (aka the MidWest) and see for myself. In the spirit of communal happiness, I offer the guide below for those of you who have also never been:

Step 1: Get on an aeroplane (or, a train, car, bicycle - whatever) and go, meng!
There are tons of cheap flights to Chicago out of New York, especially for the weekends. While you're booking that, find a nice 'lil airbnb to stay in in a cute neighborhood like Wicker Park or Ukranian Village.

Step 2: Find a local to drive you around and take you to their favorite places to eat.
I was extremely fortunate in this category, as I was visiting my good friend Josh Brau. In addition trying to make McDonalds more sustainable, Josh has spent his summer in Chicago getting to know every good place to eat. I knew I could trust this bonafide fat kid to take good care of my taste buds.

As soon as I landed, Josh brought me to Urban Belly , where creative Asian fusion is served on communal picnic tables, fast-food cafeteria style. Efficient yet delicious - I love!

Seasonal kimchi with some BYOB rosé in the background. Chicago is a BYOB type of city.

Lamb brandy dumplings. A fait accompli for Asian fusion, I still dream about the intensely divine flavor/texture combination. Definitely the star of the show.

Spot-on ramen with pork belly in pho broth

Step 3: Wash it down with dessert and drinks.
We went to Josh's favorite watering hole Big Star with the intention of having some tacos for dessert, but sadly we had to settle for drinks only since the kitchen had some kind of debacle and closed early. Not to fear! We had unintentionally thought ahead by first eating some insanely good gelato from Black Dog, with flavors like salty peanut and goat cheese.

Step 4: Wake up early and treat yourself to a sweet, fluffy breakfast.
Forget your hangover. Saturday mornings at 9:30 is when the Donut Vault opens and remains open until all their freshly made donuts have run out. Astoundingly, by the time we got there around 10:00 on a hot 90+ degree day, there was already a line (of the excruciatingly slow-moving variety) that extended a full city block.

Vanilla, chestnut, pistachio, and chocolate glazed, buttermilk old-fashioned, and ginger stack.

Luckily, it was worth the one-hour wait.

Step 5: Keep a balanced diet.
For example, why not add some protein to your diet with these fresh pork sesame buns from Butcher and Larder? They're only $1.50 each, and they taste like Taiwan!

Step 6: Decide for yourself if there is any reason to consider the Chicago pizza debate.
Okay, I have to confess that I didn't actually try Chicago-styled deep dish pizza. But that's really only because the pizza house of the moment, Great Lake, is decidedly not Chicago-styled. It was, however, remarkable. Never again will I scoff at the notion of wait-worthy pizza in Chicago.

We got ours with sausage and spring onions. I can't even look at this picture without getting hungry. It's a blessing and a curse, I tell you.

Accompanied by some farm fresh tomato salad with Dante cheese. So fresh and so good.

Step 7: Send yourself off with a hearty brunch.
Longman & Eagle may be the coolest place in all of Chicago. Not only do they have a cute hipstery staff, they also have a cute hipstery B&B right above the restaurant.

What's brunch without some brunchy cocktails? Like a good brunch cocktail, mine was floral and strong.

Watermelon salad. Every summer there is one thing that I can't get enough of, and this year it's watermelon salad. Gimme!

I loved this version of shrimp and grits because 1) the heads are still on the shrimp, and 2) the addition of the one hour egg. Hallelujah.

Housemade biscuits and gravy. What's not to love about this?

Step 8 (optional): Feed your mind!
Like the true great city that it is, Chicago has a ton to offer in the cultural enrichment category.

You can get your history on via an architectural boat tour of city. There's even booze on the cruise!

The Chicago Institute of Art is stupendous and world-class. Just as importantly, it's not crowded.

Millenium Park is a kick-ass public space, complete with it's own Frank Gehry bandshell and behemoth work of public art.

So there you have it. Now you have no reason not to go and see for yourself what all that relaxed, friendly, reasonably-priced fuss is all about.

Taiwan: Epic Breakfasts Build Character

2010-08-29T06:23:00.008-04:00

Waking up the next morning, we needed, of course, to follow up with a ginormous breakfast. I've waxed poetic about the subject before, but for the record let me just state that there ain't no breakfast like a Taiwan breakfast. Period.

Take for instance, this purple sticky rice roll.

You can have a number of yummy fillers, but here we have a Chinese churro, some pickled vegetables, and dried pork floss (just trust me on that last one - it's great).

This is freshly made cao bing. They are flaky pastries with black and white toasted sesame seeds.

You can eat them with Chinese churros inside for full effect, like so.

One of my all time favorites is man tou, which are a very basic steamed bun that has a fluffy and light consistency. I love the taro ones, which are normally purple in hue and have a sweet taro paste inside.

Ahh and then there is the venerable institution that is soy milk. There is the sweet variety, which can be served hot or cold. But more amazing is savory soy milk, which comes in a variety of ways but is always piping hot. Below, it is mixed with Chinese churros (are you noticing a pattern here?) and vegetables/condiments to create an almost tofu like porridge.

And THIS. My oh my, is this good. It's like a scallion pancake but more bread-like and with toasted sesame seeds and abundant amounts of black pepper. IT IS SOOO GOOD.

While all of the above is street food, not everyone eats out for breakfast everyday. Many people might have a simple and light bowl of congee. My grandmother prefers homemade turnip cakes, which are pan fried until crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.

Mmm...turnip cakes.

Most of this food is not that easy to find stateside unless you go to somewhere like Flushing (which is essentially a microcosm of China in the middle of Queens, New York). So next time you are in Queens or watching the U.S. Open in Flushing, you could perhaps show a picture of one of these breakfast delights to some random Chinese person off the street, and they can point and guide you to breakfast nirvana. You can thank me later.

Taiwan: Night Markets Bring Bliss

2010-08-29T04:24:00.007-04:00

At MyLu, one of our first company "policies" was officially declaring August a month of stepping back and reflecting, using space and time to reflect on lessons learned and their implications for future decisions. As such, I decided there could be no better place to reflect than in Taiwan and China -- my food mecca.

First stop: the tiny but oh so delicious island of Taiwan. I have blogged about it before, but once could never be enough for what I consider a major contender for Culinary Capital of Asia.

Last year I visited with my dad and his side of the family, and this year with my mom. For both sides, food is an unending source of delight, entertainment and obsession. It is unclear where my fatkid genes come from exactly, but likely it is due to the unique combining of both gene pools. Case in point: below is a photo of my mother as a child. She is the one in the front. Notice what she is doing that others are not.

The first thing we did when we landed was go to one of Taipei's many night markets. My wonderful Aunt Xiao Ling brought us to the best dumplings my mother and I have ever tasted. Wrapped ever so lightly in paper thin dough, these little bundles of joy exploded with delicate flavors without over-whelming the taste buds.

They had meat with either chives or cabbage. That's really all you need in a good dumpling.

Next up, stinky tofu! This house didn't deep fry their stinky tofu, and made it in more of a Shanghainese style with Thai basil and shitake mushrooms in a hot and spicy broth.

After that we had to have some dericious oh-ah-jien (egg omelets with oyster and tapioca flour) and took home some shaved ice dessert home for later.

These are different kinds of jelly. On the bottom right is grass jelly, my favorite dessert for the summer because of it's cooling properties, wonderfully herbal, bitter taste and jello-like consistency. It's actually made of real grass!

Eating all this helped us overcome our first night of jet lag by inducing severe food coma and restful sleep and dreams of doing it all over again the next day...

Fun Times with BromBom.com

2010-07-18T20:55:00.009-04:00

This weekend, serendipitously, both Mssr. BromBom and I were hanging around in the Have. Each of us intended to spend the weekend packing for our upcoming moves. However, given the 90 million degree heat, plus our shared penchant for fun, packing was foregone to make room for more inviting activities.

We started off the weekend (which henceforth shall be referred to solely as "The Weekend of New Haven Revival") right by stopping by the Union League cafe for some cocktails and oysters. Afterwards, we ventured forth into the New Haven night to try out some of the new fresh made ice cream from the MooBella machine that I was really eager to taste. We went to Durfees on the Yale College campus and to the Yale-New Haven hospital, but sadly found them both to be closed and no MooBella's to be found.

The next day, inspired by the previous, Brom and I got up early to go to the Wooster Square farmers' market. We purchased all kinds of delectable farm fresh items and returned home to make lunch in my backyard.

Here he is dining with Cat, another NH revivalist.

For starters, I made a pesto in the VitaMix out of garlic scape from the farmers' market, basil from my "garden," shredded parm, pine nuts and walnuts. We ate it with rosemary olive bread, fresh carrots, and honey goat cheese. Soooo good.

The farmers' market also had on offer one of my absolute favorite things to eat in the summer: SQUASH BLOSSOMS! These beauties came from the Yale Farm. I stuffed some with goat cheese, others with the all-purpose Siggi's plain Icelandic yogurt, and then sauteed them with some of the garlic scape. Very easy and very derishious.

Because I had been excited by the one I had the night before at Union League, I decided to make some Nicoise salads. I have gone through periods where I eat these exclusively, and they are also one of my favorite summertime treats.

Afterwards, we ventured forth and finally got to try MooBella's at the hospital. The instant fresh made ice cream idea is absolutely brilliant, but the experience unfortunately failed us on two sorta pivotal accounts:
1) my banana ice cream did not taste like banana (this made me wonder about the supposedly all natural flavoring used)
2) the machine kept malfunctioning before it spit out the ice cream.
On the plus side, the texture was creamy but light and wonderful.

All this running around and eating made us tired, so we took a little afternoon nap, and then reconvened with some other friends to go to The Place, which is one of the coolest seafood barbecue restaurants you will ever go to.

I stuffed myself with steamed clams, corn, lobster, and catfish. So much so that it was decided I had reached the golden ratio -- consumption:body weight parity. Just one indication that "The Weekend of New Haven Revival" was aptly named.

What's for Lunch?

2010-07-15T11:35:00.004-04:00

These days I am working on starting a food company with my friend Ben, a fellow SOM '10 graduate. We're called MyLu Foods and our mission is to make healthy (but delicious) foods more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Our first product is a healthy and convenient lunch pack for kids. Something that is fun and appealing and can be taken easily on the go. Basically, we're trying to take the nutritious, fresh qualities of a homemade lunch and package it into something that kids will be excited about.

We are currently brainstorming names, packaging design, and ingredients. Please let us know if you have any suggestions by leaving a comment here, or by emailing mylufoods@gmail.com. Below are some initial homemade prototypes.

Chinatown San Fran style

2010-04-25T14:28:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I almost forgot about this. After our morning brunch and ice cream at Henry Slocomb's, we took a walk in Golden Gate park. We saw buffalo! We decided that all that moving around and animal watching and whatnot warranted yet another meal, and meandered on over to the Richmond. There we went to this amazing Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant where this lazy susan original footage was shot.

Last Days of Frisco

2010-04-24T17:04:00.006-04:00

I was obsessed with the farmers' markets in San Francisco. Especially the Ferry Building one because they always had squash blossoms and this AMAZING quark cheese that tasted like cheesecake, but was apparently very good for you and probiotic and stuffs.

Mmmm...squash blossoms.

For one of my last days there, I decided I wanted to eat everything that I hadn't had the chance to eat yet, or wanted just one last bite of. Greg, Alex were good sports and accompanied me throughout. I ate so much that I wasn't hungry for about three days afterwards. For me that is really quite a feat.

What we ate:

1) Porchetta Sandwich

Roli Roti's porchetta sandwiches from the Ferry Building farmers' market. It's a serious sandwich, and my favorite sandwich anywhere. They use this wonderfully crunchy and chewy sourdough bread, heap on a giant portion of freshly roasted-to-perfection sliced porchetta, lovingly layer it with crisp skin shavings, pour secret delicious sauce with the fatty fat fat juices, and make it all very healthy by topping it off with some delectably complementary green stuff (pepper cress, apparently) and sea salt. This sandwich tastes like all the goodness of the world combined in your mouth while having a dance party.

Here is Alex eating just some pork knuckle, which they also offer alone:

It's the size of his face!

There is a funny French guy who runs the whole production. When I asked him how he got the pork knuckles so damn good, he leaned over and made me promise I wouldn't tell a soul. After I promised he whispered some Frenchie-English in my ear. Unfortunately I couldn't understand a word of what he said, so I couldn't break my promise if I tried.

After the porchetta sandwiches we shuttled ourselves on over to Russian Hill for some seafood at Swan Oyster Depot, where we had some yum yum oysters and other seafoody salty squishy goodness.

Freshly smoked salmon hurrah!

Then we decided we needed to wash down the salty sea taste with some donuts. They really love donuts in California, and they're basically on every block in SF. A lot of the donuts are sold by Chinese people, which I find interesting. Anyways, the donuts were really good, but for dessert we decided to have fish tacos at Nick's Crispy Tacos, a place that Greg and Alex really like. They do some variations on the traditional fish taco with crispy shells added to the softshell.

I've loved fish tacos since I first visited California as a tween. They are definitely one of those things that are just better on the West Coast (although Josh may beg to differ since his dad has started Dorado's Tacos in Boston, which is apparently awesome)

I had my first fish tacos in SF in Sausalito. The picture doesn't do it justice, but this taco was probably the best fish taco I have ever tasted. Lightly fried and succulent fish, with fresh fresh fresh cole slaw to top.

Needless to say, after this over-the-top (even for me) day of indulgence, it was necessary to follow up with a big giant "light" brunch at Alex and Jackie's.

Alex made "Dutch Babies." Despite the twisted name, they were delicious.

With lemon quark and lots of Kerry Irish Gold butter!!!

Remember when

2010-04-24T16:18:00.005-04:00

I lived in San Francisco? It was nice. I ate a lot a lot a lot of food. I did some fun work stuff. I was often very very cold.

I basically had three friends: Jackie, Alex, and Greg, and I hung out with them a lot. Once Matt came to visit with his brother Jeremy, and we had a big brunch with my roommates (two very cool dudes, Neil and Zach) and their friends. We had it in our backyard, where there was a very fruitful tangerine tree, fresh lavender, mint, and lots of other California goodness.

Matt, Greg and Jackie

It was all West Coast sun and fun times and whatnot.

I basically got to have fresh cut favorite flowers for almost all of the summer!!

We had these avocados. Man. oh. Man.

And these tomatoes.

But the star of the show to me was definitely these slow-cooked eggs that Alex made. He and I both prefer our scrambled eggs cooked very slowly, but he goes to a whole other level. His Eggs are almost soup-like, and they are AMAZING. Seriously, you've never had anything like it.

There's No Food Like Home

2009-06-20T04:43:00.016-04:00

Once upon a time (last month), my mother and Aunt #5 ventured to Gaoshong, the town in Taiwan where they grew up. There was some kind of seafood that was in season there, and they wanted to eat it. But more importantly they both had this decades-old craving for a special noodle - sa ca (a Taiwanese special sauce) rice noodles, to be precise - that their whole family had loved dearly when they were growing up there. They took a train from Taipei to the town, only to find their beloved childhood restaurant still in tact, but under construction. Seeing the despair on their fallen faces, a nearby witness of this tragedy informed them that the restaurant had another branch, but on the other side of town. The two of them immediately hopped in a taxi and scurried on over to said other branch, only to discover that they had just stopped serving for lunch. Desperate, they explained how they had come by train from Taipei, and before that they had flown all the way from New York -- ALL FOR THESE NOODLES, GODAMNIT! They begged and begged, and promised to eat the sa ca rice noodles only and nothing else. Pitying these poor fools, the restaurant indulged their request, and bestowed upon them two heaping bowls of noodles, making them the two happiest (grown-up) fat kids in all of Taiwan. And then they lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story is nothing will ever quite compare with the food you grew up eating. It will always have a special place in your heart, and it will always be the most delicious food you can imagine, especially when you move one gazillion miles away.

Last week I made a short trip to Taiwan and was able to confirm this phenomenon by the pure volume of food I consumed in the just 3.5 days I was there. Though I wasn't technically born there, I spent a significant part of my childhood in Taiwan and consider it home. Whenever I go back, my relatives always say I have "returned."

Of course, then, being from Taiwan makes it easy to crave desirously your childhood gastronomy -- the country is a food lover's promised land. If you visit, you will leave with the conclusion that it is the most food-obsessed place on earth. You would be correct.

Allow me now to share with you a little piece of my childhood:

First of all let me just explain my causal theory. There are no farmers' markets in Taiwan as far as I can tell. More accurately, all markets are essentially farmers' markets. All the food is fresh and largely unprocessed/preserved.

favorite breakfast food

Like a thin version of scallion pancake wrapped around an omelet. I actually got a modern version with bacon wrapped inside. Best. breakfast. ever.

beef noodle soup

Oh heavenly delight -- ordered "half beef, half tendon." Beef so tender it simply melts in your mouth, but the tendon is the real treat. Kind of like bone marrow, but more gelatinous and chewy.

loves of my life

Everyone already knows how much I love soup dumplings, but this takes love to a whole new level. Do you see the orange hue? That's crab roe (or, literally, crab yellow. a delicacy for us Chinese), so much of it you can see it through the skin. You will be a lucky son of a gun if you ever find that stateside (or anywhere else for that matter. Taiwan has arguably the best soup dumplings in the world, despite their origination in Shanghai)...

mah jong noodles

Sweet sweet mah jong noodles. Their simplicity is what makes them glorious -- just noodles coated with a sesame paste-soy sauce mixture, but this Taiwanese staple is one of my favorites. I made some tonight and threw in tomato and basil for experiment's sake. Modern day Marco Polo I am.

endangered pork buns

I'm pretty sure my brother Hans Tang actually cried tears of joy when he saw these. He used to eat FIFTY of these little water seared buns (think soup dumplings but pan steamed like potstickers) EVERY morning as a child. They are now endangered for some reason and have all gotten much larger. But cousin Arthur loves Hans Tang very much and brought him these special from one of the night markets.

oh-ah-jien

Although no one in my family speaks Taiwanese, we all know these words very well. Also native to Taiwan's night markets, they are gooey, oyster filled omelets, unlike any omelet you've ever had. And better, much much better.

stinky tofu!!

Yet another species of street food, it looks about as appetizing as it smells, but it tastes INCREDIBLE. Words can't do this mystery justice, so I'll stop trying.

food psychic

You also won't find scallion pancakes this light, fluffy, and flaky anywhere near the U.S. A minute after I bought mine, I randomly ran into Hans Tang on the street. He freaked out because he had just been saying how much he wanted those same pancakes, but he had just eaten lunch (bad excuse). He promptly took a few big bites out of mine. See, it's really not my fault -- my love for food is genetically programmed into my DNA, down to the types of street food I crave.

crushed ice desserts

This immediately makes me salivate. Fresh mango and taro with grass jelly and little glutinous balls over crushed ice. Party in my mouth, baby.

Funky Fresh Fruits:
something in the apple family

guava

passion fruit

dragon fruit

To be continued...

Back to/from the Future

2009-05-30T18:13:00.005-04:00

SO... Hi friend, it's been a while. A long while. I'll bet you don't even remember me. I'll bet you've started reading some other fat kid's food blog. Traitor. Didn't you always know that I would be back for you baby? I never really left.

Actually in my absence I did quite a fair amount of eating. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to brag. Much of it was from food carts in New Haven (not that there's anything wrong with that- they're pretty delicious). Much more of it was from a pretty mediocre pizza joint that just happened to always be free and around (cough...Town Pizza...cough, cough). But in between there were moments of beauty. Clam pizza pie from Pepe's. Fresh pomegranate juice in Istanbul. Mango and sticky rice with a side of mangosteens in Thailand. Stinky tofu and ice desserts bigger than my face in Taiwan. Inventive sushi in New Haven from Miya's. Birthday bo ssam at Momofuku. An apple crumble descended from heaven in Deerfield Massachusetts. And of course, plenty of Pei family madness.

Well I'm back. From the future. And ready to make up for some lost time and fill you in on this year's culinary highlights as well as my eating adventures in San Francisco this summer. Stay tuned...

Fresh escargot in Ghana. So big I thought it was going to turn the tables (literally) and eat me.

Objects of my affection: Mangosteen

Burmese side-of-the-road fare.

Some kind of deliciousness in Nigeria

And some mutton fufu that was not so delicious in Ghana

One of the Best Food Experiences I'm Really Sorry You'll Never Have

2008-07-08T12:27:00.006-04:00

A view from the back porch...

There are a lot of holidays in Cambodia. I mean a lot a lot. During the King's birthday (the real king and not King Sihanouk. I know, confusing) last May, I went on vacation to Koh Kong, a lush and gorgeous part of Western Cambodia that borders Thailand. I went with my boisterous coworkers/little brothers Sopheap and Vichet to Baklan Village where Sopheap's extended family* lives. Baklan is a quaint little fishing village of stilt houses built on the water, stacked tightly against each other. Each night we would have to brave some ominously shaky planks and balance beam our way over to Sopheap's family's house. Even though the prospect of falling into the garbage water made swimming in crocodile infested waterfalls seem like child's play, the promise of what lay ahead was enough to steady my clumsy steps.

Flames of goodness.

Hotpot of the Khmer variety is particularly enticing in that is also has elements of barbecue in it, and this experience rivaled that of any previous I've had. It was lovingly tended to by Grams and Sopheap's aunt. There was n'er a moment when fresh Asian greens and even fresher squid, shrimp, and fatty pork was not boiling, mixing, simmering, or crispifying. To make this combination of delectableness even more heavenly was the homemade saucy dipping sauce that accompanied it. It was a creamy Cambodian concoction that involved subtle inflections of fermented tofu (my favorite). So good was this sauce that our friend Andrew threatened to drink it all if we were not fast enough.

Grams holding down the fort. Matriarchs are the coolest, no?

Just as we were almost finished stuffing ourselves far past the point of no return, Sopheap's fisherman uncle came home from a long hard day of work. He did not come home empty-handed and shared with us his spoils, which we decided to turn into a fine post-dinner treat.

We are staring at the fleshy crabs who are staring at the succulent prawns who are staring at over-stuffed us. The circle of life! This represents approximately one-tenth of the post-dinner treat.

Pheap and fam. :)

To (inadequately) express our gratitude, the next morning we kids made breakfast.

From the leftover crabmeat I made crab fried rice and Jesse played cultural ambassador by making French Toast. Jen, Andrew and Vichet were the hard-working sous chefs.

Both dishes were a hit with the neighbors, but Grams said she liked mine more. Tee hee.

I <3 Koh Kong 4eva!!!

*Sopheap's family is not actually related to him by blood. During the time of the Khmer Rouge, many people were separated from their families. Forced out of their homes and into the countryside while struggling for survival, strangers often banded together to support one another like family. From my understanding, Sopheap's mother lived with his "grandmother" during that time.

Cha Cha Ca

2008-06-02T12:46:00.012-04:00

Probably one of the best things I have ingested on this trip so far has been the Cha Ca from the very famous CHA CA LA VONG restaurant (listen, it deserves the caps). As
the name suggests, and as with many restaurants in Vietnam, this fine centenarian of an eating establishment serves only one dish, and does so damn well. It's perfect for all those days of indecision. Pay no attention to all the naysayers and critics -- this dish of multi-layered fragrant goodness still haunts my mind, body and soul. I just can't seem to shake the blissful food memories from inside my tortured head.

I nearly couldn't find CHA CA LA VONG after getting lost wandering around the winding streets of the Old Quarter. Of course, my hunger-inspired determination of steel prevailed and I practically collapsed onto CHA CA street and into the restaurant out of the pure joy of discovery. I escorted myself up some rickety old staircases and plopped down on a solitary table.

Not long after I sat down, a waitress adorned my empty table with a sense of mechanical perfection. To accompany the dish with, she set down sides of fish sauce with lemon and pimento pepper, roasted peanuts, mint, cilantro dill, and spring onions and a big plate of bun, or vermicelli.

Next this magician of a waiter came over to my table and set down a steaming hot saucepan on coals and began to perform some crazy magic tricks.

Here he is sauteeing the catfish in hot oil with tumeric, scallions, and peanuts as I sit behind the camera with saliva dribbling down my chin.

The intense curry-yellow coloring of the fish comes from the tumeric seasoning.

While it's still tongue-burning hot, you mix the fish with the bun and accessories in a little soup bowl. You then allow this blissful combination of flavors, textures and colors warm your already overheated body. You enjoy every second of it until the entire dish (for two?) is gone. Ahh the sweet days of old.

Khmer Cuisine: Ja Ja, Oui Oui

2008-05-18T05:42:00.003-04:00

Cambodia tends to get a bad rap for its food, and you’ll commonly hear a description of it that goes more or less “Cambodian food is similar to Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, just not nearly as good.” I would hereby like to call bullshit on that annoying line of thinking.

Okay, I have found that heart-stoppingly delicious food is perhaps not as abundant as in the lands of it neighbors. Nor is the street food here quite as accessible or varied. But in the one and a half months that I have been living in this fine country, I have personally been able to have quite a few fervid love affairs with Khmer food. And if I have, well then kind sir, surely anyone else can as well.

To illustrate my point, below is one very normal, cheap, and wholly satisfying food adventure I had one day, all within working hours.

A few of my coworkers and I ventured out into one of CREDIT’s Phnom Penh sub-branches, situated close to the airport. We used this branch as a hub to interview clients that lived in the outskirts of Phnom Penh. As usual, it was a very hot and dusty day, and also exhausting. Perhaps noticing our state of heat exhaustion, one of the clients we interviewed lavished us with the fruits of her labor:

Outside of her house she sold these homemade vermicelli noodles served with a typical Khmer sauce and cucumbers and garnished with salt and chili. I eagerly slurped my bowl down, and the nourishing coolness helped restore my energy in the morning heat. I've always said there's no better way to start the day than with two breakfasts!

For lunch we went back to the branch and partook in the staff meal there. To my glee, this is what we ate:

Staff meal

Like in many other Asian cuisines, Khmer meals typically consist of a few different types of dishes composing of vegetables, seafood and meat, eaten together family style with rice. No offense to you Westerners, but I'm pretty sure we Asians have got you beat when it comes to the "how to optimally enjoy a meal" department.

The Khmers eat a lot of fish. This one was filleted and pan-fried to crispy perfection. Please note the very fitting love plate on which it was served.

This dish was basically Khmer baked beans, but slightly more pungent than British baked beans. Its strong flavors complemented the other lighter dishes wonderfully.

Garlic-sauteed sliced pumpkin with chicken. The pumpkin in Cambodia is out of this world, and to sautee it with garlic is a genius idea.

Typical fish soup dish with pumpkin, green leafy vegetables, mushroom, tofu skins, and winter melon.

After our afternoon interviews we headed back to headquarters, but not without busting a tire on one of our motos. As the roadside mechanics worked to congeal the tire, we stopped for a delightful afternoon snack to bide the time:

Roasted Eggs

They hollow the eggs (the way that Christians do for Easter), mix them with some kind of saucy saucy, refill the eggshells with the mixture and bbq them. We in turn dig out the resulting treat and eat it with a limey-chili-salt sauce. YUM!

Belated Awkuns

2008-04-20T01:09:00.009-04:00

It’s been almost a month since the food genius arrived in Southeast Asia, and I have to apologize profusely for not having shared the culinary delights of this part of the world yet. But before I delve full-throttle into revealing the exciting new world of fermented fish, duck embryos and tarantulas, I have many belated food awkuns, xie xies, dankes, grazies, mercis, etc., to give.

First, allow me to recognize the that I probably wouldn’t be blogging at all had it not been for the kindness of my new favorite corporation: FUJIFILM . I bestow upon them abundant kisses for being not only the manufacturer of the best ever digital point and shoot for low light, but also for being so kind as to give me a brand new Finepix F30 after mine mysteriously disappeared. This model is now discontinued, and since other people have now also realized what a gem it is, the selling price for used ones on eBay far surpass the original price of a new one. Fuji's customer service team was nice enough to find a refurbished one for me and send it along with all the fixins. Almost all the pictures on this blog as well as all my flickr pictures , have been taken with the F30, and I really don’t know what kind of life I would be leading had I not been reunited with my digital love. Arigato Fuji; you've got one fat kid customer for life!

I was able to use the F30 to capture some highlights from a delicious goodbye meal at Merkato 55, a creative new African restaurant in the meatpacking district. This very nice treat was generously sponsored by Jim Kingston, father of my good friend Darin. Even though he was not physically able to partake, we made so many toasts in his honor that if you look closely enough you can see his spirit. Ondapandula unene from all of us Jim!!

Darin studiously reviews the menu in order to construct...the perfect meal.

Though the owner was born in Ethiopia, Merkato 55 serves cuisine from all over the vast continent of Africa. As our greedy hands converged upon a first course of apricot blatjang chutney, apple coconut dip, long bean sambal, tuna tartar, and shrimp fritters, I felt like we were playing a game of edible African Risk.

Fresh raw oysters are perhaps one of my favorite things in the world. Merkato serves them with harrissa mignonette and melon granite – original and refreshing, a would-be perfect treat for a hot day in Africa.

Pork belly is also right up there on my list of favorite things. The succulent meat brimming robustly with flavor, coupled with the radish and green mango accompaniment, made this dish my favorite of the night.

For recently vegetarian Steph, these chickpea dumplings served with spiced butter and marjoram did just the trick.

Steamed Snapper in banana leaf, fennel and barberries - a little dry for my taste, but still very good.

The winner in the desserts category was this simple and colorful citrus salad with tapioca. I'm pretty sure in-season blood oranges can make any dish luscious and divine.

Unfortunately, I did not use my pal the F30 to record the wonderful and delicious goodbye dinner that Ned and Susan Regan hosted right before I left – I wouldn't want to interrupt such a classy evening with my obsessive and constant shutter-bugging. Ned and Susan are two of the most incredible people I know and represent what I hope to be like "when I grow up.” I’m so fortunate to know them. Susan also happens to be an amazing cook and made us all very happy by bestowing her talents upon us. She is also my friend Rafi’s mother. Rafi is the head of the U.S. operations of interrupcion*, the organization with whom I had my first internship in college. It was an experience that I'll never forget and which which introduced me to the field of social entrepreneurship. Considering what I am in Cambodia for, this delightful evening with such special company was a very fitting send-off for me. Awkun Ned and Susan!

Hot Pot: The Art of War

2008-02-18T11:51:00.006-05:00

In raiding and plundering be like fire, is immovability like a mountain.
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. [6:19]

Sun Tzu's pearls of wisdom from 6th century bc is still a point of reference for modern warfare. It is believed that he wrote The Art of War after laboriously and tediously analyzing the history of war in China. I, however, have a different theory. Being of Chinese nobility, Sun Tzu likely grew up in a very large family, with siblings as numerous as sheep. During the harsh winters, he and his siblings would eat hot pot to keep warm. As battles hard won and lost, it would be these strenuous meals that first taught young Sun Tzu the critical importance of positioning and strategy for ensuring one's survival.

Let us here, then, pay proper homage to the Art of Hot Pot (or, literally, Fire Pot), that most lovable and ubiquitous, trying yet supremely fulfilling, wintertime activity. As relentless food warriors, my friends and I fought the good fight twice in one week -- first to herald in the year of the rat, and then in celebration of our dear Meex's big two-five -- at glorious Grand Sichuan on Canal and Chrystie (no relation to Grand Sichuan in midtown).

At Grand Sichuan they prepare their hot pot in the Chongqing style, making the resultant experience even more closely resembling that of war. The Sichuan peppers and peppercorns flavor the boiling broth in which we cook the food to effect mouth(and mind)-numbingly spicy flavors, creating a full body experience that is at once stupid and euphoric. My body shakes, my skin sweats, and the color of my face emulates that of the Sichuan peppers. But I irrationally persevere.

The Battlefield (The Terrain and Laying Plans)

Here we have the stage of our battle. Grand Sichuan provides a split hot-pot, one side for the warriors, and the other for the not-so-warriors. Guess which side this is.

The Accoutrements (Waging War and Attack by Stratagem)

This here is a sample of the thinly sliced beef that we dipped in our war stew. Other accoutrements included bamboo shoots, tofu, chinese vegetables, pork, scallops, rice cakes, fen si, fish balls, golden-tipped mushrooms, tripe, and much more. Although I have stated that there is no ownership in Chinese cuisine, the art (and fun) of this war is to manage to retrieve your selected accoutrements from the battlefield before other warriors cunningly "handle" them. Once retrieved, the warrior has the choice to bathe his spoils in several dipping sauces. As the daughter of Chinese parents raised in Taiwan, my sauce of choice is the "sa cha," mixed with a raw egg. Sesame, peanut, and pungent tofu were also favored by the other warriors.

The Opportunity (Energy, Weak Points and Strong, and Maneuvering)

Unfortunately a warrior is not so free to stop and take commemorative snapshots in the midst of battle, and I could only sneak in a few photos towards the end while opposing warriors rested. Keep in mind that this was to the detriment of fully capitalizing on my own endurance, but I did it for you dear reader.

The Side Battles (Variation in Tactics)

Besides hot pot, we also waged war and kicked the ass of some other great Sichuan dishes. This here is the pathetic remains of some oil-boiled-fish. I would also highly recommend the red oil wontons, dan dan noodles, double-boiled pork, mahpo tofu, gan bien string beans, sliced beef tenderloin, and so on and so on.

The Aftermath (The Army on the March and Attack by Fire)

We are such bloodthirsty warriors that after the battle had been fought and won by all, we continued plundering. Here you see our greedy spoons sipping the blood (or broth) of the conquered.

In the end, with our our battle wounds on full display, faces freshly scarred by the mighty touch of hot oil fervently splashed by our thunderbolt moves, each warrior emerged victorious, and ready, as always, for many more battles to come.

GONG XI FA CAI!

2008-02-06T22:58:00.001-05:00

Now that I am a quarter century old even according to the lunar calendar (actually I think I'm 26 says the moon), I am officially way too old to receive the little red envelopes stuffed with benjamins that I received from family members as a child. Gone are the blissful days of emptying my crisp new cash out in my bedroom and rolling around in it like Scrooge McPanda. As an adult, I have to look a little deeper and enjoy the new year in more profound ways, such as reflecting on the past year and thinking contemplatively of the next. For my friends and me, last year was all about "living life". And we did, maddeningly so. This year, just like like growing up, makes us think beyond: the year 4706 will be about MAKING DREAMS COME TRUE.

As part of this theme, I will be returning to the motherland. I will volunteer in microfinance in Cambodia through Kiva.org. The food genius will thereby be reporting live from a variety of "exotic" Southeast Asian locations. I will also be joining the entire Pei clan in Taiwan when we descend upon this country smaller than New Jersey to surprise Grandmama Pei for her 90th birthday (SHHH, don't spill the beans)!! While there I hope to record an oral history of my grandparents, who each have treasure troves of unbelievable WWII and revolution stories buried inside of them.

One other thing that I will embark on in 4706 is a book on the Chinese diaspora as seen through food. Even here in New York, this phenomenon presents itself in interesting ways. One of my favorite ways is Peruvian-Chinese at a restaurant called Flor de Mayo. I worked at this UWS establishment (at both the 83rd and 101st St. locations) one summer when I lived in Clinton Hill and also had around 4 other jobs. I did this primarily to learn Spanish and to eat their food, but the insanity factor should also not be discounted. But I digress. The point is, the combination of Chinese and Peruvian cuisine here makes for such a perfect outcome that you start understanding why mixed-race children are seemingly always the most beautiful out of all of us...

Ensalada de aguacate

I'm not a big fan of chicken unless it's Hainan Chicken or this here roasted chicken, which tastes more or less like the way I imagine chickens want to be tasted.

Chinese Broccoli (there are always, always greens at a Chinese meal. it's all about balance.)

Don't let the blurriness fool you. I was too euphoric from the flavors of my personal favorite of squid fried rice that I couldn't focus straight. Notice how it's black. That's squid ink. mmm mmmm!

Algunos platanos, maduros, y yucas.

Oh my god, I don't even know how to describe how good these pork chops are. Trust me. They are so good that you want to drink its juices.

Ribs a la onion. Notice all the garlic. The key to my heart.

Spaghetti pesto with shrimp. I'm confused, wouldn't this qualify as Italian? Very fusiony.

One of the best cafe con leches this side of the border...

And then you wash it all down with some delightfully non-Asian but Asian nonetheless sangria! My boss Dennis taught me how they make theirs so good. Maybe if you're lucky I'll show you.

And there you have it - that's Peruvian-Chinese folks. Ta-da!! Let the year 4706, and all it's dream-fulfilling powers, begin!

Izzy's Cafe

2008-01-05T18:50:00.000-05:00

I haven't been able to post regularly for the past few months because I have been going through application infierno. Business schools are "special" in that many of them feel the need to require an inhumane amount of essays, with topics that are unique to each school. The questions tend to veer on the bizarrely personal, and if I have to do anymore self-reflecting I think my head might implode. I do think it's interesting that the topic of food has managed to make its way into quite a few essays (I think maybe 6 out of 25? not bad). As such, I thought I'd share one bizarrely personal aspect of myself with you! See the intro to one essay below.

The summer when I was six years old, my house was filled with relatives visiting from Taiwan. Although barely able to read (or speak English for that matter), I already had a passion for cooking. I noticed that more than anything, save perhaps mah jong, my family loved to eat. Identifying this excess (or, rather, unlimited) demand and restricted daytime supply, I started my first venture into the wild world of commerce: "Izzy's Cafe," a daytime deli on wheels, complete with a full menu of breakfast sandwiches, juices, and my personal culinary feat: rice, bananas, and soy sauce. Izzy's Cafe also proved to be my first magnificent flop -- my grandfather was my only paying customer, and my techniques of extortion on my poor-credit non-paying customers (mainly my brother and cousin Bang Bang) proved fruitless. Apparently, "I'm telling" is not really an effective business ploy. This failure, however, set the stage for a lifetime of nonprofit food sharing to come...

TANG

2007-11-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

As we successfully manage to just completely skip fall the way Foxy Brown manages to just completely skip court appearances, we begin to head into hibernation season, and my thoughts inevitably begin to drift to the warm, comforting, motherly aspects of Chinese cuisine. Particularly, I dream of soup, which also happens to be my last name in Mandarin (tang, but pronounced tong). Like all aspects of Chinese cuisine, tang is widely varied - from the ultimate decadence of the south, shark fin tang, to watery peasant tang; sweet dessert tang with tapioca and taro, to weirdly bitter herbal medicinal tang. Tang is so pivotal that the Cantonese serve it both at the start and end of a meal. Most Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown serve both complimentary house tang and dessert tang. If you are not getting it (probably because you are not Chinese) you are missing out, and should ask your waiter for it.

Fish Ball Tang, one of my favorites.

Chicken Curry Noodle Tang

There are also those lovely little delectable tang dumplings, which are really not considered tang at all, and actually literally translates into "little dragon buns (more or less accurate). But because i love them so much, be so kind as to entertain me and pretend that they too are tang. Since so many people seem to have difficulty mastering the art of eating these little devils, i provide here my very own Food Genius trademarked pictorial tutorial:

First, pick up your chosen darling with extra care (if you pierce the skin it's all over), preferably ones with crab meat inside:

Next, tenderly bathe chosen dumpling in the vinegar and ginger provided, and delicately place it on your spoon. Puncture the skin ever so slightly so that you can carefully slurp up the broth inside, like so:

Finally, gobble down the remainder of the dumpling, and hope that you haven't just burned off all your taste buds, because that would be a damn shame for the rest of the meal:

It's not easy to find little dragon buns here like the kind they have in Shanghai or Taiwan, but I am always relatively pleased at Joe's Shanghai on Pell Street. It's also always a fun kitschy stop in Chinatown, especially since you sit family style with random strangers. When I went last year with some friends, we were seated with some clueless tourists and some equally clueless hipster boys.

Even though these dudes (there were four of them) were hipsters and clearly from some part of Williamsburg, I was shocked at the fact that they only ordered two bins of dumplings and nothing else. I wonder what they thought of us four girls when we had our own two bins, plus:

Duck

Clams

Fried Noodles

And My favorite Chinese vegetable - kong qing cai

Plus we had way more Tsingtao then all of them.

SUCKAAAS!!

Visions of Vieques

2007-10-30T20:56:00.000-04:00

Caribbean Crustacean

Plentiful Plantains

Carved Carne

Calle Conch

Succulent Starweapons

Patrolling Pigeon-hunter

Paradiso Perfecto

Red Hook Ball Fields: Never Fade Away

2007-08-19T01:49:00.000-04:00

You know something better taste damn good if it motivates a fat kid to get off his/her fat ass and hop onto a bicycle (one of those manually powered ones?!?) and pedal all of his/her overeating weight to Red Hook in Brooklyn. After all, I've never thought expending calories and consuming them to be all that compatible. Yet oddly enough, for the abundant offering of authentic Central American street fare amid "ball fields"in this hard to reach part of Brooklyn, it seemed not only logical, but completely natural.

Fresh with hunger induced by my ride through Park Slope (turns out that Park Slope is, in fact, aptly named. who knew?), I arrived at the fields with the conviction that I would try everything this magical oasis had to offer me. I started off with an horchata that was the sweet rice drink equivalent of a "forty" in its sheer size and power. Together with some trusty fat kid companions, we pummeled through some delectable fried ribs, elotes and a pork taquito to start.

After these light appetizers, we moved on to the heavy hitters.

Taco de Chorizo
.
Why does fried lard taste so good?

Pupusas

Pu-pu-sa. A Salvadoran delight of thick, hand-made corn tortilla stuffed with lovely standard ingredientes such as cheese, pork, and the like, served with pickled cabbage and hot sauce.

Darin's pupusa was cheese + jalapeno.

Max's papusa was pork + cheese.

Huarache

Josh got an huarache - comparable to a giant taco with beans cooked into the tortilla. It was the size of Tejas.

For dessert, we had some fresh mango with salt, chili powder, and lime juice. Who knew fruit could be so sexy (besides M.I.A.)? We also had enough fresh watermelon juice to put out a small forest fire. And by "we" I mean Max.

And it wasn't just the food. Everything else about these ball fields were equally euphoric. It kind of captured so much of what is happy and wonderful about Brooklyn in the summer in that "oh come on, this type of corniness is actually really welcome and refreshing, and if you don't think so then you have no soul" sort of way.

The spectators.

The children with their water balloon and silly string fights.

Oh childhood. How I miss you.

The sky.

The lush greenness.

The company.

And this guy.

*bottom left. Have you ever seen anyone more comfortable in his own skin?

I'm not sure how I've carried on my not-so-secret love affair with high-caloric content food for this long without having come here before. Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish my mission - the ceviche, plantains, and tamales all managed to escape my hungry grasp. Hopefully, if the Parks Department and the health nazis don't have their way, I will have many more chances to revisit this wonderful phenomenon of a place to rectify the situation.

Live Free AND Die

2007-06-10T23:04:00.000-04:00

This past Memorial Day Weekend, a few of my compadres and I decided to dust off Audrey's good old Scooby Doo Van for a getaway to luscious Grantham, New Hampshire, where my roommate Tyler's parents have a condo. I was particularly giddy because I had been given the glorious distinction of being named HEAD CHEF!! Our overwhelming and uncontrolled excitement perhaps rocked the 'ol missionary van a bit too hard, though, because before making it out of New York, she decided to break down. In the Bronx.

Ray and Mike are so handy!

Luckily for us, a would be disaster was averted and was instead turned into a pleasant 20 hour side-excursion to the Bronx, thanks to Darius and the hospitality of the Longarino clan.

Sal and Nico, holding down the fort.

We even got to try some pizza at one of New York's best, Louie and Ernie's .

This sausage slice was so mouthwateringly succulent and scrumptious - only DiFara's is better (aside: I will always love you Dominic and I don't care what the health nazis say!)

Next door we found this:

Being in a heavily Italian part of the Bronx, Teresa logically had this:

Spumoni! What's better for a post-pizza treat on a hot day than pistachio-chocolate-vanilla Italian ice? Ahhh.

Once in New Hampshire, we were confronted with the sad rural reality of restaurants closing before 9, and had to have dinner in McDonalds, aka McSuckhole. Aiming for the least worst of all possible outcomes, I ordered this "Southwestern" salad (I opted not to go for the "Asian Salad" after hearing the cashier's answer to my innocent inquiry on what was in it - "You know, Asian vegetables." Yeah...ok, sure. What are we talking about here, bok choy? Right, that's what I thought.)

Afterwards, I wanted to wring all the toxic chemicals out of my stomach. Gross.

Ray is checking out the nutrition facts. His moment of realization is colored with internal monologue, "I see. Oh yes, it is possible, after all, to both live free AND die in New Hampshire. Interesting."

To make up for it, the next two days, with the help from sous chefs Mike and Ryan and Tyler's parents dream kitchen, I performed some intense head chef duties:

(Mike made his deliciously famous Rice and Beans.)

Some serious Martha Stewart stuff going on here.

Tyler doesn't like fruits or vegetables, he preferred to top his waffle with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Look at that sugar sparkle! Brilliant!

So, besides the McDonalds part that no doubt killed us all just a little bit, we did a lot of free living, including fun summer camp activities like swimming in the lake, canoeing, and bballing. We left feeling refreshed and very free. Just look at all us shining happy smiling little monkeys with our opposable thumbs!

Ahem - A Few of My Favorite Things

2007-05-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

Dear Reader,

Being intuitive, I understand that one of the most pressing issues on your mind these days is something more or less along the lines of "I wonder what a laundry list of Izzy's favorite foods might look like.?." Being wise, I feel the need to inform. So, in no particular order, here it is:

grapefruit. oatmeal. soft-boiled eggs. brussel sprouts. artichoke. liver. mangosteen. cereal. ice cream. mantou. fresh soymilk. chorizo. sausage. difara's pizza. 1000 year old eggs. salty fish. french fries. cookies. cupcakes. oysters. guacamole. mango. grapes. digestives. balarina aged gouda. uni. panna cotta. prosciutto. anchovies. capers. roe. lox. milkshakes. chinatown coffee. fried rice. sticky rice. skate. truffles. spinach. corn. bitter squash. peking duck. fresh bread. mochi. pistachio ice cream. marzipan. crab cakes. string beans. steak tar tar. hot pot. cilantro. garlic. ugly fruit. fermented tofu. foie gras. white asparagus. truffles. goat cheese. earl grey gelato. lobster rolls. RNB. avocado. berries. homemade granola. baked brie. lotus flowers. szechuan peppercorns. razor clams. basil. chilean sea bass (so spit on me!). bloody argentine steak. cold noodles. corn. cornichons. dijon mustard. peking duck.

Go ahead, talkst amongst yourself. I'll give you a second.

I've always intended to gather all those foods into my kitchen, make them into unexpectedly delicious combinations, and have a fantastically deranged photo shoot with them. In keeping with the current theme of my life, however, I am backlogged, and this will have to suffice.

Speaking of backblogged, and because you care so, here is a taste of some upcoming posts to come!:
1. Camp Eastman, New Hampshire. imagine me - HEAD CHEF!!
2. Mother's Day dinner at my favorite Japanese-owned Italian restaurant in the city, Basta Pasta, with Raymond Park and mi mama.
3. A step-by-step picture tutorial on how to make cold noodles. just in time for the summer!
4. Chilean food and why it kind of sucks.
5. Argentine Steak and why it is almost better than sex.
6. Best of Prospect Heights - Chavellas, Farm, Gen, Sorrel
7. Birthday dinners - Lucy's at the Mermaid Inn, my baby cousin Iris's at Flor de Mayo (Upper West side Peruvian-Chinese place of deliciousness that I used to work at. Maybe I do like fusion after all?)
8. My favorite brunch spots.
9. Chinatown restaurants - Joe's Shanghai, Almond Flower, Congee on Bowery, this little guy on Elizabeth, and many more.
10. Ssam Bar, Kampuchea, and other places where I can fogive the hipness factor because the food is actually good.
11. Where to find the best pizza in the city, and in one instance, the WORLD. !!!
12. Some other lovable randomness.

Yours,
Izzy
; )

Pacifistic Extremism

2007-05-02T21:09:00.000-04:00

Let's play guess this country!! Its notable greats include Roger Federer, Martina Hingis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hermann Hesse, and Heidi. It has four national languages. It is really really good at precision. And neutrality. Oh, and chocolate. Really good at chocolate, can't forget that.

Yes! Unless you are a fully certified moron, you guessed right- S*W*I*T*Z*E*R*L*A*N*D*!! Home to landscapes that heighten your human and suprahuman senses, skiing that skips your heart a beat, and so much peace and prosperity that Dadaism is its defining form of artistic expression.

My parents go there each year for business (Didn't know the Chinese mafia conducts its business in Switzerland, eh? Where else did you think they go to deposit all those giant wads of cash carried by the trousers of Chinatown? Duh.) Every now and again they tote me along with them. I am like their big, chocolate-gobbling, truffle-sniffing, not-so-travel-sized talking doll. This year, however, my mother's friend Deborah came too, so the two of us decided to venture off and have some non-mafia related fun.

This is Deborah. She is maybe the coolest and also freaking weirdest Chinese lady I know. She wants to have dreads because she thinks they're "so cooluh."

As you can see, Deborah is very "sporty." One day she had us go paragliding in the morning and skiing in the afternoon. She even ventured to the tippy top of the Schilthorn mountain with me. Her method of descent was an ingenius, though tedious, combination of tumble and vertical slip'n'slide. I admired her technique and courage.

Deborah and I also did some extreme eating. In one local restaurant in Murren (the only one open past 9 pm), we stunned our waitress by gobbling down 3 hearty Swiss meals after she told us it could not be done by foreign folks such as us.

I remember the first time I went to Switzerland. I was shocked and awed by the way the milk tasted. Why did it taste so different, so strange, so...fresh? Do they just go outside and milk the Bessie in the backyard everytime they need milk, shrug their shoulders and say "fuck pasteurization"? I dont' get it.

That's kind of how this egg was. You can tell that it was just freshly plucked from the roost by the dark orange color of the yolk. Kind of makes you want to dive right in and go for a nice long yolky swim, doesn't it? So extreme.

I am a giant dork and love muesli, another great Swiss invention. Especially with fresh from Bessie milk, I could eat good muesli ALL day and night. Judge me all you want.

Ahh-white asparagus. One of my favorite things in the world and one reason I always look forward to going back to Switzerland. It's so soft and stringy, almost like what crispy fresh mozzarella might be like. It sort of enrages me that we never get it on this side of the Atlantic.

All in all, I heartily enjoyed my stint as a pacifistic extremist. Though I'm pretty sure that a longer-term commitment to such a lifestyle would be far less extreme, and more, well, serene. And pretty. Really really pretty.

So, uh, what's the DEAL, Prospect Heights? (the Bad)

2007-03-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

There are many reasons why I love living in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. I love being close to Prospect Park, and having barbecue parties there in the summer, strolling over to Grand Army Plaza on the weekends for the farmers’ market, stalking my favorite French bulldogs and Foxy Brown, and eating out at all the unpretentious neighborhood restaurants. Most of these restaurants serve some really decent, at times great, affordable food. Lately, though, it seems like there is a price to pay for the price we pay.

One Sunday not so long ago, I went for brunch with my amigas at Beast, one of our oft-visited neighborhood joints. In a neighborhood of very unreliable peers, Beast can usually be counted on for solid service. But on this particular day, this was disappointingly not the case - our food took almost an hour to get into our hungry bellies, with not one word of consolation from our waitress, who seemed barely to notice us at all. The food, as usual, was very good (see below for evidence*), but it hardly mattered because that magical brunch mood had been squashed, and we all brooded bitterly like 5 recently sacked federal prosecutors. Yet this is nothing compared to the brunch we had at Tavern on Dean only a couple weekends before, where we waited an obscenely generous TWO HOURS PLUS to get our food, again with scant apology, recognition or compensation.

Sadly, most of us are accustomed to this ordeal. Some restaurants, though, have caused one too many premature gray hairs, and have managed to earn the extremely rare status of “Blacklisted” from some of my less forgiving friends (Café Shane , hottest servers in the world and all, with a brunch I love, is one of these elite few).

So come on, Prospect Heights, get with it, cause this shit is sooo played out. Yo.

*The food at Beast is actually consistently good:

Brunch - homemade granola with fruit and yogurt

Brunch - three cheese omelette on croissant

Dinner - seared tuna rolls

Dinner - duck with beet salad

Dessert - fried baby bananas with pistachio ice cream

Blogs - the New Letter?

2007-03-21T12:37:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to a screening of a documentary on Dalton Trumbo, a brilliant Hollywood screenwriter (Roman Holiday, Spartacus, Papillon)who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. The documentary revolved around the many letters Trumbo had written during this time to friends and family. Each and every letter was intelligent, eloquent, funny, thoughtful, entertaining and superbly well-crafted. I especially enjoyed the one he wrote to his son (who was in college at the time)where he expounded on the endless virtues of the fine art of masturbation. The man was a letter-writing genius, and I was amazed at how much we were able to learn about him and that time through his written correspondence with loved ones. I thought of how very empty and meaningless my own written correspondence is, manifesting itself primarily in the forms of emails, text messages, facebook/myspace, and blog comments. OMG! WTF? TTYL. I lament the tragic death of letter-writing in our time, and have decided to revive this lost art. So if you receive a letter from me in your mailbox, I promise you it won't have anthrax in it. Promise.

Momofuku, I te amo you

2007-03-13T00:27:00.001-04:00

By now, most everyone has heard of Momofuku. This little east village asian-fusion noodle bar was hailed as one of the best new restaurants of last year, and has gotten rave reviews from practically everyone. But you know, I really don’t give a cat’s ass about buzz. What finally pushed me to try those much-hyped Berkshire pork buns for myself was a story in New York Magazine. The article tells of how chef and owner David Chang reacted when a bitchy East Village lady (yes, you know the type) threatened to sue him after she discovered that a broth she had consumed was not *GASP* vegetarian. He did what any other rational chap would do, and added meat to every item on the menu except one - the ginger scallion noodles. Vindictive? Perhaps. Heartless? Heavens no! Hearing Chang (who hereon in shall be referred to exclusively as ”my hero”) explain his actions - “I guess I just don’t like being told what to do.” – sparked an epiphany of self-awareness and rekindled my own longtime life motto - idowhatiwant. I was thus compelled to visit the mecca of my spiritual awakening.

Telling this story a million times over to anyone who would listen probably wouldn’t be worth deeply offending my vegetarian loved ones again and again if the food weren’t actually good. Happily, it is such that I feel perfectly justified to offend freely and liberally. Here are my favorites so far:

BERKSHIRE PORK BUNS

Take a look at these beauties! There is something almost heretical about just how good my hero's take on a very simple Chinese snack is. I'm hesitant to describe to my grandmother just how sweetly the homemade pickes complement the ridiculously succulent yet crispy slab of fatty pork for fear of sounding insolent.

BRUSSEL SPROUTS with kimchee puree and bacon

Brussel sprouts and skiing are two things that make winter worthwhile to me, and though I normally snicker at the idea of Asian fusion, this dish made winter just that much better, even if it was a tad too salty for my tastes.

MOMOFUKU RAMEN with Berkshire pork combo and poached egg.

My mother says the Japanese like to use these types of Chinese noodles for their ramen. She also says that the Japanese race originated from a boat carrying 500 women and men each, sent over from China by the emperor to hunt for the fountain of youth. I'm inclined to believe her on both counts.

The prettiest beer ever.

Eugene

He is a great server and indulges all my ridiculous questions and picture-taking.

Jesse's facial manifestation of the offense I render...

...but Darius intervenes as peacemaker. SHALOM MOMOFUKU!

Friends in High Places

2007-03-01T23:10:00.000-05:00

Unlike a certain high-profile country crooner who shall remain nameless (Garth Brooks), i have friends who sit in places so high it would make your nose bleed. How so?, you may ask. Well, let me put it to you like this "I got friends who work at restaurants that make food taste real good." Yup, I am one pretty well-connected fat kid in this manzana city.

You see, among my circle of friends, we are basically divided into two camps. The first is that which I, sometimes unfortunately, belong to - those who started working in an entry-level office job after graduation, accepting the low pay and long-dreaded office environment as necessary sacrifices to be made for a higher ambition. A "career," if you will. The other half enjoy high pay, non 9-5 work hours, and incredible flexibility for vacation schedules, and mostly work in the restaurant industry. This wasn't really an option for me, though I learned that fact the hard way. (In college I had given it a shot, but soon discovered that my uncontrollable and incessant obsession with eating made working in a restaurant impossible for me. I would constantly hawk over customers' meals (especially the anorexic ones! I was so pro-ana.), making sure to rush off their untouched leftovers to the back and gobble it down as soon as possible. Needless to say, especially when I was working as a hostess in some retardedly chic soho restaurant that shall remain nameless (Thom, now Kittichai), this didn't really go over so well with upper management.)

But I digress. Last Wednesday, a couple of us went to visit our good friend and excellent waitress Lucy, who works at Olives in Union Square. She was cocktailing, and we thought we'd pay her a visit and protect her from the drunken lobby patrons.

Do you see how menacing we are? Grrr.

Dark & Stormy

Ginger beer + rum. Recently I realized that this summer favorite is actually a great winter drink, and probably spring and fall as well.

Gnocchi with duck sausage, grapefruit and celery root

Never content to have only drinks, especially at a restaurant as fine as Olives, I decided to order a snack. I'm not a huge pasta fan, but I chose this gnocchi dish (one of the night's specials) because I wanted something lighter (this is Olives, afterall), and because I wanted to try the duck sausage with grapefruit. The light and savory sauce was able to seamlessly blend the separate textures and strong flavors of the three ingredients into one robustly well-rounded dish.

Shrimp Grits

I was so happy with the gnocchi that I made Lucy give my compliments to the chef. Reaffirming my suspicion that I love every single person named Sebastian, Sebastian the chef sent us this dish to try. Cheesy, shrimpy and mushy - perfect end of winter comfort food!

Jesse arrived late, fresh from a debate at Cooper Union's Grand Hall (that once hosted the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates) between Newt Ginrich and Mario Cuomo. Clearly, he needed some fresh french fries to wash down all those big ideas.

Fried to perfection, with parmesean and rosemary and bits of parsley, and garlic aioli for dipping. Everytime I eat them, I have to emphasize how much I love fries. Nothing like scrumptious simplicity.

MELT
Our friend Rachel recently started working at this Park Slope Restaurant (Bergen between 5th and Flatbush), and on Tuesday nights they have this genius five course tasting menu for $20. The best part of this is that it's a fixed menu, so you don't have to make ANY decisions, save for that of whether or not to get the fixed wines to go with the meal (an additional $20), and whether to get dessert.

Rachel and Lucy - servers extraordinaire!

Course #1 - Roasted red pepper soup and fried goat cheese ravioli

This was followed by a mesclun salad, which I failed to photograph.

Course # 3 - Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with watermelon balls and a balsamic reduction

Course # 4 -
Fried calamari

Course # 5 -
Swedish meatballs

The owners of the restaurant are Swedish, which explained why these little guys (we got three of them!!) were so delectable. The fresh cranberry sauce also helped.

Dessert!

Everyone else was somehow "really full," but I really wanted dessert. It was a good choice. I melted.

Tales of Heaven

2007-02-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I lived very briefly in a place called Heaven. It was a land where cows roamed free in green green pastures, beautiful angels danced until the early morn, and ice cream glided like cupid's wings down oceans of dulce de leche. Early last month, I returned to this fantasy land for a sweet visit. I now live to tell these phantasmagorical (food) tales from that visit.

CHAPTER ONE
**La Cupertina** (Cabrera 5296)

On a not very busy corner in Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, there lives a little restaurant called La Cupertina. Small and simple, it is run by two well-aged Argentine women and one sweet young lad of a helper. One of the women, the shorter and squatter of the two, is like your strict Italian grandmother - she'll scold you for not eating enough (or, in my case, for taking too long to order), but it's okay because you know she just wants the best for you. The restaurant has an ambience that calls to mind a French countryside kitchen - fresh cut wild flowers at each table, a pretty theme of subdued lilac-blues and yellows on everything, brass pots with ribbons hanging on the walls, and plenty of soft sunlight to illuminate it all. I seriously don't think one restaurant has given me so many sensations of contentedness ever. Sitting there waiting for the food, I felt as giddy as a school girl waiting for the last bell to ring before summer break.

The menu at La Cupertina is straightforward - empanadas, sandwiches, stews, and plenty of insanely rich desserts. The first time we went, we were novices and didn't quite have a good strategy for ordering. However, I think we still did quite well.

Empanadas y Empanadotas!

It has been said that they have the best empanadas in all of Bueno Aires, and to Ray that meant in the whole world. I am inclined to agree. They make the Tucuman variety, but they do it with the perfect combination of love and an ocd'd sense of perfection. There were empanadas with cut beef in sauce, humita (sweet corn -my favorites), chicken, ham and cheese, and onion stuff. The empanadotas were the big fat round ones, and they were filled more with vegetable varieties, like zuchinni and eggplant.

Empanada de Jamon y Queso

Notice the sugar on top of the empanada. very weird, but a really nice, crunchy touch.

Sandwiches

Steak sandwiches, ham and cheese, and complete.

La Completa

Complete sandwiches in Argentina have beef, ham, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, a fried egg, and some other ingredients that are complete. Here is one halfway devoured.

The best thing about the sandwiches is that we got to eat them with this:

Colorful and delectable flavored mayonnaise dipping sauces. The green pesto one was my favorite. I could eat it by the spoonful, and I don't even like mayonnaise.

"Mini-cappucinos"

For some reason these little versions of the normal thing was genius. Just the perfect amount of cappuccino, each made to such delicate foamy perfection. They were so satisfying that they actually were enough to stand in as dessert, despite the many, many wonderful offerings.

Max is feeling A-Okay!

As is Ray.

Pots on the wall!

We were fortunate enought that La Cupertina was only one block away from our apartment. On our last day, after we checked out, we thought we'd have one last meal. To our great disapointment, it was not open. Fitting for such a tragic ending, we kind of just sat in front of the entrance and cried for half an hour or so.

Here you can see Ray consoling a very brokenhearted Max, while an equally depressed Lucy looks on.

Our suitcases also felt the pain, I think.

A Berry Chinatown Birfday

2007-01-25T19:45:00.000-05:00

To mark my entrance into my early mid-twenties, I decided this year that I wanted a proper celebration, complete with an authentic Chinese banquet dinner and all. Fittingly, I dragged some of my nearest and dearest to 8th Ave. Seafood Restaurant, in one of Brooklyn's Chinatowns (at 4418 8th Avenue). This is a restaurant that my mom's friend Ding Ding owns - very authentic, and very Cantonese. I knew it was the perfect choice when we walked in because every single head in that restaurant turned around to unabashedly stare (staring is a proud Chinese national sport), looking like they'd never seen WHITE PEOPLE before. Who knows, maybe they hadn't. Me and 14 whiteys - god what a sight!

Ding Ding was really nice to have accommodated my request for a mix of "stuff we like and stuff that's not too weird that Americans would like. Oh and also some vegan dishes for those geniuses among us who decided that was the best way to live life." Here is what he came up with:

The starter plate:

Cold Jelly Fish (one of my favorite appetizers - crispy and squishy all at once) with squid and fried pork chops. We had some trouble with the less adventurous eaters with this one. They didn't know what they were missing.

Ally is thinking "Would a Russian eat this? Probably." God knows what Darius is thinking. He's probably been just reminded of some horror in Shihezi.

Fish and Chinese Vegetables

You can see the really yummy starter soups in the background.

Prawns with Broccoli and Walnuts in a creamy sweet sauce

A very Cantonese dish, this was a big hit.

Pickled Turnips and Carrots with something I can't remember. Was it is eel or fish?

More Fish, but sauteed with vegetables - tender like a baby's butt.

Lobster with Garlic and Scallion (in Shell)

Sauteed Chinese Vegetable

"Pork Chop with Champan Style"

Fried Tofu

Fried Noodles (all vegan!!)

The freshly made noodles are a must have for Chinese birthdays. The long noodles represent longevity, and you're not supposed to break them otherwise you will not live a long life. Long like the noodles.

Rack of Veal with Black Bean Sauce

Fried Rice

Even with so much other food, I always have room for some good fried rice.

Sebastian and Nils - all the way from Germany!

Even with 15 of us we didn't do a very good job at finishing our plates. If my mom had been there no one would have been allowed to leave until every last morsel was gone. "Just one more bite!" I tried to play that role, but it didn't work out so well.

Chinese Birthday Buns (with lotus)

I made Darius study the bill since, you know, he was the only one of us who could read Chinese. *Sigh.

Pure Overeaten Joy

I couldn't have imagined a better way to turn 24. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Lessons on Living Life¨in 2007

2007-01-19T21:24:00.000-05:00

Tonight as I tried to squeeze my newly large ass into what were once (aka before the trip) annoyingly stretched out jeans but are now absurdly and comically tight, I realized something: too-tight jeans are a sign of a great vacation had. It shows I really lived life on this trip. I mean what the hell is the point of going on vacation and coming back skinnier? It can only say one of two things: 1. The food freaking sucked, or 2. I had diahrrea the whole time. And who wants their body to say either of those foul things? I am really grateful that my body is deciding to say "I had one of the best vacations of my life, the food was out of this world, and I f-ing vivía la vida en 2007, goddamnit. So F all ya´ll and your skinny asses."

Needless to say, I am excited to share my food adventures with everyone. Just not yet.

Holiday Eating Wrap-Up

2007-01-05T20:23:00.001-05:00

SO it's 8 o'clock right now, and I'm still at work trying to get shit done. Actually, I'm sitting at my desk thinking about how I still need to pack for my trip to Argentina, which I leave for tonight at 3:00 a.m., and I suddenly realize that I haven't shared my holiday eating adventure with everyone. What shame! Here are some highlights:

CHRISTMAS DAY: Chinatown meandering with Mom and Hans

We had some Shanghainese dim sum at the place next to the gigantic Cantonese dim sum place in Chinatown (there was a private party)

Taro cake

Hans enjoys some delicious Oil Sticks - Chinese churros, really

Some real Chinatown kids, unlike us fake suburban Chinese!

Egg tarts from "Egg Tart King"

CHRISTMAS DINNER: PEI FAMILY STYLE (selected highlights)
You know, Christmas used to be such a novelty, funny cause no one in my whole extended family was Christian (though my grandfather was Muslim, and so is my uncle). Now all the sudden there's at least 3 - 4 of them! Someone explain that one to me.

Aunt # 4, #5, and #1 (L-R)

Simmering whole fish in garlic. Mouthwatering.

Beef sauteed with dried tofu, peppers, and scallions

A Taiwanese dish - tofu skin wrapped around taro and chicken liver. People in Taiwan used to make this dish out of leftovers when guests came over unannounced. Trick them into thinking it's fresh!

Pig's feet. Yes, pig's feet.

Jellyfish

Some kind of fresh special shrimp that melted in your mouth. This was my favorite of the night.

Crab with Sticky Rice.

Tofu with Crab meat.

Red Bean yum yum cake

Tiramisu Cake

Uncle #5 made Chinese soy dessert. It's kind of like silky sweet tofu-pudding.

Mochi

Cyrena's vegan ginger cookies.

There were a ton more dishes...

Thanks Aunt #4!!

K-Town is not just for Koreans (Chinese may enter as well)

2006-12-08T16:01:00.000-05:00

This past Monday my mother and I ventured out of the comfortable confines of Chinese food for something vastly different: Korean cuisine. For those of you who think I am just being my typical sacrcastic self, I'm not. Korean food is to Chinese food what non-Jewish whites are to the Ashkenazi Jews (KF:CF = NJW :AJ) - sure, we all look alike, but what we eat is like night and day. That's why Hans Tang was so concerned, and kept asking Elaine "Do you know what to order???" to which she would reply, annoyed, "Don't worry! I know how to order! Do I have to tell you that story about how all my friends make me order again?" That shut him up (see photo below).

Our restaurant consultant suggested we go to Don's Bogam, on 32nd between 5th and Madison.

I was impressed by the exterior view, especially since it showcased an unabashedly fabulous pink Christmas tree. I wasn't ready for the holidays - until I saw this pink tree!

Look at this shiny smoke-sucking machine for the bbq! FABULOUS! And the wine bottles all lined up in a row. Double FABULOUS!

This is when Hans Tang was vexed because we weren't Korean. But do you see how studious Elaine is being? She even put on her reading glasses, determined to make the right selections.

A sea of appetizers

I think the best thing about K-food is the overflowing abundance of little appetizers they shower upon you right when you sit down. These are fish cakes, and in the background is dried baby shrimps. Other highlights were the egg custard, the kimchi (of course), the bean sprouts, and the pickled turnips.

Seafood Pancake

One of my favorite Korean appetizers (that you have to order). Though they put some kind of vegetable or seasoning in these that added a flavor I did not like, I still enjoyed the pancakes.

Softshell crab

This dish was perfect. Plenty of meat on the crabs, fried to perfection, and sauteed in a gooey, savory sauce that actually made the softshelled crabs MOIST! Aye Carumba!

My plate

Softshell crab in the center, kimchi and seafood pankcake in the background. This is what Art is to me.

And also this - there's nothing quite like raw beef all lined up on the K-barbie. They're so freaking cute, all raw and pink and sizzling. Ss Sss Ssassy!!

Out waiter masterfully tended to the beef.

When I lived in Argentina I used to tell the waiters to cook my steak casi crudoso, and not to bother bringing it out unless I could still see the sangre. I didn't have to tell this K-dude that - he could probably see it in my eyes. We had four or five different kinds of beef, and each one was juicier and more tender than the one before. I could barely believe our good fortune.

A bouquet of yummy.

You take the beef, you dress it with sauce, scallions and rice, and then you wrap it in lettuce. And if you are Raymond Park, you stuff something three times this size in your mouth all at once because "that's how it's supposed to be done!" He's Korean, so I believe him.

I'm not sure I've ever seen this much wine in an Asian restaurant.

So the whole experience, from the decor to the food to the service, was really excellent. A+! All together the bill came to only $75 (for four). Plus we had enough leftovers for both Hans Tang and me to have lunch the next day.

After dinner (my second one of the night), I made everyone go to PINKBERRY (on 32nd between 5th and 6th) for dessert. Ray had brought me here back in October, and I've been dying to come back since. It's very big in L.A., but this is the only one in New York.

Pinkberry is frozen yogurt that actually tastes like yogurt that has been frozen. It comes in original and green tea, and for toppings you can choose between different fresh fruits (not swimming in disgusting sugar water, mind you), cereals (fruitie pebbles and cocoa crisps, for example), and other more traditional options. A small is $2.95, and each topping is $.95.

An Asian Mecca - look at all those cute Korean girls in their black coats.

My order - Pomeberry.

I have to brag for a second about my choice of topping here. The tart and crunchy pomegranates complemented the smooth, slightly sweet yogurt delightfully. Plus it was absolutely gorgeous.

Ho-ho-ho-berry

This is the kind of weird decorative stuff that was just hanging out on the shelves. So freaking Asian.

The funny thing is that after I was done taking a bazillion photos inside the store, my mom brought to my attention the sign that had a big camera inside a circle with a slash through it. I thought of taking a picture of it, but I didn't want to be offensive.

So I have got to say that K-town has really gotten it's shit together. It's undeniably hip and delicious these days, and the overall quality of things is higher than average. For covering only a few measly blocks in the armpit of the city, it sure is worth visiting.

From Congee Village to Scores: A Friday Night of Excess

2006-12-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

This Friday night was a particularly memorable one. It began with dinner at Congee Village (100 Allen Street, at Delancey) with Max, Lucy and Amy, and somehow ended in the far west side at Scores Nightclub (which is, ahem, Howard Stern's favorite "club." When deciding the course of the night, I often ask myself "WWHD??" as a way to ensure a good time will be had. Trust me, it works.).

Congee, a mushy bit of rice porridge goodness, is "said to be even older than rice in Chinese history" (see the history of congee page on the Congee Village website). It holds a special place in my Chinese heart of hearts. Though I'm not Cantonese, congee still makes me nostalgic for my childhood, with memories of midnight snacks at East Coast Chinese Family Camp (ECCFC) on a chilly summer evening in the Poconos. Oh sweet food memories, sigh...

Here is what we ate. Max is allergic to shellfish, so we stayed clear of those. Didn't want my dear Meex to die in from an allergic reaction to shellfish, After all, there are much better ways to die in the LES.

Pork, Chicken and Duck Congee

Fried Mantou (on the menu as Fried Bread)

Basically these are Chinese donuts. Mantou are one of my favorite Chinese breakfast/snack foods - fluffy yet dense bread/buns. The Cantonese fry them and dip them in condensed milk because they are food geniuses.

Fried Fresh Squid with Salted Pepper

Fresh Mixed Mushrooms and Fried Bean Curd

Soup Dumplings (on the menu as Small Juicy Bun In Shanghai Style )

A Cantonese restaurant with soup dumprings on the dim sum menu. They were not bad, though the skin was very thick.

Some kind of fried noodle dish with vegetables

I don't know what the name of this dish was, but it doesn't really matter because we can do much better for a noodle dish.

Rice Baked with Home Style Salted Chicken

Max was really excited about this one, and rightfully so - I don't even like chicken that much, and I loved this. Salted chicken and vegetables baked in with rice, creating a moist and smoky log of a treat.

Lucy is expressing how she feels about the bilingual "Happy Birthday" song being played AGAIN for probably the fifth time. I think the restaurant proprietors were trying to convince me to have my birthday dinner there. Chinese people are not known for their subtlety.

Max is worried about all the leftover food. Can you believe that with one bottle of wine, our meal came to less than $75 (not including tip)?! I mean, you basically expect that for Chinese food, but still. Great value! We our leftovers packed to go, but I lost it (along with my coat, sadly) later on in the night at Scores. Bet you there were some pretty happy dancers that night.

Overall, this was one of the best Friday nights I have ever had - A++!! I give Congee Village, with all it's bizarre decor, bizarre LES location, and bizarre Happy Birthday overdoing, a 9!!

THANKSGIVING: The Fat Kid's Day of All Days (Part Deux)

2006-11-25T12:13:00.000-05:00

Haven't you always wondered what "ethnic" people eat on Thanksgiving? Do they eat turkey and mashed potatoes? Or weird things like duck and fish eyes. Well, my family eats both, kind of:

Coconut Shrimp

Mi mama made this to hold us kids over before the real food was ready.

Fried Japanese Tofu with Dried Shitake Mushrooms

Lobster Fen Si with Chinese Cabbage

This is my favorite. All of the fen si (glass noodles made of green beans) sucks up the lobster juices and mixes with the cabbage to create the most delectable flavor and texture combination ever.

Garlic Sauteed Asparagus

Grandma's Fen Si

My grandma's recipe involves carrots and dried squid.

Four Kinds of Mushroom

Normal, shitake, golden needle, and baby portabella

Shrimp with tomato sauce

Uncle #5's Sticky Rice

This is always a big hit - sticky rice cooked with pork, dried shrimp, and dried shitake.

Lion's Head

Lions head are basically Chinese meatballs. They are cooked with Chinese cabbage in broth.

Mei Cai Kou Rou

I really can't translate this. It's a very fatty pork with stewed with fermented cabbage. Hans Tang's favorite as a child.

Chinese Vegetable Sauteed with Garlic

Roasted Duck

Fish Dish

I wasn't able to take a picture before it was attacked.

The Turkey

It's more of a symbolic turkey, since no one really ate it.

But Uncle #1 is really good at making it!

DESSERTS
We ate a lot of dessert when we were standing around waiting for the food:

I made cranberry-white chocolate chip cookies

My little cousin is a vegan, and she made vegan treats:
Pumpkin Muffins,

and Green Tea Cupcakes

Someone's neighbor made homemade pumpkin pie

And Aunt #5 made sweet black sticky rice with coconut milk, which is delicious, but I was too full to have more than a bite. I thought that was okay because my mom brought home a quart of it. Unfortunately, she, surprise surprise, didn't put it in the fridge so it went bad the next day. She didn't feel like it was a waste, though, cause she just gave it to Duke, who didn't seem to mind at all. My mother is an odd one. Very odd indeed.

Well that's it. That is all we ate (almost - a few things were able to escape the glare of the camera). My cousin Edith was worried it wasn't enough food, which says something about how much one Pei family can eat. I am very proud of my kinfolk and myself, and am already anticipating the gluttony that is sure to come during Christmas!

THE END

THANKSGIVING: The Fat Kid's Day of All Days (Part I)

2006-11-24T22:36:00.000-05:00

Ahh Thanksgiving. That joyous, wondrous holiday where families get together and feast to show thanks for all they have (especially each other). As the official unelected president of the fat kid's club (me:world of food = bush43:u.s.), I declare Thanksgiving to be the noblest and fairest of all holidays. Oh Genius of Geniuses.

As per any Pei Family Event, this Thanksgiving was not to be denied her fair share of gambling, melodrama, and most importantly, delicious Chinese food. Just wait to see how much we ate! (to be revealed in Part II)

Aunt #4 - the Pei Family Resident Chef

She is my hero. Everything she makes tastes like a little bit of Chinese heaven.

Her Palette

Favorite family activity: Mah Jong

Not sure a family gathering could function without it. I definitely don't know what everyone else would do to kill time while Aunt #4 was cooking.

2nd Favorite Family Activity

And this was before we ate.

(I think she died from the anticipation of the fullness to come.)

Where Vultures Feast

My plate: round 1

To Be Continued...

Week in Review

2006-11-23T01:26:00.000-05:00

You know how marathon runners train the week before the race? Well, I don't, really, but I assume they do something of the sort. Anyways, this week was the week before Thanksgiving. Like any good fat kid, I did as much eating as humanly possible in order to prepare myself for the big day. Here are some highlights.

TRIBECA BREAD
I think shopping at Uniqlo whet our appetites for the finer things in life - after a show at the Knitting Factory, Trent and I were feeling particularly fancy and came here to eat. We found it about two blocks north.

This is what it looks like inside.

All high ceilings, wine barrels in the wall, loft-like Tribeca feel, with an open kitchen. It made me feel like I was in a restaurant in the French Alps.

Tribeca bread.

Or rather, what was left of it after about 2 minutes. I was really hungry.

What I ate:

Sauteed squid, potatoes, tomatoes, and olives. the combinations of textures, flavors, and colors made this a really intense, but delectable, appetizer. The squid was perfectly tender and just the right amount of chewy (which is not a lot, but with a healthy amount of elasticity)

You can see Trent's vegan pasta with tomato sauce in the background. Boring, but still pretty good.

Since my meal was an appetizer and we didnt' get drinks, I think our meal only came out to $40 or so. Not bad for a really decent place.
Food: 8.5 Service: 8 Atmosphere: 8.5 Value: 6 Overall: 8

TOMOE
I've been coming to this sushi joint for about ten years now, and this was the first time I've been there when there wasn't a line. I think that was an indication, because I found this experience to be both sup-bar and overpriced, which is truly sad for what was once my favorite Japanese restaurant in the city.

Toro Nakitori (around $9)

This is cooked toro ina sweet sauce. It was really tender, and the flavor was quite nice. However, I found it to be a too heavy, especially eaten as an appetizer.

Sashimi Regular (around $27)

The sashimi, which is really what makes Tomoe stand out, did not let me down. It is still amazingly fresh and well-cut into the biggest sashimi pieces I have ever seen.

It's a great deal - so much sashimi that even I couldn't eat it all. It's so beautiful.

What made the experience subpar was really owed to the uni handrolls, which were shameful. The uni was too mushy and had a bit of an aftertaste - not fresh. Plus they were $8.50 each. I was so sad I couldn't even take their portrait. The ones I had been eating all week at Marumi (on LaGuardia between Bleeker and W. 3rd), which were only around $5 each, were much better.

Food: 6.5 Service: 7.5 Atmosphere: 6.5 Value: 5 Overall: 6

WINDSOR GARDENS RESTAURANT
2nd installation of the Chinatown food blog: This is another random place my mother and I stumbled into tonight. We'd never been there before, but decided to go because it was raining, I was starving, and it was right next to the parking garage. All excellent criteria for choosing a Chinese restaurant. 81 Chrystie Street.

This was a Cantonese place, which, in Chinatown, is really hard to go wrong in since the Cantonese are more obsessed with food than any other Chinese (as the saying goes, they'll eat everything with legs except the table, and anything that flies except the airplane). Actually the same can be said for most restaurants in Chinatown since they are primarily catered towards Chinese people and not "westerners." But the caveat here is that you have to know how to order. That is why, Jeffrey Max, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Pork lo-mein, Hong Kong style ($6.95)

There are infinite varieties of lo-mein, and each restaurant does it differently. This is not what we were expecting, but it was very good. The noodles were thin but bouncy, the bean sprouts added a pleasant crispy element, and the flavor was just right.

Fried Japanese tofu with assorted mushroom (regularly $12.95 but part of the weekly special, so $6.95)

A great choice for vegans and those who love mushrooms of all kinds. There were four, to be exact.

T-bone steak with black pepper (also a special - normally $16.95, but $10.95)

Cooked just right so that the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender,and NOT well-done, which is a sin. The sauce was typical Cantonese - thick, soy, and robustly flavorful. It worked very nicely.

Dessert

Cantonese restaurants usually provide complimentary "sugar water" for dessert, and soup to start. We didn't get a soup, but settled for the "sugar water" (this one was sweet red bean soup with an orange zest) and the honeydew.

This was one of those Chinese restaurants that I had an immediate prejudice against because they sold sushi. Of course we didn't order any of that nonsense, and the dishes we did order were quite satisfactory for what we were looking for - quick, filling, and delicious. Oh and cheap.

Food: 8 Service: 6 Atmosphere: 6 Value: 8 Overall: 7.5

The End of Ignorance

2006-11-14T17:55:00.000-05:00

Gandhi had the caste system, Mandela had apartheid, Che had capitalist pigs, and Fukuyama had history. I, Isadora Tang, have the eradication of ignorance as my great calling in life. Ignorance of what, you, oh naive reader, may ask. Of how to eat good Chinese food, doi! HOW-TO-EAT-GOOD-CHINESE-FOOD, and how to do it well.

Most people of a non-Chinese heritage background seem to not know that a world beyond general tso's chicken exists. And if they do know about this world, they know not how to enter - "oh yes, i was told by a wise old man about the existence of this magical fantasy land. i am still waiting for peter pan to come take me there in my sleep one day." NO!! WRONG!! There is also that strange hybrid non-Chinese person that i have seen in my eating travels. He is the one that I am shocked to see sitting beside me and my Chinese brethen in our hidden gem of a restaurant, who manages his chopsticks with such masterful elegance, who exudes in all directions supreme confidence in his food-ordering ability. Then his dishes (or, as is sadly too often the case, his sole dish) are served, and my mother and i turn to look at each other, wipe the quizzical looks off our chubby faces, and proceed to laugh heartily over this white fool's sad misadventure.

You see my friend, eating good Chinese food is an art. With my guidance, we will, together, learn how to refine this fine and ancient art in the always-smells-like-fish-or-dorian-fruit mean streets of Chinatown, New York.

Chinatown for Beginners: Shanghai cuisine
Mondays host my weekly dinner with mom. This past Monday, since I was feeling under the weather, I requested that we duck into the first Shanghainese restaurant we could find, so I could immediately soothe my sore throat with some delicious soup of dumplings. We went to Shanghai Cafe, on 100 Mott Street. We couldn't agree on whether or not we had been there before, but we decided to give it a shot regardless.

The decor of Shanghai Cafe is typical weird Chinatown - neon purple ceiling lights, industrial metal tables and chairs, big log cabin like wooden booths, all mixed into one nonsensical aesthetic. What differentiated this restaurant was the very very friendly waitresses, who answered our probing questions politely and helpfully, and who oooh and aahhed over my mom's watch. This is indeed a rarity in Chinatown, and I feel obliged to pay the waitresses of Shanghai Cafe homage here. What strangely good service.

What We Ate

These soup dumplings were okay. I would say the skin was too thick, not even clost to paper thin. We also didn't order the crab-pork dumplings, which was our own fault - those were probably a lot better. But in terms of satisfying my craving and my throat, they did a pretty good job of it.

This dish is called "Shui Li Hong," or, as listed on the menu in English, "Bean Curd Skin with Preserved Vegetable and Green Bean" (trust me, the name is much more appetizing in Chinese). It's traditional Shanghainese fare, and delicious! Basically, its tofu skin lightly sauteed with edamame beans and this salted Chinese vegetable called snow vegetable that is only grown around Shanghai. This is one of my favorite Chinese dishes.

Okay, so this is not a great picture. I need a better camera, ok?
This dish is nian gao, or sticky cake. On the menu it's listed as "Shanghai Rice Cakes." Rice cakes are another Shanghainese specialty. They are little oval cakes that are made out of sticky rice, so have a very sticky texture. In the Shanghainese version, there is shrimp, chicken, bamboo, carrots, and onion. It is a hearty helping of gooey goodness

Soup is a big part of Chinese cooking, especially in Canton, where a woman's worth is measured by the quality of her homemade soup. Unfortunately, there were no Cantonese women to be found. This soup is called "Stuffed Bean Curd Skin & Puff with Minced Meat." Basically, it is like an eggroll made out of tofu skin and filled with meat, and a fluffy tofu variety also stuffed with meat. I was really disapointed with this soup - it was so salty that you couldn't even taste anything else, and the texture was just off. I would not order this here again.

Overall
Shanghai Cafe: B

I <3 Vermont!

2006-10-25T23:07:00.000-04:00

Well, I started writing this three weeks ago, but i suck at completion.

FUN FOOD TIMES
Oh, is there anything quite like New England in the fall? NO, there isn't. Especially when it's Vermont, even more especially when it's a big ol' scooby doo missionary van full of fat kids type of New England adventure. We basically ate our way through the weekend. Take a look:

French fries + gravy + fucking cold = most delicious thing ever.

Just ask this guy - he took a fistful!

I've been hearing about this place, the Red Onion, from Lucy for about six years now. Everytime she talked about it she would turn the knife in me a little more. Oh cruel impossible desire.

The long awaited, infamous "red onion sandwich" - fresh homemade bread, roasted turkey, apples, RED ONIONS, tomatoes and honey mustard.

Look at these scones. Soo decadent.

Hot apple cider and freshly made donuts in this cart, just hanging out on the street. Burlington is what I imagine heaven must be like.

Before we hit the road, we squeezed in one more stuff-fest, which proved once again that brunch is the best meal by far.

Tuna Salad

Eggs Arcadia - like florentine but with crab cakes. Pure genius.

Our waiter described this as the "ULTIMATE HEAVY BRUNCH FOOD." It was called Napoleon something or other, probably because, you know, "an army marches on its stomach," or something equally prosaic.

Trent paid something like $10 for this water because it had flowed through rocks that were 450,000 years old. Clearly, he has never taken a science class. But look how HAPPY the trontle is! That's because he added gin for flavor.

In between eating we found other ways to entertain ourselves.

Like enjoying the New England foliage.

Tromping through a spoooky haunted forest. BOO!

Audrey was scared.

Annie was scared-er.

Cross-dressing. (67% say Trent wore it better. bastard.)

Cheersing every opportunity we had.

Visiting an apple mill. The German tourists there made it that much better.

And shopping for viking hats.

String Theory = hot.

2006-10-11T22:47:00.000-04:00

So I read an article in the New Yorker today that basically explored the wild, rebel world of contesting the supremacy of string theory. very sexy. it fascinated me not because i can actually comprehend string and M theory deeply enough to be truly fascinated, but because of the comparison of string theory to religion. consider the thought of 95% of the world's physics community falling victim to this cult-like relgion/psuedo-science, adhering by their lives to a theory they can't prove but can "feel" the truth of, worshipping a weird genius leader dude named Witten (who, by the way, started out his career in politics and published an article in The Nation at the age of seventeen. He argued that the New Left had no political strategy in 1968. The MacArthur Foundation sure hit the nail on the head with that one - genius.) to a God-like status. The analogy seems eerily prescient.

Yet I absolutely adore string theory (again, to the extent one can actually adore something they are incapable of fully grasping). the supreme elegance, the unparalled beauty, the endless possibilities, the promise of other universes - it's just so irresistably glamorous, kind of like hollywood in the 50's. Makes me kick myself in the ass for not paying more attention during Mrs. Mattick's AP Physics class, not that that E&M bullshit could have held a handle to magnificent string theory. *sigh*

Just look at this guy! He's got God-like cult leader written all over him.

you telling me this doesn't turn you on?

ladrones, joder!

2006-10-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

so my bike finally got stolen tonight. i'm actually surprised it lasted as long as it did, being a month or so unchained on a block where crackheads unabashedly hang out on the corner, making deals at 7:00 in the morning. it really became this social experiment for me. i mean, my last bike lasted one night on 4th and D, so this really does speak to the relative security of my neighborhood. still, it sucks it's gone. even though i couldn't ride it (because it's made only for giants), it sure was a nice 'ol bike, so pretty. and i was planning on selling it or giving it to some random stranger as part of another seemingly pointless social experiment.

in other news, i told more people tonight about the idea i've had for a year or so - to write a guide on how to eat authentically delicious chinese food in chinatown. it seems that even whiteys who speak fluent chinese struggle with this noble endeavor. i think for the good of mankind it's time for me to stop bullshitting around and just do it, damn it. if only my elpher weren't busy being broken...

End of Summer Reflections

2006-09-10T04:13:00.000-04:00

Tonight I had dinner at Frank's with Lucy, Eliza, Trent, Annie and Max. We decided it was appropriate to toast, and I decided that it was even more appropriate to toast to "here's to the end of summer, beginning of fall, which i couldn't help notice today, with the leaves fallen on the ground." Annie remarked that that was a very Chinese thing for me to do, making a toast sound like a proverb.

Here are some highlights from my summer:

Trip to Thailand and China

The cutest damn kittens in the world lived outside our hostel in Beijing.

Seeing Dally made me intensely happy and really brought out the woman in me, if i do say so myself.

Shanghai = The Future

Singing karaoke. Bet you didn't know it could be this stressful.

Doggy Downtime

Hans Tang's new puppy Huey.

Duke meets Huey. Neither were quite sure what to make of the other.

mi familia.

ma-ma.

The Foods of Summer
One of the best things about summer is the abundance of fresh, delicious food. The farmer's market was especially good at providing.

Millions of peaches, peaches for me.

Beefsteak. mmmm...

Using all those fresh ingredients to make a vegan meal...

for newly (and obnoxiously) vegan Tront.

To Do (Before I Die)

2006-08-30T03:17:00.002-04:00

I've had this idea in my head for sometime now that before I die, I would like to dedicate a significant portion of my time to analyzing the science behind delicious food. Everyone has individual tastes, and these tastes all differ. But certain outstanding foods seem to be almost universally appealing (Think: Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream). In my constant quest to eat good food, I aim to quantify what that universal goodness factor really is.

My first project will be banana bread. Following the scientific method (remember that all you old farts?), I aim to tackle different recipes of banana bread in order to find what it is that makes for the perfect loaf:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena. Lots of different types of banana bread are yummy, but some some are yummier than others.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. Breads that are yummier than others possess specific qualities that can be distinguished and identified.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations. The identification of these mmmm-inducing qualities will lend insight into the cause of the deliciousness factor of other foods.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments. Me and my multiple personalities will bake several different banana breads using unique "Best Banana Bread" recipes. Double blind testing and rating of breads will ensue.

Nutty bread?

Chocolatey bread?

Triple the bread?

Man bread?

Agassi and Virgins

2006-08-29T01:21:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I went to the opening ceremony of the U.S. Open. For those of you who don't know this, I derive from an intensely tennis obsessed family, and I myself am at times an uncontrollable, raging tennis nut.

Before getting into the details of one of the most jing cai matches i have ever seen, let me just recap the opening ceremony a bit. It was a tribute to the great Billie Jean King, one of the coolest athletes+lesbians of all time, though still trailing behind Martina the Queen by a little. Jon McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert, and Venus Williams were there, and they all gave these lame mini-speeches (except for McEnroe's, which was slighly amusing only because he's kind of an asshole). Bloomie was also there, doing his weird metrosexual bloomberg thing, as was Mayor Hinkins and Martina, not to mention Giesele and my new favorite Corporate member, Robert Deniro (both of whom, apparently, are camera averse. who knew?). Oh and Tony Bennet was there.

Did you know he is EIGHTY?

But the greatest thing of all was that DIANA ROSS was there. True to diva form, she even had a COSTUME CHANGE. She looked fabulous, and I was glad she was there to drown out that goddamned Tony Bennet's children's choir, or whatever that crap was. I kept telling Hans how amazing it would be if instead of having Mary Carillo commentate, Diana Ross just diva-sang all the commentary. Or maybe she could be the chair umpire. Fuck all that trying to make tennis sexy bullshit, here's a novel way for the USTA to boost interest in the sport!:

Oh my, look at that A-A-A-ACEEEE.

On to the match. Let's just say, the play in this match was closer and more riveting to watch than two monkeys in heat trapped inside a cardboard box. The crowd was going absolutely gaga for Agassi, but the funny thing was that he was playing Andrei Pavel of Romania. So everyone would be all "GO ANDRE," and Hans Tang and I would reply, "WHICH ONE?? WE'RE NOT SURE FOR WHOM YOU ARE CHEERING. CAN YOU PLEASE SPECIFY RECIPIENT TO AVOID FURTHER CONFUSION?"

I love you Andre!

(But which one??)

Anyways, it was so close, with both of them winning one set in tie-breakers. However, by the time Agassi was trailing 0-4 in the 3rd set,I was sure doom was pending. But then he came back 2-4, and I turned to the lady next to me and said "This will start his comeback." And, of course, my innate psychic tennis ability (known only by other members of the Tang clan) was once again on the money. Agassi won - 6-7 7-6 7-6 6- He might be the only one capable of challenging Safin as my favorite male player of all time.

In other news, can I just mention how excited I am that Dan won the date with Jane magazine's 29 year-old virgin?? In between driving celebrities around for the VMAS, he will go out on a date with her tomorrow night, probably to some east village jauntz. I'm planning on showing up incognito. I really hope Dan sleeps with this girl, but mainly to laugh at all the nasty and hilarious stories that would inevitably ensue. I am a bad, bad person.

Rolando is betting that Dan will be famous before year's end.

Getting My Mind Blown

2006-08-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

Every now and then, while watching some sort of educational made for tv content, the insides of my head are completely blown to oblivion. my world is turned upside down, and my previous notions of reality are fucked. This first happened while watching the PBS special "The Elegant Universe." It happened again yesterday while watching BBC's "Blue Planet," THE DEEP segment. The Blue Planet is something Audrey, Jess and Dan have been obsessed with, but yesterday was Rolando, Mark, and my first experience. I'm pretty sure their minds were equally blown.

Here are some excerpts and FUN AND INTERESTING FACTS from the website:

1. Below 1,000 metres you enter the dark zone and an alien world. In a world where RED LIGHT DOES NOT EXIST!!!!, dark red jellyfish and shrimps float by, confident that they are almost completely invisible.

2. The only light here is produced by the animals themselves through BIOLUMINESCENCE.

3. Female angler fish use their lures to hook a male. Just one tenth the size of their partner, a male completely fuses itself on to the female's body, becoming little more than an attached bag of sperm (FOR LIFE!!)

4. In just a few places, along volcanic ridge lines, animals survive off energy produced by hot vents - totally without energy from the sun. Since their original discovery in 1979, a NEW SPECIES has been described EVERY 10 DAYS!!!

This is a real fish. OMG.

Ths Scientists call this guy "Dumbo."

Craziness, right? And the whole time they were talking about these crazy creatures and all the sea urchins that crawl along the ocean floor, 4000 meters below, i kept thinking "mmmm, i'll bet they's make for some good sushi. mmmm...uniiiii."

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Jackie likes my idea.

Restaurant Review: Le Pain Quotidien

2006-08-23T16:42:00.000-04:00

Max and I came here for a working girl's lunch today. It was half personal, half business - you know, the norm for us. Though it's a franchise (started in Brussels because some crazy chef wanted to make the perfect, most simple loaf of bread), the food here is really fresh and good, if a little pricey. All the weird little biblical references are kind of neat too. Like the "communal table" - I kept thinking I was going to turn around and see Jesus and his disciples breaking some daily bread and washing each other's feet, or something kind of creepy like that.

We ordered two open-faced sandwiches, or tartines, if you will. One was proscuitto with mozzarella and roasted peppers, the other jambon frances avec three mustards. The prosciutto tartine was to die for, with melt-in-your-mouth mozzarella and a perfect drizzling of pesto. The ham tartine was fine, great only if you love ham. We mainly ordered it because I was fixated with the prospect of not one, not two, but THREE mustards. For dessert, we decided on sharing a Belgian Brownie (Max didn't think I was excited enough for the apricot tart). This brownie, bigger than one of Max's child hands, was heaven - a deliciously dense, moist, not too-sweet triumph of decadence. The kind of brownie i daydream about at my desk when i'm trying to calm my 3:00 sugar pangs. Even the older lady who sat down next to us asked us if she could eat what we didn't finish. Ofcourse, we politely replied, "Fuck no, biatch."

Everything that everyone else was eating looked damn good as well. The service, on the otherhand was shitty. I don't think we could have gotten our waiter's attention even if we had been dirty whores. Our bill came to $35, including tax and tip.

On a scale on 1-10, this is how Le Pain Quotidien rates:
Overall*: 8
Food: 9 Space: 7 Service: 5 Value: 7

*food, being the only thing that really matters, is given more weight in the calculation of the overall score

Alvarado House Annual Pig Roast

2006-08-18T16:51:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday I experienced my 3rd Alvarado house PIG ROAST, complete with fully roasted pig and all. As always, eating, drinking, music playing and dancing were the cornerstones of the night. As an added bonus, a few of Rolando's high school friends got BUTT naked. One of them didn't have pubic hair, and I have got to say that that was one of the more disturbing sights I have seen in my 23 years.

Dan took lots of party photos with his uber duber camera profesional:

Here is Trontle trying to get some milk out of his nipples, because he was thirsty after the vegan brownies he indulged in.

Jesse and I are just lounging around.

Graham looking very cool.

Annie looking very pretty and blue.

Eliza looking berry seXXXy.

Dan had a momentary lapse in sanity. He got in trouble -with RON!

Jess had a bad taste in her mouth. That's cause she just vommed all the cup'a'cup that she had inhaled.

We are trying to look sassy.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again , goddamnit.

2006-08-16T12:49:00.001-04:00

I'm going to start blogging. For real this time. Well, probably not for real since I have the attention span of a small child. Regardless, I will try, and that's all that matters anyways.

My brother is amazing

2006-08-16T12:44:00.000-04:00

Check out what my brother wants to bring our dog duke to: http://goldstock2006.org/
It's like a Woodstock for Golden Retrievers. Isn't that WEIRD? Isn't that FUNNY? But, most of all, isn't that CUTE?

Reiteration is key

2006-02-23T12:20:00.000-05:00

To reiterate my new drunkn-blogging/what is missing in music and art today theme, here is a drunken email I wrote Rolando, but for some reason sent to Jesse instead:

YESM i am so there.
i rant into cosmso today on the train, so learned even more about the
acta who will be preforming. as you can probablyh detect mr. rojello,
i am fruuuuuunk drunk. but i had an interesting conversation about
what's missing inmusic and art these days with several people. i
think you are capable of filling that void, atleast to a larger extent
to all others who have tried. caryyon rlandjello, and make me damn
proud.

love, yours as alwaYS,
IZZY TWOFACE

PS I AM SOTTY I AM SO DRUNJK. IT HAS BEEN A WHILLLLE. HAD TO LET LOOS.
YOU KNOW HOW ITIS

Drunken Blogging

2006-02-22T23:01:00.000-05:00

So I've decided, based on the last two blogs and despite the intolerable cruelty of "publishing" so many nasty ass typos, my thing is the drunken blogging thing. yes. love it.

ps did you notice how blogspot underlines "blog" in red, as if it were spelled incorrectly? talk about dumbass.

FOR EXAMPLE...

2006-02-18T02:22:00.000-05:00

yesterday i downloaded the Symphonie Espagnole by LALO. it was a piece i had been a part of playing my senior year of high school.. THAT IS SOME HONEST, RAW, kicks you in the stomach shit. THAT IS WAHT IS MISSING TODAY!!

also, i jeust wanbted to mention how EXCITED i am to go skiing tomorrow on the GAYEST QUADRUPLE DATE EVER with jefffery marx, jessicraw lud, and jmo. TO THE MOUNTAIN WHERE I LEARNED HOW TO SKI ON AS A FOUR YEAR OLD I THNK> omd so excirted, passing out from the excitement...

Revelation # 498

2006-02-18T02:11:00.000-05:00

TodaY I had several conversations with people that kind of served as a foolllow up to that last blof i wrote. i think my point to make is that what is missin g from my/our/the generation today is a true feeling of emphatic connection. music/movies/art, whathaveyou, is so much catered to a superficial level of appreciation, that most of it today misses that one link that matters- the abilty to make someone, completley foreign and unaware of it, connect to the piece. for example, i was talking with lucifer about why egon schiele was so amazing. we realized it was because there was that depth, that R A W emotion, that we were able to connect to , on som inexplicable level, really FEEL. that strength in ffeeling is so much missing in what is produced these days, and testifies to why our generation is turning into such a WASTELAND of the T.S. eliot cvariety.

on another note, on my way home from the bar, eliza and ihad a VERY genuine connection with our driver. we talked about why chinese boys were like chinese girls, and how latinas son muy fuerrrte en nueva york. THAT was a real human connection, never mind the state of intoxication involved. that was REAL and that was HONESt, and that is what most of us crave. that is why the music we are listening, and the movies we are seeing, are not wholly fulkfilling...their void is their sincerity and honesty, their RAWNESS iffff you will.

otra cosa...hoy dia el secretario de defenso DONALD RUMSFELD (aka THE axis of evil) hablo en el Council. it was MUUUUY scary, and i will have to elaborate more, mas tarde.

I drowned in my own self-absorption

2006-02-16T23:48:00.000-05:00

So one of the reasons I have always been so disdainful of/violently opposed to blogs is because it provides a massive outlet for the shameless self-absorption our generation exudes. Yet, being as much a part of this joke of a generation as i am, i can't deny my own pitiful state of utter self-absorption. so, acknowledging that reality is how i unwittingly (or completely purposefully) ended up here. completely depleted of soul, portioned and sold to all the blog gods, the i-devils, razr phn demons and myspace megolomaniacs of the world. pity me.

on that note, i:
1. have HIGH cholesterol (proof that my presidency of the fat kid's club is fully justified)
2. am going to relive my childhood via skiing this weekend in the poconos
3. am going to start a musical troupe
4. think g-chatting is just fabulous.
5. have a new favorite song - "cheney's got a gun"

ok, that is all. as the gays say in union square, "gmail me!"

End of the strike reflections

2005-12-23T13:05:00.000-05:00

woooweeee am i glad the strike is over. here are my conflicting and VERY BORING opinions on the whole thing:

on one hand, it was nice to see that organized labor still had some force in the U.S. Cutbacks in workers' benefits coupled with (ridiculously) rising health costs is a huge problem for a lot of non-rich people, and that definitely needs addressing. however, it's not really the employers' fault if medical costs are rising so rapidly. and they can't control the fact that life expectancy has also risen so much. i think the big pharmas and healthcare industry should be the ones to dole out some side payments here to ease the burden on the ones who are hurting from their profiteering.

anyways, i think the lessons here to be learned are:
1. unions can suck when their leaders are stuck on an ideological mission that blind their judgment of what's fair.
2. life expectancy rising = retirement age has the right to rise as well. 62 is NOT a ridiculous age to retire.
3. someone has to tackle the issue of healthcare costs rising as if they were the cost of brownstones on prospect place.
4. mta workers get paid SO much more than i do. i am quitting my job and becoming a train conductor, like i've always wanted to do!

apologies

2005-11-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

it's been brought to my attention that my assumption that no one would check my blog for posts was false. i apologize for assuming, i made an ass out of U and MING (my great-grandmother from Hunan).

I like to make out with sushi at Gen. a Lot.

2005-08-09T16:22:00.000-04:00

Until I figure out how to actually have a picture represent my person in my profile, this will serve that purpose. this is me. i like to eat. especially sushi.