22 posts tagged “food”

Last night I had the pleasure of sampling PF Chang's, the American Chinese restaurant chain, with some of my work friends... you know, for the heck of it... since I knew it was gonna be faux Chinese, but at least it never pretended to be anything but. The decor was rather nice and upscale-looking, kinda like a Cheesecake Factory with a Chinese motif (complete with a replica Terracotta Warrior standing guard next to the staircase that joined the split-level dining area).

I ordered the Mu Shu Pork, just so that I could be fluent in American sitcom-cliche Chinese take-out -- it was either that or Kung Pao-something, which I also was able to sample thanks to a colleague. The Mu Shu Pork wasn't bad; for those not familiar with it, it's basically ground pork, onion and mushroom in a hoisin sauce, wrapped and folded in a pancake parcel Peking Duck-style. I got a huge portion, of which I could finish only half, so you can't complain too much about serving sizes. My main complaint was that the dish was super-salty, and so was the Kung Pao Shrimp I nibbled on from my colleague's plate... Someone hand me another glass of water!

At least my curiosity is now satisfied. It still doesn't change my opinion that a "real" Chinese restaurant that uses fresh ingredients and more traditional recipes would easily beat the pants off PF Chang's, but I suppose it depends a lot on the tastebuds you grew up with, and PF Chang's does a good job of catering to American palates and expectations.

The funniest thing was the e-mail circulating around to organize our outing, where one of my colleagues (who's from mainland China) said: "Why are we going here? This restaurant is not well-known in Chinese community." And if there's any nationality that's universally picky about their food, it's the Chinese :).

Check out the Wikipedia entry for PF Chang's, especially the references to PF Chang's in popular culture -- funny :).

Some catchup now on non-nerdy things. Last week was the final week of Ramadan, when Muslims fast for a month in a gesture of solidarity with the poor. They eat breakfast before sunrise, and don't eat or drink again until sunset. To come together as a community and raise cultural awareness, the Muslims at Microsoft DAC (I can't remember exactly what DAC stands for, I think Diversity Action Committee?) put on a Ramadan dinner in Cafe 34 (which conveniently is in my building).

We watched a video about Ramadan (I swear the same as last year's), then tucked in for a feast from nations representing a broad spectrum of the Muslim world. You break the fast with something light (in our case, dates, hommus with crackers and little samosas), say some prayers, and then follow up with the real meal. We were treated with a delicious array of dishes -- various meat curries (halal of course), biryani, stir fries, spring rolls, not to mention desserts like Gulab Jamun and baklava (the latter of which apparently found not just in Greece, but also Iran even if the pronunciation differs slightly). Tasty stuff, now if only the cafeteria would serve such food every day instead of the generic inoffensive but unappetizing fare they currently serve up...

Speaking of food (as I often do), last Friday a bunch of us from work (Nima, Leila, Zen and I to be precise) ventured to Kozue on 45th, a Japanese restaurant in Wallingford that had been recommended to me as good value. I don't get the opportunity to visit Japanese restaurants much anymore (if sushi train places don't count, that is). I miss the broad spectrum of price and quality at my disposal in Melbourne -- whether it was cheap chicken teriyaki at Don Don's, to the it's-Friday-I-couldn't-be-bothered-cooking reliability of Japonica, to the consistently high quality of Hanabishi on King Street, where I was first introduced to the concept of beef tataki. I still remember going there with Claudine in 2001, and marvelling at the wafer-thin slices of beef that I initially couldn't distinguish from the surface of the plate on which it was served...

So I was determined to devour as much raw fish as I possibly could at Kozue... and certainly the portions were generous. I don't think I've ordered a sashimi plate that had as many pieces of fish as it did for the money... they were sliced thick, and most just melted in my mouth (which is exactly what I like my raw fish to do). The one thing I had trouble with: a raw prawn. The head was still on, but the de-shelled back part (thankfully de-veined) was just sitting there an opaque mass of white/pinkish raw prawn meat, daring me to overcome my skittishness at eating raw crustacean -- something you know is just Not Quite Right. Zen had a prawn head tempura-type thing, so we did a double-dare (I think I got the raw end of the deal, haha) and decided to just go for it. It actually wasn't bad, the flavour was a milder version of cooked prawn, with just a hint of prawn head juice :). And no food poisoning afterwards either, so all those undercooked shellfish warnings are just bollocks -- you heard it here first!

Sometimes being "stuck" on the eastside means not being fully aware of the offerings on the other side of the lake, not least in the department of food, an area on which I have lamented in the past. I won't rehash it in detail here, except to say that one thing I miss about Australia is that "ethnic" food could be had that ran the spectrum from dirt cheap to high end. It feels as though around these parts, ethnic food is relegated to "value" status -- charging top dollar is out of the question. I often wonder if places like Flower Drum, Tetsuya's or Billy Kwong could survive in the restaurant market here.

Anyway, I think I'm going to have to start tagging places I read about or people recommend to me so that I don't forget. Here starteth the list:

• Top Gun (on the eastside, but highly recommended for yum cha/dim sum)
• Noble Court (as per Top Gun)
• Umi Sake House (speaking of Japanese, I miss my old local, Japonica, in South Yarra...)
• Julia's Indonesian Kitchen
• Any more suggestions??? (see how short this list is???)
  

This was Labor Day long weekend, but I didn't have anything big planned since I'm deferring my _real_ vacation until next weekend when I fly to New York City. Instead, I tried to take it easy... save for Saturday when I went hiking with a couple colleagues to Tolmie Peak, a1 hour and 40 minute drive away followed by a 6.5 mile return hike. The end goal? A spectacular view of Mt Rainier from an elevation of 6,000 feet. I was kind of expecting to see more hikers out and about this long weekend, but I suspect the 17 miles of gravelly road to reach the trailhead deters most casual outdoor types from this particular trail. Thankfully, Nima volunteered his car for the journey :). Typically at this point in the post I would proffer photos, but I'm in the middle of restoring my MacBook after installing a bigger hard disk so that will probably have to wait until I return from NYC next weekend...

Now onto the second part of the post's title... On the way back we stopped for food at Applebee's. Now, I know this doesn't count as Americana as such, but I reckon our experience eating at one of the Applebee's chain in small town Bonney Lake evoked a familiar feeling of bemusement of what defines contemporary America. I actually didn't mind the food -- I ordered a 9oz steak, medium rare, and it was true to form: tender and pink, with grill marks neatly criss-crossing it's surface. The service was chirpy and efficient. The bathrooms were clean. The walls were adorned to exude a sports motif -- football jerseys, photos of race car drivers, surfers; and there were televisions showing a football game. I guess what I'm trying to say is... the experience was pleasant, but I just got the sense that it was all too mass produced, too neatly packaged... like everyone was following a script, exactly the way they were trained to, and yes I walked away a satisfied but not blown away customer...

You'd think a small town like Bonney Lake would represent the last bastion of non-chain-ification, but at least the view from the highway suggested otherwise -- chains, chains everywhere... I'm not sure how a small town like that can sustain so many retailers actually; we saw a Wal-Mart, a Target, a Safeway, a Fred Meyer, an Albertsons and plenty more within a 2 to 3 mile strip for example.

Watching Anthony Bourdain on TV tonight visiting Hong Kong really brought it home to me. Seeing him eat at street stalls, observing noodles made by hand, being harrassed by a woman fearful a westerner would drive away trade for her sticks of smoked pig gizzard, and just being able to soak up some culture that hasn't been mass-produced made me long for that kind of experience again. Maybe NYC will give me some of that buzz?

In the midst of my searching for late night fast food sustenance to keep the work fires burning, I am reminded by Juergen of all the above-average fast food joints that I left behind in Australia: BBNT, grill'd, Oportos Portuguese chicken, even Wok on Inn noodle bars... All I have is Subway, a bazillion Macca-likes like Jack in the Box, and Mexican fast food joints (which aren't bad but I guess not growing up with them, aren't my first preference). Oh and Don Don's on Swanston -- mmmm.

I guess China has had a bad rap lately for its deteriorating food standards. Normally I would think that these incidents are probably occurring in proportion to what you'd expect in a country of 1 billion+ people (there's always someone who will try to take an inch when life gives them a mile). But then you read about stories like this one; when the desire for profit drives you to feed your customers cardboard (and not actually have the shame to hide the fact!) something has gone wrong...

Next season of Top Chef one week from today... oh and I caught the tail end of the Season 1 vs. Season 2 smackdown while randomly flicking during a Colbert Report ad break -- Season 1 kicked ass. Woops I mean arse.

Well here's a surprise: the Dalai Lama appears to not be a vegetarian. Most Buddhists (devout ones anyway) typically are, so this pricked my ears up a bit. Coincidentally I've been eating mostly vegetarian for the past few days (if only because I've been too lazy to cook, decided to eat dinner with friends and ended up at veggie places). One thing I've noticed, at least with the more Asian-style veggie places I've been to like Teapot and Lake Shore Veggie House (as opposed to Indian), is that they cook their vegetables/soy protein/noodles etc. with a lot of oil -- there's nothing like oil and deep-frying to make pretty much anything taste good!

I've always liked Ross Gittins' column as published in The SMH and The Age, not just because he seems to be most true to his economist background (rather than being ideologically bound to defend one particular side of politics' economic policies regardless of their implications), but because every so often he delves into the more human side of economics (although you might argue that economics at its root is a social science anyway in that it studies human behaviour in order to predict policy outcomes).

One of his recent articles is about our instinct towards food consumption -- more precisely, to eat as much as what's in front of us. It goes a long way towards explaining society's journey towards gross obesity. I know that when I eat out at restaurants, I feel compelled to finish off everything on the plate, as much from an aversion to waste than anything else. At least some establishments are recognising this and offering smaller portions, but the notion of getting 'value for money' will still seem darned attractive to most people.

It seems somewhat immoral not to say illogical that we live in a world in which the majority of whom suffer from food scarcity, that we in the West need to be concerned with the psychology of having too much food... I'm not saying I have the answers, or that I'm going on a hunger strike in a show of solidarity with my hungry brethren; just that something as fundamental as the food we eat probably deserves more thought and attention than it currently does. I may also be subject to the influence of the book that's currently occupying my bedside table: The Omnivore's Dilemma... (Coincidentally, the author Michael Pollan might be visiting Microsoft soon -- yay!) Highly recommended, and gives an explanation as to why the standard sweetener seems to be High Fructose Corn Syrup rather than cane sugar (as we might expect in Australia).

Balut update: Atul, Riz and I had one of our dinner get-togethers last night. We had stir-fried salmon, and deep-fried milkfish with a mango salsa; tasty stuff!

And as an extra special treat, Riz brought some balut that he bought from the Filipino supermarket near where he lives. I left them for lucky last, and can I just say that with a healthy dabble of sea salt they taste just like a boiled egg, the only difference being the texture of the partially formed embryo which is disconcerting not so much for the texture itself but because of your own knowledge of what it is. At least it was recognisably duck-like (thanks to a bit of overcooking).

So now I can say I have the balut-experience under my belt... but I think I'll pass on making it a habit! Sorry Riz! (And Israel too if you're reading this hehe).