BEST MEALS EVER
This entry goes out to Brocklee and his last comment. I am definitely picking up some pudge while here. Here's some of the famous meals I've had that have made me the pudge I am today:
-Dinner (today) , Hong Kong
-Meal: Roast goose over rice
-Restaurant: some Cantonese BBQ place in Yaumatei
-Lunch three years ago, Hong Kong
-The best Indian food. Naan light as clouds.
-One of the many restaurants hiding in Chungking Mansions, went there straight off the overnight train from Beijing.
-Dinner four years ago, Hong Kong
-A friends' parents took me out to eat Seafood somewhere in Kowloon. We walked down an endless corridor of seafood stalls. The Mom walked past each, pointing here and there to any variety of giant sea critters from a Jules Verne novel that eventually ended up on our plate in a velvet restaurant at the end of corridor. The best was some kind of garlic sauteed lobster type thing someone called a "Sea Caterpillar." You know how the best part of the lobster is the tail? This was all tail.
-Lunch, three years ago, Summer in Italy, some hill town
-Handmade pasta, handcut with a knife, rough-edged and fat so it picked up all the taste of the sauce which was some kind of tomato cream sauce if I remember. There was a hoard of predatory white cats watching us while we ate.
-Dinner, two years ago, The Xinjiang Government Restaurant in Beijing
- My friend Miaomiao took me out there with her boyfriend and my friend Andrea. Lots of great lamb in overflowing plates. The experience is kind of a blur. At the end they served the best yoghurt ever, with honey, walnuts, and fresh fruit.
-Late Dinner, New York, Matsuri (I think that's the name) a Japanese restaurant near the West Side Highway down her Tribeca or somewhere. Used to be an abandoned Metro station or something. Huge arcing ceilings and ungainly paper lanters floating overhead.
- To celebrate the finishing of Brokeback, the Editor took us out to eat Sushi. Really really really great. Melts in your mouth eel and other stuff. I had some kind of sake martini that was really great. After more sake, we went to a bar, got more drunk. I came back to my apartment, telling my roommates I was convinced I just overheard the editor confess the Secret to Fame.
-When I was a kid, Fudruckers
-Those 1 lb hamburgers and fries and the overall crazy family fun decor: kids love that shit and I was a kid too, once. Tho' the first time we had it in Baltimore, it gave our family gas, and so that night it was cleverly renamed "Fartruckers."
-Four years ago, summer between Junior year and Senior year. Visited my ex-GF's hometown in Olney Illinois. Forget what the name of the place was.
-The town is famous for its white squirrels and this one hamburger place where they grind their own meat, and stir their own chocolate sodas, and extrude their own fries. Straight out of the fifties. I felt almost American. Pretty tasty too.
-Eight (! shit) years ago, Summer after freshman year. Burrito place in flagstaff arizona.
- They had this jalepeno pineapple salsa that was just awesome. (running out of food adjectives)
-On the train to Sichuan from Beijing,three or four years ago.
- Against the advice of all intelligent health officials, I bought lunch out of the train window from some hawker in some no-where mountain town south of the Yangtze on the 24 plus hour train ride to Chengdu. The rice came stemed in its own little clay pot. It had a salty egg and some form of poultry too I think. Pretty tasty. Done, just toss the clay pot out the window and it shattered with a pleasant sound. At the next stop, I believe I bought a "pepsi" which I write in lower-case, because it turned out to be "pirate" fake brand name pepsi. After one sip proved to be slightly off in taste, I did a double-take and saw all manner of stringy and blobby particles floating through my "Future Cola."
- Chop Suey, Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii
- Hawaii has a type of Chinese noodle I've never seen anywhere else: the cake noodle. It's pan-fried noodles, but in a cake about 3"x4" and 1/2" thick. Comes covered in dark yellow gravy that's surprisingly buttery for Chinese good and good American-sized portions of chicken.
-Liliwa Bakery outside Honolulu, Hawaii
- Perfect breakfast: fluffy pancakes (tho' they call them something funny like griddle cakes or something), eggs, bacon, toast with guava jelly, guava juice, and of course, chocolate cream puffs.
While we're on cream puffs:
-Anywhere there's a Beard Papas (Astor Place)
- Japanese chain that only sells cream puffs. Anyone who knows me knows I am slightly obsessed with this place. I dressed up as Beard Papa for last Halloween.
-About a month ago, Hong Kong, some store in Kowloon City that has a bulldog outside
- My coworker said "Local enough for you?" By which he meant dirty. Most everything was precooked and sloshing in bins outside. The restaurant was just some tables by the freezers. Occassionally the waiter would come by, tell me to move so he could get something out. The meal was all manner of pork that could kill a rabbi Medusa-style if his eye strayed in its direction. Intestines, stomach, butt meat, foot meat, jaw meat. Who knows. But it was fucking awesome.
-Williamsburg, six months ago, winter
- I forget what the place was, but snow was plastering the roads, I was really drunk and really shoudn't have afforded the lamp hamburger I bought there late that night, but cumin and other spices on it slammed through my drunkenness and hit my tongue with a nice big love smack. Or something. Made me and my roommate happy enough to attempt the post-midnight subway exchange back to Park Slope.
- Eight years ago, that same cross country trip as above, Somewhere in colorado
- my first Buffalo burger. My cotraveller and I had some touristy conversation with the unimpressed waittress along the lines of, Us: "Wow, Buffalo!" Her: "Yup." Us: "Real Buffalo." Her: "Yup." It was good.
- Somewhere in New Mexico, same trip, not too far from White Sands National Monument
- Some restaurant operated by a Korean family that must have chosen their ultimate immigration destination by randomly throwing down a finger while flipping through the US Atlas at high speeds. The restaurant only served ostrich and ostrich products, by which I mean you could get your family's portrait painted on an ostrich egg. I had an ostrich burger. It was OK.
- Detroit, Greek town, High School, Junior year debate trip or something forgettable.
- Yay Greek food. I forgot my camera at the restaurant so it was an expensive meal.
- Russian restuarant, Harbin, China, on the Siberian border
- I went here with my friend for the Ice Festival every winter where they build a city out of ice. We smoked some pot before strolling out in search of the Russian food we knew was somewhere. I got too high to remember the meal, but I suppose it was good. The night ended in pot silence. Then my friend said apropo of nothing: "There goes that train of thought."
Best meal ever, tho:
- Naples, Italy, 5 min stopover at train station on way back from
- Train was coming. We were in a rush. But I had to eat pizza in the birthplace of pizza. (Oh, besides pizza from New Haven, CT which I forgot to list above). We ran to the nearest restaurant, kicked an unconscious wino from the front of the display where the pizza was slowly dying under infra-red heating lamps. We got our mini-pizzas in brown wax paper and scurried back to the train station. While running, I took a taste... and it was so good I nearly soiled myself right there. The Naples government gives out licenses to pizza restaurants. If its not up to stuff, you can't do it. That's Utopia.
That's it. I'm spent. Share your food stories.
This entry goes out to Brocklee and his last comment. I am definitely picking up some pudge while here. Here's some of the famous meals I've had that have made me the pudge I am today:
-Dinner (today) , Hong Kong
-Meal: Roast goose over rice
-Restaurant: some Cantonese BBQ place in Yaumatei
-Lunch three years ago, Hong Kong
-The best Indian food. Naan light as clouds.
-One of the many restaurants hiding in Chungking Mansions, went there straight off the overnight train from Beijing.
-Dinner four years ago, Hong Kong
-A friends' parents took me out to eat Seafood somewhere in Kowloon. We walked down an endless corridor of seafood stalls. The Mom walked past each, pointing here and there to any variety of giant sea critters from a Jules Verne novel that eventually ended up on our plate in a velvet restaurant at the end of corridor. The best was some kind of garlic sauteed lobster type thing someone called a "Sea Caterpillar." You know how the best part of the lobster is the tail? This was all tail.
-Lunch, three years ago, Summer in Italy, some hill town
-Handmade pasta, handcut with a knife, rough-edged and fat so it picked up all the taste of the sauce which was some kind of tomato cream sauce if I remember. There was a hoard of predatory white cats watching us while we ate.
-Dinner, two years ago, The Xinjiang Government Restaurant in Beijing
- My friend Miaomiao took me out there with her boyfriend and my friend Andrea. Lots of great lamb in overflowing plates. The experience is kind of a blur. At the end they served the best yoghurt ever, with honey, walnuts, and fresh fruit.
-Late Dinner, New York, Matsuri (I think that's the name) a Japanese restaurant near the West Side Highway down her Tribeca or somewhere. Used to be an abandoned Metro station or something. Huge arcing ceilings and ungainly paper lanters floating overhead.
- To celebrate the finishing of Brokeback, the Editor took us out to eat Sushi. Really really really great. Melts in your mouth eel and other stuff. I had some kind of sake martini that was really great. After more sake, we went to a bar, got more drunk. I came back to my apartment, telling my roommates I was convinced I just overheard the editor confess the Secret to Fame.
-When I was a kid, Fudruckers
-Those 1 lb hamburgers and fries and the overall crazy family fun decor: kids love that shit and I was a kid too, once. Tho' the first time we had it in Baltimore, it gave our family gas, and so that night it was cleverly renamed "Fartruckers."
-Four years ago, summer between Junior year and Senior year. Visited my ex-GF's hometown in Olney Illinois. Forget what the name of the place was.
-The town is famous for its white squirrels and this one hamburger place where they grind their own meat, and stir their own chocolate sodas, and extrude their own fries. Straight out of the fifties. I felt almost American. Pretty tasty too.
-Eight (! shit) years ago, Summer after freshman year. Burrito place in flagstaff arizona.
- They had this jalepeno pineapple salsa that was just awesome. (running out of food adjectives)
-On the train to Sichuan from Beijing,three or four years ago.
- Against the advice of all intelligent health officials, I bought lunch out of the train window from some hawker in some no-where mountain town south of the Yangtze on the 24 plus hour train ride to Chengdu. The rice came stemed in its own little clay pot. It had a salty egg and some form of poultry too I think. Pretty tasty. Done, just toss the clay pot out the window and it shattered with a pleasant sound. At the next stop, I believe I bought a "pepsi" which I write in lower-case, because it turned out to be "pirate" fake brand name pepsi. After one sip proved to be slightly off in taste, I did a double-take and saw all manner of stringy and blobby particles floating through my "Future Cola."
- Chop Suey, Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii
- Hawaii has a type of Chinese noodle I've never seen anywhere else: the cake noodle. It's pan-fried noodles, but in a cake about 3"x4" and 1/2" thick. Comes covered in dark yellow gravy that's surprisingly buttery for Chinese good and good American-sized portions of chicken.
-Liliwa Bakery outside Honolulu, Hawaii
- Perfect breakfast: fluffy pancakes (tho' they call them something funny like griddle cakes or something), eggs, bacon, toast with guava jelly, guava juice, and of course, chocolate cream puffs.
While we're on cream puffs:
-Anywhere there's a Beard Papas (Astor Place)
- Japanese chain that only sells cream puffs. Anyone who knows me knows I am slightly obsessed with this place. I dressed up as Beard Papa for last Halloween.
-About a month ago, Hong Kong, some store in Kowloon City that has a bulldog outside
- My coworker said "Local enough for you?" By which he meant dirty. Most everything was precooked and sloshing in bins outside. The restaurant was just some tables by the freezers. Occassionally the waiter would come by, tell me to move so he could get something out. The meal was all manner of pork that could kill a rabbi Medusa-style if his eye strayed in its direction. Intestines, stomach, butt meat, foot meat, jaw meat. Who knows. But it was fucking awesome.
-Williamsburg, six months ago, winter
- I forget what the place was, but snow was plastering the roads, I was really drunk and really shoudn't have afforded the lamp hamburger I bought there late that night, but cumin and other spices on it slammed through my drunkenness and hit my tongue with a nice big love smack. Or something. Made me and my roommate happy enough to attempt the post-midnight subway exchange back to Park Slope.
- Eight years ago, that same cross country trip as above, Somewhere in colorado
- my first Buffalo burger. My cotraveller and I had some touristy conversation with the unimpressed waittress along the lines of, Us: "Wow, Buffalo!" Her: "Yup." Us: "Real Buffalo." Her: "Yup." It was good.
- Somewhere in New Mexico, same trip, not too far from White Sands National Monument
- Some restaurant operated by a Korean family that must have chosen their ultimate immigration destination by randomly throwing down a finger while flipping through the US Atlas at high speeds. The restaurant only served ostrich and ostrich products, by which I mean you could get your family's portrait painted on an ostrich egg. I had an ostrich burger. It was OK.
- Detroit, Greek town, High School, Junior year debate trip or something forgettable.
- Yay Greek food. I forgot my camera at the restaurant so it was an expensive meal.
- Russian restuarant, Harbin, China, on the Siberian border
- I went here with my friend for the Ice Festival every winter where they build a city out of ice. We smoked some pot before strolling out in search of the Russian food we knew was somewhere. I got too high to remember the meal, but I suppose it was good. The night ended in pot silence. Then my friend said apropo of nothing: "There goes that train of thought."
Best meal ever, tho:
- Naples, Italy, 5 min stopover at train station on way back from
- Train was coming. We were in a rush. But I had to eat pizza in the birthplace of pizza. (Oh, besides pizza from New Haven, CT which I forgot to list above). We ran to the nearest restaurant, kicked an unconscious wino from the front of the display where the pizza was slowly dying under infra-red heating lamps. We got our mini-pizzas in brown wax paper and scurried back to the train station. While running, I took a taste... and it was so good I nearly soiled myself right there. The Naples government gives out licenses to pizza restaurants. If its not up to stuff, you can't do it. That's Utopia.
That's it. I'm spent. Share your food stories.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
Good eye on the name. You're the first to catch it.
Cheers, brother.
so what is it that you do thats brought u over to asia??