The Quintessence of Ham

Sarah and I recently trav­eled to Québec, where I gave a paper at a French his­tory con­fer­ence. I’ve included our din­ing notes below:

Thurs­day. The trip does not begin auspiciously.

Le Cochon Dingue: Dessi­cated luke-warm mus­sels served in an unde­sir­ably fari­na­ceous “cream” sauce. Alarm­ing. » Read the rest of this entry «

Hands down my cur­rent favorite Korean bar­be­cue des­ti­na­tion, Oegadgib fea­tures first-rate all-you-can-eat action. You’ll get pork belly, short­ribs, and rib­eye along with a rel­a­tively small selec­tion of qual­ity ban­chan (think 10 options rather than 30). Their only sign is in Hangul, so you’ll want to keep your eyes out for Jerry’s Subs and the Austin Ani­mal Clinic, which flank the restau­rant. Now if only it were open 24/7 like the joints in New York.

Long lines, bland sand­wiches, mushy pizza. What’s not to like?

My Korean-savvy infor­mant tells me this place is Korean-managed, but they def­i­nitely play up the Japan­ese angle more than most other Japan­ese restau­rants in the area. In addi­tion to the usual sus­pects, for exam­ple, the sushi bar offers “Japan­ese” mack­erel, “Japan­ese” snap­per, etc. They run some mildly exotic spe­cials: spot­ted sar­dines were excel­lent, but wasabi-marinated octo­pus tasted like bait (and not of the fresh variety).

Their kitchen also does good work: deep fried minia­ture octo­puses are nice, as is the unagi don.

There’s an entire aisle of dried seaweed!

This Korean super­mar­ket has excel­lent (and cheap) pro­duce, live blue crabs, and a freezer sec­tion whose vast­ness is exceeded only by its mys­tery. They also sell the Chi­nese black vine­gar that keeps Sarah happy. There’s a reg­u­lar H Mart in Mer­ri­field, but I pre­fer the “Super H” in Fairfax.

Black­salt nor­mally car­ries three kinds of oys­ters at three dif­fer­ent prices. Chesa­peakes are the cheap­est and not so great, but the annoy­ingly named “bou­tique” and “pre­mium” oys­ters are sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter. Unfor­tu­nately, Black­salt only offers a happy hour dis­count on the Chesapeakes.

Fish is hon­est and fresh, though not ter­ri­bly excit­ing. Seems to me that the ideal meal here involves a few dozen oys­ters, a Cham­pagne cock­tail for Sarah (“I thought only hook­ers drank those things”), a soup, and a bot­tle of Mus­cadet. Then again, that’s pretty much an ideal meal any­where, espe­cially if you find your­self in Can­cale.

Most of Blacksalt’s more inter­est­ing seafood seems to be in their retail case rather than on the menu. After your oys­ters, take home some­thing nice to pan roast later.

Calvin Trillin famously derided “con­ti­nen­tal” cui­sine, but I would argue that, for my gen­er­a­tion, “fusion” is the sin­gle scari­est word in the entire culi­nary lex­i­con. I think there’s a very good rea­son that Chi­nese food rarely involves Ched­dar cheese and Span­ish reds aren’t served with sushi: the result would – how shall I put it? – taste like ass. I’m not say­ing that we should let geo­graphic deter­min­ism rule our lives. How can we imag­ine Ital­ian plates with­out toma­toes or Thais with­out chiles? While they man­aged to sur­vive with­out them before glob­al­iza­tion destroyed their native food­ways after 1492, I think we can agree that out­come is tasty. Unfor­tu­nately, on most mod­ern tables “fusion” has far less pleas­ant results. But who wants to read about them?

Enter the Viet­namese sand­wich, or banh mi. While the vast major­ity of today’s “fusion” involves the appli­ca­tion of East­ern ingre­di­ents and meth­ods to West­ern cui­sine – think dump­ing wasabe and sesame oil all over every­thing – few cuisines today show­case the oppo­site. One notable excep­tion is of course tem­pura, famously trans­formed from some­thing Por­tuguese. Viet­namese food does an even bet­ter job by revers­ing the cul­tural trans­fer by trans­form­ing foods appro­pri­ated from the French. The basic foun­da­tion of the banh mi is a baguette-style tor­pedo roll spread with mayo and topped one or more meats, often French-inflected. Lightly pick­led veg­eta­bles, sliv­ered jalapeño pep­pers, and fresh corian­der com­plete the equa­tion. While the condi­ments are deli­cious, the var­i­ous meat options really make the sand­wich sing. Options at Ba Le include:

• head cheese
• pâté
• ham
• sour ham
• meatballs
• bar­be­cue pork
• pep­per pork
• shred­ded pork
• chicken
• shrimp cake

I’m sure I’m for­get­ting a few oth­ers. Our friend Matt really likes the the combo – head cheese, ham, and pâté – and it’s pretty hard to dis­agree. Sand­wiches also hap­pen to cost a mere $2.50; more­over, if you buy five, you’ll get a sixth for free. In fact nearly every­thing at Ba Le is buy 5, get 1: desserts, spring rolls, heart attacks, etc. It’s tough to say no with the staff eagerly encour­ag­ing excess, assur­ing cus­tomers, “You can each eat two sand­wiches. No prob­lem!” The best part is wash­ing every­thing down with a quart of Viet­namese cof­fee, served hot or cold. The basic for­mula is 1) strong enough that you can taste par­ti­cles of sus­pended cof­fee grit; 2) loaded with sugar; 3) loaded with milk. Per­haps now is the time to men­tion that Vietnam’s most famous cof­fee is allegedly made from the turds of a civet, the ani­mal noto­ri­ously asso­ci­ated with SARS.

Wow.

This place sucks! Every­thing was insipid beyond belief. Hello, flavor?

The Florida theme should have tipped me off imme­di­ately, since it is well-known to be the worst state (even Okla­homa has Meers). A place spe­cial­iz­ing in fish tacos should at least aspire to Cal­i­for­nia or even Texas. Maybe Baja. But not Florida.

Despite the uni­formly bland cui­sine, the place was rel­a­tively full for a Sat­ur­day lunch, a tes­ta­ment to North­ern Virginia’s famously sophis­ti­cated palate.

I asked Sarah whether she thought it was funny that the ubiq­ui­tous and shitty tilapia main was $14 while the other “catches of the day,” tuna, mahi mahi, and grouper, were only $1 more expen­sive. Sarah wryly noted that they were all the same fish anyway.

Salt would help some, though arson might work better.

Upscale junk food? Who would believe it?! So read the shocked reviews of this mediocre burger joint. The locally-raised “kobe” beef pat­ties are small, dry, and over­cooked. A bizarre combo veg­gie burger and kobe is equally dis­ap­point­ing, with the veg­gie patty’s strong crab-cake-without-the-crab’s taste over­pow­er­ing the mea­ger beef patty. Fries are adver­tised as cooked in olive oil, which seems like cyn­i­cal mar­ket­ing since plenty of other unsat­u­rated fats are far more suit­able for deep-frying. In any event our fries were greasy and over­salted. Home­made milk­shakes are the lone stand­out, though made too thick to be truly enjoy­able. Even in its aggres­sively fran­chised state, Five Guys blows this place out of the water.

Sarah and I first dis­cov­ered this place one after­noon while look­ing at real estate. “$1 Sushi,” read the neon sign. Who could resist? After a big day look­ing at lit­tle houses, we returned that night with a very hun­gry Veronica.

Once inside I imme­di­ately made a series of inter­est­ing discoveries:

1. Dol­lar sushi is only on Mon­day night.
2. It leans Okinawan.
3. “Maneki Neko” means “wav­ing cat,” Sarah’s all-time favorite piece of restau­rant decoration.

Maneki Neko makes its salmon skin roll by first deep-frying the skin with plenty of meat still attached. It’s not the most sub­tle prepa­ra­tion but very deli­cious and cer­tainly one of the best I have ever had. Veron­ica espe­cially enjoyed it. In fact, she enjoyed most every­thing, much to the shock of our neigh­bor­ing table, whose child list­lessly picked at some kind of teriyaki. My plan to raise a friande is working.

Maneki Neko always has one or two spe­cial items that are beyond the usual tuna-salmon-yellowtail line-up: e.g. live orange clam, live scal­lop, and rock­fish. They also have a sticky rice and banana dessert which was a big hit with V.

Now Veron­ica always wants to eat “Japa-sneeze” food.