An Effing Foodie

Baroque-O Loco Moco!

A non-Baroque-o Loco Moco

What happens when you put a hamburger, 2 polarizing meat products, fancypants gravy, rice, tree sap and 2 LA stoner/chef/surfers together?

Baroque-o Loco Moco!

Animal opened in June 2008 [in Montauk, NY] and has been packed since — one of the breed of gleefully carnivorous restaurants to flourish in recent years. Its giddy, sophisticated-stoner sensibility is best represented by the Foie Gras Loco Moco, a riff on a Hawaiian surfer dish. It consists of a hamburger, a slice of fried Spam, a wedge of seared foie gras and a quail egg, all teetering on a bed of rice and topped with teriyaki sauce, maple syrup, bordelaise and Sriracha.

            - NYT (links and emphasis mine)

Torn, I am.  Teetering.  I wouldn't kick it out of bed...but could I live with myself if I paid $35 for a loco moco?  COULD I???

Props to Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo for shoving pig nethers into East Hamptonians and Los Angeleans, of all people!

They don't mess around: Pigs ears, belly and cheeks, sweetbreads, chicken liver, poutine, head cheese, kimchee, foie gras, Spam, and a chocolate/bacon dessert all commingle into one gutsy (harhar) weed-out-the-weak menu of rare depravity.

No critter is safe.  MUAHAHAHAHA!

What the World Eats: The Nonburger of Samtaeseong Diner (Pyongyang), Indoor Rain at Mercado San Miguel (Madrid), Spam Fries at Wild Oats (Singapore)

It's a red-letter day at Samtaeseong Diner, Pyongyang, where North Koreans have been granted the privilege to blow half a day's salary on an All-American Hamburger.

So long as you don't use the word "American".

Or "Hamburger".

Instead, patrons of the Samtaeseong diner, which opened in Pyongyang last month, have to order a suspiciously similar "minced beef with bread".

The isolated Communist state has long banned what it calls Western or US "imperialist influences" on its people. But there was only so long it could hold out against the temptations of fast food. (Telegraph)

Hold out against the evils of imperialist fast food?  We understand.  It lacks the cleansing totalitarian virtue of tree bark and grass.

Silver lining: All the unbranded fascist minced meatpucks come draped in complimentary kimchee!  Woohoo!

                                    *        *        *

Half a world and happier circumstances away sits Mercado San Miguel, the gorgeous, newly remodeled marketplace in Madrid.  Originally built in 1916, this wrought-iron palace to food boasts the spoils you'd expect of Spain: Technicolor produce, barely-dead meats and seafood, cheese aplenty, bakeries, tapas counters.

From Druidabruxux on Flickr

This gustatory sensory overload is trimmed with urban twists and comforts--a kitchy cookbook store, an oyster and champagne bar, and even 2 AM closing times on Fridays and Saturdays. 

There's even a vegetable mister for people: "In a nod to living green, instead of air-conditioning, the air is infused with water droplets; every few minutes shoppers are bathed in a blast of micro-rain." (NYT Travel)

                                    *        *        *

And last, but not least...a topic close to my Hawaiian Ex-Pat heart...Spam.

Not just Spam...but Spam FRIES.

Yup, luncheon meat chopped up into long skinny fries, fried until they’re crispy on the outside, and served with one or more dips. Disgustingly, sinfully, ridiculously good. I had these with some friends one night over drinks at Wild Oats, the bar owned and run by Willin Low, and I just about fell off my chair. (Chubby Hubby)

<Wiping the corners of my eyes, speechless.>

Hats off to Willin Low, luncheon meat visionary!

EF Eats Honolulu, and FINALLY Eats Ono's Hawaiian Food

I tend to get tactical with my meals on my rare trips home.  Don't judge!  There are a finite number of meals that a lady can consume, and they must be devoted to things that I've contemplated selling my soul to get mid-winter in the Empire State.

Witness!  (Simply a numbered list, not ranked by importance, thank you!):

1) Zippy's Mini Chili and Chicken Plate: Check! 

<-- Eaten at Koko Marina, my favorite branch.  Perfectly juicy chicken thigh with a bayside view? YES please!

(Zippy's has a thigh-only policy with their fried chicken.  GENIUS!)

Hana hou!  Anything worth doing is worth doing twice.  This one met its end on a blanket at Kaka'ako Beach Park:

2) Breakfast at Likelike Drive Inn: Check!

Left to right: Portuguese sausage, rice and eggs; rolled guava jelly pancakes.

3) Late night nosh at Liliha Bakery: Check!

 

L to R: Hotcakes; loco moco (that's rice with a hamburger patty, gravy and a fried egg).

4) Okazu (starchy food favored by field workers in the Hawaiian plantation days, nowadays sold in deli-like okazu-yas, evolved to reflect a meld of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese influences) lovingly selected from Fukuya:

 

Clockwise, starting from top left corner: Shiso musubi (rice ball), miso tofu, chow fun, potato hash, sweet potato tempura, nishime.

Check!  Rinse!  Repeat!  This time selected from Nu'uanu Okazuya (a first for me!):

Clockwise, from top left corner: Chow fun, potato hash, furikake musubi, pumpkin stewed with dried shrimp, furikake chicken, wakame roll.

...devoured with BFF Alli and her husband, on our favorite beach:

(Sometimes, life is all gravy.)

5) Shave ice from Waiola: Check.

Melona, lychee and watermelon syrup, with ice cream at the bottom.

6) Absurdly outsized meal at Side Street Inn: Checkity-check-check. 

 

Top: Fried pork chops; Bottom, L to R: Kim chee fried rice, kalbi special (made with ribeye?).

Above: Korean fried chicken; Below: Chinese-style steamed moi special.

Plus/minus a gaggle of lychee martinis. 

Number of people eating: 3.5, if you count welcome relief from a latecomer.

7) Poke, every time the opportunity presented it self: Check!

 

Above: Limu Ahi Poke from Foodland.

Super-Expressive Foods: Manapua Monster, Mango Custard Malasada

Where've I been?

Well...'twas time to go to the Motherland, wherein I was greeted with beautiful weather, great friends, and a bevvy of mui-expressive foods of the pastry-kind.  Chekkit!

BLARGH!  Manapua Monster menacing hapless Half-Moons!

Manapua Monster was the quintessential Hawaiian char siu bao: HUGE, and crammed with BBQ pork of the leaner, shredded variety (think less saucy, more red-pulled-porkish).  He and the Half-Moons (stretchy-glutinous skinned, filled with minced water chestnuts, pork and dried shrimp) play out their ancient battle every day at the Island Manapua Factory.

Yepyup, I like Char Hung Sut better, too--but we were on our way to Manoa Falls, so convenience won out over dimsum particularity.

No visit home is complete without a (few) visit(s) to Leonard's.  Call me old-fashioned (go ahead, it's not something you'll be able to say very often!) but I don't really care for the baroque new malasadas, with the addition of cinnamon sugar, stuffings of various custards, etc.  A fresh, just-fried-HOT Portuguese doughnut tumbled in sugar is an untinkered thing of beauty, and no one does them as well as Leonard's.

That said, lovely BFF Alli has always been one to try new things, so she bravely sampled some of the newer malasadas--one filled with pina colada custard, and another with mango custard.

>MMMfph<  Mango HORK!

"Tastes like sunscreen," sayeth Alli (of the pina colada one).  As for the mango?  "Tastes like...mango sunscreen."

No worries, we had standard malasadas at the ready for her, just in case.

EF Eats SF (The Cheapies): Pho Tan Hoa, Yank Sing, Dojima-An

There is a lot of justifiable grumbling about the economy nowadays, but one of the fringe benefits is that right now, travel is ridiculously cheap.  And I've never been a gal who can pass up a great value, an excuse to escape, or free shared accommodations from a dear, dear friend.

So, I was off to San Francisco as the roving foodite compass for said dear friend and MILF-y maven, the sweet-toothed Sugar Momma.

Sugar Momma presented a few golden opportunities for an always-ravenous wanderer like myself:

1. She'd never been to SF before (or California, for that matter). 
2. As much as Sugar Momma loves food, there was a laundry list of eats that a gal raised in upstate NY had never tried before. 
3. Sugar Momma is no wuss.  Even if she's sure she'll hate it, she'll still try it.

That in mind, I crammed as many firsts and technicolor noshing into 5 days as any sane pair of chickadees could manage.

Let's start with the cheapies, shall we? 

I found Pho Tan Hoa on Yelp!, and figured it was a good place to pop Sugar Momma's Vietnamese food cherry.  She looked a 'lil worried as I lead her into a vaguely sketchy bit of the Tenderloin in pursuit of lunch, but she relaxed once the harried (but amazingly efficient) proprietor set fragrant bowls of pho and bò kho (Vietnamese beef stew) in front of us.

I know pho is old hat for a lot of you readers, but I was psyched when SM emerged from the bowl with a grin and a thumbs up, unfazed by the thin sheets of rare filet cooking in the piping-hot soup. 

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of bò kho, it's served with nicely crackly baguettes to sop up the slightly curried, anise-spiked jus as you work through the fall-apart chunks of beef, tendon, and carrots.

And since this was our first meal in SF, I was stupid about pacing, so I got a totally unnecessary order of Summer Rolls as well.  Super-fresh, the soft mung bean wrapper perfectly packaging sliced shrimp, vermicelli, and herb salad, these babies were a great value (four of them to an order, at just-around $5), and SM loved them, so no regrets. 

(Only bloat!)

Another lunch of firsts for Sugar was dim sum at Yank Sing, another find off of Yelp!.  I know, there is dim sum in NY, and some of it ain't half-bad.  But I want to live a life where dim sum is BETTER than ain't-half-bad DAMMIT, and CA will always ROCK the Empire State in this respect.  Check out these soup dumplings (Xiǎolóngbāo):

 

See how sultry-thin those skins are, so skimpy that the whole thing is slumped with soup that you can actually SEE???  GORgeous.  That's how it should be, and I'm glad that Sugar's very first one was a great one, bursting with nuanced soup and a tender pork-and-crab filling.  The black vinegar wasn't even necessary on these gems.

The barbecued pork buns (charsiubao) were a proud example of their kind, sweet-savory steamy treats:

Also toothsome were the crispy-on-the-outside, creamy-on-the-inside, pork-filled taro puffs (woogok) made with a light hand and a properly hot deep fryer (I've had some Gawd-awful greasy ones in NY); the shrimp-and-chive dumplings (gauchoygao) were kind of a non-event.

We managed to save some room for sweets; meet happily gelatinous and creamy mango pudding (before being doused in evaporated milk) and the ragged half of a shamelessly flaky custard tart (dantat):

 

Sometimes, serendipity intervenes--our last budget-minded lunch came from a homey little Japanese joint that I'd noticed one night on the way back to our hotel.

Dojima-An is not unlike places you'd find in the East Village, or even back in Hawaii, and for good reason--the appeal of well-made starch is universal, and Japanese comfort food cures what you didn't even know was ailing you (namely, taste-bud fatigue). 

Sugar Momma scored herself a bowl of hot soba with lacy vegetable tempura:

...and I tucked into udon with stewed chicken, eggs and sauteed onion.  A hug in a bowl!

I love Cali.  Even in a tiny, homey place like this, the quality of the fish was better than it had any right to be.  We each treated ourselves to a piece of spanking-rosy hamachi nigiri (yellowtail tuna), beloved by sushi-snobbypants and sushi-novice alike:

 

Like buttah.  I had to hold back from having sushi for dessert.

Patience, I told myself.  Finite space, and all that!  Tune in next post for the fancier vittles!

(Oh, and if you're keeping score, Sugar Momma has dug everything she's tried so far.  SO proud of her!)

EF Eats DC: Founding Farmers, true food and drink, Foggy Bottom, DC

 

Dos Mattys, The Bombshell and I giggled a little when we walked into DC's cheekily named Founding Farmers.  Most of the places in NY that tout themselves as crafty farm-fresh tend to be smaller, softly lit, seemingly hallowed cloisters to pig.

Not so here.  It's a huge space, two floors, mostly modern with rustic flourishes--a big restaurant with a big menu crammed with big, unabashedly American flavors. (And lighting that behooves opportunistic bloggers to boot. Hooray!)

And the thing is...it works! Who can hate on a menu that has chicken pot pie, chicken and waffles, lobster rolls and french dip?

Take, for instance, our appetizers:

Puffed pastries filled with pimento cheese--a pinky-up version of the old-school packaged cheese-and-cracker snacks (y'know, with the flat red rods for faux cheese smearing?).  Classy and brassy, gone before anyone could blush.

Deviled eggs! We opted for the "classic" (there's a more baroque "Combo" egg platter, with seafood-decked eggs); eight halves to an order, besprinkled with chives, a straightforward, two-bite treat (and a STEAL at $4!).

Steamed mussels with chunks of chorizo and bounteous bread for sopping the magical marriage of seafood and pork juices; not to be outdone, a platter their bivalve counterparts, raw oysters from the west and east coasts.  There was mollusk carnage EVERYWHERE as we licked our briny chops.

Fried green tomatoes!  I've never been a fan, but they were a gloriously crunchy delivery module for the tasty green goddess (foreground) and blue cheese dressings.

EF Eats DC: Hank's Oyster Bar, Alexandria, VA

A lucky gal was I, catching up with the newly transplanted Big-Eyed Curvy Bombshell and her serious-eater ex-roommates from Brooklyn, Dos Mattys (yep, that's two guys named Matt), in the reeediculously warmer climes of Maryland/DC.

I'm not sure I'd ever live in DC, but I've got much love for their vittles.  The dirty secret is, the Washingtonian passel of fratboys and sourpussed WASPs eat really well, often times at a much better value than we do up north.

Though Dos Mattys and I were there only 48 hours, any visit four foodies deep is bound by an unspoken pact of gluttony, and we were all too happy to comply as Bombshell hurtled us through her short-but-sweet wonderland of DC taste sensations. (Good LORD, how I miss her!)

Nothin' says "reunion" quite the way oysters do, so in oysters we trusted at Hank's Oyster Bar, in the rarefied/quaint 'hood of Old Alexandria.   

And here's where I got a little puzzled.  It was a gorgeous Sunday, warm enough so that people were busting out their sandals and sundresses...yet every person we passed on the street had nothing less than scowls on their faces.  What the HELL, Washingtonians?  Blossoms!  Sunshine!  The goddamned cherry Porsche convertible you're showing off for the first time this year! 

People think NYers are the meanest, baby-eatingest buttholes in the US, but yer average New Yorker on the street has a jaded, neutral-to-laughing-at-a-private-joke smile on their face when walking.  And on a glorious spring day--fuggedaboutit, we're all FN grinning like fools. 

But when we walked into Hank's, and waited...and waited...and waited for our table, standing crammed into the non-existent foyer, you'd think we'd brought the plague to the other guests.  Way to make NY look friendly, DC!

Anyway, when they finally got 'round to parking us, braving the icy stares of dead-inside-DCers was well worth it:

 

Lobster ROOOOOLLL!  Drool.  Had by Bombshell and Mild Matty (the other Matty has a penchant for hot sauce and curry, but this one...not so much), this was a fine specimen, not too heavy on the mayo and crammed into a liberally buttered, griddled hot dog bun.  

 

These lovely crab cakes were Spicy Matty's, and though they did not exist on the sandwich-heavy brunch menu, our waiter was happy to accommodate Spicy Matty's wish to be unencumbered by bread.  They were minimally bound, golden-crunchy patties of briny crab-as-puck.  Seafood this good goes mighty quick when there's no pesky exoskeleton to slow you down.

As various forms of shelled crustacean disappeared around me, I tucked into my own deep-fried, craggy treat:

Awwwwwww.  Yeah.  'Twas billed as an Oyster 'Po Boy, something that folks from Louisiana might take issue with, seeing as how these giant fried oysters were poked into the same grilled hot dog bun that the lobster roll comes in...but who cares???  The outsized oysters were fried to perfection, melding well with the watercress, schmear of mayo, and butter-bathed bread.  As Mild Matty would say...it was FILTH.  It was all I ever wanted out of cooked-mollusk-kind.

We also had giant Bloody Marys, a mixed platter of oysters to start (Sea candy! Whose specifics I do not recall! DOH!) and a killer key lime pie for dessert...all of which I neglected to photograph.  Mea culpa, all!  But if you get a chance, please do get some of that pie, it was a creamy-tart balm on our taut tummies, and the graham cracker crust was a fall-apart dream.

Many, many thanks to Momma Bombshell for this fab treat, and for taking us into her home!

Soon to come: Dindin with The Bombshell and Dos Mattys at Founding Farmers!

Do. Not. Politicize. Plate Lunch. DO NOT EFFING POLITICIZE PLATE LUNCH!!!!!!

Lemme preface this rant by saying--I'm glad Obama won.  I am!  I'm absolutely tickled we both grew up in the same place, eating the same food.

I like Obama.

I like plate lunch.

I like that people will get a chance to read about plate lunch.

But why, dear Lord WHY, is the plate lunch being politicized?

It's OVER people!  The man was elected!!! Can we STOP using the man's popularity to push every little thing???  WHY are there journalists scratching their heads, musing that "It all seems like odd fare for a man as bookmark-thin as Mr. Obama, who seems to treasure his treadmill"???

MAYbe it's just as simple as he said: He grew up eating this, and that's why he likes it.  End of story.

When you're in Philly, you get a cheesesteak.

When you're in NYC, you get a pastrami sandwich, a bagel with a schmear, and a proper slice.

When you get drunk in Rochester, NY, you get a Garbage Plate.

And when you're in Hawaii, you get a plate lunch, every time you can.

Shut Up and Eat: Cacao Sampaka, Barcelona

When Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady escaped the discomforting heat of New York to the surface-of-the-sun furnace of late-summer Barcelona, I was all kinds of jelly, jelly, JELLY.  (Not to mention missing eater #1, companion of the strongest constitution!)

But, I am a lucky, lucky bunny as SSFL came home burdened with bitchin' food-related swag; check out my bag!

It says: "Shut up and eat."

GLEE!!!

But SSFL really outdid her self with this:

That's RIGHT, bitches!!! That's a 16-piece Gastronomic Innovations box 'o bonbons from Cacao Sampaka.  I squealed, cried and almost knocked her over when she gave me this.

I'd read about Cacao Sampaka a couple of years ago, and have been dying to visit ever since--when a chocolatier cooks up anchovy bonbons, it's a hard thing to forget, even if it is on the other side of the Atlantic. 

The brain child of Albert Adrià (big brother of El Bulli's gastonomic magnate, Ferran Adrià) Cacao Sampaka has been rapidly expanding, bringing the worldwide market its highly-crafted, temptingly whackadoo confections.

So here's the key:

 

Top row, L to R:
1) Black Olive,  2) Anchovies & Hazelnut, 3) Balsamic Vinegar, 4) Parmesan Cheese

Bottom row, L to R:
5) Black Truffle, 6) Olive Oil, 7) Smoked, 8) Peanut

These Are a Few of My Faaavorite Things: Oxtail Soup, Asahi Grill, Honolulu

So...the EF has been felled by her ancient nefarious nemesis...food poisoning.

Once you've clocked a certain number of hours grasping porcelain for dear life, it's important to get right back on the horse and shove some nutrients back into your betrayed body. 

It's times like this that we bust out our personalized short lists of Never-Fail Food (one notch more crucial, particular and reliable than mere comfort food).

As I rubbed my wounded, whimpering belly in a guest room in Virginia, one thing kept coming to mind:

 

Meet the Hawaiian answer to Jewish penicillin: Oxtail soup.

Sadly, most of the oxtail temples of my childhood have shut down since I've swapped to the East Coast, but my last visit home, my BFF Allison clued me in on Asahi Grill, a newer kid on the block with old-school sensibilities and killer oxtail soup.

There are no frills involved; just tender, bone-in hunks of long-cooked oxtail suspended in consomme-clear broth scented with star anise, cilantro, peanuts and ginger.  No matter where you order this is Hawaii, you'll always get 2 scoops of rice and a little bowl of grated ginger to go with it.

Ironically, it's been an exact calendar year since I was sitting at Asahi Grill with my family, coating my insides with collagen-rich broth.  As I slurp down conciliatory Campbell's, I concede that this may be a sign from mischievous deities that I should visit the motherland more often.

Or at the very least, call Allison more.  Alli, I MISS YOU, I LUV YOU...SEND SOUP!