An Effing Foodie

EF Eats Tokyo, Vol.1: Ginza Mystery Ramen

Hi all! Where the hell have I been? Well...

I've always wanted to go to Tokyo...and in a fit of luck and fancy, Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I fell face-first into an incredible last-minute deal.

Could we? Could we?

Of course we could.

So before good sense and practicality could kick in, we found ourselves on a plane to Narita, digging through English-language Tokyo food blogs and guide printouts.

I should be able to find a more elegant phrase for this, but...Tokyo is awesome.  Jaw-droppingly, mind-bogglingly grand.  There is just no way to encompass the scale, the vastness, the juxtaposition of the modern and the sacred, of blazing pop culture and well-ingrained gentility.  I am floored, and only sad SSFL and I couldn't afford to stay longer.

And the food...oooooh...the food.  It's everywhere, in pristine markets and side-street stalls, French bakeries and single-dish mom-and-pop counters, ramen joints and Michelin-starred giants.  New Yorkers fancy themselves foodies, but for the peeps in Tokyo, the phrase is meaningless, because everyone is a foodie. 

The only thing they like better than good eats is waiting for niche good eats in long lines.  (And warm toilet seats.  Tokyoites have decided that it's their God-given right that every john be electrically heated.  Bless them.)

There are department store basement food courts/markets (depachika) that span entire city blocks;  The Food Show in Shibuya makes Bowery Whole Foods look like the Circle K.  (And speaking of Circle K, their convenience stores kick the crap out of ours, too!)  Never in my life have I experienced food overwhelm, but let me tell ya, I did in Shibuya. ("OMG!  We CAN'T GET OUT! I CAN'T EAT EVERYTHING! Heeeeeeeeeelp!!!")  More on that later.

Sooo...let's start at the beginning.  We stumbled off the plane and into our modest lil hotel in Ginza, and went sniffing the streets to fill our jet-addled bellies.

We didn't have to go far.  Not even half a block from us, a friendly young man greeted us warmly, and slid the door open to an empty little ramen-ya.  We let him and the incredible umami fumes wave us in.

Sorry I didn't get a pic of this, but for a lot of these ramen places, you do your ordering/paying right up front on a push-button machine that gives you change and generates your ticket for the kitchen. 

Luckily, this one had pictures, so it was a little bit less of a crap shoot than it would have been with straight-up characters.  We chose 2 bowls and a side of gyoza, and sat at the counter in drooling anticipation.

We looked at a few ramen blogs to vaguely acclimate ourselves with this city's noodle-soup fetish, but honestly, I don't think either of us have a practiced enough palate to distinguish between good Tokyo ramen and bad. 

But I can easily say I've never had any noodles this good in any fancypants ramen place in NYC.  SSFL and I were stunned as we seeped in the steam from our bowls.

Meet Hakata/Tonkotsu ramen: Thin, perfectly al dente noodles, milky pork-bone broth, pork belly, charsiu, menma (braised bamboo shoots), and a custardy slow-poached egg.  Seems simple, but deadly rich, and absolutely savory and comforting.

Second bowl...my best guess is that it was Kumamoto/Toroniku ramen:

She had a lighter-looking broth, but it was tricky--there was a good 1/4-inch of pork fat/garlic oil on top of that lovely soup.  Topped with raw cabbage, charsiu, more pork belly and menma, soft egg and a few wonton skins, this blonder bowl was a force to be reckoned with.

Each bowl was (I think) about 700-800 yen, so just about $7-8 USD.  HELL yes.

To our shame, neither of us finished, but not from lack of desire.  We looked mournfully at the remaining noodles, conceded defeat, thanked the sweet ramen-men profusely, and made our way down the street. 

A most fortuitous beginning to our trip!

Being gaijin, I'm not sure of the name, but here's 'tis on a map:

View EF in Tokyo! in a larger map

Happy hunting! Will be back with the edible aquatic wonderland, better known as the Tsukiji Fish Market. Stay tuned!

Rainy Day, Sunny Dal: Red Coconut Lentil Recipe

In starving grad student times, dirt-cheap Indian dinners on East 6th St were a welcome break in a routine of ramen and grilled cheese.  For $8-10 a head, my comrades and I basked in the nuclear glow of a bazillion Christmas lights and winking Mylar garlands, sharing lamb korma, palak paneer, steamy basmati biryani, and mounds of naan.  Nothing like a caddy of chutney to make a lady feel festive and fed.

In the course of these budget feasts, the little aluminum dishes of complimentary turmeric-touched cabbage and lentils inevitably fell by the wayside.  But I've always loved them, and consistently ended each dinner with a portion of rice draped in canary-yellow lentil gravy.

I've discovered embarrassingly recently (like, last week) that the ubiquitous dal is dead-easy to replicate at home. Thrifty-and-filling, delicious-and-nutritious, simultaneously bone-sticking and sunny, dal's an ideal balm on a rainy spring day.

And unlike their pulse/legume cousin, the bean, lentils/dal need no soaking or long-minded prep, and can be ready in 30 minutes.  Procrastinators, gather ye lentils while ye may!

This bowl of saffron feel-goods has little to do with anything traditionally Indian; it's a grab-bag of things I happened to have in the pantry, and it produced a generous pot that ensured a week of dal-on-rice, dal-as-soup, dal-with-random kale, with even enough for a quart of frozen emergency dal. 

(Just in case there is an immediate and overwhelming need for something creamy, spicy-savory, and punchy carmine.)  

Foodie Funderwear: Rainbow Chard

I'm a proponent of the Rocketship Underpants philosophy.  One may have to acquiesce to adult responsibilities--work-casual doldrums, eating fiber, going to the gym, commuting with the desperate undead.

But no one can control your underpants.  Your pink and yellow polka-dot bra?  That's YOURS, and nary a soul knows you're wearin' it.  It's not for seduction, or exhibitionism; it's just there to remind you that there is private joy in the world.

I feel much the same way about rainbow chard. 

There are fewer vegetal images as effusive as chard in its multi-hued, full-frondal form, and it's hard not to do a little dance when encountering its deeply dappled, water-beaded glory in the produce section.

But like the rocketship underwear, it's a strangely private pleasure. 

When I'm at the market, or doing prep in kitchen, more often than not I'm alone.  And once it's cooked, the pebbly emerald leaves, ruby veins, and crisp, canary stalks subdue into Depression Era sepia tones.

By the time you've set down a tasty and nutritious meal, you're the only one who knows how much prettier it was raw.

No matter! Slurp up that chiffonade beauty, and rock them neon knickers.  Some things you owe to yourself.

I Spy: Beet Carpaccio mit Smoked Ricotta @ Back Forty, East Village, NYC

...more precisely, Roasted Red Beets with House-Smoked Ricotta, Blood Orange Supremes, Shaved Fennel and Sunchoke Chips.

<crunch, crunch>
SSFL: Sunchoke chips taste like taro chips.
EF: My mom loves those! 
SSFL: I do, too!  I pick 'em out of the bag of mixed Terra Chips.
EF: (crying laughing) It's the first thing my mom does.

I'm a late-blooming beet-eater, but this salad/app provided sorely-needed sunshine to the eyeballs and winter-weary taste buds; sweet, fork-tender ruby roots with spikes of citrus, anise, crispy-salty-earth kicks from the chips and wisps of smoke from that creamy ricotta.

Beets, beets! DotDEEdootdeeDOO, sheeboom-sheeboomboom.

Biscuit Like a Snow Hill: egg restaurant, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Brunch is one of those great love-hate relationships in New York.  On the one hand, what's not to love about eggs and booze? 

On the other hand, what's to love about long waits, no space to sneeze or seize, and dead-inside, hungover servers who drew the short straw?

Tricky, tricky.  But this last Sunday, Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and myself were wandering about Williamsburg (destination: Artists & Fleas), and we did a lap around egg (diminutive case theirs), debating if we wanted to deal with the coiling line of people waiting to be nourished.

Well...why not?  When in Rome...wait as the Romans wait.  We put our name on the list and tuckered into the garage-ish waiting alcove.

The round of people we were waiting with were a well-coiffed bunch of quitters, so in 30 minutes, SSFL and I found ourselves seated on an aisle cafe table, sipping Mimosas ($7, the grapefruit one's a great change of pace) and eagerly awaiting eggs.

egg's Country Ham Biscuit ($8) has been on my to-do list of eating for years now, but never, ever finding myself in 'billysburg, it had become something like a bruncher's White Whale.  I may have danced a little dance when said whale hit the table:

Well, hullooooo.

That's a two-handed, feather-light work of fall-apart biscuit magic, layered with deeply savory (read: salty, but not too salty) Kentucky country ham, sharply creamy Grafton Cheddar and housemade fig preserves.

Feisty Lady and I were hard-pressed to choose a second candidate for a plate-swap, but we ran with the Eggs Rothko ($8.50), AKA Eggs-in-a-Frame of Amy's flaky brioche, blanketed with more Grafton Cheddar and paired with broiled tomatoes and candied bacon ($3.50):

Yep, you heard me right.  Bacon candy, baby.  It's less baroque than it sounds; a couple of the softer strips were not unlike mapled pancake neighbors, but there were one or two bronzed crispy critters that hit the candied mark.

I usually don't see what the big deal is with brioche, but this slice ate like a croissant, an ideal candidate for egg-and-cheese impregnation (made only better by spicy green sauce).  We liked the cheesy grits, but felt like they would have been better with the addition of a side of sauteed kale, broiled tomatoes, or a soft-cooked egg.

Funny, the difference a minute makes; like most bloggers, I tend to take pics as soon as the server walks away, without a flash and as quickly as possible, so the food doesn't get cold.  No sooner did I plop the camera back in my purse and raise knife and fork, a minor disaster struck.

Death by a Thousand Savory Sips: Minca Ramen, East Village, NYC

There is a time and temperature in which bodies will dictate needs.  And grossly precipitating February dictates that right-thinking peeps should drink deeply of salt and spicy pork.

The Effing BroBros answer the Ramen Siren song far more often than I do; I haven't their cravings or patience for Ippudo.

(Tangent: HOW strange is that place, that you have to endure being crammed into a slaughterhouse pen of a bar for an hour +, to finally be set loose in a ginormous circus tent of a ramen house?  My theory: The food is just okay, and it's just starvation-amplified gratitude for space that makes everything taste AMAZING!)

When the fancy does strike me, I prefer a nook or cranny that's a little steamy, laid-back, where the service is endearingly perfunctory.  And when I find myself shoved in the Alphabet reaches of the East Village, primed with hunger and a couple of cocktails, Minca's foggy windows winnow to the top of my sodium-consciousness.

I did invite the Effing BroBros to accompany me, but their answers were the same: Ooooh, that sounds good!  But I don't think my stomach can take it.

My reply to both: What?  It's just RAMEN!  Since when can you not handle ramen?

So 'twas with this brassy hubris that I perched on one of Minca's tall stools with Chocolate Bear, inches away from simmering stock and boiling baskets of stretchy-fresh ramen.

We shared an order of crisp-bottomed gyoza ($4.85):

Juicy, thin-skinned, loosely packed with veggies and pork (no lead-meatball dumplings here, thank you!) there is no more natural companion for Sapporo ($4.75)-- Greasy-savory/swallow, bitter-bubbly/swallow, repeat until depleted.

They held us over nicely until the main event--Chocolate Bear went for the Big Daddy pork broth item on the menu, the Toroniku Ramen ($14):

It may seem odd to some that there's raw vegetal matter sitting on top, but that cabbage = life raft in a sea of pork distillate.  The soup is viscous, just short of a thin gravy that veils the katame (al dente), wavy noodles and hunks of sweet-tender braised pork.  I'm fairly certain that if one were to set this bowl out on the cold sidewalk, it would turn into a bowl of piggy jello within minutes.

Being a sharper creature than myself, Chocolate Bear enjoyed his ramen, but didn't attempt to drain all of this mythical soup.  I, like a gluttonous moron, lapped up every bit of mine:

She was a thing of salty beauty, the Spicy Basic Ramen ($11); let's break it down, shall we?  Clockwise, starting at the pork at 6 o'clock, we've got:

• charsiu (shoyu-braised sliced pork)
• half a shoyu-braised egg
• shredded kombu (reconstituted cured kelp)
• nori (dried, pressed seaweed)
• menma (shoyu-braised bamboo shoots)
• chopped scallions

In a breath, it's land-animal-as-salt (embryonic and fully developed), sea-plants-as-salt (2 kinds), mountain-plant-as-salt.  And scallions.  Oh, and noodles, to soak up this devastating primordial RAINBOW of umami, winking red chili oil, and pork broth that was not quite so collagen-heavy as the Chocolate Bear's Toroniku, but still heavy enough where drinking the whole bowl is inadvisable.

...yet inevitable.  I couldn't stop myself, even though I could feel my insides being embalmed with serious savor and spice, fermented soy and pork fat.  Phuck pearl cream--the Japanese secret to dewy youth is that they're positively lined with salt on an atomic level. 

I Spy: Chocolate-Chip Pancakes and Scallion Scramble

My pancakes may never rival the fantastic light-lush beauties of the Clinton St. Bakery...

...but snow-bounced winter light agrees with them.  Caramel-laced teases.  Good morning, and Kung Hay Fat Choy, they say! 

Toys for Tw@ts: Taste in a Tube!

Photo: JANE MINGAY

Apparently, the folks across the pond have resorted to packing all the hopes and dreams of savory taste into squirty tubes.

With the advent of Taste No. 5 Umami Paste, you too can come to rely on a single product to add flavor to...well, everything, for the low-low price of £2.99 a tube at Waitrose!  

A few days ago I added a new ingredient to the children's supper, only to witness them falling upon the dish like labradors – to the point of licking their plates and the pan clean. The ingredient was fermented red bean curd, a vile-looking, liver-coloured paste that oozed a thin liquid with an obnoxious, ripe aroma...

Score One, Cult of Crust: Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, Yonkers, NY

Just as top-notch ramen and pork buns are a Hawaiian prerogative, New Yorkers aren't shy about asserting their God-given right to superior pizza.

(Be advised, New Yorkers: Don't eat pizza in Hawaii.  It's just going to give you agida.)

As a transplant, I'm not as invested in the finding the Golden Slice as the natives, but I do appreciate that their standards make it harder to settle for subpar, and am happy to ride the high tide of quality cheese and crust.

To wit: The Dough Whispering universe was all worked up about the opening of Frank Pepe's in Yonkers. OMGOMGOMG we don't have to go to New Haven anymore!

...and then, they were all a little slow to get their asses to Yonkers.  Chuckle.

The Man and I aren't far from Frank Pepe's at all, so we decided to see what the Cult of Crust was going through.  Upon reading the menu, Frank's had me at "clam pie".

For the purposes of the pipingest pie, we should have probably eaten our pizza on the premises, but they looked like they were close to closing, and we didn't want to keep anyone.  We took home one small Original Tomato Pie ($7.70, with mozzarella):

...and one small Original White Clam Pie ($12.30, sans mozzarella):

In my woefully underqualified opinion, these pizzas were FN impressive.  The crusts had an appealingly charred, air-bubbled terrain, and were thin-crisp-yet-nicely chewy. 

Of the 2, I think the clam pie suffered more for not being eaten straight from the oven, but even in its cooled state, it was oceany and rife with garlic, pecorino and a gloss of olive oil. 

But the belle of the ball was the simple plain pie: The woody char and blistered mozzarella, the caramelized tomato sauce marrying all on a lilting axis of rich and savory, sweet and acidic. 

Consider me converted, and pity the fools who can't bear to make it to Yawnkahs.

Pancakes for Dinner! (Pancake Month @ Clinton St. Bakery)

I'm not certain if it's the long hours or the stupid, biting cold, but brinner has been sounding mighty fine of late. 

Clinton St. Bakery knows how to bait people into venturing out, for February is Pancake Month! Every day they will be offering gussied-up gorgeous hotcakes, the likes of chocolate and blood orange pancakes with a candied orange glaze, classic chocolate chunk (pictured above, tender-fluffy-flawless), and pancakes topped with poached pears, vanilla bean whipped cream and warm maple butter, just to name a few.

Clicky-click for your featured pancake specials and schedule!

The pancake specials aren't offered on la weekend, when it's a madhouse; if memory serves, they're even pretty busy for lunch/brekky on the weekdays, so do yourself a favor and fulfill your flapjack satisfaction in the twilight.

And if you miss Pancake Month, don't fret--their Wild Maine Blueberry signature pancakes are a mainstay on their regular menus, day or night, and are even available for delivery to the lucky bastards within proximity.