Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I am still here, kinda.

In the few minutes I have before heading out to work this morning, day 10 of a 13-day week that has included 4 16-hour days thus far, I am somehow compelled to blog. I can no longer be satisfied by mere facebook status updates or snarky comments. I must speak and have you listen. Both of you.

Partially, I am a little inspired by bikesnob, my hero of the blogoshpere. His recent work has bee among his best, and today's skewering of single-speed culture was particularly wonderful. As a fellow child of the 80s, the snob has a similar appreciation for counter-culture scenes as I do, having the same reaction in 1991-92 when al of a sudden Metallica and Nirvana became platinum sellers. You can't suffer that kind of disillusionment without it changing you forever. Hell, I listened to nothing but Phish and Miles Davis for at least a year after that. It was a long time before I got back to my punk rock roots, as my friend Rotary Rachel cautioned me to do.

On the plus side, I listened to a lot of Miles Davis.

It's also the start of racing season, but I haven't been on a bicycle since my last day off work. I've been daydreaming of the new steel I intend to reward myself with (that decision is not yet fully arrived at) and looking at pictures on pez, but I have no commuting stories or epic jaunts to share as in posts past.

Even my eating has been curtailed. I have eaten often and sometimes well, but styrofoam boxes and plastic clamshells are not the stuff that blogs are made of.

I did have another (oops, never mentioned the abalone and truffles from the last trip there!) near-religious experience at K-Zo on Saturday. It was a short day: 10-8, so I told BoW that I wanted to have a really good dinner out and asked her to look for a res in Culver City for the evening. Ideally, I would have gone to Fraîche, but that's just because we can never get in.

She got us a reservation at the bar and told them ahead of time that we wanted omakase, and we were seated in the center of the bar in front of the chef who was clearly the stud on duty that night. We ordered some Kikusui draft sake (it's the best drink to come from a can ever!) and did some positive modeling for the younger couple at the bar next to us.

What followed was a truly wonderful dining experience. We had the complete attention of the chef who made only two dishes the entire night not intended for us. Most of his time was spent on an amazing parade of fish and fish accessories: cooked, marinated tuna with a ponzu-like gelée, beautiful snapper, halibut, Santa Barbara prawn two ways, seared halibut fin (!), real bluefin, Spanish mackerel, premium Japanese mackerel with (!), premium golden-eye snapper with seared skin (!), some kind of crazy sweet clam thing (!), fresh raw octopus tentacle, sea trout (it looks like salmon, but it's sooooooo much better), fried octopus suckers, uni, seared black cod with eel sauce, and premium Japanese baby sweet shrimp.

I think that's everything.

One of the best parts of the night was when he brought out the whole prawns and showed them to us. BoW was so sad when he took the heads off. "I want to eat the eyes." Can you blame her? Something distracted her (probably the delicious butterflied tail that was the most delicious shrimp I have every had - why do we cook tis stuff again?) from noticing him carry the heads on a plate back to the kitchen. Imagine her joy when the head returned, split in half and tempura fried. Delicious brains.

I felt a bit self-conscious about photos in this context, but I plan to return and make friends with that chef. My Japanese friend is actually moving to the neighborhood, an K-Zo is where she takes her mother when she visits, so that will boost my cred a bit. After we establish a bit of a rapport, I may give you a visual taste.

By the way, he introduced himself and gave us a fist bump at the end of the meal. His name? K-Zo.




Sunday, January 4, 2009

Christmas by the Bay

The first couple of times I went to San Francisco I was not that impressed. I was spending time working at Davies Hall, which can only be described as an abomination inside and out. I trust that even the most recent round of acoustic treatment has done little to remedy that. I guarantee that it still looks like a sports arena outside, especially set as it is among the Beaux Arts buildings of the SFWMPAC. Worse, we were working on a Christmas record in June with (fellow Hoosier) Vance George and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. That tree says it all, doesn't it.

Anyway, I had a really great vegetarian meal at Millenium, which just happened to be in my hotel, and a delicious Anchor Steam on tap. I went out to have a smoke afterward (I was young...) and got to talking to some other people. When they asked where I was from and I replied Los Angeles, the said that they were sorry. At that time, the crazy good Thai food that our producer, the inimitable Lolly Lewis, took us for in the Tenderloin wasn't enough to make up for the sting. I stayed a week and got the crabs then took a bus back home.

Future trips to work in Marin County only served to bolster my image of San Franciscans as uppity, and the hangover from my 25th birthday still throbbed in my head as I made my first pilgrimage to the Haight (why does it play Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun?!?!) and Amoeba. But even Amoeba couldn't undo the hypocrisy I felt typified the city when I saw that Baby Gap there. 

I'm older now, and maybe have lost some of my idealism. I've watched as Wicker Park and the Ukranian Village lost Sophie's Busy Bee and with it, much of its soul. I've seen what Guiliani and Michael Eisner hath wrought in Times Square. I got priced out of Venice during the real estate bubble of the oughts. I guess what I'm saying is that with my iPhone in tow and my cat securely locked away at home with a litter robot, my soulless yuppie ass has now figured out that San Francisco is one of the best restaurant cities in the world and I should just enjoy it for what it's worth, not what it's reputation or history may claim.

We are lucky enough to have friends who are lucky enough to benefit from parental largess in the form of an awesome Victorian in Cow Hollow. The future-Mrs.-Stretch was in town for a convention, leaving Stretch, BoW, and I free during the days. We filled those days mostly with mountain biking which, despite some protestation from BoW, was spectacular and rewarding. What she doesn't realize is that it's just as hard for Stretch and I, we just don't want to look weak in front of her. When we ride alone together, we usually have at least one good cry.

Anyway, the food is supposed to be the point of this entry that I started 10 days ago, so I'll start at the beginning. We went to dinner with some friends of JT at Allegro Romano in Russian Hill. Great service, good food, and an off-the-list Barbera that was as affordable as it was delicious. To really solidify the SF experience, the hippy cab driver was actually listening to the Grateful Dead and smelled like Otto's jacket. Breakfasts revolved around huge bowls of coffee at La Boulange, the local outpost of a SF chain. Snacks were generally underwhelming, but mostly that was because we were usually too tired and hungry from riding to go very far afield.

The main meal of the trip came in the middle, so I'll skip ahead to the other highlights for a sec. We grabbed some dim sum on our way out of town at Canton Dim Sum and Seafood south of Market. The previous night, we met Count Reeshard at Shalimar, a delightful Indian spot in the Tenderloin. Rarely do restaurants live up to their hype, but the recommendation from the Count made me think that this one would. And it did. Chased with delicious Taj Mahal from the liquor store on the corner, the curries were as delicious as the staff was surly. This is not a place you go for ambience. This is real food, real fast, real cheap, and real delicious. Our cabby said that it was a cabby hangout, and that we should ask to sit where they do, in the back. I expected a South Asian version of King of New York, so we passed.

The middle night, we were on our own, so we decided to follow the advice of some friends and head to Richmond to try out Burma Superstar. Clearly, this place also lives up to its reputation because there was a 2 hour wait for tables. We put our name and cell number in then did a spin around the block. Lots of interesting SE Asian fare, but nothing with the draw of the Superstar, so we went back to post up and see how the progress was going. That's when we noticed the sign advertising their new venture just up the street. Well, I was born to have adventure, so we followed up the block.

What we found was B Star Bar. Looking at the menu, we knew we were in for a treat, so we went in, sat down, ordered some Soju mojitos, 


renkon chips (so delightfully spicy with ichimi togarashi), 



and the house pickles (slightly sweet, and just briny enough -- not vinegary, but real homemade pickles!) to keep us busy while we decided what we were really going to eat.



By this point, our server was beginning to get a little uncomfortable with my enthusiasm and picture-taking. Whatever, I was on vacation and staring into the mouth of deliciousness.

We decided to have soup and a main course. BoW started with the wonton, a wonderful clear broth with lots of fresh veggies and beautiful, tender pork and shrimp wontons. Nothing special, you may think, but satisfying on a cold night and bursting with fresh flavor. 



I had the samusa soup, which tasted just like it sounds: curried flavors in a thick broth based on potatoes and chick peas. For texture, they added fresh veg and chunks of falafel. Man, it was good. I got misty. I went back and forth between savoring bites and eagerly anticipating our main courses.



Was it silly for us to get BoW soup and then jook? Maybe, but man, that was some seriously good rice porridge. And it had meat balls. Those meatballs had meatballs on their meatballs. They were completely different from the stellar polpette that Chef David treated us to the previous week, but every bit as satisfying.



The truly amazing dish, though, was my pork belly. It was perfectly cooked, falling apart into strips of glistening moistness while retaining the caramel crisp glaze of the fatty layer on top. There was a chocolaty flavor that I couldn't quite put my finger on until later: tea. It was kind of like they marinated it in sweet Thai tea. This flavor was supported by a harmonious spice mixture of mostly star anise and clove, yielding a complete olfactory experience in addition to the gustatory.



I was so high from the food, I let BoW talk me into stopping across the street at The Plough and the Stars for a nightcap. It was a Green bar, and it felt pretty homey. Of course, we got some Jamesons and settled in to drinking while members of Tipsy House and friends informally played traditional music at the end of one of the long communal tables. Well, the food high began to wear, and the whiskey brought back the hater in me, and soon the incessant compound-triple made me want to go. We flagged a cab, and who should be driving but our hippy friend from the first night. I guess maybe this town isn't so bad after all.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: Cops on Cellphones

Bike Snob is back from vacation, so there is no excuse for me not to post. I have to keep up if I'm going to be a second-rate knockoff. I'm seriously slipping into third-rate territory.

Returning to work means returning to commuting. As Facebook users can attest, I was completely unprepared for the weight of computer, clothes, and shoes in my pannier. It's a bit heavier than farmers' market produce.



On the way in, I saw no fewer than three drivers with cellphones pressed against their ears. At Fairfax and Venice, I shared a moment of head shaking with one of my motorized two-wheeled brethren as we glared at the guy in the Corolla. 

Still, that was nothing compared to the two, count them, two Culver City cops I saw pull out of the station on Duqesne, both of them slowly seeking the sweet release of death via brain cancer. While I can understand how lonely days patrolling the skate park and arresting the children of community leaders would inspire thoughts of suicide, I generally do not think of the police as agents of irony so much. 

(Non-Californians may be surprised to know that we have a hands-free law here. Thus the irony.)

The other thing that returning to work means is a return to free lunch. Today, I was treated to "kaiseki" from Hirozen, a favorite of this production crowd and all who work in West Hollywood. I'm not at liberty to publicly talk about the job I'm on, but let's just say that this was a welcome return to something I have known and loved for a couple of years now. Today's example, while shipped in plastic and styrofoam and eaten at my Avid, was as good as any I have had there.



That is not just a case of managed expectations.

In case you're wondering, the other great thing about this job is render time, which is how I've had the time to do this. I don't work for you, so eat me.


Thursday, October 2, 2008

Potowatami

I'm not feeling particularly clever today because it's hot. I did, however, take pictures of last night's meal and I am feeling a bit cranky (also from the heat), so I guess I will just rant.

This heat wave, which from daily visits to check the weather seems to get one day longer every day, is the kind of October swelter that, as kids, we called "Indian Summer." By the time I got to college in the 90s, "Indian" had been replaced by "Native American," and the former reverted to its pre-Columbian meaning, referencing the Asian subcontinent, except in the context of gaming. I certainly am no fan of the PC movement (BoW used to refer to "womyn" as "wom-whines"), but I was fortunate enough to attend a Big Ten University (we were much higher than 14 on this list in my day) where that kind of liberal claptrap was tolerated only in classrooms and maybe the freak dorm.

But back to gaming for a minute. The reexamination of our national history brought about an extraordinary amount of liberal guilt and lobbying that ultimately resulted in, for example, the remaining 100 speakers of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation opening a Casino (and Bingo Parlor -- it is in Wisconsin, land of cheese). Here again, when I was a kid, Potawatomi was a zoo and has thankfully retained that moniker in favor of the more PC "wild animal park," which would apparently require the purchase of a fleet of Segways. 

Now, on with the food. Last night was the house stir fry, affectionately known as "Meepo dofu" despite lacking any resemblance to the actual dish from which that name is taken except maybe tofu and soy. Normally, this is just a simple stir fry, using whatever fresh Asian veggies look good at the market, baked tofu, and a brown sauce based in soy, mirin, and sake. In the summer, long beans are plentiful. Ginger, garlic, and something sweet (honey or ketchup) are the other flavors. Jalapeños are nice for a little punch. Prep is key when you are stir frying. 



I also usually serve it with noodles. Here, I've used wide udon, which is actually flat instead of round and functions very much like a starchy fettucini. If the veggie is Chinese broccoli, I prefer to use rice noodles and call the dish "pad see mee." Here is the final dish, served in an awesome vessel that I believe we got from Starts with M.