The Ringer - Chau Down: Danny Chau’s Food Columns2019-09-18T06:30:00-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/175905712019-09-18T06:30:00-04:002019-09-18T06:30:00-04:00Chau Down: A Montreal Food Diary
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<figcaption>Alycea Tinoyan</figcaption>
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<p>Our food correspondent navigates around billion-dollar road repairs to sample wood-fired bagels, Vietnamese and Senegalese delicacies en Français, and more from a food city worlds apart from nearby Toronto</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="VVn4FE">Montreal is an environment actively conspiring against its constituents. Stand on any street in the city proper, and within your line of sight will be a speck of orange—a traffic cone, a maintenance sign, a construction worker in a high-visibility vest—somewhere in the distance. There is always work being done, everywhere, but none of it is close to finished. According to the <em>Montreal Gazette</em>, the city has spent more than 2.3 billion Canadian dollars on road repairs between 2002 and 2018, yet, as of 2016, the official road maintenance deficit was still estimated at CA$2.2 billion. Locals will quickly point to corruption: Construction work is delegated to third parties in an industry that is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/corrupt-quebec-construction-industry-ruled-by-untouchable-groups-report">almost monopolized by the Italian mafia</a>. </p>
<p id="5Xshqr">In April, the city announced that it would allot CA$378 million toward road repairs across 260 kilometers of land. Unfortunately, that money doesn’t seem to go very far in Montreal—in a <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-spends-more-on-roads-than-rest-of-canada-with-worse-results">2017 survey</a> among more than a dozen Canadian cities (including Toronto), it was noted that Montreal spent more than twice as much per 1 kilometer of road as the median city. Things aren’t getting better, and haven’t been for decades. Which, given how infrastructure works, means things are certainly getting worse. </p>
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<cite>Photos courtesy Danny Chau</cite>
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<p id="0ESPPw">The obstruction has become a part of the cultural conditioning: There were cars parked on the sidewalks, loading ramps of unattended trucks obstructing walkways, and major streets with entire corners uprooted, forcing detours and reroutes without warning. The ubiquity is honestly impressive, as is the expedience with which residents adjust accordingly. Once billed as the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/1930s-tourist-brochure-paints-picture-of-montreal-1.5261987">“Paris of the New World,”</a> Montreal, at least from its veneer, still appears to be searching for its best self amid the potholes and roadblocks. </p>
<p id="qUKPQi">I glossed over this aspect of Montreal life the first time I was in the city, two years ago. Feeling fried after the 2016-17 NBA season, I went on a frenzied gluttony tour, saddling up to some of the biggest restaurants in the city. I endulged in Joe Beef’s spaghetti homard, ate the duck in a can at Au Pied de Cochon for a <em>second </em>dinner, sat alone at Le Vin Papillon and built a custom tasting menu with the bartenders, shared St-Viateur bagels with a cab driver, had late-night poutine at a diner, downed a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz’s while staring at a person in an Elmo costume across the street, and wondered why there isn’t a Romados on every corner of North America for a quick and easy Portuguese chicken lunch. But I felt too preoccupied with checking boxes off a list to get a real sense of the city—and this was me on <em>vacation. </em>Given that I’ve made Toronto my summer headquarters, I had a perfect opportunity, on a weekend visit via train, to get a better sense of Montreal, a city only 350 miles away, but oceans apart culturally. </p>
<p id="9RR8jz">Here’s what I ate:</p>
<h3 id="LqL8g2">Banh Xeo Minh</h3>
<p id="Vk27Xl">It was the menu at Banh Xeo Minh, a fixture in the La Petite-Patrie neighborhood for more than a decade, that first caught my attention: concise, visually oriented, with a strong focus on the cuisine of Central Vietnam. (Outside of a “cash only” sign, the restaurant was almost completely devoid of both French and English.) In a city where many Vietnamese restaurants cater to the largest swath of clientele by generalizing their offerings and serving pan-Asian fare, Banh Xeo Minh held a quiet audacity: There is no pho on the menu, and few familiar reference points for the uninitiated. Just a few doors down from Variétés San Gabriel, a corner store of holistic Catholic esoterica that shares the name of my hometown in California nearly 3,000 miles away, Banh Xeo Minh felt like a quick phone call home. </p>
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<figcaption>The banh xeo at Banh Xeo Minh</figcaption>
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<p id="Sr5w0v">Behind the tiny storefront’s marigold dining room walls is an emporium of various rice and tapioca flour batters waiting to meet their fates. On both visits, I watched as elderly Vietnamese women crept slowly out of the store carrying half their body weight in catering-size orders of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1nh_cu%E1%BB%91n">banh cuon</a>—delicate sheets of steamed rice flour batter filled with a mixture of ground pork and mushroom. The restaurant’s namesake is far less portable, but a worthwhile experience: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1nh_x%C3%A8o">Banh xeo</a> is a crispy rice flour and turmeric crepe—typically filled with pork belly, shrimp, and bean sprouts—eaten with a bounty of fresh herbs. The ones I have at home are densely crunchy, fortified by mung bean powder that is directly added to the batter; here, the banh xeo is nearly dosa-thin, with lacy, almost gravity-defying ridges. </p>
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<figcaption>Mi quang from Banh Xeo Minh</figcaption>
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<p id="vLj4Ag">Pho may not be on the menu, but the restaurant does not lack for noodle soups. Their version of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%AC_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng">mi quang</a>, which might be the most high-variance Vietnamese noodle soup in terms of preparation, is a clear standout: Wide egg noodles (instead of the typical turmeric-stained wide rice noodles), are served in a shallow pool of deeply savory pork bone stock enriched with turmeric and fermented shrimp paste, topped with tender pieces of spare rib, shrimp, peanuts, and fresh herbs. It’s the funkiest rendition I’ve encountered. More straitlaced, but equally stellar is their mi vit tiem, a roast duck noodle soup with a complex stock flavored with Eastern medicinal roots, herbs, and dried fruits that draws heavily from Chinese technique. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BAn_b%C3%B2_Hu%E1%BA%BF">Bun bo hue</a> might be one of the more recognizable items on the menu, but it’s a lackluster version without enough lemongrass aromatics—the version at Sen Vang, in the diverse neighborhood of Côte-des-Neiges, is better.) </p>
<p id="ewulpw">Classic Central Vietnamese fare like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1nh_b%C3%A8o">banh beo</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1nh_b%E1%BB%99t_l%E1%BB%8Dc">banh bot loc</a>, and banh nam (all more or less variations on a theme of rice and/or tapioca batter) make up a significant chunk of a streamlined menu, and I would’ve been negligent had I left without ordering at least one. I opted for the banh nam (a thin, rectangular rice-batter dumpling not much heftier than an ID card, topped with a savory mixture of ground pork and dried shrimp and steamed in a banana-leaf coffin)—a dish I’d never actually seen served at a restaurant. On its face, it’s not the most resonant dish—almost meltingly tender and capable of being folded over into a one-bite morsel to be dunked in a light <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Bc_ch%E1%BA%A5m">nuoc cham</a>, it disappears much quicker than it takes to prepare. But it’s often those small, unexpected bites of nostalgia that reanimate a sense of place most intensely; to have access to the old mundanities of a past life is an invigorating luxury. On a sleepy Sunday morning, I watched an old woman, adorned in elegant sky-blue Vietnamese regalia, walk out gingerly with her catered order, smiling. </p>
<aside id="FjzGCV"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Chau Down: Danny Chau’s Food Columns","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2018/9/6/17826530/food-danny-chau-toronto-new-orleans-portland"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="ZwFiWj">Fairmount Bagel</h3>
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<p id="G7ACz8">When one of the city’s biggest institutions is a 24-hour wood-burning bagel shop, there’s no question about what’s for dessert: a half-dozen sesame bagels, with a mini-tub of cream cheese for dunking. Where a New York bagel is more often treated as an apparatus—a versatile, reliable landing spot for cream cheese, lox, onions, tomatoes, eggs, and the like—Montreal bagels are more self-contained, both the means and the end. It’s a less precious experience, but equally a source of fervent civic pride, as I quickly found out after expressing my ambivalence toward bagels in general.</p>
<p id="RtZL48">Along with St-Viateur, Fairmount is the foundation of Montreal’s deep-rooted bagel legacy. Fairmount honored its centennial during my stay, complete with bounce houses and live music, all held during a brief Saturday storm. Fairmount is famous for never closing; it was only right that the celebration continue. </p>
<p id="ZmGkND">Fairmount’s 100-year anniversary comes during a time of change. Late last year, the city enacted a bylaw that prohibits wood burning in private homes (with strict exceptions), which presaged a larger crackdown on businesses. In July, a city spokesperson said that there would be rules in place to ensure businesses meet air-quality regulations, though details regarding enforcement (and what exactly businesses would have to do) remain murky. The realities of Fairmount’s perpetual production cycle have worn on residents in the surrounding area; smoke complaints have been the norm for years. Fairmount, for its part, has installed filters to keep its emissions below the legal limit, but like in many major North American cities, emissions regulations may force businesses to change production methods. </p>
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<p id="QOW224">With that inevitably comes backlash from business owners and consumers; there is an artistry to tending to a wood fire and manipulating it to create something unique, and a desire to preserve something so intrinsic to the civic identity. There’s a prestige and honor that comes with mastering fire—it’s shared by pizzaiolos and pitmasters, too. It’s enough for some to outright <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-death-of-the-montreal-bagel/">lament the death of the Montreal bagel</a>. But given the unique pace of bureaucracy in the city at large, Fairmount will probably be celebrating plenty more birthdays before any drastic changes are made. </p>
<h3 id="Kgf5yX">Elena</h3>
<p id="YXp7zt">I couldn’t quite suss out the vibe at Elena upon walking through its doors. (For one, it was situated across the street from a glow-in-the-dark tattoo parlor.) There was a divider separating a dim-lit bar, featuring elegant, velvet barstools, and plenty of loitering patrons waiting for a table with a glass of natural wine, from the rest of the space. On the other side was a wide open dining area with blinds concealing the windows and colorful velvet lounge seats—it was all east-of-kitsch, in a space that felt, strangely, like an outsized office. But my unease curiously lifted once I got to my seat, from which I could see the wood-fired oven tucked in the back of the restaurant. Every office should have a wood-fired oven. </p>
<p id="i0P2Rx">Elena is a pizza and natural wine bar from the owners of the popular Italian restaurant Nora Gray, descendants from the Joe Beef empire’s winding family tree. It is decidedly de rigueur, playing to the expectations of what a modern pizza restaurant should accommodate: The natural wine bottle selection is beautifully curated, and waiters may occasionally come by and offer a taste of wine not printed on the by-the-glass menu. Small plate dishes, like the near-homophonic tomato tonnato, are smart and playful; the spicy green beans, dressed in a sauce of Quebec sheep’s milk and red peppers, and studded with fried shallots, were an excellent take on green bean casserole. There is corn agnolotti and tagliatelle with ragu on the menu, as one would expect. </p>
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<figcaption>A slice of the Fiore! Fiore! at Elena</figcaption>
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<p id="fEpfd2">But it’s really about the pizza: Neapolitan style, with naturally leavened dough made with locally sourced wheat that’s given ample time to breathe without the aid of commercial yeasts, giving it a mild sourdough flavor. The highlight of the meal was the Fiore! Fiore!, a pizza topped with thinly sliced zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and briny Spanish boquerones; the zucchini maintained its integrity, offering a bit of a snap to its bite as a counterbalance to the pillowy crust. The restaurant’s name is a dedication to Elena Pantaleoni, a winemaker in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. The palate of Fiore! Fiore!<em> </em>felt particularly aligned with the sensibilities of the wine showcased at the restaurant: bright, a bit off-kilter, and tied specifically to a sense of place.</p>
<h3 id="2DHj0e">Larrys</h3>
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<figcaption>The mackerel spaghetti at Larrys</figcaption>
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<p id="mcl4FW">Sometimes, the charms of a restaurant are painfully simple to explain. Larrys is an all-day restaurant, open 17 hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day. It’s a place for coffee, or for a classic breakfast of eggs and sausage from its butchery just up the street. It serves wine and cocktails, and casually heretical combinations like an IPA with an ounce of Campari in it. The vegetables take up a large portion of the food menu, and rightfully so: Preparations aren’t fussy—potatoes are fried, as they should be; turnips are quartered, and served with an acidic pesto of their own tops—but they are done with care. Their spaghetti, with mackerel and toasted breadcrumbs, is my ideal comfort food and has never left the menu. Everything at Larrys is in its right place, except for its ramp leading to the entrance, which is currently missing during construction. </p>
<h3 id="WQ6Ep0">Kem CoBa</h3>
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<figcaption>Almond and raspberry soft serve swirl at Kem CoBa</figcaption>
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<p id="qGBTz9">My trip to Kem CoBa was both a convenient pitstop on the way to dinner in the Mile End area and a redemptive mission—it was on my to-do list in Montreal two years ago, but the storefront was closed for the season. Kem CoBa (which translates in Vietnamese to <em>Third-born Aunt’s Ice Cream</em>, a reference to how co-owner Ngoc Phan is addressed by her niece) serves many ice cream flavors common to Southeast Asia, like soursop, pandan, and the oft-maligned durian. But the lines that run out the door are usually for their soft serve. </p>
<p id="HQoToE">At this point, the fascination with soft serve is less a food trend and more a mode of conduct. Trends fade, but it’s become impossible to deny soft serve’s perfect triangulation of texture, architecture, and baked-in nostalgia. It’s a scientific marvel: fat, sugar, (but mostly) air, held together at temperatures just below freezing, suspended in a sort of old-world church spire construction. There is a whole lot of meaning embedded in what is essentially a miniature rain cloud of fat; it’s a perfect creative vehicle for cooks of all backgrounds. At Kem CoBa, it comes in two complementary flavors, specifically designed to swirl, that change whenever Phan and her partner Vincent Beck feel like it (roughly every two weeks). Clouds had begun to form by the time we got our ice cream; there would be heavy rain in a few hours. The almond and raspberry swirl on the menu was a perfect farewell to summer. </p>
<h3 id="LfK2Mc">Jean-Talon Market</h3>
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<p id="5JAzj6">The color-paneled windows at the entrance of Jean-Talon Market might be the least vibrant thing in the entire open-air marketplace, easily one of the largest in North America. To walk the line is to drown in color: tiger-striped purple eggplants, vermillion end-of-season tomatoes, every pepper under the sun on both the color and Scoville spectrum, fresh onions that gleam like sunlight. A seasoned vet might steer you away from the vendors who may or may not be pretending to sell farm-fresh produce, whose seductive array of samples are simply cheap marketing for an inferior product. But taken as part of a full experience, it’s hard not to admire the sheer scale of the operation, and the numbers of people enjoying nature’s splendor.</p>
<p id="JWIb1z">One curiosity that caught my attention, however: There are an awful lot of Carolina Reaper plants for sale from numerous vendors, and <a href="https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/consommation/452376/consommation-les-quebecois-veulent-pimenter-leur-vie">that appears to have been the case since at least 2015</a>. Is there really that much of a demand in Montreal for some of the hottest chilies on the planet? Or is it just a product of being in a market with such expansive options? </p>
<h3 id="4cRzvT">Diolo</h3>
<p id="VBlF4E">Diolo is a Senegalese restaurant in La Petite-Patrie with a distinct neighborhood feel. On one end, a large party of hipsters; on the other, two young West Africans looking for a quiet meal. Regulars walk through the door and announce their arrival in French, and the staff responds in kind from across the room. If my complete lack of French language skills didn’t mark me as an outsider, the brief glimpse the waiter had of my California ID card did. There is often an element of surprise when engaging in immigrant cuisine, on both sides of the exchange. Patrons dive headlong into unknown pleasures, while those preparing the food ask questions in bemusement—<em>how did you find out about us? </em>It comes not from a threatening place, or a sense of encroachment, but from a place of curiosity and vulnerability. There is an unshakable weight to preparing a meal for a complete outsider—of being asked to represent something much larger than one dish, restaurant, or idea. Not much to do but to put faith in the product and smile. </p>
<p id="IoZHVi">But there are always through lines. I felt a certain resonance in experiencing the food of Vietnam and Senegal, two countries heavily warped by French colonization, not only in Quebec, the most visibly and proudly Francophilic of France’s former colonies, but specifically within 2 kilometers of one another in the same neighborhood of Montreal. The thieboudienne at Diolo, chef Edmond Benoit Sadio’s take on Senegal’s unofficial national dish, was my lens. </p>
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<figcaption>Takeout theiboudienne from Diolo</figcaption>
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<p id="v38V36">Thieboudienne is a process: slits are made in fish and a garlicky parsley mixture is stuffed inside and left to marinate the flesh from the inside; a stock of water, tomato paste, Scotch bonnet peppers, and various vegetables simmers with pieces of dried and fermented fish, adding a whole new world of complexity; the fish is either fried and braised in the liquid, or simmered until cooked; everything simmering in the broth is removed once done; the nectar that remains in the pot is used to cook and season broken rice, the preferred grain of Senegal that was introduced to them by the French, who were simply trying to unload their “inferior” allotments of Vietnamese rice that had been damaged in the milling process. Everything that emerges from the pot is dyed crimson; once fully assembled, it resembles a paella with deeper, richer hues. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="NVyqFy">Tying it all together is a tamarind sauce, made with some of the reserved broth. The streaks of tamarind in the thieboudienne was something of an inverted revelation: It was so startlingly familiar that I felt like I was eating something else entirely. Tamarind, a tart, tropical fruit pod indigenous to Africa, serves as a force multiplier when used in savory preparations. Where the acidity from citrus often adds an air of levity, the acidity from tamarind seems to keep the palate earthbound; it is a perfect complement to the umami-rich flavors of fermented fish and shrimp so prevalent in African and Asian cultures. It can be a difficult sensation to explicate. Still, there are Western analogs: tamarind and anchovy are two key ingredients in Worcestershire sauce, a similarly hard-to-explain condiment used precisely to add that unplaceable element in cooking. The use of broken rice may always point toward French influence in Senegal, but at its core, thieboudienne is an expression of flavor that was harnessed long, long before.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/18/20870830/montreal-food-diaryDanny Chau2019-02-18T06:30:00-05:002019-02-18T06:30:00-05:00Chau Down: A Toronto Food Diary
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<figcaption>Alycea Tinoyan</figcaption>
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<p>How does a city with a negative wind chill come to feel like home to a native Angeleno? Our food correspondent returned to Toronto seeking clarity and curry goat roti on the hood of a Volkswagen hatchback. </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ZB3fiN">Hours before I left for my first trip to Toronto, I was splayed out, face down in my living room on my niece’s disorientingly colorful foam puzzle mat. I’d had a lot to drink the night before. On the eve of Halloween 2015, <em>Grantland</em>,<em> </em>the sports-and-pop-culture hub<em> </em>where I’d spent my first two and a half years as a professional, had been shut down. After the rapture, Los Angeles staffers celebrated and mourned the only way we knew how: at a dark and dingy dive bar in Los Feliz, with wings and beer. The special monthly beer on tap was, fittingly, a double IPA from Oregon that had done me in plenty of nights in the past. It was only right. I set six alarms on my phone for my early flight, then faded into a communal oblivion. </p>
<p id="8WdgZP">What at first had been planned as a week-long birthday vacation to Toronto became a time to take inventory of what I’d learned and stall the anxiety about what my future would hold. I took notes, so many notes. I ate things, so many things. I made friends who have become lifelong travel companions. I found inspiration in my first Torontonian roti at Gandhi Cuisine; in a deep-fried chicken wing, deboned and stuffed with a pork-and-chive dumpling filling at Hanmoto; in the grilled whole octopus at Bar Isabel; in the utter gratuitousness of a San Francesco veal sandwich. Walking down Spadina Avenue in downtown at night, I saw my dad’s name twice amid the many luminous Chinatown signs: once as a jeweler, once as an optician. Two disparate fields, less than a tenth of a mile away from one another, bound by a single namesake. As I walked past my storefront surrogate fathers, I started to wonder: <em>Maybe that can be me, too.</em></p>
<aside id="VlFI9p"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Chau Down: Danny Chau’s Food Columns","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2018/9/6/17826530/food-danny-chau-toronto-new-orleans-portland"}]}'></div></aside><p id="Gx8E1T">That midnight stroll augured what was to come: For the past three years I’ve been more than fortunate to see the realms of sportswriting and food writing meld into the two halves of my professional identity.<em> </em>The goal, in both fields, is the same: Do the story, and the people behind them, justice. Last month, I came back in Toronto to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/31/18203823/toronto-raptors-danny-green-nick-nurse-cold">write about the Raptors</a>, but really, to experience again one of the most diverse cities in North America the only way I’ve ever really known how to experience anything—through its food (this time, with friends both old and new). I wanted to figure out why Toronto felt like home to a native Angeleno—even before that maiden voyage—and whether the feeling could survive the negative wind chill of mid-January. </p>
<p id="1IX4C2">Here’s what I ate: </p>
<h3 id="RWnssX">My Roti Place / Mona’s Roti</h3>
<p id="nmwhWZ">Toronto, for all its culinary splendor, doesn’t seem to have a consensus signature dish. The city’s staples have, over time, reflected the different waves of immigration the city has seen in the past two and a half centuries. The St. Lawrence <a href="https://www.blogto.com/toronto/the_best_peameal_bacon_sandwiches_in_toronto/">peameal bacon sandwich</a> is the indigenous creation of William Davies, who immigrated to Toronto from England in the mid-19th century and operated the largest pork processing facility in the British Empire; the veal sandwich—composed of deep-fried veal cutlets, cheese, peppers, and red sauce—was the product of a swell in post–World War II Italian immigration in the 1950s and ’60s. But if I had to conceive of a truly representative dish for the city, I would think of roti. The dish’s everlasting adaptation spans continents and time, from India to the slave ships headed for the Caribbean to Toronto, where commerce and cohabitation has allowed for South Asian and West Indian traditions to merge and mutate into something truly unique to the city. </p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Curry goat roti at Mona’s Roti in Scarborough</figcaption>
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<p id="HXIfgv">Roti, as a stand-alone term, refers to an Indian unleavened flatbread, but in Toronto, it typically refers to the distinctly Caribbean preparation of using the flatbread as a wrap for a stewed curry filling. The best roti I’ve had in the greater Toronto area was from Mona’s Roti in the eastern suburb of Scarborough, a 16-year-old reincarnation of a popular roti shop in Trinidad and Tobago that first opened in 1983. Just off Sheppard Avenue in a strange strip largely surrounded by auto repair shops, Mona’s boasts an impressive operation; behind the service counter housing myriad curries and stews are no less than 10 aproned women at their respective stations, cranking out roti by the dozen. (Before opening in Scarborough in 2003, proprietor Mona Khan largely sold her roti wholesale to other restaurants.) There is a particular elastic quality to Mona’s <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-17/theres-roti-and-then-theres-trinidadian-roti-and-its-awesome"><em>dhalpuri</em></a>, which, by definition, incorporates a layer of split-pea stuffing in the dough before being rolled and flattened. The dhal provides an extra bit of structural integrity and waterlog protection, allowing the roti to yield just enough to a fork and knife to serve as a proper steward for the impressive curries encased within. The kitchen takes up nearly the entire restaurant space; there are, at most, two small tables that are perpetually occupied. I cut open our curry goat roti on the hood of a Volkswagen hatchback. My Scarborough dining companions—a hearty mix of acquaintances and strangers—huddled inside, passing around the Styrofoam container and a few doubles, talking about the Raptors’ starting lineup with the Grateful Dead playing softly in the background. </p>
<p id="IesPWs">The Trini-style roti is an important foundation of Toronto food culture, upon which many South Asian restaurants have established their own interpretation. (For those unable/unwilling to shlep to Scarborough, the 45-year-old institution Island Foods downtown will more than suffice, but be ready for long lines during peak lunch hours.) One of the most popular dishes in the city might just be the butter chicken roti, and while the separate components derive from two disparate lands, its specific union might be purely Toronto. My first Indian roti at Gandhi was a revelation. Put crudely, it is ostensibly a curry-filled burrito placed in a container that would fit a personal frozen lasagna. It is a vision of perfection.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AfciKHuYg67_ooQOxfFc0Mlrc2o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13857716/Roti_toronto_chau.jpeg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Butter chicken roti at My Roti Place </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="E91Wy1">I’d hoped to make the pilgrimage to Gandhi for my first meal back in the city; unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for a weeklong winter break. Instead, I walked farther down Queen Street to My Roti Place, a build-your-own roti franchise that opened last year, shepherded by chef-partner Karthik Kumar, a former cook at Indian Roti House, one of the more acclaimed roti shops in downtown. The roti shell doesn’t quite match the pliability of what you’d find at Mona’s or Island Foods, but its sturdier form might be by design. Butter chicken is often a gateway curry, mild enough to wade into the waters without getting dragged too far off shore; still, East Indian curries are more pungent than their Western counterparts, and given that I had the heat level cranked up on my butter chicken, the roti’s extra heft helped re-establish a sense of balance. Perhaps the best thing about My Roti Place is it’s open extremely late. I’d never felt freer than when I picked up an order of lamb biryani at 2:30 a.m., sidestepping drunk, cold, and hungry pedestrians trying to sober up past closing time. </p>
<h3 id="x3DbAG">Canis </h3>
<p id="WxS50i">Canis, voted no. 15 on the <a href="https://canadas100best.com/no-15-canis-2018/">Canada’s 100 best list of restaurants</a> in 2018, was one of my first meals in Toronto, and I spent nearly half of my time in the city pronouncing the name of the restaurant wrong. To strangers, to bartenders, to friends—everyone squinted, tilted their head, and repeated the word back to me: <em>Kenny? </em>(I’d attempted to give it a French bent, or something.)<em> </em>That was what I deserved for unintentionally validating the <em>France is the center of the culinary universe </em>paradigm instead of digging into my rudimentary grasp of Latin. Canis—like Janice. Like, Latin for “dog.” </p>
<p id="2G3Fb7">It’s a restaurant that would be easily missed walking down the street if it weren’t for its comically large white-and-black sign dangling over the sidewalk. Canis takes trendy, haute techniques and channels them into a tasting menu highlighting both the elegance and simplicity of Canadian ingredients. Menus are written as vaguely as possible, listing no more than three components to each course. Expect Nordic influences, like a steak tartare playfully served in a … tart, covered in gossamer-thin radish shavings ornately arranged like plumage. But also expect regional clams from the coast of Prince Edward Island, served largely unadorned. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PU98UJqxKmMAMiSRW5QdrGjglOA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13857748/tart_toronto_Chau.jpg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Chicken liver parfait tart at Canis </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="FTIVN8">Tasting menus are admittedly not my favorite mode of dining. There are times when chefs wear their influences on their sleeves, wherein technical homage can distract from the ultimate purpose of the technique—to conduct flavor in a particular way. Of course, there’s an easy remedy: Make sure the food tastes good. What hangups I had toward the top of the menu evaporated by the final savory dishes. There was a gorgeous cut of beef short rib and maitake mushrooms, laced in a miso sourdough jus that underlines the synergy of the dish’s ingredients. There was squid where a pasta course might have been at a different restaurant, arranged in strands with the width of fettuccine, sitting in an abyss-colored well of squid ink romesco that’s far brighter in flavor than it looks. A whole roasted duck—its mahogany exterior glistened, even in the dark—was brought to the table for the final savory course. We were terrified. Of course, it was a playful stunt just to show off; duck is Canis’s signature item, served two ways, both far more manageable than dropping an entire bird on the table. We heaved a sigh of relief. As good as the meal was, I had to make it out to Hurricanes soon; <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/31/18203823/toronto-raptors-danny-green-nick-nurse-cold">there was a Raptors-Celtics game</a> to watch. </p>
<h3 id="Zy8qFm">Le Swan</h3>
<p id="3oNSWH">Last May, Jen Agg, Toronto’s most influential restaurateur, announced the closing of <a href="http://theblackhoof.com/">The Black Hoof</a>, her no-holds-barred flagship restaurant with smart and fun takes on challenging cuts like tendon and sweetbreads and horse meat, after 10 years of service. That was when I started plotting my way back to the city. I visited the Hoof twice my first time around, and I’d never been so smitten than when I had my first bite of their pistachio hummus and chicken livers. It was a brilliant balancing act: minerality tempered by an earthy, floral sweetness; the richness of the liver atop the bed of hummus provided structure. Indeed, most of my conversations with Agg over the years begin with an overture about just how good that dish was. She would agree, then demur. I get it: Sometimes you just know when it’s over, which can be difficult to parse for someone on the outside looking in. </p>
<p id="fL7uIM">I walked into Le Swan at 1 a.m. on a Thursday night after a basement show at the Dakota Tavern. It was completely vacant, save for an industry worker (who just happened to mention <a href="https://www.theringer.com/the-dave-chang-show"><em>The</em> <em>Dave Chang Show</em></a> on his way out). Le Swan is the latest reincarnation of Swan, a popular brunch spot on Queen Street West whose original run lasted from 1997 to 2015. It had been passed around in restaurant limbo over the past three years before Agg and her partners swooped in late last year. She reminisced about what it meant to Toronto’s restaurant scene back when it was one of the few hip dinner restaurants in town in the late ’90s. She called it a “dream space,” a place worth saving. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aLDsA2kVO-ROto_87jb9MQY2tPQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13857773/tunamelt_Toronto_Chau.jpeg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Open-faced tuna melt at Le Swan </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="YofUuk">More than any of her restaurant projects in the past, Le Swan is an appeal to comfort, which provides a cushion for the whiplash of the past colliding with the present. (Le Swan opened a month after the Hoof closed, which allowed staff to transfer seamlessly to the new environs.) The menu reflects that full-circle ethos: high(ish)-brow French classics on the left side of the menu, and nostalgia-laden diner staples on the right—you can and should order French onion soup to go with your chicken fried steak. It’s a space where you can mosey up to the bar seated next to your childhood self. I ordered an open-faced tuna melt, carefully dotting the contours of the sandwich with Tabasco—yes, the staff rightly insists on Tabasco—like I would have 15 years ago; I paired it with a glass of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/dining/white-wine-burgundy-aligote.html">Aligoté</a>. </p>
<p id="HXzxrA">Bartender Lee Evans indulged me for most of my stay, offering restaurant recommendations and offering his thoughts on the city’s dining scene at large, but ultimately what I sought was affirmation. I mentioned my first trip to the Black Hoof, and I mentioned those chicken livers and pistachio hummus. I asked if, in any of the existing Jen Agg ventures, we might see something similar ever again. He laughed, and told me that the staff actually considered putting it back on the Hoof menu six months before the restaurant shut down. But they’d discovered that it didn’t have the same magic upon recreation, and so they didn’t. I walked out into the snow with a sense of closure. </p>
<h3 id="9FuHoK">Bong Lua</h3>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Bún riêu at Bong Lua in Scarborough</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="OAOkiC">One of my biggest pet curiosities in people is the point when a childhood revulsion becomes a treasure in adulthood. It is, if nothing else, a great way of assessing the passage of time. Growing up, I hated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BAn_ri%C3%AAu"><em>bún riêu</em></a>, a Vietnamese crab- and tomato-based noodle soup. It had nothing to do with flavor and everything to do with what I now recognize as early-onset suburban malaise. <em>Bún riêu </em>is my mom’s favorite dish, and she used to make it incessantly—on her day off on Tuesdays, and every other weekend. On a good day, my older brother and I would taste it for what it was: a dish that deftly walked the line of sweet, sour, and pungent, the essence of crab in all its components reaching all the senses at once. But most days it was served, <em>bún riêu </em>was a reminder of just how routine our lives were. What would be considered exotic for most Americans was meatloaf for us. It wasn’t until we both left for college that the tedious familiarity of the dish became a balm for a world that got much, much bigger than we could have anticipated.</p>
<p id="ZGb4yF">I never order <em>bún riêu </em>at restaurants: At best, it’s a reminder that I should probably call my mom more often; at worst, corners are cut left and right, and it ends up tasting more like a bouillabaisse of cat food and SpaghettiOs. There just isn’t a lot of upside in trying to figure out where one rendition fits between those two poles. </p>
<p id="9v2scI">Yet, Bong Lua came up multiple times in my research, and Toronto dining authority Suresh Doss’s <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/suresh-doss-metro-morning-food-guide-15-1.4480798">writeup last year</a> revealed something I’d never seen before: Bong Lua’s proprietor Quy Huang Dang makes his own freshwater crab paste; most, including my mom, just go with a jarred version. I’d heard stories about how it was made in the old days: crab shell, meat, roe, and tomalley are obliterated in a mortar and pestle, seasoned with chili paste, fermented shrimp paste, and other spices—the end result is a bright vermilion concoction that serves as the soul of the dish. Bong Lua wasn’t only <em>not </em>cutting corners, it was striving to create a perfect bowl, made to order: The paste is added to a master chicken stock only minutes before serving, allowing for a brighter, more pronounced crab flavor to penetrate the palate. </p>
<p id="CztWGl">It’s the best bowl of <em>bún riêu </em>I’ve ever had. I’d expected a Proustian moment to wash over me, but there was no callback to my childhood. I was too focused on savoring the present. I wanted to tell my mom all about it. </p>
<h3 id="kQRtYR">One2 Snacks </h3>
<p id="UlcuRd">I watched a snow flurry unfold while seated along the front-facing window of One2 Snacks, a microscopic Malaysian storefront in an enormous Scarborough strip mall. I was struck by the uncanny: This was a parking lot lifted straight out of a far-east Los Angeles suburb, like the ones in Monterey Park or Rowland Heights, and dropped directly into a snow globe. My comfort zones were on an axial tilt; luckily, a bowl of <em>laksa</em> and a Styrofoam container of <em>char kway teow</em> was on its way. An elderly Malaysian man, seated behind me with a newspaper in hand, was guiding a fellow first-timer seated between us (seriously, this place is tiny) as he tried to take a <a href="https://www.tastingtable.com/dine/national/noodle-pulls-instagram">noodle pull</a> photo. “Laksa is perfect for this weather,” the old man said, smiling. “Because it will make you warm.” </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eIy4Mjtqm06funf56fiyXppfBxA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13857818/Laksa_Toronto_Chau.jpg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Laksa at One2 Snacks in Scarborough</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="iucxLX">Curry noodle soup is canon in the pan-Asian culinary oeuvre, though there are numerous variations on the theme. Vietnamese <em>bún cà ri gà </em>highlights lemongrass as its primary note on the palate.<em> </em>Burmese <em>Ohn no khao swè </em>leans heavily on the richness and sweetness of coconut milk. Northern Thai <em>khao soi</em> requires a litany of spices, but the aroma of makrut lime leaves often takes center stage. Laksa, a staple in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, finds itself at the nexus; that is to say, a great bowl of laksa harmonizes all of its aromatics in a precise balancing act. It has become a hallmark dish of the GTA, from Mississauga to Markham. One2 Snacks does it right. Upon ordering, patrons are asked for their noodle preference: needle-thin rice noodles that all but infuse themselves with the rich curry, thick Hokkien-style egg noodles that stand up to the heartiness of its surroundings, or both. I tend to go with both; it says a lot about a broth when it can support a veritable ecosystem of different textures and components (each bowl contains simmered bean sprouts, shrimp, chicken, fish balls, and fried tofu). </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_JrNyBxYTjgl8558coJDQjzshxo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13858603/CharKwayTeow_Toronto_Chau.jpg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Char kway teow at One2 Snacks </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Lsiarx">Perhaps even more impressive is One2 Snacks’ <em>char kway teow</em>, which might be a miracle of science. Char kway teow is not drastically different from its relatives pad see ew and chow fun—it is a crowd-pleasing dish of wide rice noodles, dark soy sauce, bean sprouts, scallions, and a protein. But I would have loved to watch the process of those simple ingredients come together in the eye of an inferno. <em>Wok hei </em>is a term that translates to “breath of the wok,” which explains, in almost mystical language, the cumulative effects of tossing food continuously in a wok set over a preposterously hot flame. The surface of each ingredient dries out, which allows caramelization to take place. All the while, smoke forms as particles burn (though the constant tossing prevents total carbonization) and bathes the ingredients in an intense second level of seasoning—that is the breath of the wok. We passed the container around and inhaled deeply; judging by the delirious looks on each person’s face, you’d think we were huffing paint. One2 Snacks’ char kway teow has a level of smokiness I’d only ever associated with pit-smoked meats—the kind that lingers with you through the day, the kind that seems to permeate every fiber of what you’re eating, leaving residual artifacts on its journey to becoming a flavor memory. </p>
<h3 id="eLcbA2">Parallel </h3>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Bright green falafel at Parallel </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="vNASSh">I’m rarely affected by color in food; <em>eating with your eyes </em>was not something I was raised to do. Some of my favorite dishes are enveloped in dark, all-encompassing gravies. The most jarred I’d ever been by a dish’s palette was in high school, after ordering an unfamiliar Thai noodle soup called <a href="https://www.eatingthaifood.com/yen-ta-fo-thailands-popular-pink-noodle-soup-at-nai-uan-restaurant/"><em>yen ta fo</em></a>—a bowl of vivid pink broth (flavored with a fermented paste made of soybean curd and red yeast rice, hence the color) was placed on the table and it felt like an encounter of the third kind. But then I cut open a falafel from Parallel and stared into the most verdant, almost plasticine, shade of green I’ve seen in a prepared dish. Part of it is the effects of visual contrast; the falafel itself is fried a deep, dark brown, turning it into an emerald ore. The falafel gets its color from an abundant mix of parsley, mint, and other herbs (all from the garden built on the building’s second level), added in higher concentrations than most falafel doughs. It’s shocking, then, to find a plush, pillowy interior given all the additional fibers and water weight. It’s an extraordinary falafel, served on a bed of house-made tahini, made of sesame seeds ground on a Syrian volcanic stone press more than a century old. The restaurant exists within a tahini factory; the tahini is available for purchase, and it makes its way into every single dish. </p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Hammshuka at Parallel </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Niy0cr">Parallel sits on a plot of land on Geary Avenue just above the Canadian Pacific Railway that seemingly separates Geary from the rest of the city’s core—it’s the reason the owners, the three Ozery brothers (Alon, Aharon, and Guy) chose the name. As an Israeli restaurant, however, the name suggests a level of irony: Israeli cuisine is its own self-contained kaleidoscope of countless intersecting and overlapping cultures. The hammshuka is a good example: eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, ladled over the restaurant’s signature hummus. </p>
<p id="37CMRA">Parallel is a space reverent of its location; the rumbling of passing freight trains is built into the building’s ambiance. It is part of a new collection of factories along Geary, which include businesses like Famiglia Baldassarre, a wholesale pasta operation that supplies pasta to some of Toronto’s best Italian restaurants, and Blood Brothers, one of the best breweries in the city. Like so many scenes in Toronto, the development of Geary Avenue is immediately recognizable. The old warehouses and auto repair shops are interspersed with new craft breweries and restaurants. These are the growing pains of any expansive metropolis in the 21st century. Toronto’s rent crisis is as bad as most major cities in the U.S. Chinatown and Kensington Market, two adjacent neighborhoods long resistant to the insidious creep of gentrification, are now feeling the squeeze. Geary’s timeline follows a familiar pattern: industrial work fades in the outskirts of town, artists occupy the space and build its creative potential from the ground up with venues and exhibits, and then new businesses arise seemingly all at once. It is renewal that also reflects the shifting inequalities of the city. </p>
<h3 id="nbsgku">Sakai Bar </h3>
<p id="sqvOIq">There is so much that Stuart Sakai would like to tell you about sake. But first, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake_set"><em>tokkuri</em></a><em> </em>of the good stuff from Okura Honke, precisely warmed in an immersion machine. It’s cold outside, after all—a perfect time to experience the structural revelations that hot sake can offer. Okura Honke produces its sake in the Nara prefecture, where ancient monasteries first established the codes and natural methods of spirit-making centuries upon centuries ago. Prod deeper, and Sakai might go long on <em>Bodai-moto</em>, a long-defunct method of starter yeast production that precious few breweries in Japan adhere to today. Then again, if all you want is a nice Suntory whisky highball, he can handle that, too—Sakai was a longtime bartender at Rhum Corner, one of Jen Agg’s enduring Toronto bars. “After I left to start my own place I told myself I’d never make another cocktail again,” Sakai told me, smiling as he fixed three highballs at once. “Yet, here I am.” </p>
<p id="pAJmRD">Given the intimacy at the bar, the best course of action is often just picking a direction (cold or hot, floral or earthy, crisp or soft) and allowing Sakai to take you where he thinks the night ought to go. I was given a pour of Shuhari, a sake that, from fermentation to storage, is produced in extremely cold temperatures; it is only during pasteurization that the product is evenly brought up to temperature, as though it were entering a sous vide machine. The result is a crystalline sake that pops with a shocking amount of effervescence. Then, I had a sake from Yamagata Masamune—my favorite of the night—which had such a soft texture that it nearly registered as weightless. <em> </em> </p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Katsu sando dip at Sakai Bar </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="uxyEgo">There are thoughtful bar snacks to serve as buffers between drinks; Sakai has been particularly proud of his tweak on the katsu sando, one of the trendiest dishes of 2018. The components are all there: a perfectly executed breaded pork loin with a juicy blush of pink at the center, shredded cabbage, lightly pickled cucumber, and a hot-mustard-inflected mayonnaise. Except, there’s an added component: a sweet, mild curry gravy for dipping—a handheld katsu curry with the ethos of a beef dip. I told Sakai I was from L.A., one of the epicenters of the modern Japanese sandwich craze. <em>I’m sure they’re all delicious, </em>he offered, <em>but if anyone out there starts making sando dips, let them know I did it first.</em> </p>
<h3 id="E1oCF5">Grey Gardens </h3>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Lobster and brussels sprouts in tandoori masala and lemon at Grey Gardens</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="4FvrFC">If a restaurant has a chef’s counter, or any kind of seating that places the diner in clear view of the cooking process, those are the best seats in the house. Eating at restaurants, unfortunately, often means erasing perspective: A waiter arrives, like a genie, takes an order, disappears, and then reappears with food, like magic. Taking in all of the behind-the-scenes work as it happens re-broadens the purview of the entire service industry ecosystem. To watch the magic happen in the kitchen is to learn that cooks have a much sharper, more intuitive sense of time than most do. Internal clocks are honed like knives. It’s what allows them to let dishes sit on the range unattended and trust that the end product will be perfect; most home cooks wouldn’t be able to shake the anxiety of a bubbling pot for long enough to actually go anywhere. Timing, balance, and flow are all on display; it’s practically sports. </p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Scallops with yuzu, mizuna, and caramelized cabbage </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="iodd2n">Grey Gardens might be considered Agg’s new flagship: a natural wine bar that also happens to be one of the best restaurants in the city. We sat in front of chef and co-owner Mitchell Bates, who previously spent three years as the chef de cuisine at the two-Michelin-starred Momofuku Ko in New York. The ambient pan-Asian inclinations that come with being a veteran of the David Chang empire comes through in many of the dishes. Raw scallops are plated with bitter mizuna greens, slivers of intensely fragrant yuzu zest, and dark strands of caramelized cabbage so deeply flavored you’d be forgiven for thinking it were an XO sauce, an umami-laden Chinese condiment that uses dried scallops as a base flavoring agent. It’s a dish that makes a right turn just as it’s about to reach full circle. There is something of an unofficial ode to Scarborough in their lobster and brussels sprouts, cooked with the myriad spices that comprise tandoori masala, and livened up with a jolt of lemon—a South Asian spin on the increasingly popular Chinese seafood restaurant staple of the lobster combo. </p>
<p id="zRfPaR">Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” came on as Bates plated a dish of immaculately seared duck on a bed of wild rice and sauerkraut. He couldn’t help but sing along. Catching himself in front of smirking observers, he briefly paused. I offered encouragement: “This song’s a banger.” </p>
<p id="6RVSEs">“Sheryl’s got nothing <em>but </em>bangers,” he said. And then he served our plate. </p>
<h3 id="Ks5j4K">SumiLicious </h3>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Smoked meat plate at SumiLicious in Scarborough </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="K44ff8">One of the most acclaimed classic Jewish delis in the GTA is owned and operated by a Sri Lankan immigrant, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/suresh-doss-tamil-chef-allens-1.4867449">one of many</a> who have had a significant hand in constructing a contemporary development of Toronto food culture. Sumith Fernando was a longtime employee at the legendary Montreal institution Schwartz’s. Before decamping for Toronto, Fernando spent much of his free time refining his own smoked meat recipe in hopes of opening his own business in a less saturated marketplace. His Scarborough restaurant SumiLicious has drawn heaps of praise in the past year from locals and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/review/2018/10/19/if-your-mother-says-she-loves-it-check-it-out.html">critics</a>, though I found myself underwhelmed—not unlike my first Schwartz’s experience a few years ago. Growing up in L.A. with a unique pastrami culture that sidesteps the conventions of New York City, I often found Montreal smoked meat balanced, but tepid; I’d come to expect a full-throttle, hypertension-inducing rush from my deli-smoked meats. </p>
<p id="mlsChV">It’s hard to say the trip out to SumiLicious was a bust, though. Scarborough’s cultural bricolage can be staggering—generations of disparate immigrant cultures seemingly stacked on top of one another in a … melting pot? I hate that term. Cultures don’t ever fully homogenize, they vine and entangle and absorb and refract. Strip malls with some of the best food in the city sit adjacent to used car lots; Vietnamese, Afghani, Trinidadian, and the impressively diasporic Hakka cuisine—it can all be found within a mile radius. Salon workers stand in line at Shawarma Empire next to a man decked head to toe in Balenciaga with two spicy shawarma sandwiches tucked under his arm. SumiLicious is just another element to the wondrous jumble. <em>Toronto Star </em>restaurant critic Amy Pataki learned of the restaurant from her mother. “You’ve got to check this place out,” her mom told her. “It’s a Sri Lankan guy doing Jewish food for Chinese customers.” It reads like cultural Mad Libs, but really, it’s just Toronto.</p>
<h3 id="q5MAm3">Sneaky Dee’s </h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WEHauACKfyrJN1WNHSBXNpNYY2E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13857991/sneakydees_toronto_chau.jpeg">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Kings Crown nachos at Sneaky Dee’s </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="xvqkID">I was sitting at a bar with my friend Steve, plotting out the rest of my night. It was 11, and I was getting hungry. For years, I’d heard so much about Sneaky Dee’s nachos from just about everyone—the most respected chefs in the city, the Raptors’ public relations department, strangers at the bar. It held near unanimous approval. I mentioned the possibility, and Steve’s eyes went wide. His voice changed, warping into a thickly accented Canadian yawp: <em>Oh, buddy. Yeah. Hell yeah. It’s midnight on a Saturday. We’re doing Sneaky Dee’s.</em> He called his roommate, Blake, a Raptors beat reporter who was running on fumes. “If this late-night run was for literally anything else,” Steve told me as he hung up, “Blake would have gone straight to bed.” </p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fitting that I am the one to take <a href="https://twitter.com/dannychau?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dannychau</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/thesneakydees?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@thesneakydees</a> for the first time</p>— Steve Sladkowski (@sladkow) <a href="https://twitter.com/sladkow/status/1086858179047084034?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2019</a>
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<p id="L595Yx">There might not be a more alluring siren song in downtown than Sneaky Dee’s at midnight on a Saturday. It’s the sort of beckon that would revive a corpse. A few shots of Crown Royal, a few pitchers of Old Style (a Canadian pilsner not to be confused with the Chicagoan lager of choice), and a Kings Crown (a fully loaded plate of nachos with beans, ground beef, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, cheese, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa roja) will do that to you.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="HBr0YJ">Sneaky Dee’s is a civic landmark, a Tex-Mex restaurant whose upstairs serves as an iconic music venue for some of the biggest bands in Canada. To stumble out of the restaurant with salsa stains is a rite of passage; to stumble back in hours later for a huevos rancheros brunch is to suffer from <a href="https://twitter.com/dszczepanek/status/1086864238411304961">Sneaky Dee’s Stockholm syndrome</a>. We sat at a table right by the windows, watching near-accident after near-accident slowly unfold on a College and Bathurst intersection notoriously bad in snowy conditions. Drunk men and women descended from the upstairs venue in weather-inappropriate clothing, huddling together as they waited for Ubers soon to be involved in other near-accidents. People watching past midnight, amid standard-issue chaos. It was 5 degrees outside, but I couldn’t imagine being more comfortable anywhere else. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/2/18/18228969/toronto-food-diaryDanny Chau2018-09-06T06:20:02-04:002018-09-06T06:20:02-04:00Chau Down: A Chicago Food Diary
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<figcaption>Alycea Tinoyan</figcaption>
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<p>Our food correspondent traveled to the Windy City and returned with a deep admiration for the city’s cultural multitudes and evangelical fanaticism for its most underrated cultural institution: the jibarito.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="hNgWnZ">Learn the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeppson%27s_Mal%C3%B6rt">handshake</a> early, and the city will honor you as one of its own. That was my first lesson in Chicago, where Old Style beer and a shot of Jeppson’s Malört serves as a conversation starter, a quick way to make friends, an invitation into an inner circle. (And, if you’re lucky, a beer knocked off your tab for supporting Chicago institutions.) Shot-and-beer combos can be found anywhere, but none feel so rooted in a city’s identity as the Chicago Handshake. The famously foul-tasting Malört is almost exclusively a Chicagoan indulgence; a map of Malört distribution shows how comically centralized the grapefruit-scented drain cleaner is in Chicago proper — and almost nowhere else. Its containment is something of a modern marvel (though it’s more likely that most parts of the country have no interest in acquiring the taste), and its following is what makes Chicago one of the most interesting drinking cities I’ve ever been to.</p>
<p id="R4Rq6w">The bitter taste of wormwood was exactly what I needed to cleanse myself of worry on a quick vacation stop in Chicago. For four nights, I chased restaurants on my bucket list, and found new ones. I found an educational experience I’d longed for. I found a sandwich worthy of obsession. I found a taste for Malört. Here’s what I ate:</p>
<h3 id="JbQQx8">Au Cheval</h3>
<p id="CL2ly8">I’m waiting in the shade and surrounded by fresh beer kegs in the alleyway between Green and Halsted streets, just outside the site of what many consider the best burger in America. The entire corner is redolent of bacon, as though the secret to Au Cheval’s overwhelming popularity were pumping its environs with sweet maple smoke — a twist on the decades-old urban legend of the hyperoxygenated Las Vegas casino.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/t5H0n2lOqoeeRVrd1WSx_2yJN_Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12821209/P1020139.JPG">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>The kitchen at Au Cheval</figcaption>
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<p id="bDPLON">A bar seat is the way to go at Au Cheval. Part of the charm of the experience is watching the machine hum. With its open, diner-style kitchen, Au Cheval offers a distinct look into the momentum of a restaurant staff during rush hour. Of course, every hour is rush hour for Au Cheval, but within that unending chaos is an affirming sense of continuity. The constant turnover of guests means the internal timekeeping mechanisms are always running, and the rhythms of the kitchen go uninterrupted. Consider the line mentality as a kind of flow state. Dozens upon dozens of burger patties at a time, all being cooked in unison, all to medium doneness. Even amid the bustle, burgers make it from griddle to plate to table in a matter of minutes.</p>
<p id="G63fCy">Au Cheval fancies itself an elevated diner experience, which means building upon truths that many Americans would consider self-evident. For instance: a double cheeseburger with two thin patties usually creates the optimal meat-to-bun ratio, so instead of exoticizing an accepted ideal, Au Cheval makes its regular cheeseburger with two patties and its “double” with three. It’s a joke the restaurant tells on itself: It’s bad at math, and pays that forward to the customer. It’s a restaurant where, for a lunch break, it’s OK to revel in ignorance. Here, one plus one does, indeed, equal three.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/m-gMNhbsMc7mfdW1GM6blzYp8RE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12821283/P1020133.JPG">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Do as the locals do and get the bacon on the burger at Au Cheval</figcaption>
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<p id="gL1c18">The burger is well constructed: top bun gets a healthy smear of dijonaise, topped by a <a href="https://www.woodvalefishandlilyfarm.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Darwin.jpg">water-lily</a> arrangement of paper-thin pickle slices and diced red onions in the fashion of a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Then it’s two thick planks of maple-glazed bacon and two (or three) cheddar-topped beef patties on the bottom bun. It’s designed to offer a little bit of everything in each bite. The bacon is technically an add-on, but I’ll repeat the sage advice I got from nearly everyone I asked for recommendations: <em>You have to get it with bacon.</em></p>
<p id="N1jvCT">While the bacon is cloyingly sweet on its own, when tempered by the acidic elements above and the patties below, it’s the light, smoky flavor that counterintuitively takes center stage. Because Au Cheval aims to preserve a pink middle in its patties, the beef doesn’t quite attain the hard, crusty sear of the diner burger of my dreams. In preserving juiciness, it sacrifices a little bit of that seasoned griddle-top magic. The bacon becomes a signal boost for the remaining Maillard flavors that we long for in a burger. Together, they build harmony. But it’s strange to think that the whole is <em>that much </em>better than the sum of its parts. I took out the bacon for my first bite; I couldn’t imagine <em>that</em> version of the burger being anywhere close to topping any lists. I left the cramped restaurant satisfied, but partially longing for my next visit to <a href="http://littlejackstavern.com/">Little Jack’s Tavern</a> in Charleston, where I’d be reunited with the burger of my dreams.</p>
<h3 id="TkOqQe">Goree</h3>
<p id="Tyzsqg">Recently, in my off hours, I’ve been watching YouTube videos of Senegalese mothers prepare various stews, imagining the union of certain ingredients and the way they evolve over long periods of simmering. I’ve found myself both immersed in the sense of discovery and grounded by the familiar rhythms and techniques employed by protectors of a culture I’m barely familiar with. It comes naturally, if only because many of the ingredients that form the bedrock of Senegalese stews — dried and preserved seafood — are also common in Vietnamese cooking (not to mention the shared bonds of French colonialism). I’ve learned about the word <em>teranga, </em>and how it permeates Senegalese culture at large. “Teranga is about the way we treat our guests,” Pierre Thiam, perhaps the most high-profile ambassador of Senegalese cuisine today, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/dining/teranga-senegalese-harlem.html">told <em>The New York Times</em>’ Tejal Rao last month</a>. “It’s about the way that when you come into a Senegalese household, everyone moves so that you can fit in the circle and share their food and drink.”</p>
<p id="0SpkQQ">Because of all this, my most anticipated meal in Chicago didn’t come from a Michelin-starred tasting menu or one of the city’s staples, but from Goree, a Senegalese restaurant less than two years old in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Goree is technically an offshoot of Chie Nene, a family restaurant on the island of Goree, just off the coast of Senegal’s capital, Dakar. Owner Adama Ba used to work at Chie Nene as a child, <a href="https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20161031/kenwood/goree-cuisine-sengalese-food-adama-ba/">hauling restaurant supplies by himself</a> from the mainland to the island by ferry.</p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
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<em>Soupe kandje</em>, a stew of lamb, fish, and okra, at Goree</figcaption>
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<p id="NLAfkL">I knew what I wanted to order before even sitting down: <em>soupe kandje</em> (or <em>soupe kandia</em>), a stew of lamb, fish, and okra that triangulates some of my favorite cooking techniques. In its meticulous layering of proteins both land and sea (and heavy reliance on the thickening power of okra), it is evidently one of the key descendents of what Americans now know as gumbo. The use of seafood to amplify the flavor of meat is also an extremely Asian thing to do. And the flavoring agent <em>nokoss</em> — a combination of onions, garlic, and a litany of spices all ground up in a mortar and pestle — creates a baseline of flavor the way a sofrito, mirepoix, or holy trinity would in other cuisines.</p>
<p id="g3odNl">It was just as I’d imagined: a comforting taste of familiar flavors rearranged into something I no longer recognized, but nonetheless felt a connection to. The lamb is cooked down until it’s meltingly tender, almost disintegrating into the thick gravy that surrounds it; it’s unflinchingly complex and funky, a byproduct of the dried and smoked fish that reconstitute in the cooking process. Soupe kandje isn’t the national dish of Senegal, but I knew that’s where I wanted to start. I can’t wait to dig deeper.</p>
<h3 id="W5Mf37">Jibaritos y Más</h3>
<p id="k7NAgL">The desirability of specific foods evolves from context. The American rice now celebrated as Carolina Gold is a cultivar of a West African rice that was often eschewed by the Senegalese for the broken rice provided by French colonists by way of Vietnam. The byways of food culture are unpredictable and often unforeseeable. In 1996, <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-06-18/features/0306180103_1_plantains-sandwich-puerto-ricans">Juan Figueroa flipped through an issue of <em>El Vocero</em></a>, the second-largest newspaper in Puerto Rico at the time, and read about a culinary oddity: the <em>sandwich de platano </em>— or, a sandwich that replaces bread with two pieces of fried plantain. Figueroa made one for his father, who soon asked for the sandwich repeatedly (which is essentially how all food-creation myths go). It wasn’t long before the sandwich de platano made it onto the menu of the family’s Humboldt Park establishment, Borinquen Restaurant. Figueroa would name the sandwich a <em>jibaro </em>or <em>jibarito</em>, a word that either carries pejorative connotations reflecting the unsophistication of rural life, or one that nods to the Puerto Rican ideal of a hard-working rural farmer.</p>
<p id="iaxjSw">Despite finding inspiration from his motherland, the jibarito was a uniquely Chicagoan phenomenon; within years, it was added to just about every Puerto Rican menu in the city. Even the Puerto Rican tourism bureau’s restaurant section has recognized it more as a Chicago delicacy.</p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>A jibarito from Jibaritos y Más</figcaption>
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<p id="3luuop">My first jibarito was from Jibaritos y Más, a perpetually busy nook in Logan Square, where patient customers pack the walking space so densely that restaurant employees have to Tetris their way through crowds to deliver food to sit-down customers. Steak is the most typical meat option for the sandwich, but I opted for the restaurant’s housemade <em>morcilla</em>, a mildly spicy blood sausage with an abundance of rice in the filling. It was a matter of both preference and logistics. Steak may be a no-brainer, but it’s prone to inconsistency; depending on the cut, how it’s cooked, and the way it’s layered onto the sandwich, it can be tough to bite through cleanly, which is an issue compounded by the rigidness of a deep-fried green plantain. Any sort of masticatory struggle threatens to upend the jibarito’s structure. Morcilla may have been the “exotic” option, but in my mind, it was safe: While firm, it yielded evenly and provided an ideal textural contrast to the dense crunch of the tostones.</p>
<p id="BQzigC">After my first bite, on a park bench on a gorgeous Saturday morning, I lost control of my wits and inadvertently cursed out loud in front of several families. I wasn’t prepared for Jibarito y Más’s flame-orange hot sauce that tasted like a chile-infused olive brine. I wasn’t prepared for the garlic oil brushed on the top plantain piece. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly it all would hijack my pleasure centers. It was the most memorable bite of the trip, enough to turn me into an evangelist. The jibarito is <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/18/17583254/chau-down-an-endless-pursuit-of-perfect-flavor">a perfect food</a>, and a snapshot of how I’ll think of Chicago from now until forever.</p>
<h3 id="SSJHS3">Johnnie’s Beef</h3>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>A combo Italian beef from Johnnie’s</figcaption>
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<p id="gTTHOA"><em>Whatchu know about Johnnie’s? </em>That was the startled, almost defensive response from locals I got when asking whether Johnnie’s was indeed the spot for Italian beef. They were impressed with the homework I’d done, but I won’t give myself any credit. Johnnie’s was almost unilaterally the choice for <em>best</em>, though several claimed it wasn’t worth the trek outside city limits to Elmwood Park. Their argument: Johnnie’s might be better than Al’s, and Al’s might be better than Portillo’s, but ranking the city’s very best Italian beefs is examining the narcissism of small differences. Were those dissidents right? I won’t know for sure until my next visit, but I do know that, if we’re talking about form, I’d rather have an Italian beef over its regional cousins (the Philly cheesesteak, the L.A. French dip) any day.</p>
<p id="0HRXs8">What I quickly learned from my time in Chicago is that there’s <em>always</em> another layer of flavor to the sandwiches there, from the Au Cheval burger to the jibaritos. Order a “combo” and an Italian beef will come with a spicy Italian sausage, grilled rotisserie-style over charcoal, nestled deep within the bread, and completely buried under thin shreds of beef and giardiniera. I ordered a combo, juicy (the bread soaked through with roast beef jus), with hot peppers. The revelation at Johnnie’s was the bread, which seemed to have fibers as strong and elastic as spider silk. It reestablished order with every bite, conforming to the ways in which the sausage, peppers, and beef were displaced. It’s a truly phenomenal sandwich, and if you manage to arrive at a time without a line, you’ll get your sandwich before you finish paying for it. The lemon Italian ice is a nice side attraction; they’ll even shape the ice into a flower design if you ask nicely.</p>
<h3 id="sfzqEY">Birrieria Zaragoza</h3>
<p id="O4nmDd">Stewed goat, in its myriad preparations around the world, is taxing work. There is sweat equity built into the process of finding the right level of gaminess to preserve in the dish, in capturing the essence of the meat and the bones without drowning in it. My dad’s goat stew, cooked with traditional Vietnamese medicinal herbs and spices, is legendary among his peers. One of his long-lost friends once traveled all the way to Los Angeles from Boston to taste it — and he gifted a first-generation iPod as a token of his appreciation. There were so many steps that seemed extraneous — the scrubbing, the vinegar bath, the quick blanch — but that persistence and devotion to the process was always part of what made it special. Goat has always been a canvas for ritual.</p>
<p id="orB5lt">My favorite goat preparation is birria, a stew (generally goat, but also beef) with endless permutations across the states of Mexico. My first bite, roughly a decade ago, led to an instantaneous obsession. The <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/23/17601794/jonathan-gold-food-critic-la-times-obituary-in-memoriam">late critic</a> Jonathan Gold’s favorite birria in Los Angeles came from El Parian, about half a mile from Staples Center; my favorite in Los Angeles has long been from a tiny restaurant in Boyle Heights called Flor Del Rio, now Birrieria Nochistlan. After reading about the consensus that had emerged regarding Birrieria Zaragoza in Chicago’s Archer Heights, I was determined to find out whether Chicagoans have it as good as Angelenos.</p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>The birria at Birrieria Zaragoza is served in a light tomato consomme</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="JMWdqQ">Zaragoza is a small operation: a handful of tabletops and six bar stools along the counter. After the bustle of the morning weekend rush, the restaurant settles into an afternoon lull. I tucked myself into a corner of the restaurant and then polished off a plate of bone-in goat meat with a light tomato consomme ladled on top. The broth didn’t quite have the meaty depth that I’m accustomed to, but that’s by design: The consomme is cooked without any fortification from goat parts, meant to accent the deep, roasted flavors of the meat.</p>
<p id="ofF18T">With only a few diners in the restaurant in such close quarters, it was hard not to make conversation. With Jorge, a neighboring solo diner, and Norma, the co-owner of the establishment with her husband, Juan, we discussed everything from exotic fruits to her problems with a trash collection agency. Norma told us that Grant Achatz, Chicago’s most celebrated chef and one of the most acclaimed chefs in the world, is a regular; Rick Bayless, who has a stable of influential Mexican restaurants in the city, hasn’t visited, though she’s heard murmurs that their humble restaurant is brought up at nearly every staff meeting.</p>
<h3 id="N8eqJ0">Dove’s Luncheonette</h3>
<p id="pgmQYJ">I resolved to visit one of the restaurants under Paul Kahan’s Chicago empire, and predictably landed at the one location where I could have a shot of mezcal for breakfast without any judgment. Outside, you’re likely to be greeted by crust punks unabashedly asking for contributions to their beer-and-cigarettes fund. Inside, you’ll walk into a strange amalgam of restaurant concepts: a ’50s-era all-day diner (complete with a jukebox that might be old enough to be your grandpa), a mezcal bar, and a modern Tex-Mex eatery all in a 40-seat space.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/T1VWWa3cOIwa9q1WVRjALCZz76g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12821571/P1020083.JPG">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Chicken-fried chicken at Dove’s Luncheonette</figcaption>
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<p id="JxSpIU">On the menu, Mexican hangover remedies like pozole and aguachile share the spotlight with eggs and grits and burnt-ends hash. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet-corn tamal filled with country ham and served with a mole verde. The chicken-fried chicken, though, is the showstopper: Two butterflied chicken thighs breaded, deep-fried, and smothered in a chorizo verde gravy, then dotted with peas and pearl onions. It looks like a gut-busting all-American plate, and it is. But there’s a lot hidden in the gravy. Chorizo verde gets its name (and its color) from a mash of cilantro, serrano peppers, and poblano peppers folded into the sausage mixture (at Dove’s, they add tomatillos for acidity) — these piquant profiles razor through the base roux of the sausage gravy and add depth to what could have easily been a one-note dish. Take it even further with the <em>salsa macha</em> found in the condiment caddy. That nutty, oil-based salsa with sesame seeds, peanuts, and a trio of guajillo, ancho, and chile de arbol ought to be spooned over everything in life.</p>
<h3 id="EUfDyU">Smyth</h3>
<p id="XwXglw">First impressions aren’t everything. The husband-wife duo of chefs John Shields and Karen Urie Shields met in 2003 while working in the kitchen of Chicago’s legendary Charlie Trotter’s; one day, Karen found a trail of black liquid that had gone from the dishwashing station all the way to the pastry area, where she was working. The trail had led her to John, the new guy, who had dripped squid ink all over the kitchen. She made her way over to him to reprimand him, but decided against it. In accordance with the butterfly effect, perhaps Chicago’s fine-dining landscape might not have seen the shift it has in the past two years if she had.</p>
<p id="AcpzY2">Smyth is a repository of experience in those 15 ensuing years, from Charlie Trotter’s to John’s time as a founding chef at Alinea, to the couple’s kindling romance and serendipitous trek out to Chilhowie, Virginia, to run a 35-seat restaurant, to the three years of unemployment that prefaced their current empire-building trajectory. It was a success almost instantly. It earned its first Michelin star six weeks into service; it earned its second early this year.</p>
<p id="S0jWMa">John kept notebooks full of ideas during the lull years, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve exhausted them quite yet. There is a nervous creative energy that buzzes from the kitchen and is channeled by the front-of-house staff. Over the course of a tasting, there will be maple-uni funnel cake, and brioche doughnuts served with 120-day-aged Pat LaFrieda ribeye jus for dipping (“I’ve been explaining this dish for two years now and it never gets old,” one server told me). When another server noticed I still had jus left in my cup, she encouraged me to knock it back like a shot.</p>
<p id="lxQry6">All farm-to-table restaurants are subject to the whims of seasonality and the market, but one of the express goals of Smyth was to refine that relationship between restaurant and the providence of nature. The restaurant has an exclusive partnership with a 20-acre farm in Bourbonnais, a village roughly an hour south of Chicago. The farm grows roughly <a href="https://media-cdn.getbento.com/accounts/2d8a6ac13add390358a9302117d40771/media/accounts/media/WFDmih6wRUWdTfEMZSTr_Seed%20List%20Smyth%202017.pdf">200 different types of produce</a>; the variety at Smyth’s disposal can take you to corners of the world you weren’t expecting to see. On the Thursday night in August when I visited, Malabar spinach and lemon balm — two cherished greens in my Vietnamese upbringing — were served alongside poached halibut with fermented green tea.</p>
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<figcaption>A potato and trout roe in a chicken jus at Smyth</figcaption>
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<p id="958FX3">Menus are designed in dialogue: Surprise harvests from the farm can, of course, dictate changes to the menu on any given night, but the seeds of a new menu idea can also germinate before any actual seeds are planted. One dish I felt lucky to have experienced was a humble potato, no larger than a golf ball, draped in a jus of yeast and chicken stock fortified with dried scallops and a spoonful of cured California trout roe. The potato came via seeds from Row 7, a New York–based seed company founded by vegetable breeder Michael Mazourek and chef Dan Barber, one of America’s farm-to-table pioneers. Row 7 breeds produce for flavor; the Upstate Abundance potato, as it’s named, was specifically designed to create velvet-smooth starch granules that would mimic a potato that had been cooked in butter. Its silkiness is contrasted by the trout roe, which was selected for its particularly thick skin — the pressurized pop of the roe’s vessel feels more akin to a crunch. The jus keeps everything in orbit, a flavor every bit as complex and comforting as the Chinese superior stock (<em>shang tang</em>) it was likely modeled after.</p>
<h3 id="JcOGVX">Parachute</h3>
<p id="YJwARz">Parachute is a delightful restaurant and I’d love to talk about its delicate summer squash kimchi accented by sesame oil and strands of saffron, or its deeply satisfying fried soft-shell crab with black bean sauce, or its yellowtail poke made with young almonds and the late-summer cherries that seemed to be a popular ingredient in the city — but all I want to do is join the gospel of the restaurant’s most defining dish.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Q0QQpQiZfWVbhIxsCXytetgBIxQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12821659/P1020099.JPG">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Baked potato bing bread at Parachute</figcaption>
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<p id="0MqN5I">Parachute the manifestation of <em>Top Chef </em>Season 9 finalist Beverly Kim’s Korean American experience growing up in Chicago, but the restaurant’s most essential dish is rooted elsewhere. The baked potato bing bread is a tableau of the Midwest by way of Xinjiang, a vast autonomous region in northwest China with a population that mostly consists of ethnic minority groups, a majority of which practice Islam. Tucked in the rolls, waves, and folds of Parachute’s version of bing are hallmarks of American childhood memory — cubes of potato, white cheddar, scallions, and bacon, with a side of whipped sour cream butter — but in a form perfected by Islamic Chinese. Those familiar with bing may be more familiar with its flatter version; the type of bing that Parachute draws inspiration from is <em>zhi ma da bing</em>, a leavened sesame bread studded with scallions throughout. In college, my friends and I stumbled upon Mas’ Islamic Chinese, an enormous restaurant on a dilapidated business street in Anaheim mere minutes from Disneyland and close to one of those apocalypse-proof discount Hostess bakery outposts. There, we first discovered the joys of <em>zhi ma da bing</em>. The version at Parachute is stunning, regardless of context, but sometimes the best things about traveling away from home is finding the cultural tethers that bring you back.</p>
<h3 id="vuAR9x">Giant</h3>
<p id="fMYA6a">I was ready to leave Giant, an enormously hyped restaurant for such a small space, sated but with a tinge of disappointment. It’s nominally a pasta restaurant, though a quick gloss over the menu suggests the team got a little distracted along the way. The king crab tagliatelle with a sharp, acidic chili butter sauce was excellent; the sweet corn quasi-succotash with Thai sausage, wrapped in a dosa, was less so. But I wanted to give it another shot (and I was on vacation). Instead of asking for the check, I asked my server: <em>If there is one dish I can’t leave this building without ordering, what would it be?</em> It took only a second of thought: the sweet-and-sour eggplant.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UowLU9e99jQZZgoAD6C5LxKps2M=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12821719/P1020301.JPG">
<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
<figcaption>Sweet-and-sour eggplant at Giant</figcaption>
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<p id="84UfzZ">There was an unplaceable quality to the dish. In the cooking process, eggplant is often infused with qualities from more dominant ingredients around it to become something just east of recognizable. At Giant, it was coated in an intense sweet-savory sauce that tasted of hoisin, but also a bitter, burnt-lemon finish that rounded out the palate — not exactly the most Asian technique or ingredient. Plus, it was served with fried pitas with berbere spice. Sitting at the chef’s counter, I quizzed the cooks in front of me about its flavors. While the dish has gone through several permutations, the basis of the dish goes like this: eggplants are marinated in lemongrass and garlic, and then cooked in gochujang (among other ferments), rice wine vinegar, and candied lemon — essentially engorged with Asian flavors layered in a decidedly un-Asian way. What results is a tower of overwhelming flavors that all more or less balance one another out.</p>
<p id="uc0cWM">Perhaps it was the fried pita that shifted the focus away from the flavors my mind was already trying to process. Perhaps that was the point. In an essay on the universality of flatbreads in the upcoming food compendium <em>You and I Eat the Same</em>,<em> </em>Aralyn Beaumont notes that while some flatbreads (like pita) share historical lineage, “what’s enlightening is that much of it happened concurrently and separately. It seems hardwired into our nature: if we see a piece of bread and a piece of meat, we want to swaddle the latter in the former and put the whole thing in our mouths.” There is no need to dissect the origins of something as fundamental as that. My final bites at Giant were of an ethnically ambiguous preparation of eggplant, and I relished in the disorientation of it all.</p>
<h3 id="qH99W1">Piece Pizzeria and Brewery</h3>
<p id="ig6YOo">My final meal in Chicago was, in a way, honoring an experience I never got to live. There may never be another hot dog joint as acclaimed as Hot Doug’s, which was open from 2001 to 2014. On the final day of service, zealots lined up so early that they had to <em>cut off</em> the line four hours before Doug Sohn’s restaurant was slated to open. Imagine a hot dog being that good — that’s something I’ve thought about for years.</p>
<p id="ulAHr3">Doug’s cultish sausage has slowly reemerged in various forms and capacities in recent years, including a stand at Wrigley Field, but perhaps the easiest way to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with Hot Doug’s is at Piece, where they serve Hot Doug’s atomic sausage on a pizza. It’s my stoner dreams come true: specks of beautiful sausage highlighting the floral qualities of serrano, jalapeño, and habanero peppers on a sturdy, thin crust. I brought a few slices home to savor the memory. It really is some damn good sausage.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="kbNW3M">Yes, my last meal in Chicago was an enormous New Haven–style pizza. Yes, I didn’t have any deep dish. Forgive me, Ditka, for I have sinned.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2018/9/6/17825230/chicago-food-diaryDanny Chau2018-07-18T06:35:01-04:002018-07-18T06:35:01-04:00Chau Down: An Endless Pursuit of Perfect Flavor
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<figcaption>Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Our resident food correspondent considers the phenomenon of involuntary memory, and the ways it helps us form connections to the world around us</p> <p id="GHW5Xn">Flavor, at its most sterile, is detected on the tongue and further clarified in the back of the nose. Most flavors we encounter reach the end of their journey then and there. Others linger. The ones that transcend the moment sublimate into something else entirely. They are shepherded into a hidden archive, a collection of reference points stored and accessed through the brain’s limbic system. Those are perfect flavors, and inside all of us is a gallery full of them.</p>
<p id="IyfS4Z">I think about perfect flavors constantly, which is to say I meditate about memory. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with gaining entry to that liminal space, where connections are made between the larger world and your own small corner of it and the sparks that register as epiphanies. It’s often a fruitless endeavor; it’s not something you will into being. It just happens. As David Chang described it in <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/07/chef-david-chang-on-deliciousness/">his 2016 <em>Wired </em>essay</a>, a perfect flavor “makes you very aware of what you’re eating and your own reaction to it. It nags at you, and it keeps you in the moment, thinking about what you’re tasting. And that’s what makes it delicious.” That flash of self-awareness is much easier to come by when the world is still small, when one moment isn’t competing with the deluge of experiences that comprise daily adult life; that’s why so many revelatory food experiences seem like echoes from childhood. </p>
<p id="0f5fw6">But it’s maddeningly ephemeral! It’s no wonder, then, that communities like Yelp and social media platforms like Instagram have become havens for the food obsessed. Photos and text descriptions are vain attempts at reconstructing in a physical space what was once only experienced internally (and rarely validated by others so readily). There is something bizarre about that impulse, but epiphanies can make us do strange things. After all, what is a yelp but a shout into the void?</p>
<p id="VRAexk">Documenting flavor memories might be like catching lightning in a bottle, but for me it’s less about creating a certificate than it is about making sense of the context a flavor has established in my life. I keep mental images of my 9-year-old self eating a lemony salad of watercress and rare horse meat (it’s like lean beef, but with a cleaner aroma when grilled) while kneeling beside the living room table in my grandparents’ house at a family gathering in Wiesbaden, Germany. None of my cousins touched the stuff, but my brother and I gladly dug in. I remember my dad grinning, telling his siblings and parents that we weren’t afraid of anything. That’s a token of my father’s pride I carry with me always, as someone who feels like a coward on his best and worst days. That memory set into motion this dogged, futile pursuit I find myself in to this day, and probably will for the rest of my life. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="G1rlVu">
<p id="fqYV20">For many Americans, one of the first perfect flavors we encounter is ketchup—specifically Heinz ketchup. Malcolm Gladwell once wrote a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum">5,000-word <em>New Yorker</em> story</a> on its objective perfection, on how it is a marvel of sensory analytics. Heinz is exactly the right level of too sweet, too salty, too sour, and too bitter, such that, in conjunction, it is perceived as none of those things. It is the Vitruvian condiment. It’s impervious to blind taste tests; even if it’s not the outright winner, Heinz is the standard-bearer, the flavor against which all other competitors are judged.</p>
<p id="Am9W5q">Of course, perfection doesn’t always correspond with enjoyment. Perfection isn’t immune to the law of diminishing returns, especially over the course of a lifetime. Last week, the <em>Ringer </em>staff had a particularly spirited debate about the merits of ketchup. While there were fanatical partisans on both sides of the divide (“Ketchup is the worst thing since polio,” said one writer), most settled into the uninspiring middle. Ketchup, by most accounts, is fine. “Fine” is generally my descriptor of choice for completely unmemorable meals. </p>
<p id="iqJfCR">This might be a good time to admit what might be a heretical opinion: I’ve always preferred Hunt’s to Heinz. Except when paired with french fries, ketchup has always been more of a kitchen tool in my family than a stand-alone condiment. I’ve used it as a way to add depth to fried rice; it’s my mom’s secret ingredient in her Vietnamese beef stew. Hunt’s has stronger acidic profiles than Heinz, and that vinegary bent coheres with my family’s general palate. I have distinct memories of my elementary school days when my dad wanted to give the all-American diet a test run. He’d prepare cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup for the two of us, but was horrified by how little it tasted of anything other than salt. He’d doctor the soup with ketchup (and a little bit of Sriracha) to provide the <em>cay</em> <em>chua ngọt</em>—the spicy-sour-sweet components that are at the foundation of Vietnamese culinary sensibility—without folding from the constraints of using strictly American flavors. My dad’s experiment didn’t last long, but it didn’t have to. As children, smothering literally anything in ketchup establishes a tether to the warmth of familiarity amid a world of strange. Kids can do some heinous things with a squeeze bottle of Heinz, the culinary equivalent of a safety blanket. But eventually we leave safety blankets in the past.</p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
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<p id="xqm2rl">One of the founding dishes at Here’s Looking at You, a nationally acclaimed restaurant in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, was grilled quail draped in thin slices of pickled beets, like a velvet robe, surrounded on all sides by a blood-red barbecue sauce, also made with beets. In celebration of their two-year anniversary, the staff favorite was briefly put back on the menu. The dish, while artfully plated, conjures a scene plucked right out of an all-American childhood, and subverts the notion just a bit. It asks you to imagine your 5-year-old self trying quail for the first time, your elders convincing you it tastes just like chicken; it plays upon the juvenile impulse of dragging that tiny wing through a marsh of Heinz ketchup as a way of softening the blow of trying something new. Except the “ketchup” is made of beets, one of the quintessential <em>I hated it as a kid </em>foods. Of course, the sauce isn’t labeled as ketchup, which is why the distinct play on memory works at all. There is nothing implicit about ketchup. It is maximalist to the point of dullness. Labeling the sauce as such would have broken the illusion before it even began. To call something ketchup is to create a rigid expectation. In sidestepping that expectation, the dish achieved something that ketchup, by nature, cannot: subtlety. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="G7Q4dh">
<p id="VX5nRg">Like all great food cultures, L.A.’s culinary landscape wrestles with the tension between tradition and the subversion of said traditions, between telling it how it is and telling it how it could be. Lien Ta and Jonathan Whitener have created a kaleidoscope of a California restaurant in Here’s Looking at You, finding the soul-satisfying center of both French and American Southern cuisine in a porridge dish, taking traditionally Southeast Asian ingredients and decontextualizing them in a crudo. It exists in a Koreatown enclave where nearly all of the best restaurants are owned and operated by immigrant families sharing a specific taste of home. I’ve been shaped by those kinds of traditions, having spent my entire life in a similar enclave some 15 miles east. As much as my palate expands, it will always be rooted in my experience within that community.</p>
<p id="Uif34Q">The immutability of ketchup makes it impossible to present as anything other than ketchup, but not all perfect flavors are restricted by their suggested forms. When I think about one of my favorite dishes I’ve eaten this year, I think of the loathing my 17-year-old self would radiate upon hearing the tagline: a vegetarian eggplant appetizer from We Have Noodles, a pan-Asian restaurant in the hip Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake. It reads like a socially engineered Mad Libs for the last dish I’d ever think to order, let alone enjoy. Yet, there I was, on a Wednesday night last month, marveling at its deeply savory take on <em>nahm prik noom </em>and <em>jeow mak keua</em>,<em> </em>the Thai and Laotian versions of a roasted eggplant dip. </p>
<p id="XTM7Vv">The eggplant, arguably the most perfect phallic symbol of a generation since Michelangelo’s <em>David</em> during the Renaissance, is a vegetable of few merits in its natural state. Like the potato, its distant cousin under the nightshade family tree, eggplant is not exceptionally nutritious, nor is it all that edible raw. But also like the potato, its potential is unlocked with heat. Though its flesh yields easily under the influence of fire, it’s also somewhat of a masochist, finding the outer limits of its flavor once it straddles the line between roasted and burnt. As eggplant cooks, the bitterness of its raw state melts into a muted, nondescript sweetness that blends in amid more dominant flavors; as it chars, eggplant becomes a capsule of its own smoke, absorbed and distilled through its network of fibers.</p>
<p id="NfYzvg">Darren Sayphraraj, the 29-year-old chef/owner of We Have Noodles, roasts his eggplants until they reach a deep char, and it’s that intense smoke and caramelization that creates the foundation for a dip as umami-laden as any meat-based dish. It’s a showcase of the eggplant’s salient culinary traits, which have to be coaxed out of hiding. Cooked with a procession of familiar aromatics (shallots, garlic, ginger) and finished with <em>khao khua </em>(toasted sticky rice powder, which adds body and nuttiness), the dish is something of a Rorschach test of Asian memory; my first bite reminded me of Taiwanese minced pork. </p>
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<cite>Danny Chau</cite>
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<p id="LfBf7g"><em>Jeow </em>is generally served with fresh vegetables, but Sayphraraj also includes a bundle of Japanese sweet potato chips dusted with a seasoning so embedded in my childhood I couldn’t for the life of me recognize what it was in this new context. My eyes bulged, then retreated behind closed lids—the standard Proustian response. When Sayphraraj made the rounds checking in on tables, I blurted out, “Is this crack on these chips?” He laughed. Turned out I was close. </p>
<p id="pPqVHJ">The plan for those chips always included some sort of seasoning that would replicate the experience to tasting <em>tom yum</em>, the ubiquitous hot-and-sour Thai soup base powered by a redolence of kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lemongrass, and chiles. As Sayphraraj described his thought process, the flavor had suddenly clicked: It was the contents of a tom yum seasoning packet from the Thai instant noodle manufacturer Mama, my lifeline throughout childhood and into college. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ielNEb">In that moment of clarity, I felt kinship; Sayphraraj was a San Gabriel Valley kid who lived a city away from me, who grew up on the same flavors, and had similar food memories. It tapped into my greatest fascination these days about one of the best food cities in the United States: How the next great cooks of my generation, similarly stuck in the middle between community tradition and multicultural experiences just beyond their particular bubble, find their voice, and the flavor memories that inspire them. Mama’s seasoning had the perfect blend of salt, sugar, MSG, and crystallized citric acid. It already hit all the right notes, Sayphraraj reasoned. It was a perfect flavor. There could be no substitute.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/18/17583254/chau-down-an-endless-pursuit-of-perfect-flavorDanny Chau2018-04-22T07:00:02-04:002018-04-22T07:00:02-04:00Chau Down: A Portland Food Diary
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Our resident food correspondent takes a trip to Rip City for the first time to explore the rich diversity of restaurants embedded within the whitest major city in America</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="vuV4ry">For one reason or another, I’ve kept Portland at arm’s length. The first time I was made aware of Portland as a culinary destination was when Pok Pok, a Northern Thai restaurant founded by Andy Ricker, expanded from local anomaly to a national story of cultural obsession. It was named Portland’s restaurant of the year in 2007 by <em>The</em> <em>Oregonian</em>; Ricker was honored with a James Beard Award; and there is even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr4HHepGxxM">an hour-long documentary on Ricker’s journey</a> to becoming the country-spanning restaurateur he is today. I kept tabs on all of it, but my first thought when I heard about Pok Pok was “Wait, is there a Thai community in Portland?” </p>
<p id="fL6BhJ">Here was a self-contained notion of a hyperspecific cuisine that few in the city were aware of, much less ready for. And it fell in their laps out of the blue. Ricker had done the hard part in his travels: conversing with the masters, translating recipes, committing to memory his experiences. Ricker established a dialogue behind the scenes; what Portland got was the academic lecture. Considering its success, maybe it was more of a TED Talk. </p>
<p id="WlVXqy">The calculus should’ve changed in 2015, when the Portland-based establishment opened up a branch in Los Angeles, home to a Thai enclave nearly six decades old and just a few miles from Pok Pok’s Chinatown residence. (Ricker chose the location in part because it was within walking distance of a Thai food warehouse.) But instead of furthering a dialogue with the city’s already-rich history of Thai food, Pok Pok seemed to impose its own isolation. Thai dishes many Angelenos had grown up enjoying for years were being spelled out back at them in what felt like mandatory explainer notes recited by the waitstaff. The food was good, but the sense of disconnect was overbearing. Pok Pok in L.A. couldn’t last, and it didn’t. Its closure in 2017 only seemed to corroborate my suspicions about why it exploded in Portland. Pok Pok was the only Portland restaurant of its kind for a while; when there is nothing to measure up against, consensus can be inevitable. Ricker’s Thai empire is the example at the fore, but I wondered how that kind of monolithic portrayal of certain cuisines affected the city’s dining scene across all cultural lines. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><div id="KXk4Wu"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/768MzkX2meSyiVvS8fhQOk" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Q8Yhd7">Several writing assignments brought me to Portland for the first time last month, and I jumped at the opportunity to examine, and potentially rebuke, my own preconceived notions about the city. There was fried chicken, fine dining, a strip club, and unexpected slices of home. Here’s what I ate in the whitest major city in America. </p>
<h3 id="VA8wyc">Han Oak</h3>
<p id="xSsvfT">Behind a teal building that sits in the parking lot between two restaurants was the most transfixing dining experience I’ve had this year. Through the door that reads “511” (Han Oak’s address number) was an elderly Korean man adding reeds to an outdoor fireplace. Behind him was a strange, hooded patio that almost resembled a small hangar in the middle of … someone’s backyard? </p>
<p id="Pm7TG6">Han Oak is the brainchild of Peter Cho and Sun Young Park, a couple that understands the strain that a chef’s hectic schedule can have on family life, so they cut out the distance between the two and put a Korean restaurant literally in their backyard. Cho, a veteran of New York kitchens for almost a decade prior to his return to his home state of Oregon, can be spotted overseeing the kitchen stations with a baby in hand; his older child, Elliott, is often walking around the space, charming diners. “On a good day, his pants might still be on,” Peter tells me. Cho’s parents, who make the restaurant’s kimchi themselves, also patrol the kitchen, joking with the chefs on the line. It’s a completely immersive experience. What should be a clear line between upscale dining experience and family gathering is blurred. </p>
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<p id="d1836q">Han Oak offers something that I’d never seen from a Korean restaurant: a tasting menu, a tour of the restaurant’s greatest hits across all its a la carte categories. Classics like <em>bo ssam</em> (pork belly) and <em>galbi jjim</em> (braised beef short ribs) run up against more modern stylings like a corned beef <em>soo yook</em> (boiled beef brisket) or Korean fried chicken wings with an umami-laden crust meant to remind you of instant-ramen flavoring packets. </p>
<p id="kf12Ai">In Los Angeles’s Koreatown, one of the most vibrant dining neighborhoods in the city, going to a Korean restaurant almost always means going for one specific dish. The market is saturated; life is too short to be eating something that the restaurant isn’t especially known for. “We’d never survive in L.A.,” Cho says. In L.A., where Korean cuisine is a cultural stronghold, it can be difficult to stray from tradition. But in the wilderness of Portland’s food scene, those rigid boundaries don’t exist—for better or for <a href="https://pdx.eater.com/2017/5/22/15677760/portland-kooks-burrito-cultural-appropriation">worse</a>. Cho has the freedom to create something born of his own unique experience. I’m grateful for his family’s willingness to share it. </p>
<h3 id="zMhuHT">The Thai Food Scene at Large</h3>
<p id="UFI2C1">I will be honest: I wanted to get some clarity on the mystique of the city’s Thai food. I went in with doubts; the number of Thai restaurants in relation to Thai residents in the city is astronomical. Palates can be developed for a certain type of cuisine, but it’s not the same as being born into it and having certain memories of the way dishes are meant to taste. Ricker’s Pok Pok was a clear forebear in the renaissance, but his diligent exploration of Thai culture doesn’t have a monopoly on the city the way it did a decade ago.</p>
<p id="ZCJx9q">Let’s run through some of my stops:</p>
<p id="VtMOJj"><strong>Nong’s Khao Man Gai: </strong>From what I heard around town, Nong’s is one of the most universally beloved operations in the city. Nong Poonsukwattana put a national spotlight on Hainan chicken rice in a way few (if any) have in America. It’s a simple dish: sliced, boiled chicken with rice cooked in the chicken stock, and a bowl of the broth to chase the meal. There is almost nothing to hide behind: Every component has to work, or the dish falls flat. The dipping sauces change depending on the cultural adaptation: A three-sauce palette of dark soy, ginger-scallion oil, and a chili sambal is most common in Singapore and China. The Vietnamese version of the dish offers a pungent, sweet-and-tart fish sauce mixture with pulverized garlic, ginger, and chilies. The Thai sauce is similar to the Vietnamese version, but swap out fish sauce for a sweet-savory fermented soybean paste. To be honest, Nong’s version of the dish was fine. The rice was perfectly cooked (as in, the texture was my platonic ideal for rice—I’ve never had it better anywhere else), but lacked much in the way of a discernible schmaltzy flavor. Everything felt like it was meant to be slathered in the addictive sauce, but my favorite versions of the dish, no matter the cultural variations, have a distinct balance in flavor. I didn’t get that here.</p>
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<p id="G9S72E"><strong>Langbaan: </strong>Arguably the hardest reservation in the city. Earl Ninsom, a Thai restaurateur in Portland, has built a veritable empire in the city, and Langbaan is his flagship. Langbaan is a restaurant within a restaurant—a tiny, 20-seat nook in the back of his more populist Thai restaurant, PaaDee. Langbaan serves a themed tasting menu that changes every month. The restaurant started with Ninsom and Rassamee Ruaysuntia (who once cooked at Nahm, a Bangkok restaurant rated one of the best in the world) behind the counter—it was a triple distillation of a Thai experience miraculously found in Portland. But as Ninsom’s influence within the food scene grew, so too did the diversity in staffing. While holding true to its original format, Langbaan now scans more as an ode to Portland from a Thai perspective, and an appreciation of fine dining as a discipline. That isn’t to say the food doesn’t get funky. On its first day of the April 2018 menu, when I visited, the restaurant was inspired by Central Thailand; one of the final savory courses was a <em>kaeng-om</em>, a Sing Buri–style curry that featured a healthy dose of <em>pla raa, </em>a fermented fish sauce that, in its raw state, smells positively rotten. It was one of the best dishes of the night.<em> </em> <strong> </strong> </p>
<p id="aZBLTD"><strong>Hat Yai: </strong>Ninsom’s newest addition to his Thai stable is Hat Yai, named after a Thai city famous for its fried chicken. But unless you like your fried chicken overpowered by whole coriander seeds, the real draw of Hat Yai lies elsewhere. Its version of <em>kua gling</em> (ground pork stir-fried in a fiery turmeric curry paste) is redolent of fresh lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, and its Malay-inspired braised beef cheek curry is complex, with the uncanny texture of wet paint (all the better to adhere to the roti you’re eating it with). I’m frankly shocked that <em>sup hang wua</em> (oxtail soup) is on the menu: There are at least five whole Thai chilies in each bowl, and while it was the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/8/31/16041202/the-burning-desire-for-hot-chicken-bf87446b4dda">perfect heat level for my sensibilities</a>, I couldn’t imagine the average Portlander tackling it without advance warning. I’ve had the dish once before—at a restaurant in L.A.’s Thai Town at a now-shuttered restaurant that specialized in Muslim Thai cuisine. Hat Yai’s was better. </p>
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<h3 id="YTgvhy">Castagna</h3>
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<p id="bxseeK">I had a visceral reaction to the first plate laid before me at Castagna’s 16-course tasting menu: a thimbleful of beef tartare shrouded entirely by a beet chip, pleated to form a four-pointed star. The chip had the deep, matte grain of fruit leather and the shape of an interdimensional artifact. I paused and gazed on the curious object—a snack, one of four staples that remain constant amid a hyperseasonal menu. Belle and Sebastian played softly over the sound system, and as I mouthed the lyrics to “The State I Am In,” I realized why I’d been so affected by the amuse-bouche: the color—a deep, lustrous maroon—was exactly the shade I’d pick out if I had the money and foresight to handpick my own coffin. “Yes, bury me in the sexy space sarcophagus!” I laughed quietly to myself and devoured my death wish, hoping my gallows humor didn’t somehow permeate the mind of the child who sat a few feet from me. </p>
<p id="jPlMOs">Since 2011, Castagna has been under the stewardship of Justin Woodward, a four-time James Beard Award nominee who, 10 years ago, spent a time cooking at the former WD-50 in New York, one of the foremost incubators of modernist cuisine—and modernist chefs—in the world. There, he worked with Alex Stupak and Rosio Sanchez, who have become empire builders in NYC and Copenhagen, respectively. The thoughtful, painstaking ingenuity of his early-career experiences can be tasted in the finale of the meal: a humble potato, whose essence is drawn out and highlighted in one of the best desserts I’ve ever had. Potato skins are slow-roasted for approximately three hours, wringing out every possible level of caramelization—the potato’s inherent earthy sweetness is doubled, then tripled down. The skins are then steeped in milk overnight, creating a rich infusion that is added to Castagna’s standard ice cream base. A buttermilk granita and drops of 30-year-aged sherry vinegar add depth and a rounded acidic component to the palate that both augments and counterbalances the complex roasted flavors in the ice cream. </p>
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<p id="HF7CUr">The end of the meal circles back to the study of shape and form that is introduced at the beginning: The ice cream is topped with intricate structures built to resemble potato skins. Biting into one creates a light, foamlike snap—at first I thought it was a piece of potato skin that had been given the astronaut-food treatment of freeze-drying. In reality, it’s a thin layer of meringue, hand-painted brown on one side, then toasted—the heat warping the meringue into the fanciful formation it eventually takes. It is Castagna’s signature dish for good reason. </p>
<h3 id="FVfIRv">Matt’s BBQ</h3>
<p id="5JSRq8">Matt’s BBQ used to exist in a Portland pawn shop parking lot on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. For a long time, locals assumed it would never leave the location, if only because proprietor Matt Vicedomini felt he’d found the perfect placement for his two 500-gallon offset smokers. Barbecue can be ritualistic (and pitmasters are prone to superstition), but, as I learned with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/22/16180430/soul-of-barbecue-charleston-south-carolina">Charleston barbecue</a>, variables like airflow matter. When it was effectively evicted from the space, Matt’s BBQ moved into a small colony of food carts in the outdoor patio area of Prost!, a German beer bar. A fence separates its two smokers from a house. I hope they appreciate the free smoke. </p>
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<p id="nHHeVr">Vicedomini’s <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/bbq/matts-bbq/">strange, winding story has been captured before</a>, but it bears repeating: He’s a Long Islander who learned how to smoke meat in Australia, and brought his obsession to Portland, where he’s making Central Texas–style barbecue that is better than anything I’ve had outside of Texas (and Lewis Barbecue in Charleston). Matt cooks his brisket using only salt and pepper. The “simple is best” ethos is pervasive in barbecue lore, but from my experience, rarely adhered to in earnest—there’s always <em>some </em>secret in the mix. Nonetheless, both the point (fatty) and the flat (lean) of the brisket were cooked well: It precariously held on to its structural integrity; tender, but not yet collapsing into mush and grain at the slightest prod of a fork. On Saturdays, Matt offers pulled lamb, which is especially good in taco form—the brightness of the pickled onions and guacamole tempers the gaminess of the lamb that an hours-long smoking process highlights. </p>
<p id="0Pqr6p">My favorite bite, however, was the smoked housemade sausage. Grease began to bubble up as soon as I pierced it with a fork. The snap from the casing was more akin to a crack of a whip. One of my bites sent a jet stream of grease hurtling to the table next to me, nearly hitting a dog right in the eye. Those things should come with a warning.</p>
<h3 id="iANnr7">Acropolis</h3>
<p id="zMSru9">It was getting late. I was starving. I’d missed the last call on food by about five minutes at the neighborhood German bar. Sasha, a friend I’d made during my stay, had met me for a beer after his bartending shift. He’d been something of a spiritual Portland food guide during my stay, a fount of Portland beer knowledge with a phenomenal story about the gendered dynamics of food preparation abroad that ends with him unintentionally eating goat shit in Greece. The clock struck 1 a.m. on my last full night in Portland. Sasha knew exactly where to take me. </p>
<p id="gmaGWw">Welcome to A-Crop, a combination strip club and steakhouse that locally sources its beef because its owner owns both the club and a cattle ranch. I ordered a 16-ounce T-bone steak for under $12. As a veteran of Las Vegas early-bird steak specials, I thought I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. Turns out, more strip clubs should be owned by cattle farmers. </p>
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg-6qX3H9ip/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div>
</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg-6qX3H9ip/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">The best strip club steak I've ever eaten.</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dannykingchau/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Danny Chau</a> (@dannykingchau) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-03-31T09:46:22+00:00">Mar 31, 2018 at 2:46am PDT</time></p>
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<h3 id="8yZxjX">Kachka</h3>
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<p id="2PbMQK">What a place to forget your night. Get there early (4 p.m. to 6 p.m.) or late (10 p.m. to 12 a.m.) for happy hour. Order what amounts to Kachka’s version of a boilermaker: a beer and 30 grams of one of their house-infused vodkas; the outstanding horseradish vodka ought to be used in exorcisms. Get the <em>golubtsi</em>, a ground mixture of beef, pork, and lamb wrapped in cabbage and cooked in a sweet and sour tomato sauce. You might find yourself compelled to order more of the infused vodkas, and then maybe also the beet-infused fernet. I might have forgotten many of my interactions at the restaurant by the end of my night, but I’ll fondly remember the sour-cherry <em>vareniki</em>: Ukrainian dumplings filled with a mixture of local sour cherries, topped with sour cream and ribbons of basil. It’s a dessert for people who don’t like dessert but like talking about layered, contrasting flavors and textures. Biting into the dense, toothsome exterior of the dumpling, immediately followed by the pop of the sour-cherry filling, was a gratifying sensation. </p>
<h3 id="GKTEkL">Beer Break!</h3>
<p id="rLJDMD">This is maybe blasphemous, but does Portland have <em>too many breweries</em>? Modern Times, a San Diego–based brewery recently opened a location in downtown L.A. and it is almost always busy. Modern Times opened a Portland location about a week later, and when I visited in the afternoon, I had the place more or less all to myself. I learned that the company has a Slack channel where employees are encouraged to pitch beer name ideas based on random inspirations. Breweries: They create content just like us! </p>
<p id="kil1IW">Here’s a rundown of my alcoholic intake in Portland, aside from my experience at Kachka:</p>
<p id="reqLDo"><strong>Best beer drunk?</strong> Cascade Vlad the Imp Aler (2013).</p>
<p id="UsybZR"><strong>Beer drunk most frequently?</strong> Breakside IPA.</p>
<p id="mOV98Y"><strong>Did I have a tallboy with my fried chicken at Reel M Inn?</strong> Yes, a Hamm’s. </p>
<p id="FFeLMo"><strong>Favorite cocktail? </strong>Oh, Snap! (Aria gin, snap pea, mezcal rinse, mint) at Ash Bar inside Nomad PDX.</p>
<p id="tnUyrh"><strong>Favorite brewery?</strong> Upright Brewing.</p>
<p id="DetQyp"><strong>Favorite beer bar?</strong> Bailey’s Taproom.</p>
<h3 id="prjMd8">Afuri</h3>
<p id="yw7Nfd">Somehow, the only two international outposts of Afuri—a popular ramen chain established in 2003 in Tokyo—are located in Portland. More than metropolitan influence, the company wanted to best recreate the highly calibrated experience of Afuri ramen in Tokyo. Ultimately, that boiled down to water. The company went on a search that spanned the entire United States and landed in Portland, where the soft, raw water of the Bull Run River was found to be nearly identical to the water taken from the wells of Mount Afuri in Kanagawa Prefecture, the water source for the chains in Japan. </p>
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<p id="gnMzZ9">The pH and minerality of the water matter because Afuri’s signature dish—a chicken <em>shio</em> ramen flavored with yuzu citrus—is impossibly light and subtle. There might be more leeway in a rich <em>tonkotsu</em> broth, where the robust flavors of long-simmered pork take center stage; Afuri’s yuzu <em>shio</em>, on the other hand, registers more like a tea infusion. Water is thus more of an ingredient than a conveyance. Not the biggest fan of yuzu’s intense aromatics personally, I was surprised at how that very specific citrus flavor fell into place with the rest of the bowl. It was a welcome departure from the ramen in L.A., which has, for the better part of a decade, engaged in a game of who could make the richest, silkiest, porkiest bowl of <em>tonkotsu</em> ramen in town; the quest for mastery ultimately hurt diversity. But perhaps that was in efforts of courting a Western palate. </p>
<p id="nZRoPq">Spin-offs often don’t resonate the way originals do. As bar manager Billy Noble told me, Afuri’s yuzu <em>shio</em> ramen isn’t the most popular item on the menu, which is perhaps too expansive for its own good. The Afuris in Portland aim to be a sort of Japanese food emporium, offering everything from <em>robata</em> to sushi. It’s understandable that patrons would feel a bit underwhelmed by the yuzu <em>shio</em> if their palates had already been blown out by the <em>karaage</em> or <em>gyoza</em> they ordered as appetizers.</p>
<h3 id="nitFt6">Reel M Inn</h3>
<p id="GQZ7za">Reel M Inn is a perfect dive bar, a place that was uniformly well regarded, which can be rare when fielding recommendations from locals. It opens early, closes late, and serves cheap beer (but it’s also Portland, so there’s a Boneyard IPA for you if you want it). On my right was a college student reading a novel; on my left was a middle-aged couple enjoying some fried chicken. You’ll want to enjoy some of their fried chicken. Back in 2013, celebrity chef Sean Brock revealed that Reel M Inn’s fried chicken was the inspiration behind the version you’ll get at Husk Nashville: Brock prebreads the chicken three hours in advance, just as the ladies at Reel M Inn do, which ensures that you won’t be disrobing your fried chicken of all its crispy skin upon the initial bite. Although, at Reel M Inn, I’m thinking the breading method was more of a logistical solution. The first thing you should do upon entering the bar is order the chicken, because for all you know, it might not come out for an hour. Two people work behind the bar, and those same two people are your fry cooks. There are only two fryers. Your order will invariably enter a queue. Still, it’s worth it: The thigh piece might be as big as Kawhi Leonard’s <a href="https://goo.gl/images/s2m1rc">hand</a>. </p>
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<p id="YuzHeB">Growing up, when the world was small, my idea of an adventure was strolling up and down the aisles of the supermarket just steps away from my house, killing time while the person manning the Albertsons deli brought out a fresh batch of fried chicken straight from the fryer. There was just something magical about seeing a tray newly emerge in front of the heat lamps, still sparkling from the residual oil. The best fried chicken in the world at any given moment will always be the one with as much of the middleman cut out as possible. </p>
<h3 id="Xp2Hdu">Rose VL Deli</h3>
<p id="rc99qi">I walked through the doors of Rose VL Deli for the first time on a temperate Wednesday morning, but I swear I must’ve been inside the restaurant hundreds of times in the past. The pastel walls, the studio-quality family portrait with a stained gray background, the embarrassingly earnest ornaments with messages like “Bless the food before us, the family beside us, and the love between us”—all hallmarks of the Vietnamese households I’ve visited in my life. </p>
<p id="KkC1bA">William Vuong, the 78-year-old patriarch of the restaurant, sits at one of the free tables with a cup of coffee and the newspaper every morning, though he leaves his post often to chat with diners and take orders. On my first visit, I ordered in Vietnamese, leaving him in mild shock. </p>
<p id="QODy9m">Rose VL is the offshoot of Ha VL, a Beard-nominated cult-favorite noodle shop famous in Portland for serving only two soups every day. Those are the options, and when they sell out, Ha VL closes up shop. The process begins at 5:30 a.m, and the soups are slow-cooked for three hours; the restaurant opens 30 minutes later. “This is home cooking, not restaurant cooking,” Vuong told me. “It’s completely different.” </p>
<p id="rz86i1">My Wednesday arrival was strategic—that’s when Rose VL serves <em>bun bo hue</em>, my holy grail. A complex spicy beef (and pork) noodle soup powered by lemongrass, annatto seeds, and fermented shrimp paste, <em>bun bo hue</em> is the dish I most often dream about. My mom’s version is the standard to which I compare all other renditions. Most fall desperately short. </p>
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<p id="ACp7xu">Rose VL treats its <em>bun bo hue</em> with finesse—the flavors are subtler than what I eat at home, and the composition is streamlined. Tradition holds that sliced beef shank, pork knuckle, and coagulated blood cubes be added to the bowl. But Rose VL omits the blood completely and swaps out knuckle for an unctuous pork cut more familiar to the Western palate: pork belly. It’s one of the better restaurant renditions I’ve had to date, but the search continues. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="vwgCMP">Vuong estimates that 80 percent of Rose’s clientele is white, which is not too dissimilar from the city’s main demographic at large. After I finished my meal, he sat at my table and eagerly told me his story, one he seems to have told many, many times before. He was a battalion commander during the Vietnam War, a Provincial Reconnaissance Forces commander working with the CIA. After the war, his American ties put him in jail for 10 years. He had earned his teaching degree in English in his 20s, but it wasn’t recognized in America by the time he landed in Portland (though, years later, he would teach a few courses at Portland State University). There are three statements of purpose painted on the outside window of the restaurant: “Meticulous Soups,” “Authentic Style Cooking,” “Exceptional Hospitality.” Vuong’s past has helped to succinctly define his present. As Vuong makes the rounds and talks to each of his patrons—whether it’s to ask about their day or to guide them in how to properly eat an unfamiliar dish—they tend to speak with a sense of reverence. He’s earned that level of respect. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2018/4/22/17266986/portland-food-diaryDanny Chau2018-01-29T05:40:02-05:002018-01-29T05:40:02-05:00Chau Down: A New Orleans Food Diary
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<p>Seven days in the Crescent City, where the Ringer’s resident foodie ate some of the best fried chicken in America, quested for a perfect gumbo, and found home away from home </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="lnwkbv">The scent of Popeyes fried chicken in a car is all my brother needs to be transported back to Day 1 of the rest of his life. He’d just turned 6, spending his birthday at an airport in Thailand. It was 1989; my family was sponsored over to the U.S. from southern Vietnam by my uncle, an army captain who was one of the earliest Vietnamese immigrants to settle in America after the fall of Saigon in 1975. He picked them up at the airport, but home would have to wait. First, a family order of Popeyes for the road. My brother’s first meal in America was a piece of fried chicken. It was specifically the aroma wafting within the car that he remembers so fondly, the smell of something completely foreign. That was his first memory of the States, a Proustian moment so vivid even our cousin retells the story as though it were her own. My dad’s first memory of America was of the giant mosquito that bit him just as he opened the airport doors. Two generations, two different perspectives; one rapt by the <em>newness </em>of it all, the other acutely aware of the challenges ahead. I was two years away. </p>
<p id="lh1MMv">In another timeline not too far diverged from this one, I’d live as an Orleanian. My family had a five-month sojourn in New Orleans, a prolonged layover on their way to their eventual destination: the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles, home to some of the biggest Asian American communities in the country. It would’ve been a different life had we stayed in Louisiana. Maybe I’d have spent my high school years working in the back of Cafe Du Monde, cowering in anxiety next to the ladies who run the tight ship amid the bustle of the French Quarter. I would have <em>definitely </em>adopted the Saints as my religion early on. Maybe instead of staying up late as a 4-year-old watching old Showtime Lakers games bootlegged onto VHS tapes in our small garage nook, I’d start to notice the intricacies of defensive line play and kneel at the altar of Pat Swilling before Drew Brees arrived to be the quarterback of my young hopes and dreams. </p>
<p id="U9Ukce">A wedding brought us back. The same cousin who watched my brother take his first bite of Popeyes was getting married. It was all the reason I needed to spend time in the city that incubated my family’s American experience. The last time I visited, I was a 3-year-old eating his first crawfish. I felt I could do better this time around. Here’s what I ate.</p>
<h3 id="jRja1t"><strong>At Last, Willie Mae’s</strong></h3>
<p id="57mYNS">The weight of recent history bore down on me as we parked the rental van right along the side of Willie Mae’s Scotch House on Tonti Street. Eating at the tiny restaurant had been on my to-do list for years. Too many people whose opinions on food I respect have claimed Willie Mae’s as <em>the</em> best fried chicken anywhere. It has a James Beard Foundation America’s Classics award and the enduring patronage of generations of locals and tourists alike—all catnip for the annoying, food-obsessed phylum of humanity that I unfortunately belong to. </p>
<p id="C6hs7P">I was distracted as I walked toward the door, my eyes affixed on the pavement and gravel along the edges of St. Ann and Tonti, where Willie Mae Seaton sat in 2005 in front of her ravaged restaurant after Hurricane Katrina left the entire Treme neighborhood a virtual ghost town. I’d watched a <a href="http://www.southernfoodways.org/film/saving-willie-maes-scotch-house/">Southern Foodways Alliance documentary</a> on the restoration of Willie Mae’s Scotch House; Seaton, 89 years old at the time, was resituated in Houston in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, but snuck away from sanctuary, boarded an airplane back to New Orleans, and rode a cab all the way back to that corner of St. Ann and Tonti, just to check on it. It’s a crushing scene to imagine: Seaton returning to her shop on a whim, as though, by chance, everything might’ve been restored just as it was before, and she could return to the kitchen and cook for her customers. The New Orleans police department caught wind of an elderly woman in the neighborhood in need of assistance; after Seaton identified herself, she pulled out one of the few items she had on her person: the James Beard medallion.</p>
<p id="jP6yNq">Seaton died 10 years later in 2015 at the age of 99, but not before the complete revitalization of a New Orleans institution. We walked into a stunningly empty dining area (I was fully prepared for an hour-long wait). The walls were a tinted a shade of marigold, lined with framed reviews, and displaying, of course, the 2005 Beard award. The centerpiece: a painting of Seaton holding a plate of her fried chicken before you outside of her storefront, a thin halo just above her head. </p>
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<p id="op3zCq">The chicken was immaculate, encased in a crust unlike any I’ve had previously. The exterior, almost auburn in hue, formed soft ridges, like <a href="http://www.kitgentry.com/Images/lava2_06.jpg">waveforms of cooling lava</a> suspended in time. Seaton’s recipe is heavily guarded, as all good Southern cooking secrets seem to be, but Willie Mae’s crust could only come from a wet batter, thin enough to yield an airy crisp, but substantial enough to essentially meld with the chicken skin, forming a sort of fritter that acts like a side dish unto itself. The waitress insisted I have a cornbread muffin; turns out it wasn’t necessary. </p>
<p id="LKRZoX">The other sides, beautifully stewed, however, were: I opted for the green beans, stewed in tomato and plenty of spices, with rice in gravy. Our waitress, dead tired from a work shift at another job she’d just come from, recommended the butter beans in a wistful tone that suggested it was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpse_Reviver">corpse reviver</a> of a different sort. </p>
<p id="RLjAg2">I ate fried chicken from five different establishments in New Orleans (Manchu, I’ll get to you next time). Here’s how I’d rank them:</p>
<ol>
<li id="tCaS8B">Willie Mae’s</li>
<li id="uOmwRD">The late-night two-piecer I got fresh out the fryer at the random gas station mini-mart on Rampart at the outer limits of the French Quarter. </li>
<li id="e7EThe">Popeyes</li>
<li id="TlXegq">Dooky Chase’s</li>
<li id="pc0UUO">Coop’s Place</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="hj17aC"><strong>Sandwiches, Old and New</strong></h3>
<p id="4S0rMJ">I’ve been collecting New Orleans food recommendations for years, long before I had any reason or means of getting there. I dug through all of my old emails and found one rec, from a mentor: <em>“</em>Parkway Bakery in Mid-City changed my life.”</p>
<p id="st1QXV">The line for Parkway at peak lunch hours (read: <em>on Martin Luther King Jr. Day</em>) is akin to the line for a dark ride at Disneyland. It goes through a dining area with old-time advertisements on the wall that emphasize the cultural impact and longevity of the po’boy. Then it snakes up a few stairs, and through another door. Parkway has been in business for a third of New Orleans’s existence as an established city, which is a serious historical statement when 2018 is the year of New Orleans’s tricentennial. It was Monday, which was fried oyster po’boy day. So we got one of those: </p>
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<p id="Kz3HHe">And we couldn’t leave the premises without a little debris from a surf and turf: </p>
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<p id="BgNvlb">Classic Leidenheimer roll made in town, fully dressed and overstuffed. Both sandwiches were textbook executions. The biggest seal of approval? My dad, who is notoriously suspicious of most classic American food staples, was a fan. </p>
<p id="JBrRnm">Last year,<em> First We Feast’</em>s<em> </em>video series “Food Grails” captured <a href="https://firstwefeast.com/eat/how-new-orleans-birthed-a-vietnamese-poboy-movement">an ongoing cultural dialogue in something as intrinsically New Orleans as the po’boy</a>. The city’s Vietnamese community was established more than 40 years ago, and has become embedded in the local traditions. The lines blurring between po’boy and banh mi was inevitable. One of New Orleans’s most popular po’boy spots, Killer PoBoys, uses banh mi instead of the standard Leidenheimer bread. Their most popular sandwich, befitting of a city with a robust cocktail culture, is an ode to a Dark and Stormy: a roasted pork belly sandwich with a dark rum and ginger glaze. I admired the concept, but it skewed too sweet for my taste; better was the modified roast-beef debris sandwich, topped off with pickled long beans and horseradish sauce. </p>
<p id="u1a0tQ">Alas, not every acclaimed sandwich recommendation hit the mark. Cochon Butcher was a near-unanimous pick from everyone I asked, but I left disappointed. In theory, the Butcher’s muffuletta is a sandwich nerd’s dream: It is a precise study in the geometry of a perfect sandwich. It is logistically sound, designed to deliver the perfect bite, every time. Meats are layered by texture; the olive salad and <em>giardiniera</em> are chopped extra fine to ensure an equal layer of brininess. But I was disappointed in how the actual flavors came together. The smokiness of the bacon wedged between layers upon layers of cured meats dominated the palate without much of a fight from the olive salad. It was definitely a sandwich that leaned heavily on its cured meat, which under most circumstances might not have been a problem for me. I was just surprised at the lack of balance from one of the most composed sandwiches I’ve ever ordered. </p>
<h3 id="S571Jo"><strong>Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop</strong></h3>
<p id="PlZSAI">A year ago, I rang in 2017 with my specialty gumbo. I’ve been honing my gumbo-making technique for more than six years now, ever since I was a college student looking for a hearty stew with common ingredients that could last a week in the fridge. But only last year did I stop to think about how absurd it was to have so much confidence in my gumbo when the only frame of reference I’ve ever had was my own version of the dish. I soon became consumed with the history of gumbo. I read <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/best-gumbo-ever-84440550/">personal narratives</a> lovingly written about gumbo and family. The writing couldn’t physically season my palate, but it granted me the relief in acknowledging I didn’t know a damn thing. With a new sense of levity, I resolved to try what I’d never had the guts to do before.</p>
<p id="vUYwE3">I set a bizarre mandate for myself: I would stir the roux for 45 minutes, no more, no less. I wanted it to be as dark as my anxious heart could bear. I watched as the nascent mixture, the color of wet stucco, graded into deeper palettes: from blond to peanut butter, from cafe au lait to ochre, from mahogany to<em> mole negro</em>. A black roux tests your faith, your patience, and most importantly, your sense of smell—the line that separates a usable dark base and a scorched waste of time is nearly imperceptible. A black roux takes the combination of fat and flour to the edge of its life, and then gives it a new one. It is a near-death experience that nonetheless transitions into an afterlife. </p>
<p id="EI8Nb8">As Robert Moss noted in a finely researched <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/history-new-orleans-gumbo-roux.html">history of roux in New Orleans gumbo</a> published in <em>Serious Eats</em>, a darker roux has become standard practice in the past three decades, a phenomenon largely indebted to Paul Prudhomme, an influential chef who altered the trajectory of New Orleans cuisine in the ’80s. Prudhomme emphasized the deep, sultry, swampy characteristics of gumbo, in flavor and hue. Before his recipes and machinations became gospel for a new generation of New Orleans cooks and residents, gumbos were lighter in color, and less viscous. </p>
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<p id="2GHDnx">Ask anyone in New Orleans about who makes the best gumbo in town, and more likely than not, you’ll hear about someone’s mom. It is a kind of dish that preserves family traditions; it’s a dish with infinite variations. The idea of getting it anywhere but home might seem preposterous to those embedded within Cajun and Creole culture. </p>
<p id="SHSOaH">I ordered the gumbo at every stop we made that offered it. Some used too much roux as thickener, the texture disconcertingly close to a country gravy; others were little more than a tomato and okra soup; plenty were somewhere in between, with a lot of filé powder—a pungent, earthy herb that was historically used in gumbos during the winter when okra was out of season but has since become part of the regional palate. My favorite gumbo came from Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop in Metairie. Their Mumbo Gumbo is similar to the kitchen-sink variety that I tend to make at home: chicken, sausage, and seafood, all in one pot. But the expression of flavors was clearer in the Chef Ron’s version, as though the components were stratified, each lending a certain percentage of its essence to the dish that adds up to the whole. The seafood gumbo was even better, with the oceanic sweetness of shrimp, crawfish, and crabmeat peeking through the rich stew it’s interlaced with. </p>
<p id="n7Qgtu">I told my brother about my gumbo, and how it was overstuffed compared with what we had at Chef Ron’s. We were in agreement: The essence of the gumbo was in the space between. Not in the bits of protein, but in the flavors that had culminated as a result of their union. It was an edifying experience. I can’t wait to try my hand at another pot.</p>
<h3 id="vgjNAW"><strong>Cocktail Break</strong></h3>
<p id="3eElBN">Cognac was first exported to China and surrounding Asian countries in the 1850s, where it became a symbol of prestige and opulence. Asian wedding banquets, specifically in Hong Kong and Vietnam, will feature a bottle from one of the four houses of Cognac (but typically Hennessy or Rémy Martin) at every table. I have dreams of opening my own restaurant/bar in the next 10 years. The first cocktail on the menu will be called <em>Vietnamese Wedding</em>:<em> </em>cognac, sparkling water, and lime bitters—a nod to the 2-liter of Sprite or 7 Up that often accompanies the bottle of cognac on the lazy Susan. </p>
<p id="IXBdR3">I’ve been to dozens of Vietnamese wedding banquets in my lifetime, but in New Orleans, I encountered something new. During my cousin’s wedding dinner, the waiters at the restaurant were asked to bring out the stainless steel teapots, the kind typically used during dim sum. From there, cognac was emptied into the pots and diluted with water and ice. Agents of chaos walked around the dance floor and neighboring tables with teapots in hand, asking for the honor of pouring some straight down your gullet, the way Catalonians drink wine from a <em>porrón</em>. It was terrifying. It was brilliant. Angelenos: Invite me to your wedding banquets. Let’s bring this tradition farther west.</p>
<p id="L7f6oR">Here’s a quick rundown of my alcoholic intake in New Orleans:</p>
<p id="APkb2O"><strong>Best Beer:</strong> Urban South Holy Roller IPA</p>
<p id="o6qCYc"><strong>Most Frequently Consumed Beer:</strong> Yuengling</p>
<p id="LYRAfO"><strong>Best Cocktail:</strong> Mezcal White Negroni, Bar Tonique (<a href="https://punchdrink.com/articles/mastering-ramos-gin-fizz-cocktail-recipe-with-mark-schettler-bar-tonique-new-orleans/">Shouts out to Mark.</a>)</p>
<p id="BM1Eoq"><strong>Most Labor-Intensive Cocktail Consumed:</strong> Ramos Gin Fizz</p>
<p id="BxUZFi"><strong>Best Decision:</strong> Getting a 44-oz. drive-through daiquiri for a discounted $8 </p>
<p id="WjzaV1"><strong>Worst Decision:</strong> Getting a 44-oz. drive-through daiquiri for a discounted $8</p>
<h3 id="n09I2U"><strong>Harbor Seafood & Oyster Bar</strong></h3>
<p id="tTPQq0">We arrived in New Orleans a couple of weeks early for crawfish season, which, under optimal weather conditions, can start <a href="http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2017/12/crawfish_early.html">as early as Christmas</a>. But the winter had been colder than usual, delaying the season. Finding fresh-not-frozen crawdads meant knowing a person who knew a person who had a local connection, or calling ahead to make sure. The last time I was in New Orleans, crawfish boils were a regional delicacy. These days, with so many Cajun seafood restaurants owned by Vietnamese families, the palate for that flavor has experienced a westward expansion. Los Angeles and Houston (two metropolises with significant Asian populations) have become hubs for crawfish import, but something gets lost in transit. Franchises like The Boiling Crab in Southern California approximate the experience of a boil, but so much of what they serve is drowned in a garlicky, spiced butter solution that amplifies a broad, vague Cajun flavor but overcompensates for the crawfish itself rather than accentuates. It’s a classic case of making the most of what you have, but it’s not what I’m looking for in a crawfish boil.</p>
<p id="V0HF7P">Harbor Seafood is a perfect restaurant, rightfully listed on <a href="https://nola.eater.com/maps/best-new-orleans-restaurants-38">Eater New Orleans’s essential 38 restaurants</a> list. It’s a spot one of my uncles has been visiting since he was a college student. It still manages to feel like a hidden gem because it is; it’s a couple of cities away from New Orleans proper, located in Kenner, out by the airport. The oysters are sweet, the beer is cheap, and the crawfish is everything I dreamed it would be. We took down 12 pounds.</p>
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd_upj-ntxU/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div>
</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd_upj-ntxU/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Just slightly before season, but beggars can't be choosers. Won't be eating crawfish for another five years after the 12 pounds we ordered. Worth every mg/dl of cholesterol. It was great.</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dannykingchau/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Danny Chau</a> (@dannykingchau) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-01-16T03:46:27+00:00">Jan 15, 2018 at 7:46pm PST</time></p>
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<p id="oDQAEP">Trying to kill the hour wait for a table, my brother walked a few blocks to a nearby church where a <em>Pokémon Go</em> raid was occurring. There he met a local food truck owner, who asked him if he was waiting for a table at Harbor. <em>How did you know? </em>“Because if you’re not from here, there ain’t no other reason to be here,” the man said. </p>
<h3 id="1fpCTZ"><strong>Back to the Beginning</strong></h3>
<p id="ZM96HM">Leonard Fournette looked indestructible as he bludgeoned the Steelers for three touchdowns and 109 yards, but he was no match for a 4-year-old boy given permission to wail on the drums. It was divisional playoffs Sunday. I was at a family lunch and there was a drum set right next to the TV. The kids and toddlers took turns giving it a go. It was a gallery of uncoordinated limbs and unmitigated joy. Only one was capable of maintaining a rhythm. </p>
<p id="glT48f">We were in a house that has been in the family for decades. It sits beside a canal that runs along Morrison Road in New Orleans East, a section of the city that was particularly ravaged by Katrina. There was a serious effort to rebuild the interior of the house, but upon walking in, everything seemed … normal. It wouldn’t be until I stepped back out onto Morrison Road and noticed the two adjacent parcels of land still empty, where houses used to be, that the lingering effects of the hurricane snapped into focus. New Orleans East has largely been populated by black Americans and Vietnamese migrant communities. That marriage of cultures made its way into this particular biracial household. </p>
<p id="ur5CEH">All the older women in the family were huddled in the small kitchen finishing lunch prep: on the menu, <em>nem nướng cuon </em>(broiled ground-pork patties wrapped in rice paper rolls) and <em>chả giò </em>(Vietnamese egg rolls). When it became clear there wouldn’t be enough food to serve visiting guests, the man of the household was sent off to acquire more. He returned, braving the cold in a Saints beanie and a billowing Saints winter jacket, with a family meal from Popeyes. It made perfect sense. </p>
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd8V09BHWp1/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div>
</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd8V09BHWp1/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Nem nuong. Popeye's fried chicken. NFL playoffs. New Orleans.</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dannykingchau/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Danny Chau</a> (@dannykingchau) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-01-14T20:11:50+00:00">Jan 14, 2018 at 12:11pm PST</time></p>
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<p id="14Pt1b">One of my favorite essays of last year was written by <a href="https://www.tastecooking.com/lets-call-assimilation-food/">Soleil Ho for <em>Taste Magazine</em></a>, about the food immigrants make with foreign ingredients from their new land in an effort to remember their old one. She called it <em>assimilation food</em>:<em> </em>“food that’s made to close the gap between homes.” Our Sunday lunch made no effort in differentiating the two. Cultures, cuisines—the spaces we feel safe enough to call home didn’t merge as much as expand.</p>
<p id="OWuop3">Our final day in New Orleans was threatened by the coldest morning in recent city history. Our pre-flight lunch plans were thwarted. All the bridges that connected the city were iced over. All major highways from Lafayette to New Orleans were closed. (But considering how many big rigs I saw flipped over on their side on Interstate 10 during my trip under <em>normal </em>weather conditions, it was probably for the best.) Hungry and trapped in Slidell, roughly 40 miles away from city proper, we considered our options. But we knew there was only one right answer. Forty minutes later, after a slow-and-steady drive into town and a wait in line among like-minded residents, we returned with a family pack of Popeyes fried chicken. An American dream comes full circle. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="WmE7o9">They say Popeyes tastes better in Louisiana. I’m still not sure that’s true—Popeyes tastes good anywhere—but I understand the sentiment a whole lot better now.</p>
<p id="E5pWNu"></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2018/1/29/16944030/new-orleans-food-diaryDanny Chau