08. 23. LUNCH

막썰어회: butchered sashimi

And here I use the term “sashimi” with all the grains of salt in the world. This “style” of preparing raw fish is mainly for people who are happily consuming alcohol near the sea. I was rather pepped for all the seafood eating that we were going to do, since we were traveling south to where all there is to do is eat seafood and look at the sea, so needless to say, I was a little upset when we decided that we had half an hour until the tour boat departed and that we had to eat whatever we could as quickly as possible. Actually I was pretty damned upset. Despite knowing that this sorry-looking excuse for an establishment would only ever really cater to people who were happily consuming alcohol near the sea, I was convinced that I would rather eat here than at the Chinese restaurant down the block. Actually I would have starved in protest rather than eat at the Chinese restaurant down the block. I do love my Chinese food, but seriously, that’s pointless. It’s so pointless that I don’t even have a decent metaphor for how pointless it is. And there we were, with our father parking the car some ways away, and I tried to be assertive and ask what they had on their menu, and the lady was like, Sea cucumbers. And conches. Which is fine, but not a meal. So I was like, What about fish? And she made this ridiculously vague hand motion towards a full tank, and said, Some stuff like this. And I was like BUT WHAT KIND OF FISH IS IT because it was unrecognizable and she kept saying, Just fish. And I was like AUGH AUGH AUGH. But apparently we were really busy — why, in the first place, was that even necessary? I’d have just bought tickets for the next boat, they have one every ten minutes, Jesus God — so I ended up mumbling that we’d take a fish. Thirty dollars. I was sullen until the food arrived. No, that’s not true, I was sullen all the way through. Besides, it wasn’t even the fish from the tank that we got, it was two much smaller fish from out of the blue and I have no idea what those were either. The only reason that all this wasn’t sketchy was because this was on the waterfront and like hell it would have stayed open long enough for it to get so filthy, if anything funny were going on with its food. Which didn’t stop me from sulking.

boiled mussels

On top of which, the lady had an accent so my brother couldn’t understand her and finally he muttered out loud, I have no freaking clue what you’re saying, so I was rather embarrassed and what she was actually saying was that since we were busy, she would skip the spicy soup part of the meal, and inwardly I was just like OKAY THAT IS FINE JUST GIVE ME MY FOOD SO THAT I CAN EAT IN MY MISERY, and nobody was being the slightest help in the confusion and I was still sulking. I’m no connoisseur, and I don’t take much objection with the fact that the fish was just cut up instead of being sliced according to the natural grain of its flesh, et cetera, et cetera. What I hated was that we were in a hurry when we had no need to be, that the lady wouldn’t tell me the name of the blasted fish I was eating, and that the broth that the mussels were in just tasted like tepid water. All this while the lady was walking back and forth emphasizing that all ingredients were naturally and freshly caught. As I neared the end of the meal, I felt a little sorry for her since she obviously didn’t know what to do with customers as lost as we were, and because the fish was actually good. The mussels were okay, but nothing above average — I could get behind that fish, though. Despite still not knowing what it was. Anyway I was sulking a bit for a good deal of the boat ride as well, up until the man sitting in front of us let us open the window and my brother got seasick. This does not make me a terrible person.

08. 14. DINNER

sauteed mussels

This was the actual birthday dinner I had with the family. Thursday evening was a solo recital for the recorder, courtesy of a son of a friend of my mother’s (I prefer longer longwinded interpersonal descriptions) — wait, let me rephrase that. Courtesy of the elder of two sons of a friend of my mother’s who also has her office next to my mother’s in the building in which the School of Nursing professors have their offices. Okay. I guess that’s passable. So I was to have made reservations for four at Mad for Garlic, near where the concert was being held, but I put it off until the day before (even now I don’t think it was an unreasonable thing to do) and all the reservation slots had filled up by the time I called (now that’s unreasonable). Fortunately when we got there at six, the time they advised, there were still seats and we made it in with no trouble. Mad for Garlic is stupidly overpriced and incredibly self-righteous, but that is fine with me because their menu is huge and their food is rather good. We started off with sauteed mussels because my mother, much like me, experiences tunnel vision whenever mussels are mentioned in her vicinity and she must have them no matter what. If she hadn’t, I would have insisted on it, besides. I want you to read this in James Franco’s voice: so good.

garlicholic rice

Man, that is a terrible picture. Excuse the blurry. The restaurant was super dark and the problem with digital cameras is that unless you have a vague idea of what you’re doing, the camera is going to give you a messy piece of crap. Then again before the more analog kind was back in vogue, we had the problem of never quite knowing if we were even managing to take the picture at all, so it’s a fair trade-off. Garlicholic rice is basically just fried rice with some garlic and other stuff thrown it, and James Franco repeats: so good. They obviously had to just to succeed, but they do this thing where you can eat all the garlic in their food, as much as you want, and still you won’t get that breathy aftertaste for hours afterwards. Wow! Magic! I swear I’m not a spokesperson, honest.

vongole mare pasta

Another of my faults: if you give me the choice and if it is possible, I will always go vongole. Even if the tomato-based sauces come topped with mountains of seafood or really good meat or — God help us — bacon, it is physically impossible for me to deny vongole spaghetti. This is kind of like how if you give me the reins, I will choose Japanese food for every single meal. The whole “we had Japanese for lunch so what should we have for dinner” nonsense does not compute. The two meals are independent of each other and both times, the superior choice is clear. Actually it might be a good thing that people don’t allow me to do this, because then I would suffer an existential breakdown from not being able to ever eat pickled crab. Huh.

grilled pizza

That it’s “grilled” says nothing about what’s actually on it, but it was in fact a big part of the reason why we chose it. It’s got mushroom and mozzarella cheese, and we would have gone for the rucola but that came with sweet potatoes and I am not the biggest fan of sweet potatoes on pizza. Later on my mother was lusting after the gorgonzola pizza that the couple at the table over were having, so if we can go before vacation’s over, we’ll be having that. The grilled pizza was pretty good too, but I think Bellamonte does it better, which doesn’t mean a whole lot because Bellamonte’s pizza isn’t world-class or anything. At least they all beat out Di Matteo, which, despite that, is still my favorite.

green tea ice cream

Dessert is rarely if ever my favorite part of the meal, and usually I’m not even particular about having it at all, but dear sweet Lord this has a good shot at overturning that altogether. This deserves three James Francos at once, count them, three: sooo gooooood. The flavor was stronger than is customary, which is a thousand times YES because Jesus God this was so rich and illegally creamy and it tasted more like green tea than diluted milk thank you thank you thank you Mad for Garlic. Fact: the picture kind of makes it look like the ice cream scoops and the tray are making the Joker face. This just renders everything that much better. HA HA HA

tiramisu cake

Isn’t this adorable? The picture is again suffering from a case of the blurs, but look at that little chocolate-powder garlic there, aw. The cake was also really good, I would have been satisfied with just a double serving of the green tea ice cream but even for someone not completely crazy about tiramisu (no, I do like it immensely, but I’ve noticed that fans of tiramisu get a little frightening when the culinary pushing comes to the shoving) it was excellent. Altogether excellent. And just today my brother’s birthday present for me arrived, which is a DVD that they’ve stopped making — honestly, the movie was released in 2005, why would you cease production like that? It’s pretty popular from what I gather — no, now I’m just lying, it’s not all that popular at all. It’s a cult hit, except here “cult” means “people who were teenage girls or close friends of teenage girls in 2005″. So he ordered it secondhand from a DVD rental store that was going out of business, and they shipped it in that rental-store plastic box that requires an authorized machine to get the disc out, oh laugh out loud. We pried it open and it is safe and sound in my hands. All miiiiiine. What are birthdays for, if not unreasonable demands? I have many others lined up for years to come.

07. 26. LUNCH

Vietnamese summer rolls

Saturday seminar class is great because afterwards we get to pig out like the totally fit and health-conscious college girls that we are. So I think this qualifies as summer rolls because it’s wrapped in lightly cooked rice paper — wait, is that the only prerequisite? At any rate that is what I am going to call them. I would have taken a picture of the wrapped result, but you’re kind of fully occupied when you’re trying to keep that wobbly vegetable mess of a baby safe in its placenta on your hands, so that sort of presence of mind is not going to happen. By the way, this restaurant is amazing. It has fantastic food and the most atrocious service that I’ve ever seen. They nearly refused to seat us, then they wouldn’t stop sneering. If we could have left tips, we definitely wouldn’t have. But the food was so incredible that we decided to put up with all the haughtiness.

seafood rice noodles

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten rice noodles with seafood instead of beef, and it’s actually not bad. The flavor is a lot stronger, and it’s more forthright and spicy than with meat, but it’s got a nice feel of its own. Also I ended up eating pretty much every single mussel in it, and the one shrimp, so I am satisfied with myself. I pretend that was my prerogative for sitting in front of the bowl.

pineapple fried rice

And not in front of this, which you might possibly know that I would murder an acquaintance or two for. Unfortunately it was on the other end of the table from mine, and even the picture wasn’t taken by me, I had to ask a favor, but the two spoonfuls I had were really, really, really, really, really good. No, but I’m not complaining, seriously, I hogged the mussels. And I was too full for much more of the fried rice anyway. Even if I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have stuck a toothbrush down my throat if I’d been offered more.