November 26, 2004

• Salt and pepper squid. I love Vietnamese food. Especially now the hot weather's here, six in the evening and it's 36C.
• Reuben sandwich. Sauerkraut, pastrami and melted cheese on toasted rye. Yum!
• Hmm...If is isn't that great a lot of the time, why would I always order it ? This seems like a recipe for constant disappointment. I order things that are difficult to prepare; requiring a lot of work that I'm generally not prepared to do myself. The cost of the ingredients always comes into play, as well. I never order rice, noodles, pasta, or any inexpensive carb, as the entre
• Caesar salad, New York style cheesecake, apple pie a la mode. Stuff that, even when so-so is reasonable, and when fab is fabtastic.
• Chocolate cake. Half the time, it's some store-bought stuff, dry and crumbly. The other half of the time - ecstasy.
• I second the Caesar salad. Some places I find outstanding (I am particularly fond of Outback and Panera), and others are horrible (never, ever again at Ruby Tuesdays). There isn't really a food that I expect them to do well, but they never do. I don't have any strong, childhood associations -- my mom cooked, but it was rarely something special. Mostly, if I'm at a new restaurant I'll pick something from the menu I've never had before (as long as it isn't fish). My reasoning is that if it is there, then it's probably more than editable. For example, I recently had spagetti in a carbonara sauce at a local italian place. I said to myself "a white sauce with bacon bits? you must be joking." But it was very, very good. Same thing with the agnolotti di zucca at the local Biaggi's. Squash puree? Brown sauce with almonds and parmesan? But I was plesantly surprised. The moral of the comment is that I like to try new things, and usually give them the benefit of the doubt.
• I don't think I've had food that meets the criteria. It sounds like a strange concept.
• I second Salted and Spicey Squid. When it's good, it's so good you know it's bad for you. When it's bad, it's completely forgettable. However, Moroccan Chicken is my menu weakness. It always sounds sooo good and interesting, and yet I always find it incredibly disappointing, approaching inedible (for me). Took a few times before I pledged never to order it again.
• Nattomaki.
• Salt and pepper squid. The last time I had salt and pepper squid I was in Adelaide, funnily enough. It was yum. But I say Lobster Thermidor, which my parents sometimes prepare in Niv
• Yam neua (Thai rare beef salad). So very good when it is good.
• Lobster's too expensive for me. I have no idea what "Niv�se" means. *looks around house for pho*
• Hmm, I have encoding issues. When's Xmas in your French Revolutionary calendar, you ol' Bonapartologist?
• oh wait wikipedia is my friend.
• I've been hunting for a really good pizza outside of the New York/Boston metropolitan areas for about 10 years now, and I have yet to find it. Even Escape From New York pizza in San Francisco is sub-par. So, I always try the pizza.
• I always ask for the moose, but they keep bringing me this chocolate whip stuff.
• A Monte Cristo sandwich. When it's done well, it's heavenly. When it's done badly, it sits in your stomach like a nasty hunk of grease, assuming you can force yourself to eat it. I've had enough bad ones that I don't get them very often, but occasionally the siren call will get me. I'm going to keep trying Tex-Mex up here in Joisey, even if the best Tex-Mex I've had since I left Texas has been a toss-up between Amy's frozen organic vegetarian enchiladas and nachos/fajitas at Chili's. That's sad.
• NOT LIVER. i tasted that once, and immediately decided to NEVER, EVER, EVER PLACE IT IN MY MOUTH EVER AGAIN, AMEN. talk about a horrible mouthfeel! egad!
• Sandwiches are squarely in this category. I make them at home, and they come out limp and uninspiring, like Eddie Murphy's "Houseburger" concept. Yet when we get a prepackaged sandwich from Whole Foods Market here in Austin, they are fantastic. I am guessing they are using a larger variety of fresh ingredients and have special toppings that they use. I just can't make a great sandwich at home without spending over 15 minutes doing it. Also I think that a lot of restaurant food in general tastes better from a restaurant than prepared at home, and I can't just chalk it up to MSG. I suspect they get a better grade of cheese and meat than the supermarkets stock. I'm still trying to figure this one out.
• Uni. It's either wonderful or it tastes like phlegm that's washed up on the beach (phlegm flotsam or is that phlegm jetsam?).
• Flotsam is the stuff that floated away when the ship went down. Jetsam are the items you threw overboard to try and stop the ship from going down in the first place. Insurance is obliged to pay for the former, not the later. you know... for future reference So I'd guess it would jetsam, since the crew would have thrown it overboard to make the phlegm go away
• My test for Mexican restaurants is cheese enchilidas. If they do those well, I'll come back to try other dishes. Mr.Knickbocker: it's a search for perfection, sort of. If you've tried something that knocked your socks off (causing you to lose one), searching for other versions that are as spectacular can be chancy fun.
• It's amazing to me how hard it is to find a good grilled steak in a restaurant. I'm often afraid to order it in a new place for fear I'll get some non-aged, non-tenderized or overcooked piece of shoe leather. Fortunately, here in Ontario, there's always a Keg nearby. Mmmmmmmm...red meat rocks!
• Chili relleno. When it's good, it's heavenly, and wonderfully bad for you. When it's bad, it's usually still edible. When it's inedible, I leave, then come back and burn the restaurant down during the night for their sins against humanity. Fortunately I don't have to do that very often.
• Sweetbreads.
• World's biggest euphemism, that name.
• Hamburger. How hard is it to find a restaurant that serves flavorful, juicy, medium rare grilled ground beef? Apparently pretty hard. Vietnamese salad rolls are another one, usually disappointing but occasionally amazing.
• I'll add Roast Beef to Rocket88's steak comment. It's a ubiquitous piece of meat that when done badly, like most places do, even those so called "high-end" steakhouses, it's a grainy, rubber, chewey, greasy (especially Prime Rib), or alternately - dry, teething toy. Coming from the Anglo/colonial, peace, order and good government, background that I do, nothing is held in higher esteem than a Roast of Beef and a Yorkshire pud. with drippin's.....mmmmmmm
• Fried Dill Pickles. If I see them on the menu, I order them without fail. Sometimes, they are an overbattered greasy gut bomb. But then there are those that are simply divine.
• I'm talking about the kind of food which isn't that great a lot of the time, but when it is "on", it totally rules your mouth. pussy.
• mee-ow!
• french onion soup
• quidnunc ... I don't think the "preferred approach" to eating that particular dish is as a food item.
• Seeing Rocket88 and Zedcasters comments I will have to add salad. You know you're in trouble when you order the salad and you end up with "hospital salad", for lack of a better word. It's best identified by the whitish cast to the salad, emanating from the rock-hard chunks of iceberg lettuce stems that are already browned around the fringes. Sometimes you'll get token shreds of carrots. The big-name chains have their own "fancy" mixture with darker strains of lettuce and different ingredients, but even that recipe seems to be exactly the same from place to place. It's rare to find a truly good salad, but then again I probably don't go to the right restaurants.
• Lamb. When it's good, it's like heaven. When it's not, it's orfal.
• Reuben sandwiches and huevos rancheros. Not together, though. The possiblility of disappoinbtment is always high but (hope springs eternal) when these dishes are good... they're very, very good.
• I don't think the "preferred approach" to eating that particular dish is as a food item. Aaaaah ... that explains why mrs quidnunc won't let me keep mustard in the bedroom :(
• Huevos Rancheros: Are the eggs supposed to be runny? I always loved this dish but after awhile I couldn't stomach the runny eggs.
• Risotto. It never works, it takes too long, I should know better, but in theory it's so good. immlass: Oh how the Reuben can go bad. The one at Fran's in Toronto (24h Diner) is a triple decker, with thick bread. Too much egg. I felt sick for days.
• There's a Mrs quidnunc? *mind boggles* She must be one cool lady!
• I believe "Mrs. Quidnunc" is this week's euphemism for the drifter he abucted, forced to wear a Dorothy Gale dress, and locked in his cellar.
• duckstab: I agree wholeheartedly on the French Onion soup. When it's good, it's sooooo goooood, but when it's bad, you want to cry. (Well, I do.) I also agree with the people who said "steak." Being from Texas, I want a steak that says "Muh!" when I poke it with the fork. (i.e., the old "slap it's ass, show it the fire, and stick it on my plate" ethic.) Most places burn the crap out of it, or try to pass off a bad cut of meat.
• Hot and sour soup. When it's good, it's good. But, it seems, it's only good in California, because the place here that makes it has the absolute wrong idea of what I expect the soup to be.
• tortilla soup
• Paraphrasing MCT: Tripe. When it's good, it's like heaven. When it's not, it's offal. But really, I've been on the hunt for good Lobster Thermidor ever since I tasted that little piece of nirvana in a run-down hole-in-the wall restaurant in Penang, Malaysia.
• Funny how nobody mentioned a hamburger. There are a few places (very few) that make a bang-up, knock-em-down hamburger with everything on it including a 1/2 slice of sweet onion. Even though I'm pret'near committed to cutting meat out of my diet, every time I drive through Weiser, Idaho, home of the onion growers, I lustfor a good burger. Call me unAmurkin, but I refuse to eat a McPukeBurger
• Claypot dishes from chinese restaurants. There is a place around the corner from my apartment where if you order the catfish in blackbean sauce, the old woman walks from behind the counter with a fish-net and scoops your future dinner out of the tank right before your eyes (I apologize to all vegitarians, etc.) Fresh and heavenly. There is another place, on the other corner, where I ordered chicken-claypot one day, and it was so suspect that after eating it I went home to make sure none of my cats were missing. Ecchh! Koko: next time you are in San Francisco, try Amici's Pizza for a passable NY/Boston style.
• I love going out for breakfast, mainly because it's such a pain to prepare at home, at least before the caffeine kicks in. A good plate of bacon and eggs with hasbrowns and toast can set the tone for an exemplary day and a reliable provider is to be treasured. Also Won Ton soup. And a good roast beast.
• Seafood laksa. Cantonese barbeque duck. Anything with chicken livers. Anything that will gross out my daughter.
• Pho. Lovely, lovely pho.
• Mmmmmm... I'll second the Laksa, vitalorgnz! I'm also a sucker for ordering Satay despite a near-guarantee that I will be disappointed as I'm of the opinion that it's only done right a la Kajang Satay. The most important part is the peanut sauce which no-one seems to get right outside of Malaysia. Inside of Malaysia, it's too dark to read.
• Believe it or not, coffee. Some places SUCK at making it yet like bit of a dummy I keep ordering it. Would agree about french onion soup. Also Chinese food - some places just don't know how to make egg rolls, won ton soup or rice.
• Mao po tofu. When it is good mmm mmm mmm. But tofu in nasty brown goo with a few peas and something that may have once been a pig is far too often what shows up on the plate. When I lived in New York the quality of the mao po tofu was my way to deciding which of the 15 chinese places a block from my house was worth going to. Of course it helped that that was what I ordered half the time.
• rolypolyman, yeah, I think the huevos should be runny... but I see no reason why you shouldn't specify otherwise. wrenkin, did you say you had egg with your Reuben? That's one I've never come across. Interesting. Was it in the sandwich?
• Ginger beef, San Fran-style burritos, guacamole, chai, fish and chips; good equals; hot fresh cod or halibut, crispy batter, and the perfect layer of tasty creamy batter/fish mush between, just the right amount of hot tasty grease - served with malt vinegar, loads of fresh black pepper and fan-fuckingtastic tartar sauce. Bad equals old dish-sponge mystery fish, greasy mushy and undercooked batter, crap white vinegar and tartar sauce that tastes like somebody dug up some mayo and old pickle juice, farted in the blender and whipped it up. I feel strongly about fish and chips. Or Finch and Chimps as the bad version is called.
• If it's on the menu, it doesn't matter what I was originally in the mood for, meatloaf and/or lasagna must be ordered. Not because I've once tasted the Greatest Meatloaf EVER, but because I am a man that needs comfort, and comfort food I shall have! Oh, and I do rue the days when I get an awful rendition of either. If you're ever in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, on the corner of E. Palisade and Sylvan there is a diner. Do not, under any circumstances, order the meatloaf. You've been warned.
• Fried Dill Pickles. If I see them on the menu, I order them without fail. I've never seen FRIED dill pickles on any menu. What kind of restaurant serves them? What restaurant do you like them at?
• Great Gandhi on a spit, but you people are carnivorous! Falafel - yum, yum, yum! islander, I think you meant "eggs with hasbeans", no?
• I cook a lot, and moderately well, so when I go out, I always try to order something that I like, but would never in a million years make at home. For breakfast, I almost always order Eggs Benedict, because I will never have either the time or the inclination to make hollandaise sauce. Lunch and dinnertime I pick something that looks interesting but fussy, expensive to buy in 1-2 meal quantities, and/or time-consuming to make. Battered fish and chips, prime rib, crab cakes, fried chicken, a fancy salad with lots of stuff on it; things like that.
• moneyjane...Amen on the fish and chips...but make mine haddock. I've had it in Scotland with something they call "brown sauce" over there. Pure heaven. And for those who've mentioned Chinese food, what is it about black bean sauce that makes it taste completely different in every restaurant? When it's good its my favourite, but sometimes it's putrid. Luckily I've found a place that does it right, and as a bonus they have the best hot & sour soup anywhere.
• I'm a fish'n'chip fancier myself. So where do you go for fish and chips around here, Money? I like Pajo's on the dock in Steveston, King's Fare in Marpole, and sometimes Trolls in Horseshoe Bay; when I'm headed up to Whistler or Squamish. There used to be a couple of good fish'n'chip joints in the West End, but the last few times I've gone looking there, I've been disappointed. The best I've had were at the Lonsdale Fish'N Oyster bar, long since closed, and on the dock in Gibsons Landing; where the owner actually radios incoming fish boats to tie up with their catch as she runs out inventory on hand.
• Here's my list; Caesar Salad, calamari, sushi, pud thai, French onion soup, definately coffee, ..... Fortunately, I know the best places to go for each of these in my area and in Seattle. Thank God.
• "Pud thai"? Come over to my place baby, I have some fish sauce right here. *ahem* mechagrue, you have hit on it exactly - if I can cook it well myself, and I can cook a lot of things, why the hell would I pay for it? My choices above are things I don't have the knowledge, time or equipment to do myself. (apart from grossing out my daughter, which I can pretty much do any time. baby octopus kebabs are good, stray tentacles out of the mouth and all). moneyjane, fish and chips have reached their zenith here in the southern hemisphere, but not in restaurants. Proper fish and chips can only be had from dish and chip takeaway joints. In particular, Greek and Italian immigrants to Wellington have married their potato-frying skills to anglo-jewish battered fish. (Perhaps it's time for my monster monkey post on the origins of fish and chips in the Sephardic East End.) A battered bluenose or warehou fillet and a scoop of crisp chips, eaten out of newspaper on the rocks at Island Bay. If you're lucky, there will be a few crunchy blobs of batter at the bottom of the wrapping. Mmmmm.
• (Perhaps it's time for my monster monkey post on the origins of fish and chips in the Sephardic East End.) Let's see it! I have a great fish and chip shop quite close to me, but like proper French chips cooked in France the best. Although I'm sure the Belgian ones are great too. Moules frites -- mussels with chips -- is a great little feed.
• The secret to proper chips - and the Belgians do excel - is that the chips are par-cooked through in lower temperature frying oil before being turned golden and crisp in a second fry at higher temperature. Post preparation underway.
• If it's Chinese, Carribean, Indian, Native American, South American, Hawaiian, Spanish (expecially Catalan), French (especially Provencal), most Asian and many less familiar cuisines, I'll try it. If it's a lamb dish I'll try it again, though lamb's very disappointing when inexpertly cooked.
• White Rock used to have some excellent fish and chip shacks on the beach - not sure if they're around still. Had great fish n chips out of a shack by the railroad tracks in Squamish about 7 years or so back. There's a place near Britannia on the way to Squamish as well, but I think it's gone. Another one - frybread, or bannock. Everybody and their duck-eating bullfrog has a special recipe, so you never get the same experience twice. I had a seriously twee variation at Bin 941 that was really good, though I doubt you'd be caught dead whipping that variation up at any pow wow I ever been at.
• Fried pickles are deee-vine. If you've never had them, seek them out. They're wonderful.
• In that southern food bent, I also love fried green tomatoes, pickled watermelon and slimy okra. Mmmmmmmm. My mom told me last night she's going to send me a mess of okra if she can figure out how to keep it nice in the mail. I want gumbo!
• First I was with PareidoliaticBoy - If it stank more than a couple of times, why would I go back? Then some of you started in on the Chinese food, so I had to retrench. My impression of Chinese is that its quality is entirely a function of the freshness of the ingredients and the skill of the chef. (Is that a statement of the obvious?) One local restaurant can make the same dish in wildly varying degrees of palatabilty from one day to the next. I assume that's the chef. I've had bad Chinese food in Beijing, and great food from the local fast take-out place. Making good hot & sour soup is a challenge. Finding a good burger is also a challenge. There used to be a place called Brooksie's in Sharon, VT that made a good one, but it burned down. If you want to know how bad a burger can be, try a McDonalds in Beijing. (I know -"Why?" Call it an experiment.)
• PlanoTX, fried dill pickles are a Southern thing primarily. Sonic Hamburgers had them when I was a kid and they were called Pickle-O's. The places that I can get them now are The Purple Cow, a hamburger stand in Kingsport TN, Durty Nelly's, an Irish pub in Chattanooga TN, and A Salt and Battery in NYC. I occasionally find them at other pub places. I've also found a close corollary, the fried olive, at some Italian places. Yum.