Jan 23
Leave it to the Taiwanese. First they stirred up the pot with their lavatory-themed restaurant, Modern Toilet, and now they’ve recreated airplane dining with A380 In-Flight Kitchen. Airline food has a bad rap, but plastic trays would be step up from toilet bowls, don’t you think?
Photo from Reuters. See more.
Check out my list of Accessible (Mostly) Southeast Asian Cookbooks on Flashlight Worthy. Yes, people still read books.
Even though I’m off the sugar, I was excited when a coworker brought back green tea and sweet potato flavored Kit Kats from Japan this week. I was just going to take pictures, but how do you not taste unusual varieties of candy from afar? I bit.
The green tea had proper bitter undertones; you’d probably be able to identify the flavor if pressed to do so. Maybe the creamy pale green color would help, too. But in the U.S., orange signals sweet potato even though not all yams, sweet potatoes, whatever (I know they’re not the same) are so brightly hued. Orange dye wouldn't have even helped the butter yellow wafer because it tasted like super sweet white chocolate and nothing more, not even a hint of vegetal goodness.
Word is Japanese Kit Kats have been known to come in limited editions flavored with corn, watermelon and salt, and even soy sauce. Check out the Japanese KitKat Flickr pool that includes chiles, McFlurry, macchiato and more.
1/2 I’m not ashamed to admit that a good food court is one of the few things in life I can get excited about. And by good, I mean a well-curated space offering diverse foodstuffs from the Asian continent. Essentially, an indoor hawker center (I’m not persnickety about hygiene but I do love me some air conditioning).
Singapore really takes the cake in this genre, which isn’t surprising since they prefer modern tidiness over grit. Yes, some might say soulless compared to say, Malaysia, Vietnam…or really anywhere in Southeast Asia. Of course you can eat outside in Singapore too; it’s just that everything’s organized and regulated in comparison.
I love the Food Republic concept. I even watched a television segment about its founder while recuperating in our hotel (one of the many evening spent lying in bed rather than gallivanting around town—I got like zero drinking accomplished on vacation). The thing about these restaurant collections is that for the most part, they’re not mega-chains, many are extensions or evolutions of local eateries, and you won’t find all of the same establishments in each mall.
I first stumbled upon a Food Republic in the Wisma Atria and they had a little of everything: Hainanese chicken rice, herbal soups, sushi, dim sum, laska and so on. We vowed to return for dinner but after spending all day going from mall to mall (nearly all of the shops on Orchard Road are connected) we had strayed too far to go back, plus, we’d already discovered a million other places where we wanted to eat (ultimately, My Mum’s Place in Paragon across from the always packed, distressingly named, Spageddies.)
Our last night in Singapore, after eating so-so Indonesian food at House of Sundanese in Suntec City we did the mall-to-mall crawl and eventually found ourselves in another Food Republic. This one was classy and designed to look like a library with green-shaded desk lamps, wood tables, book wallpaper and padded leather signage. Seriously? A library-themed food court full of amazing Southeast Asian treats in a ginormous mall?! I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced this level of awesome before.
We desperately need an NYC Food Republic. The equivalent would be going to…well, we don’t have real malls in Manhattan. But imagine a giant suburban mall at Union Square. There would be a food court but minus any McDonald’s or KFCs (they would be in the mall, as they are in Singapore, but not as part of the food court). Instead, you might find some of the beloved Red Hook vendors. You couldn’t get DiFara but definitely those Artichoke guys (they’re expanding, right?). Obviously, street cart favorites like Kwik Meal and Calexico could be there. You could go trendy with a salumeria stand, porchetta and charcuterie too. There would have to be bbq, bagels, oh, and deli food and hot dogs but not Junior’s or Nathan’s who would certainly jump on the wagon, Rachael Ray would also want her burgers represented but the public would demand a Shake Shack satellite (I say the public because I’ve never eaten there. Weird, I know) Will Goldfarb could pretend Picnick never happened and get in on the desserts. Duh, and a speakeasy stall, mixology for the masses. Alcohol is one thing Singaporean malls totally lack because they are lame that way. There would have to be drinks. The theme could be Gangs of New York and it could be decked out like Tamanay Hall. Or maybe the Immigrant Experience, yes, the second location in midtown would have Ellis Island memorabilia everywhere. I see pushcarts, newsies and chamber pots.
Do note the books tucked into the shelves in front of the stands. No eating in the library?
Many of the Food Republic shops are showy with big picture windows letting diners watch their Chinese donuts being kneaded, cut and deep fried in a giant oil-filled wok. Or their prata being rolled out and filled with tasty stuffings…
I could only make room for something small, I mean, I wasn’t going to not try something, so James and I shared a cheese prata with the default vegetarian curry containing a lone okra pod. The griddled pancakes weren’t too oily and there was just a hint of mild white cheese (I couldn’t say what type). There’s no getting around the fact that prata are heavy, though. I restrained myself from ordering two and then thought twice when I noticed the woman in front of my getting three (if I were truly nosy, I could’ve followed her to see if she was dining with two others). I am always humbled by the culinary fortitude of Asian girls.
I didn’t realize the name of the stall was What You Do Prata until we were leaving. Despite the silly moniker, the food is a notch more serious. They have guy who makes your prata on demand. I was kind of paralyzed by indecision because in NYC we only have roti canai, no choice of filling or sauce. Here, you could have egg, onion, cheese, combinations of those or meat, but then I think chicken or mutton makes a prata become a murtabak. And there were curries in steam table trays behind glass. Everyone else seemed to know what everything was despite no labels.
Typically in Southeast Asia I haven’t been stymied by language barriers, Singapore is super English-friendly, it’s the food customs. I was thinking of this when I read about Ferran Adria being taken to Katz’s. Even though he could communicate with the Dominican counter guy in Spanish, it’s not like he knew how and what to order.
Roti canai, a flaky, layered pancake that’s always served with a little cup of curry that usually contains as small bone-in chicken piece and one potato chunk, is something you’ll often see as an appetizer in Malaysian restaurants in NYC. I’ve since realized this is weird. For one, what we call roti is prata in Southeast Asia. That’s fine, just a semantics issue. It only occurred to me this time, on my third visit to Singapore, that roti, prata, whatever, isn’t even Malay (though it could be argued that it is Malaysian). It’s something you find at Muslim Indian stalls, a style that I’ve heard called mamak (don’t know if that’s an un-PC term or not). So, Malaysian restaurants in New York, which are run by ethnic Chinese serving Muslim Indian food, are really no different than the American restaurants run by Brits or Australians in Asia that serve tacos, bbq and Cajun food all together.
But more importantly, I have no idea how to categorize prata. Prata is a Singaporean bastardization of Indian paratha so is it Singaporean because it's part of the country's culture or still Indian? Malaysians would claim prata too and they are more Muslim than Singaporeans so is it also Malaysian? Ok, I'm going to call it Malaysian and Singaporean but not Indian, convoluted as it may seem. The closest local example I can think of is whether gyros are Greek or American. It's crazy when food starts making me think like a librarian.
What You Do Prata * Suntec City, 3 Temasek Blvd., Singapore
1/2 I wonder if people in Malaysia read about fast food sensations on NYC blogs? Probably not. I keep tabs on a few Singaporean and Malaysian blogs, and one of the things I find most fascinating are foreign trends. In the mid-2000s I kept hearing about Rotiboy, which I eventually tried.
Last year I started noticing internet chatter about Indonesian donut chain J.Co. I was particularly amused by their use of outré ingredients like cheese. And the alcapone donut combined with a bullet hole motif on the company’s cardboard boxes was kind of sassy.
So, when I was unexpectedly faced with a big J.Co Donuts café with seating (I always imagined them as a take out counter) at Bugis Junction right after a fun stop at Raffles Hospital, a block away, I had to sample the wares even though I’d just eaten sweet, buttery kaya toast.
One vacation problem is that I use the break as a license to snack with hedonistic abandon. I’d buy anything that caught my fancy whether or not I had an appetite for it at the time. Consequently, lots of snacks sat around the hotel room not getting eaten at their prime.
I thought getting four donuts to share with another was being kind of gluttonous, but I had nothing on the two teenage boys in front of me in line who got three donuts apiece on a plate to eat right there on the spot.
These donuts, mocha and tiramisu, had a glossy unusually thick layer of frosting that would be gooey if fresh and warm. When I tasted these the next morning, they were still good but the chocolate had hardened like Magic Shell. It was almost like having a candy layer atop a donut that wanted to flake off in chunks.
Green tea tasted like green tea; I’m more into the color than the flavor. The most interesting donut by far was the cheese. James was scared of it, but I thought it had grotesque charm. I actually prefer hole-in-the-middle non-filled donuts just for the sweet bready yeastiness. This has all that softness with a salty melted parmesan-esque (funny, I just looked up their own description and it's "New Zealand cheese." I told you Southeast Asia was obsessed with Kiwi dairy) coating. I expected something more bagel-y, but nope, it was a genuine donut encased in cheese just like it looked.
It wouldn’t make a half-bad breakfast treat, especially if it had some bacon crumbles sprinkled on. Though being Southeast Asia, they’d most likely use “floss,” the ubiquitous flaked jerky that shows up in strange places.
J.Co Donuts & Coffee * Bugis Junction, 200 Victoria St., Singapore
Maybe because I have tenuous ties to both Nevada (my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother both lived in the Silver State) and Basques (my father’s mother’s mother was Basque, though not in Nevada, Texas, more like. Would that make me 1/8 Basque? That might as well be zero, as I don't think anything less than a quarter counts for squat when claiming ethnicity), I actually read an article, "Meat and Greet," in today’s T Magazine.
Normally, my attention span for the section is next to nonexistent. I can’t get enthused over $13,000 shell-encrusted busts (statues not décolletage) and $4,300 capes. But dwindling cultures in far-flung parts of the country are interesting. It kind of reminds me of the incongruous Luso-American Cultural Center, a block from my apartment. There aren't any Portuguese in Carroll Gardens that I'm aware of, the building stands.
This isn’t Basque like the brand new Txikito–close in spirit to modern Spain–this is hefty mutt fare that has steeped in America's West for over a century. I’ve never tasted this style of cuisine, though I imagine the paella and lamb steaks are the equivalent of Italian-American veal parm and spaghetti and meatballs. I’d like to try it, though I’m not sure when I’ll have the opportunity. Idaho and Nevada, two Basque hotbeds, aren’t exactly on my radar.
Photo from Mike's Gallery
I’ve never been to a Sam’s Club, which I think is like a Wal-Mart owned Costco, right? But I still love the idea of Mas Club, a warehouse store devoted to products shipped from Mexico.
I don’t know how this will translate here since we’re more of a plantain than a tortilla city. They’ll probably only put them in Texas, Arizona and California. Ok, nevermind, we don’t have Sam’s Clubs in NYC anyway.
In New Jersey and the outer boroughs I’m accustomed to big Asian supermarkets but we don’t really Latino equivalents, at least that I’m aware of. That’s why I was so wowed by Mariana’s in Vegas a few years ago. That market is probably no big deal to West Coasters where freshly baked conchas and myriad types of tripe are easy to find.
I would like to pretend that I grew up eating wonderfully nuanced Mexican food, but the truth is that my family’s favorite venue was Taco Time. The regional chain was/is better than Taco Bell because they deep-fry their skinny burritos, which are like a cross between a chimichanga and a flauta and they serve Mexi-fries, glorified tater tots. I very rarely get homesick for the Northwest but I have fond Taco Time memories.
Yes, I suppose it’s one month to Thanksgiving. Time to make reservations if that’s your type of thing or start scouring the magazines. My holiday issues have been pouring in. And as much as I get a soothing sense of calm from planning Thanksgiving meals, I’m kind of relieved that I’ll be out of the country November 27.
Potatoes, yams, pumpkin pies, pecan pies, stuffing…it’s all starch and sugar (and turkey is flat out dull), things I try to avoid while also trying to not talk about it too much because frankly, who cares what you’re trying not to eat.
I’ll board a plane at early the 27th and won’t touch ground until it’s Friday night in Bangkok. Too soon for personal homesickness, but Americans (I rarely encounter Americans in S.E. Asia—mostly British, Australians and Germans) in the mood for “traditional American dishes such as roasted whole beef tenderloin sliced with jalapeños, smoked Texas BBQ pork ribs, Louisiana baked darn salmon and California BBQ Chicken with a glass of California wine,” will find that most of the big hotels put on Thanksgiving meals like this example from the Novotel.
Hong Kong, where I’ll be a week later, takes quite a different approach to the holiday. Would you fancy a HK$880 ($113 USD) menu serving Kumamoto oysters, warm horseradish and tomato broth, fresh crayfish and okra soup, prosciutto, roasted pumpkin and sage salad, slow-roasted turkey, foie gras and chestnut stuffing with shaved Brussels sprouts, cherry-yuzu soda and pecan and dark chocolate tart, vanilla bean ice cream and bourbon caramel? At least that’s what they were serving last year at Felix in the Peninsula Hotel.
I love Singapore to death. I would move there in a heartbeat if given the option. Even though guidebooks view it as a two-day-and-under starting point for more exotic Southeast Asian travel and anyone who knows anything about the orderly island believes it to be authoritarian (I think the only association many Americans have with Singapore is that Michael Fay caning incident) and sterile.
I love it because I love rules (not that I actually follow them) and orderliness. While much of Southeast Asia is smoggy, smothering chaos, Singapore is as easy as (durian) pie. It’s Asia in cuisine but everything is in English and communication problems are few. Air conditioning is in abundance, and everything is spotless; no touts, no street beggars, lots of malls–even the occasional homeless cat is well behaved. Hawker stalls spell everything out for you, almost always in English and often with photos. I think that’s why intrepid foodies sing the tiny city-state’s praises. Calvin Trillin and Tony Bourdain immediately come to mind.
As I’m researching dining for my second Thailand trip, I’m reminded of how intimidating it can be to face a menu lacking a single English word (minus the baffling “T steak”), even on the Coca Cola logo. Even Beijing and Shanghai weren’t that opaque. Five years ago when I first visited, I was underemployed and actually had the free time to listen to Thai language tapes and attempted to learn a few characters. I’m not so delusional this time. I’ve been formally studying Spanish for over a year and still have the vocabulary of a dimwitted toddler.
But Singapore is not all magical chili crabs and happy bowls of laska. There is a dark side. I’ve found my new cheer-up Flickr pool, Ugly Singapore. I’m frequently petty, it doesn’t take much to set me off or ruin my day. NYC can be exhausting and loud and soul crushing…and then I see people in Singapore genuinely upset about Oreos left in the frozen chicken section at a grocery store and everything is put in perspective. Ok, I’m not uptight at all.
If one stray bag of garbage on the side of the road is enough to set them off, imagine how they’d take the perpetual trash bag heaps in New York or street couches. Now, if they would just spend more time making babies instead of documenting society’s ills…
Thai menu photo from ImportFood.com
These unnaturally colored mooncakes exemplify why I love places like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. They’re not afraid to experiment with food, and I don’t mean in a molecular gastronomy way. Both of my visits to the region happened to fall during mooncake season and I was amazed each time by the number of modern varieties. New York’s Chinatowns are still firmly entrenched in the traditional baked red bean cakes not these rainbow hued “snow skin” types.
Of course tradition has its place. But I don’t think that quality ingredients and crazy presentations need be mutually exclusive. I think much of the reason why I can’t get excited about local, sustainable, organic or whatever, is because while possibly tasty, it’s not very fun. Or maybe pristine produce and small producers just doesn’t rev me up. Novelty impresses me, I’m afraid.
I have no idea how this particular Chinese chef created his gummi bear and lavender flavored mooncakes or achieved those shades of pink and blue. Probably not naturally–is that a problem? It doesn’t bother me, but I’m also fine with fake green pistachio gelato, red velvet cake…and even Velveeta.
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