Author Archives: Bangkok Glutton

Taiwan’s white bitter melons

By now you will have probably already seen the viral clip of The Cure’s Robert Smith interviewed by journalist Carrie Keagan at this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. If not, well, I’m not sure which one to link to, and where have you been anyway, it’s everywhere, even Piers Morgan has covered it. Morgan even claims to have wooed his wife with The Cure songs (instead of dancing alongside her and eventually biting her neck, like other lizards would normally have done). This must be very horrifying for Robert Smith, sorry, you can rest in peace now, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

The interview is most often pitched as an illustration of the differences between Britons and Americans, but like Jordan Peele’s new movie “Us”, I think it serves as a Rorschach test for the viewer’s own prejudices. In my case, I was convinced Carrie Keagan was the alternative music version of a social-climbing parvenue, the kind who listens to the “Wish” album and then proclaims herself a mega-fan, versus a long-suffering misfit who had to eat lunch with their one friend at school and listened to “Pornography” before bed in order to make themselves feel less alone (Hmmm? What’s that? I’m not talking about myself you’re talking about myself.) It turns out she is a “Japanese Whispers” fan and, although it’s technically considered a singles collection, whatever, I have to eat my words and pretty, ebullient people like Carrie Keagan can also be closet Goths even though they probably never had to pay any of the social cost for it, what, I’m not talking about myself why are you so obsessed with me.

The Cure are a good band to consider when it comes to discussing a wide-ranging, even surprising, fandom. They appealed to everyone from the likeliest (Trent Reznor, I feel you) to the unlikeliest of music fans (Piers Morgan) and everyone in between, thanks to the universality of Robert Smith’s songwriting and unvarnished voice, and some really stellar musicianship that never really gets a lot of attention because everyone is paying attention to Robert Smith (not his fault). Watching The Cure’s set from the induction ceremony, I was struck by how generous they were in playing for this smug peroxided bunch of phonies who represents everything in music that The Cure have always hated (and will probably induct a band like Poison any year now, just you wait).

Wait, what was I saying? Oh yes, a wide-ranging fandom. Yes, really, that was what I was talking about, not about how rock music has become equated with the oppressor Donald Trump types of the world and has lost all credibility as a resistance art form as a result. Oh wait, I mean a wide-ranging fandom …

… which Taiwanese food also enjoys. What I’m saying is, Taiwanese food appeals to a whole range of people, from the foodie Gluttony types to the junky sweet tooth set to the genuine, food-of-the-people champions — like The Cure’s discography, there’s something for almost everyone there (provided they aren’t Motley Crue fans or whatever).

Colored like an apple, shaped like a banana

I’ve been to Taiwan before. I consider that my pure Glutton trip, an attempt to inhale as many of the things I’ve always loved about Taiwanese food in Taipei. This trip was a more wide-ranging jaunt, a budget tour through the island, focused on covering as many stops as possible from Sun Moon Lake to Alishan to Yehliu Geopark and every souvenir shop doling out commissions in between. The food was different from what I would choose to eat in Taipei, but it ended up being a good thing and probably much more representative of what regular Taiwanese people outside of the capital city eat.

Open-air hotpot in the mountains

Of course, there is always something new to discover here. In my case, it was the “tea egg”, which our guide said was the only street food allowed to be sold in the Alishan area during Chiang Kai-Shek’s time because the vendor was a widow with children. Besides this story, tea eggs are simply the perfect snack, savory nuggets of protein stewed in a broth of tea, soy sauce and Chinese five-spice powder for long enough to form the characteristic marbled pattern on their surfaces, reminiscent of how Tom Hardy looks when Venom is taking over.

Tea eggs on the street

Because they are such perfect snacks, tea eggs are pretty much everywhere, on the street, in tea shops, even in the 7-11. But it took finally arriving in Taipei to suss out what I had been wanting to try the whole time: Taiwan’s supposedly ubiquitous fried chicken (I love fried chicken, did I ever mention that?). This magic stuff is like a half of a chicken pounded flat through sheer WTFery (bones be damned) and then lightly breaded, fried to a face-sized slab and cut into squares to allow for easy grazing from a paper bag. It comes in normal and “spicy” (which is a lot like Nashville’s “hot chicken” in flavor) and is so delicious that I forgot to take a photo until the very end, when I was finally able to stop myself from eating for long enough to snap a picture.

Fried chicken on Hanzhong Street

Also delicious: bubble tea. I know we all say we’ve had bubble tea, but the fact is that no one has had bubble tea unless they’ve had it in Taiwan, the actual birthplace of bubble tea. The inventor of “pearl milk tea” is said to have been Chun Shui Tang, but count us as Tiger Sugar converts, thanks to the addition of dark brown sugar syrup to its signature drinks.

Praise be Tiger Sugar

And then there are the bitter melon juice stands. Like Robert Smith’s hair, the sight of several rows of bitter melons lined up like soldiers at the front of a juice stall could appear intimidating. But these gourds are not the light green variety commonly adorning eggy stir-fries and pork broth-based clear soups elsewhere in Asia. Fortunately (unfortunately?), Taiwan’s produce is almost unparalleled (gorgeous guavas and rose apples, etc) and its fat white bitter melons — said to be milder than their green counterparts — are no exception. The juice is augmented with honey and ice cubes and is a bittersweet jolt to the senses, the Goth shadow to the ebullient lightness enjoyed by the happy and uncomplicated fangirls of the world. Just like The Cure (YAY I DID IT), bitter melon juice is the darkness by which all the sweetness of the world can be measured.

Mee krob at the Florida Hotel

In my last few posts, I’ve been focusing a lot on weight, but I’m going to take the opportunity now to head on back to a golden oldie, age. I do this because only very recently — well after everyone else, it would seem — I discovered that beloved Thai-Chinese cookshop Yong Lee had closed down. The chef, second generation after the passing of her father, founder Keepong sae Dan, has developed diabetes, and decided to put her health first. It’s sad (for me), but a very wise decision. It’s just a shame since there were many times I passed by the open shopfront on motorcycle and failed to go in, thinking I would have time in the near future for a meal. Unfortunately, no. I will miss their nuea pla kapong pad prik dum (stir-fried seabass with black peppercorns) and hae gun tod grob (crispy fried shrimp dumplings), and a bunch of other stuff besides.

Yong Lee now

Not that I would have been able to try the food in the past couple of weeks. While in Japan, I somehow managed to injure myself in what I have been told was an eating-related ailment … like an athletic injury, but for people who stuff their faces. What I thought to be an ear infection was actually a painful inflammation of the joint in my jaw, which my doctor says must have been triggered after chewing too enthusiastically on Nagano’s apple-fed beef. The pain was enough to cause a migraine that radiated all the way to the top of my head. So I was ordered to eat soup and rice porridge until the pain went away.

I imagined a future like this lady:

But luckily the pain went away after a few days, which was lucky for me because I went to Florida Hotel’s Tampa Coffee Shop (not to be confused with its Orlando Dining Room) for the first time a little while later. No one calls it by its coffee shop name though, preferring to simply call it “Florida Hotel Restaurant” (43 Phaya Thai Rd., 02-247-0991).

This is a restaurant that inspires a lot of questions. First and foremost, where have you been all my life, Florida Hotel Restaurant?

Pork ribs with barbecue sauce and the Florida Hotel salad

The answer: it’s always been there, since 1968, and my ignorance and laziness kept me from going sooner. My loss, because this is the Thai-Chinese-Western diner of my dreams, attached to a hotel that is abandoned-looking enough to plausibly be haunted (some Google reviews: “feels like no one stays there”, “old fashioned”) but bright and crowded enough inside to inspire comparisons to the diner in “Happy Days” or, if you’re too young for that, “the Peach Pit” in “Beverly Hills 90210” (RIP Luke Perry).

The original chef is said to have learned his recipes at the knee of Rama V’s own farang chef, but the menu doesn’t stick to the old cookshop favorites that most of those types of restaurants (like Yong Lee) featured. If you are too lazy to flip through the menu, specials are listed on the wall: there is a hamburger, and filet mignon, and a freaking club sandwich. The barbecued ribs, a photo of which adorns the menu’s front cover, are good enough to be found on a paper plate in any backyard in actual Florida, tender and smothered in a ketchupy sauce with a hint of spice. The special Florida Hotel salad comes with big chunks of canned white asparagus and unwrapped slices of processed cheese (please don’t cheese your dining companion). And there’s soup! Although …

“French onion soup”

No, the reason why the place is so crowded isn’t the recommended Western-inspired specials. It’s because of their renditions of Thai-Chinese favorites, like the goy see mee (stir-fried egg noodles in gravy) and the mee krob (a tamarind- and citrus-touched noodle dish that I’ve just learned is Thai-Chinese, not pure Thai).

So I suppose there is plenty more I will have to try to really get to know Florida Hotel Restaurant. But when you are newly freed from a dependence on soup, gnawing on a pork rib with sauce is enough to remind you that you’re not dead yet.

Shirako roll at Yamazaki in Toyosu Fish Market

Every year, I go to Nagano for about a week of skiing, during which I find new ways to make my legs and feet hurt. Because going up and down the stairs becomes a challenge, it helps me pretend that I am losing weight. We eat the same nabe stews every night, I drink too much sake, and I come close to being Gwyneth Paltrowed at least once. It’s pretty much the same thing every time … although I have to admit that even after 4-5 hours of skiing, a steady diet of comfort food and booze has me looking more like this than Lindsey Vonn:

Me, apres-ski

(Photo from BBC)

But one of the great things about being only two hours away from Tokyo via shinkansen is that … there is Tokyo. And one of the great things about Tokyo is that there is always something new to explore. It’s a lot like Bangkok in that way. My friend Naomi took us to Nihonbashi institution Taimeiken, rightly revered for churning out Japanicized renditions of Western favorites such as beef stew and breaded cutlets in a cooking style known as yoshoku and similar to some of the stuff you find in old-timey Bangkok places like Yong Lee . It’s an interesting fusion that ends up being not-quite-Western, but not-really-Japanese, either.

Downstairs is a casual, first-come-first-served kind of affair, but the second floor (reservations only) is a more dressy deal, replete with white tablecloths and shrimp cocktail on the menu. It doesn’t really matter though — either floor you choose, first-timers are still expected to order the city-famous omurice dish “chicken rice omelet”, popularized in the seminal 1985 Japanese food geek movie “Tampopo“.

The famous omurice as it comes to your table

The waiter was concerned that I did not know how to eat this dish, but Naomi assured him that I had indeed watched the movie “Tampopo”. Although I’m not always a fan of being told how to eat, I understood how important it was to the kitchen that I slit the omelet lengthwise, just enough to pierce the skin but not enough to cut all the way through to the ketchup-slathered rice beneath. The omelet’s innards, barely cooked, are then laid out like a blanket on the plate and drizzled with even more ketchup from a gravy boat in a move that is commonly known as YIKES.

Before eating

Do I regret passing up the shrimp cocktail and coquilles saint jacques for egg and rice with ketchup? Maybe kind of, but also worth it as a food tourist to say, “Oh, I had that.” Not ordering it the next time I darken Taimeiken’s door, though, which is something that is definitely happening on my next trip to Tokyo.

Another return trip I hope to make is to Toyosu Fish Market, which opened last October as a successor to the much-lamented Tsukiji. While Tsukiji’s outer market (and Sushi Zanmai, so don’t worry Thai people) is still open to fish-loving tourists, the business end of the deal — namely, the tuna auction — moved over to the new place in January of this year.

Some guys cutting up fish

To see the auction, you can either watch from an upper observation window, or apply to the lower observation deck a month ahead of time. This is so that, unlike at Tsukiji, the people actually working will not be bothered by lameass bystanders getting all up in their business. However, I have to admit, and I am a little embarrassed to say, that I totally completely lucked out by having a family friend who went to high school with one of the tuna vendors on the main floor, so we were able to bypass the auction at 5:30 and stroll on in at 7:30. And yes, I was totally a lameass bystander who got all up in everyone’s business as they were trying to go about their regular day.

Orders for the day

A maguro bocho, a sword used to break down tuna

It was worth it (for me, not for them) because I got a really lovely breakfast of maguro and chutoro, eaten with toothpicks on a table used only minutes before to break down tuna destined for the Conrad and Ritz-Carlton.

The wholesale seafood section, where you used to be able to purchase the stuff you would later find at your favorite sushi bar, is not yet open to the public. However, you can view the action from an upper observation window in an adjoining building which is accessible via outside walkway. You can also purchase some sushi paraphernalia and produce on the fourth floor of the adjoining intermediate wholesale building.

Fairy squid for sale

You can also simply sample actual sushi at one of the sushi bars that have relocated to Toyosu (with long queues to match). The place we hit up was Yamazaki (not yet crowded at 10am), where we got an omakase set for 6000 yen and copious amounts of beer and sake which added substantially to the bill and rendered me useless for much of the rest of the day. But hey, great for a first-time visitor, yes?