by | 02/14/2014 · 3:01 pm

Glutton Abroad: Soup’s on

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei in Tokyo

Fetishizing food is encouraged in Japan. Much like how having an opinion on the best chicken rice or egg noodle in Bangkok lends you social currency among a certain set in Bangkok, the genuine appreciation of a certain dish or ingredient — in the right season, of course — is considered cultured, even necessary. Knowing about this stuff seems to be part of what being Japanese is all about.

So it’s not surprising that I always enjoy my trips to Japan … even though I almost always end up committing some horrible faux pas on some poor unsuspecting Japanese person (people). Once, as a guest in a holiday house with its own onsen bath, I was offered the opportunity to bathe first. Now, I’m not a total idiot: I knew I would have to sit on a teeny tiny stool and clean myself out in the cold before actually going into the bath, which was very hot and the size of a baby pool. But maybe pulling the plug after I got out wasn’t such a great idea. They had to fill it all back up again with new water after I left the room. To this day, they have never mentioned the appalling thing I did (and I’ve never mentioned it either. Call it a game of embarrassment chicken). That level of politeness also seems to form a part of being Japanese.

One of my favorite dishes to search out when I go to Tokyo is ochazuke, which is rice served with whatever topping you feel like (raw fish, pickles, or fish eggs are common) and broth on the side. You yourself decide how soup-y (or mushy) you want your porridge (I don’t like too much broth). Rice porridge doesn’t sound like it would set many hearts a-flutter, and not many people order it outside of Japan, but to me there is no better lunch (if you are wondering, Aoi in Bangkok serves versions topped with pickled plum, salmon, baby sardines or spicy fish roe). I could eat it every day: with a different topping for each day of the week, of course.

It’s not a hard dish to get right, but it’s a difficult dish to really excel at. Which is why I think the taichazuke (sea bream porridge) at Chikuyotei (5-8-3 Ginza, across the street from Mitsukoshi and next to Nissan) is so exceptional. The morsels of fish are freshly sliced and then left to “marinate” for a bit on a tangy sesame sauce spiked liberally with sesame seeds and strips of nori seaweed. There is a big bowl of rice and pickles, and the all-important kettle of broth. It’s simple but deceptively disarming. I blame the sesame sauce.

A pity I’ve been eating it wrong all these years. Apparently, you are supposed to “savor” the delicate taste of the fish in the sauce with the dry rice before drowning all those poor rice grains in fish broth and your grody drool drops and then pouring that mishmash down your open face hole. Oh well. The long-suffering ladies who serve here must deal with this kind of stuff all the time (not really. I never see any gaijin there).  They also serve a raw tuna version that is less good, but more substantial, for those days when you really want to pig out without looking like you are pigging out (or you can just suck it up and order oomori, or a large-sized portion). Really, these triumphs in the art of rice porridge cookery are not bad for a restaurant that supposedly specializes in unagi (eel). Yay, porridge!

A great surprise, then, that the culinary wasteland known as Narita Airport also boasts its own ochazuke restaurant, in the “mall” adjacent to the check-out counters — a place I never go to normally because I am usually so late getting to the airport. Wasting your entire day at Narita might be worth it, if only for the 15 minutes that it takes to find Dashi Chazuke En, order your porridge at the counter (they also have their own raw tuna and sea bream versions, as well as fish eggs, pickles, and a cold version topped with thinly sliced pickled cucumber), and slurp that whole shebang down your throat before your waitress even knows what’s up. Sure, it’s the “poor man’s” chazuke, the Joan Collins to Chikuyotei’s Liz Taylor, but who on earth is choosy at the airport?

Dashi Chazuke En's raw tuna porridge

Dashi Chazuke En’s raw tuna porridge

8 Comments

Filed under Asia, food, Japan, porridge

by | 01/31/2014 · 12:51 pm

Street food celebrities

Image

Deep-fried sea bass at Jay Maew Seafood in Samut Songkhram

Gordon Ramsay. Jamie Oliver. Anthony Bourdain. You know who these guys are, right? Everybody does. And, if you like reading about food, chances are you have your own favorite celebrity chef whom you hope to meet one day and become best fwends with forever and ever (mine is Martha Stewart. I know. But the lady looks like she wouldn’t shy away from a drink and likes to have a good time. What can I say? Love has no logic, okay?!) 

The relatively tiny little world of Thai street food (or, as tiny as hundreds of thousands of street food stalls in Bangkok can be, anyway) also hosts its own celebrities. Everybody who has lived in Bangkok for some period of time knows about the dude who sells moo ping (grilled pork on skewers) at the Convent/Silom intersection late at night, greasy sweet manna for the high school-age revelers who are just stumbling out of Soi 4 (and with that last sentence, I have officially entered Middle Age). Many know about the guy who plies customers at his cart just off of Saladaeng Road with great yen ta fo noodles and carefully selected snippets of abuse. And of course, there is Jay Fai. So there are Thai street food celebrities out there. And, it would seem, the grumpier they are, the bigger the accolades. 

Jay Maew seems to fit into this mold. I have written about this fantastic seafood place in passing before, but after a recent trip there I think they deserve their own post. Like many professional chefs — and I am only just getting this — Jay Maew is a control freak, happy to bust out of the kitchen with a schmatta on her head to direct your car to a new parking spot if she thinks your parking skills are subpar (which must make her a lot of friends). She likes to tell customers that she is going to close soon, or is close to retiring, or maybe she will serve lunch, but just for you, because she likes you that much. Then you show up at the restaurant and see that lots of other people are already there. Why you gotta toy with my emotions like that, Jay Maew? 

Her other regulars like to tell me that she does this whole song and dance every time you make a reservation because she is trying to limit the number of customers she has, otherwise she gets flustered and stressed out — which, for a professional cook, sounds batshit crazy. Isn’t that what cooks do for a living? Serve customers food that they’ve cooked? But once the food comes out, it doesn’t really matter what uncharitable thoughts you had before, because everything is genuinely that good. There are always the stews — the bright, pungent gaeng som, the slightly sweet and meaty tom som, and of course the all-star tom yum — all thick with deftly cut hunks of pomfret or whatever other fish is a specialty that day. The gaeng kai pu — full of crab shells encrusted with orange bits of crab egg — will bring a tear to your eye. 

There is more than just the stuff that is thom (boiled).  There’s also the stuff that is pad (fried): a whole battery of different greens, my favorite being the young pumpkin shoots and acacia leaves, and the Chinese-y fried shrimp or crab dumplings accompanied by a homemade plum dipping sauce, and plump bits of crab as big as the pad of your thumb, stir-fried with garlic and chilies. 

Image

Jay Maew’s stir-fried crab with scallions and onion

I’ve only ventured a little ways through the menu here because I always end up sticking to my favorites, and let’s face it, that is way too much food to order in one sitting. I haven’t even mentioned the grilled tiger prawns, or the simply steamed fresh crab, or the steamed Chinese-style fish with either lime and chilies or pickled plums or soy sauce, or the deep-fried anything that you can think of. Although it’s an hour-and-a-half trip out of Bangkok on most days, it’s worth it — as long as you can get Jay Maew to agree to seat you.

How to get there: Get on the expressway to Dao Khanong. From Dao Khanong, go towards Samut Sakhon. From Samut Sakhon, head towards Samut Songkhram. Look for the sign for the Maeklong River, and then exit towards Maeklong village, where Jay Maew is located. Go under the bridge, turn left at your first left, and it should be on the left hand side. If you or someone you know can speak some Thai, you can also call 034-713-911.

Image

11 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

by | 01/17/2014 · 3:03 pm

Thai food rant

The remnants of a "gra moo" (pork crackling stir-fried with herbs)

Scraping the plate clean: the remnants of a “gra moo” (pork crackling stir-fried with herbs)

Whenever a group of people talk about the nature of Thai food, talk inevitably alights on how Thai food is “spicy” and “wild” and whatever other adjective suggests something is “too much” for foreigners. I don’t have to tell you that this drives me up the freaking wall, but I’m going to do it anyway — and tell you twice, and maybe three times. This drives me up the wall. Almost as much as when someone eats rice and curry with a fork or chopsticks (how do you keep the sauce on the rice? Drive me up the wall x2), or when someone orders something like stir-fried morning glory or thom kha gai (coconut lemongrass chicken soup), and then proceeds to bogart the entire thing themselves (it’s meant for the entire table. Drive me up the wall x3).

But one rant at a time. The origins of the myth that Thai food is too challenging for Western palates are murky, but believing in it is still considered as Thai as, well, cherishing the right to take to the streets in protest: equivalent to the French fondness for going on strike. Thai food — much like the Thai political situation itself — is too difficult, too complicated and nuanced for foreigners to understand. And, let’s face it, it’s just too spicy. Hence the need for a gatekeeper to explain it to them, to tame those culinary zigs and zags that Thais take for granted, to turn them to those neutered bowls of green curry and plates of pad Thai, things that are tailored to welcome foreigners to the bosom of Thai food instead of pushing them away. Because ultimately, Thai food — as deemed by Thais themselves — is too strange, and too “other”.

Hence the creation of parallel menus in Thai restaurants abroad, and, in essence, an entire parallel cuisine. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to a Thai restaurant in, say, Ardmore, and had a menu taken away from me by a Thai waiter, proclaiming it “not what I’m used to”, followed by a promise that they will get me something cooked for the staff. Another gatekeeper: this time in the reverse direction. But why the need for guarding Thai food like a bouncer at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District? I used to think it was a form of self-hatred, that the feeling that Thai food was too “weird” was akin to masking one’s own quirks in order to keep from scaring off a blind date. But now I think it’s something else. Real Thai food is ours, and you can’t have it. It’s too complicated and challenging because we are special snowflakes incapable of being really understood by a bunch of outsiders (aka dumbasses). To be honest, I cannot really count myself among those special snowflakes, because I have been tainted by my long stay in the West. Maybe I am being paid off by an Isaan som tum purveyor.

So the next time someone says Thai food is too “spicy” or “difficult” for foreigners, I want to ask them why the diner can’t make the decision for himself or herself? I feel like Thai food is so wide-ranging, with so many great regional variations of incredible complexity, that it’s a shame it’s being parceled up into these foreigner-friendly packages when it doesn’t need to be. I certainly haven’t had the experience of a Brazilian dissuading me from trying acaraje or a Japanese person telling me to avoid natto because it’s grody to the max. In fact, they are quite happy to let me shove fish sperm or fermented squid guts down my throat without any warning whatsoever (maybe this is just the kind of crowd I am running with). Maybe Thais — many of whom are grossed out by pla rah (fermented Thai anchovy) and sometimes even eschew fish sauce (my husband) — could cede culinary control in a similar way. It could win Thai food — a cuisine that is indeed nuanced, and varying, and detail-oriented, and special — even more fans than it already has.

13 Comments

Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, Thailand