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The food porn has moved!

The food porn has moved to my dedicated food porn blog Chomple.

Help me and Jody attend the Fancy Food Show!!!

Foodzie are giving away two tickets to the Fancy Food Show in SF!!!

The contest is here: http://blog.foodzie.com/2009/01/were-giving-away-2-tickets-to-the-fancy-food-show/

Now, the contest is to blog about why I should be the one to win tickets.

The way I look at it, I can say all I want about myself but I think it's much cooler to show what you, my loyal and frequently pithy reader, think about my gluttonous food porn star self attending the show.

So pretty please, leave comments here about why I would be the most awesomest attendee of the Fancy Food Show.

And if you don't and I don't win, that's okay. I'll just head downtown to my favorite Chinese dive and drown my sorrows in abalone.

Eating with my parents... the full experience

Some of you reading this have had dinner with my parents at some point or another. Be aware that my parents were on their very bestest behavior when that happened and that the reality of their views on food are quite different. For those of you that follow my eating habits and adventures, reading this will probably explain quite a bit.

1. Eating in a restaurant that looks nice is a waste of money. This one is from my mother. She believes that any place that looks nice has spent the money on decor and upkeep, and thus you are paying for that instead of the food. While from a business standpoint this does have a modicum of truth to it, in reality the support costs of a restaurant really aren't going to be the problem. To me, the real problem is that chain restaurants that all have that sanitized look to them always have mediocre food. This has nothing to do with the fact that they spent money on decor, and has a lot more to do with the fact that they are just mediocre restaurants... some would say by design.
   
   This is very odd considering that my parents eat at Outback probably three to four times a week. They love steak, and the way Outback does their steaks really works for my parents. One day, I asked my mother why it was ok to eat at Outback, since they obviously do spend money on their decor. Her response? "The food is good, and the decor is very bad and cheap, look so cheap. I think they get decor Goodwill store."
2. Eating while on vacation is a waste of money. Ohhhh, this one really gets me mad. My parents and Thai people in general, don't believe in spending any money when you're on vacation. The logic goes that you have gone on vacation for one reason: Sightseeing. That's it. Don't waste more money than you need to.
   
   I actually start to get very angry when I think about this. We traveled a lot when I was a kid, and I can't even fathom how much awesome food I missed out on because of this stupid policy. Montreal without a smoked meat sandwich? Miami without rock crab claws? Tokyo without sushi? Boston without chowder? These things would never occur now. I could do nothing but eat local food for about a week in any major city before I felt the need to go see anything. But in my childhood, all of these cities tasted the same. Like ramen.
3. The job of the man is to have the backup dish. This is something directly caused by my parents' clashing personalities. My mother is very adventurous but ignores the consequences of anything she does. My father is very boring and would love to live life in the "OK" column. So this is what happens at restaurants: my mother orders the most messed up sounding dish on the menu, no matter how bad it sounds. My father gets the most boring option on the menu. When the food comes, if the crazy dish my mother got is good, yay for her. If not, she trades it to my dad for his "safety dish", leaving him with the dog food she ordered. They've done it this way for decades. Unfortunately this did not carry over to me, so there's no Secret Dish Service protection for Jody.
4. Garlic should be served unpeeled, after soaking in rancid vegetable oil. No further description needed.
5. Nobody should start eating until the woman of the house is ready and has a bite. However, the woman of the house will run around doing bullshit things for 15-45 minutes after the meal is ready to go. SIT DOWN. Seriously.

Things I wish I had a picture of...

(And if you by chance have any of these pictures, please by all means send them to me.)

As many of you know, I love taking pictures. In fact, the biggest insult I could give in my review of the train wreck of a restaurant Johnny Garlic's (a Guy Fieri restaurant) was that it was the first time in several YEARS that I did NOT take a single picture at a meal I ate away from home. That's doubly an insult because I also photo the bad food along with the good, the only stuff that doesn't get photographed is the stuff so amazingly meh that I can't think of a reason to share the image with anybody.

Because of my addiction to taking pictures (as opposed to actual photography, which I supremely suck at) I carry my iPhone with me at all times. If I need higher resolution I can go to my actual camera that is also with me at all times in my messenger bag. And if all else fails I can use my Disney Princess camera that I have hidden in the glove compartment of our car, although the picture quality is bad enough to be an insult to the words picture and quality.

It was not always the case that I had a camera on me at all times. In my life, I call the time before 1995 "The Dark Times" and the time before 2001 "The Grey Times" mainly because technology had not progressed to a level where life was easily documented. As a result of this, my memories are littered with things that unfortunately I have no pictures of except for in my head. So if you are one of the many people I know from the Dark or Grey eras and have a picture of any of these things, please PLEASE send me a scan of them.

1. The scarf that depicts getting sexually assaulted by a monkey. I was in the south of Spain with my roommate during college and we decided to take a jaunt over to Gibraltar. In one of the shops we found a scarf that depicted various attractions from around Gibraltar. One of the attractions was a Gibraltar ape, which was pictured in sort of a hilariously aggressive pose sort of glaring out from the scarf. The real kicker was that the person who designed the scarf had not learned how to space or size letters, so next to the ape it said gibraltaRAPE. I believe we almost bought the scarf to take it with us, but then decided like frat boys to spend the money on booze.
2. Ebby goes crunch. Now this one happened recently, but I just didn't have the camera out or nearby to grab the picture. We had been playing with Ebby and she was chasing the laser across the living room into the dining room. When she went into the dining room, Jody would shine the laser way up on the wall and Ebby would jump a good 4 feet in the air trying to get it. Well, on one such trip we saw Ebby go flying into the dining room but fail to jump. Instead we heard a deep kerchunk as Ebby made full facial slam contact into the wall and fell over. A few seconds later she wandered out of the dining room all dazed and flopped over on the floor next to us. Jody shined the laser next to Ebby and the cat just glared at the dot and started hissing. Poor cat.
3. Tunaface! While on the subject of cats, my previous cat was narcoleptic and once fell asleep with his entire face in a can of tuna. Although thinking about it, I need two pictures here: one of the cat with his face in the tuna, and the other of the look on his face as I was trying to wash tuna off of it. Both would have made contest winning lolcats.
4. Teahouse porn. On my campus visit to Duke my parents decided to go see the Duke Gardens  (actually, since my mother is obsessed with gardens this is the ONLY thing we ever see on family vacations. We once took a cross country road trip to Yellowstone and the only thing we ever saw in any city we went to were the botanical gardens.) Anyway, we wound up walking past the Japanese teahouse, where we were encountered by some dude vigorously doing his girlfriend doggy style (this is at 1 in the afternoon). This is also memorable because it marks one of the few times in recorded history that both of my parents had something witty to say at the same time. Dad: "that not Japanese tea ceremony" Mom: "Maybe administration pay them to display sex to show this school have more than study."
5. Tractor fail. I came across a motor vehicle accident (well sort of) between a tractor and an Amish buggy. Now, I'm not sure how either of those vehicles got going fast enough to cause an accident, but stranger things have happened in Ohio. The truly funny part was that the Amish buggy driver was insured but the guy driving the tractor was not. Wonder if the Amish guy used GEICO...
6. Hypercolor, indeed. Hypercolor shirts and other clothing, which changed color from body heat (or other heat) were all the rage in 7th grade and everyone wore the stuff. That is, until a girl wore a Hypercolor shirt and shorts to school with no underwear, causing her nipples and crotch area to glow with heat. Yeah, she got sent home.
7. Enron. I should have taken tons of pictures the day I interviewed at Enron. I even saw the gold train that they used to bring bonus checks to the execs.
8. Marilyn Manson confronts his roots. Mister gothboy himself is from the high school next to mine. I ran into him along with some of my friends in a bar in Cleveland. My drunk friend decided to repeatedly call him Brian Warner, asking about his high school, and asking him what it was about Ohio that made him so angry that he made miserable music. To his credit Marilyn started laughing hysterically and made some comment along the lines of "I had someone else's penis in my mouth when I was on stage, I'm really not going to be bothered by talking about who was mean to me in Algebra."
9. Paris Hilton, pre sex tape. Ran into her leaving a club in NYC. She really did look less plastic back then, I swear. 
10. Election night 2008. Mere seconds after Obama is announced as the winner, one of my neighbors put his head outside his window and yelled "TAKE THAT WHITE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!"
11. I thought that was in my checked luggage! Lady sitting a few feet in front of me on a flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo is fumbling around with her purse looking for something and pulls out a giant floppy sex toy. Realizes what she has done and puts it back in her purse, looks around and sighs with relief thinking nobody saw it. Well not only I saw it, but during deplaning the woman who was sitting next to me points at dildo lady and says "Wonder if she had a satisfying flight?"
12. No more menus! I was spending the night at a friend's place in Dallas when I heard what sounded like someone trying to break in. I sat up in bed and heard the distinct sound of her doorknob being jiggled. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went to the front door. Glanced out the peephole and saw some guy trying to rubberband a menu to the doorknob, except after almost a minute this guy was still struggling to do it. I got up right next to the door and yelled "BACK AWAY FROM THE DOOR! I AM ARMED AND WILL FIRE!". The guy took off running and dropped his menus in a hilarious trail from the door to his car.

JODY CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER

A half pound of organic bison with sage, rosemary, pepper, santa maria spices (Pappy's), pastured butter and a pinch of kosher salt mixed in. Mixed and formed into a patty by hand (I R OLD SKOOL).

Topped with a slice of local marble jack cheese.

Thrown between two slices of brioche torn apart by my bare and (now) greasy hands.

Jody can has! LOL.

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Read this before you buy a Wii this Christmas.

It's Christmas. Yet again, a crapload of people are going to buy a Nintendo Wii. Unfortunately, for about 60% of these people (by my estimates) the Wii is the absolute wrong choice, and is a product sold on hype and general public groupthink.

Read the rest of this post, and if you still want a Wii, I wish you luck finding one.

1. The graphics on Wii, regardless of game, are universally very cartoony. You will see a lot of aliasing. Now, if this sort of thing doesn't bother you, don't worry about it. But if you are an eye candy person, the Wii's graphics will make your eyes want to claw out of your head and hide under the couch. To me, half of the games look like 3D renderings of flash games you can play on a website. If you do get a Wii, please hook it up to the cheapest, smallest, lowest-tech television you have in the house. When hooked up to a pure 1080p LCD, you'll see all of those jaggy blur-textured blobs in all of their underwhelming glory.
2. The Wii is basically built on circa 2002 technology. The bells and whistles you are expecting from a console won't be on the Wii. Want to play DVDs? Sorry. Want downloadable content for your game? Sorry. Want to download more WiiWare? Sorry, out of memory and not expandable. The list goes on and on. Half of the things on this list were actually available on consoles in 2002.
3. Every multiplatform game, if it comes to the Wii, will be by FAR the worst version available. Most games released for Xbox 360/PS3/PC/LeapFrog/MyFirstConsole/Speak n' Spell won't even be released on the Wii, as it's so underpowered that there's no point making a half-assed version of the game for the Wii. If they do bother to port it, it will suck complete and total ass. I didn't realize how bad it was until I had the intense displeasure of purchasing and playing Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii. The graphics looked like something my iPhone would render on a bad day (and on my iPhone, the screen isn't as big as a television). And all of the extra songs you can download? Nope, sorry, no downloadble songs. Even if they had that feature (and subsequent games have attempted to add it) Wii game data can only exist on the Wii's system memory, not the SD card slot, which means you wouldn't have room for that stuff anyway.
4. The Nintendo first-party games are good, but since all other games suck you had better REALLY like Nintendo games. We're talking the Mario/Link/Pikachu/Some other cartoon character franchises and the like. If you do not like these sorts of games, there are maybe about a half-dozen games for the Wii worth buying. TOTAL.
5. It's not the cheapest console anymore. That honor goes to the supremely more fun and useful Xbox 360 Arcade.
6. Don't be fooled into thinking that it's inexpensive. You get one Wiimote with the console. Eventually you will get three more Wiimotes as well as four nunchucks. And when it's finally in stock, another $90 for Wii Fit (which is worth it, but still, you're getting the point here).
7. Nintendo intentionally (and stop claiming it's a supply chain problem Nintendo, because if it is, you are the most incompetent manufacturing outfit in the history of business) makes or releases way fewer of everything than there is demand for. This means that even if you want a Wii or a hot game/accessory, you will be searching for it. The console has been this way for almost three years running. Wii Fit is still not in stock anywhere. Mario Kart Wii was even hard to find for a few months. I assume they are doing this to build hype, but it's just ridiculous.
8. The control system is not revolutionary in any way. For most games, the Wiimote is not even measuring what you are doing, it's merely sensing your movement as a button push that requires more effort. For an example of this compare Wii Sports Bowling and Tennis. The bowling game actually tracks the accelerometer and gyro data to influence the game. The tennis game just treats your motion as a button press (press A for forehand, press B for backhand would work exactly the same way). The latter method of Wiimote usage is what most games for the Wii support. To replicate this, you could just use a normal game controller and make an exaggerated motion with your arm in the air before pushing A or B.

Still want a Wii? Congratulations, you are their target market (and I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, I just had to drive off all of the hardcore gamers before they made a mistake). Now go find one!

www.nowinstock.net is your friend.

I'm not eating sushi again for a long long time :( [warning: food porn inside, don't come hungry]

Ever eat at a restaurant that was so good that it ruined that cuisine for you? You know, like that first time you had a real hamburger and decided to swear off McDonalds, well at least until the next time you were hungry, had 5 minutes for lunch and 99 cents in your pocket :)

Now, I must admit, I've had sushi this good before. The first time was when Morimoto made it for me at Nobu years ago. The second was at one of the Jiro locations in Tokyo (one of these is the place Anthony Bourdain eats at in the Tokyo episode of No Reservations). Neither of those places ruined sushi for me for one main reason: I accepted that these meals were hella expensive once or twice in a blue moon experiences only available in what one would term a global cosmopolitan city.

Well, I certainly did not expect that a sushi chef that good would set up shop in a far north suburb of Sacramento. Or that he would charge 1/3-1/5 what I was paying at the other places this good.

The first time I went with Jody and Sushi Girlfriend (our coworker that tags along with us for sushi every weekend). We decided to try the place on the strength of reviews on Yelp. Almost everyone was giving this place five stars and almost pleading for everyone in the area to stop patronizing the overpriced, oversauced crappy sushi places in the area to go to this place. Any place that gets Yelpers that excited gets me excited.

This was our first lunch there:

First Wave Visit

The plate in the front is their 8 dollar lunch special. I don't know why I ordered it, but I suspect I just wanted to see how good their regular sushi was. Even that plate was phenomenal. 

For the rolls in the background, the left was a rainbow roll and the right was a dragon roll. Standard California sushi offerings, but made with very very fresh fish. Oh, and did I mention the sushi rice? Instead of that candied tasting crap everyone else makes, Dave (the sushi chef) actually makes it the traditional way, making a separate seasoning mixture with vinegar, kombu and "other secret ingredients" before combining it. I could just eat rice there and be happy.

The roll in the middle was the result of my order of "tell him to make me a roll... whatever he wants, I don't care". This roll was salmon belly wrapped in nori, then rice, then white tuna, then yellow tuna, then covered in a dijon sauce he made (yeah this threw me for a loop when he told me what it was, but it was very good) and then... candied walnuts. It was crazy. But it worked. We swore to not eat sushi anywhere else as long as he was here. We couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing in a strip mall in this part of the world, but we were happy that Dave the sushi chef at some point in the past had a moment of insanity and decided to set up shop here.

A few days later we had some layoffs at work and decided after a day that rough that we wanted to go back. We somehow dragged ourselves to the sushi bar and with our remaining energy asked Dave to "omakase" us, or in English, "make whatever the F you want and keep it coming until we ask you to stop."

He took us up on that...

Monkfish liver, white tuna, bigeye tuna, paper thin cucumber, fresh crabmeat

Cucumber rolls. That's what he called it. As you can see in the picture title, he decided to add some phenomenal things to it. The last time I had monkfish liver was when Morimoto served it to me. This roll blew my mind.

We probably spent an hour there eating various things. He had some fresh oysters and some great soft shell crab that he turned into a hand roll. And then there was our "sushi mini bites platter"

Sushi Bites

...which was awesome. Oh yeah, and a whole platter of bigeye tuna sashimi because he overheard Jody talking about how much she liked the tuna.

Over the next couple weeks we went back for lunch a few times, each time having phenomenal sushi. On one visit, Jody asked for octopus. He had Moroccan octopus in stock, which is seriously unlike any octopus I've ever had (and much better). During one lunch, we saw him manically putting together some crazy looking dish. Then he handed it to Jody:

Blingtartare

This was some crazed concoction of tuna tartare, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, greens, tobikko and gold leaf. It tasted even better than it looks. Oh, and remember how I mentioned this guy was charging crazy low prices for this stuff. This plate ran us 11 dollars. Seriously.

During the meal Dave mentioned that he was probably going to have to close in January, as business was declining because of the economy and that while he didn't want to sound arrogant, it was sort of fruitless for him to hang out in a small area while barely breaking even.

So fast forward to last night, and I'm drifting away into a very needed nap when my email bell goes off. It's a guy from Yelp telling me that Dave announced he was closing this Wednesday. Really, like 5 days away. I freaked out and went with Jody to his restaurant. sure enough, he had given up on his location and stopped ordering supplies. He was going to stay open until he ran out of fish, which he was now estimating would be Monday.

So we had one last omakase meal...

Tuna tartare with tobikko on foie gras on a crostini... wtf

Yeah, foie gras. Turns out Dave's wife is French and that he's moving with her there. Their family tradition during the holidays is to buy a couple lobes of foie gras and nom on it. He decided to bring one into the sushi bar with him...

Dave's sashimi platter

Nothing exciting here except for the extremely fresh fish...

Dave's "I decided to have some fun" roll

"Having fun" to Dave meant a roll of salmon belly and foie gras (seriously, again, omg) with more salmon and hamachi on the outside, dressed with chopped mangoes and candied nuts. If you have ever had ortolan, it was like that. Each piece was about 3-4 distinct layers of flavor. 

Hamachi Kama (aka fish cheek)

Fish cheeks have the texture of crabmeat. This was also incredible. It was cooked in some sort of sweet soy.

The scallop ending

He bought us a shot of sake in the meantime, and right before closing I said I wanted one more thing. So he grilled two of the most crazy good scallops I've ever had and wrapped them in smoked salmon. This was by far the highlight of the night.

So year, I'm done with sushi for a while. Sigh.

Protect traditional Cat to Pizza relations!

You've heard me talk about how my cat gets around pizza. So I captured it on video for you.

 

Ebby LOVES Pizza (too much)

So what's your family's Fascist Footprint?

With all this constant talk about carbon footprints, I'm moving on to the election version: the Fascist Footprint. What is it? Simply put, it's an over and under that calculates your family's effect on spreading fascism in the United States.

For this election it's pretty simple.

Most votes have no point value. A vote for McCain/Palin or a vote in support of an anti-gay marriage proposal is a +1. A vote for Obama/Biden, any libertarian candidate, or a vote against an anti-gay marriage proposal is a -1.

The McSawa household clocks in at a nice -4. It would be a -6 but Ebby can't vote.

It gets more interesting when we start involving our immediate and extended once removed families.

My parents clock in at a +2. As conservative Asian-Americans, there's no way in Hello Kitty they are voting for Obama. This would be a +4 but Ohio doesn't have a "we hate gays" item on the ballot this time around.

On Jody's dad's side, we have her dad and uncle. Let's just say that judging from the emails and casual conversation (one of them once described Torchwood as "a great show, except for all the gay stuff"), between these two is a +3 (there's no "we hate gays" in FL this time around either). The opinions of her stepmother are unknown.

This isn't looking good. The net Fascist Footprint for my family is now +1. And unlike carbon, I can't buy Fascist offsets. 

Thank goodness for Jody's mother's side of the family. They're a bunch of hippie liberals. I bet they eat granola. Heck, I bet they pal around with terrorists. By rough calculation I put that group at about -12 to14.

So what's your family's Fascist Footprint?

My cat is dressing up for Halloween.

Ebbyween

And her initial reaction:

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