CHARRED ANIMAL PROTEIN AND NUKED TUBER

The bookseller always has a burger and fries after getting back to Chinatown/Northbeach. With a glass of the rotgut red. I always sneak a few of his fries, and wash them down with a mixture of Fanta and Coke. I purchase the drinks, he pays for the sustenance. As you would expect, there is Sriracha there. Both of us probably discovered Sriracha at the same time more or less. It must be over a quarter of a century ago, because we ate and drank there since the late eighties, when I lived nearby, and he worked down the street.
Sriracha is the vegetable component of a balanced meal.

I used to drink the wine there too. Stopped doing that when I decided I wasn't man enough. Sometimes it was incredibly nasty. Dang.

The nuked tuber strips are almost always excellent.

Anthony Bourdain liked the place.

It's good.


Having grown up near the Belgian border I have high standards for fries, and after returning to the States I often despaired of finding decent ones, as Americans failed miserably in that regard most of the time. Bl**dy effing awful. Precisely like the cheese, coffee, and beer. Really, you lot should hide your faces in shame.

After a while one adapts. One finds the places run by immigrants that have real cheese, and real coffee, beer, and fries. Sometimes they don't have all of those things. The burger joint can't do a chizbooger with melted blue, and their coffee is typical American slop, but with the decent charred meat, excellent hot tuber strips, and Sriracha, a man can tough it out in the wilderness. Still. That wine. Remarkable. Vin ordinaire des égouts de paris.
The recipe likely dates from prohibition days.

Earlier, as usual, I had smoked a pipe while wandering down to where we meet up after he gets off work. In Spofford Alley three little girls were playing at the near end, a twitchy white street person was settling in for the night with gesticulations in the middle, right in front of the florists shop, and some geezers were huffing ciggies while taking a break from their mahjong game at the far end.

We ended up not visiting the karaoke place; it was filled, and a screaming frathead inside was audible from a block away. There's just something about many drunken white people which makes the world a sadder and more vicious place. I hope the frathead chokes in his sleep.


I had eaten a late lunch earlier in Chinatown; curried fish (咖喱石斑 'gaa lei sek pan') and rice. Sek pan (石斑 "stone variegation") in the strict sense means grouper (a serranid, either Epinephelus or Mycteroperca). But there's no telling what the fish actually was, as fish nomenclature is not set in stone, and translations are often inexact. Good though.

On Wednesday I often have the baked filet of sole with rice ((蒜蓉焗龍脷飯 'suen yung lung lei yu faan') at a chachanteng, one of their three lunch sets. But, for diversity, I'll probably have the club sandwich (公司三文治 'gong si saam man ji') this time instead.
With some excellent fries and Sriracha.

Everything goes with Sriracha.
You know this, right?



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