In a previous life I must have done something very wrong. Why else would I be so surrounded by unimaginative eaters?
I realize this today because the departmental holiday lunch is coming up.
Naturally I suggested dim sum.
There have been sub-audible howls.
Several years back there were slightly more Asians in finance, and consequently my scheme would have stood a very good chance of succeeding. At present, excluding the person who had a meltdown a few months ago (now out on disability), there are five times more NON-ASIANS than Asians.
So we're probably NOT going here:
城景 CITY VIEW RESTAURANT
662 Commercial Street
(between Montgomery and Kearny).
San Francisco, CA 94111
415-398-2838
They've got some pretty darn good dim sum at City View. It's close to the office. Clean, fast, comfy, and cheerfully noisy..... Quite the best place to go. And really, nothing says Christmas spirit better than Chinese food - just ask any Jew you know!
[Nope, none of them in accounting either. Jesus, I must have been a right son-of-a-bitch in that previous life! What the hell did I do?!?]
But of course, there are some things that today's sensitive suburbanite will not touch with a ten foot pole. Let alone chopsticks.
Ha gau (蝦餃) for instance. It just looks too pretty to eat. Minced shrimp, or shrimp and pork, in a delicate pale slightly translucent bonnet, steamed........ this is the Hello Kitty of dumplings.
It is very beautiful
Suburban food does NOT look beautiful. Ever.
Siu mai (燒賣) are another example. That wrapper looks suspiciously wrinkly, and it's open on top! Good lord, you can see what 'they' filled it with! We don't care that it's high quality pork! Juicy and oh so good within the little wheat-dough pocket!
Fung jau (鳳爪) are definitely off the list. Who wants to eat chicken feet? Even if they are yummy and delicious? Those poor feetless birds!
Got any tempeh or wheat germ instead? Anybody want to make a run to Mickey D's?
Ngau yiuk kau (牛肉球) are just meat balls, you can't fool us. We've been to Italian restaurants. We're not morons!
Chu cheung fan (猪腸粉) ....? NO! Especially not after the snarky Dutchman explains what the name means ('pig intestine noodle'), because of its appealing slick pearlescent appearance! To us, no recognizable part of an animal looks good. Yes, we can tell it's actually a steamed soft rice noodle sheet around delicious fresh shrimp or beef, but we can't get that image out of our heads. We have no imagination.
Dau chup pai gwat (豆汁排骨) don't appeal to us either. They should use a sweet sticky sauce instead of a savoury, garlicky, fragrant, scrumptious black-bean sauce. And can't they debone the spareribs as is common in fast-food lunch places? We don't like bones - they remind us of Bambi. And Thumper.
Do they serve anything else?
DOT -- DOT -- DOT
The problem with woo gou (芋角 taro cake), lobak gou (蘿蔔糕 daikon cake), and ma tai gou (馬蹄糕 water chestnut cake) is that there is no meat in them. Well, not more than a smidge in the middle one..... Yes, I know we objected to everything that did have meat already. But we've been conditioned to crave meat. And that stuff looks like goo.
Surely they can wrap a steak or a hamburger in a dumpling skin?
Etcetera.
All in all it's probably a darn good thing that we'll probably choose a random Mexican place instead. Red and green salsa is ever so festive, and we can have cheese on everything!
I won't have to translate anything either. That would've put a serious crimp in my eating.
And it's dining as a group that's important. The shared experience and all that.
All of us together, we've made it through another year, huzzah and hooray.
I might lose sight of that if I enjoyed myself too much.
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or perhaps an Icelandic treat such as ;
"Hákarl is traditionally prepared by gutting and beheading a Greenland or basking shark and placing it in a shallow hole dug in gravelly-sand, with the now-cleaned cavity resting on a slight hill. The shark is then covered with sand and gravel, and stones are then placed on top of the sand in order to press the shark. The fluids from the shark are in this way pressed out of the body. The shark ferments for 6–12 weeks depending on the season in this fashion.
Following this curing period, the shark is then cut into strips and hung to dry for several months. During this drying period a brown crust will develop, which is removed prior to cutting the shark into small pieces and serving. The modern method is just to press the shark's meat in a large drained plastic container.
Sounds scrumptuous. Shark has a particular taste, but otherwise it belongs with trassi, bulatjong, daing, and similar things.
Like the wetter fishy products, probably not a good idea to make at home. But I’m awfully tempted.
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