SOOTHING FRAGRANCES

It is pleasantly mild-crisp outside. And, having limited my doomscrolling through social media and the news, my mood is considerably better than it was. So, naturally, as the compulsive foodie-gourmand that I am, I'm thinking of food. It is far too early in the day to have a roast duck, but as an intellectual exercise, dreaming of nice juicy oozy fatty bits and that crispy savoury sweet fire-darkened bird dermis has a lot to recommend it. The succulent flesh meats my teeth and tongue, the taste fills my mouth, my lips and chin are moist.....

Darnit.

Considering a breakfast of roast duck porridge, while resolving to not give in, because there is no room for it yet, as I'm still on hot beverages and a satisfying pipe full of aged Virginia.

Which might be so much more satisfying if it were to follow roast duck.

I'm fond of both the bird at the restaurant on the corner of Powell and Broadway and the meat-choppery on Stockton near a bakery with excellent egg tarts on the oppposite side.

Food is frequently an intellectual thing. Drawing food using the paint programme on the computer helps me grasp it better. Which is a good thing because otherwise I'd be one of those horrid people compulsively photographing what they are about to consume in a restaurant, and also fat and diseased to boot.

In San Francisco, that's easy.

FYI:

港新寶燒腊小食
KAM PO (H.K.) K. - KAM PO KITCHEN
801 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133.
415-982-3516.
[Gong san po siu-lap siu-sik; "harbour new treasure roast meats eatery".]

新凱豐燒臘店
GOURMET DELIGHT BARBECUE
1045 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
415-392-3288.
[San hoi fung siu-lap dim; "new triumphant surfeit roast meats shop".]

If you are Cantonese or a Brabander you are probably drooling right now. It's that mediaeval Bourgondianismus that permeates your fibre that makes you that way. The Cantonese person delights in preparing a feast, the Brabander in painting it.

Mmm, this tobacco is good.

A few years ago, when marijuana was made legal here in California, every day I'd smell that vile skunkweed upon returning to my neighborhood. The thrill seems to have worn off a bit, though it is still frequently in the nose whenever I'm out and about in the city, though hardly ever in Chinatown. Where they're all sober Calvinists about such things.

I would prefer the aroma of roast meats.

It's better for the soul.



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