Free Kobayashi

Drama in the competitive eating world.  W.T.F.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/04/kobayashi.hot.dog.arrest/index.html

This explains so much

about why so many Americans don't know how to use flatware.

Who eats this shit?

Well, apparently I do. I met L for dinner on Friday, and we were supposed to go to a Japanese restaurant in Mongkok. It was a really long wait, so we dropped into the restaurant next door where there were plenty of seats available. We quickly realized why.

The restaurant had a bathroom theme! We sat on toilets, our table was a sink, and our food came in dishes shaped like urinals, bathtubs, sinks and toilet bowls. It was gross, and that's just the food, not the decor!

I looked up the restaurant once I got back to my parents' place, and it's a whole chain of bathroom and shit themed restaurants all over Taiwan and Hong Kong that got its start selling chocolate soft serve in squat toilet shaped dishes. One of the founders got the idea while reading manga on the can. Go figure.

From Modern Toilet Restaurant

The wall was covered in urinals which were all shiny and sparkly just in time for the holidays.

From Modern Toilet Restaurant

The ceiling fixtures were fashioned like toilet plungers, and the lights are "poo" shaped. Oh, shit!

From Modern Toilet Restaurant

Our Japanese style hotpot dish came in a toilet bowl. It would have tasted fine if the broth wasn't just pure milk, which made all the veggies and meats taste like they were lactating. (Not that I would know.)

cheese mites : adding flavor through "action" on the cheese

MTR reports that he recently bought a wedge of Mimolette. Here is the excerpt from a wikipedia entry describing how mimolette is made:

"The greyish crust of aged Mimolette is the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor by their action on the surface of the cheese."

And, here's an excerpt from a wikipedia entry on cheese mites:

"[Cheese mites] gain their name from the fact that in addition to grains, flour, cured meats and insect detritus, they are also known to favor cheese. The mites burrow tiny holes in the surface of the cheese and are sometimes intentionally introduced to flavor cheeses like Milbenkäse and aged Mimolette. Cheese that is infested with the mites can have a sweet, minty odor and will appear to be covered in a fine gray dust of the mites, their dander and excrement."

And, in case there was any doubt about how we ought to view cheese mites, wikipedia also says:

"Cheese mites are considered vermin in the food service industry. They are known to cause a mild form of dermatitis called baker's or grocer's itch and can inflame asthma and dust allergies."

Therefore, Mimolette = dander and excrement.

MTR reports that it was delicious!

I'm all for green

but this might be a tad too crunchy for me.

http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2009/57478/

The girls have a room, used mostly for playing (they don’t have homework), but everyone sleeps in the family bed, a king mattress plus a twin pushed together. “The girls love it,” Chew says, “and I’ve gotten used to sleeping with a foot in my face. If Blake and I need privacy, there are plenty of other places in the house.”

I do love this concept though: http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2009/57477/

“There are 1,000 worms in here,” Annie Novak says, cracking the lid on a box filled with scraps of newspaper and small squirmy things. The earthworms are about to be relocated to the soil spread across this warehouse roof 50 feet above the Greenpoint sidewalk, where, Novak hopes, they’ll get to work aerating the soil. Urban gardens are nothing new, but the scale, location, and imagination of Rooftop Farms—the name of this project—is stunning.

VDM is beyond tacky

KB and I caught up over dinner at Via Dei Mille (VDM). The place is marketing itself as Soho's version of Cipriani, but it's got a long way to go before it can come close.

The service needed serious help and training. We arrived to a raucous happy hour event at the front of the restaurant. Our hostess didn't realize we had a dinner reservation and almost wouldn't let us in. Once we were seated, we were asked by the wait staff to move to two different tables. We eventually ended up at a table next to the bathroom. Our server took so long to check in on us between courses, we often wondered if he had forgotten about us.

The food was mediocre at best. Our server recommended the meatballs to start because they were one of the more popular dishes on the menu. After tasting the dry underseasoned hunks of meat, I didn't want to imagine what the other starters were like. I cleaned my plate anyway. Mostly because our server took a long time to return to our table, but also because I was worried that my entree was going to be worse. My Dover Sole entree wasn't that bad. It wasn't great either, and at a $28, I would have expected the sole to taste less fishy and the tomatoes to taste less canned, but I was happy to take what I could get.

Finally, the clientele came nowhere close to the sceney trendsters and socialites at Cipriani's. I didn't realize that it was possible to be even more obnoxious than euro-trash B&T, but the orange-tinted women next to us that compulsively took flash pictures of themselves every 2 seconds or so proved me wrong. They wore acid-washed cutoff jean shorts (newsflash: 80s clothes were ugly, which is why people in the 80s stopped wearing them once they reached the 90s), and one girl's shorts were so short, KB asked me several times if she was wearing pants (upon closer observation, we realized she was). KB and I were grossly engrossed, not because we wanted to be, but because the flash going off in our eyes every 2 seconds or so forced us to participate. We were further fascinated and horrified when a meathead stallion and a S&M outfitted bleach-blond walked into one of VDM's single serving bathrooms together and then reappeared 15 minutes later. Eew.

As we left, one of the proprietors apologized for making us move several times (which we appreciate). He then NAME DROPPED (can you believe it?!) and explained that they had to reorganize the tables because Rihanna's party was running late. We doubt Rihanna would actually go there. Unless they paid her.

If I were a betting gal, I'd say VDM won't last long unless it makes some drastic changes. It's a good thing I'm not a betting gal!

Please, just roll me back home

I met a former coworker for lunch today at David Chang's Momofuku Ssam Bar.

I don't even want to talk about the food, because it was too good for me to put into words. Let me just say I love chefs that love pork and offal. I love restaurants that specifically state on the menu, "We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items."

My friend and I both had the prix fixe, where we ordered different items and shared everything. As a take-small-bites-and-taste-everything-at-least-once eater, I like eating with people who can share.

My faves: Pork Buns, Blondie Pie

Afterwards, my friend and I went next door to the Milk Bar where I checked out the Marshmallow Cookie (it was ok), the Chocolate Cake, and the Banana Cake. I've decided that I like my cakes and cookies better when they're slightly warm.

My new teapot

My new kettle. It's tens of dollars less expensive than my old one, it's easy to maintain, and it works. I tried it today, and it whistled. Afterwards, nothing melted.

I had my eye on the lovely Le Creuset Ogive but decided to bypass form and function for just mere function. I'm certain my water tastes the same either way, so I won't lose sleep over it.

With the additional store credit from the original pot and a 20% off coupon, I finally bought the Wusthof knives I've been coveting for quite some time. I'd give up a fancy kettle for a handy knives any time of day. :-)

My teapot just melted

How can a company make a teapot that has an attached whistle that's not heat resistant? All I have is a melted lump of plastic where the whistle used to be...

I'm taking my teapot back. It's the second time I've had to take my teapot back (the first time, the whistle didn't work) and get a replacement teapot. This time though, I'm taking it back and leaving it there.

Word to the wise, don't buy a Chantal teapot.

Cooking Sundays

Since I've stopped generating income (I am starting to track how many different ways I can say unemployment without actually saying it), I've been eating at home a lot more. Well, actually pretty much all the time.

It's unusual coming from a person who used to only keep a carton of egg whites, a box of All Bran and some mixed greens in the fridge because she rarely ate at home. When I did eat or cook at home, it was just scrambled egg whites over mixed greens which I ate standing over the kitchen sink.

Now that I actually cook at home, I find myself getting sick of the same old same old. I've started planning my days and meals, keeping a mental grocery list, and getting creative with how to use leftovers.

Today, I made chocolate pudding -- dessert for the next three days. For lunch, I made a bacon, pear, egg white, grilled cheese sandwich. Pears, cheese and bacon sounded so good together, and I was pretty happy with the results. Ok, the egg whites were kind of random. But, I had to pretend to be healthy somehow!

Are you eating?

So it's been almost two months since I've been laid off, and I've been eating my way through Manhattan.

Dad calls to check in on me every week, and the most recent call went like this:

Me, "Hello?"

Dad, "What are you doing?  Are you eating?  I know it's hard when you're not working, but you need to stop eating, or you'll get fat."

Me, "I'm not eating." (I'm eating.)

Dad, "I can hear you eating.  Stop eating."