First entry, busy night

Y hulo there internet. In the off chance someone who is not a friend of mine stumbles upon this, an introduction.

I have been blogging since before it was cool. I got started on Open Diary back in the day, and have been on Open Diary, Dead Diary, Livejournal, and Myspace. I even had a Geocities account I used to blog for a short while. By far my longest stretch was on Open Diary. It was pretty awesome for a long time. The thing about blogging is, if you are doing it for the audience the only way to build one is to be a complete hooker, and go around chatting people up. They call it networking in other professions. On the inter-webs it’s basically just being nice and saying hello to the neighbors. I reached a point where it just stopped making sense to spend a lot of time on internet drama with people I would never meet, and then half ass the average entry. I would sit down and rattle off the things that had happened to me that day and then look for something more to say. Invariably, I would do a survey. I don't want to knock those years. I had a lot of fun and met some awesome people. But things change and I got bored.

These days I no longer write much poetry, or write many stories. What I do a lot is cook and eat out. I've wanted a way to talk about food to my friends and relatives, but we always seem to miss each other, and when we do get to talk, I want to talk about my life, and not bore them with “that roast I made.” So this is going to be a food blog. Saying so brings up alarming associations for me. Defining this as such means I have to define myself in relation to the "foodies." Its not that I don't like food, get somewhat obsessive about describing it, and spend altogether too much money on it. It’s that I hate labels and groups. I'm going to be talking about both high end cuisine and at the same time be telling you all how amazing the grease trucks are, but the immediate associations such an angle conjures, say, Diners Drive-ins and Dives, fills me with loathing.

So I'm going to try to avoid the whole issue. I love good food, but I try not to be snobby about it. The food network is way too white bread for my tastes, but I end up watching it a lot. Moving on.

The last few days have been pretty big; I may have to split them into two entries as I am already tired. The first interesting development is that my girl and I found a great Vietnamese place in our area. To do this topic justice we need to go back to college.

My first and still favorite Vietnamese food was from a place called Saigon in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went to school at Clark University, and every year the school has a day called "Spree Day." Most schools have something similar. Everyone gets the day off. In years past it was an excuse for legitimized underage drinking; now it is an excuse for de-legitimized underage drinking. On my first spree day I was still ill-advisedly straight edge, and somewhat bored, though I was enjoying watching everyone have a good time. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up there, but I think it was a girl I was pining after who invited me to join a bunch of her friends and go to this place off campus.

The restaurant was wonderfully shabby. The family clearly lived upstairs, and there were always kids either running around, or studying in the corner. The wait-staff was obviously the relatives, but the older relatives only took orders sometimes. Most of the duties were preformed by a pair of very... metro-sexual young men who couldn't have been beyond their early twenties, if that. The menus had items on it that my friends and I were never able to order, since that had not been carried in the previous five years. They never, in the five years I went to Saigon, reprinted the menu. The decor was blue, with a firm coating of golden budda heads, and there was a TV playing Vietnamese language television on top of the coke case. I have seen similar TVs in almost every hole in the wall Asian restraint I enter, and often kill time wondering about the distribution routs of such material.

At the time I was not impressed by the food, probably because I was a bit moody that the girl had not ended up sitting near me, and I didn't know anyone else. Ironically, I may have been hanging put at that point with several of my future good friends, given the social circle, but in freshman year you do not know these things. I also didn't really know what to order. Figuring it similar to Thai, I ordered something along the lines of a curry. It was alright, but heavy on the peppers and very greasy. Still, it was good enough and different enough that when, over the years, people asked to go back, I would generally say yes.

I spent 5 years in Worcester, four in school and one bumming around, and every time I went to Saigon I liked it more. I eventually figured Vietnamese food out when a friend of mine told me to order the bbq pork on vermicelli. The pork comes in basically identical strips, covered in hosin sauce that is seared on over a grill. or at least, you hope it is a grill and not from a package. it could go either way, given the uniformity of the product, but honestly, I don't care. it is tender, salty, sweat and spicy. each piece is bite size, and it is served with a fresh salad, a cup of sauce, and a pile of the titular vermicelli. Vermicelli is a very thin noodle, kind of like angel hair, but made with semolina wheat instead of durum. the Italians make their vermicelli with durum, but they are wrong. I have spoken.

The affect is a dish with clarity of flavors. The Indians and the Thai have their curries with their blend of greens and spices and savor. That is fine and good, but as often as not the result is a muddle on the tongue. The Vietnamese, at their best, produce dishes that are just plain interesting. My favorite way to eat the above dish is to dump the sauce, a kind of citrus-y salad dressing, on top of the noodles, dump in everything else, and mix it all up. The noodles have their calm, subtle sweetness, the pork has its salty, smoky spiciness, and the salad imbues the whole with refreshing crunch. I do not always feel full after this meal, but I fell nourished, the same way I do after reading a telling bit of theory. This is food that makes sense, to the brain and the heart.

When I moved back to the Jersey I missed Saigon sorely, but soon I found a substitute. Working in New Brunswick, as I do, my coworkers and I often partake of the numerous lunch deals offered in that town. We eventually stumbled upon Mekong, a very clean hole in the wall style restaurant that served a wonderful selection of Vietnamese food, from Pho to spring rolls, though these last were a bit pricey. I was overjoyed, however, to discover that the bbq pork was on the lunch special. My coworkers were less pleased, as I proceeded to drag them there for months straight till they began to refuse to go there. I was of course crushed when Mekong closed. it wasn't perfect, but it was close, and their #31 with pork and fried spring rolls was amazing. The Korean place that replaced it has not really been a consolation.

So it was that my gal and i ended up in Edison at Pho Anh Do in Edison, NJ. as the name implies they specialize in Pho, which is a good sign. you know how Chinese places that specialize in dim sum are guaranteed to be good because they are catering to actual Chinese patrons? With Vietnamese food that is Pho. I'll tell you all more about pho at a later time, as I grantee you i will be getting more Vietnamese food in the future, but as it happened I was not in a Pho mood that day, nor was I in a mood for my usual bbq pork with vermicelli. I was in the mood for beef, so on the recommendation of the proprietress, I tried the beef cubes with rice.

With most dishes the goal is balancing all the elements into a harmony. This is not the case in a beef dish. a beef dish must balance the beef in harmony. Beef is such a strong, powerful culinary force that if that is achieved, all else will follow. I am quite happy to say that Pho Anh Do's beef cubes with rice achieved that balance. The beef was sauted with onions in a somewhat salty, pepper laden sauce, but the affect was more like a rub. The sauce was barely there, and that is how it should be with beef. The timing manifest in the beef was superb. the meat was insanely tender. it tasted perfectly rare, but i didn't actually check as it was too good to pause the eating. The dish was so good I even enjoyed the onions, often a necessary but annoying encumbrance in the eating of a dish. The rice provided a wholesome rest from the beef, and a coolant when the spice became too much. the small salad that came with the dish served basically like a post coitus cigarette, calming the diner while still allowing him to savor the flavor of the dish.

Obviously, I was trilled with the restaurant. My girl Friday also enjoyed her dish greatly, and we found the spring rolls to be delicious and reasonably priced. We had three orders between us and didn't begrudge a penny.

In the hope that my friend Alex reads this, i should mention one further detail. After dinner i indulged myself in an avocado shake. Alex spent many hours assuring us that Saigon's offering of this concoction wasn't as bad as it sounds. when i eventually ordered one myself, i found that they were, on the contrary, delicious. I know it sounds weird, but the drink is really pretty good.

For dinner tonight i had adventures as well, but they will have to wait, as it is four am and i am exhausted.

Evil Tom