The Food Thing! What Would YOU Eat?

Thank you for this post domino!

My wife and I were watching Brooks’ “The Muse” recently, the first Albert Brooks film she’s seen, and it started me thinking about Defending Your Life, one of my favorite movies. We haven’t been able to find a subtitled copy here in Tokyo but I hope we can so she can see and appreciate this wonderful picture too.

As for the food thing… well as an expat New Yorker, and NYC is Judgment City in it’s own way, my pig out foods are all New York based-

1.Number one has to be a pastrami sandwich from Kat’s Deli... and none of that lean stuff either, I’d tell ‘em “Make it wet” meaning leave the fat on, and they hand slice it and pile it high on rye bread. If you slip a couple of bucks into their tip jar they give your even more, enough for two or three “normal” sandwiches plus a small plateful to sample. Their amazing sour pickles and pickled green tomatoes are great for cutting through the, oh so very delicious, grease. Strangely enough, for a city that has so many amazing French fry options, Kat’s Deli’s fry are on the top of my list too.

2.Joe's Shanghai takes the number two spot with their crab pork meat soup dumplings. There’s a restaurant here in Tokyo that makes good soup dumplings but despite us being so close to China, Joe's Shanghai are the best! The Braised Duck and Braised Pork Shoulder are also “melt in your mouth” heaven.

3.While I’m in NY’s Chinatown and after Joe’s it’s a short amble over to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, which has received a“Recipient Zagat Award of Distinction” and has the best and most unique ice creams in NYC with flavors like almond cookie, avocado, black sesame, durian, ginger, green tea, lychee, pumpkin pie red bean and taro to name only a few. My favorite? A double scoop of almond cookie and coconut fudge in a sugar cone, yum, yum!

4.Now how about some Anchovy Pizza at Famous Ray's of Greenwich Village at 11th Street and Sixth Avenue. Of the many, many Ray’s in NYC, none of them related, this one is my favorite. The slices are enormous, the size of a whole pizza in Japan, and since almost no one orders the anchovies the guys there pack it on to get rid of the damn things. And than, whatever you order, they put a pile of cheese on the top and pop it back into the pizza oven until it all melts into a mouth watering molten slice of deliciousness.

5.We already had ice cream but for our real desert we head uptown to Serendipity3, the real life shop seen in the movie "Serendipity". Their three scoop Hot Fudge Sundays, with the goblet they use so filled to overflowing that you eat the rest off the plate it’s on because you don’t want to waste a drop! The same goes for their original and indescribable “Frrrozen Hot Chocolate”, both topped with gobs of whipped cream and shaved French chocolate; they are the best of the best! And if you’re still peckish the rest of the menu is great too.

Of course it being New York those are just five of the literally thousands of amazing restaurants I’d pig out at. With that in mind I have to mention, in no particular order:

-The Porterhouse Steak at Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn and their amazing Special German Fried Potatoes and the Creamed Spinach
-The hot dogs with sauerkraut and a papaya drink at Gray's Papaya in the West Village.
-The smoked white fish and white fish salad and bagels and Stilton, Shropshire Blue, Cheshire, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Brie and any other cheeses you can dream of at Zabars (The bagel at B&H right next door are great too, if not better!)
-The roast duck and roast pig at NY Noodletown back down in Chinatown
-The vegetarian dim sum at Vegetarian Paradise (I think that’s the name) in Chinatown, again.
-The dim sum at HSF also in Chinatown
-The congee with “thousand year old egg” and pork in, where else, Chinatown.
-The Sour Cream Apple Walnut pie from The Little Pie Company
-The English Afternoon Tea, with real clotted cream and jam for the real scones at Tea and Sympathy in the West Village
-The matzo ball soup, pierogi, challah french toast, matzah brei, kasha varnishkis, blintzes and the kielbasa with scrambled eggs at the late great and dearly lamented Kiev, a Ukrainian restaurant that was in the East Village
-The grilled calamari, broccoli di rape w/ cheese & parsley sausage sautéed in garlic & extra virgin olive oil w/ fresh cavatelli pasta and the Costoletta di Miale Ripiena -center cut pork chop stuffed w/sausage, mushroom, & gorgonzola served w/butter nut squash & sautéed escarole at The Three of Cups also in the in the East Village

So much more but I’d be very happy to pig out at any, no make that all, of the above.

domino, you were saying you had wanted to try Fugu, I wonder if you ever got the opportunity to try it? I’ve had it a quite a few times when I lived in the countryside in Japan. To tell the truth the fugu sashimi is not that impressive, more of a texture than a taste. I never felt the tingling from the fugu toxin. The best way to eat fugu is in the full multi-course fugu dinner. You get the fugu sashimi but there is also, to me, the more tasty fugu nabi (stew is the closest translation) grilled fugu and other cooked fugu dishes. To drink there’s crispy grilled fugu fin in hot saki and one of the strangest, to westerners, foods is a soup with what seems to be soft, delicious creamy dumplings in it. They are, in reality, the sperm glands of the male fugu.
Still there are more “unusual” foods to be found for example, whale sashimi which is such a deep red it’s almost black and if it wasn’t for the ginger and scallions grated on it would have no taste at all. There’s raw chicken sashimi, safe but scary to us Americans, seal sashimi and cooked seal and the famous horse sashimi. The last three never tried by your humble narrator.

The strangest foods in Japan have to be the “live food.” Fish or shellfish so fresh it’s still moving after being cut up for sashimi. Also the live octopus, plucked right out of the sea, the tentacles cut off and eaten; they say you can feel the sucker sucking you all the way down. Again I’ve not had the... pleasure.

Thank you and everyone who contributed to this post!

Renfield: Isn't this a strange conversation... for people who aren't crazy?
Dracula (1931)