Check out the OC Weekly's remix of my Apocalypse Chow! post. It's shorter with more dick! Enjoy, I think?
If you actually live in the OC or are passing through, then tell Summer Roberts to hit me on my celly. Oh, you mean it's only a tv show. Well, then, at least pick up a hardcopy of this week's OC Weekly (August 10, 2006)
J.D.: Well, I may be an outlaw, darlin', but you're the one stealing my heart.
– Scene from Thelma & Louise
Do these cooks look like outlaws?
The end is near. The future is now. And I have seen both. The food fascists and those who are arrogant enough to legislate “what foods are acceptable to eat” are closing in on our consuming choices. The anti-animal protein faction abandoned their impotent sweeping strategy of the evangelical, i.e., screaming to anyone who walks by that “meat is murder”, but like zealots foaming at the mouth, they will not stop threatening our epicurean independence until we develop three more stomach chambers and start chewing cud. So instead, their tactic de rigueur is the surgical strike, blasting away entrée by entrée, delicacy by delicacy, and, potentially, food group by food group until we are essentially embalmed by soy products. Put all of the various foes of food together and you get the slippery slope you hear about all the time; now your refrigerator and pantry have become very slippery places. Ban foie gras here, sous vide illegal there, live lobsters not allowed for sale at supermarkets, wild morels need to be domesticated. Eerily this approach mimics modern warfare where the object is no longer the massive invasion but rather a more precise picking off of particular targets: Culinary assassinations.
Rarely do I venture into Downtown Los Angeles, especially after nightfall. I’ve lived in LA for most of my adult life and have a variety of excuses of why I don’t go there after dark: excuses that span from the skid row undead who rule the town at night to nightmarish visions inspired by the cinematic masterpiece Blade Runner to the fact that there still isn’t much of a downtown nightlife which doesn’t involve conventioneers or crack.
Tonight was different. I was more than willing to go into the bowels of downtown to confront all my downtown, after dark hang-ups just so I could get a taste of the future of dining. Illegal dining. Black market meals. The Outlaw Dinner.
“Nobody tells me what to eat,” I seethed to myself, “Nobody but my mother.” And she would have no problem letting me eat all that promised to be on the night’s tasting menu.
As I handed my keys to the valet, I looked up to the third floor of the Omni Hotel Los Angeles towards Noé Restaurant and wondered if what I was about to experience was to be the speakeasies or eateasies of tomorrow, as the case may be. Noé is a sleek, modern place with its alluring lighting design and clean composition. It faces the gleaming California Plaza which has the unique charm of being the end of the line for the legendary funicular railway Angels Flight. The front desk and waitstaff have the manner and appearance of an international utopian space program – multi-cultural, neat, clean, well groomed, professional, pleasant and efficient. The guests in the dining room were not much different from the staff. Many were actually dressed for an evening out. (I’m not talking a pair of True Religions and a t-shirt either.) This place doesn’t reek of the clandestine, back alley, smoke-filled speakeasies of Prohibition decorated with eager showgirls and fueled by illicit ale. I can’t imagine a small army of jack booted Feds raiding an elegant establishment like Noé and roughing up its clientele while a foie gras fighting Eliot Ness flashes his sparkling badge and shouts out everybody’s Miranda rights. We are, however, diners in a brave new world, so anything is possible.
Every speakeasy has a password and an admission price: Tonight’s was “Outlaw Dinner” and ninety-five bucks. Every speakeasy has a specific purpose. At Noé’s Outlaw Dinner, the purpose was to celebrate and to indulge in those foods that will be forbidden, restricted or are already banned in places where the very act of cooking or eating certain foods can be punishable under penalty of law. Although nothing served was illegal in Los Angeles (at least, not yet), the spirit of the evening was still one of delectable defiance.
Outlaw Dinner Chef, Robert Gadsby.
Executive chef Robert Gadsby is the mastermind and the mob boss behind the Outlaw Dinner. Glen Ishii, the chef de cuisine, is his enforcer. This kitchen combo of a culinary Al Capone and Frank Nitti demonstrated to the packed restaurant how very delicious it was to be bad, with the embattled foie gras as the star of the night.
It’s the final countdown for the eradication of foie gras in the City of Chicago. August 22, 2006 is when the Windy City’s controversial foie gras ban goes into effect. So it was only appropriate that foie gras took the stage first. The “Foie Toast Bacon and Eggs” was the modest moniker for this fancy nibble of fatty goose liver snuggled by a strip of smoky serrano bacon atop a stamped out piece of toast. Maybe it was just nostalgia but this dab of foie gras was the best I’ve ever had. But how could I already be looking back on something when it’s still here? I’m overly sentimental that way. To paraphrase Alfred Tennyson: “’Tis better to have eaten foie gras and lost than never to have eaten foie gras at all.” I thanked the goose that produced this dreamy and creamy piece of absolute pleasure. Research has claimed that maltreatment of livestock results in inferior tasting food. If that is the argument, then the goose from which this fatty liver came must have been living quite well.
First Course: Foie Gras Menu.
Coupling with the “Foie Toast Bacon and Eggs” was a whimsical, pre-dinner dessert: “Foie Gras Bonbons with Pop Rocks”. The chocolate covered round of foie gras crowned with cherry flavored Pop Rocks looked like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Research Institute. And in an odd Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup maneuver, the marriage of chocolate and foie gras actually results in a peanut butter flavor but on the slightly salty side. “Hey, Chef Gadsby, your foie gras fell into my La Maison du Chocolat chocolate! What’s up with that?”
First Course: Foie Gras Menu.
Foie gras’ offense for making it onto the most hated food list is well known, but Pop Rocks has its own notorious past full of gossip and murder. “Mikey”, that ‘70s kid from the Life Cereal commercials who would eat anything, was rumored to have taken his gluttonous reputation too far by ingesting a lethal combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop. The mixture of the two items proved to be explosive and killed John Gilchrist aka “Mikey” by blowing up his stomach. This is why the death-dealing candy was taken off the market in 1983. The Outlaw Dinner’s “Foie Gras Bonbons with Pop Rocks” was paired with champagne, a bubbly beverage, thus making this naughty dessert potentially a very volatile and very deadly endeavor.
If you grew up with that incredibly well-distributed, pre-internet, urban legend about Pop Rocks, then you know by now (hopefully) that it was just a very imaginative tale that possessed enough rationale to make it seem credible. I’m not sure if even Chef Gadsby realized the candy’s sordid past when he used it as a topper. Gadsby’s reasoning for using Pop Rocks was to include an aural dimension to food which is rarely experienced. So was the champagne pairing just a coincidence? Or was he really trying to kill us all and turn us into Soylent Green?!
Second course consisted of the momentarily restricted in Los Angeles, morel mushroom. The morels were gently suspended as a terrine and teamed up with “Sweet Bread Nuggets”. The slurpy morels terrine was the most satisfying slime I’ve ever sucked down. The pork gelatin (I suspect) and the lusty morels succeeded in achieving an optimum flavored terrine – essence of earth and swine – and therefore making this outlaw diner very happy.
Second Course: Morels Menu.
“Sweet Bread Nuggets.” Sounds like something divine you’d wait in line for at Krispy Kreme, don’t it? Sorry. Sweet bread is euphemism for the thymus organ. But to me thymus organ is just as seductive as an illuminated Krispy Kreme “Hot Now” sign. This ingenious deep fried nugget of organ parts testifies to the fact that anything deep-fried is really, damn tasty.
Third Course: Absinthe Menu and Cocktail.
Before the Outlaw Dinner’s third course I was an absinthe virgin. I’ve heard the wild absinthe stories. I knew of its famous and infamously unstable enthusiasts like Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hemingway. I learned of its ill effects such as seizures and hallucinations. And of course I was aware of the Green Fairy who has an uncanny resemblance to Kylie Minogue. But like a dumb groupie, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with absinthe for the first time in my life. I wanted to party with it. Burn down a five star hotel room with it. Go on a hundred-city Monsters of Metal tour with it. I finally surrendered myself to absinthe and it rocked! Some call it liquid crack. It's as wonderful as a chilled shot of Nyquil. I call it lust at first sip, and, for my sanity, I’m glad it’s illegal.
Fourth Course: Hemp Seed Menu.
Naturally what follows a nice, wet smooch from the Green Fairy is hemp seed. “Ceviche of Kampachi with Hemp Togarashi” or Chronic of the Sea as I like to call it. I’m just playing. Hemp and marijuana aren’t the same thing. Sure, they’re both cannabis but the THC (a psychoactive ingredient) level in each is different. The psychoactive content in hemp is substantially small and has virtually no intoxicating effects. THC is what gave hemp such a hard time crossing over to the mainstream. Hemp seeds are a part of the mix of spices used to make the togarashi sauce that flavored the oh-so-buttery, fatty Kampachi (related to yellowtail). Yes, your honor, I’m guilty of gluttony in the first degree. Make my last meal kampachi with hemp togarashi.
Fifth Course: Sous Vide Menu.
Sous vide is a cooking technique Jane Jetson would embrace and probably use. It’s like space age cooking with the use of vacuum sealing and plastic bags. But she’d better not be cooking sous vide in Manhattan in the year 2006, otherwise she’d best be ready for a visit from Robocop. Like many other low and slow cooking methods, the point is to retain as much flavor, texture and nutrients as possible. Sous vide is a less forgiving technique than, say, braising, and authorities fear that in the wrong hands sous vide cooking may be a health risk though there hasn’t been any reports of any illnesses resulting from vacuum cooking. The fifth course's sous vide swordfish was unremarkable. The blocks of fish were flash grilled after their sous vide treatment which I felt resulted in a coarse and dry product – isn't that what sous vide shuns? I'm not quite sure what the technique added to the fish but it actually tasted inferior to swordfish I’ve enjoyed in the past cooked by traditional means.
Sixth Course: Unpasteurized Milk/Cheeses Menu.
My family owned and operated a drive-thru dairy back in the late ‘70s. Aside from the easy access to Hostess Sno Balls and beer signage, we could guzzle down as much raw milk as we wanted. My mother encouraged this because she believed in all the health benefits attributed to raw milk and felt raw milk was superior to pasteurized milk. The taste of raw milk was burned into my taste buds thanks to its boldness and supremely creamy texture. The unpasteurized cheeses in the sixth course consisted of a sheep’s milk Camembert, Langres and Spanish Manchego. I am a believer in the notion that raw milk makes a more dynamic tasting cheese, and it was true for all three of these luscious, imported wedges.
Seventh Course: Forbidden Dessert Menu.
Heaven in the seventh course. Chef Gadsby and his outlaw posse started off the dinner with foie gras and concluded with foie gras, bookending the evening in a most decadent way. The entire outlaw dining room washed down the night’s criminal comestibles with a killer foie gras hot chocolate dotted with toasted marshmallows and spiked with volcanic chili. Chef Gadsby thrilled us all night with his culinary mischief and pulled off a final prank with a dainty demitasse of frigid “foie gras hot chocolate” where the “heat” comes from a nice sprinkling of chili powder.
There are many meals I’ll never forget for many different reasons. Chef Gadsby’s Outlaw Dinner is one I shall forever remember because of his intense passion for food, his desire to communicate this passion to food lovers, and his admirable talent for breaking the rules.
“You are remembered for the rules you break.” – Douglas MacArthur.
(The Encore Outlaw Dinner will be served at 7pm on Monday, August 21 - Foie gras will be banned in the City of Chicago the very next day - Location: 676 Restaurant & Bar, Omni Hotel Chicago, 676 N. Michigan Ave., 312.944.7676. $95. Reservations highly recommended. The last one in Chicago was sold out.)
The Fall of Saigon.
Over thirty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam, collapsed or was liberated depending on your political point of view. Soon after, a massive migration of Vietnamese refugees sorrowfully and with great peril sought out new homelands all over the world. Traversing the treacherous open seas on precarious fishing boats, many would not survive the voyage to new lands. Others, however, would end up in a drowsy middle-class suburb of Orange County, California called Westminster. Immediately upon the fall of Saigon, the capital city was renamed Ho Chí Minh after the North Vietnamese revolutionary leader. Although Saigon no longer is, the spirit of the city would rise again along with her people, tradition, culture, art and, especially, food in a place we’d come to know as Little Saigon.
Once in a great while even senseless war and regime change can bring unexpected gifts. One spring afternoon in 1982 I would discover one of these gifts. My father drove me to Little Saigon for lunch. It was there I was introduced to my first pho (pronounced - fuh) restaurant and my very first bowl of pho. For those who are unfamiliar with pho, the almost perfect meal, I feel gutwrenching pity for you. Pho at its most basic is a rice noodle soup in a beef broth served with thin slices of rare beef accompanied with a plate of limes, sprouts, herbs and greens. The savory intensity of the broth and the delicate swatches of lean flank as well as the nutty bean sprouts and fresh bouquet of spicy greens all made a lasting impression on me. That humble lunch was my awakening because never in my young life did I experience such delicious dimension in a bowl of noodle soup. I knew right away that I had just enjoyed something very special though I knew nothing of its heartbreaking and anguished journey to my table.
Ann Le, author, The Little Saigon Cookbook.
A few months ago, I met author Ann Le at a potluck party hosted by one of the producers of KCRW’s Good Food show. Prior to that we had only sent brief and cordial emails to each other. She was a recent guest on Good Food and was on-air to discuss her new cookbook The Little Saigon Cookbook. At the party I told her she had a really wonderful radio voice. She told me I was taller than she’d imagined. I thought to myself that she looked a lot like a Vietnamese Rachael Ray. On the perk-o-meter, Ann’s perkiness level was just about that of Rachael Ray’s. I wasn’t about to share these unspeakable thoughts with her. Then suddenly my wife volunteered, “You know, you’re like a Vietnamese Rachael Ray!” Check, please.
Ann Le’s The Little Saigon Cookbook ventures beyond being solely a cookbook and sheds profound light on the brief history of Vietnamese cuisine in America’s multicultural buffet. Understanding the food via the culture and people are just a couple of ways Ann’s book explores this savory world. Another way she accomplishes this is, of course, by sharing her culture’s food with us. And, personally, that’s my favorite way.
I was honored enough to be invited by Ann to have lunch with her and a fellow writer friend of hers, Kim Fay. Undoubtedly, Little Saigon was to be our edible playground. However, I was surprised to find out that Ann’s father Bobo (bo means “father” in Vietnamese) planned to join us for lunch not simply because he was hungry but because he learned I was coming and that I was craving something, eh, special. Bobo offered to show me just how, eh, special Vietnamese food could be. I took that as a challenge and happily accepted his offer.
Chicken pho or Pho Ga.
Most of the Vietnamese restaurants and pho shacks that I frequent dish up the usual bowls of steaming rice noodle soup heaven, the fantastic seven courses of beef (a veritable carnivore’s carnival) and other inviting fare. But at these eateries I’ve never spied any item on the menu that reached out of the page, grabbed me by the throat then rudely spat, “Eat me! I dare you!” Granted, this is coming from me, a guy who likens tripe to potato chips - a really, really chewy potato chip, to be sure. So perhaps some of these restaurants do have challenging chow on their list of offerings but for me they just weren’t challenging enough. Bobo promised to change that once and for all.
Our group set off to find the pho house called Pho Nguyen Hue. Located somewhere within the city limits of Little Saigon, it is purported that Pho Nguyen Hue offers fare not normally found on the average pho house menu, and with any luck I’ll eat dishes there that will make my dining experience a deep one.
We began looking for this place on Little Saigon’s main drag, Bolsa Avenue. This main artery running through Little Saigon is home to a massive variety of shops, cafés, markets, herbalists, bakeries, delis, pho houses and other types of Vietnamese restaurants. The place we were trying to find was not here. So we veered of the big avenue and into the more obscure territories of the town. Ann consulted her GPS navigation system on her Prius but it didn’t seem to get us any closer to the restaurant. To make matters worse, Ann was giving wrong directions to Kim who was on her phone trying to direct other friends to the place we were ineffectually traveling towards. The blind leading the blind.
The heat and humidity were oppressive and suddenly this wild goose chase began to resemble another kind of hunt where the ultimate game is man. Each time we would return to Bolsa Avenue to get our bearings, the avenue’s asphalt seemed to shimmer from the midday sun, making it look like a river. I imagined that it was the Mekong River and the little Prius was our swift boat cruising past dense shores of jungle trying to find our target. We eased into one of the river’s tributaries. Er, I mean, we turned onto a side street. What were we looking for again? God, it’s hot. Really fuckin’ hot. Are we there yet? Have we found him? Colonel Kurtz? Oh, right. It’s not Kurtz we’re after; it’s Pho Nguyen Hue. And it was on Bolsa all along.
Here at Pho Nguyen Hue, flank steak is strictly for the kiddie table. If you think pho is just about beef, chicken or even *gasp* vegetarian, then you’re in for a pho-reaky surprise.
Once seated, Bobo eagerly pointed out the picks on the menu that might tickle my fancy. He delighted in explaining an odd delicacy that involves a slowly stewed hen that still carried eggs inside it, though in actuality they were premature yolk rather than eggs, follicles perhaps. (These yolk are unfertilized if that’s of any comfort to you, loyal reader.) This chicken and egg pho combo is called Pho Ga Trung Non Them. If your waiter can speak some English, then you can simply ask for the chicken pho with the “small eggs”. Bobo employs a limited amount of English so Ann had to do some complex translating for her father in order to precisely illustrate this treat. At one point I feared we were venturing into the realm of Vietnamese hot vit lon or Filipino balut (duck embryo), but when I finally got what this thing was about, I looked forward to meeting it.
Hello penis, my old friend…
It’s been long overdue. The first time I had bull cock in my mouth was about four years ago in Shanghai. It was just one of many strange meats in our exotic hot pot banquet that evening. Now I got the opportunity to revisit penis as interpreted by pho. The Pho Pin Xe Lua is basically your average pho but dick is substituted in place of thin beef slices. And don’t think for a second that size doesn’t matter; you get to choose how big you like it. Your choices are small, medium or large. Magnum is not an option, cowboy. Naturally, I ordered the large.
Enough time has passed since my last meal of a bull’s member that I forgot what it was like. They say you never forget your first, but my memory is quite foggy with this. I do remember it being a bit rubbery but not in a condom kind of way. It was, you know, chewy.
To my amusement, since I do collect the often odd, effed up and wildly baffling English mis-translations on ethnic restaurant menus, Pho Nguyen Hue uses the word “pudendum” (as a euphemism, I’m guessing) to say penis. “Pudendum” as defined in Webster’s Collegiate is “the external genital organs, esp. of a female; vulva.” Now I was confused as well as a little excited. Was I going to eat penis or vulva? My pulse raced. I’ve never had vulva. (I meant cow’s vulva, wisenheimer.) But what added to the confusion was the "bull-" preceding the word “pudendum”. On the menu it read “bull-pudendum”. Is there such a thing as a bull’s vulva? And do I really want to eat one? Even I’m not quite ready for a taste of hermaphroditic bovine. Whatever it is, the order was placed.
The next dish we asked for was under the Mon An or Traditional Food category. Actually Kim ordered this dish called Oc Gia Ba Ba; in English it’s escargot with tofu and green banana. If you’re into that Slow Food movement and enjoy eating your food at a snail’s pace, then escargot need to be routinely on your plate. The idea of tofu and green bananas mingling with snails had most of us scratching our heads but we were still intrigued enough to order it.
“Okay, premature yolk, schlong and slugs comin’ up!,” confirmed the waiter. Not really. His English was much better than that.
While we waited for our food, a few more friends of Ann and Kim finally arrived to join us. Strangely, they opted for less phallic selections.
Chopped stewed chicken and bonus bits of nasty.
First, the steaming bowl of pho arrived. This was to be the canvas on which the chicken and the bull pudendum would decorate. Although I technically ordered two phos, a beef pho and a chicken pho, only the chicken pho, which I do not prefer, was brought out to me. This didn’t bother me very much because the pho itself really was just filler. I wanted to isolate the experiences of the odd “pre-eggs” as well as the bull pudendum anyway. Shortly afterwards, a small platter of chopped steamed chicken showed up, along with a small soup bowl filled with broth and miniature orbs of golden-orange yolk. The chicken, in taste and appearance, was reminiscent of Hainan Chicken. That was accompanied by a motley mix of nasty bits—chicken gizzards and livers, and dice-sized cubes of coagulated pig’s blood.
I'm not an egg. Not yet a chicken. Just kidding.
Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, so the proverb goes. But in this case you can certainly count your eggs before they’re laid. Presumably, my bowl of about ten premature yolk came from the same hen. Remarkably the yolk retained their perfectly spherical shape thanks to the cooking technique. Smaller than a normal chicken yolk, since they are premature, I picked one up and popped it in my mouth like a malt ball. But, it was more like chewing a racquet ball. The feel of the yolk was synthetic but that gave way after some chewing to the familiar chalkiness of the average hard-boiled egg yolk. There was virtually no flavor other than a wispy taste of something yolk like. Ultimately this delicacy was a novelty act with not much going for it.
Floating chunks of bull penis.
There is nothing like a bowl of bull penis to get the dick jokes going. After the giggling subsided and the bad dick jokes ended, I tried a piece of the bull pudendum, which turned out to be penis and not vulva (though, I had secretly wished it was vulva). Like the last time I had bull penis, it proved to be a chewy endeavor. It's very much like beef tendon, in fact, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference if it wasn’t for Bobo constantly pointing out the penis’ urethra. “See the hole?” he’d ask repeatedly. The broth that the penile chunks were floating in was not nearly as robust as good pho broth should be therefore the penis wasn’t very flavorful. No penis envy here. And I’m totally not trying to be a dick. It’s only my opinion.
Very slow food.
When the escargot with tofu and green banana came to the table, I could tell it was going to be good. Visually it had the appealing array of colors and textures that are essential to multi-dimensional and flavor balanced dishes. The escargot looked plump and juicy. I anticipated a struggle chewing through them but they were as tender as perfectly cooked calamari. Best of all, the snails soaked up all the personality of the rich broth, and this was evident with every bite. The broth itself is a wonderfully unique synthesis of flavors with the spicy-sweet from the cinnamon basil, the earthiness from the escargot, the dull pungency of the green banana and a combination of other spices and seasoning. It was very much like a cinnamony curry. Inexplicably the tofu was substituted with pork skin. Fortunately, this switch added to the great flavor and uniqueness of the dish.
It used to make me nuts when the uninformed person would describe Chinese food as merely egg rolls, shrimp fried rice and a fortune cookie. But I may be just as guilty of ignorance when it comes to Vietnamese food with my limited knowledge. Thanks to Ann Le, her book, Bobo and their generosity and patience in sharing their culinary knowledge with me, I can move beyond the pho section of the menu and see what other delicious possibilities await. And there doesn’t even have to be a penis anywhere in the bowl.
Take your stinking claws off the baby, you damned dirty lobster!!
Illustration by Ji Lee, photograph by Daniel Root
I know this sounds insane. Like crazy with a “k”. It’s a loco notion really, but is it possible that famed New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni and I are in the same gang?
We couldn't be more different.
He’s reprezentin’ the East Coast. And I’m kickin’ it old school on the Westside.
He bangs with the red. And me wit da blue.
He’s down with the dead and phat Notorious B.I.G.
While I vacuum the house with the late Tupac swearing and blaring through my earbuds.
Yet somehow we managed to set aside all those differences and combine forces so together we can stop the food fascists before we’re all eating out of hay bags.
Frank and Eddie versus the Whole Foods Market Lobster Ban.
You got my back?
Your back is got.
Word.
Deep End Dining on KCRW's Good Food. Guess what's on the menu?
Awww, live shrimp and lobster again?!
Hey, there are kids in Switzerland who've never had Kobe beef!! Be quiet and eat your lunch!
Listen in SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2006 at 11AM Pacific Standard Time (PST).
If you live in Southern California, tune in to KCRW 89.9 FM.
OR
From anywhere with internet access, go to KCRW.COM, click on "simulcast" and listen to the streaming broadcast, also at 11AM PST.
OR
If you missed or dissed the broadcast, listen to the show archived.
OR
Hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening!
It's a British Invasion...kinda. This time it's US food blogs (mostly) conquering the shores of England. Deep End Dining is among them. I'm a big Anglophile so this is really cool. Check out the Guardian's list. I'll be celebrating with several pints down at the pub. Cheers, mates!
Change is good
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