Thai in Taipei: Sukhothai

Cuisine: Thai

Location: Zhongxiao East Rd. No. 12, Sec. 1 at the Sheraton Hotel

Price: $$$

Food: 3.5*

Service: ***

Overall: 3.5*

There are many places to eat Thai in Taipei, most prominently Thai Town, a massive chain restaurant in Taiwan that puts out some very good (if not totally authentic) Thai food. Growing up, it was always my go to restaurant for Thai food. Although the cuisine is altered for the customer base (more Chinese flavors, less Thai), I think that it helped give me an appreciation for traditional Thai food while I was still developing my palate and less willing to try funky tasting foods or items with names I couldn’t even pronounce.

That said, I’ve since been to Thailand a couple of times, and absolutely love authentic Thai cuisine. From the intense heat of the curries to the fresh seafood, whether it’s pineapple fried rice or shrimp cakes, the spices and flavors of Thai cuisine are so different from its Southeast Asian brethren. When my aunt suggested that we go to Sukhothai, a supposedly more authentic and classy version of Thai Town, I was happy to say yes and excited to try it out.

The Next Ticket Debacle

On Sunday, Nick Kokonas, the co-founder of Alinea and Next, took to Facebook to announce that the majority of tickets for Next Restaurant’s summer menu – a tour of Thailand – would go on sale on Monday around 3 p.m. in Chicago, or 4 a.m. Tuesday in Taipei. Since I have a complete disregard for any semblance of a normal sleep schedule, I decided I’d have no problem staying up until then and gunning for one of the 2,000 tables to be released.

I went to the first iteration of Next, Paris 1906: Escoffier at the Ritz, in June after being one of the unbelievably lucky few to secure tickets in the mayhem that was their first few days of operations and ticketing. The meal absolutely blew me away – it is definitely one of the two best meals I have had all year, with the other contender being my college graduation dinner at L2O, which lived up to its Michelin three-star hype. Despite Next being well out of my price range¹, the meal was so good that I had no qualms about the opportunity to go back and experience Thai food under Chef Achatz’ creative vision. 

It’s a good thing that Next is stellar not only in its food but also its reputation, because the patience of many hopeful diners was put to the test during the ticket release process, which started an hour late². The process was slowed by the fact that the website was bombarded by so many auto-refreshing bots (and manual-refreshing fingers like my own, as I stared blankly into the screen and clicked refresh over and over again until I thought I was being hypnotized by the background on the page) as to overload the server. When Kokonas announced that tickets would not be released on Monday and would instead be released on Tuesday after server issues were handled, the vitriol and anger that poured out of the Facebook page where it was posted was unbelievable.

This screen will hypnotize you. Also the message that stares back at you simply says, "We are currently sold out. Please check back as we will soon be releasing more tables."

To be honest, I was frustrated too. I don’t particularly enjoy staying up in the middle of the night to wait for tickets that I have a minute chance of getting. My frustration was buttressed by the fact that during the two-hour waiting period from 4 a.m. until when the postponement was announced, I was forced to refresh the Next Facebook page over and over as well in anticipation of an announcement. What frustrated me wasn’t the endless refreshing or the need to do it all again tomorrow, but rather that I was forced to read the veritable shitstorm of complaints that rolled over the website like the recent power outage did Evanston.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people found it necessary to make comments - some sardonic, some sarcastic, and others outright virulent – expressing how they had been inconvenienced by the tickets not being sold at exactly 3 p.m. on the dot on Monday. Some commented on how fifteen-year-olds could have built a server equipped to handle the traffic Next received on Monday; others essentially stated that Next was to blame for them not getting work done for two straight hours or for them pointlessly postponing a meeting at work. People, I hate to break it to you, but a restaurant that you are begging to dine at – not one that is begging for you to dine there³ – is not responsible for your being wildly unproductive at work.

This is as fucking asinine as me blaming the creators of Adobe Flash for preventing me from paying attention in class – maybe if I wasn’t so busy playing flash games in class, I could have redirected my energy to listening to the dynamically monotonic voice of my Economics professors and learned something that I would find wholly inapplicable once I entered the job market!

Like six-year-old children that can’t believe their parents won’t buy them a horse after they’ve gone to one horseback riding lesson, the Facebook page was overrun with what amounted to one massive online temper tantrum. I’m not sure at what point along the way these people decided that they deserved tickets (and I guess everyone else didn’t deserve shit besides being forced to listen to them turn bitching and complaining into an art form), but the sense of entitlement was appalling and enraging.

The next day, as 4 p.m. came and went and there was no announcement of a pending ticket release, people resumed their bitching about how it would be unfair for people to miss out because they were stuck in a commute home, or how they’d have to stay by their work computers until the tickets went on sale and how they’d prefer it to be now so they could go home. Luckily for the community of chronic moaners and groaners, tickets did indeed go on sale shortly thereafter, at 4:30 p.m., or 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in Taipei. By then, I had already woken up four separate times (in 45-minute increments) to make sure tickets weren’t about to be released, and then had spent an hour mindlessly clicking at the lovely Next website praying for a miracle ticket already. Suffice to say I was totally fried and exhausted at that point.

Luckily for me, this long post of my own complaints about other complainers has a happy ending in that I did indeed end up snatching a ticket to return to Next in August to experience a tour of Thailand.

However… I still wish butt warts upon the legion of entitled fine-whining diners (or are they fine-dining whiners?) from their computer chairs. Also I hope that they all failed miserably in their quest to get tickets. That will give them plenty of anger and negativity to stew in until October, when the menu changes again, the ticket frenzy starts anew, and they disdainfully announce that since they didn’t get to experience this menu they should be allowed to waltz into the restaurant and receive a reservation at their convenience. Oh boy, I can’t wait for that to happen!

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^{1. An eight-course meal with six different wine pairings ran me about $180, with tax and tip included. The meal, while expensive, offers unbeatable value and quality – the same meal would probably run $300 or more at similar upscale French restaurants, I imagine.↩}

^{2. Late, that is, in the eyes of the many Facebook posters, many of whom expressed anguish in setting aside a block of time to purchase Next tickets and then not having the tickets released. Kokonas had merely stated that tickets would be released “around 3 p.m.”, with an hour’s notice. Heaven forbid he try and run his restaurant on a schedule that doesn’t cater to each and every individual’s work schedule.↩}

^{3. Next, with its unbelievably large Facebook following and unique ticket systems that makes seating 100% equal opportunity, is so difficult to get into that the Michelin Chicago Guide (via Twitter) opined about its lack of ability to experience the cuisine there.↩}

Italian in Taipei: Osteria by Angie

Cuisine: Italian

Location: Guang Fu South Rd. No. 33, Lane 280, Taipei, Taiwan

Price: $$$

Food: 2.5*

Service: ***

Overall: 2.5*

Website: http://osteria.com.tw

In a city where Italian restaurants run abound and many try and cater to the tastes of the locals instead of preserving the authenticity of Italian cuisine, Osteria by Angie stands out in stark contrast. Co-owned by executive chef Giorgio Pappalardo, who grew up in Sicily, Osteria by Angie goes to great pains to deliver the feeling of authentic, home-cooked Italian food that makes one feel at home.

The concept, in my opinion, is fantastic – as someone with a decidedly non-Taiwanese palate, I have been to many Italian restaurants in Taipei where the quality of the food suffers as a result of dumbing down the food to local tastes. At Osteria by Angie, the pizzas are made with buffalo’s milk mozzarella imported from Italy, the pasta is hand-rolled and homemade, and the risotto is actually cooked “al dente”, instead of into a sloppy mush, the texture that many locals prefer as it more closely resembles the white rice eaten on an every day basis.

Osteria by Angie had all the components necessary for it to deliver an all-star meal – and at its best, I was definitely impressed with some of the dishes it had to offer. Sadly, I found flaws with a few dishes, whether it was in the preparation or in that they simply didn’t have a lot of flavor. The restaurant has a potential to be fantastic, but as it stands, too many missteps made the overall experience pretty average.

The first thing I noticed was how cramped the seating was on the first floor – we were seated in a booth that was directly next to the walk-in area. The layout was such that often, servers had to stand in the walk-in area and reach around us to plate food or refill water, which made their presence very conspicuous and made me feel like they got in the way of each other a lot. Otherwise, service was pretty much what I would expect.

Because our group ate family style, I wasn’t able to get pictures of all the plates, resorting instead to just taking pictures of what was on my own plate so I could chronicle the meal. So, apologizes for some less than stellar/ missing photos. With that in mind…

Deep-fried calamari with garlic aioli

Appetizer: The batter on the calamari was light and airy, giving them a nice crunch. I thought the garlic aioli could have been a little stronger – with the lemons that were squeezed over the calamari, the taste of garlic was neutralized and hard to detect.

Grilled tiger prawns, marinated capsicum, rocket salad

Appetizer: The poor, poor tiger prawns were way overcooked, making them chewy and tough instead of tender like they should be. Not only that, but the capsicum were not just marinated in olive oil - it felt more like they were just completely soaked in them. The amount of oil on the bottom of the plate gives you a little bit of indication here. They turned the dish entirely too greasy and further worsened an already crappy dish.

Angus Beef carpaccio, Parmigiano Reggiano, truffle

Appetizer: One of my favorite dishes of the day. The carpaccio was sliced very thinly, and the parmigiano reggiano and accompanying arugula gave the dish a kick that was finished with a slight hint of truffles. I appreciated that the dish wasn’t heavy-handed on truffle oil – it really allowed the carpaccio to shine through.

Salad: Romaine lettuce with Parma ham and smoked ricotta cheese (no photo)

The smoked ricotta cheese was an interesting departure from what I would normally expect in a salad – it had great flavor and accentuated the salad. Otherwise, this salad was pretty standard Italian, with the dressing being a simple balsamic vinaigrette.

Mushroom risotto with braised beef cheeks in red wine

Primi: Probably the best thing I had all day. I absolutely loved that the risotto had a bite to it, as it should – as I mentioned above, too often in Taipei I’ll get risotto with the consistency of white rice, which drives me crazy. The beef cheeks were braised perfectly and melted in my mouth. That, plus the fact that I love mushroom risotto, sealed the deal for me.

Pizza Diavola: Spicy salami, tomato, mozzarella cheese, basil

Pizza: Another very good dish – the cheese had that gooey, melty quality to it that I love, and the flavors are very traditional Italian. It's pretty hard, I think, to make something with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, basil, and spicy salami and have it come out poorly. I liked the thinness of the pizza dough, but found the crust to be a little bit too thick for my liking. 

Pizza Quattro funghi: Mozzarella cheese and four kinds of mushrooms

Pizza: I am surprised that the same kitchen that produced the pizza diavola could produce this disaster. Considering that this was a white pizza, I would have expected some intense flavors to replace the tomato sauce. Instead, I got bland, unseasoned mushrooms and some doughy pizza bread with a little bit of cheese. Without any flavor, I felt that the cheese's main contribution was to greasify the pizza (and my lips).  Just a poorly made dish all around.

Dessert Sampler: Chocolate soufflé, mango crème brulee, tiramisu, assorted gelato (no photo)

The dessert was complimentary, as someone in our party had complained to our server about the overcooked tiger prawns. If the point of dessert was to assure us that they cared about the quality of food they put out, well, they failed pretty miserably. It wasn’t that dessert was bad – most of it was decent, if not particularly memorable. However, the one thing I will remember from this sampler plate is that we were served a soufflé that didn’t rise at all – like a deflated balloon, the entire soufflé sank into the ramekin it was served it, creating an utterly sad and pathetic visual display that I will definitely remember. I wish I had a photo of it, but I think that we immediately dug in to the soufflé so we wouldn’t have to keep staring at the sunken black hole where there should have been an airy, fluffy top.

Last thoughts: The highlights – and there were many – were great, and left me wanting to make a return trip to have the risotto, pizza, and carpaccio again. Sadly, the lowlights – and there were just as many – left me disappointed with my meal as a whole, in the sense that I thought this meal could have been so much better. I’d love to go back the next time I’m in Taipei to see if they’ve improved upon some of the poorer dishes I encountered today – if they do, Osteria by Angie will become a great place to go to for authentic Italian.

Italian-Spanish in Taipei: Forchetta

Cuisine: Italian-Spanish

Location: An He Rd. No. 4, Lane 127, Sec. 1, Taipei, Taiwan

Price: $$$ - $$$$

Food: 3.5*

Service: 3.5*

Overall: 3.5*

There is a definite disconnect between the culture of eating in Taiwan and fine dining. I noticed this when reading the menu at Forchetta, which states the origin from which their food comes from (e.g. chicken from Mioli, fresh seafood from Keelung Pier).

I found it intriguing because usually when restaurants in the states do this –Maine lobsters, Kobe beef, etc. – it gives the sense that the ingredients are fresher and higher quality. I know that lobsters from Maine are fresh, that Kobe cows is raised to produce amazingly high quality beef, so on and so forth. However, I know next to nothing about Miao Li (the phonetically correct and more accepted pinyin spelling of 'Mioli', which Forchetta used), and when I think of Keelung, I don’t think of fishermen and the pier, but rather I think of a river that used to be so insanely polluted that someone once described it as looking like Coca-Cola. Which is funny, because the river I'm thinking of isn't even Keelung River, its Tamshui River¹. Even though I’m certain that the local produce is of very high quality, seeing it written down on the menu did not automatically trigger that connection to quality food for me, as my above thinking shows.

The good thing is that my little philosophical tangent into the gastronomic culture of Taiwan didn’t stop me from keeping an open stomach and palate towards the food being served. Though Forchetta serves some Spanish (Iberico ham; tapas plate) food, I only had their Italian food. But if what I had were any indication, then I would expect the rest of their menu, Spanish or Italian, to be well crafted and worth tasting.

An interesting note about the service here – our server was someone who I recognized from a previous trip to Mondo, another fine Italian restaurant in the nooks of Taipei. He stands out particularly because he speaks English fluently (a rarity here), and also because of his gregarious nature. He actually selected the courses for my friend and me, so overwhelming us with his suggestions and enthusiasm that I think we decided to just let him run with it. In general I found him to be very helpful in explaining the food and enhancing our experience there, save for the fact that his constant doting² was certainly out of the ordinary when it came to service I’ve come to expect. It was a little like dining at a friend’s place and having their parents keep saying, “Eat! Eat! Eat!” That and I had a minor quibble about his rush to serve us the plated food – because we split all of our dishes, he would often separate the dish, put it on our individual plates, and pull the original plate of food in a blink of an eye. Aside from the fact that it prevented me from taking photos of the composed plate, I was a little disappointed that it detracted from the visual aspect of eating. But I thought service overall was very good, and certainly appreciated how helpful our server was.

Without further ado, my meal at Forchetta:

Fresh baked bread

Tomato paste, garlic aioli

Bread: I was impressed with how fresh the bread was – in fact, when I went back for a second piece of bread 20 minutes after it had arrived, the wait had robbed it of its freshness and the bread became just slightly harder (certainly not to the point of it being inedible, just that you could tell how fresh it had been originally). It came paired with tomato sauce and garlic aioli³ that we spread ourselves, which I definitely preferred to the common alternative, a pat of butter. The flavor combination was great – very rustic Italian, with the garlic and tomato.

Shrimp Carpaccio w/ sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, truffle oil

Appetizer: I love arugula. The peppery taste it gives off pairs greatly with the light, refreshing flavors that a carpaccio is supposed to bring. I was very happy with the shrimp – they had a great raw flavor without being too slimy for my tastes. The arugula and sundried tomatoes gave the dish a real kick, and the presence of truffle oil gave another layer to the dish that left a lingering taste afterwards.

 

Mushroom and truffle pan-fried ravioli

 Appetizer: I was a little miffed by the presentation – these pan-fried ravioli were not like either traditional ravioli or deep-fried ones, but rather something in between. The original plate was dotted with a bit of sauce, but we didn’t get any of the sauce after our slightly-too-hands-on server served us and removed the plate. I wasn’t a fan of how big the ravioli were, and thought they resembled pot stickers more than ravioli. The filling was quite tasty, however – the combination of mushrooms with a hint of truffle is a very classic one. Served hot, I loved that the scent of truffles was released once the ravioli was cut into. I would have loved this dish if it were served traditionally as ravioli instead of this bizarre Asian-fusion pot sticker style.

Spaghetti with spicy chicken from Mioli and Chinese pickled mustard vegetables from Fu Hsin Garden

Pasta/ Primi: I've always believed that a good Italian restaurant is judged by the quality of their pasta – if so, Forchetta passes with flying colors.

The undoubted star of the meal, the pasta was finished with some spicy olive oil to give it an extra kick, but the crunch and taste of the pickled mustard vegetables had me sold. I love pickled mustard vegetables with Asian cuisine, and seeing them used so cleverly here without turning the spaghetti into a bowl of Asian-style noodles was an impressive feat. The pasta was cooked perfectly, the chicken superbly tender, and the slight spiciness to it kept me coming back for more.

Pineapple panna cotta

Dessert: Again, I didn’t get a picture of the original plating here before our server helped us split it into two. I liked this as a closing to our meal – it was not overly sweet, which I actually liked a lot. The pineapple flavors were still prominent, and the texture to the panna cotta was fantastic. A good end to a fine dinner.

Last thoughts: Forchetta was definitely a quality Italian restaurant that I would be happy to return to. In a city filled with Italian spots, I don’t think many can make a pasta dish that I enjoyed as much as the spaghetti here.

The first floor is very small and gives the place a very intimate and elegant feel – I didn’t venture down to the basement, where I think there was more seating. As such, I’d definitely recommend this place for a romantic dinner, a nice night out, or simply as a fine dining destination. 

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^{1. Just yesterday, the local news in Taipei, which focuses exclusively on ridiculous sensationalized news that whips the nation into a frenzy about idiotic issues of non-consequence, reported that a corpse was found floating in Tamshui River, just 25 meters away from a major MRT (Taipei's equivalent of the L) station. Not the best association to have with the origin of my food, erroneous or not.↩}

^{2. Ranging from telling us to eat our bread before it got cold to playfully chastising my friend for not finishing her ravioli. Although, in his defense, he was 100% right about the bread getting a little stale if it sat for too long.↩}

^{3. Like bacon and chipotle mayo, garlic aioli makes everything taste better. This is also why I am a sucker for the turkey with garlic aioli at Al’s Deli and the Al Forno at Rollin’ to Go.↩}

French in Taipei: Aux Champs sur Marne

First things first:

Haven’t yet read what my ratings for restaurants mean? Go here.

Haven’t yet read my philosophy behind reviewing restaurants? Go here.

Cuisine: French

Location: Xin An St. No. 161, Taipei, Taiwan.

Price Range: $$$

Food: **

Service: **

Overall: **

Every time I’m back home I end up going to a few places to eat that my dad, relatives, or family friends have found since the last time I’ve been back. The story is usually goes like this – they’ve found a great new restaurant, and the food there is spectacular. As a result, they’ve been back a couple times already in the span of a few short months, and the owner/ maitre d’/ executive chef greets them by name¹ and sometimes trots out dishes² that are nowhere to be found on the menu.

So understandably, I was excited when some family friends told us they had found a great French place that served rustic, authentic French food. Sadly, this was one of the rare times that I was decidedly underwhelmed by a fine dining establishment in Taipei.

The restaurant is very small – by my count, it seats maybe 30 people. The kitchen is in plain view of the dining room, separated only by the expediting station. Given that, I would have expected service to be attentive, or at least not be poor enough to leave me with a bad impression. Especially considering that the restaurant doesn’t do a la carte at all (instead offering multiple options for a set menu consisting of a soup, salad, optional appetizer, entrée, and dessert), you would think that they would have the pacing of the meal down to a tee. Instead, there was a 30-minute delay between our salad and appetizers, followed by a 20-minute delay between our appetizer and main course. Which, for the people who didn’t bother with the appetizers, translated into almost an hour-long wait³.

Even worse, the food simply wasn’t very good. It wasn’t bad, either – it was just that there was always one component to each dish that I didn’t care for. Instead of talking in generalities⁴, here’s a more in-depth recap of my meal at Aux Champs Sur Marne:

Left: Apricot, Ricotta, Berries. Middle: Salami, Pesto, Pickled Cucumber. Right: Salmon, and honestly, I can't remember for the life of me what the hell that orange looking sauce was.

Amuse-bouche: A pedestrian beginning to a pedestrian meal. Why were the bites served on Ritz crackers? I have no idea. The chef imports his bread from France so that it has an authentic flavor, but can’t be bothered to drum up something more ingenious than two whole Ritz cracker for a dish that’s meant to showcase the creativity of his cuisine, apparently.

French onion soup

Soup: The croutons in the soup were delicious. These garlicky croutons were the undoubted highlight of my meal. Which is not at all a good thing when you think about it. Also the soup managed to hit that balance of being flavorful without being overpowering, and in general I am a sucker for a good French onion soup. There was no cheese at all in this soup, though, which I was extremely disappointed with, especially considering that I was told the food was going to be authentic.

Imported bread from France

Garlic-sauteed mushroom salad

Salad: The dish was plated so that the mushroom was literally at the forefront of the plate. Which was apt, because the garlic flavor was so powerful that it muted everything else on the plate.  The mushrooms were delicious because of that flavor, but they seemed like they belonged in a steakhouse as a side dish (which I would have loved). Instead the flavor masked what I thought was a very decent balsamic dressing on the salad.

Escargot "gratin"

Appetizer: The escargot I had here was way fishier than any that I had previously had, and I really did not care for it. The fishiness also emanated into the gratin, making this dish a total miss for me.

Green apple sorbet with brandy

Palate cleanser: This dish was complimentary, perhaps due to the aforementioned service mishaps. But they only gave our table of six two of these for some reason. Which is fine because it meant that only two of us had to taste this. I could tell the green apple sorbet was refreshing and subtly sweet, which I liked a lot. Too bad the intense taste of brandy completely overtook the sorbet and left an insanely bitter after taste in my mouth. As palate cleansers go, this one was one big epic FAIL. It came closer to nuking my palate than cleaning it.

Duck breast confit, apple tatin, Dijon mustard, seasonal vegetables

Entrée: The duck managed to be cut into slices that were just too big and chewy to eat in one bite, but the duck was just south of tender so that it was decently difficult to break the slices down into smaller pieces. The accoutrements to this dish were decent – the sweetness of the apple tatin and the bite to the Dijon mustard, plus yet another sauce that I can’t name because there was no explanation of the dish, all paired well with the duck. However, the seasonal vegetables to the side were dreadful. Why the fuck was there a bland mishmash consisting of a Chinese long bean, a mushroom stem, an ear of baby corn, a slice of zucchini, and a cherry tomato⁵ on my plate? It added absolutely nothing, and on an entrée that was very flavorful, managed to be completely devoid of taste. This shitstorm of vegetables is something that I would have expected to receive at a chain western restaurant designed to cater to the masses of Taipei, not a small French restaurant trying to emphasize authenticity.

Vanilla ice cream, blueberry and banana crepe

Dessert: I was pretty much ready for the meal to end at this point, as I am now with my lengthy post nitpicking about the meal. Let’s just say that the crepe was a little bit too thick for me, but otherwise the dessert wasn’t bad.

Last thoughts: like I said, I felt that everything managed to miss the boat by just a bit one way or another. Overall, a wholesomely forgettable dining experience. Especially for the price point, I wouldn’t be able to justify recommending this place to anyone.

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^{1. My uncle David has been to a certain Japanese restaurant in Taipei so many times in the last few months that they keep a set of chopsticks engraved with his name there for his personal use.↩}

^{2. A good friend of my dad’s claims that he once frequented an Italian establishment so often that to switch things up he once asked the chef/ owner to make him porridge instead. As the story goes, the porridge was as fantastic as the restaurant’s Italian food.↩}

^{3. Food worth waiting over an hour for: Hot Doug’s and Kuma’s Corner. And at least there you’re warned that you’ll be waiting for hours and hours to eat.↩}

^{4. Which I promised I wouldn’t do when it comes to reviewing restaurants!↩}

^{5. The fact that they plated an entire cherry tomato (instead of halves) really bothered me. Because the cherry tomato had been either blanched or boiled, I was beyond worried that when I picked it up with a fork the entire tomato would collapse and spew tomato juice all over the table.↩}

Rating Restaurants

I’m about to post my first full length review of a restaurant, so I thought I’d give a quick legend when it comes to scoring the restaurant on the big measurables: price, food, and service.

Price:

$: Cheap, affordable eats. (~$10 entrees)

$$: A decent dinner if you’re a college student. (~$15 entrees)

$$$: A decent dinner if you’re a real person of the society. (~$25 entrees)

$$$$: Expensive. (~$40 entrees)

$$$$$: Exorbitantly expensive. (~$250 24-course degustation, or something of the sort)

Food:

*: I wouldn't serve this shit to my hypothetical dog.

**: Not bad, but not decent by any stretch of imagination.

***: Good, decent food that I would recommend to others.

****: Beyond the norm, dishes that impress me in taste and creativity

*****: Unbelievably amazing food that defies convention and leaves a lasting impression.

Example of food deserving of one star: Through extensive word of mouth, I have heard that Chicken Bar in Evanston falls pretty squarely under this definition.

Example of food deserving of five stars: Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York.

Note: I will use half-stars very liberally, since most food won't fall so neatly into one of the aforementioned categories.

Service:

*: Egregious offenses, inattentiveness, complete lack of caring.

**: Too many minor slip-ups to call service passable.

***: Average. What you would expect at any sit-down restaurant.

****: Engaging wait-staff that adds to the dining experience

*****: Wait-staff that goes above and beyond in giving you a complete dining experience. 

Dining Out and Reviewing Restaurants

Most of my dining experiences, in particular at nicer restaurants, involve an evaluation along a very narrow spectrum. When someone asks me how the food was, it’s almost always good. The service is always good. The bread was good, the salmon I ordered was good, and the wine pairings were good. If it’s not good, it’s really good. Which just means that it’s a lot of good and practically indistinguishable from something being just good. The only difference is that “really good” is usually said with more verve than “good” when being given as a reply. If I enunciated and emphasized good like I normally do when I tell someone that a restaurant is really good, it would have the exact same effect. I say “really good” with a different inflection, a higher pitch, and a tone that is supposed to convey everything with regards to the meal that I can’t, won’t, or am too lazy to go into detail about.

80% of the restaurants that I have visited with which I have had even the slightest sliver of expectations fall into the murky category between good and really good. Of course, considering that expectations usually suggest some prior emotional investment to the meal followed by a monetary one after, I tend to give restaurants that are just shy of good a pass and call them good anyway. This is why, in my opinion, in the lexicon of restaurant reviews, the word good, or any derivative of it, carries absolutely no evaluative or judgmental value whatsoever. If my goal is to give an honest review, playback, or evaluation of a meal, telling someone it was good means I really haven’t said diddlysquat. Essentially, what I just told you was, “Yea, whatever, why don’t you go try it yourself, then you can be as equally middle-of-the-road as I am being to you right now when you go and describe your meal of indistinguishable quality from thousands of others that you’ve had and called, ‘good’.”

As such, when I review restaurants, I’ll do my best to be precise about what I liked, what I didn’t like, which parts stood out, and which parts didn’t. If the entire meal was good, that means that the meal was one big flat-line, like a dead patient in a hospital bed. I am not completely sure about this, but I think that comparing a meal to a dead patient in a hospital bed is not a flattering comparison¹. A truly special meal will have highlights and courses that make you exult and pine for just one more bite. If I can express that, I’ll (hopefully) be much more successful in convincing you to see for yourself and dine at said restaurant so you can experience the parts of the meal that were so much more than just good.

Speaking of highlights (and lowlights), there are the 15% of restaurants that are either mind-numbingly bad, unimaginably awesome, drown in the deep end of the pool of my expectations, or rise far above and beyond what I had expected. These are the ones that we already describe to our friends as “Amazing!” or “That restaurant was a complete fucking train wreck and if it burns down tonight I would be totally fine with that because then no other diner would have to endure the two hours of shitty service and food that I received at this garbage-in-a-pail² establishment.” These, I think, will be the truly fun ones to review in terms of the ease with which I can express my opinions. Actually, true to my sadistic sense, I’ll probably take perverse pleasure in ripping apart restaurants that manage to really fuck it up, whether it’s by serving me hair with my glass of water or sending my friend a plate of food with an ant in it³.

Lastly, there are the 5% that draw a “meh.” Think Gru’s mom in Despicable Me. I truly think that a restaurant that doesn’t draw much of a reaction is harder to make-over than one that draws a strong negative review, if only because in the latter there is a clear indication of what needs to be fixed. The mehs are the ones where everything is just slightly subpar, and nothing is quite exciting enough, and each dish somehow just misses the mark, and the entire dining experience is wholesomely forgettable and no one will remember the food they ate there again in 24 hours.

I’m sure I’ll have well received reviews as well as ones that people disagree with as I write about the restaurants that cross my path in the future. If so, please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me, and I’ll be happy to get back to you on the subject.

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^{1. But what do I know. Maybe some people find it to be a compliment of the highest order.↩}

^{2. Certain people are convinced that I made this saying up, but even if that's the case I'm of the belief that if I keep using it, it will catch on eventually. It means finding shit where you're not expecting it. Like if you go to reach for your pail to build a sandcastle on the beach and some dickwad has thrown garbage in there while you weren’t paying attention. Then you go, “What the fuck! Why is there garbage in my pail?”↩}

^{3. The hair came at Spiaggia, the most disappointing fine dining experience of all time due to supremely shitty service, and the ant came at Mary’s, a diner I used to go to all the time right next to my high school. They made these ridiculously tasty bacon and egg sandwiches that I went back for even after the ant incident. Some foods are worth risking for I suppose.↩}

Eggs

My mom does not cook. Most of what I remember about her culinary repertoire involves the following: boiling frozen dumplings, microwaving leftovers from my Grandma’s, steaming and reheating buns from Din Tai Fung, home of the world’s best dim sum.

It’s not so much that she can’t cook – she makes a great chilled peanut soup, which she would always serve to my friends when they came over to hang out. It’s just that she never bothered, probably because she was too engrossed in her work. Plus leftovers from my Grandma generally tasted awesome so it wasn’t like we were eating poorly.

The only time she’d ever cook for my sister and I was breakfast, on the weekends – and every weekend, I could expect to eat two eggs to start my day. Some day it was two sunny-side up eggs with soy sauce on them; other days it was two scrambled eggs with buttered toast. I remember being mesmerized that the same white spherical object could turn into a multitude of things when prepared differently. Eggs can be hard-boiled, soft-boiled, fried, scrambled, poached, baked, and god knows how many other forms of prep I’m missing here^1.

“Teach me how to make eggs,” I would tell my mom over and over again. But then I’d balk at the suggestion that we make eggs for breakfast the next weekend when she suggested it. I was scared senseless that somehow when I went to make eggs instead of my mom something terrible would happen and everything would go to shit.

Eggs – in particular, scrambled eggs – are next to impossible to screw up. All you have to do is make sure you don’t leave a healthy dose of eggshell crumble in your eggs, and don’t leave them on the stovetop so long that they fuse with your pan. That’s really about it. But the first time I did it myself – mixed the yolk with the white, sprinkled some salt and pepper in it, poured it into the pan, let the mixture set, broke it up and scrambled it with the spatula, and finally, plated the eggs – I thought I was a top chef extraordinaire. Of course I did – it was the first thing I had ever made in my life. I was so proud of the fact that I could make scrambled eggs².

That’s really what kick started my interest in cooking – after that; I started reading more and more about food until finally I started cooking on a regular basis this year. Even today, eggs remain a major staple of what I eat and cook. I’ll put an egg on anything and everything – corned beef hash, burgers, pasta, steak, fried rice, scallion pancakes, and more. And when I’m too lazy to make real food, I always revert back to eggs and breakfast food to whip something up quick – couple slices of bacon, some toast, two fried eggs, and a glass of OJ make for some killer hangover food at 1 pm in the afternoon.

My dalliance with eggs are far from being over, either – I still have plans to figure out how to poach eggs perfectly, and to make Eggs Benedict sometime soon (though the béarnaise sauce is somewhat daunting). I still need to figure out how to flip an egg without a spatula to make eggs over easy that don’t have broken yolks, and to make omelets that actually look appetizing instead of having them turn into scrambles all the time. There’s a lot more to tackle and learn when it comes to eggs, the most basic of foods to cook – and I plan on figuring it all out, and then some, as I cook my way through my first year of being a real person.

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^{1. This doesn’t include the millions of recipes that call for eggs in some form, or the fact that eggs can also be thrown at cars, people, and houses for much hilarity. ↩}

^{2. This would be the only thing I could make until halfway through my freshman year in college, when I boiled pasta for the first time. Unaware the water had to be boiling, I left the heat on medium and waited for 30 minutes before my pasta was remotely edible.↩}