Fat Guy

Dietitians are the least of a fat person's worries. Dietitians don't push high-risk, high-failure-rate surgery on fat people. They don't prescribe unproven drugs at the slightest sign of "abnormal" measurements. They don't judge, condescend and give second-rate treatment to fat people. They just try to get people to eat well. Some dietitians are hopelessly misguided about what it means to eat well, but there's only so much harm they can do -- pretty much the worst they can do is be unhelpful. And a good dietitian can do wonders, especially for a cooperative but not particularly aware person. No, if there is blame to be assigned here it doesn't go to dietitians. It goes to the traditional medical establishment. Fat people are, in far too many cases, committed to avoiding their doctors because their doctors don't treat them as human beings or as individuals. If you're not a fat person, you can't possibly comprehend the absurd nature of visiting most doctors today -- unless maybe you were a woman visiting male chauvinist gynecologists in the 1950s. You can't even have an intelligent discussion with your doctor -- and I'm talking about people trained at Harvard and Yale -- because they don't have even a basic understanding of the studies and research other than the ones they're exposed to by pharmaceutical company sales reps who want to sell statins and PPIs, and by the CDC (which has been caught in lie after lie about obesity and health). There are so many people being prescribed unnecessary drugs and being subject to other radical interventions that plenty of intelligent overweight people stay the hell away as a means of self-preservation -- and plenty of people who really need help don't seek it out. The best thing a fat person can do is find a doctor who isn't incompetent at working with fat patients. Unfortunately, that would require that each doctor in that position treat about a million patients.

Tofu. Check. Definitely need to do something on that. Another idea I had overnight: desserts.

I think there needs to be something about kimchi, and pan chan in general, in the Korean section of the book, but I'm not seeing enough pickles in non-Korean Asian restaurants in the US for there to be enough substance for a comparison. I think something about beverages -- both alcoholic and non-alcoholic -- is a must, that's a great idea. Tea, I haven't been to a restaurant here that takes it seriously enough to mention, so it's not really something I'd cover in this book, even though the topic interests me.

There seems to be some confusion here with respect to what a wrap is. A wrap is an American innovation that takes all the wonderful traits of the burrito and other wrap-like international foods and discards them, replacing the goodness of those products with a nasty tasting ruined tortilla-like thing and poor-quality American sandwich fillings. A burrito is not a wrap. A ssam is not a wrap. Moo-shu pork is not a wrap. If you like or don't like those things, that has no bearing on your position on wraps.

So I went by Saigon Grill (Upper West Side) today. We just couldn't go on without green papaya salad. I mean, my journalistic duty required it. Anyway, before going I did some Googling to see if there was any new info, and found the Boycott Saigon Grill blog: http://boycottsaigongrill.blogspot.com/ At the restaurant, things were quite busy. I was pretty surprised to find the place so vibrant. I don't know what the protest schedule is, but as I've mentioned I've never actually seen the protesters at the Upper West Side location. In the bag was another note from Simon Nget. Same points made as before. There was, however, one nice touch at the end: The chive ones were superb, the cabbage-pork ones were just okay -- the dry shrimp flavor wasn't exactly used with finesse. I hadn't read the handout when I unpacked our order, so I thought something had been included by mistake. Eventually I reconciled all the information.

A quick search reveals that on 6 December 1996 Ruth Reichl wrote a piece titled "Moderation on the Skids: Big and Bad Are Back." It says, among other things:

I think Frank Bruni is exactly 10 years too late on that trend report. In 1997, such an article would have made sense. That's about when one could have pointed to the confluence of the 2.5-pound crackling pork shank at Maloney and Porcelli, all the rodizio restaurants like Churrascaria Plataforma and Master Grill, the entrenchment of Korean barbecue, a slew of new steakhouse openings, barbecue restaurants starting to get more serious, the mid-1990s backlash against so-called healthy eating, etc.

I think what I'll probably do with all of these is consult my collection of restaurant menus in order to determine the dishes customers are most likely to encounter. That will narrow the field a little bit.

Soups! Excellent idea. It's such a good idea I have no idea how I'm going to keep it to a manageable size! (I guess by just isolating the most central examples from each cuisine.)

So maybe you all could help me with some idea generation here. One of the things I want to include in the book is a set of cross-cultural cuisine comparisons. These would be little sidebars (or shaded boxes, or whatever the book designer chooses) sprinkled throughout the book, discussing similarities among Asian cuisines (and beyond). So, for example, dumplings. Pretty much every Asian cuisine has a version of these, so I'd do a little guide to dumpling types, with brief descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc., dumplings, and also some examples of dumplings from non-Asian cuisines. This I think, in addition to perhaps being interesting, could help demystify a new cuisine for someone who has never, for example, had Korean food. So these are the ones I've thought of so far: - Dumplings - Curries - Wraps (Chinese moo-shu, Korean ssam, various Southeast Asian wraps, Indian frankie) - Noodles (this might be a longer piece; also interesting that India seems not to have a significant noodle culture) Any other thoughts? And does this sort of comparison chart/sidebar seem like something that might be a good addition to the book?

Because I object to them on a deep philosophical level and would therefore like to see them eradicated from the universe. And because I've found them impossible to avoid. If I go to a picnic, corporate event, etc., they're always serving those damn wraps.

Depending on the sandwich, freezing the whole thing might reduce your enjoyment. Lettuce and mayonnaise are particularly weak when frozen, as are any salads made with mayonnaise. Cheese is so-so, as are cold cuts. I suggest freezing the bread and having the other ingredients at refrigerator temperature. This morning I put a bottle of frozen water in one of those soft insulated pouches I was describing above and left it in our car. I just went back down to get it and it's still about half frozen. That's about 3 hours in the car, and it's 82 degrees out and the car has been in direct sun all morning. So, I really believe in these pouches, and they weight almost nothing: the one I have measures 2.8 ounces on our postal scale, and could hold quite a few sandwiches. I've seen smaller ones too.

I suppose I've always noticed that a lot of restaurants name themselves after the highways and byways on which they're located, but today I saw a particularly thick cluster of this behavior and gave it a few additional moments' thought. I was out on Route 22 in New Jersey, heading from Turnpike exit 14 out to Mountainside, and it seemed every quarter mile I passed a restaurant named for Route 22, e.g., "Rio 22 Brazilian Steakhouse and Sushi." Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Route 22, it's about the least appealing stretch of road in the Western industrialized world. So naming your restaurant after Route 22 is not like naming your restaurant "The Madison Avenue Diner." Unless I'm radically misunderstanding the culture of New Jersey, I'm pretty sure there's no cachet at all to being on Route 22. In addition, since Route 22 is just about the only road out there (just try finding an alternate route to Mountainside when the Route 22 traffic is bad, even aided by GPS), it's not like anybody is going to get confused and fail to find the restaurant. I've also found that the numeric designations don't actually help people who are navigationally challenged. For example, I can't count how many times I've been at China 46 (on Route 46, a route perhaps even more undistinguished than Route 22) and received a call from the friends we were supposed to meet: "What road is it on?" So what's up with this route-naming behavior?

Please tell me I'm not alone in my contempt for "wraps," that unique American amalgam of the burrito, the ssam, the banh cheo and the frankie, with the appeal of none. Can somebody please explain to me why a cold, flat, soggy piece of dough wrapped around (and around, and around) an undifferentiated mass of fillings was ever thought to be a good idea? And don't even get me started on the stupid wrap humor ("That's a Wrap") that seems to be evident in the genre.

Sorry. Too late. You now get to hear my lecture about the tyranny of authenticity. Though I’ve eaten enough Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian and Southeast Asian food in my life that my Caucasian DNA could at any moment spontaneously resequence itself into Asian DNA, I’ve never spent much time in Asia. I’ve enjoyed the limited time I’ve spent there tremendously, though I haven’t enjoyed the flight (my voluminous eating is evident in my bulk, which doesn’t take well to 20 hours in an economy-class seat). Nonetheless, it only takes about one minute in Asia to notice that the food there is quite different from its representation in restaurants in North America. Many of the dishes I enjoyed at Empire Szechuan growing up, for example, were Chinese-American adaptations: egg rolls, General Tso’s chicken, egg foo yung. Thus, many people, and especially food writers, have called these dishes “inauthentic.” Reading the glossy food magazines, the newsletters, and the Internet, and even when talking to educated gourmets, I get the sense that the authenticity police are everywhere these days. Have you ever dined in a Japanese restaurant with friends who have just returned from Japan? "Oh, in Japan a restaurant only serves one thing," they'll inevitably say. “You never see tempura, noodles and sushi on the same menu.” Authenticity as commonly understood by today’s reigning culinary authorities refers to the preservation of "original" recipes, presented with some historical and cultural context. In the language of Merriam-Webster, authentic means “conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.” But what if evolution itself lies at the core of authenticity? After all, there were no hot chilies in China’s Sichuan province, or anywhere else in Asia, until long after the discovery of the New World. When that beloved red pepper first appeared in China, did the local food cognoscenti protest, "We don't use these things in authentic Sichuan cuisine"? No cuisine springs into existence as a fully formed entity, and all living cuisines evolve. There was no tomato sauce – and there were certainly no sun-dried tomatoes – until centuries after the tomato first reached Europe from the New World. We could just as easily imagine knee-jerk authenticity-based complaints about chocolate in France, and wine in Australia. If you dug really deep, you'd probably find that at some point in prehistory the very notion of cooking beasts over a fire instead of eating their bloody haunches raw was scorned for its inauthenticity, too. “Fusion” is not some trend that started in the 1980s. It’s the history of cuisine. And since everything in the world of food likely had some precursory experience, wouldn't it be smarter for us to make allowances for what "authentic" really means? If you ask me, such tolerance is necessary when you dine out in a place like America, where just about everybody came from somewhere else. Chinese chefs, on arriving in America, found different ingredients, faced different challenges, and adapted. They created new dishes and extended their native cuisines. I believe these cooks demonstrate that authenticity isn't a repetition of history. Real authenticity, to me, is grounded in being faithful to oneself. This is the last definition given by Merriam-Webster, but to me it is the most appropriate for cuisine: “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.” That's why, despite their breaks with tradition, there's nothing inauthentic about those big, fat, American egg rolls, or Japanese restaurants with far-ranging menus. Sometimes these concepts even get exported back to their parent cultures, for example with the opening of Nobu (a New York restaurant, based on a Los Angeles restaurant, serving Peruvian-influenced Japanese fusion cuisine) in Tokyo. Change for its own sake is phony, but true originality is authentic. To me, what makes America a supremely dynamic eating destination is exactly its unabashed dedication to what the old school writers would call inauthenticity: America doesn't attempt to hide the actuality that human history is built on immigration, assimilation, and invention. My memories of dining at Empire Szechuan would be utterly foreign to a resident of Sichaun province, but they’re the authentic experiences of my life, an American life. Rather than obsessing about historical notions of authenticity, I propose finding culinary validation within ourselves and accepting that tomorrow's authenticity is always the child of today's inauthenticity. Those who forget this lesson will, I think, be relegated to quibbling about trivialities, like faux quartermasters debating the historical accuracy of their Civil War reenactment uniforms. By using what the information science people call "secondary epistemic criteria." How do you ever decide whom to trust when you don't personally possess all the information you'd need to make the decision yourself? You look for various indicia of credibility. Think about reading just about any eG Forums topic. In most cases it doesn't take very long to identify the most credible posts -- your brain automatically weighs several factors (your familiarity with and opinions about the member who's posting, the level of detail and apparent familiarity with the subject matter, a tone that resonates with you) and comes up with a ranking. In the restaurant context, this sort of analysis can occur at various levels. You might dine with someone who has more information (you can be sure that any good restaurant reviewer, when reviewing a restaurant that serves an unfamiliar cuisine, will take an expert along to dinner). You might be able to derive some information from the way the restaurant is set up, who's eating there, what kind of comments you get from the staff, what you've read in books, magazines, newspapers and online, etc. Which is not to say that a restaurant full of people with Oriental faces is always going to be serving food just like you'd see in Asia -- that's a common misconception that leads to a lot of false positives.

I'd love to see photos of some of these items.

We've created a monster! I think we need to learn more about how vanilla is produced commercially. It seems to me it can't possibly be as alcoholic, in its retail form, as what I've got going in my cabinet. And there's a sweet smell that I suspect may not really come from the vanilla itself. Still, I do think the only way to test our creations is to use them in cooking. Presumably, that alcohol will dissipate or at least dilute pretty quickly. I was actually thinking it's time to make some cookies or something, though I think I'm going to wait maybe a full four months (until early July).

We were there at 6pm and for about an hour we had the undivided attention of our server and a couple of additional servers. By 7pm the place started to get more active, and by the time we left at 8pm it was pretty full -- not slammed but well populated. I would definitely say that there was less service as the place got busier. Two of the people who served us seemed very nice, and one was kind of cold. He seemed not to like me. Maybe he's an eGullet Society member. When you go, my suggestion is (if you have a couple of people) that you get the pork belly cubes, the sweetbreads, the ribs and that cold noodle soup with shrimp (oh, and the corn! oh, and the mussels!). That's the meal I'd love to hear your feedback on, for purposes of calibrating my own palate and sanity. I mean, I was registering "Momofuku good" in my brain, but what do I know? Also, definitely chat with Ratha Chau -- he seems like a very nice guy and he's standing right there.

I went into Kampuchea with an open mind but a mostly negative attitude. “It’s not real Cambodian,” was something I heard several times, and a couple of my most trusted sources, who had dined there early on, had decreed: “Don’t bother.” Still, I’m in the process of writing a book about Asian restaurants in America, and I thought it would be negligent, or maybe just lazy, not to speak to the owner of the only currently operating Cambodian restaurant in town (we’re still waiting for Cambodian Cuisine, formerly of Fort Greene in Brooklyn, to open in its new location on the Upper East Side of Manhattan). So I made arrangements to speak to Ratha Chau, the chef-owner of Kampuchea, but his position was that first I should eat the food, then come back some other time to interview him. So, tonight we went down to Kampuchea for dinner, and thanks to our generous host we had the opportunity to taste quite a few dishes. I’m probably going to do the interview next week; I barely had the opportunity to meet Ratha Chau tonight – we only spoke for a couple of minutes when I got there. So these are just my impressions of the food. I’ll try to post more about Ratha Chau’s whole story another time. I’m not sure what Kampuchea was really like when it opened, and maybe I’m lucky I missed those first few months. I walked by in January, looked at the menu, thought it was not well designed, had heard little good about the place, so concluded it was unworthy and going nowhere fast. But what we experienced tonight was an amazing meal. I think Kampuchea has not been fully grasped by the food cognoscenti. No, it’s not a Cambodian restaurant as such. Rather, it’s more of a Spice Market meets Momofuku situation, but with Cambodian as the most significant influence. The Momofuku restaurants are the most obvious comparison, given the physical layout and general style. There’s a healthy dose of that new-paradigm admixture of haute and rustic, though Kampuchea leans more rustic than Momofuku. Still, there’s that feeling of the technique and ingredients of a high-functioning New American kitchen being brought to bear on Asian-inflected food. There’s organic chicken, sweetbreads, Berkshire pork, freshwater prawns, careful plate arrangements that owe more to Alfred Portale than to Asia, and a white guy operating as number two in the kitchen. Spice Market is another relevant point of comparison, because Kampuchea (which, like Momofuku, gave itself the misnomer “Noodle Bar” for some inexplicable reason) is really about taking street food influences (the menu says “Kampuchea: a tribute to street food” right at the top and, interestingly, does not say “Noodle Bar” anywhere) and running them through a more upscale set of ingredients and procedures. Needless to say, tiny Kampuchea lacks the grand scale of Spice Market, but the food on the plate has stylistic similarities. So I think Kampuchea is bound to fail to communicate itself to those who are looking for a Southeast Asian restaurant experience along the lines of a Cambodian equivalent of the Vietnamese restaurants on Baxter Street. If you want that experience, wait for Cambodian Cuisine to reopen. Kampuchea, for its part, isn’t an imitative restaurant. It’s an original, of this moment, New York place. And the food, taken on its own terms without any baggage or expectations, is great. We started with grilled sweet corn, slathered with coconut chili mayonnaise, and topped with chili powder and coconut flakes. This was probably the most street-foodish item we had all evening, and it was delicious. The corn itself was the best I’ve had yet this season, and I felt there was just the right amount of stuff on the corn. It was a messy procedure to distribute the garnishes and eat the corn, and that perhaps was the aspect of the evening that most reminded me of being in Southeast Asia: the little time I’ve spent over there, I devoted mostly to trying to figure out ways to get more napkins so I could wipe off my fingers after diving into messy, difficult-to-eat food without the benefit of a fork or knife. You definitely don’t want to wear a white linen dress to Kampuchea. Not unless you have some seriously bad-ass chopsticks skills – as in, you can eat corn on the cob with them. Our tasting panel, PJ, seemed quite pleased with the corn as well: The star of the platter of house-made pickles was the pickled ramps, though all the pickles were delicious. One thing I really liked about the pickle selection was its balance. The server mentioned that this one was spicy, this one sweet, this one sour, etc. A nice touch. One word of advice, though: quite a few of the dishes on the rest of the menu come garnished with these same pickles in various combinations. So if you’re with a group and you’re ordering several plates (or you’re a disgusting pig like me and you share half the menu with a 22-month-old), you’ll probably see all the pickles eventually anyway. There are a bunch of alcoholic beverage selections, but we were driving so we went with fruit juices. These are the fresh watermelon juice and the “lychee fizz.” I preferred the lychee fizz, however the fresh watermelon had the benefit of vivid purity. There’s also a pineapple-coconut, which is equally delicious. PJ was also partial to the lychee. (He also ate several of the ice cubes.) One of the highlights of the evening, and artfully presented, these are chunks of crispy, honey-glazed pork belly with scallions and lemongrass, with an “apple cider drizzle.” Here we have the ginger-rubbed freshwater prawns, split and grilled. A very nice product, flattered by the seasonings and cooked not one second too long or short. Not as messy as you might imagine – the way they’re prepped makes it relatively easy to get the shells off. This is another dish that would be at home at a more upscale restaurant: seared sweetbreads in a chanterelle, black and shiitake mushroom broth, with scallions and basil oil. The best sweetbread dish I’ve had in awhile. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to eat enought of that dish. PJ, though he hesitated at first, eventually warmed to the sweetbreads, then demanded mine as well. One of the sections of the menu is “Cambodian savory crepes.” There are four options, and this one is chopped jumbo tiger shrimp and red onions. The main ingredients are served on an eggy crepe and you’re instructed to wrap the crepe in lettuce and garnish it with sprouts, mint, basil and sauce. Lean way over your plate to eat this one. I loved the synergy of the flavors. Looking over the photos, this was a pretty exhausting meal, but it’s a testament to the quality of the food and the brightness of the flavors that, even at this point, I finished an entire bowl of mussels all by myself. These are Prince Edward Island mussels in a spicy and sour broth, with tomatillos, celery, okra, red onion and Thai chilis. It comes with a side of garlic bread for dipping. I didn’t dip the bread, though – I found it more useful for counteracting the heat of the Thai chilis. These are the “tamarind baby back ribs,” however I’m pretty sure these aren’t baby backs. Way too much meat on them for that. I’m guessing country style ribs because they’re more like tender little pork chops than they are like ribs. But anyway, these ribs should really appeal to the pork-loving community. I ate four of them. Here we have skirt steak with Sambal chili and toasted coriander. Irresistible, and as you can see cooked just right. (Also, I refer back to my earlier comment about the reiteration of the pickles.) Another section of the menu is “Num Pang,” which I suppose is Cambodian for banh mi, or sandwiches. There are nine choices here, or you can get a tasting of three small sandwiches. Here we have grilled tofu with sweet ginger-scallion soy dressing, pulled oxtail with spicy tamarind basil sauce, and coconut tiger shrimp with toasted shredded coconut. Predictably, I favored the oxtail, though I confess the tofu was damn good. This is what the plate looks like when it comes out: I also went ahead and opened up each of the sandwiches for a look inside: Now, if you have been reading along, you may be saying, hey, I thought this place was supposed to be a noodle bar? Well, yes, there is indeed a noodle-soup-stew section of the menu, and for the last dish we had some noodles. This dish alone would have been a filling dinner for one person. Here we have seared tiger shrimp, crispy pork belly, chives, cucumber, lettuce hearts, hoisin and chili sauce, and underneath all that are chilled flat noodles. Now, Kampuchea is not as cheap as the Vietnamese restaurants on Baxter Street. But the highest-priced dish we had all night was that last one, at $15. There’s nothing over $17 on the menu. And a lot of the dishes are under $10, for example the sweet corn is $6. That pork belly dish: $11. The sweetbreads: $12. To my way of thinking, it’s a very, very good value. Finally, here’s Ratha Chau working the pass in Kampuchea’s open kitchen. It’s okay, you can say it: he sure is tall for a Cambodian guy. He must be six-feet-plus.

I think we should use an inclusive definition of inherited.

The only comment I've stumbled across on this issue comes from Alex Renton's piece in the Observer -- probably the best thing I've read on MSG (though the Steingarten piece was funnier). He says: That's not a particularly scientific explanation, though. I'd much rather see a source that says whether or not those "contaminants" do anything.

I think they're actually from Brooklyn.

There was a letter in the most recent issue of the Art of Eating claiming that there is a difference. I post this not because I think it's true, but rather because I'd be interested in understanding the issue better. What the letter, from a gentleman in Italy, says is:

Here's another item from the archive. This is a set (there seems to be one missing) of silver Chinese-motif place-card holders:

Nathan, I agree that oftentimes when a business does something that doesn't appear to maximize profit, it's actually part of a larger plan to maximize profit. For example, a money-losing restaurant in a hotel may be a loss-leader calculated to bring prestige to the hotel. A flagship money-losing restaurant may be calculated to lend cachet to a chef, who can then make the serious money operating mid-priced restaurants. Donations to charity, participation in idealistic-seeming movements, etc., can all be calculated to maximize profit. Or not. As opposed to a public corporation, a privately held business (typical for a restaurant) has no obligation to maximize profit. The capitalist system says a business is private property, and can be disposed of any way the owner likes: it can be used to maximize profit, it can be used to maximize pleasure, it can be used to do good -- often those three goals are even in alignment, but if they're not there's no law of capitalism that says you have to maximize profit. While there are plenty of profit-maximizers out there, there are also plenty of people who are content to make enough money to break even and apply the rest of their time, energy and revenues to pursuing various other goals and ideals. On the issue of dining early, a little while back I started a topic about the joys of dining early. Among other things, I said: Quite a few people agreed with the sentiment, came out of the closet as aficionados of the early bird special and gave additional justifications.