mamster

I went Thursday and then didn't have time on Friday. We should organize an eGullet banh mi crawl and offer bites all around. (Because, you know, I could go broke buying all those expensive banh mi myself.)

Well, now I'm still going to Koraku, but I'm going to have to try the saba first. Naomi of ColorsNW really made it sound good.

BON, I'll try Kouraku and let you know what I think. I make it to the International District pretty often.

Do they sell apartments above Admiral?

Nah, only $3 and change, but I always make that mistake too. Our Whole Foods carries some stuff (at slightly higher prices) that I usually buy at my farmer's market, after farmer's market season is over. Hope yours is as grounded.

I noticed that they have the Hempler's at my QFC. I'll try it next time. Among the options is a pack of ends and pieces at a discount (about $3.50/pound), which would be great for dishes where you're just going to cut the stuff up anyway.

Grand Sichuan International, 9th Ave and 50th.

That's why they call it "Whole Paycheck". I try to stick to the things that aren't stupidly priced. Non-Asian produce items, bakery, cheese (when they're willing to cut me a non-shrinkwrapped piece, grrr), short ribs on sale. They also carry a brand of butter that's cheaper than the regular supermarket price, not sure why. They do have a jar of almond butter that's maybe $6 at Trader Joe's, and I believe they charge $18 for it. No, I wouldn't drive 50 miles into Atlanta for WF, but then, I wouldn't drive 50 miles into Atlanta for a million dollars.

They're not Old Dutch, but I think they sell dill pickle flavor chips at Trader Joe's, if those are the ones you miss.

Hey, I've got one. Near the back of the current Gourmet there's a recipe for some chicken patties over bean thread salad. The chicken is ground with water chestnuts, cilantro, and jalapeno. I monkeyed with the recipe a bit but was still afraid that it might come out tasting like health food (it was in the "lite" section of Gourmet). The meat is formed into patties, three to a skewer, and sauted. I got a good crust on the patties. The salad (with english cuke, carrot, napa cabbage, and rice vinaigrette) was, well, rather noodley. Laurie's going to take some of the veggies and leftover patties with pita tomorrow.

I believe that when the Seattle store opened it was the largest in the Whole Foods enterprise. It's an incredible place; we've discussed it on PacNW, and I reviewed the cafe in the newspaper. And I agree that the Chelsea location doesn't compare. There's a brand-new one in Portland, OR, that I haven't made it to yet. Jim Dixon, have you tried it? What it comes down to, I think, besides square footage, is that it's not possible for a store to set national standards for produce quality or variety. Mostly this is a good thing, I think--the Seattle WF has a fair amount of local produce, and a lot of stuff that arrives from California in good shape.

Vancouver potstickers, from Hon's?

I agree that Artisanal's cheese counter is a beautiful spread. So why do they make it impossible to stand there and ogle without being in the way of passing waiters? There's a great book by Paco Underhill called Why We Buy about retail design. One of his tenets is the "butt-brush phenomenon"--if you're shopping and the aisle is so narrow that two people bump you in the butt as they're going past, you're going to leave that aisle. A lesson unlearned at Artisanal, a place I hasten to add is otherwise pretty awesome.

jh, the mamster-alert must have worked, because I hardly ever look at New Jersey (nothing personal!) and suddenly, randomly, here I am. Before I answer, may I observe that it would be really cool if there were a mamster-signal like the bat-signal? Thank you. Also, the other night I was telling a friend about the time my dad and I shared a whole deep-fried skate at a Malaysian restaurant, and I heard myself saying, "It was like being served Batman." Now I need to work this into a review somehow. Okay, now to the question. Yes, there is regional Thai food. I can and will offer some generalizations, but I'll also add that I've never been to a Thai restaurant in the U.S. that was anything but central Thai. Even those run by northeastern Thais (from the region called Isaan) tend to concentrate on central dishes because that's what Americans are familiar with: coconut-based curries, phad thai, and so on. The vaunted Lotus of Siam is, incidentally, a northern Thai restaurant. Basically the four regions of Thai cooking break down into northeastern, northern, central, and southern. I've never been to southern Thailand and don't know much about the food, although I'd definitely like to at some point, since I hear they eat a lot of spicy fish. Isaan food is very popular in Bangkok, kind of the way some version of Tex-Mex is popular throughout the US, so you do tend to find some northeastern dishes on Thai-American menus. The most common of these are: Larb. Chopped meat salad, usually chicken or beef here but an enormous variety in its native Isaan including things like raw or cooked fish, duck with duck blood, and raw water buffalo. Sticky rice (khao niaw). Served in those cool bamboo baskets. This is the staple rice of northeast and northern Thailand, eaten instead of jasmine rice. Eating with your right hand is totally acceptable. Som tam. Green papaya salad, usually with peanuts, chiles, dried shrimp, and often (always, in Thailand) with a side of raw vegetables such as cabbage and yard-long beans. Gai yang. Grilled chicken. Unless you've found a version of this you like, I'd recommend avoiding it at Thai-American restaurants; it's a completely different and inferior dish here. In Thailand the chicken is marinated in a lemongrass-rich brine and usually butterflied before grilling. I can think of one quintessential northern Thai dish that sometimes shows up on menus here: khao soi, usually translated as Chiang Mai Curry Noodles. It's a big bowl of noodles with a red curry broth, usually with some ground dried spices and chicken. This is an easy and fun dish to make at home; there's a good recipe in Hot Sour Salty Sweet. The north and northeast also eat a variety of sausages and curries without coconut milk, such as gaeng pa (jungle curry) and gaeng hangleh (Burmese dry curry, usually with pork). I pretty much never see these things on Thai-American menus. Gaeng pa paste is usually made with a rhizome called krachai which is in the ginger family but is a different species from ginger or galangal. Northeastern Thai cooking is derived from Laos. Are there any Lao restaurants in New Jersey? I know of one in Seattle, and it serves some pretty good renditions of some of my Isaan favorites, along with a whole bunch of Central Thai stuff demanded by their customers. I hope this helps. If you do uncover a genuine regional Thai restaurant in New Jersey, please let me know!

Oh, I forgot to mention the cheese, which one of our guests had brought back from France. It was an extremely stinky Corsican sheep cheese in a small round. (I tried to look it up but was only able to narrow it down to three or four possibilities; apparently most Corsican cheese are washed-rind sheep.) The smell was stronger than the taste, which showed a mild sheepy tang, and it was great on some baguette slices.

My menu came off well. I overroasted the asparagus and it turned to mush, but luckily I decided that if I was going to be roasting vegetables anyway, I'd throw in some cauliflower, and that came out great. Both the beef bourguignon and the souffle recipes came from Cook's Illustrated. I believe the beef is from Jan/Feb 2001 and the souffles from Sep/Oct 1996. The souffles are a really handy thing to know, because you can freeze them up to two days ahead and they go straight from the freezer to the oven. Everyone will wonder how you managed to whip up souffles in fifteen unattended minutes. As much as I rag on CI and make fun of Kimball, probably half of the stuff I make regularly came from that magazine.

Actually, of course, the glossary would fit much better on PerfectCircle's Vietnamese page.

The summer rolls came three to a styrofoam tray. One of the cool things about these places (Saigon and Seattle Delis) is that they have all kinds of cool packaged stuff to take for lunch, including various types of summer rolls, BBQ pork and spring roll over rice, and a lot of things I couldn't begin to recognize. This summer roll some carrot and daikon shreds (pickled), rolled up with rice paper, and then a thin lengthwise slice of lop cheong rolled up between two layers of the wrapping so that it showed through the top of the roll. They looked really cool, which is why I bought them. The dipping sauce was good and peanutty. I really like lop cheong, but as I said, I couldn't taste it much, so I was a little disappointed. So, Saigon Deli had probably ten different types of banh mi. Do you think we could piece together a glossary? Because I think the Vietnamese names are consistent but the English ones aren't. So far I know that the BBQ pork is banh mi thit nuong and the chicken is banh mi ga. A table of all of the major types with fully accented Vietnamese, common English translation, and a description would be an amazingly useful tool. Maybe we could compile it and put it up on the grub shack (or elsewhere) with all of our names on it.

The sweep has begun. Today I tried a chicken from Saigon Deli and a BBQ pork from Seattle Deli. I also grabbed a tray of lop cheong summer rolls with peanut dipping sauce. While I was at the bus stop I traded a bite of my chicken for a bite of this woman's combo from Thanh Vi. It had ham, liverwurst, and turkey, according to her. It was good. The chicken was a little bland, the pork a little dry, but they were both perfectly acceptable sandwiches. Next time maybe I'll try the pork from Saigon and something else from Seattle. I need to read back over those posts. The summer rolls were nice and fresh, and I liked the dipping sauce, but I didn't really catch any flavor off the sausage.

This thread rules. ColorsNW is a free monthly glossy devoted to issues concerning people of color in Seattle. They do an ethnic restaurant review in each issue, and they often manage to come up with a place I've never heard of, so I always check out the magazine. Glad they posted that Vietnam's Pearl review. Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table is a great book. I've made the saigon crepes (banh xeo) several times, and they're both fun to make and fun to eat. They're crispy, and who doesn't like crispy? I can't wait to try Lee's next time we're in West Seattle. We can hit Admiral afterwards.

A few years ago I met Jeffrey Steingarten and he made some comment about how you've never tasted real szechuan peppercorns until you've had the ones imported from sichuan by this particular Chinatown chef. I didn't really know what he was talking about, but I guess he was serious, because it seems unlikely that I'd never hit szechuan peppercorns before GSI, but clearly szechuan peppercorns had never hit me. I think I'll go buy a bag and experiment.

Well, this is obvious. He should get Randy Cohen to do it.

Back when we were living in NYC (1998-99), something caused the price of butter to jump by more than a dollar. The only brand unaffected was Plugrá. The first couple of times we got it, we were amazed at the rich, buttery flavor. Then we got sick of it and started buying the less rich, less buttery butter again. This is why they kicked me out of Slow Food. Just kidding. Since then I've occasionally bought cultured French butters like Echiré for when the butter is going to be the star, but for everyday use, I'm sticking (ha ha) with Land-o-Lakes.

Didn't we have a cheese mites thread? In the (great) new book The Cheese Plate by Max McCalman, he advises that if you want to know whether you have cheese mites on your rind, put a bit of rind scraping on the table and see if it's moved a few minutes later. Then he goes on to imply that he would be proud to eat cheese mites. B Edulis, no one responded (gosh, why) to my thread about eating pureed beetles, but if you read it, maybe you won't be surprised that I think you did the right thing, too.

There's a review of Vietnam's Pearl in the current issue of Colors NW. I don't think it's online. I've been to Monsoon several times. I'm a little torn; some of the stuff I've had there has been fantastic (they have this soup with tamarind and shrimp...) and some has been more like Chinese takeout (the crispy chicken, not that it wasn't good). I'll keep going periodically, though--it's a walk from my house and the service is good. But the price can add up if you're not careful.