"Asian Dining Rules" -- Fat Guy's new book

[DCP]

My grandmother (the italian one) is reading a book that states that the nepalese (is that the correct word?) have the longest longevity in the world.  I had to explain to her that the author of the book was incorrect and the healthiest people in the world were in fact the japanese.  This is true, correct?

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Perhaps so, but the situation is sadly changing. An article in yesterday's Washington Post suggests that standard ailments associated with Western dietary trends are on the rise. In the context of other such parallel trends elsewhere on the globe, it should not come as a surprise.

The rising impact of colorectal cancers in Japan (see World Health Organization graphs) as compared to other nations is also of concern. In short, it may be the healthiest nation, but there is still much to be improved.

[anpanman]

I think it might be useful to have a section on the myths and realities about MSG. It seems that there are so many people who feel the need to avoid MSG or have self-diagnosed themselves with MSG sensitivity, when it's probably something else. It seems to be a contributor to some Asian food phobias.

[Fat Guy]

That was actually one of the very first things I wrote when I sat down to pull all my research notes into a book, anpanman. Great minds think alike. The only reason I haven't posted it (other than that I can't post the whole book!) is that there has already been so much discussion about it elsewhere in eG Forums.

[phaelon56]

Today I posed the Korean-Japanese question to one of my morning regulars at the coffeehouse where I work part time. He is Korean and owns a Korean-Japanese restaurant (in addition to a conveyor style sushi bar).

He believes there to be close parallels in Korean and Japanese foods (in terms of the ingredients the kitchen must keep on hand) and he also commented that in his opinion there are far more Koreans here in the US interested in running restaurants than there are Japanese.

Due to a language barrier I think he didn't quite grasp the other aspect of my question - whetehr it's a logical fit based on market demand. If one includes sushi in the mix I think a conservative small city market such as ours has a greater demand for Japanese 'style" food than it does for Korean - despite our city having a miniscule Japanese population and a much larger (although still relatively small) Korean population.

[Pan]

Howzabout different uses of soy and soy products/sauces in the various Asian cuisines?  I always think of tofu in Chinese food and miso soup, but would love some guidance toward tofu in Korean food, for example.

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Tofu. Check. Definitely need to do something on that.

Another idea I had overnight: desserts.

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Not to ignore the "obvious": Make sure to mention fruit under desserts.

Varieties of tea and other beverages should also be mentioned, including the phenomenon of Bubble Tea and related phenomena (smoothies with nata de coco, etc.).

Somewhere, it needs to be explained that traditionally, the rice or noodles are the core of the meal, with other things being regarded as sauces or side dishes that are added to the rice or noodles.

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I've heard this stated many times, particularly in the context of food-and-nutrition discussions (you can Google and find thousands of variants of the statement "Rice is the main dish, the other stuff with the meat and sauce is just the topping"), but is it actually correct? I can see how if you're a peasant eking out your existence in an infertile, inland area there's no choice: you eat starches to survive and you get whatever bits of meat and vegetables you can. But if you go to a restaurant in Asia, or a middle class home, you don't see people eating huge piles of rice and using meat as garnish. You sometimes don't even see a plain starch item on the table at all. If anything, what I've noticed is that Americans eat more rice than Asians.[...]

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Your experience is different from mine, though to be fair, I don't frequently buffets in the U.S. In places like Malaysia, my experience has always been that you might eat a lot of food, but whatever you eat will be over a more or less full plate of rice probably 90% of the time, with the other ~10% consisting of exceptions like fried noodles, types of pancakes for breakfast, etc.

I do agree that as people have become wealthier, they've been able to eat more lauk (the Malay food for "what goes on the rice"). I don't get the feeling that not eating rice with the lauk has become acceptable, though I could stand to be corrected. Nor do I get the feeling that eating more lauk has come at the expense of eating less rice -- I think wealthier people simply eat more food in general.

[Hiroyuki]

Somewhere, it needs to be explained that traditionally, the rice or noodles are the core of the meal, with other things being regarded as sauces or side dishes that are added to the rice or noodles.

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I've heard this stated many times, particularly in the context of food-and-nutrition discussions (you can Google and find thousands of variants of the statement "Rice is the main dish, the other stuff with the meat and sauce is just the topping"), but is it actually correct? I can see how if you're a peasant eking out your existence in an infertile, inland area there's no choice: you eat starches to survive and you get whatever bits of meat and vegetables you can. But if you go to a restaurant in Asia, or a middle class home, you don't see people eating huge piles of rice and using meat as garnish. You sometimes don't even see a plain starch item on the table at all. If anything, what I've noticed is that Americans eat more rice than Asians.[...]

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Your experience is different from mine, though to be fair, I don't frequently buffets in the U.S. In places like Malaysia, my experience has always been that you might eat a lot of food, but whatever you eat will be over a more or less full plate of rice probably 90% of the time, with the other ~10% consisting of exceptions like fried noodles, types of pancakes for breakfast, etc.

I do agree that as people have become wealthier, they've been able to eat more lauk (the Malay food for "what goes on the rice"). I don't get the feeling that not eating rice with the lauk has become acceptable, though I could stand to be corrected. Nor do I get the feeling that eating more lauk has come at the expense of eating less rice -- I think wealthier people simply eat more food in general.

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I agree with Pan, and this has been discussed in someone's foodblog. I can't speak for other Asian countries, but here in Japan, rice is still revered as a supreme food. An important aspect of a Japanese meal is that it's hierarchical, with rice at the top, flanked by soup (often miso soup). All other dishes are okazu (accompaniments to rice). Okazu are of two types: Main dish and side dish. These features of a Japanese meal are reflected in Japan's food pyramid (spinning top):

http://www.mhlw.go.jp/bunya/kenkou/pdf/eiyou-syokuji4.pdf

Note that in this diagram, fish and meat dishes are a translation of side dishes (fuku-sai), and vegetable dishes are a translation of main dishes (shu-sai).

Edited June 21, 2007 by Hiroyuki (log)

[Fat Guy]

Tonight I walked by a typical urban hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant and, as I glanced at the photos above the menu board, I thought about how great it is that so many Asian restaurants show photos of the food. It makes so much sense as a way to remove much of the ambiguity from the ordering process. I particularly love the photo book at the restaurant Sripraphai, in Queens, where they have a photograph of every single dish on the very long menu. Without that book, I'd have never figured out that dish O2, "Chicken with ginger sauce over rice," is the same as the popular Singaporean/Malaysian specialty of Hainanese chicken rice.

And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a sculpture worth? The Japanese have taken the visual representation of food to the highest level with their glossy plastic replicas. There's a store in New York City, or there used to be one, that specializes in plastic food. Does anybody remember the name of that place? Or are there any great stores in Japan that have websites I could check out?

Then there's the Grand Sichuan book, from Grand Sichuan International Midtown in Manhattan. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the Grand Sichuan book actually is several thousand words (5,039 to be exact). I'm not sure the book exists anymore, given the closing of the Midtown branch. I have, fortunately, preserved a copy (of the version that used to be online, though it's not exactly the same as the physical book) and will post some quotes below.

Photos, models and encyclopedic descriptions are just some of the things Asian restaurants do that all other restaurants should do too. I also think any restaurant that serves family style should copy the Asian-restaurant practice of having a lazy Susan in the middle of the table. And, of course, every restaurant everywhere should give out hot towels.

[Fat Guy]

From the Grand Sichuan menu guide:

118. Prawn with garlic sauce: The fresh prawn marinated and sauteed with garlic sauce, thicken, strong and spicy. In Chinese, garlic sauce actually means "fish smell sauce". The sauce was invented by ancient Sichuanese. Long long time ago, Sichuanese ate a lot of fish. Sometime they didn't finish the fish dish and saved it for the next day. Then they mixed the fish and other dishes and other dishes had the fish taste and delicious. Sometime in Winters they could not catch the fish. Then Sichuanese wondered if they could make some sauce with the fish taste to satisfy their appetizing for fish. As a result, the Sichuanese invented the fish smell sauce: garlic sauce.

The good garlic sauce has the fish's taste and smell without any fish ingredient. The real garlic sauce is called "fresh garlic" or " mashed garlic".

Mao's Home Cooking

180. Braised pork and chestnuts with brown sauce: We have first cat and first dog in USA. Also we have first dish in China. For Mao's whole life, he loved the braised pork best and never changed. Most of Chinese like this dish, too. Thus the braised pork is the first dish of China. The large piece of pork first boiled, then cut into small chunks, light fried with seasonings, adding the sauce soup and chestnuts and others, simmering under a slow fire. The taste is the combo of salt and sweets. The taste is a little sweeter than Hunan version. The dish has a great smell. In traditional way, the pork must come with fat. You may only eat the lean part and take the fat away.

[Hiroyuki]

It would be interesting to know the ethnicity of Japanese-restaurant owners, however I've found data of that level of granularity to be extremely difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to come by. If you have a source, I'd love to hear about it.

There's a section of the book called "Guerilla Sushi Tactics," which is a rough guide to how to get the most out of a sushi bar (rule number one: sit at the sushi bar). It doesn't concern itself specifically with the high-end -- that sector is so small as to be not all that central to a book with nationwide, mainstream scope. But I think the basic strategies work at most any level of sushi bar. Actually, I know they do, since I developed them over the course of several meals at Sushi Yasuda, Kuruma Zushi, Hatsuhana, et al. in New York City a few years back. One of my central theses is that strict adherence to Japanese etiquette is not necessary in American sushi restaurants. No sushi chef who has spent more than a week working in America insists on that. The important thing is to make a connection with your sushi chef and communicate that you're an interested, enthusiastic, discriminating customer.

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I've never been to a Japanese sushi bar or any other type of Japanese restaurant in the United States, but I think it's always a good tactic to say those magic phrases to Japanese-speaking chefs and servers, "Itadakimasu" before having a meal, and "Gochisousama deshita" after having a meal.

[Hiroyuki]

And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a sculpture worth? The Japanese have taken the visual representation of food to the highest level with their glossy plastic replicas. There's a store in New York City, or there used to be one, that specializes in plastic food. Does anybody remember the name of that place? Or are there any great stores in Japan that have websites I could check out?

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Those items that you refer to as plastic replicas are called shokuhin sanpuru (food samples) in Japanese. You can get numerous sites by googling 食品サンプル (= shokuhin sanpuru). Unfortunately, however, you can get hardly any good sites by googling "food sample".

Here I post two (which are not very useful):

http://www.kankou-gifu.jp/en/experience/food.html

http://www.nagao-sample.co.jp/english/english.htm

Just in case you are interested in how those samples are made, here is a site that shows it. Click one of the PLAY buttons on the right.

http://sc-smn.jst.go.jp/8/bangumi.asp?i_se...renban_code=044

Warning: JAPANESE ONLY!

[Fat Guy]

That video is pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I can't believe the guy goes to the trouble to paint the coral-colored striations on the piece of fake shrimp before covering it in the fake tempura crust. And I love that the title is "The Making."

[Hiroyuki]

That video is pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I can't believe the guy goes to the trouble to paint the coral-colored striations on the piece of fake shrimp before covering it in the fake tempura crust. And I love that the title is "The Making."

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Food samples may be artistic, but I have a low opinion of them. I mean, they are very often much better than the originals. I much prefer photos because they usually justify the originals.

[Fat Guy]

It's interesting to me that the traditions of food photos, samples/sculptures, and lengthy dish descriptions have never taken hold in Western restaurants. I sense there may a Puritanical impulse at play here, as in a feeling that pictures and other representations of food are somehow sinful. The term "food porn," used to refer to beautiful photographs of food, would seem to indicate that this is the English-speaking world's sentiment. I assume there is no equivalent phrase in Asian cultures. Western culture has even rejected lengthy descriptions of dishes. Restaurants are routinely derided in the Western food press for listing the sources of ingredients and details of preparation beyond the simplest phrases.

[Fat Guy]

I was thinking this morning about the aesthetics of restaurant exteriors.

When the Time Warner center -- a gigantic upscale vertical shopping center occupying the first several stories of an office building complex -- opened in Columbus Circle in Manhattan, it met with a lot of resistance from died-in-the-wool New Yorkers. Not only do New Yorkers consider themselves anti-mall, but also there was the double insult that this particular mall would be home to some of the most ambitious restaurants in the history of the city, most notably Masa and Per Se. "Nobody will want to eat in a mall," was the standard refrain. A few years later, these restaurants have prospered beyond anybody's expectations, and the refrain has evolved to, "I hate eating in that mall."

This mentality is a close cousin, I think, of the general Western preference for restaurants that look pretty on the outside. Especially when it comes to nice restaurants, there's an expectation that the exterior will represent the interior and the meal to come.

Contrast that with Asian restaurant culture, which seems to have no such hangups. For example, the office tower at 211 East 43rd Street is one of New York City's most nondescript, a relic of the functionalist period when great efforts were made to design buildings just ugly enough to be ignored without being remembered. But the basement of 211 East 43rd Street, where most buildings stockpile their trash and tend to the boilers, lies a Japanese restaurant so full of character that it stands as one of the great proofs of the "Don't judge a book by its cover" maxim.

I learned about Saka Gura awhile back, when Tom Colicchio, then the chef of Gramercy Tavern (and a man of few words), whispered in my ear that "Saka Gura is where I eat Japanese," I cleared my calendar, ditched my deadlines and hailed a cab. After walking up and down 43rd Street, from Second Avenue to Third -- three times -- I finally asked the security guard at number 211 if he knew where Saka Gura was. "Basement," he said, bored.

I followed a trio of mini-skirted Japanese twenty-somethings down the fire stairs and through a humble wooden door, and there it was: Saka Gura -- A thoroughly Japanese subterranean expat hangout, faithful in every detail right down to the American jazz music and the awful paper lanterns. The bar offers more than 200 varieties of sake, the Japanese brewed rice "wine." Saka Gura is well documented in the Japanese-language guidebooks and Web sites, but only gets token American press attention -- usually whenever sake is the hot topic of the moment, for a moment.

In Asia, moreover, it seems that nobody gives a second thought to restaurants in vertical malls in mega office complexes. Where else are they going to put restaurants in cities like Tokyo and Singapore, where the population density makes Chicago look rural by comparison. In Asia, it seems the attitude is that the restaurant experience begins only once you enter the restaurant.

This aesthetic has carried over to the New World. Traveling around North America, time and again I've encountered wonderful Asian restaurants in the most unappealing locations, like Sun Luck Garden in a Cleveland strip mall ("turn left at the KFC"), or China 46 in a former Greek diner in a Day's Inn motel parking lot on Route 46 in Ridgefield, New Jersey, or Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens, New York, where from the outside it's hard to tell if the restaurant is even open. Conversely, I've had some memorably awful meals at places where all the money must have gone into the exterior design, rather than into ingredients or trained kitchen staff.

[Pan]

That's such an insightful point and so well stated, Fat Guy. I had a great meal at a place called Restoran Oversea in a shopping mall in Petaling Jaya, the most populous (I believe) suburb of Kuala Lumpur. I think that, if anything, pains may be taken with interior decoration, but exterior decoration is quite a bit less likely.

Edited June 24, 2007 by Pan (log)

[Fat Guy]

I think my soliloquy, and the underlying half-thoughts, was triggered by a conversation a couple of days ago on a related subject. I was talking to a friend and he was recounting some Asian restaurant discovery or another, and he said, "I knew it would be good because it was full of Asians!" Well, I'm sorry, but that's just a total myth. Some of the worst Asian restaurants I've ever been to have been full of Asians too.

Asians are like any other people in the world: a minority are educated foodies, and the rest couldn't care less about the quality of what they eat. There are plenty of restaurants in Asian neighborhoods that cater to almost exclusively Asian customers that nonetheless serve terrible food. One of the greatest ironies is that if you go to a place like East Buffet, where 95% of the food is Chinese and 5% is Americanized Italian-ish stuff like eggplant parmigiana, the only people eating the eggplant parmigiana are the Asians.

Likewise, a full parking lot or a line out the door doesn't mean a damn thing. Drive through any suburban strip and you'll see where the full parking lots and long waits are: Olive Garden and Applebee's. It's the same with Asian restaurants: plenty of people, including Asian people, go to what's cheap and convenient, not what's actually good.

[Pan]

[...]It's the same with Asian restaurants: plenty of people, including Asian people, go to what's cheap and convenient, not what's actually good.

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I agree 100%. I remember years ago, while on jury duty in Chinatown, I went into a restaurant on Canal St. that was absolutely mobbed with Chinese people. My lunch was terrible! The selling point of the place seemed to be that it was unusually cheap.

[Fat Guy]

I'm writing up a little guide to panchan, the Korean side dish appetizer items that usually come out gratis at the beginning of a Korean-restaurant meal. Does anybody have any thoughts on, say, the 15-20 panchan items folks are most likely to see at a Korean restaurant in North America? So far on my list I have:

Kimchi, the standard version made with cabbage, and the the various hyphenated versions: manul-kimchi (scallion), oh-e-kimchi (cucumbers) and kaktugi-kimchi (radish). I know there are about a million others, but I'm trying to list just the ones you’re most likely to see in a restaurant’s panchan assortment.

Odeng – gefilte fish slices

K'ong namul – seasoned bean sprouts

Shigeumchi - seasoned Spinach

Doo-boo chorim - seasoned Tofu

Ojinguh bokum - broiled spicy squid

Yeunkeun jorim - seasoned lotus root slices.

Hobak jeon - seasoned fried zucchini

Gamja jorim –potato salad

Others?

Also I'd love some input on spelling. There doesn't seem to be as much standardization in Korean transliteration as there is in Chinese and Japanese, but I'd like to communicate as clearly as possible.

[SheenaGreena]

your korean spelling is spot on.

not to nitpick (don't know if you care or not), but kkak du gi is radish kimchi that doesn't have the radish tops and is always cubed. There are other forms of radish kimchi with different names

for more namul panchan, how about

gosari- fernbracken

doraji - bellflower root

and don't forget

candied black beans (forget the name)

and baby sugared anchovies

[SheenaGreena]

oijengo bokum is not considered banchan. Its actually considered a main meat dish like kalbi or bulgogi

whats up with odeng being gefilte fish? do you mean sliced fish cake?

if it was meant to be a joke, I didn't get it

Edited June 25, 2007 by SheenaGreena (log)

[Fat Guy]

Yeah it was a little joke. Whenever I see that stuff, I think it's just like slices of gefilte fish, but even worse tasting!

Thanks for the note on the squid. I've been served that as panchan, cold. Strange, maybe they had a bunch left over!

[Pan]

I'm writing up a little guide to panchan, the Korean side dish appetizer items that usually come out gratis at the beginning of a Korean-restaurant meal. Does anybody have any thoughts on, say, the 15-20 panchan items folks are most likely to see at a Korean restaurant in North America? So far on my list I have:

Kimchi, the standard version made with cabbage, and the the various hyphenated versions: manul-kimchi (scallion), oh-e-kimchi (cucumbers) and kaktugi-kimchi (radish). I know there are about a million others, but I'm trying to list just the ones you’re most likely to see in a restaurant’s panchan assortment.

Odeng – gefilte fish slices

K'ong namul – seasoned bean sprouts

Shigeumchi - seasoned Spinach

Doo-boo chorim - seasoned Tofu

Ojinguh bokum - broiled spicy squid

Yeunkeun jorim - seasoned lotus root slices.

Hobak jeon - seasoned fried zucchini

Gamja jorim –potato salad

Others?[...]

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When I used to frequent Woo Chon in Flushing a few years ago, I was frequently served a delicious dish of roughly smashed yellow sweet potato with golden raisins, an almost-dessert to my taste.

There's also that sliced salted fish in a sauce with tomatoes in it (I think?) that comes with watercress. That's one I've had at Han Bat and some other places in Koreatown in Manhattan.

[SheenaGreena]

the only squid I've seen served as panchan is spicy raw squid or strips of dried seasoned cuttlefish and thats closely related to squid?

if they served you cold oijeongo bokum, thats really weird. I'm not sure what the literal translation of "bokkeum" is, but I'm sure it's "fried" or "stir fried" and oijeongo is squid

[slkinsey]

And let's not forget potato salad!

Actually, one of my favorites is something that seems like it's made with raw or partially cooked potato shreds.

Edited June 25, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[SheenaGreena]

There's also that sliced salted fish in a sauce with tomatoes in it (I think?) that comes with watercress. That's one I've had at Han Bat and some other places in Koreatown in Manhattan

tomatoes aren't traditionally used in korean cooking. If you were to give a tomato to my grandmother, she would sprinkle sugar on it and eat it like an apple

maybe the tomatos were chilis? salted fish with watercress sounds like it would be in a soup to me, cause watercress and fish are traditionally served in hotpots/stews.