The Evolution of a Foodie OR An Ode to My Nephew

Since coming into my life about 7.5 years ago, my nephew has been one of my favorite people in the world (the other favorite being his sister who followed him a year and a half later).

One of the things that makes him especially awesome? The fact that he will pause mid-bite in whatever he is consuming with nary a complaint, just to let me take a picture.

Of course I would love him to bits regardless of his aptitude for being a featured subject in my food photography habit. But seriously, here he is about to chow down on an ice cream mooncake (kind of like an ice cream mochi), and he barely batted an eyelid when asked to delay his gratification so that I could take this picture.

Since I've never lived in the same city as him for more than a couple of months, I don't get to witness the evolution of his food tastes firsthand very often. Of course I know that he loves chocolate cake, and that he will eat almost anything wrapped in a tortilla. I know that when he's about to garnish his pumpkin pie with whipped cream, you'd better make sure he takes his finger off the trigger at some point. But usually these are things that I learn ex post facto, seeing the culmination of several experiences into one preference that I can identify, but don't know the origins of. I'm rarely there at the actual moment of discovery, the moment when he takes a bite of something and realizes that this is not just anything in his mouth, but something that he wants more of, something revelatory and magical that transcends the current meal to become a food memory.

Maybe it's the age he's at or the experience of being in a foreign place, or some combination of the two, but our trip to Hong Kong at the end of July proved an especially ripe occasion for memory-making. Like the night we had three dinners.

Mexico

I've been horrible at updating this blog, and sadly, it's not because I've been eating delicious things instead. Then again, I suppose reading about delicious things (thank you Anthropology of French Food and Culinary Tourism courses!) isn't so bad either.

So, in honor of UNESCO's recent recognition of Mexican food and the Michoacan paradigm as products of intangible cultural heritage,* I take you back to a simpler time, when so much of my everyday experience was focused on food. Rewind five months to my five-week program in Oaxaca, Mexico, birthplace of chocolate and mole:

Posole



Ballpark hot dog, cheering on the minor league Oaxaca Guerreros



Street tacos in the Zocalo



Amazing salsa at the women's weaving cooperative in Teotitlan del Valle



Nieves



This is all that you'll see of the tacos al pastor. Because they were that delicious.



Hot chocolate


Mole coloradito, my favorite of the 7/1,000/7,000 moles of Oaxaca


And of course, the infamous chapulines (grasshoppers). Legend has it that eating chapulines assures that you will return to Oaxaca.


I guess I better start looking for plane tickets:

(photo courtesy of Laura)


*For a more nuanced take on whether this recognition is actually a good thing, see Is 'Culinary Heritage' a Good Idea?.

Why do you go to restaurants?

In a piece for SFGate's food coverage, Clark Wolf counters "Best Restaurant in the World" chef Rene Redzepi's contention that people go to restaurants only to refuel or to be challenged by listing the myriad other ways that restaurant dining affects him.

On the Purpose of Going to Restaurants

The range of emotions that Wolf describes echo my own attachments to food: "I delight, I remember, I grab comfort, I just smile. Food can make me giggle or get me teary, deeply satisfy or stimulate my desire for more. It can calm me the freak down or really rev me up." But it also speaks to the visceral power that food holds -- which is exactly what makes it a powerful tool for communication generally, and culinary diplomacy more specifically. The range of emotions that food can inspire speaks to the range of ways in which food can be mobilized to reinforce or counter a particular message.

Of course, it also speaks to the stakes in getting food right: "Food gone wrong (or professionally wronged) can get me crabby or leave me sad and empty – all while feeling full. It can confuse and upset, annoy or mildly amuse." Or just inspire uninhibited aggression:



Clark also balks at the constant need, mostly on the part of young male chefs, for food to be a challenge, and the fact that critics and gastronomes consistently associate bold, edgy, revolutionary with "best". To which I say, hear hear! As a visceral, and often times primal, experience, food should be about what it inspires within you, the eater, regardless of the preparation techniques involved. Obviously, surprise and innovation can be compelling. But there is also the risk of alienation that accompanies edgy, revolutionary food, which seems to undercut one of the primary purposes of eating (in my mind): to revel in one's food, to enjoy and savor and be satisfied. Food education, learning to understand and appreciate new foods, might be work, but food itself shouldn't be.

Hong Kong eats (boy, does it ever!)

One of the great things about having a mom that lives in Hong Kong, is that when I find myself with a free month between the end of semester and the beginning of my summer study abroad program, I can actually say, Hey, why not hit up Hong Kong for a few weeks? While the freedom of a graduate student and the finances of a graduate student sadly don't always match up to make such a proposition possible, the generosity of my mom, aided by her United mileage rewards account, came to the rescue, and I got to spend what turned out to be 2 awesome weeks in the city of my childhood.


How to encapsulate the diversity that is the Hong Kong dining scene? I often tell people that what I love about Hong Kong is that you can have a five minute meal or a 3+ hour meal. You can sit on stools in the street, or in a plush armchair with mile-high windows overlooking the harbor. Your cutlery might consist of chopsticks from the communal container and a roll of toilet paper, or heavy silverware and new plates the second your first one gets the slightest bit dirty. You can cozy up to complete strangers at shared tables, or stick to your known entities at your own table. Interestingly, while Hong Kong and Macau only share 3 Michelin-starred restaurants for the area, that's already enough to encompass this diversity.

Some highlights of my own dining experiences:


Won ton mein (shrimp dumplings and egg noodles) and gai lan (Chinese broccoli) at Mak On's Noodles in Central. The awesome food aside, this restaurant is in what I've now decided is one of my favorites areas of Hong Kong. It's just around the corner from the famed Hong Kong style milk tea place, Lan Fong Yuen, and its neighboring streets are some very cool small alleys filled with fresh produce vendors.
5-minute meal (admittedly, my 5 minute meals -- I went back the next day -- actually lasted a bit longer. I'm a slow eater), shared tables, and chopsticks.



Sunday brunch at Spoon. (Special thanks to my mom's coworker, Charles, and his dad, the manager at Spoon, for pushing our reservation status from waiting list to confirmed). Sunday brunch in Hong Kong is a whole other category of dining in my book, which, for the purposes of this blog entry, might be summed up as fulfilling the 3+ hour, plush armchair and amazing harbor views, heavy silverware, and private table dining categories.


I would also add the category of incredibly good value for the luxury experience. The first glass of champagne and subsequent free-flowing red and white wines are included in the price of brunch; the Thai asparagus with black truffles and amazing beef tartare shown above were but two of the numerous offerings in the appetizer buffet. Cheers to mi madre!



Wet market and seafood lunch at Ap Lei Chau. You buy your produce/ingredients in the wet market downstairs, the fishmonger kills, cleans and bags the fish, and then you bring it upstairs to these "restaurants" that are really nothing more than small storefronts, and tell the cooks how you want it all prepared.


Your fish goes from water to plate in about 30 minutes (depending on how long you browse through the market). Not for the faint of heart, nor those who don't like to think about where their food comes from.
Stools (though not sitting in the street); chopsticks and toilet paper.



Dim sum at Tim Ho Wan. This is where the Michelin star reference comes in, although my family's opinion is that the place is okay, but not anything particularly special, and definitely not worth the wait to try more than once. When I was there with my dad at about 11 AM, the lady gave out numbers for tables saying, We'll honor your ticket any time before 4 pm. We ended up waiting about an hour. Personally, I think the prices and quality would make it a reasonable destination if the wait weren't so long.

Shared tables, slash, tiny tables crammed so close together you might as well be sharing a table. Unfortunately, my dad and I drew the short end of the stick and got seated at the outermost of 3 tables in a row. I had to get up to let people out and in about 4 times throughout my meal.

I've got some other dining experiences to report on, but they don't quite fit into the time/environment dichotomy I've set up here. Which probably just goes to show the danger of thinking in dichotomies...