Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Hong Kong, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, and then... a free day. And not just a free day, but a free day in Melbourne. And not just any free day in Melbourne, but a free Sunday in Melbourne. And not any free Sunday in Melbourne but a free Sunday in late-summer Melbourne: a day soaked in a mellow sun and a sense of possibility. Already that day, the three of us [Jules, Johnny and I] had been for runs and got tangled up (to varying degrees) in a half marathon which snaked around in the centre of the city. We'd also already had our fair share of delicious food, with a great lunch of calamari fritti, roasted peppers, sourdough pizza, scallops and fresh tomatoes at the wonderful Gilson in the South Yarra district. But rather than quitting while ahead, we went all-in and headed out in the late afternoon glow to the beautiful environs of St. Kilda beach, where Stokehouse sits like a pimped-out beach hut set back from the golden sand. We were seated upstairs on the first floor, right next to one of the generous glass windows through which the setting sun was tickled by the fluttering fronds of a mature palm tree. For Stokehouse's interior designer, lots of his job had been done by nature, but he'd also found a wonderful visual language of wood, plants, diffused lighting and crisp minimalist tableware to pair with the sand, sun and foliage outside. This pitch perfect setting was complemented by waiter service which I'd describe as spot-on: chatty but sincere, funny when appropriate, discreet when appropriate, and all backed up by a deep knowledge and enthusiasm for the menu. My snack to start things off was a yellowfin tuna belly & melon bite. This beautiful tartare and translucent melon sat in a crisp pastry basket, on a happy little dollop of brown butter sauce. I was sceptical that the light freshness of diced tuna belly could stand up to the richness of brown butter, but it totally worked. Seven or eight more of them and I would have been satisfied. My 'official' starter ended up being my unexpected highlight of the meal. I ordered the heirloom zucchini (courgette), duck egg, blue oyster mushroom & leek essentially as a way to offset my being drawn to the rather vegetable-light main course of Australian beef. But despite its virtue, it was a total treat. The photo taking was a challenge because the dish is not much of a looker, either before, during or after eating. The texture of a courgette can so often be disappointing, but this was light and soft and with just enough bite. The duck egg hiding underneath was huge: almost all-yolk, golden and jammy. And when it bled out, it bled into meaty oyster mushrooms and down into a leek puree which had an almost smoky quality. I wondered if they'd charred the leeks before blending. Each of the elements in this dish rested almost entirely on quality of its ingredients, and it was all the better for that. The course which I thought would be my highlight was nearly sensational: Australian pure Black Angus sirloin with Andean sunrise mash, leeks, smoked bordelaise & seaweed mustard. The seaweed mustard, though appealing as an idea, was a dangerous addition. It worked well in tiny quantities with the beef, but it was a total palette-buster on its own (which is how I first tried it), and looked like the turd of a dehydrated chihuahua. The potato puree - it was too luxuriant to be called mash - was a delight. It had been passed thoroughly for perfect smoothness, and the choice of potato and the generous addition of butter gave it a burstingly yellow colour. The meat itself had been cooked on a charcoal grill, giving its outside that nice distinct barbecuey crust. But for me the charcoal grill thing can make the inside of the steak sag and split a little bit. The glistening, confident evenness of a pan- or teppanyaki-seared sirloin is a thing of true wonder to me, and that treatment could have lifted the dish even further. But don't get me wrong, it was jolly nice just as it was. The sickening charade of ham-acting 'I'm just going to having a look’ at the dessert menu, because 'I'm so full I can barely move', makes me want to throw myself out of the nearest window. But in this instance, there was no need to go through all this. The meal had been so delicious, and the portions so carefully judged, that there was no question about whether or not we'd be having dessert.
Mine was the Sticky date pudding. Dates in this context seem to me so much better than toffee. The chef did all the right things with steaming warmth versus tingling coldness, and their Mr-Whippy-style vanilla ice cream (served separately) was eccentrically unfussy and a great counterpoint to the carefully manicured stripy glaze on the sponge. The sweet date sauce was supplied generously and had a glossiness in which one could almost see the setting sun reflected. STOKEHOUSE St. Kilda Beach 30 Jacka Blvd VIC 3182
0 Comments
In what seems to be a running theme of the tour we're on, the dinner that three of us (Jules, Nick and I) had at Kisa came after a long day of time-zone-discombobulation and tiredness having landed at midday after a journey from Wuhan to Hong Kong to Auckland and on to Wellington. I was also very ready for a lovely big meal, having got mysteriously and briefly ill in Wuhan and dispelled any nutrients I may have taken on board in the preceding hours. Kisa delivered, in bucketfuls. Everyone we had asked for recommendations had put Kisa at the top of their lists. Had we wanted to eat at a normal time, we wouldn't have got a table. It's clearly the place to be. But our brains and stomachs were so confused that 5.15pm felt like the ideal and obvious dinner time, so that's when we sat down in the light-stone, dark wood, plant-touched, softly lit interior of this Wellington hotspot. After swiftly dispatching some of their delightful hummus, red zhug, crispy chickpeas and parsley oil with flatbread, the tone was set for the rest of the meal. It has reminiscences of Ottolenghi's restaurants and menus, with an array of middle-eastern ingredients and flavours enmeshed with traditional Western fayre. Also shared with Ottolenghi is an unapologetic celebration of the vegetable. Two of the dishes we ordered put a single vegetable (or fruit... I can never remember which one tomato is) at centre stage, fawned-upon and adored by exotic oils, garnishes and elaborations. These dishes were, firstly, the Heirloom tomato, peach, chamomile honey, harissa jam, grape vinegar, in which the honey and the vinegar shone flattering spotlights on a beautiful delicate and sweet thinly sliced tomato - the likes of which one basically can't find in the UK. The second was their Charcoal cabbage, ras el hanout, yoghurt salata sosu, black lime, quinoa. This was in fact the first thing I noticed as we sat down to eat. The multi-tiered barbecue in the open kitchen was doing wonderful things to a load of halved cabbages which had already spent quality time soaking in preserved lemon, black lime and spices. Sitting above the coal fire, the outer edges got blackened and crunchy, while further into the cabbage-halves, the marinade sweated its way into the flesh of the vegetable, transforming it from something I often find to be a bit of a chore, into a total delight. Being an unrepentant carnivore, I wasn't going to stand by and let solely vegetable work happen when there were some enticing meats on the menu. So next came what was probably the stand out dish for me: Spiced wild goat mince lahmacun flatbread, pickled green tomato, toum, hot honey. I still have no idea what 'lahmacun' means (and I'm not going to let Google ruin the fun). But the whole thing was a delight. Like the pizza of your dreams: thin, crispy bread with a layer of rich and delicious goat meat (think somewhere between pork and venison; rich and kind of smoky but crumbly and satisfyingly salty at the same time). It was tempered with a truly delicious drizzle of hot honey: a trendy new ingredient on the Instagram-wannabe-chef scene which I'd never actually tried before. In combination with the pickled green tomato, all the necessary bases were covered: smoke, spice, sweetness, sharpness. Our final dish? Lamb shoulder, doner spice, toum, mango Amba, zeytinyagi courgette, laffa breads. Honestly, this was the dish which I had been most excited about on ordering it. It combines a few of my favourite things - lean lamb, mango, courgette and Middle Eastern bread. And whilst the mango Amba dressing (served separately) was beautifully sweet, sitting on creamy yoghurt and swimming in glorious extra virgin olive oil, I honestly found the lamb a little underwhelming. For me, lamb shoulder should be succulent, rich, pull-able and a bit fatty. This was a leaner, drier treatment which didn't pack the full punch required to hold its own against the dazzle of the mango Amba, the fluffy bread and flavoursome red onions and courgette. Realistically I think my expectations were unfeasibly high: I thought I had come across my life-defining dream dish, and instead this was simply very very nice.
I don't do star ratings here (because they're a blunt tool and frankly who cares how many stars I give something), but if I did - and there were five available - Lisa would get a comfortable five. KISA 195 Cuba Street Te Aro Wellington 6011 I was so tired it was frankly ridiculous. An awkwardly-timed flight, during which I inexplicably got too emotionally involved in the ‘Today in Parliament’ podcast to get much sleep, put me in a kind of dazed trance as I trudged around Shanghai on an uncharacteristically clear-skied day, trying to stay awake. First port of call in these circumstances was of course coffee. I had two cups: one from Horiguchi which was pretty decent and very attractive to look at, but wildly overpriced at c.£10 for a flat white. The second - at next-door Arabica Roastery - was meant to be reasonably priced at c.£4, but when I handed over £9 in cash, they thanked me for the tip and I couldn’t face trying to reclaim my change. The coffee was really decent, although the closest thing to a flat white on their menu was a latte which came out a shade milky for my incredibly refined and sophisticated palette. Dinner, when the time eventually came, was from a food market on a beautiful old shopping street in the Huangpu district of the city. Out of nowhere, the grey and silver of Shanghai gave way to this street of traditional Chinese architecture heaving with restaurants and stalls. I dived into a brightly lit canteen space which I now can’t find on Google Maps (largely owing to my lack of Mandarin), but which is next door to a restaurant called Yu Shanghai. There were two rows of competing stalls selling intimidating Shanghai specialities from squid skewers to ‘hairy crab’ rolls. There were some wonderful surreal English translations on the signage but I was too tired and hungry to make a note of any. I was there for one thing: the Shanghainese stewed pork buns. Eating my four in the bright, noisy communal dining area in the market, I was treated to the nicely coloured bottoms which are fried after steaming, a perfect light and sweet dough with an encrustment of toasted sesame seeds on the bottom and some black ones on top, and just the right amount of beautiful squishy and rich pork filling. Satisfied but not quite satiated, I popped my head into a smaller and less salubrious canteen en route back to the hotel. Scanning the counter of steaming hot trays I saw one winking at me: glistening crispy chicken topped generously with garlic slices and chopped Sichuan chillies. I couldn’t look away despite knowing it probably wasn’t good for me. This dish looked to me how a warm spoon and a tight belt might look to a crack addict. So I pointed at it, nodded, and paid in clumsy fistfuls of notes whose value was slightly lost on me.
(somewhere near) YU SHANGHAI
69 Jiujiaochang Road Huangpu Shanghai BUMS, TONGUES AND CRABS It had been an unusual travel day for us. Once we’d checked out, a van drove us from the hotel-cum-casino in Macau over to the sea port, where we gave in our little slips of paper to show we’d arrived legally, before boarding a ferry to sail eastwards, round the coast, to Hong Kong. It wasn’t exactly a north sea storm, but nor was it a pleasure-cruise. And after the subsequent taxi ride through Hong Kong’s motorway tunnels, and having checked into the hotel on the waterfront in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district, a bit of light supper seemed just the thing to settle the stomach. On exiting the hotel, there appeared to me — like an oasis to a thirsty Saharan trekker — a restaurant called Robatayaki (in Japanese, simply ‘robata grill'). As the enthusiastic owner of my own robata, I knew that this could only be good news for a queasy traveller: clean heat from the Japanese coals, and beautiful ingredients. The dining room was quite literally built around the chef, who was boxed in by a lovely long wooden countertop where intrigued diners could watch him cook while they chomped away on his handiwork. He sat on something like a bar stool, the robata firing away in front of him, and desk space on either side where he would slice, dice, brush and garnish before presenting each dish to the diners around him. So transfixed was I by this man at work — neat, orderly, calm and precise — that I twice had to ask for more time when the waiter came to take my order. On the third time of asking, I couldn’t delay. My eyes swept what I felt was the prime page of the menu and I spotted two dishes I knew I would enjoy — things I’d cooked and which would be great in the hands of this chef: wagyu beef tongue, and tempura soft shell crab. Searching for a third item at the waiter’s suggestion, I turned the page and saw a dazzling array of chicken options. Not wanting to plump for anything too obvious, I skipped the breast and the thigh and various other definitely-nice bits, and spotted ‘Chicken tail’. Adding this to my order, I noticed the waiter’s eyebrows ascend as the ’t' of ‘tail’ passed my lips. He commented: ‘very advanced taste!’. A word or two was exchanged between the waiter and the chef, whose eyebrows I could swear also lifted in the flickering light of the robata, before the waiter slunk off and I was left to my increasingly troubled thoughts. I took out my diary and scribbled away, documenting what we’d been up to in Macau and a little bit about forthcoming plans in Hong Kong and China. And no sooner had I got the ink flowing than I was presented with my plate of soft shell crab. When eating this in the popular Sichuan style, it’s often served whole, garnished with diced spring onion, chillies and peppercorns. When cooking it myself, I have found — even from the wonderful local fishmonger Sandy’s — the soft shell crabs are a little paltry and only amount to one or two mouthfuls. Well, the one I was served at Robatayaki must have been a fearsome beast in his water-going days. They’d filleted him into a few large pieces, and the tempura batter was somehow layered almost like filo pastry. With each bite, thin sheets of the batter slid and flaked to reveal the glistening white meat. I made short work of it, preferring to dab the chunks lightly in soy than in the sharper, slightly overwhelming salsa that came with it. After a few more minutes back at my diary, the chef stood up from his station and presented me with the beef tongue. As is traditional in any preparation of this dish, it’s euphemistically cut into anonymously small strips so as to disguise the unnerving origin of the mouthful.
This was really wonderful. In my previous experience of it — both eating and cooking — the tongue has been boiled extensively first to soften what is a tough muscle, before then being diced, fried and served. This being a wagyu cow, there was an inherent softness and fattiness which meant this initial boiling was deemed unnecessary. As a result, it was somewhat tougher than my previous experiences. But not bad-tough: the texture was curiously satisfying in the mouth. The slight resistance to the bite was rewarding, and seemed to help impart the deeply umami flavour of the cut. Our man behind the counter had seasoned it beautifully, and I had all the bits I was hoping for: the fatty, buttery taste, some of the charcoal of the robata preparation, but balanced out by the pleasantly sinewy texture. To really relax and enjoy it, the rule is simply not to think for one second about tongues while chewing. Only afterwards can one sit back and reflect on how utterly hideous a concept it is to chew the heated-up tongue of a cow. Just as this hideous thought was seeping in, a fresh new horror dawned. I had been watching the chef working away on the robata with these little things which looked liked fortune cookies. They were curious little pyramids which had spent a fair while being flipped, checked, relocated and prodded around the workstation as they developed a golden crispiness. When the chef’s assistant had brought them over from the fridge, the chef had donned blue gloves to handle them. And I should have known. What on earth kind of ‘tail’ I was expecting? Dogs and cats have tails: chickens have nothing of the sort. Chickens have anuses. And as the chef begun to plate them up for me (glancing unnervingly at me while he did so) the realisation slid into place like the concluding scene of something by Agatha Christie. I picked up my first one with my chopsticks and rotated it, and sure enough winking at me from the underneath was an unmistakeable hole. Fairly disturbing stuff, for sure. But there were silver linings: the bunching of skin at the back end of the chicken meant that there was an generous skin-to-meat ratio, and plenty of skin surface area making the pyramid crispy and golden, the juice still fizzing on the surface. In a fit of confidence, I said to the chef ‘Do you like this dish?’. He looked up at me. He replied, ‘Oh no; no, I would never eat this’, before looking back down at his robata. If the charcoally (or other) discolouration near the hole wasn’t enough to put me off, then the chef’s answer was. I had a good crack — pardon the pun — but didn’t quite finish this particular delicacy. ROBATAYAKI 20 Tak Fung Street Hung Hom Hong Kong You've already had all the steak frites you can manage. Your monthly quota of duck a l'orange has been reached or possibly exceeded. You've had it up to here with waiters who make you feel like a bothersome nitwit (and who aren't fooled by your mumbled school French). All of these situations have afflicted me in Paris before - multiple times - but I have good news for you. You can dine in central Paris, eat well, and avoid all of this.
Once pierced, I left it 30 seconds to allow the soup to cool, then bit in to taste the porky goodness. But sure enough, there was still the squirt of boiling hot pork soup and my taste buds took a 4-5 minute time-out to gather themselves. Only then I spotted the bizarre little cardboard straw (pictured) which was evidently the approved method to pierce and drink the soup. I tried this for the next one. More burning liquid. To this day I'm not sure if there's a trick I'm missing or if the contents were simply too hot. I prefer to blame myself.
Coffee is so much about context. That's why it's actually quite hard to get excited about good coffee in New York City. Walking around the loud grids of glass and concrete, hopping from arty coffee shop to arty coffee shop that are all good on paper, I find it actually really hard to find a magical cup. But here, having tip-toed and hopped through the snowy, icy sludge of Estonia's capital city on a cold January morning, RØST Bakery is everything you want, just how you want it. Nestled in a fortress-like brickwork pedestrian alley in the Rotermanni Kvartal area of the Old Town near the harbour, its thick exposed-stone walls and low hanging lamp shades make it feel not only like a bakery from a century ago but also a home from home. Estonia is a country that shares its long eastern border with Russia, and sits in an advantageous position on the Baltic Sea. So over the last century it has been buffeted more than many countries by ever-shifting Russo-European geopolitics. It was occupied by Germany during the Second World War, and then became part of the Soviet Union after the war, before establishing its sovereign independence in the early 1990s. Nowadays, it has strong military alliances through its membership of NATO and is on the frontline of cyber-attacks and intimidation by Russia, and looks on particularly warily at the situation in Ukraine. A gentleman who collected us from Tallinn airport last night, when I asked him about the Ukrainian War, questioned my phrasing. 'Really,' he said, 'it's the Russian War. It just happens to be in Ukraine at the moment'. This ominous reframing highlights that Russia's general attitude towards so many of its neighbours these days is one of war, whether or not there are troops over the border yet. No wonder, then, that Estonians take great pride in their language, their music, and their food. The popping bright vowels of locals speaking Estonian, against the general hum of the cafe, is a perfect accompaniment to the oozing gooey goodness of the almond croissant (which is warm, straight from the baking station in an alcove of the cafe). Its toasted flaked almond outside, dusted with icing sugar, crumbles wonderfully in the fingers, the bready body tears deliciously, and the vividly coloured sweet almond paste in the middle is almost too much. Almost. The coffee is carefully and lovingly made, slightly cocoaey in taste, with milk smooth and creamy in texture, served in cheerfully-coloured earthenware. At some point shortly, I'll have to down-tools and step back out into the wintry Baltic air. But when I do, I know that I'll be looking for the next possible chance to wend my way back to the perfect haven for drinking the perfect coffee in the perfect atmosphere for the totally imperfect weather. ROST BAKERY Rotermanni 14 10111 Tallinn Estonia ‘Just don’t stop driving, whatever happens’, I mansplained to Cressida as she drove the four of us through a dodgy bit of the Five Cays area that took us down to Omar’s Beach Hut. The previous October, somewhere around here a car got held-up at gun point. The passengers and driver were shot and killed in what has been reported as a hit-and-run relating to a gang war between Haitians, Jamaicans and locals. It wasn’t going to happen to us, of course, and by all accounts the violence had calmed down by January. But there was a certain tension in the Land Rover as Cressida navigated some heavy-duty speed bumps and the rhythmic glare of undimmed headlights casting across our dusty windscreen. Bullets and speed bumps aside, Omar’s Beach Hut is a wonder when you get there, and worth a reasonable deal of mortal peril. The place kind of sprawls organically into the sea. The smoky indoor kitchen backs on to a covered terrace, then it’s just two steps down to an area of open decking, covered only by the fronds of a few palm trees that stick up through the deck. And then — the piece-de-resistance — down some more steps sit picnic benches (painted in Omar’s signature bright blue) wedged into the sand, which for half the day are almost submerged in the island’s famously blue ocean. I’ve never actually seen anyone sit on these benches — frankly it’d be impractical -- but the signal they send is that there’s nothing separating the sea and the kitchen. At high tide the blackened grouper sitting on your plate was probably scratching its back on those wooden benches, and the only detour it had to make on its way to the plate was via the fish market just 100 metres away (and visible from our table). Out of the sea emerges a ramp which leads up to this cheerfully-coloured, big-windowed warehouse where the fishermen land their catches each day then flog the fish to restaurants and supermarkets on the island. No restauranteur has a shorter journey from market to kitchen than Omar: and it shows. To be quite honest, I can’t really remember the mains. Everyone ordered fish, either blackened, grilled or fried, and it came with rice and corn and was probably deliciously smoky, flaky and in all spiced to perfection. In case you're wondering, my memory wasn’t addled by my booze. I wish it had been. But the cocktails were so icy and weak that it would have taken 10 litres before I’d forget anything. No, the mains stood no chance in my memory after the glory of the appetisers. The dish I can’t shake from my mind, months later, is the coconut shrimp. Meaty, juicy prawns which had barely finished twitching, dipped in a coating of the finest shredded coconut and panko crumbs, fried perfectly to give an unforgettable balance of taste, colour and texture: sweetness, aromatic nuttiness and saltiness all brought together with a chilli dipping sauce silkier than French knickers. Other winning appetisers included the conch fritters: fat, squidgy little things so addictive that one can scarcely believe they were fish. The snapper tacos also made their mark: lightly spiced chunks of grilled white fish, nestled into warm corn tortillas and lifted with a life-giving chunky tomato salsa and a squeeze of lemon. As an aside, I can think of very few foods that aren’t improved with a squeeze of citrus. Part of what’s so exciting about going to Omar’s - aside from the quasi assault course to get there - is that it was set up in a fit of extraordinary passive aggression. The shack next door, Bugaloo’s, had been doing roughly the same thing on the same stretch of beach for years. It did a good trade, and I’ve eaten there before with no complaints. In fact, Ellie got extraordinarily drunk there on one occasion, so they must do their cocktails right at least. Then one day, a few years ago, one of their chefs (presumably called Omar), having been wronged in some way by Mr Bugaloo, set up shop literally next door. Even closer to the fish market. Cooking even better food. And there is something of this ballsy, brazen, sassy energy baked into the whole Omar’s experience, even for those of us who have no axes to grind with Bugaloo’s. And so I say long live Omar, and all who sail in her. OMAR'S BEACH HUT Five Cays Providenciales TKCA 1ZZ Turks & Caicos Islands It's probably an embarrassing way to choose a restaurant, but given the ridiculous number of great places to eat in Tokyo, going for somewhere I'd seen on Netflix seemed as good an approach as any. At one end of the dining spectrum, Tokyo has more Michelin stars than any other city in the world. At the other, it has street-corner ramen bars that Shoreditch or Brooklyn residents would murder a kitten for. In fact, some of its greatest food is in its most unassuming spots, and in this Netflix programme I'd seen - Ugly Delicious - the Korean-American chef and presenter David Chang was so moved by the chicken at one tiny place in Tokyo that he squeezed his considerable mass around the end of the bar to go and hug the chef. That restaurant was Masakichi, in Tokyo's Meguro City district, and I can only guess that its Michelin star got lost in the post. I arrived at the quiet residential street in a taxi with Johnny, Nick, and Jules, fresh from a rehearsal with the Japanese film composer Joe Hisaishi (whose new piece we were premiering in a couple of days time at Suntory Hall). We tangled our way through the hanging-curtain entrance and shuffled our way along the gangway behind a row of Japanese diners seated at the bar. As we moved through the haze to the small table at the back, we hungrily breathed in all of the meaty smoke that the extractor fan couldn't quite shift. I remember in Ugly Delicious how the chef described a 'dance' between the fat from the chicken and the heat of the specially-sourced binchotan charcoal underneath. In this style of cooking, as the skewer of chicken cooks and releases its juices, the droplets of fat ignite licking flames from the hissing charcoal. The aromas of these two elements, working in partnership, create the magical taste and smell of great yakitori (yaki referring to 'direct heat' cooking, and tori meaning chicken). The English menu (yes, we asked for an English menu: just you try and translate the Japanese for 'wasabi marinated chicken gizzards' without WiFi), was like something out of the Victoria and Albert museum. Excavated from a shelf under the counter, this precious relic - one had the sense it was the only copy - was shredded at the edges, beer-stained in all the right places, and printed on paper with the texture of a granny's elbow. But my oh my it guided us through a chicken adventure. Neck; heart; breast; liver; thigh; tail; wing; even skin: each came on a perfect little skewer, the wood charred at the edges and the fat on the surface of the chicken still fizzing from its encounter with the heat. While the chicken was the undisputed star of the show, little details like pearls of wasabi paste dotted on the breast meat, and slivers of Japanese leek interspersed with each skin-on thigh chunk, helped the skewers sing. It was perhaps the more alien cuts that delivered the most flavour; the tail meat was incredibly tender, and the neck (not to be confused with the flappy little pink chin, which is what I was imagining) was a total revelation. After four or five sticks of tori, we were practically begging for the skewers of miso-glazed portobello mushroom and shishito peppers, which helped keep scurvy temporarily at bay. And while the menu could be criticised for a lack of variety, and for the eye-watering number of chickens it must take to populate skewers bearing 4 chicken hearts each, we shouldn't be surprised. Japanese chefs have an extraordinary willingness to dedicate themselves wholly and unflinchingly to a single ingredient, method, or dish, spending years lovingly perfecting it. Masakichi is a living example of this total dedication, and my goodness these chickens did not die in vain. MASAKICHI 5 Chome-2-8 Megurohoncho Meguro City Tokyo 152-0002 +81 3-3792-5216 I thought I had a reasonable handle on Asian cuisines. I know my hotpot from my ramen, my Szechuan from my Cantonese, my Vientamese summer roll from my Thai spring roll. And then I went and spent a few days in Singapore, and Johnny suggested going out to a Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant. I nodded sagely and said 'of course', while manically Googling 'Peranakan food' under the table. To put it simply, it's a word which describes the sort of culinary fusion I only know from my wildest, happiest dreams. Peranakan people are of mixed Chinese and Malaysian or Indonesian descent, many of whom settled in Singapore. In their cooking, spices from the Chinese culinary traditions are mixed with the aromatic and sweet ingredients used in Malaysia - palm sugar, ginger, coconut milk, fish sauce, coriander. So as Jules, Johnny and I sat down in the tastefully minimalist wood-toned interior of Candlenut I wilfully maintained my ignorance of the Singaporean Dollar exchange rate and nodded enthusiastically at the suggestion of their 11-course lunch menu. The waiter managed to stay just on the right side of that very fine line between friendly and over-familiar. After declaring at the outset that he would remember our names, it was a tense moment every time he'd arrive at the table to offer '.....Julian... wait, no, Johnny. No, no, definitely Julian' a top up of hundred-dollar mineral water. But frankly, he was welcome to call us whatever the hell he wanted, with the quality of the food he was putting in front of us. A description of every single dish and ingredient would probably cost me extra in web-hosting space and slim my already-small readership down to just my wife. But some of the stars of this show included 'Yeye's Curry Ayam Bakar' with kaffir lime leaf and fried shallot; cuttlefish with fried egg, coriander and bandung sauce (whatever that is); and a sweet potato and coconut mousse that surprised and delighted like the cracking-open of a two-yolked egg. In addition to learning about the glories of Peranakan cuisine, my ignorance was further alleviated through the course of this meal as I realised that candlenut is in fact an actual nut, not just a snazzy name for this spot in Dempsey Road, Singapore. CANDLENUT 17a Dempsey Rd Singapore 249676 +65 1800 304 2288 If there isn't salsa and oil running down your wrists and forearms, they haven't done it quite right. That's what I'd been told by locals, so I knew I'd struck the motherload as I sat crouched on the pavement of Avenue Cinco De Mayo outside Taqueria Arandas in central Mexico City, watching helplessly as another jumper was irreversibly sullied. The Al Pastor taco would be a religion in Mexico, if everyone wasn't already Catholic. Characterised by the sweet (normally pineapple) salsa garnish that tops it off, and the Middle Eastern-style rotating spit of stacked, spiced pork steaks that fills it, this beautiful taco originated from Lebanese shepherds who migrated and settled in the Puebla region of Mexico. As the spit turns, these pork layers congeal into a giant cylinder, charring beautifully on the outside, before being deftly sheared off by a taquero who works expertly in rhythm with the cooking of the meat to create piles of shaved pork. In Mexico City, taquerias who pride themselves on their Al Pastor do this grilling and carving out on the street, leaving scores of passers-by to drown in pools of their own saliva. Before it even reaches the rotating spit, the pork has been marinated ruthlessly in a mixture of fruit juice, achiote paste (this is what affords the meat a signature red colour), as well as ancho chilli powder, garlic and and a splash of vinegar. This carefully balanced acidic, smoky and sweet marinade gives the meat tenderness, depth-of-flavour, colour, and char-factor as it cooks. As is traditional in Mexican taquerias, this Al Pastor pork meat was nestled on not one but two warm corn tortillas. One tortilla doesn't quite cut the mustard in Mexico: of the pair, the inner one is a kind of shock absorber, soaking up juice and fat from the meat like a sheet of galvanising metal rusting to protect the hull of a ship. The second tortilla is dry and structurally sound; it it's this one that you fold into a U-shape, gripping the salty and sweet filling, before rotating it 90 degrees and easing it into the mouth for a bite which transports your tastebuds to heaven and your clothing to the laundrette. TAQUERIA ARANDAS Avenue Cinco de Mayo 46 Centro Historico Ciudad de Mexico 06000 |
AuthorA clumsy human, frequent traveller and lover of good food and coffee, here to share some experiences of eating and drinking around the world. |