Category: food

Chinese Food: China vs America

Seth Roberts2 Comments

I skype-chatted with Clarissa Wei, a Chinese-American journalist in Los Angeles whose post about stinky tofu in Los Angeles impressed me.

SR What do you think of Chinese restaurants in America compared to Chinese restaurants in China?

CW It depends on where you’re talking about. In broad America, the Chinese food is pretty different from that of China. In places like Los Angeles and pockets of New York… it’s much more alike

SR I’m thinking of the best ones in Los Angeles.

CW It’s definitely cleaner here that’s for sure. In Los Angeles, the food quality is pretty similar. The major difference would be the price and variety. The selections are also pretty similar. The set-up in American Chinese restaurants is obviously different than the ones in China so that influences things a lot

SR I have never been to a Chinese restaurant in America that resembles a high-end Chinese restaurant in Beijing

CW In Los Angeles — there are a couple high-end Canto restaurants. They typically are your seafood + dim sum banquet types. Lunasia is a great example.

SR What do you mean by the set up?

CW Well in China, a lot of the restaurants are literally hole-in-the-walls. There isn’t that much of a standard in terms of being neat and sanitary.

SR There is vastly more range in China, both better and worse

CW In the rural countrysides, it’s out of people’s homes. But in America, everyone has to have at least some degree of sanitation.

SR Chinese restaurants in China are more playful. Like a toilet restaurant, for example.

CW Very true. Yeah they’re opening one of those in LA.

SR Or a restaurant where everyone says hello when you enter and goodbye when you leave

CW There’s also a Taiwanese “Hooters” in L.A. A lot of the Taiwanese breakfast eateries in L.A. have that “cutesy” vibe.

SR When you were in China were you in any way disappointed by the Chinese restaurants?

CW I was in China in 2011 for 4 months as part of a study abroad program. I was disappointed mostly because I always got sick.

SR What city?

CW Shanghai. But I travelled to Guilin, Dunhuang, Beijing. I got sick from just the regular restaurants on my street. Some were marketed as higher-end. I lost 10 pounds from throwing up. Mind you, I go to Taiwan yearly and that never happens.

SR The first time I went to China I was sick every 2 days, but after that I was fine.

CW I think my toleration for bacteria is pretty low.

SR I get sick no more often in Beijing than in Berkeley. [But in Beijing I eat Korean and Japanese food mostly.]

CW That’s surprising. I was at Donghuamen [a night market selling strange food] in Beijing. Did an article on that place. But I just felt like throwing up because the streets reeked of trash.

SR The cheap restaurants scare me. They use recycled cooking oil.

CW I think that’s changing now with the media coverage on the Chinese food scandals. But in places like Los Angeles..the food is pretty up to par in terms of “authenticity”.

SR How was the food in the various Chinese cities besides Shanghai?

CW It was alright. I get turned off when a restaurant is dirty to be honest. But that may just be because of my American upbringing. It really influences how I consume the food and how much I eat of it. When I was in Dunhuang, there was a vendor making daoxiaomian but he kept on coughing over and over. And we watched him make the dish and serve it to us. I felt disgusted but we were starving.

SR What did you think of the food expertise of the Chinese people you met in China?

CW I learned a lot about Chinese food in China from my Chinese teacher. That’s when I started to gain in interest in the regional differences. The oyster omelette for example in Xiamen is similar to the one in Taiwan, but crispier and thinner

SR It was very hard to buy a kitchen timer in Beijing because I was told no one uses them when they cook.

CW No one uses fancy gadgets or exact measurements there. It’s all passed down and family recipes which is the beauty of it.

SR My students at Tsinghua are more connoisseurs of food than my Berkeley students. A lot more.

CW Food is such a central theme of the Chinese culture. There’s a fascination with Western food too. In Shanghai, my first article for CNN was “Top Western Restaurants in Shanghai”. I brought my Shanghainese friends along to one of the places — a bagel places — and they were fascinated.

SR I went to the best Korean restaurant I’ve been to outside Korea in Shanghai.

CW Shanghai has a tradition of really embracing foreign cooking traditions. One of the best fine dining restaurants I’ve been to was in Shanghai, Mr. and Mrs. Bund.

SR Do people in Shanghai understand how good the food is in Japan?

CW I think so. But a lot of Chinese people really don’t have the opportunity to travel abroad. They don’t have a feel or the exposure to foreign tastes as much as Americans do. In Taiwan, there’s a fascination with the Japanese. Obviously because of the occupation of the Japanese but a lot of the high-end Taiwanese restos are Japanese influenced.

SR Controlling for age who did you think are the more adventurous eaters, Americans or Chinese — I mean the ones you know.

CW Chinese hands down.

SR That’s interesting, I always worry that my students won’t like this or that. [At least, they draw the line at eating insects.]

CW Just because Chinese cuisine has a variety of meats and offal and “bizarre” parts you know. So they’re much more open to try …. snails from France than your average American. Because snails are a Chinese dish too.
Also in Chinese culture, you’re taught to eat anything and everything that’s presented to you. It’s rude to refuse.

SR A friend of mine said that Chinese (in practice) is a language of verbs, English is a language of nouns. One of the verbs is “eat”. Parents tell children: “eat”.

CW Yes. Americans have the luxury of being more picky — look at the whole gluten free, vegan movement in these metropolitan places. If you go into a Chinese restaurant in China and say you’re vegetarian — they don’t really know how to work with you. Some places will just roll their eyes.

SR After you came back from Shanghai to Los Angeles, how did you view American Chinese restaurants differently? The authentic ones.

CW I appreciated it a lot more. The food here is good and it won’t give me food poisoning. Sanitation was like the biggest worry in China. An article recently came out that said the ice from the KFC in China had more bacteria than toilet water.

SR I never go to KFC in China. Now I have been vindicated in that decision

CW The egg tarts there are fantastic. Modeled after the original Macau egg tart recipe apparently.

SR There should be a category: best food in worst restaurant. Also worst food in best restaurant.

CW Chinese restaurants have such extensive menus, it’s always easy to find a bad item.

SR I was impressed that Chinese restaurants managed to make mashed potatoes slightly interesting. That’s baby food! They added raspberry sauce.

CW Again — fascination with Western food.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts8 Comments
  • Open Source Malaria
  • Criticism of Malcolm Gladwell by The Korean, Gladwell’s persuasive rebuttal, more from The Korean, more from Gladwell. I thought the work under discussion (“ethnic theory of plane crashes”) was the best part of Outliers. Gladwell summarizes it: “That chapter in Outliers is about a series of extraordinary steps taken by Korean Air, in which an institution on the brink of collapse and disgrace turned themselves into one of the best airlines in the world. They did so by bravely confronting the fact that a legacy of their cultural heritage was frustrating open communication in the cockpit. That is not a slight on Korean culture, or any other high-power distance culture for that matter.”
  • More praise for the new TV show Naked and Afraid on the Discovery Channel. It really is riveting.
  • Ziploc omelette. Poor man’s sous vide.

Thanks to Nicole Harkin.

Sous Vide Secrets

Seth Roberts9 Comments

A few weeks ago, based on the good experiences of friends, I bought a sous vide cooker. As promised, food cooked sous vide (sponsored link) (at very low temperatures, such as 135 degrees F., for long periods of time, such as 48 hours) was excellent, clearly better than other cooking methods. For example, I made short ribs. They came out a perfect texture (slightly chewy), very moist and full of flavor. I also made eggs. At the right temperature, they turned a wonderful custard-like texture.

Sous vide isn’t new. Professional chefs have been using it for many years. The equipment has been too expensive (such as $1000). What’s new is lower prices. A friend paid about $350 for a sous vide cooker and vacuum sealer.

My brief experience suggests two conclusions I haven’t read anywhere else:

1. Don’t pay that much. I bought a Dorkfood DSV controller ($100). It turns the electricity to a crockpot on and off to maintain the right temperature. (A new crockpot is about $20. I already had two.) The controller is much better than “home sous vide” cookers (about $400) because it takes up much less space and can be used to control anything, not just crockpots. I can use it to make yogurt, for example. I no longer need a yogurt maker ($15, in China). The only problem with the Dorkfood controller is that you can hear it operate. It makes audible clicks. My crockpots and yogurt maker, which do the same thing at fixed temperatures, are silent.

2. You don’t need a vacuum sealer. You put the food in a bag, which is submerged in a water bath. Yes, sous vide means “under vacuum” but vacuum sealing may be inferior to using ordinary freezer bags, which cost less, are much easier to get, and unlike vacuum-sealed bags allow opening and re-closing. When I use an ordinary freezer bag I put the top of the bag above the water so as to not worry about leakage. My low-end vacuum sealer (Seal-a-Meal, $40) works with ordinary freezer bags, not just the special bags you are supposed to buy. I will eventually do a side-by-side comparison: cook the same food two ways (vacuum-seal and freezer bag).

 

 

Seoul Restaurant Story

Seth Roberts5 Comments

I was in Seoul for a few days. I wanted to go to a really good Korean restaurant. I did a lot of research. Finally I returned to where I started — an article about “the ten best restaurants in Seoul” — and carefully picked one of them: Yong Su San.

I phoned the restaurant, got directions. It was almost dinnertime. To my surprise, it was only a mile away so I decided to walk. I didn’t have a map but I could aim for the nearest subway station. I walked toward that subway station for a while, then asked someone for directions. She said another branch of that restaurant was closer to where I was. It was as if after extensive research I had decided that the best meal in New York was at McDonald’s.

The restaurant was extremely good. For only $60 I had a fascinating and delicious meal. At the end they give you a choice of “main food”. I chose bibimbap. Bibimbap is all cheap ingredients (rice, vegetables, sometimes egg, hot sauce, sometimes a small amount of meat or fish) and strikes me as the best possible way of combining those ingredients. This is an eternal question — given a small amount of money, what’s the best you can do? It’s surprising that the best answer comes from a small country (Korea).

The Pizza Paradox: Home Cooking and Personal Science

Seth Roberts26 Comments

Last week I had pizza at the home of my friends Bridget and Carl. It tasted divine. The crust was puffy, chewy and the right amount. The thin-crust bottom was slightly crunchy. The tomato sauce had depth. The toppings (two kinds of mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes, zucchini, onions, goat cheese) were tasty, creamy and a little crunchy. It was pretty and three-dimensional. It was easily the best pizza I’d ever had, the best home cooking I’d ever had, and much better than the lamb I’d had at Chez Panisse the night before, although the lamb was excellent. The pizza hadn’t been hard to make nor were the ingredients expensive. Do other people wonder why this is so good? I asked my friends.

At some level I knew why it was so good — why the sauce was so good, for example (see below). The puzzle — let me call it the Pizza Paradox — was that commercial pizza, even at fancy restaurants (such as Chez Panisse), is so much worse. In restaurants, pizza-makers make dozens of pizzas per day. Business success is on the line. That should push them to do better. Professional cooks study cooking, have vast experience. They use a pizza oven. My friends have never studied cooking, never cooked professionally. They might make pizza once/month. Nothing is on the line. My friends don’t have a pizza oven. High-end restaurant pizza should be much better, but the opposite was true.

In my experience, high-end restaurant food usually is much better than home-cooked versions. Why is high-end pizza a big exception — at least, compared to Bridget and Carl’s version?

My explanation has two parts. First, the concept of pizza is brilliant. It taps more sources of pleasure than any other food I can think of. Chewiness from crust. Fat from cheese. Umami, sweet, and sour from tomato sauce. Protein from cheese and meat. Complexity of flavor from sauce and toppings. Variety of texture from toppings and crust. Variety of flavor from toppings. Attractive appearance from toppings and bright red tomato sauce. Most foods fail to tap most of these sources. For example, a soft drink isn’t chewy, doesn’t have protein, doesn’t have fat, doesn’t have variety of texture or variety of flavor, and isn’t attractive.

My friends had one goal: to make the best possible pizza. It couldn’t take too long or cost too much but they weren’t trying to save time or cut costs. Over the years, they tweaked the recipe various ways and their pizza got better and better. Experimentation was safe. If a variation made things worse, it didn’t matter. It would still taste plenty good. (Due to the brilliance of pizza.) Variation was fun. After making pizza in a new way, they’d eat the pizza themselves (with guests) and find out if the new twist made a difference.

Professional pizza makers don’t do this. After a restaurant opens, they make pizza roughly the same way forever. The pizza at Chez Panisse, for example, looks the same now as many years ago. The owner might want to make the best possible pizza but is unlikely to experiment month after month year after year. The actual cooks just want to make satisfactory pizza. Making the best possible pizza is not part of the job. The owner might benefit from better pizza but the cooks would not. They’re cranking it out under time pressure (watch Hell’s Kitchen). They do what they’re told. Owners fear experimentation: It might be worse. It won’t be what’s expected. Don’t mess with success.

This illustrates what I’ve said many times: job and science don’t mix well. To do the best possible science or make the best possible pizza, you need freedom to experiment. People with jobs get stuck. All jobs — including professor at research university, rice grower, and pizza maker — depend on steady output of the same thing again and again. Trying to maximize short-term output interferes with long-term improvement. To do the best possible science or make the best possible pizza, you also need the right motivation: You care about nothing else. People with jobs have many goals. This is why we need personal science: To overcome the (serious) limitations of professional science.

All this should be obvious, but curiously isn’t. Long ago, philosophers such as John Stuart Mill claimed that people “maximized utility”, apparently not realizing that maximizing output (which happens when people work “hard”) slows down or prevents innovation. Later thinkers, such as Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman, glorified markets. They too failed to grasp, or at least say anywhere, that market demands get in the way of innovation.

The recipe for my friends’s pizza had several non-obvious features:

1. Pizza dough from Trader Joe’s. At Chez Panisse and other high-end restaurants, this would be taboo. It might produce better results — you still couldn’t do it.

2. Pizza stones above and below the pizza. My friends use an ordinary oven. Maybe an ordinary oven with two pizza stones produces better results than a pizza oven.

3. Balsamic vinegar in the tomato sauce. They got the idea from a friend. American cooks, including professional ones, routinely fail to understand how much fermented foods (such as balsamic vinegar) can improve taste. My friends also use more traditional flavorings (marjoram, basil, and garlic) in the tomato sauce.

4. Plenty of goat cheese. They scatter goat cheese slices over the top of the sauce.

There you have the secret of Bridget and Carl’s Pizza.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

If You Ever Visit Seoul, You Might Want To Skip Bean Table Restaurant

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A restaurant near Seoul named Bean Table got a surprisingly bad review:

Then came a massive chicken salad dish, given the number of people we had we over ordered. The patrons we brought were split 50/50 on enjoyment for the chicken. We had so much leftovers and were wasting so much food, I asked the waiter to wrap the leftovers. . . . Asking the waiter to wrap this chicken came with a resounding “no”, so again to the kitchen to talk to a manager. Actually ended up talking to a chef, a young man who speaks good English, who also declined our request. We had a six year old and a three year old with us and that was the only food they were eating minus the pungent sauce.

Our driver then proceeded to get angry and went to talk to the chef, Sungmo Lee, and surprisingly Mr. Lee and our driver had a conversation that the whole restaurant could hear despite repeated requests by our driver to discuss outside. As that incident occurred being concerned for my family who flew on average 7,000 miles and were picked up for a total driving commute of two hours to come eat at this restaurant I went to calm both parties down. Things progressed from worse to horrible. I identified myself as a food critic, and Mr. Lee proceeded to take that as a threat and stated, “You don’t know who I am.” . . . . My father, a man in his 70′s, tried to speak reason to him only to be found that we were asked to leave.

At the end of the day, police were called, we weren’t allowed to pay the bill till police arrived even after we stated we wished to leave and skip the remaining courses. Police came and scolded Mr. Lee, telling him that if a customer pays for food then containers should be allowed for the customers to take food home. Keep in mind we are talking about cooked chicken, not fish, or tartar, etc. (Mr. Lee’s argument was that there were no take out containers in the restaurant and remained adamant about the no take out policy when we asked the driver to buy some containers). After the police came they asked us to leave while they dealt with Mr. Lee only to find an employee chasing out bus to pay the bill. No discounts, full price and another time suck of 20-30 minutes and the rest of the meal was safely kept in their fridge due to their “no takeout” policy. . . .

Before all of this nonsense came down my whole Korean family all thought that the restaurant was over rated and there was no single outstanding dish.

Until the Internet, stuff like this was never reported.

 

Flavour, a New Scientific Journal

Seth Roberts2 Comments

A new online open-access journal called Flavour has just started publication. The first issue has three articles and an editorial.

The journal

encourages contributions not only from the academic community but also from the growing number of chefs and other food professionals who are introducing science into their kitchens. . . . often in collaboration with academic research groups.

The first set of articles has an example of a collaboration between chefs and professional scientists — how to get a strong umami flavor from Nordic seaweed. Then you add the flavor to ice cream. Which reminds me of dessert at a friend’s house where he poured expensive balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream.

Thanks to Melissa McEwen.

Tokyo Restaurant Recommendations — and Why They Might Be A Bad Idea

Seth Roberts9 Comments

An earlier post asked for Tokyo recommendations. A kind reader (Andrew Clarke) provided the following recommendations of off-beat restaurants:

One place I always recommend is Andy’s Shinhinomoto, in Yurakucho: https://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/D61101.html. I have never seen a travel show that has covered the place, but it’s a best kept secret within the ex-pat community. Its menu is a standard Japanese Izakaya (pub) menu with some of the freshest sashimi (and fish in general) in Tokyo, and the strangest thing – it’s ran by a long-term British ex-pat, who is so renowned for his ability to pick good ingredients that he selects and delivers fish for several local sushi shops. Upstairs seating is best for atmosphere, but the food is the same downstairs. They have an English menu, and I’d also recommend the fish head and tempura. It’s also not super expensive, somehow I never manage to spend more than 7000Y with alcohol.

Teyandei is another one that I would generally recommend: https://www.bento.com/rev/2133.html. You’ll be lucky if you manage to find this one, most taxi drivers I have ever asked couldn’t find it even with GPS, it’s located in a residential area of the back of Roppongi. Great atmosphere, and again Izakaya style but not fish oriented, and not strictly traditional. The most memorable dish I had was a french baguette, vanilla ice cream and maple syrup slider – which was very good, but to be enjoyed occasionally. Outside of that they have many great dishes, with more of a meaty or stuff on sticks vibe.

Last general recommendation is for sushi: https://tokyofood.blog128.fc2.com/blog-entry-52.html. I used to live in Tsukiji town and this place is a friendly joint that attracts many locals in the evening. Probably because it’s not super-expensive, but great quality and I particularly recommend the Uni if that is your thing. Their ‘aburi (blow torched)’ dishes are great too, and the Aji (mackerel) and the tsuki maguro (marinated tuna).

[follow-up:] The Moroccan place, I’m not sure why I didn’t include this the first time, as it is possibly the most strange and off-the-beaten-path: https://www.dalia58.com/d_map.html. Google Maps. The owner is a Japanese lady who spent 1 year in Morocco on a home stay. She loved the home cooked food and fastidiously learned to replicate them the way only Japanese people can. I learned about from a Moroccan co-worker who swears it’s the most authentic Moroccan food he has had out side his homeland. You definitely need to book ahead, there are only maybe 12 seats in the place and only 4 of those are not on the ground. The menu is fairly small and changes every once in a while as the owner travels back to Morocco regularly, but usually I have the meatball tagine (best), fish tagine, freshly baked wheat bread and vegetable couscous. I have never been there alone, you’d need at least two people to eat all that.

Alexandra Harney, author of The China Price, who has spent years in Tokyo, recommended:

My favorite watering hole: Asahi Shokudo in Nogizaka, near Tokyo Midtown. Unless you speak Japanese, the best thing to do is probably to have someone call ahead, make a reservation (a very good idea) and fax you a map. Their tel: 03-3402-6797. GREAT food, very good atmosphere, sake good too. It’s not fancy, but authentic and creative.

Tyler Cowen’s forthcoming book (An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules For Everyday Foodies) says a lot about Japanese food and restaurants. In an email he said “Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo was the best meal I’ve ever had…that is expensive, though.”

I am in Tokyo now. Last night I took a long walk around my hotel (Hotel Changtee), which is in Ikebukuro. I have stayed here three times before. On my walk, for the first time, I noticed a Spanish restaurant (Agalito) a few blocks from my hotel. In Beijing, I often have Japanese food, so I decided to try it. The menu (mostly tapas) looked good. It wasn’t expensive (Ikebukuro is full of relatively cheap restaurants).

I had seven dishes. Every one surprised me and tasted great. I had pickles, a vegetable terrine, deep-fried shrimp and avocado (the avocado was also deep-fried), mackerel, a dish of large mushrooms and bacon, marinated cherry tomatoes (skins removed), and baked/grilled cheese and tomatoes. Far better than the tapas I had in Barcelona (or anywhere else). Far better than the tapas at a Berkeley restaurant (Cesar) next to Chez Panisse owned by Alice Waters’ ex-husband. The pickles were a small dish of carrots, cucumber, cabbage, and red pepper. The best pickles I’ve ever had, and I’ve had pickles hundreds of times, as anyone who knows my passion for fermented food will understand. They are a staple of Japanese and Szechuan cuisine. I’ve had Japanese pickles at dozens of places. The carrot pickles were so good, such a great blend of sweet and sour, so perfectly crunchy, that I want to start trying to recreate them. I didn’t know carrot pickles could be that good.The tomato and cheese dish also opened my eyes. I never knew that cheese and tomatoes could go so well together. I want to get special equipment (the baking pan) just to make this one dish. I want to try many different cheeses and tomatoes to find the best pairing. No meal at Chez Panisse or anywhere else has pushed me to do two new things. A tiny number (five?) have pushed me to do one new thing.

This restaurant is a few blocks from my hotel. No one recommended it. The meal, with drink, cost $60. I’m told that if you ask a Tokyo resident what are your favorite restaurants? they look at you blankly. Now I see why. There are so many great restaurants it doesn’t matter. This meal also taught me that recommendations may be counter-productive. Recommended restaurants are often expensive. Expensive food is likely to require lots of labor, special tools, and expensive ingredients. Making it harder to copy and thus less inspiring. Whereas this “plain” meal, with cheap ingredients and relatively little labor, will continue to influence and teach me whenever I do stuff it has inspired me to do.