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Apr. 30th, 2003 02:25 pm
Exotic fruits!
On Saturday, I wasn't the only one trying to get by without much in the way of expectations. Because she had come with no more agenda than to spend time with us, my stepmom was open to anything. Taking her to some of my favourite places in Chinatown gave me new eyes to see them with. We ended up in Chinatown Square (the extensive mall north of the original neighbourhood) scrutinising everything from the ingredients of the "wrong foods" to the characters incised in the walls.
One of our stops was the St. Anna Café for bubble tea and sweets. Dad finally ended our curiosity about the "Iced Horlick"--sort of. As he passed it around and we each tasted it, we were stuck--none harder than e.--trying to identify what the taste was so reminiscent of. All I could really put by finger on was malt. As it turns out (thank you, WWW!), what Horlick is is a forgotten Ovaltine rival. Similarly, my "Hong Kong Style Bubble Tea" seemed based on Lipton. Ah, the mysterious, enchanting East! Serves us right.
At La Peña that night, we saw a repeated of the germ-sharing round robin. I was delighted to see they had naranjillo, which is just La Fonda's lulo under a different name. Well, sort of; it tasted much sweeter--quoth e. "like SweeTarts"--and without the more subtle kiwi-esque notes.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj ventured to get something no one had ever heard of, tomate de árbol. Yes, that's right: "tree tomato". The waitress attempted a rambling explanation that suggested it was something like a cross between a tomato and a passionfruit.
She was right.
I mean, near as I can tell, not ever having had a tomato shake. Still, I imagine it would taste basically like tomato-flavour White Rabbit candy dissolved in jugo de maracuya. Since I've had both of those individually, I'm pretty sure that's on the money. Searching that on the Internet, I've found it's like naranjillo--just one of those South American fruits that no one here really knows about, so we haven't felt the need to name it. Could one of them be the "Chinese gooseberry" of the future?
One of our stops was the St. Anna Café for bubble tea and sweets. Dad finally ended our curiosity about the "Iced Horlick"--sort of. As he passed it around and we each tasted it, we were stuck--none harder than e.--trying to identify what the taste was so reminiscent of. All I could really put by finger on was malt. As it turns out (thank you, WWW!), what Horlick is is a forgotten Ovaltine rival. Similarly, my "Hong Kong Style Bubble Tea" seemed based on Lipton. Ah, the mysterious, enchanting East! Serves us right.
At La Peña that night, we saw a repeated of the germ-sharing round robin. I was delighted to see they had naranjillo, which is just La Fonda's lulo under a different name. Well, sort of; it tasted much sweeter--quoth e. "like SweeTarts"--and without the more subtle kiwi-esque notes.
bunj ventured to get something no one had ever heard of, tomate de árbol. Yes, that's right: "tree tomato". The waitress attempted a rambling explanation that suggested it was something like a cross between a tomato and a passionfruit.She was right.
I mean, near as I can tell, not ever having had a tomato shake. Still, I imagine it would taste basically like tomato-flavour White Rabbit candy dissolved in jugo de maracuya. Since I've had both of those individually, I'm pretty sure that's on the money. Searching that on the Internet, I've found it's like naranjillo--just one of those South American fruits that no one here really knows about, so we haven't felt the need to name it. Could one of them be the "Chinese gooseberry" of the future?