Language of the Day

Sarnami (short for Sarnamī Hindustanī or "Surinamese Hindi")

Runner-up: Qene Drehu (a.k.a. Lifou)

Crackers with stinky cheese!

This image is BIG ASS, so, out of consideration for those on dialup, I'm hiding it behind a cut.
( Show me the honey! )

We KNOW you love food!

Those of you who read this for the gastronomy, well, all I can say is that you must be starving to death of late. I haven't been posting about food because I haven't been eating that much of it. Nights when I go to visit Nuphy, I end up having at most a snack, and with monshu out of town, I just haven't been eating out as much.

But it hasn't all been fasting and vending food cuisine. Last Friday, I visited friends in Oak Park who took me to The New Rebozo for a late-night snack. The place is fun; zompist just calls it "Paco's" for the larger-than-life host. He's been taking cooking classes lately with the result that he's grafted a more upscale menu onto his Mexican margarita barn. Nothing revolutionary--enchiladas con mole, tamalitos de pollo--but a welcome change from some of the mediocre Mexican (e.g. Angel's, what I cook at home, etc.) I've been subjecting myself to lately. The only catastrophic disappointment was the "Fried Ice Cream". Mire, Paco, I'm not from the quinto pino. I can tell the difference between helado frito and ice cream that's just been rolled in some Special K! The "Oh My God Ice Cream" (named for Paco's favourite catchphrase) probably would've been a more interesting option.

Saturday, I headed up to monshu's for the evening. I considered hitting Riques again, but decided I'd been short on the Asian food of late. My first choice was closed, so I rounded the corner and ran into a promising newcomer on Argyle, Phở Xe Tăng. I had no intention of eating in the restaurant, since it's small and popular with a Vietnamese crowd--which is to say, smokier than a leather bar--so I ordered a couple of dishes from the take-out menu. And then, out of sheer perversity, I demanded a pennywort drink and wasted several minutes of everyone's time as I failed to find it on the menu or remember its Vietnamese name and struggled to explain what it was like to the owners.

Several minutes later, the young and articulate owner set a large, fried fish in front of me and presented a bill for over $30. I flushed with confusion; where was my duck? Turns out that the woman who took my order wrote down 164, not 174, even though I took a stab at pronouncing vịt kho gừng (ginger duck), which sounds nothing at all like cá hồng chiên (fried whole red snapper)--netting a bemused smile for my pains. Despite not being at fault, I was embarrassed and apologetic. It was an expensive mistake for such a small restaurant. (The dish cost twice what I had ordered, which is what prevented me from just smiling and paying the bill. Again, Da's cheapness trumps his taste for serendipity!)

The owner couldn't have been nicer about it. He apologised, asked me if I wouldn't mind waiting, and then apologised to me at least two or three times more before I finally left with my duck almost half-an-hour later. Again, if I had been thinking, I might've ordered a meat that took less time to cook. But the wait wasn't bad. My table faced the open door. Shortly after I arrived, a front blew through and I was bathed in cool, fresh air (one could almost see the haze of cigarette smoke be held at bay on all sides of me like a CGI effect in a crappy horror film) as I sat, sipped my rau má drink (made with fresh pennyworth, I'm pretty sure!), and read in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

So--after three paragraphs of backstory--how did the food taste? The duck was a tad disappointing. I loved the sauce (or what was left of it after I managed to spill it all over monshu's table, chair, and carpet) and the sticks of fresh ginger, but it was as if it were cut up in order to ensure the maximum number of bone fragments. Eating it without choking became a chore. The other dish, however, was fantastic--a cold salad of chicken, shrimp, peanuts, and scallion called gỏi ngó sen. (The name leads one to expect lotus root, but I sure didn't find anything I recognised as that in mine.) I found myself craving again this week as the weather heats up.

When I looked at the menu again afterwards, I found another odd surprise. The English name of the place is "Tank Restaurant". There's a big green illustration of a tank on the cover. Nothing inside the restaurant recalls a tank--there's no millitary hardware on the walls, no rusting metal, just the regular ethnic kitsch that passes for decor in such greasy spoons. Go figger.