Edible Women (a draft)

Last Under the Table

2010-08-02T18:53:00.001-07:00

I came from a family where none of the girls cooked, or even knew how. My mother grew up in a time when home economics was looked at with the virtues of female repression. This combined with the fact my grandfather was a cook, not a chef, rendered the Wong clan useless in the kitchen.

So we ate out a lot, as in every meal. If we ate in, it was from a take-away counter or leftovers microwaved from previous meals. This was my diet growing up, a lifetime of salt, MSG, butter and chemicals from melting plastic containers. It all sounds tragic now, but I can tell you it was a truly luxurious way to eat, a gourmet lesson in every meal.

In Hong Kong, the majority of us eat out at least once a day. Maybe because dining out can be cheaper than eating in; probably because we are lazy; definitely because we treat a visit to a restaurant as a source of entertainment.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve seen Hong Kong graduate from mediocre chain imports to world-class dining in every genre. But still, Hong Kong doesn’t have the international applaud that many other dining cities do. Why? As I write my last Under the Table column, I asked my friends in the industry to chime in on how we can make Hong Kong a better dining city.

I’m not sure Wagamama would have been a huge international success if it was started in, say, Paris instead of London. London at the time was short of cheap and modern dining spots and Wagamama with its minimalist-chic-eats alternative gave London town an instant talking point in the media. It was the (English-language) food media that spread the word, worldwide, and help make Wagamama a household name. If you look at other world-recognisable restaurants, the majority of them are located in big (English-language) media hubs: New York, London, increasingly Singapore. I believe a lot of this has to do with international publications getting the word out. Thus, the first thing we can do is (self-servingly) get our restaurant coverage on the international map. This is a job for food writers, publications, and public relations.

But before we do that we need to fix a few things. Hong Kong needs to grow some national pride before we boast about it. I think we’ve exhausted the dim sum trolleys, Chris Patten’s egg tarts and HKTB’s push on muddy water-tank seafood. Other countries’ one number food export is their chefs.

Bo Innovation’s Alvin Leung knows this. He is Hong Kong representation at every major food event from the Sydney to the Bangkok Food Festival delivering nouvous-Hong Kong cookery with his vile “Sex on the Beach” (an edible condom filled with some sort of gummy cream which is laid on a sandy mushroom dusted plate). But he is getting Hong Kong a lot of attention outside our borders and we should applaud him for his wok-and-shock efforts.

Hong Kong needs to support (read: money) our home-grown talents if we are going to play with the other foodie cities. The biggest disappointment I’ve seen in covering food for the last five years was that we don’t give chefs with Chinese names top billing. If it is an imported chef from France, his name would be synonymous with the restaurant. But Chinese chefs are often left faceless, and rarely get the number one spot in top kitchens. That needs some rethinking.

But I hear restaurateurs barking. Chefs leave if they are offered 50 cents more elsewhere. They also give the middle finger if they asked to stay on one more hour than is required. For many cooks, this is a job, not a career. Cooks join a kitchen not to learn, but to get paid. The idea that cooking as a creative outlet is a very modern notion, a vanity job, and not a noble one. “Better training would give them pride,” says Gerald Li, owner of Liberty Exchange. “[Being a chef] is a career not a job. At the end of a shift, Makoto [Liberty’s executive chef] stays to scrub the kitchen. That is in his training.”

The number one cost for many restaurants is the rent. I would be deemed a dreamer if I thought this article would encourage rents to be lowered for the sake of good dining. But if rent is driving the way we build restaurants, and therefore eat, then we need to seriously rethink how we do this. One of the reasons why we have so many Italian and Japanese restaurants is because the formula has proven to work over and over again. Meaning A+B=$$$$. Also, we like it. But when you look closely, the food cost is low (even in Japanese cuisine) and a restaurant can sell it for a few hundred times its cost. Profit is driving our menus.

Rent is also the reason why we don’t invest in the décor of our city’s restaurants. We have a culture of signing short-term leases, five years or under. “You only have a short amount of time to recoup your money back,” says Alan Lo of the Pressroom Group. So why would you bother to make multi-million dollar structural changes and invest in nice furnishings, if in under five years time, you have to give it all back?

Now you are delusional if you start a restaurant with the goal of getting rich. There are better ways of making money than opening a restaurant. The amount of time and resources that goes into restaurant is all-consuming, and often for little glory. You have to love it –service, entertaining, cleaning, taking care of people. What? Did you think it was about the food? People who do this line of work slave seven days a week, give up all their holidays and weekends and take shit from their customers. They do it because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. And when the customers notice that kind of commitment, the reward is financial, but that should never be the goal.

Stop copycatting. For this to happen, chefs needs to exercise the right part of their brains; owners need to encourage this and not make menus based only on budgets; but most importantly diners need to be more adventurous and stop requesting Caesar salads, seafood over carbs, and molten chocolate cakes. We need to evolve our menus. I’m encouraging everyone to order something less familiar before the owners take it off the menu and swap it for Campbell soup over pasta.

Lose central purchasing. TBLS Chf Que van Dong says the reason why you see the same ingredients everywhere is because of central purchasing. Central purchasing is a hotline chefs call to order their food. If you are not a big buyer (Maxim’s) then the hell with you. You’ll get the wiltiest celery stalks, waygu beef (because they are not carrying any other types), and the occasional floppy fish fillet. This is mostly because central purchasing deals with suppliers who give them the best deals. So the Hong Kong diner gets to eat ingredients with the lowest costs. This is also why we don’t see a variety of fish, game meats, and vegetables on menus. If central purchasing doesn’t have a relationship with a farmer that sells heirloom tomatoes, then you are going to get the same watery cherry tomato as everyone else. Chefs, pick up a basket and go to the wet markets or order direct from the supplier. We beg of you.

Invest in our bread basket. Return the bottles mineral water comes in, rather then tossing for wash and reuse. Print the name of local farmers on the menu. Go to lesser known areas to eat to avoid paying for rent not food quality, also to support other foodie neighbourhoods. Be nice to your server –tip them. Put down the camera and dine rather than document. Encourage good restaurants by telling a staff member that you like what they are doing. Run from menus that start with Caesar salads.

And remember, you know what good food is. You’ve tasted it. I’m talking to the diner, the chef and the owners. Stop compromising for dollar signs. And if you do we, Hong Kong diners, will reward you with our loyalty.

30 hours on a train_Ulaanbaatar

2010-07-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Planes, trains and automobiles, for weeks our bodies were in motion. We haven’t stopped moving for two weeks straight, constantly racing towards our next destination. Speeding at 140km per hour on the motorway in a two-seater Smart Car, my boyfriend opened the window and said, “If I dropped this apple out this window, it will roll at the speed of 140km.”
At the halfway point of our thirty hour train ride to Ulaanbaatar, the custom inspector at the China/Mongolian border asked me to smile for her as I didn't resemble my happy passport photo. She gave a customary giggle in response, which I would later learn is present in the Mongolian people. I didn’t know it on the train, but I was about to enter the happiness place in the world.
Seated for our first stationary meal, I noticed the first course on the muli-course menu was “patience”. This came out as three bites of amuse bouche, which we enjoyed as our bodies slowed down to human speed. After dinner, we strolled along the roadside listening to trees clapping in the wind. We stopped under the swaying trees and were grateful to be standing still while the rest of the world moved around us. Happiness is the sound of trees.
Ulaanbaatar is a place where it doesn't matter if it is Monday or Saturday. Life just happens. On our drive to the Naadam Festival, "the three games of men": Mongolian wrestling, horse racing and archery, I watched as men and women walked long stretches of country roads with nothing but a plastic bag for water, a hundred miles to anywhere. “It must take them all day to get to their destination,” mentioned to our tour guide Segi. “No, they could take the bus, or hitch-hiking is common here. They choose to walk because it makes them happy.” With nothing but the horizon in sight, they are focused with little distraction. Happiness is a long walk.
At the Naadam Festival, I watched fathers ready their sons as young as four years old for the horse racing competition. The young jockeys rode without saddles to keep the weight as light as possible for the horse. This is a much celebrated event, and families gathered to support their rider. Fathers whispered wisdoms to their sons for the mental endurance of the race. “Huchtei bolon naizarhag baigarai,” said one to his little boy, racer number 288. “Be friendly, be strong.” Happiness is a loving family.
Babies in Mongolia are considered gods. They believe when babies are born they are the purist forms of humans. As we age, we get disrupted by human maladies and move away from nature. It's when we move away from nature that we are unhappy.
Our tour guide said she was the first person to hold a PhD in Mongolian Art. She giggles from her belly and it shakes her all over. She studied in Russia where she said people there had embedded frown lines set on their faces. She tried to make a furrow face as she said this, and her facial muscles couldn’t even conjure a sad face. The level of societal happiness is written on the citizens’ faces. I asked her what keeps the Mongolian people happy.
Younger generations of Mongolians are swapping gers for city apartments, and the city life, she said. So different from where they've come, they throw themselves in the stresses of seven day work weeks, 9pm conference calls and all that Hongkongers calls normality. “Everyone [in the city] likes to wear black," she said. “When you are happy you don’t wear black!”
Mongolians are some of the most nationalistic I’ve met and though modern city life has stepped in, they remain unchanged. They respect their culture and the lands they’ve taking care of, never stepping too far away from traditions even though modern life and its amenities are appealing. People here celebrated the terrains they came from, and certainly didn’t look down upon it or try to distance themselves from their beginnings. Happiness is keeping to your roots.
On my last day before leaving Ulaanbaatar, I walked for some time, my eyes taking in the open green terrains. With a four-winged flying creature to accompany me, I thought about my lessons. The rules for happiness are very simple. Be honest with the trees, laugh from the belly and don’t wear black. Keep to your traditions and to those who will pass their wisdom to you. Stay young like new borns and don’t frown like the Russians. Then walk a thousand miles into the horizon.

Ex and the city

2010-06-24T00:22:00.000-07:00

For four consecutive nights I couldn’t sleep. I had no idea what was wrong with me. I just had a birthday and submitted to the fact that I was getting older and didn’t need sleep anymore. But I knew there was something more keeping me awake and that something lingered on the mind until the sun cracked. By day five I was mentally and physically exhausted. I knew it wasn’t the usual suspects of stress or the like. I knew something was about to happen. It was just a matter of when.

Then on day six it came. An email from my old flame arrived in my inbox. “Maybe a coffee sometime? Entirely up to you. Dx” I haven’t seen Dick for years, barely since we broke up. New lows of heartbreak were reached with this guy. I monitored myself as I read through his email: My breathing was steady, heart rate was fine, I’m not twitching, I might just be over him.

“My boss fired me… I’m going to London,” his email continued. Even though I hadn’t seen him, heard from him, or randomly bumped into him on the dance floor in all this time, I had the comfort of knowing he was still around somewhere. But now he was leaving Hong Kong. And this was our goodbye coffee. The end of an era. “4pm” I replied to his invite.

Without even a check in the mirror, I dashed out the door to meet him. In the elevator I thought, this is what I always used to do. I ran to him, it was never the other way around. I took my pulse to measure my excitement and nervousness. Normal. I started to worry over the fact that I was feeling absolutely nothing. Unlike before.

A month after our breakup I barely ate anything but miyoga. Miyoga is a winter vegetable popular with Japanese housewives who administered this astringent-tasting bud to forget their troubles. I ate it with every meal and got a mild buzz when overdosing. I would then cut my antidepressant with alcohol in the evenings and do it all over again. It was good to remind myself of these things, I thought as I walked to meet him. I was such a mess over him that my friends would scrap me off the floor and throw me on a jet plane whenever Friday rolled around so I could get excited about life again.

I came out of my funk and took away that in Hong Kong, nothing is forever. There were examples everywhere: restaurants/ relationships would open and close in short cycles; great friendships would form and then one party moved away; people were disposable. I became cynical, worst I was a party of one and jaded. It took two years for me to stopped looking at the world with dirt-coloured lenses.

I saw Dick from a block away. He towered above everyone on the street. When we embraced, I remembered how good it was to hug him. His all-enveloping arms felt like a fit. Shit.

Inside The Pawn, loaded with double espressos, we were formal with one another. Switching to gin improved the situation. Seven sips in we’re laughing at his receding hairline and how little sleep I needed as I aged. I told him was thinking of moving house, and he asked if I still lived in the same place, the same building we shared together. “My favourite crazy Hong Kong story I tell people was how you moved into my apartment when you got a hold of my keys,” he said. “You mean I wasn’t supposed to?” I thought to myself. Even though none of this mattered anymore, and as we were discovering our new level of comfort as exes, I couldn’t get myself to ask if me moving to his place was what broke us up.

We kept to nonchallenging topics such as happenings with old friends, family, work and currency trading, but never spoke of our current dating situation. We were happy for eachother’s successes and discussed the future. It was such a miracle that we could get right back into it, as if no time had passed. But time had to past to get us into this place --friendship. “When are you moving to London?” I asked. “Next week, but I’m coming back,” he said. “I’m not leaving Asia. You can’t dispose of me so easily.”

“Yes the future of humanity will likely have dark hair and dark eyes”

2010-06-04T02:36:00.000-07:00

Pew Research Center recently found that nearly half of American-born Asians chose non-Asian spouses. They were record highs.

An offspring of this new world order is the cuisine that we sometime mislabel as fusion. Here is an excerpt of an interview done with the founder of Hapa Kitchen, Akiko Moorman, in New York. She is Hapa (defined as half-white, half-Asian) as well as her menu.

Angie: What is Hapa cuisine?
Akiko: It’s using flavors profiles without the restriction of country of origin or a defined region. Our dishes are not about that dirty word “fusion”.

Angie: fusion-confusion
Akiko: exactly.

Angie: Do you think Hapa is now a recognised cuisine?
Akiko: I believe it encapsulates the immigrant story and is a tangible expression of that. So much of the inspiration for Hapa Kitchen comes from dishes that were created in our multiracial homes

Angie: What would be an example of a Hapa dish?
Akiko: I do an edamame hummus on a fried wonton chip that looks very familiar but tastes very new. I stuff cheese into tofu to make it look like fried mozzarella cheese sticks. I made a cheviche with the wonton chips that looks like salsa
Angie: Can we go through the basics? How did Hapa Kitchen get started?

Akiko: I create a menu that represented every place Obama was from or lived [for a CNN documentary]. I invited as many multiracial friends to help out. The conversations during that meal were amazing…about food, our families and about having a foot in two worlds. It became clear to me that food binds us to both our cultures and I wanted to explore and celebrate that. Everyone I recruited for Hapa Kitchen has an amazing story about something weird that ate as a child. For example, my mother made a soy sauce turkey stuffed with chestnuts for Thanksgiving every year. I thought every American ate this.

Angie: Does most of your menus use Asian and American flavours/ingredients?
Akiko: Yes

Angie: Most of your chefs are Asian and white mix?
Akiko: Almost everyone involved is Hapa. I do have a few Hapa lovers that participate.

Angie: Hapa lovers?
Akiko: People who love Hapas. I also always encourage Hapa makers (multiracial couples!!!).

Angie: Can we talk about race before getting back to the food?
Akiko: Of course

Angie: Tell me what is the mixed-race environment in the US right now?
Akiko: We have a multiracial president. One of the most visible Hapas in the world is in the paper almost every day (Tiger Woods). And for the first time we are being looked at as a community. Growing up, most multiracials felt very isolated. We either hung out with white kids or Asian kids. In Japan, I am 100 per cent considered to be an American. In the US, I am 100 per cent considered to be Asian. I am a perpetual foreigner everywhere I go.

Angie: In Asia we have the added bonus of inner-racism. What are some of the difficulties you face as a Hapa?
Akiko: As a Hapa, I have been asked what color my nipples are 'cuz white girls have pink and yellow girls have brown. In Japan, I am asked why my name is Akiko. In the US I have been told that my English is very good. I make the monoracials do the dishes. I am, like, the most racist person in the room.

Akiko: I think the challenge will be how to celebrate foreignness, without offending
Angie: hmm, try doing that in a former British colony

Akiko: Hapa is one step closer to us being simply, the human race. One thing that Asians like is that ALL their genes are dominant.

Angie: explain
Akiko: dark eyes will prevail with recessive genes

Angie: recessive genes being blue eyed, blonde hair?
Akiko: redheads are the first to go as the lowest occurring marriages are a redhead to a redhead. Then blonds

Angie: are you saying the future human race will be brown eyed and have dark hair?
Akiko: Well, that depends. Genetically there are more dominant genes so that would suggest this, unless northern Europe really ramps up the baby production. Yes the future of humanity will likely have dark hair and dark eyes. What I am super fascinated with is what happens when two Hapa marry

Angie: what happens?
Akiko: Here's the interesting thing about being Hapa. It is single generational. My parents are not Hapa and neither will my children.

Angie: What are your parents?
Akiko: My mother is Japanese. My father is European-American

Angie: Why won't your kids be Hapa?
Akiko: Well, my current boyfriend is a cashew (half catholic, half jew) but even if we have kids, they would not really have the Hapa experience. For example one side of my family only speaks English, the other Japanese. I don't know what it is like to have a big family gathering. My grandparents never met.

Angie: Why do you think the mother is usually Asian, the father White/other?
Akiko: I think Asia is not that awesome for women. I can totally understand why my mother wanted out [as] she was well educated and independent.

Angie: Who did you identify with more growing up? Asian or white?
Akiko: if you look more Asian, you identify with being Asian, if you look whiter, you tend to think more white. I would suggest the red queen theory

Angie: go on..
Akiko: The red queen theory is used to explain things like why there are two sexes. That to stay ahead of bacteria and viruses that mutate and reproduce much faster, our species had to find a way to recombine our DNA to act as a wall, much like what your firewall does for your computer the further distinct the genetics

Angie: in your scenario, who is the bacteria?
Akiko: No, I’m talking about actual bacteria. Mulitracials have better genetic protection from disease. There is an evolutionary value in mixing [races]. On the flipside it is very difficult for multiracialsto find a bone marrow donor.

Akiko: I have been working on what to call the next generation will be called; I've been calling them Quapas. Quapas are a quarter Asian and three-quarters other and wonder if they will feel any connection to being Asian.

Angie: you think the trend would be to go Quapas, but not the other way 3/4 Asian say?
Akiko: Now that would be awesome. I only think that because all the ladies in Hapa Kitchen have white boyfriends.

Wine Tax

2010-05-09T20:01:00.001-07:00

I write about this particular issue once a year. And every year the blame game expands to more and more players. But this year I think I’ve stumbled on the truth: we’re all to blame.
Here goes. Why is it that two years after Hong Kong abolished its wine tax I’m still paying up to $120 for a glass of wine? I’m disappointed, because this tax cut was sold to the public as a way to help restaurants and bars bring in more happy drinkers and most of all to get Hong Kong in the drinking spirit. But I also took that to mean that regular consumers would also benefit from the tax cut, as in that an $80 glass of wine (with an 80 per cent alcohol tax in 2007) would be reduced to $50 by the time the import duties were abolished in 2008. But instead, I’m paying 50 per cent more per glass in 2010 than before the tax cut. What gives?
I do drink more good wines here in Hong Kong than I do anywhere else in the world. And that’s because the luxury tax cut has acted as a calling card for vineyards and retailers to come our way. Post tax cut, Hong Kong has become the second largest wine market in the world, after New York City (in 2009 wine auctions totaled an estimated US$64 million). This is great for collectors, but when will it trickle down to our glass?
In 2008, when Chief Secretary Henry Tang brought the wine duty from 80 per cent to zero, the going argument against lowering prices by restaurants and bars was that suppliers still had pre-tax cut stock to sell off, and therefore they couldn’t lower their prices just yet. Two years on (and their warehouses now replenished), not only have wine prices not dropped but they’ve gone up in price, not in value.
Restaurant and bar owners claimed that rising real estate prices were the culprit of 2009, resulting in a rise in food and drinks costs. I almost bought that, but then I remembered that most restaurants have multi-year leases at fixed rates or controlled escalations. “The publicans will tell you that it’s all about the rent, but we suspect it’s mainly about greed,” says Dean Aslin of Sauveurs Wines, a local wine distributor.
Years later, suppliers pointed fingers at restaurant and bar owners for demanding wines to be sold cheaper wholesale, but then the owners sold it on menus for incredibly inflated prices. “I know of one popular bar that sells a bottle of our wine that they buy for $50 for $475,” says Aslin. “Typically, an $80 to $90 bottle will sell for a minimum of $70 a glass and $300 per bottle (in restaurants and bars). I know of $20 bottles that are going for $60 per glass.”
“If bars and restaurants see that no one else is lowering their prices, why would they have to?” said Alasdair Nicol, Time Out’s wine writer and owner of Vinspiration, a wine distribution company.

A bar consultant who requested anonymity said: “I can’t get myself to order from (restaurants’) wine menus knowing the original cost of the wine.” He says it pays to pay for corkage. “Customers aren’t dumb, they’ll go to Watson’s Wine Cellar and see that a Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc costs $260 on the shelf and $650 at a restaurant. Why not save the $300 and pay for the $150 corkage?”
Consider this: A bottle of X costs euros5 (roughly $50) to produce. When it lands in our port from the vineyard, it costs around $70 per bottle. The importer tags on another 200-300 per cent on top of that, then the middle men gets their cut adding on 15-20 per cent; the retailer stocks it with a 300 per cent markup; finally that euros5 bottle of wine gets to your favourite restaurant and it now costs $2,880 on the menu. This is a real case study of a bottle of a Krug Grande Cuvée non-vintage Champagne. Truth is we are paying a few hundred times more for transporting wine than the cost of the actual product. Now, here’s the golden lining: since there are no wine duties, anyone can import wines themselves straight from the producers. You can buy that case of Krug on your own (granted not for a discounted wholesaler rate), but even to buy an economy class ticket to fly it in yourself would be worth it.
Ultimately the blame game is on us. Most consumers happily pay whatever the listed price for a glass of wine without a blink. We just don’t care. We don’t question it and rarely do we inquire about the quality of the pour. And if we don’t care, why should they?

TBLS Review

2010-05-03T16:50:00.001-07:00

Six courses of wonder

Whenever Chef Que Vinh Dang gets upset his macaroons crack. “It’s the same recipe, same measurements, same everything,” he said. “I don’t know why, but when I’m mad, they come out all wrong.” Good thing we visited when he was happy.

Que Vinh Dang has worked with the best in the industry. He’s too humble to name drop, so we’ll do it for him. Rocco DiSpirto’s Union Pacific and Geoffrey Zakarian’s Town. were his early teachers in New York. He had a short stint with Alvin Leung at Bo Innovation, and Paul Hsu at Elite Concepts, before he opened Duke’s Burger (closing this month), but disappeared a few months after opening. He got frustrated with the restaurant scene in Hong Kong, so much so that he dropped it all to step back and think. His resumé would get him a respectable job at a hotel restaurant, but he knew he would never make it to the top because of his name. “A chef with an Asian name will never get the executive chef title at a non-Chinese restaurant,” he said. “Even if I have the same years and experience as some French or German chef.”

So instead of harbouring resentment over Hong Kong’s shallow food industry, he set out to fire bomb it. After some soul searching in New York, he moved back to Hong Kong to start afresh. And the product of his sabbatical is TBLS (tablespoon abbreviated), located in an old nondescript building on Hollywood Road. You’ll need a door code to enter.

Here, around 12 seats are set on the sides of the large open kitchen. Outside, a balcony holds more tables with views of IFC and the towers of Soho. Both rooms are sparse, filled with mass-produced chairs and tables and dark woods, but not much else in way of décor. There are plans to hang meshed-up New York and Hong Kong street murals on a wall begging for something. But since he’s emptied his bank account to start this place, the concentration has to be on the kitchen for the moment.
Six courses, at $480 per person. There is only one menu. And with this, Dang proves his talent with a playful comfort food menu that takes a shot at the fine diners he has come from. For example, he makes chicken nuggets, serves it on toasted brioche and pairs it with a cup of mushroom essence – a soup and sandwich combo.

The amuse-bouche comes out and my dining partner takes the short rib cube with pickled daikon served on a large silver spoon into her mouth and says, “I think I just came.” The flavours are that of a bánh mì sandwich, only tight, concentrated and refined. Technically, Dang is brilliant, and not afraid to try anything – great qualities to have in a market so desperately seeking fresh ideas.

Because of the size of his kitchen and the limited number of seating the chef can accommodate in one evening, he can be very personal with his guests. A plate of brown cubes arrives and he asks us to guess what they are. Some sort of cheese on toast was the closest we got. Almost. It was the rind of parmesan cheese pan-fried. When rind is heated, it becomes soft like bread, the oil of the cheese separates and softens as well. This was his version of a grilled-cheese sandwich.

Various witty dishes arrive: wagyu oxtail and Iberian chorizo lasagna; a slow poached salmon with every part of a celery stalk used in the sauce or puree. Braised short ribs makes a reappearance, this time with creamy polenta and sous vide endives. Everything is in small individual portions and builds to a crescendo like a good song.

Speaking of songs, you won’t hear any dreamy bossa nova, or lyricless easy listening. No, this guy’s from New York. He blasts Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Common, Pharrell, and Kanye West throughout dinner. And this gets his young and handsome staff pumped.

Finally, dessert, or more importantly, his macroons. On the menu they are called “PB&J” (Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). A large macaroon is split then smeared with strawberry jam to hold a thick coin of peanut butter ice cream. I held the PB&J sandwich at eye level and examined it. I looked for cracks. None. I look for uneveness. None. I licked its centre, and this simple act took me back to my school lunch days. I sat back and reviewed his menu again, I looked at the young chef, I looked at the melting ice cream sandwich and thought, finally, a breath of fresh air in Hong Kong’s stale restaurant industry. Angie Wong

7/F, 31 Hollywood Rd, Central, 2544 3433. Mon-Sat 6pm-11pm.

The Bill

Set six-course menu x 2 $960
Ten per cent service charge $96
Total $1,056

Cafe Match Box Review

2010-04-27T04:21:00.001-07:00

So this is what happens when film art director Angelo Castilho dresses up a restaurant. You get the richness of a movie set and the feeling that you are having an experience, not just a meal. Every surface of Café Match Box is covered with bing sut tiles and wood panelling, and the theme of old Hong Kong means retro clocks, old movie posters and stool seating.
Like many rebirths of cha chan tengs, this one serves notable favourites such as fluffy egg sandwiches, elbow macaroni in soup with ham, and sweetened milk tea so thick you could stand a spoon in it. As we sat down at a shared table, our hip, young waiter urged us to order the set menu of buttered toast, ham omelette, fried egg sandwich, char sui (roast pork) over spaghetti ($36), and the chicken pot pie ($32)for good measure.
The char sui spaghetti was exactly that, but in a shallow bowl of chicken broth, while the pork was chewy and belted with fat. The spaghetti was nothing to note, and the soup was bland. My dining companion reminded me that this is simple food, and that the food should be light in flavour, but filling. I’m not sure I agree with this, and if this was the only dish I was going to get I wanted it to be fantastic, or at least full of flavour.
Next up was a good sized bowl of pig’s liver in ramen noodles with Demae Itcho packets of sesame oil and MSG soup powder on a separate plate. “This means we are getting a good brand of instant noodles, and not the cheap, imitation stuff,” my companion said. The ramen were telephone curls of egg noodles in a broth made from liver. The liver itself was thin-cut and steeped in the soup long enough to carry the broth’s flavour, but not long enough that it masked the livery taste. The liver was as slippery as organs tend to be, and had a really strong odour which was hard to stomach if you are not a liver fan.
Now, an item never seen before in any cha chan tengs arrived at the table: chicken pot pie and an electric green puddle of pea soup – unusual even in Western diners. We had no idea why this would even go together, but strangely it did. The pastry crust crumbled at the slightest touch to reveal chunks of chicken, ham and mushrooms. It took a spoon and fork to get the soup and pie in one go. Again, there is no reasoning behind this combination, but we went with it. The waiter said it goes well with ketchup, but we decided to go naked for this one. The ham and egg sandwich was the super fluffy kind with the super fluffy toast. The eggs were mixed with Kowloon Dairy milk and loaded with butter, as was the thick white toast. It was a simple combo.
One thing we would definitely come for are the banana hot cakes ($42). Three stacks of cream on the inside, evenly browned exterior sandwich slices with warm banana and walnuts. The caramel and cream sauce pulled this entire dish together giving the sweet tooth a reason to live. Served hot off the griddle, this is one of our favourite dishes of 2010.
I’m trying to think if there was anything left on the menu we didn’t try. Perhaps the warm egg tarts at the take out counter would’ve been a nice addition. Though with plenty of good food in our bellies, we decided enough was enough. Angie Wong
G/F, 8 Cleveland St, Causeway Bay, 2868 0363. Daily 8am-1am.
The bill
Set menu $36
banana hot cakes $42
chicken pot pie $32
10 per cent service charge
Total $121

Long Lunches

2010-04-16T03:49:00.000-07:00

How I long for the golden days when offices would empty out at noon and employees would cement business deals over multi-hour, wine-fuelled food orgies that went on till sundown. People were so drunk they put ink to paper while taking shots of malt, and that’s how deals were done.

But the era of three-martini and three-hour lunches have long been off the menu, and traded in for express meals that get you in and out in under 30 minutes. According to a 2006 survey by Diabetes Hong Kong, 69 percent of 1,322 office workers said their lunches lasted 20 minutes or less. That’s barely enough time to chew.

It's been a while since I sat down for a proper long lunch, Christmas Day 2006 in fact. I thought I’d be a hot shot and volunteer to work on Christmas. This was also the day I toyed with the idea of antidepressants. A bunch of traders invited me to dine at the Four Seasons where we feasted from noon until 9.30pm and drank up a bill of $81,000. Luckily the boys who worked the India and Japan markets that day expensed it.

For our holiday table of 14, we had a good crowd who sustained a continuous riff of banter that made nine plus hours fly like nothing. And when we finally ran out of conversation, we happily sat in silence, enjoying each other’s company. It was that good.

Now please don’t confuse what I’m saying with the thinly-veiled Christian cult also known as the Slow Food Movement. People who lunch as a lifestyle are doing it to gain professional advantages or as a big personal fuck you to the mandatory lunch hour, not because they like to chew their food slowly.

Old timers at the FCC blame women executives for killing the long, boozy lunch. They say women in the workforce hold the good old boys accountable for long lunches that lead to bar crawls that lead to pay-by-the-hour hotels charged on entertainment expense accounts. The next assaults were emails, Bloomberg messaging, and Webex making everyone super-efficient and time-starved. Power breakfasts became the ‘it’ meal, limiting meet ups to one hour and taking the boozing aspect out of the equation. Then, as a last blow, their corporate Amexs were put on a diet as corporations trimmed their fat. Good news boys, I’m looking to bring long lunches back!

Well, here’s the thing. My campaign to reignite long lunches in Hong Kong lasted about a week, and it was all talk and no action. My friends decided to take it into their own hands and book me for a Friday. I was happy to be nestling inside Central’s new old boys’ club, Alfie’s by KEE, when it started pouring. The men were working down their second bottle of wine by the time our soups arrived. “We’ll finish this bottle, have a martini, some cheese, then you can go back to work,” they assured me after I tried leaving for the second time.

The longer the lunch went on, the longer I felt guilty for being away from my desk. This isn’t normal I thought. How is it they can enjoy a three-hour lunch, entirely guilt-free and I can’t? I used every excuse in the book to up and leave, but my handbag was held hostage.

“What you need to do is call your office and tell them you have a meeting this afternoon,” said J. “Then you are going to have another drink with us,” said D as he emptied out the remainder of the bottle in my glass. “At five o’clock you tell your office you’ve got to walk around the portfolio, and there is no point of you coming back as you have a client dinner at six-thirty.”

The temptation was there. My club chair already created a nook for my backside. Maybe I’ll just stay for dessert, I told myself. And as the third bottle of wine was brought out I knew I couldn’t enjoy it so there was no point. I stood up, made the announcement that I was going back to work and that I would find them at this very table when I was done. I left my bag behind as collateral.

Guilt won over decadence in this round I thought, as I hailed a taxi. Time is the ultimately luxury and I don’t own my time, not right now, not yet.

Angie Wong

Posh food is just a genre.

2010-04-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

In a 2009 issue of Esquire magazine British columnist David Baddiel said that as kids we never voluntarily choose to eat gourmet food, but were in fact yanked kicking and screaming from restaurants if mummy tried shovelling forest fungi and goose liver down our throats. Instead, he opined, little ones gravitate towards unidentifiable nuggets or edible objects coated with sugar or salt. “As a kid, I didn’t know what a nice taste was.” Somewhere along the way, we ignored our taste buds and idolised the food darlings of the moment, not fully knowing whether we should like it or if we actually do like it.

When I first started writing about food professionally, I was eating out all the time at expensive gourmet restaurants. Nothing short of Peter Lam’s newest haunts or some celeb chef-touted mega-diner would do. I bought into the majesty of the Michelin Guide. For some time, I thought food at high calibre restaurants was actually better food. It is haute cuisine after all. It took more than a few bites for me to realise that a $20 burger was as satisfying as a $300 Kobe beef/ foie gras burger with truffle jus. But at the time I convinced myself that an expensive burger was by definition a better burger. I believed that money equals quality. If I made the same comparison with people, would you see the fault in my thinking? After more time comparing fancy restaurant to their cheap eats counterparts, I decided that this was all bullshit.

The biggest piece of evidence lies in the ingredients. I’ve met a food supplier who has a monopoly on produce in Hong Kong. He sells the same pre-washed mixed salad greens to posh restaurants around the city as he does to the fast food chains. The pedigree of the ingredients is exactly the same. Sadly, what we end up paying for is ambiance and extortionate rent.

Baddiel’s message to his readers was essentially this: expensive food is not better food, but simply another genre of food. If we classified posh food like we do Indian or Japanese or New York pizza, then we see it a whole different way. Fancy food is just that: a classification, not a level.

In Hong Kong is it not uncommon to order from the top two most expensive dishes at pricey diners. When I ask restaurateurs what that is all about, the answer I usually get is “saving face.” So what we are really talking about is who can afford what, or what your expensive choices say about you as a person. It’s not necessarily about good food at all.

This was all very annoying. Is price really the best way of judging taste? Or does status override all other elements? This made me think of all the restaurants out there pushing Wagyu beef, D'Artagnan duck breast, Hudson Valley foie gras, alba white truffles, bluefin tuna, great white’s shark’s fin, and gold-leafing to add extra zeros to the dishes.

When you look at posh food as just being a genre of food, and not better food, then we lose the class status built around it and we appreciate taste. I’ve sat at many fine diners wondering why the dim sum meal I was having would be considered better than one I could get at Maxim’s. Just because something is delivered in a dome and topped with a sprinkling of parsley, doesn’t mean the taste will be heightened one bit. This is why those who visit the supposedly top restaurants in the world are often disappointed. Can you really taste that the five-week old lamb was massaged everyday before slaughter? Or that the bean puree was made with Icelandic water, and not straight from the tap? Or that the shrimp is from the northern waters of Japan? Hand on heart, it all taste the same. These are just devices to load bland nouns (lamb, beans, shrimp) with adjectives or, worse still, with overtones of excessive refinement.

I hear chefs barking. But they would agree with me that there is no such thing as high- or low-brow food, only good or bad. Whenever I’ve dined with chefs, it is rarely in a fancy environment. We are almost always sitting on a plastic stool, sharing a wet-nap, and slurping incredible, cheap meals. They know how to eat well, and they know it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to eat there. It’s time we did the same.

Angie Wong

The Egg Project

2010-03-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

File: 51-Food-UTT

Sec: Food

SubSec: Under the table

P/Q: I wondered if I would’ve been a more responsible person if I had to support an egg in my early life

It all started when a delivery man placed a parcel on my desk. “Be careful, it’s an egg,” he said in whispered tones. What is it… sleeping, I thought as I carefully opened the package. Inside a brown egg slept in a soft plastic tube. Who would send me an egg? I turn the plastic casing around and saw it was from La Maison du Chocolat.

I didn’t go to school in Hong Kong, but my girlfriends who had told me a story of how when they were little, their school teachers made them each take care of an egg to show them responsibility and to sustain them from pre-marital sex. One by one their eggs would break and the school children learned the efforts of raising a child. I was never privy to this experiment, and wondered if I would’ve been a more responsible person if I had supported an egg in my early life.

By some holy marketing miracle, an egg had arrived on my desk. This was not going to be a missed opportunity. I brought my egg to dinner at Miso that night and placed it on the table. “Are we going to eat it?” asked one of my friends (we were sitting near the teppenyaki grills). I moved the egg onto my lap for protection then turned to my boyfriend, “Honey, what are we going to name it?” His amusement turned into fear. After a beat he said “Cyril” to play along, probably wondering if he was witnessing the first signs of baby pangs. “Cyril is the hardest name for Cantonese people to pronounce,” I said, then agreed to it.

After dinner, I hand-carry Cyril to the Ok Go concert at Grappas. It was our first party together. In the tight crowd I held him close so no one would smush him. I lifted him in the air when the masses closed in. By the end of the concert, I was surprised he survived. Fully intact, I lifted the lid of his plastic carriage and I saw he had pooped. This was when I realised Cyril was filled with chocolate.

My chocolate baby and I went everywhere together, to meetings, to lunches, to parties, to work, I even took him to a chocolate tasting at a competitor’s brand. Though Cyril was quite boring, he sat around and observed. His charms were fast wearing off on me.

At a rooftop party at Cepage, he sat silent next to half-drunken glasses on the table. I’ve had him about one week now, and I was getting tired of thinking about his wellbeing all the time. “He doesn’t die,” I said to my girlfriends. “How long am I supposed to carry this thing?”

“Forever, that’s the point,” one said.

Later that night at Sie Jie, I get a phone call from Cepage. “You left your egg here.”

Oh geez, I totally forgot about Cyril. I felt so guilty throughout the meal for being such an irresponsible twat that I couldn’t enjoy the burn of Sie Jie’s mouth-numbing delights. I had to get up and collect my egg. And I dragged my boyfriend with me, guilting him to take on some responsibility, By now, I’m positive he had written me off as a nutter.

I shamefully collect my egg (yes, I’m a bad mother) and call it an early Friday night. On Saturday , I was exhausted from my week of responsibility. On Sunday, I spent the day in bed.

James mentioned taking Cyril to Drop one night, and I thought about how he would not be a bad father. Though a death at Drop would give a grand finale to this tale.

Cyril was the egg that wouldn’t die. I have to give him credit for that. It’s been two weeks, and he had kept up with my hectic schedule, and gleefully accompanying me in my goings. He was a good egg. Someone at work suggested I get a baby buggy (I have no idea what this is).

Serendipitously, I met the person who brought the La Maison du Chocolat brand to Hong Kong. I did not bring up Cyril as I had left him at home that day. We spoke about scheduling a lunch to try Alvin Leung’s sicko invention, Sex on the Beach (a “condom” made of ham, filled with honey, and then flung onto a bed of mushroom sand) at Bo Innovation.

At Bo Innovation, I brought Cyril to meet his maker. I wanted to tell the man behind La Maison Du Chocolat how his gift had changed my life. I now realised I am not a good mommy, and I’m not a responsible person. I’ve been caring for this egg for four weeks, and now I’d like to give it back. But before I could say any of this to him, the Demon Chef, Alvin Leung, grabbed Cyril and offered to cook him. I resisted. No way would he make a good godfather. But I wanted this episode of my life to end. I said goodbye to Cyril and handed him over to Alvin. I promised Cyril conjugal visits. But we both knew he wouldn’t survive a night in Alvin’s kitchen.

Men in waiting

2010-03-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

File: 50-food-utt

Sec: Food

Subsec: Under the table

Hed:

P/Q: There’s a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

I realised recently I’m the only person in my family that has a full time job. Both my parents are enjoying the glees of retirement and my two youngest siblings are in school. But my middle brother, of prime working age (28), hasn’t held a job in six years.

My parents asked me to have a motivational chat with him. “You know they are going to kick you out of the house soon,” I said over a stupidly expensive dim sum lunch. “How are you planning on stretching your life of leisure?” “I was thinking of applying for business school, that should give me another year, year and a half. An MBA takes another two years,” he said casually. “Are you ever planning to work again?” I asked already knowing his answer. “Nope, not if I can avoid it.”

And there you have it. I pick on my brother, well, because big sisters do that kind of thing, and because he is a slice from a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

In my brother’s case, and my ex’s (Homeless Guy), and many others spanning from Hong Kong to Japan to the European Union, their reasons are valid. They are educated, and they feel entitled to have a dream job that is ethical, powerful and fulfilling while earning a $100k starting salary with ample holiday time. ‘Why settle for a lifetime of grunts and ulcers?’ is the common motto. Life is for travelling, absorbing books, resting the fork in-between bites, and enriching the mind with television, they preach. Office life is so unnatural.

I love their no-worry attitude, but here’s what I discovered months after dating Homeless Guy. He was a bum. A wasted being. An intelligent man with no ambition, like a bird without wings. Worse, he sponged off me.

At a bitchfest feast with my girlfriends, one bought up the topic of divorce –a heavy word for lunch. She no longer sleeps with her husband (surprise there) because she resented him. She complained she paid for the rent, his hobbies, and his lunch. “If he actually worked, then maybe we could afford to buy a place rather than living in a rented box,” she ranted, waving her knife and fork. “I even have to pay for his graduate school. It’s like he left parents, married me so he can be my dependent. I’m with a loser!”

Funny thing is, I’m friends with her husband, mainly because he’s personable and philosophises about dumb things. I found him in a chatroom while writing this. He is there most days.

Me: “What do you do all day long?”

Him: “The day surprising goes by fast.” He explains he works out for two hours (which includes sauna time and reading time at the juice bar); there are episodes of Extras to watch; he is currently reading The 4-hour work week; on the days he’s not at school, he smokes pot and cleans his motorcycle. He shaves right before he picks up his wife in Central for dinner. He feels bad she always pays, but has come to expect it.

Him: “Don’t judge. I see tai tais doing the same thing.”

Me: “What do you plan to do with your English degree?”

Him: “Maybe [wife] will buy me a beach house and I can write a novella.”

Arg. Like my brother, he speaks three languages, he’s the eldest boy in his family and was raised to succeed his father. The pressure of knowing he’ll have to take care of the family when he is old enough was all too much. So he delays growing up, maybe forever. He turns down jobs because he thinks the positions are beneath him. In his prime, age 25-35, he has lived down expectations by dropping out of the work environment. The Japanese have a word for extreme cases of social withdrawal, Hikikomori. The most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from middle and upper middle class families whose sons, are typically the eldest.

Women have been social engineered to think men who don't work or earn a living are worthless. I’m factoring in decades of girls being told to get an education and take care of themselves as men are not always reliable. But what messages have the boys been receiving all this time?

At a bon voyage dinner with my middle brother, who was en route to Beijing for a year of language school, he said he realised work doesn’t have to be eight hours behind a desk. He rhapsodised about the brighter side of working such as having an outlet to meet friends, carry business cards, impress girls, and get the parents off his back. He was too proud to ask for help, but he said he had been out of work for so long that it was impossible to get back in. “They kicked you out of the house yeah?” I said. “Yup,” he added, without skipping a beat.

Ah Yat Harbour View Restaurant

2010-02-18T22:55:00.001-08:00

File: 49-food-re-(main)

Section: food

SubSect: review

Hed: Ah Yat Harbour View Restaurant

Subhed: Abalone king

P/Q: This is a place for dining, not just to eat.

Star: 4

Text:

Chef Ah Yat knows his abalone. So famous for his edible sea snails, Singapore Airlines carries his critically acclaimed brand of abalone delicacies on the in-flight menu.

So when Chef Ah Yat opened his newest place in iSquare, it was not going to be a small deal. Many elements goes into making a fine Chinese diner: An intimate dining space like Man Wah; the seamless service of One Harbour Road; and the proud procurement of specialty ingredients like Fook Lam Moon. With its top floor city views, cosy dining room, Hyatt-trained floor staff, and with a menu of braggable abalone from around the world, Ah Yat is surely ticking the right boxes.

The environment here is right for dining I thought as I sat down; a quiet level of conversation, mind-clearing views, undisruptive service, and calm blue and gold setting. This is a place for dining, not just to eat. Plan for a sit down. And plan to try their Yoshihama abalone set menu if you are a first timer. Five courses, a glass of wine, and dessert for $1,388.

The dried Yoshihama abalone is prized for its shape and musky taste. On another occasion we tried fresh abalone from Australia and preferred this tender meat and clean sea flavours to the Yoshihama. But this is a personal preference. Both were equally meaty, unblemished, and glossed with velour sauce made of Yunnan ham and dried mushrooms and accompanied by goose’s web.

“Have you ever refrigerated abalone sauce?” The former chef I was dining with asked. “When the sauce separates, about half of it is fat.” Maybe that’s why it is so smooth on the tongue. The supervisor overheard our conversation and broke in, “Ours is made with very little oil. You can take some home if you’d like.”

A pair of rock lobsters arrived, steamed with a mount of garlic and green onions. These petite crustaceans were beautiful objects to look at and took no more than two sweet bites to finish. Good time to note Chinese food here is eaten with fork and knives. There are chopsticks, but most of the courses require western tools.

The Ah Yat deep fried crispy chicken was simplistic and technically perfect. The skin was paper-crisp, the flesh smooth and tender though not a hint of blood was visible. The taste was heightened by a small saucer of lemon juice.

There is a saying in Chinese called wok hay (wok-heat). It refers to the blessing that transmits from the wok to the ingredients if your fire is fierce enough. When a wok breathes energy it brings the breath of a wok to whatever it touches and carries forward past ingredients that have seen this wok. In other words, there are dead woks and woks full of life. The latter is evident here with the next course: Ah Yat’s famous fried rice. First it is prepared in the kitchen in their lively woks where eggs, shrimp, dried scallops, and char sui are tossed in a wok, then brought out in a clay pot and finished to your liking. Our waiter asked us if we like our rice wet or dry then cooked the fried rice accordingly at tableside. We enjoyed the dolsat bibimbap-like crisp of the burnt rice, and the extracted flavours in the soft grains.

On fine china, course by course was laid out seamlessly and with little interruption but the views beyond us. We’ve visited twice now, and both times it has been consistent in food and service. It’s true craftsmanship, and you’ll pay the price for it. Angie Wong

29/F, iSquare , 63 Nathan Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, 2328 0983. Daily from 11.30am-11pm.

The Bill

Yoshihama abalone set menu x2 $2,776

Service charge 10 per cent $277.60

Total $3,053.60

Como Shambhala

2010-02-17T02:39:00.001-08:00

File: 49-food-UTT

Section: food

SubSect: under the table

Hed:

Subhed:

P/Q: I was skeptical at Demi Moore, Sting, and Woody Harrelson for endorsing such life choices, but I was surprised to find myself a believer.

Text:

After months of fattening my liver with the ills of deep-fried objects, tasty animals, good wine, coupled with little sleep, little sunlight and little exercise, my boyfriend deemed me toxic. He surprised me with a week of detoxification in Bali. If staring at palm trees, waddling in sun-kissed lap pools, and listening to the gentle trickles of afternoon rainfalls won’t pull me out of this waste-filled city lifestyle, then I don’t know what will.

I downed my welcoming drink, a blend of cucumber and mint, nature’s healer, while taking in Ubud’s layer cake rice fields from our villa. I read and read, and I slept and slept until I woke up with the birds and geckos. Though it felt like a week’s worth of slumber, it was only 7am the next morning. I dressed and made to it to morning yoga.

The thing when you treat your body well is you don’t then want to fill it with crap. At the resort’s raw food restaurant, Glow, I read delicious descriptions of raw food dishes written by skilled wordsmiths as cut-up lettuce leaves can’t possibly taste as good as this read. This sounded promising: heirloom tomato, semi-dried tomato, zucchini lasagna with pine nut ricotta made with ingredients grown on the resort’s estate. It sounded like a cake of sliced vegetables, but more importantly a safe choice. What came out was a stack of paper-thin vegetables dressed in peppery olive oils and blessed with stone-pounded pesto so green it looked alive. And that’s the point of a raw food diet; nothing on the plate is “dead”. The jicama, pine nut and shiitake maki roll with wasabi tofu was not as hippie as it sounded. It had the texture and complimentary flavours of a good sushi roll minus the expensive protein that usually makes sushi rolls worth eating. Lastly, a young coconut was shaved to resemble noodles, the same treatment was done to carrots and daikons and the strands were turned into a beautiful mess of spicy “noodles”. If ever there was a meal to be thankful for, this is it.

I was skeptical at Demi Moore, Sting, and Woody Harrelson for endorsing such life choices, but after trying raw food, I was surprised to find myself a believer. I continued with morning yoga overlooking a crater filled in by palm trees, floated in pools of sacred spring water, hiked in Jurassic jungles and studied the behaviour of butterflies all while thinking about my next raw food adventure.

We didn’t miss meat at all. That was until we took a ride into town and stopped by the barbecue shack Naughty Nuri's, made famous by its ribs and praises of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert (who met her husband there). The clouds of smoky tender ribs on a hot grill hypnotised us in; the inapposite pairing of New York-style Martinis served here were better than ones served in New York; and sitting in the setting of a best-selling chick-lit was too much to pass on. Sat on a bench, we ate platters of wet ribs and sipped gin martinis. Here, I realised my love for pork and alcohol.

The next day, I got back to my yoga and raw food diet. I ordered something that was completely foreign to this city dweller: nut “bread” made with nothing cooked over 40C. The “bread” was compressed wheat and nuts, which formed a hard cracker, unbreakable with the blade of our table knife. Bite by bite, I cut my gums with sharp raw nuts while enjoying the burn of the lemon-dressed avocados in my wounds.

Day four, it rained and mosquitoes came out for their dinner. One leg into my jeans and I could tell they wouldn’t fit. How could this be? They fit just four days ago. I buttoned up and an instant muffin top appeared. I’ve been eating vegetables all week (sans Naughty Nuri's), how am I getting fat?

Back at Glow, I drank my papaya sunrise with a plate of fruit. The acid stung the cuts in my mouth. I told the general manager about my jeans and my swollen mouth. It’s probably bloating, we offer colon therapy (read: colonic) to alleviate the problem, he suggested.

A constant city diet of fast foods, rich dinners, white sugars and gin and tonics didn’t make me puff up, so why the hell would fresh fruits and vegetables do it? The next day I stepped on a scale. I was two kilos heavier. I couldn’t fit in my pants. I was gassy. I was the fattest I’ve ever been.

I sat meditating at one of Begawan Giri’s waterfalls to forget my troubles and thought about life as a woman of leisure. They sleep as much as they need, read as many books as they want, and had time for things like sitting under waterfalls… Then it came to me as I exited my alternate state: all this inactivity and relaxation is getting me porky.

Stress and city life burns calories, while blue skies and butterflies brings on fat-bliss. Vanity wins this round. I like my skinny jeans too much. I’ve got to get off this healthy stuff and retox.

Restaurant reviewers vs. food bloggers

2010-02-04T01:45:00.000-08:00

A publication once sent a writer to review a brand new Japanese restaurant in Causeway Bay. The reviewer wrote that the food was very small, the flavours very light, the pricing very expensive, the service too fussy and the lighting too dark. The publication ran it and the restaurant closed down two months after print.

What the readers didn’t know was the review was done by an intern. Someone who was new to the city, had little experience in critical writing, and didn’t have the budget to spend much time at white-table clothed restaurants. The consequence was a $2 million project, the couple’s life savings, down the tube.

In journalism, what you say comes with responsibility. This story came to mind when New York University recently held a forum asking: Are restaurant reviewers still necessary? The floor was divide where professional reviewers on the panel enthusiastically said yes and food blogger, in real-time, blogged, no. And the imagery of celebrated food journalists on an elevated stage nodding their heads verses bloggers angrily challenging professional’s every thought on their keyboards is a good illustration of where we are today. What was really being asked during this forum is this: Should opinion writing be democratised? After a quick scan of food blogs around Hong Kong I have to throw myself into the yes camp.

Many blogs fall into one of three categories: the ego-driven nobody who power trips with his iPhone writing negative knee-jerk reviews if they are not fawned over at restaurants; the “I took my mom to ____ and we liked ____ very much” variety; or the worst of the bred, the marketing tool disguised as a personal blog.

The last category is harder to spot if you don’t do due diligence. Some of the most respected food blogger keep their identities hidden for creditability, but if you cover the food beat, then you’ll know instantly they are the grandsons and daughters of the city’s food industries. One recent blog criticised a new restaurant in Soho, never stating he was the marketing manager for the restaurant right above the one he was criticizing. You see how this could get messy.

When I used to take press meals, that is free meals paid by restaurants in exchange for press coverage ( a good time to insert that Time Out reviews anonymously and pays for meals), tables would be seated by free-loading journalists and bloggers looking for a king’s feast. What I didn’t understand then, but clearly see now is that the acceptance of a free meal creates the classic journalistic conflict of interest: how do I judge a restaurant when they have to be on their best behaviour? Hosting free meals allows restaurants to control how it will be portrayed in the media. This is a wildly hedonistic occupation, and anyone, it seems, can be bought.

I’m not trying to throw scare tactics to wain readers away from food blogs and put their trust on the professionals. Food blogger are not the bad guys in this write up. As Little Cream Book’s author and blogger Winne So says in support of blogs, “You are more likely to trust your friend’s opinion than a professionals.”

And as your friend’s blog turns in six-figure book deals such as This is Why You're Fat, Gourmet Glossary, and Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression, and a Hollywood movie deal (Julie & Julia) come to a book dealer or movie theatre near you, you think why not give it a go? And even in this over-saturated market of food blogger, there will always be room for more proses as everyone eats, and everyone can use puffery to sing to the masses.

I can easily jump camps and state the reasons why food blogs will take over my job. The main reason being they don’t have to print on dead trees. Print media have lag time between collecting the information and when it is released, sometimes months after restaurants are opened. Bloggers have instant publishing tools. In fact, all they need to do is whip out their iPhone tableside. This of course has problems as well. Often the outcome is the writing is spontaneously, unedited, hasty opinions. In this day and age, a restaurant critique is not just a record of been there, ate that, but also a reference book, a history lesson, a travel log, a celebration of food vernaculars, all while sounding delicious or grossed out. There is baseline standard that comes from understanding and investigation. That only comes from years of disciplined eating, referencing, traveling, tracking talents, and food poisoning.

food blogs

2010-01-28T17:54:00.001-08:00

The books to have come out of 2009 started from food blogs. And if you think there will be a mass repeat, well, you are right. But if you were inspired by the movie Julie and Julia, in which a moonlighting blogger cooks herself through Julia Child’s Master of French Cooking, but ou do Joy of Cooking instead, well, good luck. Publishers are looking for fresh, but tested.

But unfortunately, last year’s trend has spun a whole slew of new food blogs. I’m not against having more information out there. I’m against having misinformation out there.

Interview with Sarah.

What you say comes with responsibility. Just because you love food and are passionate enough to send hours of your day writing about what you had.

Come on, it’s about what you had, and what you’ve experienced, and putting yourself out there as an authority, yes? Answer is yes. But with this comes responsibility.

This is not your outlet to power trip.

You don’t slam a restaurant for seating you by the loo, especially if there are no other tables available or if you hadn’t made a reservation.

There are so many knee-jerk food blog, and tweets, that makes me wonder how any restaurateur makes it.

There is a magazine, and I won’t say which one, that sends interns to review for their publication. This intern is most likely still in school, enjoys food but its anyone’s guess how much they are reference and compare other restaurants like the one they are reviewing. This intern was sent to review a new Japanese restaurant in Causeway Bay where she reported the food was small portioned and very expensive. The restaurant shut two months after this review came out after the owners poured their life savings into it. To this day I regret ever have sent this intern and will, as a personal policy, never send anyone new to this game to review a restaurant.

Food, I understand is a very, very, extremely personal thing. That’s having an opinion. Food is a very universal thing. That’s having a reported opinion. The dishes are referenced, it is not just a matter of taste.

You really do need the references to formulate an opinion. But we all have an opinion, we all eat. That’s a universal fact.

Food, ultimately is about personal enjoyment.

I know I’ve just spent an entire column selling you on our food reviews.

We don’t take free meals, but now I understand that more than anything.

I can always tell if this is someone’s first attempt at reviewing. Young (and I just mean new to this game) reviewers have a tendancy to trash a place. Key give aways: no facts, no references, no history, no context. It’s basically a rant piece on himself and what he thought of his taste sensations.

Unfortunately, the media doesn’t have time to revisit places after they’ve fully opened. This is where blogs can shine.

Forget the book deals, that should be the end result after a blog well done (and having lots of followers), not the goal.

Questions to ask: Why are you praising them? Why are you really trashing them? Okay, agreed, if they weren’t such money hungry restaurateurs, they wouldn’t have squeezed an extra table by the loo, but ask yourself if this is a personal grip, or if you’ve personalize this, rather than see it as a super packed restaurant and thye managed to squeeze you in. Another words, Think before you publish.

Here’s a trick, on and offline. Nobody likes to be called out that their wrong. That the all-consuming project, their baby, which took years and all their savings, is wrong. The public will judge. Once you put pen to paper, and publishing it, you are no longer the public. That’s doesn’t make sense. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself, what is your motivation. Too get free food- ennh. Wrong answer.

What is the goal ultimately? To make recommendations, yes. To be wined and dined for free. If you are still considering saying yes. You are doing a disservice to the public.

How much power does a food blog hold?

What people don’t understand is that many of these blog writers are romanced by restaurateurs. They get seated in VIP suites, meals are taken care of, wines are free-flowing. Special chef’s menus are created that would normally not be available to the public.

I was invited by Xiu Long Bao to dine on the private floor of Yung Kee. These guys are treated like princes. You think he is blogging about the roast goose you are eating downstairs?

They are romanced by press relations, and why not they are influencial and they have numbers to prove it. But what many food bloggers do not reveal is their true nature of things. Many are marketers, advertisers, press agents. But under the veil of anonymous, they never have to reveal themselves while pushing their agenda.

But, it is freedom of speech, the little we have.

I’m not saying the latest bad guys are food blog, there are a lot of talented people out there who commit to these blogs because they truly feel they had an experience and want to share it. But there are plenty who do this for personal gain.

You just need to read between the lines and realize who is who.

Love over 35?

2010-01-27T23:51:00.000-08:00

SECTIONCODE: 47- feature- 35

SECTION: feature

SUBSECTION:

HED: Too late for love?

SUBHED: Will women find The One after 35? The long and the short of the answer is: unlikely, writes Angie Wong

P/Q:

TEXT:

Experience is sometimes measured in years. And by the time you are 35-years-old, you’ve likely learned a thing or two about the "courtship narrative". It used to be spelled out like this: attraction, dating, engagement, wedding, babies. But something in the narrative has been disrupted.

Spring break sexual liberation led to numerous and nameless hookups; drink-induced flirtations led to numbers you don’t remember inputting in your SIM card; boys who once fancied you in school led to Facebook friendships; a series of low-commitment relationships led to you saving yourself for someone better.

But then you’re 30. And then you’re 35, and you are still spring-breaking, drinking and flirting, Facebook spying on boys from school, or worst, your exes, to see how far in life they’ve gotten. Quite far, according to their family pics and links to their wives’ Facebook pages. Hmmm, you think to yourself as you stroll through her profile, that could’ve, should’ve, been you.

It’s not too late, you think. But you also start to believe you may be getting a little old. The problem is the window between the time you realise you are no longer a young swan and you’re entering middle-age is a very, very short space. A few years at best.

Don’t wait too long, as the old saying goes, or else the train may pass you by. This is a real consideration if you believe in the numbers.

Quite simply, there are more women than men in Hong Kong. The Census and Statistics Department divided the sexes in Hong Kong as 3.3 million men to 3.6 million women in 2008. And the numbers get scarier when describing 35-year-old single male to female ratio: 50,100 to 67,000. It continues to fall at age 37: 47,300 single men to 68,000 single women, and it tumbles each year thereafter until both sexes level off at 55. The age of brides peaked at 29, at 3,835 brides in 2008, and fall every year after 30. At 35, there were 1,539 brides. At 40, there were only 628. male figures If we are just looking at numbers, Hong Kong’s environment is not a lucrative breeding ground for holy unions.

And environment is a funny word—because we create much of it. I looked at the reasons why other countries such as Jamaica and Iran had the best success rates when it came to marriages. Religion plays a big role; social/political unrest drew people together (safety in numbers); the lack of transient (read: expat) lifestyle was another; strong family values and associations were pluses; work-life balance is key (the average Hongkonger worked 22 percent more hours per week than recommended by the International Labor Organization); Money was also a big factor –more money, more breakups.

We’re not Iran or Jamaica, we’re Asia’s World City. We’re also a city of one million expatriates, politically muffled, and frequent flyers. We are applauded for career titles and rewarded for our financial success. Al these things add up to a crippled dating arena.

Hong Kong is a materialistic, career-obsessed, selfish place. And if you believe in the Chinese principle of yin and yang, the harmony of balance in the world, then something’s gotta give. If we are going to put our energy into accruing money, hedonism, and material needs then there’s a flip side. The balance of that are the symptoms: more money, less personal time; more sexual partners, less meaningful relationships; more material goods, less blue skies. If modern self-fulfillments were the goals, these are its consequences.

We are also a city of over-achievers. We did everything our parents told us to: we got good grades, went to good schools, secured good jobs. So what happened? “Mothers should think twice before telling their daughters these things,” says Violet Lim, founder of Lunch Actually, a dating service which has paired off more than 200 couples and 80 marriages since 2004. What mothers and television series forgot to tell them was for every dollar females makes above her man, the chances of their relationship failing goes up, and every year past the age of 29, the percentage of getting married drops.

“The reason you are still single is because you are too career-minded” says Lim. “When I used to work at a bank, my female colleagues were married to their jobs. They were too time-stretched to meet anyone.” According to Lim, guys respect career-oriented women for her achievements but less for being their equal. Men believe they’ll have a harder time providing for her if she is an equal or in a higher position than him and might feel insecure about her, which goes against even the mildest of feminist teachings.

Also men are looking for femininity, “not necessarily strong women,” says Lim. “Some women challenge everything, which is what women are attracted to in a man, but not what men are attracted to in a woman.” She suggests women to get unharden and “wear more ruffles”.

It is, without say, that looks play an important role in the game of attraction. As the saddle bags set in, the rings around her eyes gives a resemblance to Beetle Juice, and hair grows in places she never imagined possible; women have to invest a lot to look competitive in the dating market. An entire anti-age industry is built upon it; the promise of youth is a US$96.89B a year business and is expected to reach US$291.9B by 2015, according to Global Industry Analysts. A plastic surgeon who works in New World Tower, says the majority of his clients comes in for first-time procedures after her thirtieth birthday. A fitness trainer, who works in Central, says most of his female clients start training in the early or mid-thirties, and following a major break up.

Girls grew up idealising marriage, believing it’s some sort of divine spark, and in their dating prime women will walk away from uninspiring boyfriends that would’ve made them happy when considering him as a husband or father of their children. But what they held out for all these decades (true love), has back fired as time passed, and they’re now described to eligible men as “mature”. In Lori Gottieb’s famed article in The Atlantic Monthly, she argues: “Those of us who choose not to settle in hopes of finding a soul mate later are almost like teenagers who believe they’re invulnerable to dying in a drunk-driving accident. We lose sight of our mortality.”

When asked whether women in their mid-thirties will find long-lasting relationships in Hong Kong, Lim takes a long silence before saying: “Hong Kong men are more open-minded to date older women over 25. But most single men who come into Lunch Actually request to be paired up with women 35 or below.” And what were the company’s success rates for finding a mate for 35 + women? “It is hard for us to find them someone,” she admits.

These are the consequences of a super competitive market. One 36-year-old expat female dater who plays her chances with online dating sites describes the market like this: “With some very keen local girls it’s hard [for] a Western woman to compete!”

For Western women it is undoubtedly more difficult to find suitors. An Australian female who, at 35, swapped her prominent financial position in Hong Kong for a lesser position and lesser pay in London describes this:

“I found it hard to meet anyone who was stable and wanted a long-term relationship [in Hong Kong]. I also found the majority of men were more interested in local women and the pool of nice, normal, single, available men much smaller. I did not want to end being 40 and single in Hong Kong like so many other western women I saw there.” Moving to a city where there was less of an expat penalty in the dating pool a big boost for her ego. “Men [in London] find me attractive and I don’t have to compete with Asian girls,” she said over an email. She, like other expat women I spoke with, said they first considered moving out of Hong Kong to find The One at 34.

“Guys usually don’t choose older women… The cut off age is 32-33,” a 34-year-old male consultant says. He adds that men shouldn’t feel like they are the bad guy for opting out of a woman 35 or older. “Biologically, and logically, it’s better to choose younger women if [the man] wants to have children. It’s just a smart decision.”

But not all guys agree. “I want to have kids,” said a 33-year-old business developer. “It’s cliché, but I want a mature partner. Women over 35 have a better sense of security; they are more settled, and grown into their habits. I know what I want in life. What I’m not looking for is someone on a journey or discovery. I want to know who you’re going to be at the end of the tunnel. If I’m dating a 26-year-old, how the hell am I going to know who they’ll be at 30?”

“If I want to play around I look for someone who’s 25, if I want to settle down I look for someone who’s 35,” one late-thirties musician dittoed.

You hear a lot of “if it happens, it happens,” “we’ll see what god has in stored” or “It’s up to fate”. It is rarely advisable to completely leave finding The One in fate’s hands when you know the odds are against you. If you are determined to complete the journey that many have failed, (of course you are you over-achiever), then may we leave you with some ideas.

Lim says, be vulnerable, drop the mask, and change your patterns. Before dates, leave the powersuit at the office and slip on a black dress. Get feminine. Just be out there. Accept every invite. Drop your criteria list and be open-minded to men of all shapes and sizes and income levels. But the most important message is to stay positive. “Men are like dogs, they can smell desperation,” says one 34-yer-old art trader.

A 36-year-old singleton, who admits to lying about her age, describes this: “I always try and be optimistic. I always accept invites from new people to parties. I think most of my single friends accept that you will not find the one in Mes Amis, apart from one who swears by Dusk Till Dawn,” (her friend has a preference for pilots). She also suggests joining wine tastings, tennis clubs, and enlisting her friends for pair-ups. Though she says whatever you do, stay out of Wan Chai.

The problem of finding The One is actually not a problem at all. It is that the references we have for the process are outdated for modern times. We lack the traditions of the “courtship narrative”, but that doesn’t mean we are broken. It just means it doesn’t work for us anymore. Marriage rates are down, worldwide in cities, but there are contributing factors. The world has changed. We put religion aside and stopped persecuting unwedded co-habitaters as sinners; second-third-fourth marriages are more and more acceptable and common; we’ve moved out of the political arenas to focus on ourselves; and we’re making a whole lot more money. It’s not all bad. It’s just different. And we just need to stop griping and embrace it, even if we fear the unknown.

Box:

Yes, the odds are stacked against women over 35, but if against the odds you are persistent. You can integrate into an unwed dead man’s patrilineage. “Ghost brides”, as they are called, will receive the family’s wealth, power and have the ability to be independent without the interference of a living husband. But they must take a vow of celibacy, and immediately take up residence with his family. On the flipside, a ghost groom marrying a dead bride does not have to stay celibate.

Dining Xpress for Professionals, Wed 3 Feb 2010

Participate in this dinner date with a twist! Meet a new dining partner at each course. Take time to savour each course, as you get to know your dining partner! Price $500 per person.Tel: 2524 5020

Ben Hoad's dinner (final)

2010-01-18T19:30:00.001-08:00

There is a reason I have a year old leg of lamb in my freezer. Everytime I open my ice box, it taunts me. I will tell this tale on its one year anniversary, then toss out this frozen object of pain.

As the saying goes, the direct path to a guy's heart is through his stomach. An Aussie guy I had an unhealthy obsession for brought up the idea of throwing a dinner party at his place one year ago. "What should I make at your dinner party?" I eagerly offered my homemaking services. "You mean our dinner party," he countered. I glowed for weeks.

We decided on leg of lamb—a classic family-style roast with prewritten gender roles of the man of the house ceremonious carving meat table side. Invites were sent and a date set. Only one problem: I've never made lamb before. I grew up in America where lamb was not a staple, nor the industry.

I somehow thought if I could deliver the perfect meal he would magically lust me. I drove myself insane crafting the perfect meal in my head; nights were lost studying cookbooks; I even bought the Jamie Oliver DVD set. One episode showed butterflied leg of lamb, but in my fantasy dinner party, rather our fantasy dinner party, I imagined carrying out an entire leg of lamb to the table. Arg. Frustrated, I write to Jamie Oliver posting my dilemma. To my surprised his staff came back with a recipe.

I ran this recipe by Richard Ekkebus of two-Michelin starred Amber. "Well you can't serve an Aussie that. Jamie's a Brit, Aussies do it differently." He proceeded to roll out a recipe for the perfect leg of lamb which involved professional kitchen equipment and lots of anchovies. I'll never be able to recreate this at home.

I buy additional legs for test runs. I set off my smoke detector multiple times smoking oysters for our starter course. I procured artisanal ice from Antarctica for welcome drinks. This was going to be the dinner party of dinner parties.

On my way to pick up tomatoes ordered from Sicily the phone rings, it's him, "Hey, how's it going?" "Everything's good, looking forward to our dinner party," I said coolly. "I made a test leg of lamb last night." Shut up! Too much information. "Wow, really?” He said. “When I was a kid my grandmother would roast a leg of lamb, it was one of my favourite memories growing up." Fuck. "She would put-" at that precise moment a roaring city bus crosses my path. "Wait, what did you say?" I said half panicked. He mumbled it again but I still couldn't get a clear connection through the city roar. The forces were against me. I loudly asked a third time like someone using a mobile phone for the first time believing he would hear me better if I yelled. I finally said, without meaning to: "I'm sorry I can't understand your Aussie accent without seeing your lips move."

“You want to win this guy right?” the former chef of Zest asked me four days, and two overcooked legs of lamb, to showtime. “Forget the anchovies, forget the bacon, forget everything. Keep it simple. Fresh mint sauce, rosemary, roast potatoes, and gravy. You can do this. You know how to make head cheese for god's sake."
"I think I'm just too nervous and I'll fuck it up," I was going to cry.

“It’s cute how worked up you get. How about this? My kitchen will prepare everything for you. You just need to pop it in the oven." This was cheating, this was so brilliant.

No one really cooks from scratch anymore, we think we cook, but all we really do is assemble the parts and we call it cooking. I considered his offer. "You sure you want to be with a guy that drives you this crazy?" the chef asked. All the best ones are a little crazy, I thought. But I didn’t want to be crazy and a cheater, so I turned down my way out of roast lamb hell.

The night before the dinner I packed a hand-carried bottle of bourbon from the Kentucky, grey salt shaved from the salt banks of Gemunden (Germany), herb rub from Borough Market (London), a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar bought at auction, and a recently purchased gravy bowl in the shape of a duck.

I took a day off work to get ready for this fated night. I remind myself to take deep breaths as I was getting my hair/nails/makeup done. Just one more stop at the tailors then I’ll head over to his. My phone belled: “Problem. Need to reschedule. Sorry,” texted my beloved. “What!?! My scream silenced all the blow dryers in the blast radius.

I threw the lamb in the freezer, and speed-dialed my girlfriends for a night of consolement. Between glasses of bourbon, I turned up the oven, ditched the sauces, and cooked the most honest meal to ever come out of my kitchen. It was made with tears, disappointment, heartbreak and relief, not crazy psychotic behaviour. And then we feasted.

Ben's Lamb Dinner

2010-01-18T01:32:00.000-08:00

There is a reason I have a year old leg of lamb in my freezer. And everytime I open my ice box, it taunts me. I will tell this tale on its one year anniversary, then toss out this frozen object of pain.

As the saying goes, the direct path to a guy's heart is through his stomach. An Aussie guy I had an unhealthy obsession for brought up the idea of throwing a dinner party at his place a year ago. "What should I make for your dinner party?" I eagerly offered my homemaking services. "You mean our dinner party," he countered. I glowed.

We decided on leg of lamb—a classic family-style roast with prewritten gender roles of the man of the house ceremonious carving meat table side. Invites were sent and a date set. Only one problem: I've never made lamb before. I grew up in America where lamb was not a staple, nor industry.

I somehow thought if I could deliver the perfect meal he would magically love me. I drove myself insane crafting the perfect meal; Nights were lost studying cookbooks; I even bought the Jamie Oliver DVD box set. One episode showed butterflied leg of lamb, but in my fantasy dinner party, rather our fantasy dinner party, I imagined carrying out an entire leg of lamb to the table. Arg. Frustrated, I write to Jamie Oliver posting my dilemma. I was surprised his staff came back with a recipe.

I ran this recipe by Richard Ekkebus at the two-Michelin starred Amber. "Well you can't serve an Aussie that. Jamie's a Brit, Aussies do it differently." He proceeded to roll out a recipe for the perfect leg of lamb which involved professional kitchen equipment and lots of anchovies. I'll never be able to recreate this at home.

I buy additional legs for test runs. I set off my smoke detector multiple times smoking and marinating oysters for our starter course. I procured artisanal ice from Antarctica for welcome drinks. This was going to be the dinner party of dinner parties.

On my way to pick up tomatoes I ordered from Sicily the phone rings, it's him, "Hey, how's it going?" "Everything's good, looking forward to our dinner party," I said coolly. "I made a test leg of lamb last night." Shut up! Shut up! Too much information. "Wow, really?” He said. Awkward pause. “When I was a kid my grandmother would roast a leg of lamb, it was one of my favourite memories growing up." Fuck. "She would put-" at that precise moment a roaring city bus crosses my path. "Wait, what did you say?" I said half panicked. He mumbled his grandmother's list of ingredient again but I still couldn't get a clear connection through the city roar. The forces were against me. I loudly asked a third time like someone using a mobile phone for the first time believing he would hear me better if I yelled. I finally said, without meaning to: "I'm sorry I can't understand your Aussie accent unless I see your lips move."

“You want to win this guy right?” my chef friend said four days, and two overcooked legs of lamb, to showtime. “Forget the anchovies, forget the bacon, forget everything. Keep it simple. Fresh mint sauce, rosemary, roast potatoes, and gravy. You can do this. You know how to make head cheese for god's sake."
"I think I'm just too nervous and I'll fuck it up," I was going to cry.

“It’s cute how worked up you get. How about this, my kitchen will prepare everything for you. You just need to pop it in the oven." This was so cheating, but it was so brilliant.

No one really cooks from scratch anymore, we think we cook, but all we really do is assemble the parts and we call it cooking. I considered his offer. "You sure you want to be with a guy that drives you this crazy?" the chef asked. All the best ones are a little crazy, I thought. But I didn’t want to be crazy and a cheater, so I turned down my way out of roast lamb hell.

The night before the dinner I packed a hand-carried bottle of bourbon from the Kentucky, grey salt shaved from the salt banks of Gemunden (Germany), herb rub from Borough Market (London), and a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar bought at auction, and a recently purchased gravy bowl in the shape of a duck.

I took a day off work to get ready for this fated night. I remind myself to take deep breaths as I was getting my hair/nails/makeup done. Just one more stop at the tailors then I’ll head over to his. My phone receives a text from my beloved: Problem. Need to reschedule. Sorry. “What?! My scream silenced all the blow dryers in my blast radius.

I threw the lamb in the freezer, and speed-dialed my girlfriends for a night of consolement. Between glasses of bourbon, I turned up the oven, ditched the sauces and cooked the most honest meal to ever come out of my kitchen. It was made with tears, disappointment, and relief, not crazy psychotic behaviour. And then we feasted.

33

2010-01-01T02:26:00.001-08:00

Thirty-three is the largest positive integer that can’t be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers. It is also the temperature when water boils on the Newton scale. A normal human spine has 33 vertebrae. Jesus was reportedly crucified in 33 A.D., when he was 33, after performing 33 miracles. Thirty-three is the jersey number for basketball players Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O' Neal. It’s also the number of years Manchester City Football Club has gone without a trophy. It’s a significant number in modern numerology. ‘33’s are also known as long playing records, or LPs. Thirty-three is the number of victims that were all killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007. The United Nations symbol has 33 segments. '33' is a Nigerian brand of beer. In Masonary the 33rd degree is the highest possible degree (thanks Dan Brown). It is the atomic number for arsenic. ‘33’ is one of the symbols of Ku Klux Klan (K is the 11th letter in the alphabet, and it appears three times, 11 x 3= 33, KKK). Thirty-three is the coming of age of hobbits in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And that’s where our story takes us today. A coming of age story about 33.
Having hopped over the thirties wall, and now watching squeamishly how my recently-30 girlfriends splattered over the otherside, was a scary event. And without pause I'm now seeing a repeat, this time to my Schadenfreude, with my guy friends turning 33.
Within the course of two months, I’ve had four separate conversations with close friend-boys about their quests for finding the right girl so they can settle down. They say quest, I say panic because this is my second time watching this film.
When a guy's in heat, I'm not sure if I should stay away or embrace it. I offered my help to my guy friend B, age 33 last June, who spent two hours over dinner talking about how he is looking for the one and how he needs to start popping out kids. He is (sort of) my ex, and naturally I’m sad he is maturing to this now, and not when we were dating. I offered to line up my single girls for him, the top guns, the BLTs (brains, looks and talent), the Anne Hathaway-marriable type. But he was offended by the offer, "I can get girls no problem." So do I just listen or do I offer solutions, I ask you?
When guys panic, they are pretty proactive about it. My friend J, also 33 as of last June, is interviewing potential wives by having exgirlfriends live with him for two weeks at a time to see if they are, again, compatible. Other guy friends are going online, using compatibility sites such as eHarmony to match their personalities, only then to use sites like Date Search to gawk at candidates’ criminal, property, and tax situations. “Guys go through two different processes when they are looking for a girlfriend verses a wife,” said my eligible friend H, who turned 33 in September. “If he hasn’t stumbled on the one already, then by the time he hits 33, he is not fooling around anymore–until he hits his midlife,” he said brushing forward his hair to disguise his receding Jude Law hairline.
I wondered about the factors: hair loss/ wrinkles/turkey neck; pivotal successes in careers; the purchase of a first home (empty of anyone to share his kingdom); the volatility of today’s markets and the uncertainty of whether he can capture a hot girl if he loses his job; pressure from his mother (also older sisters). “Maybe, I’ve dated too many assholes and I’m looking for a nice girl,” H injected.

Over a smokin’ Korean grill at Sorabol, I was having this same conversation with my favourite married couple Andrew and Clara. "Thirty-three is the new 28," Andrew said, age 30. "It used to be that guys thought they had to be married by 30, so at 28, he starts to panic. But that bar got pushed, and now the acceptable age to get married is 35, therefore 33—panic.” He has a way of making everything clear. “Also, after a certain age you become known as the 'old guy'. None of us want to be in that position and single."
"Are you thinking about marriage Angie?" Clara asked.
"Pushing 30 I was,” I said. “Post 30, I'm not as excited over the prospect. But I kind of want to get my first marriage over with." I joke, but there is truth to my word.
To push for commitment at 30, I know well now, is based on panic, and not a sensible time to make a milestone decision. Once 30 comes and goes, the panic subsides (well, for me), and I would advise girlfriends to be cautious with those months leading up to 30. Don't make any rash decisions when you have no idea what force is driving you. Best to make the most important decision you’ll make in this life time, choosing a partner, when you are sober.
So I'm going to wait, just a little bit longer until I can make rash, grown-up decisions. Because, though jaded as I am, I do only want to walk down the aisle once.

best wines by the glass Hong Kong

2009-12-29T23:11:00.001-08:00

SECTIONCODE: 45- food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: I was getting too old to wake up with my face in a plant
W/C:
TEXT:

The longest I've gone without a drink in Hong Kong was 22 days. And when it was over I thought it was a stupid exercise to partake. Drinking is entertainment, and I was bored without it. Fact is I like drinking, I like the taste of alcohol, I just didn't like going retard then being a zombie during normal people hours. Plus, I thought I was getting too old to wake up with my face in a plant.
But drinking is good. Drinking is life. A glass of wine a day may boost life expectancy by five years, say some uncredited doctors somewhere. So rather than having a traditional dry month this January, I'm going to drink a drink a day. But sensibly, with wine not whiskey. This also means that January will be an expensive month as having a glass a day will equal being ripped off in most places, (Soho being the worst offender as a glass of wine can sometimes cost more than double the price of the entire bottle). So I've asked my friend, Wine Chap, to have a drink with me so I can pick his brain. Wine Chap (winechap.com) is a service that pits wine lists against wine lists. Their motto: "We spend our time poring over lists, so the only pouring you need to do is in your glass."
Since their arrival in Hong Kong last fall, they've produced an additional service that was probably not intended, but a great byproduct; they've unveiled the ridiculous mark up of wines in restaurants to the public, some over 400 per cent, and over the past few months this has forced some to reevaluate their wine programmes and reprice.
I asked him to take me on a mini-wine crawl of sorts to seek the best value wines by the glass around town. This kicks off a series of columns devoted to great wines by the glass. We kick off with Hong Kong Island.
Our first stop is, surprisingly, Tapeo for a glass of La Guita Manzanilla, Palomino Fino ($55 per glass). They have a sign that reads: "Sherry is the English corruption of the word Jerez". I like this place already. We have a glass of Fino with a plate of lomo (Spanish dry-cured pork loin) and plump white anchovies at the bar. I'm not sure I've ever had a better starter to an evening than this. Wine Chap agrees, "There is no better aperitif than a glass of Fino. A dry, crisp, and slightly salty style of Sherry.”
One down and four more glasses to go, (yes, I did say one glass a day, but this is research people). We head for a glass of Cabernet Franc Rosé, Couly-Dutheil Chinon Rosé ‘René Couly’ 2008, ($78 per glass). It shocked me to learn this was being served at Lian in IFC Mall. The second shocker was we had rosé with ox cheek in red curry and French loaf. But again, it was the perfect pairing. “It’s dry but oily, and soft with berry fruit and floral aromas," he says. "This perfumed rosé from Loire Valley has enough weight to deal with chillis without either the wine or the food being over-powering."
As we cross town to The Pawn, he tells me, "I'll make a journey for this wine. This wine is as good an example as you can find in Hong Kong today." I'm getting excited, and full. We skip the pasta course and go straight for the Dolcetto d’Alba 2008 Bruno Giacosa ($95 per glass). In his wine lexicon he says, "A cultural understanding of wine is really the key to getting maximum enjoyment. A simple denominator is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is best enjoyed with raw fish or oysters on a terrace in the summer. So when and why to drink an unusual grape variety like Dolcetto is important. It’s a simple grape, normally un-oaked and designed to drink young and fresh. That way it retains its perfume and juicy damson plumy fruits."
A word must be inserted that when wine is well-matched with food, both brings out the best in each other. Such is the classic coupling of cheese and wine. This evening's starlet a glass is the Côteaux Du Layon Les Rouannières Dom. C. Papin 1997 Chenin Blanc, ($210 per glass) served at the best kept secret in Central, the haute-cosy bar at Caprice, Four Seasons. Wine Chap's noted, "This is the most outstanding cheeses available in Hong Kong, and this wine in particular is unique. It’s quite floral and quince note, but has high acidity and minerality, which help it deal with salty blue cheese. It’s nothing but a noble experience."
Even gluttionists reach their limits, and I hit mine about three restaurants ago. But one more glass is in order, this time, sans food pairing. "I like to finish the meal in high, but often a glass of heavy red or a sweet dessert wine can really finish you off. So a fresh and clean glass of Prosecco is the perfect lift," he says. We head to Posto Pubblico for a glass of Nino Franco Prosecco, ($95 per glass). Here I get a lesson on the other sparkling wine. "Prosecco is not Champagne and people should stop comparing the two,” he says. It is different to Champagne because it’s less sparking," he says. "There is a lot of average stuff out there– but this is regarded as the best Prosecco producer there is.

I'll drink to that. I’ll drink to all of that.

2009-12-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

The longest I've gone without alcohol in Hong Kong was 22 days. And after my fast was over, I thought, well that was stupid. Fact is I like drinking, I like the taste of alcohol. And just because I've woken up in a plant a few times, slumber from too many Manhattans, shouldn't prevent em to stop drinking altogether. So I thought I will stick with wines, but drop my whiskey habit.

2009-12-24T03:51:00.001-08:00

It's one thing to read about it, and another to actually see it.

New York is really depressing to see. I've never seen it so bad. I've walked into a half empty Nobu, We made last minute reservations at Sushi Yusada, there was now ait at Cheesecake factory, where there was usually an one hour wait. Upmarket food retailer Dean and Deluca had four shoppers on a recent Tuesday evening as the work day closed. We all looked at eachother wondering if in fact the store was closed.

Trends towards gourmetaizing the humble burger, hot dog, sheshkabob stand or a bahn mi is not without intention. It's asserting we have superior taste without the budget.These are modern luxuries; we can't afford to buy the 'it' car, but we can afford this meal as luxury.

New yorkers are not going to let down their air of taste-makers.

These are hard times, though you wouldn't know it if you were in Asia. In 2009, there was a parade of world-reknown chefs touring through our parts looking for a oppurtunity. Sam Mason of Taylor's in New York said this at a guest chef event at Amber: "I'd like to open a place here to support my restaurant in New York."

Hong Kong restaurants are still quite full, and though you might not see a top tier wine being order as often any more, the dining rooms are still quite healthy. And that message is being spread across the wordl, especially to top-branded chefs whose business model relies on building a restuarant based on their names, and who loves brands more than Hong Kong?

The message is also that we are willing to spend $988 per person at dinner on a Wednesday night, and that is still socially acceptable to do so in these parts.

Same in London.

My dad who doesn't really care if he is dining at the hottest eatery or having a bagel in his car, was standing in line at McDonald's one morning. There was a man in front of him who was trying to redeem a hot breakfast with a coupon, which had expired the day before. The cashier would not honor it. The man said, what am I going to do? I don't have enough money. This was his only meal of the day. Ultimately, my dad purchased his set meal.

What are reviews about: it's about knowing if you should spend your money with an unknown product. Not about taste making.

food stamps

2009-12-24T03:49:00.000-08:00

Live on the mean of the national food expenditure for a week

33

2009-12-20T02:18:00.000-08:00

33 was the age of XXX, XXX, XXX when they XXX, XXX, XXX. This is to quote a reliable source, Dan Brown. 33 is also the age where I have witness men panic.

Having hopped over the thirties wall and watching carefully how my other girlfriends splattered over the otherside of that wall was scary to watch, but now I'm seeing it again, this this time to my delight, with the majority of my guy friends.

When guys panic, they are pretty proactive about it. One is interviewing potential wives by having them live with him for two weeks at a time to see if they are compatable.

When a guy's in heat, I'm not sure if I should stay away or embrace it. I offer my help to Ben, who spend two hours over dinner talking about how he is looking for the one and how he needs to start popping out kids. Ben is my ex in some fashion by the way. I offer to line up my single girls, the top guns smart-successful-marriable girls, against the wall for him to choose from. But he was slightly offended by the offer, "I can get girls no problem." So do I listen or do I offer solutions I ask you?

My own boyfriend is 33, and I throw the theory that men begin their panic at 33. And though I wasn't speakin the female language of double entredras, he understandably sees it that way. He remains very silent on the issue, but he has said that he has thought about marry this year.

I wondered about the factors, the pivot success in their careers; the purchasing of a home and empty of anyone to share his kingdom with; the violtility of the markets and the uncertainty of whether he can capture a hot girl if he loses his job; mother, (and also older sisters).

Over a Korean grill at Sorabol, I was having this same conversation with my favourite married couple Andrew and Clara. "33 is the new 28," Andrew said. "It used to be that guys thought they had to be married by 30, so at 28, he is looking at 30. But that bar got pushed, and now the accepttable age to get married is 35, therefor 33. Also, after a certain age you become the 'old guy' hunting," Andrew cringed. "None of us want to be in that position."
"Are you thinking about marriage Angie," Clara asked.

"I have to say, pushing 30 I was. Post 30, I'm not as excited over the prospect," I said. "I kinda just want to get my first marriage over with." I joke, but there is truth to my word. The panic is there, to be committed at 30, but then I know very well now that that would've been my first marriage since it was based on panic, and not sensibility. Once 30 comes and goes, the panic subsides (well for me), and I would advise any future girlfriend I meet to be cautious with those months leading up to 30. Don't make any rash decisions then, you have no idea what force is driving you.

And that is the same message to take to my 33 year-old male friends.
Best to make the most important decision of your life, choosing a life partner, when you are at your most sober.
So I'm going to wait, just a little bit longer until I can make rash, grown-up decisions. Because, though jaded as I am, I do only want to walk down the aisle once.

50 years (final)

2009-12-09T20:30:00.001-08:00

SECTIONCODE: 44-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: Futuristic postal workers have delivered this email to you because I asked it to or because I am dead.

W/C:
TEXT:

Written: December 2009, Deliver: December 2059
Subject: What if
Dear Future Self,
When you get this I hope you are sitting down. This is Angie Wong writing to you from 2009. futuris.tk, a site created by futuristic postal workers, has delivered this email to you because I asked it to or because I am dead.
It’s the last days of 2009, and I’m having a bit of a reflection period looking backward and forward. I haven't thought about what the future me will look like since I was 18 and strapped to a chair for a tattoo. But 2009 has given me pause and allowed ample time to think about the future.
I wonder what kind of world you are living in. Is it better now than it was 50 years ago? Was it how Al Gore predicted it would be? What got me on this line of thought was something that happened 50 years ago today:
My current and I went for caffeine and took in the weekend papers. I dived for the soft core news and read about restaurants abroad while he went for the review and sport pages. I gave death eyes to the columnist I used to love reading as I had just discovered his words are paid for by advertisers. Sunday papers are my diet of current affairs.
At the back of one weekend magazine I was taking in an advert, this season’s Tiffany holiday campaign. It was a full page photo of the back of a well-groomed man holding that internationally recognisable blue box, eagerly awaiting the door to open, and his answer. "You like that ad, don’t you?" my current lowered his paper to ask. "It calls to me," I responded. He kissed my shoulder and we shared a fuzzy feeling. As we laid head to head all I could think of was how this moment was sponsored by Tiffany.
So many of life’s big moments are sponsored by brands today I don’t know if I naturally feel emotions or if it was thought up by a really smart person on Madison Avenue who’s taught me to go warm and fuzzy at the thought of aqua blue. My worry for future years is whether this life is actual or manufactured.
I’ve met people named Mercedes, Pret, and Chanel. My friend in school was named after his parent’s favourite brand of toilet paper; my sister was named after a burger chain; my first boss was named after a car that her parents couldn’t afford. Tissues are Kleenex, cotton swabs are Q-tips, copies are Xeroxes. Google is a company as well as a verb. Every item on my desk, everything I’m wearing, has a branding budget of $100 million or more. Our generation might be the first to have entirely been brought up from birth on the language of brands. So, 50 years on, I have this to ask: how did you turn out? Did you have real moments, or did you have Kodak moments?
I hope you’ve read the books you wanted, and travelled to the places you’ve wanted, because, from where I’m standing, seeing the world, experiencing first-hand experiences, and coming to your own conclusions through reading and listening to multiple sources may be the only chance we get to be a real, actual person with real, actual thoughts today.
So what kind of life did it turn out to be Angie Wong?
In closing, there are a few things you need to know, or rather be reminded of: Those lumpy bits, that's from eating straight pork fat in your youth. And all those obsessive tendencies turned out to be a good thing didn't it? Time did heal all –you can’t even remember their names I bet! Turns out you didn't need all those shoes, did you?
Future me, did you marry for love, convenience or money? Was it love at first sight or love in hindsight? Have you spawned? Are you still climbing every mountain/ swimming every ocean/ crossing every desert? Who is making you do that? What's his name? Have you lived up to your potential like you had promised or have you forgotten what those were? Are you still a trouble maker? I hope you are doing exactly what you were doing 50 years ago, but maybe with a bit more grace. ; )
Wish you were here. Loving life.
Me.

33

2009-12-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

33 is the magic number. And not just because Dan Brown said it in his book The Lost Symbol (Yes, I read it, and liked it). In this day and age, I've watched my girlfriends go through their terrible 30s, and now I'm witnessing my guy friends hit their panicking 33s.

Five guys near and dear to my heart, I would consider to be my closest, some of whom I call 'the voice of reason in my head', one of whom I call my boyfriend, have all hit a brick way all at the same time. 33. This is the age, in this place, I found in my yuppie circles, to be the age when men are looking for a wife and family.

I was having dinner with one my nearest and dearest, and also exboyfriend, and he was upset he just ended things with a girl and all he wants to do is find a wife and have kids.

Why couldn't he hit that wall while we were dating?

Another dear friend said this: "I'm just tired of it all. I'm so ready to settle down. I'm interviewing potential wives now.

And this is the event: They buy a house. The source of independence, the living proof he is a provider, but he has no one to provide for. Like woman and their shapely child-birthing hips, and shapely wit, we throw up these objects to find a catch.

Is it really all that simple? Guy provides, girls need to feel provided for? And when that magic number hits for both of them, it's magic.

So find a guy toward the end of home construction and be present when he realises how empty his nest is without you there..

Dear Future Self.

2009-11-24T02:47:00.000-08:00

50 years
Written: November 2009, Deliver: November 2059
Subject: What if
Dear Future Self,
When you get this I hope you are sitting down. This is Angie Wong writing to you from 2009. futuris.tk, a site created by futuristic postal workers will send messages up to 50 years in the future or at post-morterm, has delivered this email to you because I asked it to or because I died.
It’s the last days of 2009, and I’m having a bit of a reflection period looking backward and forward. This year has aged me, maybe by 50 years. As for the future, it never occurred to think so far ahead. Never was much of a planner, your former self.
I haven't thought about what the future me will look like since I was strapped to a chair for a tattoo at 18. I wonder what kind of person you’ve become. Do you remember the ones you’ve obsessed about or did time heal all? Did you marry for love, convenience or just to see what married life was all about? Have you spawned? Are you still climbing every mountain, swimming every ocean, crossing every desert? Who is making you do that? What's his name? Have you lived up to your potential like you had promised or have you forgotten what those were? Are you still a trouble maker? I hope you are doing exactly what you were doing 50 years ago, but maybe with a bit more grace. ; )

Here’s a slice of your past blissful and glorious life:
On Sunday Dave and I sat in a coffee shop to take in the weekend papers. I dived immediately for the soft core news and read about restaurants abroad while he went for the review and sports pages. I gave death eyes to the writer whose column I used to love reading as I had just discovered his words are paid for by advertisers. This was my only diet of current affairs as during the busy work week I have no time to collect thoughts about the state of the world today sadly.
At the back of FT's How to spend it magazine, I was staring at an advert, this season’s Tiffany's sell featuring the back of a well groomed man holding that internationally recognizable blue box, eagerly awaiting the door to open, and his answer. "You like that ad, don’t you?" Dave lowered his paper to ask. "It calls to me," I responded. He kissed my shoulder and we shared a fuzzy feeling. As we laid head to head all I could think of was how this moment was sponsored by Tiffany’s.
This angst is the reason why I’m banging away on my keyboard as we speak.
So many of life’s big moments are sponsored by brands now I don’t know if I naturally feel this emotion or if it was thought up by a really smart person from Madison Avenue. My worry for the future years is whether this life is actual or manufactured.
So what kind of life did it turn out to be Angie Wong? Did you follow in the Mercedes Benz life, or were you more the Volvo type? Burberry or Tom Ford? iPhone or Vertu? Boffi or XXX? Tiffany’s or Cartier’s? I feel a violent reaction coming on. If you can honestly say none of the above, then I am proud of you.

I hope you’ve read the books you wanted, and travelled to the places you’ve wanted, because, from where I’m standing, seeing the world, experiencing first hand experiences, and coming to your own conclusions through reading and listening may be the only chance we get to be a real, actual person with real, actual thoughts.
In closing, there are a few things you need to know, or rather be reminded of: Those lump bits, that's from eating straight pork fat in your youth. And all those obsessive tendencies turned out to be a good thing didn't it? Turns out you didn't need all those shoes, did you? Future Me, I hope I didn't forget what's their names. I hope we're all still on speaking terms.

Wish you were here. At 32. Loving life .
Me.

This romantic moment was sponsored by.. Tiffany’s.

2009-11-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday Dave and I sit in a coffee shop and take in the weekend papers. At the back of FT's How to spend it magazine, I was staring at an ad, a Tiffany's ad on a handsome man holding that internationally recognisable aqua blue box, eagerly awaiting for the door to open. "Do you like that ad?" Dave leans over to ask me. "It calls to me," I respond. He kisses my shoulder and we share a warm feeling. What disturbs me is that this ad triggered our first communication about the idea of marriage.

What further disturbed me was that I wanted to live the message of that ad. My special moment will be sponsored by Tiffany's.

What kind of lifestyle do I desire? Do I want the BMW lifestyle? Or do I want the Volvo lifestyle? Do I feel French's mustard or am I more Grey Poupon?

Whole Foods

2009-11-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

Todd scooped me up in his BMW convertible outside on Bonham Road then handed me a book of road maps, “What do I do with this?” I panicked as I haven’t seen a road map in decades. “You’re playing navigator,” Todd Darling, restaurateur of the newly opened Posto Publico, told me. “Where’s your GPS? Wait, I’ve got one on my iPhone…” I said hoping for a promise of actually getting to our destination. He threw me a yuppie brat look. “Nice BMW Todd,” I fired back.
Todd and I were headed for Yuen Long, into farm country to watch vegetables grow, and maybe kill a pig. As we cruised through fume-choked tunnels, he spoke about how he wanted to be a different kind of restaurateur, better than the model we currently have. His philosophy: There are many ways to make money, why not choose to be ethical while making cash?
We pulled up to Hong's Organics farm, and I stepped out to plant my driving loafers into fresh mud. There were butterflies everywhere and a sweetness in the air, perhaps fresh? Todd was arranging vegetable pickups for the restaurant’s opening. He has chosen this supplier because Thomas Fung, the owner, was one of the only farmers who wanted to work with a non-Chinese. It has been a struggle to source ingredients locally for his restaurant as the simpler option would’ve been to do what everyone else is doing: pick up the phone to a mass supplier. But “this is the only way I want to open a restaurant,” he said.
I’m well-read enough to know how to eat healthy and respectfully, but lack the time and commitment to this way of life full time. There are too many rules and inconveniences: buy only vegetables from certified organic farms from lands afar, find line-caught fish that isn’t on the endangered list (memorise the endangered list), eat eggs from birds raised on acres of land that pooped out eggs when it felt like and not forced with hormones. If this process was only made easier for the yuppie eat-gooder, say in the form of a restaurant, then I would subscribe. I’m also a cynic as I know how our supermarkets jack up prices for items labeled with marketing buzz words of the season (‘organic’, ‘free range’, ‘healthy’) when in fact it really depends on which bodies certifies it. My skepticism started early in life when I learned beef were cows, pork were pigs, and chicken fingers was from ground up chicken parts. Much like the line ‘green tea will prevent cancer’, I eat with caution.
I kept asking Todd what’s his gimmick? What kind of pony show will your restaurant have? As a food writer I need those talking points for my story. “Nothing,” he said over and over again. And it wasn’t until I sat down with him and his partners at his restaurant before I completely understood what he was saying. Serving fresh foods shouldn't be a hook or a sell point. It should be what every restaurant in the country is serving. Real, whole foods.
Inside Posto Publico’s kitchen, I was shocked this restaurant made their own breads, cheeses, and fish are from sustainable sources. They pretty much do everything themselves but milk their own cows (that might be in Q3). I had to stop and ask myself why this was shocking to see. It was only when seated in front a platter of roasted baby vegetables and chicken Francais that I knew this shouldn’t be a diner’s privilege, it should be every diner’s given right to be served such foods. This is how a real restaurant is supposed to run.
“We have a responsibility (in the food industry) to served people whole food,” Todd said. Other restaurant owners call him and his team idealists, and predict their end citing the high rent and food cost will buckle them. But I think they are onto something, here’s what Bostonian Restaurant has to say about going 100 per cent sustainable by 2010:
“We have seen a large increase in demand for sustainable eating this year. As people grow more concerned about the future of our environment and food sources, I think it is our responsibility to ensure we are sustainable where possible,” said executive chef Mark Bannon, of The Langham. They have been sourcing suppliers and making sure they can receive goods all year round. When budgeting cost factors, they found it not too huge of a jump from their nonsustainable supplier s. They also plan to educate the staff on why and where their fish will come from as they will ultimately educate Bostonian’s customer.
I was at the Sydney Food Fair a few weeks ago, and each restaurant we visited (Otto, Quay, Kables) had the names of the farms the vegetables grew in, names of the butchers who supplied the meats, and even the valley in which the fizzy water was bottled. Restaurants were proud to highlight their produce selection and suppliers, which in turns make them take the responsibility, and creditability, for what they serve customers. Pride and customer satisfaction from one line of ownership.
We forget eating isn’t a cuisine, or a dish, or even entertainment. It’s to feed our bodies. It is for enjoyment, and by that I don’t mean ordering from the alba truffles menu, I mean ingesting real food in which your body can enjoy its nutrients and healing benefits.
My Hong's Organic farmed carrot had a rotted hole running through its body, this doesn’t happen with industrially grown carrots. But it was simply roasted with a bit of oil and salt, and it tasted of sunshine. If you have never tasted a real carrot or tomato or fresh corn picked only hours ago, then you have not eaten. I realise this way of eating will have rots and bugs and worms and dirt. All of which I am looking forward to consuming if it means it tastes this good.

2009-11-12T04:43:00.001-08:00

I get into Todd's BMW convertible and he hands me a road map. What am I supposed to do with this? I panicked. Where's your GPS? Luckily I have google map on my iphone.

((Setting up yuppie modern_))

Women (!)

2009-11-11T19:25:00.000-08:00

me: hi
Daniela: hey Angie :)
me: How is it going?
Sent at 11:13 AM on Thursday
Daniela: ok
this girl wrote a super rude email to me yesterday.
me: what did she say?
Daniela: in front of the board insulting me when I was just trying to do my job
Haha
Sent at 11:15 AM on Thursday
me: write her off
not worth worrying about
Daniela: well it was not the first time she sent out sarcastic emails
just makes her look bad
me: a colleague?
Daniela: but I was a bit offended
on Wokai volunteering board
It was totally unneccesary
me: oh no
egos
Daniela: It is a job for a cause but some people still feel the need to exert power she doesn't have
Yes
It is the perfect word
My friend told me a long time ago she was egotistic
Even as a friend
And at job
It totally shows
me: she'll learn one way or another
I'm sorry you had to deal with her
Daniela: yes because I hate dramas
sometimes I am hesitant to be close to a lot of girls because they are catty
me: YES
I disassociate from lots of girls
Daniela: I get emotional so I hate it when they do that
me: too much drama and fighting
well, learn to sort the good from teh bad, needy ones
Daniela: I suppose
me: I tend to stay away from girls in general
it is only now that I have a small pool of GFs
Daniela: yes but I enjoy this work but I always am afraid once u show you can do something, people are bound to attack you
My gfs are all very comfortable with themselves
me: yes, that's exactly right. Once you show confidence and ability they get jealous
Daniela: so I am more chill with them and we won't compete
me: I work in publishing.. I know
Daniela: Yes u must get that a lot
me: well, I've learned you have to create an atmosphere where they can chill with you
Daniela: Esp because you write
me: otherwise they attack
I'm trying to figure out how to handle women
we should share our findings
Daniela: haha. sure
me: Well, I was wondering if you and Brian have plans this Saturday evening?
Daniela: I don't think I am qualify
Bri will be leaving again till my dinner
:(
me: awww
Daniela: Yup
me: I have a wine dinner to go to on Sat and wanted to invite you both
Daniela: Which one
me: Press Room
Daniela: I see
Too bad

FCC

2009-11-11T06:09:00.000-08:00

Why would I want to go to a party with them? I hate them all. My friend Daniel says. Well why drag me to going with you? I asked. Because its my going away party?

It's a tradition in his office that everyone who resigns get a company paid going away party. The reason why I'm resigning is to get away from these people.

So I go to the FCC to meet the three witches, his soon to be former bosses.

Cook her to bed.

2009-10-27T02:35:00.000-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 41-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: Anyone willing to take the time to prepare you a meal from scratch will take his time in bed
W/C:
TEXT:

I was in bed, rereading an old article in GQ on how to cook her into bed. The menu lists “oyster with a champagne butter sauce” I was laughing out loud at the thought of a guy trying to crack open an oyster, much less make champagne butter. Sorry, my bias. When I was done with the article, I realised my current cooked me into bed. It was a home-cooked meal of chicken breast stuffed with XX cheese, wrapped in prosciotto then roasted in a hot oven. There was wine, lots of it, followed by make outs, lots of it. I'm not sure what was more impressive, the fact he made me a meal from scratch or that he had designer place mats. He might be the full package, as they say.

I was telling my friend MM about my new someone and he emailed me a recipe that's always worked for him when he was on the hunt. In his words:
"I call it my makeout recipe….Duck breast, sautéed mushrooms with thyme on a bed of couscous with burnt orange sauce drizzled over it. I cook the breast very rare, a nice slathering of fat is the perfect comfort food to relax the ladies. A salad of rocket leaves with lemon zest dressing, blue cheese and tomatoes will show you’re receptive to the female dietary needs. Then lots of red wine. No whites – red wines make them sleepy. If the girl is badass you get out a little cognac or port, then you're off to puddy town."
So do most guys have default recipes to get girls in bed? It seems so as every guy I asked could recite a recipe without having to draw too far back into file cabinet. "There's always one or two in my repriotorier," says my playboy friend MC. His specialities are sauces, ones you can feed woman with finger (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, "it depends on her hair colour," he notes.). I'm all cheesed out at the thought, and worse, women fall for it.

I was hoping my chef friends had better recipes to share but nothing they said really would impress me enough to jump out of my clothes. "If you really want to impress her," Chef CM says. "Then you invite yourself over to her kitchen and make a meal out of what she's got in her pantry. "I've only got ice cubes," I challenge him. "Then he'll make slurpees," says his pastry chef friend.

So if he cooks her dinner, then it's a sure recipe that he gets the girl? I mean once you're in his house, he's got you for the night right?
"Duh. If a guy invite you over for dinner, and you accept, you know you have to put out," says my girlfriend IH. "And you know you are supposed to bring wine too." But what if she's trying to impress him? "Then produce a dessert to show off your home economic skills," says my tai tai girlfriend CD. "Bring something that will scent his kitchen with warmth and homeiness, like a perfume that lingers on his pillow days after, and make as little mess as possible." Now that she's mentioned it, I do have one or two recipes in my repetorier, one of which includes a homemade madeline that impresses with the smallest amount of effort excerpted. This and a cup of vanilla early grey will make him think: Who the hell bakes anymore? Oh, my mother.

But if you are totally inept in the kitchen, here's a fool-proof bring-over. Waitrose does a fantastically delicious frozen pear tart. Pull apart the packaging, pop it in the oven for 30 minutes and let it cool for 20 minutes before serving. I also like to 'make' a vanilla sauce to dress the tart, which involves a trip to 7-11. Grab a small pot of vanilla ice cream, then let it sit on the counter as you have dinner. By the time you are ready to serve dessert, the ice cream is fully melted and you spoon some creme on the plate or on top of your tart. It's up to you if you want to lie about the origins of the cake, I prefer to come clean when it comes to pre-baked. I've 'made' this tart for a party of eight before and there's no need to pretend like you've spent all day baking and saucing. Best to be upfront about your busy lifestyle and your make-do 7-11 sauce. You can also do a nice 7-11 parfait with Twix bars, pre-pack fruit salad, and double-cream. Or a nice casserole of bread and butter pudding and 7-11 granita (depending which flavour coffee they have that day) with crushed Kit-Kat bars. In fact, a good amount of my dessert recipes has some origins from 7-11.

What was my point? Right, sex and how to get some. I don't know. But its not really about the food is it? It's about someone caring (real or fake) enough about you to spend a few hours in the kitchen with the desire to feed you. And when we're talking about food, we might as well be talking about sex as in this context is interchangeable. Because anyone willing to take the time to prepare you a meal from scratch, will take his time in bed or the kitchen or wherever.

The drunk dial

2009-10-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 40-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
W/C:
TEXT:

Lately, my sleep has been interrupted by an exboyfriend. We don't speak anymore per se, but his phone likes to call me occasionally around 3am, the dead of night. Our breakup had left me with lots of unanswered questions, and I began seeking answers in the smallest of details. When the morning came, and after the sleep fog as past, the rationalising hat went on. He must be drunk dialing again, you think to yourself. Or maybe since my name begins with an ‘A’, I’m the lucky recipient of unintended pocket calls. Well, if he doesn’t miss me, then at least his phone does. Confirmation is had when I go to check my voicemail: a series of 10-minute long messages of euro trash beats crushing the threshold of my phone's speakers filled the available recording space.
There are some people who complain about being that guy who strangers stop on the street to ask for directions, well I’m going to complain about being that girl who is on the receiving end of drunk messages. And it’s not just dialing, but drunk text messaging, emails, Facebooking, and visits.
My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
While our self-editors tend to turn off under the influence and our true-selves released, I’m happy to be on the receiving end of unabridged conversations and stream of conscious mind barfs, but not in the middle of the night please. And after years of being a one-person crisis hotline, I have noticed that we, when intoxicated, are the total opposites of our daylight selves. The inhabited become un, and vice versa, we know. But I’m talking a Jekyll and Hyde complex, where sinners become saviours, and where the dumb become smart, which phantoms out. Booze, it seems gives us voice.
For the past few years, I've been the receiver of drunken emails from one reader who sends me page-long passages on topics such as women he’s just slept with and the future of Sarah Palin’s America. And inevitable, he’ll follow up with an email the morning after to tell me he was very, very drunk and very, very sorry. I quite enjoy his email rants about nothing, and everything. Though I don't believe for a second his perfectly composed letters sans spelling mistakes and filled with paragraph indents were written under the influence. If we are opposites from our drunken-texting self, then he must be illiterate.
Ok, I’ve given a few drunk-dials as well. They were somewhere along the lines of “I hate you, but I love you,” Judy Garland cries. But I’m not going to relive those. I want to help people, like me, with drunk-dialing/texting disorders. One solution is to kindly ask your phone carrier to block you from making calls to certain people (or all people) without a special dial-in code. If your phone service doesn’t offer you this, you can do what one of my girlfriend does: “I leave off the last digit to my boss’s number on my phone. It’s the only way I can prevent myself from calling her the foulest witch in finance.” Overseas there are services that make you do a simple math evaluation before unlock your phone privileges between the hours of midnight to 6am (the magic hour when reasoning returns).

Google has stepped in too to help drunk emailers. Its Mail Goggles is your email straitjacket. You have to complete five arithmetic problems in under 60 seconds to unlock your email between designated hours. (I’m not sure my aptitude in mathematics would allow me to do this sober.)
LG also makes a breathalyzer phone, which prevents you from dialing certain numbers if your blood alcohol levels is too concentrated –any time of day.
These gadgets are fun, but also an admittance that you have a drinking problem. So I take a less techie approach to control my uncontrollable self, I delete the numbers of my formers. Their numbers may linger on the memory for the short term, but this guarantees me piece of mind when in the company of a bottle.
But, even with all these tools to prevent the true-self from speaking, it always finds a way to transmit. I sent out a drunken text of my own asking the ex if his 3am rings were intentional, even unconsciously intentional, or was his phone just foned of me? (True self translation: ‘after months of silence are you trying to reach out, or am I to continue to rationalise this and pretend your phone keeps calling me by accident?’ Ok, my drunken self and true self are pretty much in line.) I wanted answers. Apparently, my drunken text voice was an angry one.
His response was one I hadn’t factored in: “I was trying to call someone else but was epically drunk. I might have to refile you under Wong.”

2009-10-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Future self

When you get this I hope you are sitting down. If you only knew what a trouble maker you are today, you can't give your daughter shit for wanting to do the same.
.
I just hope i live to my potentials.

I hope I never turn on my self-editor and lose the ability to throw up my thoughts on a page.
In fact I hope I don't change much.
If I'm lucky enough to make it to 80+ and reading this email, then I'm one lucky girl. In fact, I'm already very lucky.

I hope I don't forget what's his name. i hope we're still on speaking terms

Oh, those lump bits, that's from eating straight pork fat.

All those obsessive bits turned out to be a good thing didn't it?

Turns out you didn't need all those shoes did you?

In fact, if I'm doing exactly what I'm doing right now, I'm pretty happy.

Subject: What if
Wish you were here. At 32. Loving life .

Future Me, I wonder if I'm in a love marriage, a convenient marriage, or an arranged marriage.

That book on my desk; Diary.

Future self: I have so many questions for you.

I haven't thought about the future me since I got my tattoo at 18.

Are you still climbing every mountain, swimming every ocean and crossing every dessert. Who is making you do that? What's his name?

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2009-10-05T01:53:00.001-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 39-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. We had no idea then, at 14, we were entering the most powerful time in our lives. Being young and carefree, and discovering the powers teenage girls hold over men of all ages.
Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xi Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sends me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I reply, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big, generous smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers now struggling to find common interest again. Minus the gym class smoking breaks, the underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me, but then nearby tables started cheering for us to kiss. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on these walls or in Beijing.
One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. But in a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we made out?” He took a second to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us dared to breathe. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds in angst awaiting release while people hooted. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in awkward silence. And when the tables of teenage boys offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as stories of being young, dumb and powerful, never to be restaged, or upstaged in this case, in adult life.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2009-10-05T01:53:00.000-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 39-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xui Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff that I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sent me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I’m replying, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers struggling to find common interest again. Minus gym class smoking breaks, underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. A nearby table on teen Goths cheer us on. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on this walls, I think, was what the owner was to convey. One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. In a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we kissed?” He had to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us were breathing. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds, while cheers deafen the room, we angstly awaiting release. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in an awkward silence. And when the adjacent table offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as a story of youth, and not restaged.

dear penthouse

2009-10-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Penthouse

I never thought this could happen to me. Sitting in a restaurant with a woman I've fantanised about since high school, and now, meeting in an erotic city of beijing, I find her so boring.
The sexual attracyion must have been purely physical, but not chemical. Her mind doesn't fuck me. I had no desire to kiss this woman, even though I brought her to the one place to guarantee a little mouth to mouth.

She hadn't change one bit, sexy as ever. But if I had to take a guess, relied too heavily on her lips and glaze that she never exercised a different muscle, her XXX.
I guess gain confidence, either though knowledge or compliments, fulfills the void and tames the drive for compensation.

I had loved her, as I have all my past loves. But I realise now that I was in love with romanticised idea of her and me in highschool. And in reality, we had little in common/ lust.

This is the Dear Penthouse letter gone ary.

2009-09-18T03:48:00.000-07:00

I always took pleasure when guys would say," Why are you meeting guys online? You're not the kind of girl to go on these things." I take a strange pleasure in hearing those words.

HK's Signature Drink

2009-09-17T02:20:00.000-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 38-food-UTT
SECTION: Food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: The Wan Chai Wash— a combination of beer, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila, and kamikaze shots with a measure of spit and of vomit, then poured over a 5am kabob.
W/C:
TEXT:

I write this to you from an uncomfortable stool at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. I came here to discover why the Singapore Sling, invented at this bar in 1936, is so famous. I see it at every shitty airport bar, in every cocktail book, in our collective memories. Though I do not know of anyone who would comfortably order this vile mixture of thickened cough syrup and food colouring poured over a mug of sugar (for this pleasure, it cost me S$23). But to condemn this drink is to condemn the nation whose name is behind it. So I better tread carefully.
I’ve been thinking for some time about why Hong Kong doesn’t have a signature drink. Singapore’s got the Sling; Russia’s got the white Russian, and black Russian for that matter; Ireland’s got Guinness; Mexico has the margarita’s (though Texans will dispute this to their death-beds). And no introduction needed: The Cosmopolitan. So how come Hong Kong missed the international boat on this one?
If Hong Kong is a first tiered, world-class city, we should have a drink that symbolises us, much like its famous bridge, tower, statue or national dish. We should have our flag in every shitty airport bar. So I went searching, for a drink that represents Hong Kong. Came up with nothing.
Then I remembered something Karen Mok told me, “Hong Kong people think imported is better than homegrown.” Is pride the reason we lack a national drink?

After a self-education on cities’ signature cocktails, I found that the commonality running between most national drinks is this: sweetness. You see it in the sticky-sweet fruit punch of Singapore Slings, the rim’s of margarita glasses, the sweetened whipped cream of a Blow Job (tossed back, no hands). Sugar, it seems, aids sales. Second, the most famous cocktails were created in hotel bars. Much of this has to do with the hotel’s famous, vocal, clienteles such as F. Scott Fitzgerald who used to eat the orchid garnish off a lovely young woman’s drink in order to gain her favour at the Petit Bar at the Ritz Paris.

Third trait: the origins of the main liquor component are home-grown. Rice wine, maybe our only alcoholic spawn, does not agree with me, but maybe as a wash it could give the drink a secret burn.
With friends, I tossed around this question of the city’s signature drink. We created a laboratory of sorts and played around with plum sauces, ginger liquor and got down-right drunk in the process. Through our drunken stupor, we did invented one delight: The Wan Chai Wash— a combination of beer, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila, and kamikaze shots with a measure of spit and of vomit, then it is poured over a 5am kabob.
Since we still don’t have a drink that represents us, I, in a hurried afternoon, thought up of what could represent Hong Kong in a glass. In a combined effort between myself and Gani, the bartender at Union J, a recipe was revised to one and a half part gin, one part crème de ginger, one part orange liquor, freshly crushed ginger and a topping of boxed lemon iced tea found at any local Circle K. It was as refreshing as an icy pimm’s lemonade on the hottest of Hong Kong days.

I don’t know who said it first, we were evenly drunk by this time, but someone slurred out “Wong Island Iced Tea”. And that stuck as the name of this drink.

I’m not going to be pompous and say that the Wong Island Iced Tea will become Hong Kong’s national drink. I just want there to be a national drink for no other reason than to see it on a menu in a shitty hotel bar by the airport.

So if not this one, then maybe another, created by someone who knows what they are talking about, who is actually a person of mixing authority. So I’ve asked several bartenders from hotel bar in Hong Kong to create what they think would be a candidate for a drink that would best represent our city.

There will be no contest or casting of votes for this drink. People will vote with their wallets and their tastebuds and maybe the public relation world will do its thing spread the word. Then hopefully one day, I’ll be sitting at a shitty bar in an airport sipping Hong Kong’s signature cocktail.

The Future 50 years

2009-09-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

This would be interesting to see if this even reaches me. It might amuse you to know that I'm listening to Britney Spear's Piece of Me, a song that is already over a year old, and a song I'm about ten years too old to be enjoying.

On this day, I'm on two ends of an extreme. I've come off a breakup with a man who says he loves me, but I couldn't get myself to say those word back. And when you you don't love someone, on no occasion should you compromise and lie with those words.

On the other end of the extreme, I'm smitten by a man, a gentleman, who calls me up on a telephone on a Tuesday to ask me out on a date on Friday. Not an SMS (short message service), not a Facebook message, not an email. He call me on a phone, one that's is attached to the wall no less. This is old-school, even for this day. And I find him to be the last of gentlemens.

I am now listening to Philippe Glass, The Poet Acts. It's a soothing afternoon tune that I've enjoyed for sometime now.

I'm assuming I will be a different person 50 years from now. By the way, I haven't changed much over the years. I'm assuming I will still have sight and other sensories to enjoy this letter. But I have to tell you, that I recently went from 20/15 vision, to something much less. This has me worry that I send too much time in front of a screen. And I receive far too much information from a screen rather than books, travel or real life experience. Which of course scares me because I am being shaped by screens with too much chatter, like everyone's got a platform for speaking, no not enough people are saying a thing. I'm not creating my own thoughts. And reading, traveling and experiencing might be the only chance we get to, in this age, perhaps, becoming our own person. A real person with pure thoughts and the ability to make decisions based on first hand experiences and untainted intuition. That is my wish for myself.

I wonder if I will be able to fulfill my potential when I come to read this 50 years from entering these words on my keyboard.

We are so caught up with our immediate self, a guarded self, that we rarely share. This really is an exercise of talking to yourself. A conversation we have less and less of eachday.

31 year old Egyptian woman

2009-09-15T04:27:00.001-07:00

My host XXX in Cairo gave me pause when her phone rang a baby's cry. I asked, "Is that yours?" No, she shook her head, half smiling, half crying. We were having lunch at a highly touristy- highly priced restaurant in the middle of XXXX market. It was a pleasure to dine in such a themed park diner meant to evoke the romance of Egypt, but you get the sense no one who lives here actually lives like this.

"I want to have babies," she told me without prompting. She says that's all she wanted now. With part regret she recalled being excited by going to school, and studying tourism and languages She makes more than her male family members giving tours of her city and its famous pymides. But she says, she is 31 years old, the same age as me. And in this society she is too old for marriage. Men will not ask for dates, they want younger she says. She says if you are not picked for marriage before 16-18 years, then chances are not likely she will get married. She started to tell me about a Turkish non-Muslim boy who had asked her for coffee years ago, but she could not be seen out with him in a cafe as it was against her religion to be seen with a man in public that is not her husband. She couldn't be seen with him, but thought about him for her husband. She said she wanted children with him or some one else.

I could read she was hopeful, but the hope started fading away long ago, and this was only a fraction of her. Her future dimmed every year a man would not take her. I was feeling the same pressure as I was months from turning 32. I had been dumped just months ago from a man who didn't see me in his future. Who after one and a half years of dating couldn't call me his girlfriend. Who just didn't love me and never said those words just so he could not be blamed later on, the looming break up he was always certain of and I feared since the beginning of our relationship.

I felt time, as she had. I felt time slipping. And I wanted everything now. As she had. The man, the baby, a future. The sound of babies crying, her own, my own baby crying.

But I felt young. Younger than she. I felt I have a few more years of hopefulness. She was dim and on the verge of cracking. I could wear shirts to show my shoulders, even that became an advantage I had and she didn't. Age, for the most part, was of the mind, her's a reality.

Money, the evidence of food, highly-priced food, laid on our table that we shared, was an issue that divide me and her. Our education, similar. But hers meant she could not meet suitors, mine meant I could.

How much longer does she have to be hopeful?

I paid for the meal and her as well. She gave me more than I thought I would see on a visit to Egypt.

The Break Up

2009-09-14T17:50:00.000-07:00

He knocked three times. I thought it was noise from upstairs. Then he knocked a few more. I sat in bed listening, silently. He finally rang the door bell. All the while I waited in bed afraid to move. The phone rings. I ignore it. Surely he must know I'm ignoring him.

I feel sick about this. I feel sick I needed to ignore him. Finally I hear a slam at the door and I think he's gone.

I slip into the shower and just let it rain down on me. I hate that I am acting so viscerally towards him. But it's over. He had come by the night before on my invitation. We had drunk wine and ate salad. He had talked about the future, and I had talked about seeing other people. We left on a hug, mine was goodbye, his was, well, I'm not sure.

How would I explain this to him if he came by again? That I was kept up all night from the bottle of red we drank and was fast asleep when he rang my bell? This was half truth. I can hear him moving outside. He is reading a magazine.

The shower felt good. It was like drinking a glass of water.

When a person says I love you and you don't feel the same way, the only thing to say is I don't love you. Never is there an option to say anything but.

I'm kind of scared to step outside.

This is not an act of romance. It's a little bit creepy.

Break ups are hard man. I don't want him touching me, I don't want him hugging me. i don't want to give him and indication that I might be interested in his love for me. It is not recipricated.

Family meals

2009-09-02T00:31:00.001-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 37-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: She had just graduated with a degree in psychology or sociology or mind-fucking or something, with a minor in theatre.
W/C:
TEXT:

Every year my late grandfather would host an end of the summer family gathering and the extended family would come together for a spectacular dinner he made from scratch. He grew his own vegetables and picked them before the season was over; he killed chickens, frogs, pigs, and made plum wine. It was the one time of year the entire family travelled from all over the world to eat, not because we want to but because we had to.
Since his passing, no one had bothered to organise all the uncles and aunties together. The cousins didn’t get to see eachother grow up. And the family members became strangers again, happily.
My dad, feeling his legacy, decided to call together the family again this summer. I couldn’t make up my usual excuse of living overseas, or being overworked. They were all coming to Hong Kong.
They say you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. And as I sat down for our first meal together, this was never more evident.
In the five years since our grandfather died we hadn’t been together in the same room. I had a good look around the table. Who were all these strangers? How did my cousin Janice with an eating disorder grow to be over six feet tall? Who was uncle Paul’s new wife, or was it the same wife with some work done? Why did step-cousin Jenifer go blonde? “No, that’s Jimmy’s girlfriend –no one knows her name,” my sister whispered.
There were kids as well, but I had no idea who they belonged to. Three of them sat head down with their PS3, no one bothered to feed them, no one bothered to even introduce them. The aunties and uncles made dumb flatteries such as how everyone lost weight (lies) or how no one’s aged (more lies). No one mentioned to auntie Jane that she gave her new daughter a porn star name, or how uncle Paul has a new girlfriend but was still wearing his wedding ring, or the fact that no one bothered invited uncle George. “Uncle George is still contesting [grandfather’s] will,” my rumour-mill sister said. We were a sorry bunch.
On many occasions I enjoy a proper Chinese banquet, but this might be the longest 11-courses I’ve ever eaten. I turn to Jimmy’s no-name girlfriend to make contact, and was sorry I did. She had studied journalism as I had and was looking for a job as a broadcast news anchor. She had dyed her hair from black to blonde and gotten a ridiculous Thai boob job. The entire first three-courses she spent bitching that news producers wouldn’t take her seriously.
Now cousin Jon and I always got along. While the women had done a good job of raising their daughters to be future golddiggers and housewives, Jonny and I were reformed hippies. I want to give him credit for teaching me how to make bugs explode in the microwave, but it might have taught him that. I was looking forward to spending time with him, as he was the only non-crazy of the bunch. Unfortunately he came as the handbag of his 22 year old girlfriend who wouldn’t let him speak a word. She had just graduated with a degree in psychology or sociology or mind-fucking or something, with a minor in theatre. She wanted to take this trip to explore career options in Asia.“This is where it is all happening right now,” she was telling me this. Over conpoy and egg white scramble, she went on and on about her expertise in what… I’m still trying to understand. An expertise she gained from studying in a classroom for the last 15 months and now has some degree in. She spoke with so much naiveté and punk attitude of absoluteness, that I actually felt old for judging her. “What is your intention with Jon?” I wanted to make this weird. Well, that ended her air of certainty.
My aunt Nancy said someone really wanted to meet me. I didn’t even know I had a cousin named Alexis. And within nine seconds of sitting with her I could tell she didn’t want to meet me either, but was nudged by aunt Nancy to butter me up to write her college applications for her. “We’re family, we’re supposed to help eachother,” my aunt turned 90 degrees in her chair to inject. “I’m happy to edit what she writes, but I can’t recount her life’s experiences for her,” I said not-so-politely, plus I didn’t even know she existed until tonight.
“So how much does your employers pay you,” asked my great-uncle Tow. I wanted to tell him my eyes were up here. “The important thing is you’re happy! Hahaha!” he creeps me out till this day. I wondered if my parents ever left me alone with him.
I wish my grandfather was here. He would be sitting next to me right now, and I know what he would’ve said when the soy chicken came out, “I make this better!” and he could make it so much better. He was a chef, and he set out to train his grand kids into gourmands. He fed me lobster as my first solid food. What kind of twisted person feeds babies bottom-feeder crustacean as their first meal? He found it to be the ultimate expression of love and giving his little ones the best foot forward in life. He was also the one who taught me how to smoke. And when he hit the 90 marker, his doctors told him not to quit as it would kill him if he stopped his two packs a day habit. He was so old he would tell his self-editor to shut up aloud and said it as they were. We got along the best. And now that all of my grandparents have passed, and I know I’m not supposed to do this, I can say he was my favourite.

North Korea

2009-08-18T03:30:00.001-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 36-food- UTT
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang.
W/C:
TEXT:
A funny thing happened on the way to North Korea. Two American journos were caught sneaking into the Hermit Kingdom and sentenced to 12 years in a hard labour camp. I have a slight obsession with North Korea and these idiots were the reason why my visa was revoked. Like a spoilt child, I wanted to throw something.
I was looking forward to a weekend of feasting on small abalone from the East Sea of Korea –while the rest of the country starves; I wanted to stuff my face with pine needle mushroom – picked by hard labour prisoners; I wanted to eat dog. But most of all, I wanted to indulge in commie kitsch.
So with purchased tickets to my departure city of Beijing, I go for some solo commie fun. In BJ, I decide to stay clear from Peking Duck, boiled dumplings and all those delicious red bean pan cakes that have upped my pants size on previous trips, instead I contact the North Korea embassy for a list of North Korean restaurants in the Red Capital. A list of three names reverted to me, diners all owned by the embassy itself. The internet turned up a half-dozen more.
Pyongyang Haedanghwa is the most well-known of the bunch, and I thought I’d start my commie 101 class there. Inside, my cellphone was not blocked, but calls would cut off after the first words were spoken. It was so comical I would multi-call my friend to split out one word each time. My itinerary of restaurants tucked inside a plain manila folder was pulled out of my hand and examined upon entry by pretty hostesses in traditional hot pink robes. “Where are you from?” one host asked me in three languages.
The thing you need to know about these girls is that they are spies. Ok, those are incriminating words. These government officials’ daughters and nieces are hand-picked, given intelligence training and the pretty ones get shipped out to Beijing on a three-year rotation to work in their restaurants. A bus drops them off in the morning, and a bus picks them up at night. They live together. Once in a while, they take group excursions around the city, but they are never to interact with foreigners except when working. They are the lucky ones.
“I’m from Hong Kong,” I reply. “You skin is very tan. Hong Kong women like white skin, you are really from Hong Kong? You look like ABC, a little bit,” she says right on. “Say something Chinese,” my dinner companion urged. It slipped my mind that North Koreans are not very friendly with Americans, just Bill Clinton. But I just smile.
There was the dining room, and there was the state’s dining room. The positioning of each table tells a story of where on the important scale you rank. We were sat by the kitchen entrance, how does that translate?
Two men in grey boxy suits with mandarin collars sporting the fashionable cut of the day, the Kim Jong Il, strolled by and I whipped out my camera. Before I could even position myself, it was ripped from my hands. “No photo,” our hostess said sternly, smiling. I assume I’ll get that back.
They uncomfortably surround me as I jot thoughts in my notebook. “Personal space is not exercised here” I write in BIG letters. My companion was thoroughly embarrassed or scared, I couldn’t tell from his facial expression.
A seashell came out on a flame. Sliced Korea turbo fish and shitake cooked in a fragrant broth boiled inside and we were instructed to eat it very quickly. Our host was never far from the table. She knew I was up to no good. An assortment of kim chee came out. This looked like kim chee served at any Korean meal, but its taste was more sour than heat, more fresh then pickled. And when the mild-tasting kalbi came out I understood why. They don’t use MSG. Since they don’t trade much with foreign purveyors, MSG is probably not a common kitchen item like it is in South Korea.
In the next room, I heard singing, spinning Korean girls entertain dignities. They get the full show of dancing, piri (Korean flute) playing, and who knows what else. I didn’t see a picture of Kim Jong Il anywhere, and as if my dining companion read my mind, he said as a deal with Beijing, they cannot put up a mural of their leader here. But they did have pleasant oil paintings of vistas and happy families by the winter lake. It was all the commie fun I had wished for and more. The dog meat and steamed dog trotters were not the highlight. This was a cross of The List; this was a one-bite curiosity—satisfied.
There were lots of pine nuts, pine tree mushroom and corn noodles served. This special corn and soybean noodle is said to delay hunger, a gift from the Japanese. After one bowl of cold noodles I was still left hankering to taste more of what North Korea had to offer. And when I asked for the menu for round two, the waitress looked at our table dotted with half-eaten plates and said, “No waste.”
That was when I was reminded of the people of North Korea and its leader who threatens the world with nukes –all for a bag of potato to feed his happy, dancing, singing people. Who was this wasteful American who infiltrated their dining room, whose presence in this restaurants challenged their commie ways, and what rights does she have to comment on their way of life without having faced hardship herself? A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang. And with complimentary bowls of sweeten red bean congee, I thanked the host in my most gracious Cantonese.

Chapters-revised

2009-08-12T21:30:00.001-07:00

Thesis of my book-- edible women
Movement, a movement.

When I finish this book, one of two things will happen. I will find love or something that resembles love, or I will move out of Asia.

I made a pact like this four years ago. I said to my friends in New York “If this monkey (former president George W Bush) gets reelected, I'm outta here.” Then move out to Asia on Nov 3, 2004 the day after he was reelected.

Four years later I'm still wondering what kind of life I could have here in Asia.

I will either fall in love with a man or with Asia, maybe both. But the four years I've spent here has produced neither.
I am giving myself twelve chapters. When this book is done, I might as well be.

Chapter index

HONG KONG
The Arrest
Boob recipes for flat-chested girls and their mothers
The more sorrow you have, the deeper you love
Home; Dinner parties
Hoad collects media girls
A question of salt
My housekeeper
Ben's dinner
my first crush
Why is Hong Kong obsessed with Japanese culture? Do we think they are the superior Asians?

TOKYO
Man with a plan: mistress please
Oak Door: Thomas
Morgan Stanley run annual fireworks and fugu on the streets
Bike ride / picnic in the park

CHINA
Shenzhen: Anti-Japanese restaurant and the kids who love them
Guangzhou: mango fed duck// white swan hotel adoption
Beijing: Ass sandwich
Kiss kiss bang bang
Shanghai: Thomas, again
Hangzhou : in search of loong ching
Sanya; Hainan chicken

ASIA
Taipei: 97 dumplings to go Din Fung Tin
Singapore: Clara stop please oh god stop
Bali: som soup
Sri Lanka: black and white ball
Seoul: Green tea from DMZ
koh Samui: dead blow fish in the sand as we eat

Okinawa?

Vietnam?

Hong Kong Signature drink

2009-08-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

I’m really sorry to hear that.
How come Hong Kong does not have a signature drink?

Singapore’s got the Singapore Sling, Russia’s got vodka and the white Russian, and black Russian for that matter. Ireland’s got Guniness; Japan- sake, Mexico, margarita’s though Texan’s will dispute this and say they’ve invented. So how come Hong Kong missed this international definition?

So I went searching, well, not that hard. For a drink that represents Hong Kong. Nada. There are some crossbreds and rip-off mutins such as the Hogn Kogn mule, Kowloon Sling, nine dragon martini, but come on. The more I looked, the more ridiculous the drinsk got.

Then I remembered something Karen Mok told me, “Hogn Kong people think things that are imported are better than homegrown.” Where is the national prided in that? I don’t want to agree with her, but all the evidence I have, that I’ve seen, she might be right.

But without national pride, what have we got? Shopping malls filled with international brands?
I’m not saying a drink is the answer, but it’s an easy first step to start with?

If Hong Kong is a first tier international city, we should have a drink that symbolize us, on an international scale. A drink that one can get in a shitty bar in an airport hotel, or a fancy lounge at the Peninsula or something.

So since we don’t have a drink that represents us, I, in a hurried afternoon, thought up of what would best represent Hong Kong in a glass. One and a half part gin for its colonial past, one part rum because of it’s subtropical heat and our tendancy for all things sweet, and a drink Hong Konger grew up with—the boxed lemon iced tea found at your local Circle K.

A friend who showed up early to the tasting, had this to add: It is looked down upon real bartender to mix spirits in one drink. I’m not sure how much I want to take that into account.
At a conference (with those sitting closest to my desk), we came up with a name The Hong Kong Long. Rolls off the tongue nicely, sort of.

A combined effort between myself and Gandi the master bartender, the recipe became one and a half part Bombay or gordon’s gin, one part crème de ginger, one part Bols orange liquor, freshly crushed ginger (grated is fine) and a unknown measurement of boxed iced tea.

It was refreshing as icy pim’s lemonade of the hottest of Hong Kong days, slightly sweet.

The commonality running between most nationality drinks is this: sweetness. You see it in the fruit punch of signapore slings, the rim’s of margarita glasses. Sugar makes it easily drinkable. Anothertrait: the orginals of the main liquor is made in their home land. I really don’t want to use ricec wine, but that might be the closest thing to home-made liquor. I just personally don’t like it. But maybe I could wash the glass with it to give it that secret burn.

With straws, we tasted, more this, a bit more that, bitter maybe?

I don’t know who said it first, we were perfectly drunk, but someone slurred out “Wong Island Iced Tea”. And that became the name of the drink for the night. You say anything enough times, and it just stuck.

I’m not going to be this pompous and say that the Wong Island Iced Tea will become Hong Kong’s national drink. I just want their to be a national drink for no other reason than to see it on a menu in a shitty hotel bar by the airport.

So if not this one, than maybe another, created by someone who knows what they are talking about, who is actually a person of authority. I just don’t want it to be exclusive of one brand.

I’ve asked several bartender from top bar in Hogn kong to create what they think would be a candidate for a drink that would represent our city. And you can try them at the bars following.

So there is no stupid contest or casting of votes for Hogn kong’s signature drink. People will vote with their wallets and their tastebuds. And I’m hopeful, that one day, I’ll be sitting at a shitty bar in a hotel by the airport ordering this cocktail.

What pisses me off is that liquor labels are reintroducing classic drinks such as the sarac with their own brand suggesting it is made using their bottle.

Profile someone. Just because.

Travel, experiencing, reading, and, creating your own thoughts. That might be the only chance we get to really, truly, becoming our own person. A Real person, with thought not tainted by marketing campaigns, outdated thinking, but our own pure thought based on first hand experience and intuition.

Globs of people shaped by marketing campaigns.

A question of salt

2009-07-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Chinese people loves salty things, soy sauce, oyster sauce, preserved vegetables. So why is it that when western foods that are naturally salty are presented, they always send it back?

Oysters, clams, steaks-- all naturally salty.

Is it a matter of discrimination? Is it a matter of bad, misinformed marketing to which Hong Kong people are so acceptable to?

Westerner smells like meat, sweat like salt, stink of animal fat. Aged steaks are too gamey. You have to remember the idea of eating artensenial steak is relatively new in this part of the world.

They blanch their clams before adding it to vongole to mix with a artifically salty sauce.

Is it the idea that hong kong people are so used to the idea of non-fresh food (nothing is homegrown here, all is imported and until recently chilled meats came to shore, before that it was all frozen meats). So much of the tastebud here are used to non-fresh, no-taste meats disguised in sauces and other flavour enhancers, that the real taste of food is still quite foreign?

Here's the kicker, salt isn't just salty, but it enhances the flavour of whatever it is put on. That is why some pastry chefs put a dash in desserts. So if Hong Kong people already do not like the natural taste of meat, then why use salt to enhance the very flavour they would rather disguise?

2009-07-21T04:05:00.001-07:00

Sazerac

1/4 ounce (1 1/2 teaspoons) Herbsaint, absinthe or pastis
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 dashes Angostura bitters
3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
2 ounces (1/4 cup) good rye whiskey
1 lemon, unwaxed and scrubbed.

1. Place a short rocks glass in the freezer to chill.
2. Add the Herbsaint to the chilled glass, swirl it around to give the inside of the glass a thin coating, then discard the excess.
3. Place the sugar in the bottom of a mixing glass with a few drops of water. With a wooden spoon or cocktail muddler, muddle down the sugar, add the bitters and keep muddling. Add the whiskey and stir well, until the sugar is dissolved. Add enough ice to fill the mixing glass three-quarters full and stir for about 20 seconds. Strain into the coated glass and, using a vegetable peeler or sharp knife, slice off a piece of lemon peel. Squeeze the peel’s oils over the drink and either discard the peel or drop it in the drink. Adapted from “Artisanal Cocktails” by Scott Beattie.

2009-07-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Boys are really screwing with my head. I am compromising my values to allow men to behave badly. I hear too many stories about girls who never believe the ones they are with are only withe them, and them only. It is a relief to discover there are others, just like they had always suspected. ANd then they live in misery for ever knowing there are others, maybe many more than others.

To me, it is a horrible existance, and i want no part of it. I don't want to change or be changed to suit the taste here. I'm not ok with it.

And even when a guy like Tex tells me straight up that there are others, I am slightly happy that he is being truthful, but I am worried that he is being truthful and I'm not flinching.

That is why I was never sound with Dick, I never believed him to be about me, and in the end he never was. Not because he cheated, but because I cried and cried for someone who was never in love with me.

2009-07-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

Chapter

Why is Hong Kong obsessed with Japanese culture? Do we think they are the superior Asians?

Discuss.

Hoad collects media girls

2009-07-15T21:47:00.001-07:00

Barista -final

2009-07-14T21:36:00.000-07:00

SECTIONCODE: 33-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: utt
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: If he wants to grab coffee instead of, say, dinner or a proper drink, then he might as well say “Let’s be friends.”
W/C:
TEXT:
When a guy suggests going for coffee, I get nervous. If it’s a guy I’m interested in, and he wants to grab coffee instead of, say, dinner or a proper drink, then he might as well say “Let’s be friends.” If it’s a guy you are dating, there is a good chance he will break up with you, warns a sampling of my male friends. If it’s a guy you’ve dated, and out of the blue he wants to go for coffee, then it could go either way. He may want a part two , or he may just want to drop in to check up on you and remind you that he is an upstanding person who doesn’t discard people when a relationship end s, which of course leaves you questioning why it ever ended. So coffees, I try to avoid.
And drinking coffees I’ve avoided most of my adult life mostly because I’m a tea person –that was I until I took my first lesson as a barista at Fuel Coffee, IFC Mall. Gabe, the grand master, was showing me how to grip a portafilter, the handle that attaches to semi-automatic and piston-driven espresso machines.
“Curl your fingers around the handle and place your thumb here for control,” Gabe directed. We loaded fresh grounds into the portafilter then packed it evenly with a stomper. “The weight comes from the shoulder with a slight bend, but don’t lock the arm.” As he was revealing the elements of a great espresso – heat, water (meticulously filtered) and pressure – I suddenly realised I had no idea what a perfect brew would look or taste like. At what point do I tell him I’m not a coffee person?
Fuel, like all coffee nazis, is pretty pedantic about quality control. Each morning the grounds and machine (in this case the Ferrari of espresso makers, La Marzocco, hand assembled in Florence, Italy) need to be adjusted according to the most miniscule changes in the air, which Gabe can instinctually sense.
My teacher submitted me to 55 bumps, grinds, and pulling bases before I achieved an acceptable cup. And several cartons of milk were used before I got something that resembled froth, not foam, in the stainless steel jug. In a typical four-week training session, each student can use more than 24 litres of milk before reaching perfection. Ideally, the steamed froth is an even-bodied, creamy milk base that pours in thickly, splitting a single shot of dark espresso which is capped with a not-too-thin, not-too-thick crema. And never, ever dot the cup with foam – real baristas don’t do that shit.
I watched the master at work. Two taps, a pull, a wash, a dry, an adjustment, a grind, a stamp, a spank, a lock, a press, then magic. It’s all style and Gabe made the process look effortless. Even when Roger Federer is tripping over himself on a clay court, he looks like he is posing for page one. “It’s all a confidence game,” said my tutor.
He taught me to take a loud slurp from a teaspoon, drawing in the flavours of cardamom and peppercorns. Fuel’s coffee beans are grown near spice plants on an old estate in Coorg, India. And like a cabernet sauvignon grape, the beans take on the flavours of their surroundings. I also learned that freshly roasted coffee is not a desirable thing. According to the Fuel guys, coffee should be used the day after roasting and up to two weeks later, allowing the flavours to settle.
I had invited the men of my past to come by for a cup of coffee. This was a slightly suicidal move on my part because if I had to be completely honest with myself I would say I was doing one of two things: I wanted a part two or I wanted to show them I’m an upstanding person who can move beyond raw emotions and leave them with that as my legacy. But the running line of the day was a sugar-coated guilty offering of caffeine for never having made them a brew before, mostly because I didn’t know how. But that was then.
I was ecstatic to see them after a long silence, after the obstacles, after the bullshit, standing in this coffee bar, I knew we were cool. Gabe, sensing the change in the air, and let me take my break. I made them my best brew, to the exacting degree taught, Angie’s perfect one-day training espresso. Lingering over a cup at the counter we sensed we’ve changed but we're still the same, so far from where we've been, it’s a miracle that we can sit and sip together today.

Want to learn the art of coffee-making? Time Out Hong Kong has arranged two special workshops at Fuel Espresso, IFC Mall, at 2pm on Saturday, Aug 1 and 8. To participate, email angie.wong@timeout.com.hk with “coffee workshop” in the subject line. The first 10 entries received will be invited to take part. Please state your preferred date. Workshops last about one hour.

Barista

2009-07-10T01:44:00.000-07:00

My first real crush was on my tennis coach John. I was eleven and even then I knew I liked older men. He drove a beat up Porsche, wore basketball shorts, and nicknamed me pornstar on the court. He made more money per hour than most of my dad's finance friends and he never graduated from highschool. He was my preteen rebellion love.
I practiced everyday and join the junior varsity tennis team to impress him. I wore matching socks and sweatbands to impress him. I served 76 miles per hour balls to impress him. I wanted him so badly.
One day his girlfriend walked on the court wearing a full length mink coat. She was mallified gorgeous with juicy red lips and big overdone hair. What did he see in trash? I aimed balls at her head as she would walk off the court. The more I hated her, the harder I played. Then one day I saw her kiss him and I ran home to cry. It was then I dropped tennis altogether. He was my everything-- until New Kids on the Block came along.
I haven’t thought about John in decades, until one day when I was taking my first lesson as a barista at Fuel Coffee at IFC. Gabe, the grand master of ceremony was giving me a show on how to make the perfect cup. He was coaching me how to grip a portafilter, the handle that attaches to semi-automatic and piston-driven espresso machines. “Curl your fingers around the handle and place your thumb here for control.” We load fresh grounds into the portafilter then pack it evenly with a stomper. “The weight comes from the shoulder with a slightly bent, but don’t lock the arm.” As he was teaching me the elements of a great espresso: Heat, water (meticulatiously filtered water)and pressure, I had a realisation: I have no idea what a perfect brew would look or taste like. At what point do I tell him I’m not a coffee person?
Fuel, like all aficionados, is a bit Nazi-ish about quality control. Each morning the grounds and pull need to be adjusted to the miniscule change in the air. Now I can understand this Nazi behaviour. I share the same degree of obessiveness when it comes to tea, and at the moment that is Taiwanese golden oolong. They let me go through 55 bump-grind-pulling bases before getting the perfect cup. And I used up a few cartons of milk to get something that resembled a froth, not foam, in the jug. In a typical four week training session, each student could use more than 24 litres of milk before perfection. And what a perfect froth looks like is an even bodied milk, creamy, and pours in thick splitting the espresso that’s not-too-thin, not-too-thick with crema on top , but never cap the mixture with foam. Real barista don’t do that kind of nonsense.
A loud slurp with the teaspoon draws in the flavours of cardamom and peppercorns. The coffee beans they use is grown in Coorg, India, on an old estate near spice plants. And like a sauvignon grape, it takes on the flavours of its surrounding.
As I was practicing my new craft, I could imagine myself doing this. I fantasised about quitting my day job to work behind the coffee bar where I could play with the Ferrari of espresso maker s the “La Marzocco” handmade in Florence, Italy, all day long.

Here’s another thing I learnt—freshly roasted coffee is not a good thing. Coffee, according to these guys, should use used the day after roasting, and up to two weeks later, so the flavours have time to settle.
To be a journalist is to bear witness, and I am watching a master at work; two taps, a pull, a wash, a dry, an adjustment, a grind, a stamp, a spank, a lock, a press, then magic. It’s all style and Gabe makes the process look effortless. Even when Roger Federer is tripping over himself on a grass court, he looks like he is posing for page one doing it. Gabe says: “it’s all a confidence game.”
By invitation, I had invited the men of Angie’s past to come by for a coffee. This was spear-headed by guilt for never having been able to offer them a brew in the morning, mostly because I didn’t know how. But that was then.
I was ecstatic to see them after a long silence; after all our obstacles, after all the bullshit, standing in this coffee bar, I knew we were cool. Gabe, sensing the change in the air, let me take my break. I made them my best brew, almost to the exacting degree taught, Angie’s perfect one-day training espresso. Sitting at the counter we sensed we’ve changed but we're still the same, so far from where we've been before. It’s a miracle that we can sit and sip today.

Barista

2009-07-07T03:50:00.001-07:00

My first real crush was on my tennis coach John. I was eleven and even then I knew I liked older men. He drove a beat up Porsche, wore basketball shorts, and nicknamed me pornstar on the court. He made more money per hour than most of my dad's finance friends and he never graduated from highschool. He was my preteen rebellion love.
I practiced everyday and join the junior varsity tennis team to impress him. I wore matching socks and sweatbands to impress him. I served 76 miles per hour balls to impress him. I wanted him badly.
One day his girlfriend walked on the court wearing a full length mink coat. She was gorgeous with juicy red lips and big overdone hair. What did he see in this piece of trash? I aimed balls at her head as she would walk off the court. The more I hated her, the harder I played. Then one day I saw her kiss him and ran home to cry. Shortly after I dropped tennis altogether. He was my everything-- until New Kids on the Block came along.
I haven’t thought about him since until one day I was getting my first lesson as a barista at Fuel Coffee. Gabe, the grand master of ceremony was giving me a free lesson on the art of coffee. He was teaching me how to hold a grip of the XXX. “Curl your fingers around the bar and place your thumb here for control. The weight comes from the shoulder with a slightly bent, but not locked arms. Use your shoulder to give you leverage.” I give it a squeeze then slam. I think it was the way he stood behind me to teach me how to grip.
He was teaching me the mechanic to making the perfect cup, when I had a realization: I have no idea what a perfect would look or taste like. I wondered: at what point do I tell these guys I’m a tea person?
My first lesson was to learn the elements of a great espresso: Heat, pressure, and XXX. Fuel, like all aficionados, are a bit Nazi-ish about quality control. They let me go through 55 tries before getting the perfect cup. I used up a few cartons of milk to get the fluff just right.
Now I can understand this Nazi behaviour. I share the same degree of obessiveness when it comes to tea, and at the moment that is Taiwanese golden oolong.
He walks me through the lamborginis of espresso makers, the XXXX. Other than human skills, everything happens inside this machine to spit out a perfect cup of dark, aromatic espresso with a not-too-thin, not-too-thick crema on top. A quick and loud slurp with the teaspoon reveals flavours of caramon and peppercorns. The coffee beans they use is grown in XXXX, on a XXX year old estate near spice plants. And like a sauvignon grape, it takes on the flavours of its surrounding.
As I was practicing my new craft, I could imagine myself doing this. It’s a training trick. Picture yourself doing it, and then you can kick a ball 100 meters. I fantasized myself quitting my day job to work behind the coffee bar, where I greeted my customers with a hot brew before they even order it, where I would smell the intoxic aroma of roasted beans everyday, where I could play with the machines I’m now getting comfortable with.
It’s all in the speed of the pour (26 second in this case), the thickness and colour of the drip (a dark stream to a lite thick density), and the patting of the grounds (perfectly flat or else the water will take the path of least resistance and fuck up the whole cup.)

Here’s another thing I learnt—freshly roasted coffee is not a good thing. Coffee, according to these guys, should use used 5-12 days after roasting so the flavours have time to settle
To be a journalist is to bear witness, and I am watching a master at work, two taps, a pull, a wash, a dry, an adjustment, a grind, a stamp, a lock, a button, then magic. All done in the most stylish manner and sex appeal available with coffee grinds and a XXX stick. You can understand why someone would want to be him.

It’s all in the style. The style of the bang, the button, the pour makes the process look effortless. Even when Roger Federer is tripping over himself on a clay court, he looks like he is having sex doing it. Gabe says: it’s all a confidence game.

Milky drinks are most popular in Hong Kong, but it will be another three weeks before I can even touch milk as the training is intense. “But I can give you a short introduction,” he said. And as I was frothing my first jug of cold milk, angling it with my forearm rather than my wrist, the first of a series of exes comes for a visit.
Now this was by invitation. I had invited every guy I’ve ever gotten with in Hong Kong to come by for a cup on me. This is brought on by guilt for never having never offered them a cup of Joe, mostly because I didn’t know how. So one by one, I was finally able to make them a cup.

2009-07-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

But the reality is this; my mind is bored, so I cause trouble. There is nothing challenging me here, nothing new, nothing different, nothing stimulating.
The shops are all the same, in every mallification around the world. In every city, though this one especially is boring and unoriginal, trying to catch up with the rest of the world, so it could never be called a second rate city. But it is missing one crutcal element, and that is entertaining the minds of youngsters to be less like others and more like themselves. Less to live up to international , and more home grown pride, which from what I can observe does little exist here.

You see the dismay on the faces of its people, frowns on passerbyers, taxis taking the powerseat of running down people, cars not allowing others to pass. There is no respect for one another, it is cultural. And until tha mindset begins to change, nothing, i mean nothing, good will happen here.

Chapters- done

2009-07-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ben's dinner

Arrest

Boob Recipes

A note to self

2009-07-02T17:30:00.001-07:00

Just remember the quality of guys outside of Asia is so much more. They treatment women with respect and don't cheat.

2009-07-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Dick

Why would he try to make me feel better? What did it matter now? Was it for his own relieve? His own guilt? Did he receive pleasure from relaxing my pain? My scared nature. One that I hid with a smile and laugh? One of embarassment and shame and pride? Did he see right through it? Was he laughing with his friends? Or does he actually care, about me?

He wanted to protect me. He wanted to save me from my thoughts and fears. Fears he shared and had himself "For tow weeks I had prison nightmares".
ALl this to say the one thing he never could when we were together. That he cared for me. He loved me. But he was too scared, and too strapped to the idea of what that would mean, and what I would expect of him.

2009-07-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

Peter

He would always say how he loved to see me cry. And I cried alot for him, in front of him, but mostly in solo. He thought I looked sweet and helpless. And I was so pretty when I cried. Because I cried mostly for him. Because I cared so much fo rhim, that I couldn't hold in my tears, not in front of him. That my emotions were so raw and undisguised. I cried, tears of utter love and truth because I loved him so much. To this day I love him so much.

2009-07-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

The more sorrow you have, the deeper you love.

I don't think I've ever felt so lonely. The more I ground myself, the more time I have to be by myself, the more time I have to think The more I think, the more I realise how lonely I am.

I've destracted myself enough. If I keep to the bottleI will forget.

I have friends and love ones.

Butterfly effect

2009-06-29T19:25:00.001-07:00

You know the thesis of the butterfly effect? One person has a bad day and takes it out on everyone and that effects the mood of those he effects. And in return everyone is in a bad mood.

Thesis of my book-- edible women

2009-06-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

Movement, a movement.

When I finish this book, one of two things will happen. I will find love or something that resembles love, or I will move out of Hong Kong.

I made a pact like this four years ago. I said to my friends in New York if this monkey (former president George W Bush) gets reelected, I'm outta here.

Four years later I'm wondering what kind of life I could have here in Asia, I just can't see it. So then what am I doing here? Other than wasting time.

I will either fall in love with a man or with Asia, but the four years I've spent here has produced neither.
I am giving myself twelve chapters. When this book is done, I might be as well.

my first crush

2009-06-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

My first real crush was on my tennis coach John Ruby. I was eight and even then I knew I liked older men. He drove a beat up Porsche, wore basketball shorts, and nicknamed me pornstar on the court. He made more money per hour than most of my dad's friends and he never graduated from highschool. He was my teenage rebellion love.

I wore matching socks and sweatbands to impress him. I practiced everyday and join the junior varsity tennis team to impress him. I served 76 miles per hour balls to impress him. I wanted him so badly.

One day his girlfriend walked on the court wearing a full length mink coat. She was gorgeous and had big hair. She was classy, put together ad did not belong on the court, not on my court! I aimed balls at her head as she would walk off and I might have even cried once when I saw her kiss him. He was my everything until New Kids on the Block came along.

At what point do I tell tell I'm tea person?

Barista cradled me to help me with my grip.

Mexico

2009-06-23T03:01:00.000-07:00

Staring up at the glowing screens, we wondering where the day was going to take us. It’s been on my life’s check list to arrive at the airport and jump on the first flight on the departure board. Today, that box was gonna get ticked. 9.55 flight to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

It would be appropriate that fate would take me to the hot breath epicenter of the swine flu outbreak. The virus has been following me around since it jumped onto our worry maps. The first case in the U.S. was discovered in a highschool minutes from my family’s home; the first case in Hong Kong was documented in a hotel one block from my office; and now there is an infectious person living floors above me that has my building choked up. So H1N1 let’s streamline the process and let me come to you instead.

It would happen that the first time I check in luggage it would be lost in the vast network of chute and ladders and baggage merry-go-rounds. I think the airline said it was routed to India. So with no clothes, no batteries and no worries, I walk out empty-handed into the dusty sunshine of Mexico’s cruise liner county.

At Walmart, my girlfriend and I grab the best of gaudy swim fashion and matching cruisewear. We looked like lesbian newlyweds on our matching tracksuit honeymoon. Homeless Guy loved our uniforms and prop-induced campy mannerisms, he jokingly suggested we be his oriental concubines for the remained of this trip. The two Ivy League graduates in polyblend garb did not flinch at the thought of this one bit. Not because it was an outdated sexual perversion, but because orientialism was making a comeback as the modern day paradox of power and submissiveness.  Queen Bee and Chinese cookbook author Eileen Lo said it best: Chinese women are now embracing the idea of being oriental objects because of the quiet power and control it holds.

We drive three hours through tequila country to the sleepy beachtown of Costa Careyes, best known for the careyes turtles that come onto the beach each July to lay their eggs. The three of us stayed at what was billed as the smallest hotel in the world, three shabby-chic bungalows on the beach.

The balmy air did not die with the sunset and we were left fanning eachother and sucking on ice chips in our cosy bungalow. With no books, no television, no computers and no blackberries, all we had were conversations and head space to plan for the future. We were unfamiliarly uncomfortable in our sensory-deprivation chamber where three city dwellers sat with no idea how to chillax. We made friends with the locals and they showed us their cliftside homes developed by an Italian dreamer who is crafting this nook of Mexico to resemble the coastal town of Positano, Italy. Stunning.

At first we were ridiculous when it came to playing out the stereotypes of oriental princesses. Homeless Guy would tell us his stories and we sat smiling and mute. We walked in unison two steps behind him everywhere we went and allowed him to speak for us; this was mostly because he spoke fluent Spanish and we were helpless without him. We secretly loved relying on him to take care of us. And he took pleasure in this fact.

My girlfriend and I would don our matching sarongs on the beach and took turns feeding him almonds while massaging him for laughs and shock value. By the end of day one our exhibitionist gag was tired and we returned to our power-equality selves.

Strange thing is I didn’t realise I carried on role playing days later. I was quite content toppings his glass at meals, washing our beach clothes each evening, bringing him tea post-dinner, stroking his back until he fell asleep at night, and letting him make decisions for me throughout the week. Though I was consciously acting out the parody of an oriental pearl before, this wasn’t role play anymore. There was nothing perverse about this. These were things people do for people they care for. And we were just taking care of eachother.

In the morning, he would wake up before anyone else and bring us sencha in bed then quietly slip in the kitchen to whip up a heavenly-scented chorizo scrambled eggs on grilled bread breakfast. We would feast in our bathrobes and watch stone crabs take their morning stroll across our bare feet. In the afternoons, we drove out to roadside taco stands and drank Bohemia beers with locals. And when the three city dwellers were finally relaxed, we had one last surf and one last mesh outfit to parade before our sun-kissed holiday came to a bow.

Hong Kong

2009-05-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

To come to Hong Kong, that is to say, to move to Hong Kong, you have to have a pretty strong constitution. This is the land of excess, and access. You can pretty much indulge in numerous vices and go from zero to world citizen status within three months. Things are good and plenty out here. You are desired, you make quick friends, you make good money, you are on top of the world in this subtropic finance centre.And though you might be a dime a dozen where you come from, you are unique and in high demand here. you lucky boy.

But because of your fortunes, you tend to expect this universe to be your new reality, and that is throws you in hyper reality and really tests your core values. If you are strong at the core, then the excessiveness is merely a challenge. If you are not, then you might get swept away and lose yourself in this nonreality.

Little humbles you. You travel like kings and queens, you dispose of people, you spend little doing it. When your parents come, you are nervous. You revert back to your old self. You are uncomfortable.

Because without parental supervision, without the check adn balance you go off the radar. Those centred at the core self police and can say yes or no, know truth adn wrong without thought. They know to do the right thing.

So do the right thing.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2009-05-22T02:56:00.001-07:00

I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In high school we were the two Angies joined at the hip. Angie was an ultra-beauty. She was so femme that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now. That is why I took the first over to Beijing when I heard she was there.
In school we caused all sorts of trouble and greeted eachother on the lips as high school girls do to gain the attention of teachers.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at a yakiniku joint called Kiss Kiss. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you doing it. It is the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrived early to secure a table on the hipster’s dining row of XXX. I’m sitting here by myself in a black-box divvy yakuniku joint with walls loaded with graffiti and layered with Polaroids of couple in tongue tango. I make it a point to tell the entire staff that I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a kiss. I turn my neck with every anticipation of the door opening, then slinks when it is not her. I can’t believe I was so nervous.
My phone bells. Angie’s sent me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I’m replying, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you.” I hate rejection. An older gentleman with a slight moustache began his approach and I just looked down and shook my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic glow enter the door. She was as cute as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We kissed on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Over beers and grilled meats we chatted about our lives since highschool.
The idea of order the beef tongue came up. And I said, the guys here creep me out, and the cute waiters are paid to kiss customers.
He held lips to lip for a mere second before realizing this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like old lady scents and stuck to my lip like rubber tree sap.

Best Meal Ever with Boys

2009-05-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

As I was compiling the 50 meals you must have this year list, I was trying to think back on the best meals I've had and why.

Why these meals and not others? What made these meals so special, tops above all else? The only conclusion I found was the people I shared my table with.

Happiness, I've discovered, makes my sensories heightened. So does fear. On a date, my senses go from guarded to uninhabited within a drink, three more I go from caution to lust. And when that happens my tasting threshold stretch to both spectrums of extreme.

So here is my personal, uncensored, list of best meals ever.

Bone marrow with Professor
He made me my first gin and tonic. And I know I could trust his taste from that point forward. We would have roasted bone marrow on toast points and salt and parsley salad before our class. Sucking slightly cooked fat from the inside of a chainsawed section of bone is never a sexy look, but he made it effortlessly elegant. With pinch spoons we would scoop out the fat, and sometimes blood, then lay the lumps of fat on toast and spread it like butter. It went on the tongue like the sweetest, smoothest cream you've ever had. Th salt and parsley salad only freshened the breath and cut the grease so to feel less guilty of eating pre fat. He taught me how to eat, not like a college student, but as a young adult.

Steak with Blake
Blake, in hindsight, might have been the love of my life. I stupidly broke up with him because throughout our relationship he was a vegetarian. And a life without meat was not a life I wanted to have. During our annual meet up/ one upmanship dinner, I was shocked to hear he chose a steak house. Over a shared Tuscany porterhouse, he told me he's always wanted to eat meat but just couldn't afford it right out of college. He chewed each piece of meat with 18 bites to get the maximum flavour out of each taste. "You would think after a decade of being a vegetarian your body would reject meat, but mine is loving it," he said savourying the New York strip.I did as he did and slowly chewed on every bite, tasting the flavours of the fat of the cow and followed his comments of how th eblood tasted fresh, not aged, how the charring so too much on such a high fat content piece of meat. I'd never tasted meat like I was drinking wines. I'd never tasted meat until i was with a vegetarian.

Scrambled eggs with Josh
Any meal with Josh would always be rushed. He was a workacholic and shuttled between cities most days of the week. When he knew he had a morning in town, we would always meet up, and usually between 5 and 6 in the morning. Options were slim at this hour, but we found haven in 24 hour cafes around town. Sometimes I would be too excited to sleep or too worried I wouldnt wake for our date. I was usually exhausted when we met, but immediately perks at the sight of him. We would almost always share one plate of greasy scrambled eggs, then order another because we would still be hungry. Then for the next hour I would sip milk tea, him coffee, and talk about a future we never had together. When we weren't together, we would seek out new cafes to visit and have endless conversations about them for the sake of a conversation. Though what we were really saying is we were happy to have eachother's company, even if it was only one hour a week.

Steak with Thomas
Stuck on an assignment, I was dining by myself at The Oakdoor in Toyko. I had no idea this was a date spot. Great. The manager gave me a two top right in the middle of the grand dining room and along with my bread basket he brought out a selection of magazine to entertain me as I was without company. No thank you, I told him and then I let him order for me. He brought out a lushious piece of A8 wagyu, a beautiful glass of bordeux and gorgeous geltin tartin. The food just tasted better because my hormones were heightened. He came by every so often to entertain me with stories during pockets of lull on the floor. We ended on a drinking tour of the city’s best speak easys until the next morning. And from there a beautiful courtship emerged.

Yakitori with Dick

After a fight, you long to see the person you care for to make sure they are ok because your world is in wrecks knowing the other is hurting. We hadn’t spoken in days and so many days had passed and we weren’t certain why anymore. It was so good to see him. We shared four bottles of sake to calm the edges left between us. There were savory meats on sticks, and heavily salted lamb chops which made us drink even more. The staff even bought us a bottle to see how much we could drink on a school night. It was the best meal of our relationship. It was even good when he held my hair back as I tossed up in his bathroom.

Fake Mexican with Ben
I never cared much for Mexican food in Hong Kong. Mostly because I was spoilt by the real thing in the Mexican kitchens of Los Angeles. So to have pretend Mexican food here never proved fruitful. We spent an afternoon drinking beers in the winter sun and tasting an array of fake Mexican food at Tequila. There's little that I won't, but an childhood incident with peppers had put me off them for life. I gag with the force of life when one sneaks itself in my mouth. I've manufactured a lie I tell myself that they make my fart. Even when they touch my food, or worst when it is blended into, say, a soup or a sauce, I walk away. He orders peppers, four of them, stuffed with cheese. Now, if I didn't like him so much, I would've objected. Instead, when they arrived I gracefully accept one. Fork in hand, I dive. I closely examine the treat before me.The pepper did not smell of that familiar barf-inducing scent, the skin was coated with so much cheese and a layer of beer batter, I bare noticed the green slimy skin. In a baby bite, I taste nothing but XXX cheese and batter. Another bite revealed the same. By a few more, I had finished the whole thing and reaching for another. I dig this, I could do this, I like this, he likes this, we like this. he broke me of my fear. I'd never thoguht my first whole pepper would taste so good.

Salmon lettuce wrap with Mark
It was our second dinner of the evening. No matter how much we love food as foodies, we just could get into our first meal at The Pawn. I was excited to taste their roasted bone marrow with parsley salad appetitiser, and he was excited to try their sucking pig. After a drawn out flirtation period, we had out first date, Friday. We both had high expectations of our perspective dishes, both disappointed greatly. So much so we got up to have a second dinner elsewhere. It was our own fault, we had been talking up this meal to epic portions. So the only conclusion was disappointment. Though after a three course meal, neither one of us was hungry, but neither were satisified being true gluttonists. We roll into Sushi Kuu for a shot of salmon lettuce wrap. This might be perfection in a lettuce. In two bites, we were sated. In two bite, this helper did more, much more than what our previous three-course meal had done. The salmon, butter-like. The lettuce- crisp and held the sauce and juice from the fish. The secret sauce mixed with thin sliced onion created what was said best by my date, "This tastes like a burger." Forget the fancy, a burger is what good first dates are all about.

Homeless Guy

2009-05-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

The guy has nothing to offer me.Zero. No security, no future, nothing but wit and good times. And converastion, no a tender heart.
He just gets me. And he makes everything fun, funnier.

Best meals ever;

Steak and cab shiz at oakdoor

If I had to pick the best meal EVER, then it's got to be a meal someone cooked for me. It might have been my very first solid food. My sadistic grandfather, a chef, made me eat lobster. Who serves a baby a bacteria carrying, ocean bottom feeder? What kind of sick experiment is that? But that is my fate. Since i can't remember that meal, I'm going to fast forward a few decades into present day.

Things just taste better when you're happy, in love, in lust, intrigued. Happy.

And the same is true when you are down. Things just taste dead, dull, less.

Chateau Bernanon, Ocean Club Bahamas. First taste of freedom at 16.It was so tender and it was my first taste of bernasis sauce.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx interspec story telling with memorable meals.

5am eggs with Josh at French Roast

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
First gin and tonic with peter baker
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Kebabs with Kevin McCleod
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Yakitori with Dick

My relationships are ear marked with amazing meals, to me they are amazing meals.

Which meals are worth a flight for?

2009-05-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

where would I travel in Asia to eat?

Best meal ever

2009-05-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

I played alittle social experiment for work recently. I dine at one restaurant three times: once with four friends, once with a guy I'm interested in, and once by myself. I ordered the same meal each times and I swear to you each time it tasted different. Not because the chefs were inconsistent, but because my emotions were.

Now this is a hard thing to hear as I do restaurant reviews around town. My experience of a meal is greatly affected by the company I keep. WHen I was with my four friends, I couldn't taste anything, I was too busy talking and catching up, that I just shovelled food into my mouth. It was about the company and conversations here, not so much about the wonders of the dishes before me. When I'm with a guy, it really could go either way. I could be completely be in loe with him and be persued that this is the best meal of my life or I could dislike the guy and never return again to that restaurant to not relive that memory.

Our tastebuds do have memories and will associate an awful experience with taste and smells. Which is why I cannot a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever again.

Dining alone is sometime just lonely. Yes, your sensories are heightened because you have little distractions (magazines, bberries, newspapers), and concentrations is on the meal before you. But if you ever study solo diners as I do. So many times they speed shovel the food in their mouths and exit.

But the best meals I've ever had were because of the company I keep. Everything is heightened when you are in lust> I need to ask a brain XXXX about this but I bet taste and sex share the same part of the brain.

Suckling pig seems to be have been touched by magic when you are sharing it with the one you love most. I must admit some of the best meals I've had in this town were because of the guys who engaged me in conversations.

So thank you Ben for the best mexican poppers, thank you X for the best portuguese egg tarts, thank you Thomas for the most delicious bordeux. Thank you guys for making life so delicious.

food and association.

This is why restaurnats love it when someone proposes in their restaurants, they know if it works out, the couple will come back year after year.

chapters

2009-05-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

Tokyo;
man with a plan: mistress please
Oak Door: Thomas
Morgan Stanley run annual fireworks fugu
Bike ride / picnic in the park

Shenzhen: Anti Japanese restaurant

Guangzhou: mango fed duck// white swan hotel adoption

Sri Lanka: black and white ball

Taipei: 97 dumplings to go Din Fung Tin

Singapore: Clara stop please oh god stop

Bali: som soup

Seoul:

BJ: Ass sandwich
Kiss kiss

Shanghai: Thomas

Vietnam:

koh Samui: dead blow fish in the sand as we eat

Sanya; Hainan chicken

Okinawa

Vietnam?

Home; Dinner parties

apple

2009-05-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've had this apple in my refridgator since I moved into my apartment 14 months ago. I'm wondering if it will ever go bad. What is in this super apple?

Monz

2009-04-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

"I'm tired of selling Debra futures," my friend Debs exclaimed over Sunday dim sum at the Metropole. She's been on/offing with a man since college who hasn't let her go, but hasn't progressed after years of love messaging, booty call travels, and buying Debra futures with no plans of additional investments. .
He can't think I will be there for him in the future, how we are so good together, while he is saying to both of us to date other people.

I can relate, my latest adventure in Hong Kong dating has brought me to a man who is transparently hedging his bet with me and his last/current lady friend(s). "The thing about multiple hedging is you never know which fund will outperform the other," my friend Andrew says at the table. "You can't evenly hedge, then you're just flat. You have to bet with whichever outperforms and sell the losers. So Angie, you just need to outperform her and show him how much valuable you are in his portfolio. Plus, he's not married, fair game."

"There is never a complete hedge for an investment. If you are completely hedged then you are flat and you'll never get a decent return. You have to take a view of what will outperform when investing and sell the losers. So Angie, you just need to outperform her and show him how much valuable you are in his portfolio. Plus, he's not married, fair game."

His wife, my risk manager, tells me this investment is a short term buy. why the heck would you want volatility?
for all the wrong reasons..."Get what you need, then cash out."

IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME ANYONE'S COMPARED POTENTIAL PARTNERS TO STOCK PICKS. AFTER ALL, TIME AND AFFECTION SEEMS NO LESS AN INVESTMENT THAN COLD HARD CASH. BUT THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT BEING HEDGED AGAINST THAT'S UNSETTLING. MAYBE HE'S HAD HIS HEART BROKEN TOO MANY TIMES. MAYBE IT'S STILL TOO EARLY TO DEMAND 100% OF HIS ATTENTION. OR MAYBE... THERE IS JUST TOO MUCH DOWNSIDE POTENTIAL TO AN ANGIE-WONG INVESTMENT.

The derivative comment was just about how people can be just as volatile and unpredictable like derivatives. U can win big but lose big too when betting on people/derivatives!

I am value-packed, but I didn't realise I had to put on a talent show to play this game. So I'm making a list of awesome qualities I possess. All I have on the page is 'Just because'. This exercise might have been the biggest waste of a Sunday afetrnoon I've had in a long time.
I decide to crack open an antique cookbook I picked up in Oxfordshire. One of my value-added qualities was that I'm not afraid of the big, bad kitchen. I found a simple recipe for carmelised bacon. One pound thick stab bacon, one box of brown sugar. No indication of what a box measures back in the early 20th century, so I wing it. I made what looked and tasted very much like bacon brittle. A salty candy like swine derivative. Brown to a nutty crisp, I spread it on a baking tray then crumble it on a salad.

eating my swine candy over a bowl of greens was ridiculous. And so was thinking up ways to impress this guy.

You have to create oppurtunities for him to be the aggressor.

How do I capitalise on this?

Truth is he is not calling me. So why wait?

So how do I become a long term investment? Rather than just a flip?

From people in the business:

Offer deep value, excess returns, and reliable liquidity

You just have to keep delivering the goods year after year.
Don't forget about the compliance officer (philippe) and managing the exchange fees and stamp duties (I don't wan this role... Any takers?). Considering my success w Fio/Cahill recently, I might as well stick to my current rule as the agency broker.
Long term investments also benefit from solid parent company foundations... But not necessarily. Sometimes hidden long-term gems just need to be polished up a bit.

Risk manger:It all goes back to fundamentals.

For the rational investor that is.

The rest of you are a bunch of yahoos that don't know how to value anything on the market. Foolishly and randomly driving up the price of shit investments that look pretty at first glance....
and good companies are very picky about their investors.

Long term investments also benefit from solid parent company foundations... But not necessarily. Sometimes hidden long-term gems just need to be polished up a bit.

I think the Korean market is basically a good place for me to parking some long-term cash right now... Especially in a KR company with a JV investment in China. But yur right, a solid company like that one ain't easy to inject capital... Deffo gonna take a little more "guanxi" to be given a shot!

The master of all long-term investors, Warren Buffett, says use the following 4 criteria:

"a business you understand, favourable long-term economics, able and trustworthy management, and a sensible price tag"

...which in the present context could mean:

Someone you "get," good timing, decent brains and judgment, and not overly high maintenance.

There are some investment opportunities that I wouldn't touch witha 10-foot pole, no matter how much restructuring they've undergone or plan to. Nobody in this group, but I'm just saying :)

I think it can be ingenious to use investment analogies in romance but what differentiates love from everything else is that it is impulsive, whimsical and totally irrational. And all of the above could lead to happiness, heartbreak or utter chaos. But the point is, and maybe the investment world can take note here too, is that if we don't try we won't ever know. You find your long term fill-in-the-blank when you give your all and you don't look back. The bravest, who take the first calculated risks, are often best rewarded and laughing all the way to the bank.

The right question Angie is how do you find someone worthy of your long term investment in them? And the answer, ironically enough, is by not hedging. Unlike real world investing there are no benefits to the portfolio approach. You find the investment you like and you go all in. Caution to the wind.. You bet your life's savings and put a lot of sweat and heartache into it in the hopes that the stock goes up and up indefinitely.

No need to diversify to protect yourself from the downside. B/c if the investment crashes and burns, unlike the real world, you have total control over when, how and if you will invest again. That's the genius of it. You decide whether a failed investment takes down the whole company or not. B/c in this game, one never runs out of investable assets. You can always choose to ante up again.

Swine

2009-04-19T07:09:00.001-07:00

I'm sort of seeing this homeless guy. I wish I was saying this for shock value, but it's real. And he though he does not have a home, he has many addresses, including one at the Four Seasons. You see he's been doing something short of a social experiment where he had given up most of his worldly possessions in trade for a fuller life. He lives off the generousity of others, street smarts and charm. And to live this kind of life, and live it well, you must be one charming motherfucker. Which he is, which is why I'm so attracted to him.

I might him at the sotheby's spring auction where he picked me up with wit and free glasses of wine in the Southeast Asian contemporary wing. We had dinner when the wine boxes ran dry at the opening, where we continued on with a four hour conversation over a candlelit dinner at Union J. We spoke of his travels, he spends much of his life in the air, in first class no less, on a scheme. We spoke about wines, he spends much of his 'time off' touring wine countries. We talked about swine; about all the different ways to have swine.

He called me the next day and talk more swine, and the topic of buon mi came up. He suggested we spend the weekend in Hanoi where he would take he to have the earth's best buon mi. So then an entire dialogue of pork sandwich spun from that. We ended on a promise that he would make a cubano sandwich for me from scratch on our second date. This guy is a smooth operator. The only problem was sourcing the right bread, a serious problem citywide. By the end of the day, I sourced a baker who made portuguese rolls, the closes I could find to an authentic bun. When I dialed him back, the number turned out to be someone's phone he had borrowed. So no phone, and no home. Am I really doing this?

We began emailing a lot. It was our only communication without seeing eachother. Then one day out of the blue, he popped up unannounced to the office to tell me he found pulled pork. So with bread and pull pork, we have the two main elements for a proper cubano.

"It's my birthday on Friday," he said. "I could make it for you then. I just need to find fontina cheese, most people think it is made with swiss cheese, which is also good, but Cubans use fontina." He had learned to make cubanos in guest houses in Cuba by cuban women. He knew by heart exact measurements of spices, temperture, and time to roast the pork shoulder. He knew how to turn a brick and tin foil into a make shift sandwich press. He knew how to make his own mustard, which I don't think would be all that hard, but would never think to make it.

We had a great debate over whether swiss or fontina cheese made for an authentic cubano, but whereas I can only argue on taste and value, he could say he's actually been to cuba.

So we had a date of gathered ingredients to make the ultimate cubano and he promised me a real caphrina learned by his time spent in Brazil on his 30th birthday. He would walk me to work each morning telling me stories of his travels and what he ate and how he was going to make me that same meal. He would wait for me outside my office and walk me home or to dinner. I thought this was old fashioned sweetness until i realised he didn't have a phone.

The detail in his description put me to same. I could write an entire article about octopus avo lemono, but have never stepped foot in Greece. And he would tell me how he'd been to the bottom of the XX seas with a tickle stick to wrestle a family of octopi, skinned and dressed it with lemon and olive oil for lunch days ago. Whereas I could rate a cubano sandwich on the merit of taste and satisfication, he could name the origins, the authenticity and its history. I think I might have met the yin to my yang. He has spent months eating, cooking, learning the qualities of a good cuban sandwich. This made him an expert and me a pretender.

It all comes down to the references we have in life, and he seemed to have much more accummilated than I did.

We obsessively spoke about food, and I guess I didn't realise this at the time, but his guy could talk extensively about any topic as he just researches and absorbs topics all day long. He was charming my pants off. Quite literally. He wasn't an expert, but so much a con man I was half expecting.

"what do you see happening between us?" I asked him one morning. He had defacto been staying with me. What I was really asking was 'did he have direction in life or was he w=always going to be a wanderer? And it seems he has been in this circumstance before. When I was in the shower, he had made plans to make his next move: Massacusette. We spent one more evening together, eating swine and drinking rose.

Five days after he left, I walked to Gusto in Happy Valley to have a look. On its chalkboard specials it listed cuban sandwiches made with fontina cheese. I had to email him right away. The bread was all wrong and toasted up to be a hard rock, but he was right, the sandwich tastes much better with fontina.

The Power of Now

2009-04-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while people get intrived in a genre of books that won't go away. I've managed to steer clear from a recent wave of Happiness self love books.

Within the same week, two people I trust suggested I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I must really need it. I started and restarted the book three times and could never get past page 17. The words made sense, but my body rejects the ideas. Why would anyone want to not live in the past and look forward to events in the future?
It is a difficult book to read if you are not looking for enlightenment, or if for the moment you are in fact at peace.

We romanticise the struggle, my friend Philippe pointed out. I like that I'm twitchy and neorotic and destructive and manic. If I didn't have these struggles I would just be in blissful complicity.

we trade sleepless nights and our health for the pursuit of life, not to live in the NOW or in the pursuit of happiness. My professor asked me what I wanted out of life at age 19. I said happiness. And yes, that is the end game, but I don't want to be happy right now. Why should I be happy? I want so much more from life, and in its pursuit, there will be sleepless nights, heartbreaks, disappointments and self-hate. That's what makes us better I believe.

If you are in contentment, what's left to achieve? Why not wrap up life and call it a day?

So unhappiness, is the pursuit of happiness. Struggle is the path of enlightenment.

I decided to go back to a stage when I was first thirsty for understanding life. Right before I graduated from high school. Two movies did it for me; Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. I decided to do movie night and relive my hopes and dreams of 1994.

I'm scared that I will not be loved. But then I realise all this struggle will make it all worth while when it does happen.

Ben's lamb dinner

2009-04-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

As the saying goes, the direct path to a guy's heart is through his stomach. I didn't broach the topic, but he brought up throwing a dinner party at his place. "I can cook," I eagerly offer my homemaking services. "What would you like me to make at your dinner party?" "Our dinner party," he counters. "You invite your friends and I'll invite my friends. Should we invite couples or keep it a singles' party?" Was there ever a more loaded question?

We decided on leg of lamb. A classic family style roast with prewritten gender roles of the female netting the lamb and the ceremonious craving of the meat table side by the man of the house, in this case his newly renovated home in the midlevels. Invites were sent, a date set, and lamb ordered from New Zealand. Only one problem. I've never made lamb in my whole life. I grew up on American beef. Lamb was not a staple where I'm from. And honestly I would have winged it if I didn't like him so much.

But because I somehow thought that if I could deliver the perfect meal he would somehow like me as much, I drove myself insane crafting the perfect meal. Nights were lost studying cookbooks, I even bought the Jamie Oliver DVD box set for one recipe. Except the DVD showed a butterflied leg of lamb, and in my fantasy dinner party, rather our fantasy dinner party, I had imagine an entire leg, bone and all. Arg, frustrated, I write to Jamie Oliver posing my delimma. I was half surprised that he wrote back with a recipe with called for XXX, well that doesn't seem right.

I ran this idea by XXXX of Michelin starred Amber. "This guy, what is he?" Richard asks. "Aussie," I say. "Well you can't serve an Aussie a leg of lamb with XXX. Jamie's a Brit, the Aussies do it differently" He proceeded to run a laundry list of how make the perfect leg of lamb but of course this is Richard XXX of two michelin star rambling, I'll never be able to recreate this at home.

I buy two legs from XXX in Causeway Bay on the suggestion of my dinner party-cohost. One will have to be a test run. Now, I know my way around the kitchen and I'm not afraid to improv, but this leg of lamb scared the shit out of me. So much so I kept pulling it in and out of my freezer several times.

I was picking up Italian tomatoes from Sicily to practice a salad I've made a million times when the phone rings, it's XXX him; "Hey, how's it going?" "Everything's good, looking forward to our dinner party," I said cooly. "I was making a test leg of lamb," shut up I'm giving up too much information. "Wow, really? When I was a kid my grandmother would roast a leg of lamb, it was one of my favourite moments growing up." Ah shit. "She would put-" at that precise moment a roaring city bus crosses my path. "Wait, what did you say? I'm sorry I couldn't hear you," I say half panicked. He mumbled his grandmother's secret ingredient again but I still couldn't get a clear connection through the city roar. The forces were against me. I asked loudly a third time like someone using a mobile phone for the first time thinking since the person is far away he could hear me better if I screamed and I now I just sounded like a dweb. And then I said it without meaning to: "I'm sorry I can't understand your Aussie accent unless I see your lips move."

I have four more days before he returns from his trip and before I entered his kitchen. Deep breaths I told myself. "You need to serve mint sauce," the general manager at Zest told me. "Mint sauce? That's an English thing right?" "Ok, keep it simple. You want to win this guy right? Forget shoving in anchovies, forget the bacon, forget everything. Simple. fresh mint sauce, fresh rosemary stuffed in the lamb, roast potatoes, gravy. You know how to do this. You know how to make head cheese for god's sake."

"I think I'm just too nervous that I'll fuck it up," I admit. "You have too much riding on this. It's cute how worked up you get. How about this, my kitchen will prepare everything for you. You just need to pop it in the oven." This was so cheating, but it was so brillant.

No one really cooks from scratch anymore, we think we cook, but all we really do is assemble all the prep parts we pick up from the market. Ok, conscious resolved. "You sure you want to be with a guy that drives you this crazy?" the chef asks before handed me over the goods the night of.

Was I crazy? Obsessive yes, all the best ones are, but crazy? I guess I was alittle nuts. I did bombard three chefs with a collective of five Michelin stars on how to make a simple roast, I did invest in three legs of lamb from New Zealand, another leg I'd have the entire set; I did buy special dishes that held exactly four medium sized tomatoes sliced in halves; I did hand carry a bottle of whiskey from the US, truffles from France, grey salt shaved from the salt banks of Gunmuden, herb rub from Borough Market, and a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar from Italy for this party, I am now the owner of a gravy bowl in the shape of a duck. I founda supplier of Antartic ice cubes, but thought that to be unsubtle. This was going to be the G-8 of dinners. Ok, maybe I went a little crazy.

"Hey, um, we've got a problem. All my friends cancelled," he texts to tell me as I'm getting hair and makeup done. "What?!" The blast radius of my scream silenced all the blow dryers. "Yeah, let's postpone ok?" Not ok, but I didn't say that.

I made the lamb any way, but for me and close girlfriends. I ditched all the professional sauces and just popped the leg in the oven dotted with a few cloves of garlic and rosemary sprigs and it turned out to the most delicious and honest meal to ever come out of kitchen. Made with love, not crazy psychotic behaviour, we feasted.

Intro

2009-04-06T02:59:00.000-07:00

The more time I spend here, the more I can say with certainty that I hate this Place.