Out with the Old, In with the New

The other day I had a Taiwanese treat. On Friday, I took my parents, brother and an aunt to Mainland China to celebrate my mother's birthday. The Viets say it's bad luck to eat duck by yourself. So, at Peking Gourmet Inn in Falls Church, Va., the five of us split one duck and a few other dishes.

I started with the hot and sour soup, which was hearty and thick but not so much to kill my appetite.

The jumbo shrimp was dipped in a tempura-like batter and deep-fried to crisp perfection. I would have liked it if it was then seasoned with salt and pepper. Instead, some fried chilis were scattered above the pile of crustaceans. The Jeo Yen shrimp was advertised as spicy on the menu. Lies! Still, it was delicious. The shiitake mushrooms with baby bok choy were also yummy.

Peking Gourmet Inn is known for its roast ducks. Word on the street is that it goes through 10,000 birds in a week. The cramped restaurant is the favorite of lots of politicos and their hangers-on who want to be in-the-Beltway and in-the-know. The plywood walls are covered with 8" by 10" photos of these famous legislators. The difference between a restaurant in D.C. and that in L.A. is that in D.C. you don't recognize the pudgy, pasty faces on the walls but you know the names, whereas in L.A. you have a sense of familiarity with the framed headshots but can't think of the names. Peking Gourmet Inn is so successful that it can afford to triple its size and build a nice room for the people who arrive on time for their reservations but are told to wait an additional 25 minutes for a table to be available. My aunt said the owners refuse to change an inch because the north-facing eatery has such good feng shui. Here's a cook carving our $37 duck.

This is the deconstructed plate of duck meat and skin, wheat pancake, white scallions and plum sauce.

I passed on dessert at Peking Gourmet Inn because I was stuffed. Besides, my grandmom had some treats at her house. Here, a papaya and pomelo.

The next day, my mother took me out for lunch and to buy some snacks for my L.A.-bound flight leaving later that afternoon. I don't remember the name of the restaurant that we went to, but I tried their banh xeo, which is a Vietnamese crepe made of a batter leavened by coconut soda. The filling is always savory, stuffed with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts. My complaint is that the restaurant went cheapo and filled the banh xeo with too many sprouts and not enough shrimp and pork.

There are two ways to eat banh xeo. You can roll it up in a lettuce leaf with some mint, Vietnamese basil and other herbs and dip it in the seasoned fish sauce. Or you can shred the lettuce, herbs and crepe in a little bowl and dip it in the sauce. I opted for the latter because I didn't want my hands to smell like fish sauce and coconut soda on the plane.

The new year brings a new critter to play with. While 2006 was the year of the dog, 2007 will be ruled by the pig. Since I was born in the year of the pig, this coming year will be either very prosperous or extremely unlucky for me. Superstition holds that you usually are beset by bad fortune in your year. My father chronicled all the bad things that happened to him in his year. In 1970, he broke his foot. In 1982, he.... But he had a great time in 2006, so perhaps the spell has been broken. I've always had a lot of fun in the year of my sign. It's true that they were all times of transition (1983: starting junior high school; 1995: moving to Cambridge, Mass., from Japan for my first real post-college job). Yet, change is good and an upbeat attitude makes all the difference. Lunar New Year starts on Feb. 18, 2007, so technically we have six more weeks of pooch positioning in Asian astrology until the beginning of the new lunar calendar. In the meantime, Happy Western New Year!

Taiwanese Temptation

I broke my vow to eat only Viet food while home with my peeps in Virginia. My cousin Peony took me to a cheap and yummy Taiwanese joint called A&J. We had lunch at the Annandale outpost of the two-door chain, whose other branch is on the other side of the Beltway in Bethesda, Md. It's hard to tell which location earned the restaurant the honors of being best bargain for five years in a row from Washingtonian magazine. Peony said the Annandale spot is better. We were a little worried when the waitress told us it's a cash-only business. But with rice porridge priced at 95 cents per bowl and the big plate of Taiwanese fried chicken with rice and pickled mustard greens costing $5.95, we were able to order a variety of dishes and have our bill, with tip, total $24.

This is the 95-cent bowl of rice and corn porridge, or congee in Taiwanese-Chinese-Hong Kongese. It was bland but hot and filling.

This is the chilled hodgepodge of bean curd skin, mustard greens and edamame beans.

This is the spicy seaweed and bean sprout salad, also served cold as a nice complement with the bean curd skin to the fried chicken.

This is the Taiwanese version of Japanese karaage, or fried chicken. The difference is that the entire boneless fillet of chicken breast was sliced uniformly and deep-fried with the skin on it. In contrast, the Japanese dish consists of blobs of chicken that could have been taken from the breast or thigh.

The potstickers were long and lean, but the flour skin barely held the meat. It was more like a wheat crepe that was filled with ground meat and fried in a pan.

Continuing The Food and Music Club's obsession with gnomes, I snapped a pic of Peony in the pointy knit hat that her beau got for her. In profile, she reminds me of a Little Orange Riding Hood who got lost in Gnome Forest and decided to stop by a roadside diner for some dumplings. Perhaps I should submit her photo to the online Gnome Club. I heard that Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen's Gnome Book has been re-issued on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. Gotta get me one of those!

This isn't a gnome. It's my grandmother's Pekinese. I hesitated from granting him a second appearance on this Web site because he is such a vain dog. But I changed my mind after Peony informed me of the full name written on his pedigree certificate: Sir Roscoe Kacee Boots Pug. Loony!

Global Warming Christmas

Merry Christmas! It's a mild winter in the nation's capital, where I've arrived from Los Angeles with thin sweaters, a knit hat, cashmere scarf, fingerless gloves and a waterproof car coat to spend Christmas with the Viet clan. I arrived on Christmas Eve to be met at the airport by one auntie and immediately whisked away to my cousin's new house in Loudon County, also known as Silicon Valley East, for a 19-person feast. (And not all of the relatives showed up!) At the request of my out-of-town cousins who missed their mother's Thanksgiving dinner last month, we had turkey and all the ancillary dishes. The only hint that we were Asian was the big bowl of fried rice sitting on the buffet table. The secret to my aunt's turkey was that she essentially braised the big bird. She poured chicken broth into the bottom of the roasting pan and periodically poured the hot liquid over the buttered breasts. She also shortened the cooking time to three hours from four. It was delish!

Before we opened our presents, we asked 5-year-old Dylan to demonstrate the moves he learned in kung-fu class. Dylan is an orange belt, so he showed us his orange form. For an encore, we asked him to go through his yellow form, which is the level under orange. But he refused. "I'm no longer a yellow belt," he protested. Yeah, he's so over it.

Coming home for the holidays is a time for reunions. This is my brother's dog, Mikey, who turned 11 this year. That's 77 in dog years. He's always been a sweet pooch, but the years have mellowed his Labrador-Rottweiler demeanor even more.

Here's the Baby Buddha puppet that I got for my parents so many years ago from Nara, Japan. As good Buddhists, we have to treat every single image of Buddha as a holy relic. This puppet is hanging from the doorknob to the room housing our ancestral shrine. My grandmom actually put the Baby Buddha puppet I gave her on the shrine at her house.

This was Christmas dinner with my parents and brother. We had salmon roasted in a ginger sauce, shrimp stir-fried with broccoli and tamarind soup with a spongey green vegetable called bac ha, shrimp and tomatoes. Viet cooks rarely use salmon. We prefer the fresh water catfish or white-meat poisson such as cod and bass. I think I've had salmon fewer than five times for dinner at my parents' house. That's why it was OK for my mother to use a Taiwanese seasoning for the salmon. It's funny how ethnocentric Asians can get. My mother had to point out that, yes, it's a foreign fish and, yes, she's using a foreign sauce on it.

My dad took me out for lunch on Tuesday at Huong Que, the famed Vietnamese restaurant in the bustling Eden Center. Huong Que is owned by a junior-high classmate of my mom's from Vietnam. The patriarch often greets us when we arrive. Today, he even took our order and offered us fresh springrolls on the house. These are the pickled jalopeno peppers and papaya slices that presaged the preparation of my egg noodle soup with a braised duck leg.

The Chinese broccoli countered the duck's smokiness with a bit of bitter crunch.

Later that night I had dinner at my grandmother's. This is the meal that my grandmother's caretaker made for us. The chicken was stir-fried boneless with broccoli, green beans and carrots or caramelized bone-in with shiitake and button mushrooms. The homemade pickled bok choy was light, cold and crisp, in a refreshing contrast to the boiled pork dipped in fish sauce seasoned with lime juice and red peppers.

I had a pick of desserts: fresh pineapple with a salt-and-chili dip, sweet banana porridge, sweet black bean porridge or sticky rice with hominy and ground yellow beans.

I chose the sweet black bean porridge, whose stickiness was smoothed with some spoonfuls of coconut milk.

What Do Elves Eat?

Here are two hungry elves, one from Vietnam and the other from Bulgaria. What do you think they eat?

On a recent Saturday night, the Southeast Asian elf tasted some saffron pudding from a new cash-only BYOB restaurant called Elf Cafe on Sunset Boulevard. The shoebox of a restaurant produces some tasty Mediterreanean fare using both organic and vegan ingredients in its little kitchen. The saffron pudding was speckled with pine nuts and dates. But I liked the pear tarte tatin better. After all, it's pear season. It was a shame that the lighting was too dim at this elf hangout for me to take a picture of the tarte tatin. The waiter said the restaurant got its name after the owner Scott had a dream about elves one night.

I had plenty of light to snap a photo of BLD's Ode to Butterfields. My co-workers and I had our holiday office lunch there on Thursday. We arrived at 11:20 a.m. for blunch, or a compromise between breakfast and lunch. I couldn't decide between the breakfast and lunch menus, so I went with this steak version of eggs benedict. Instead of Canadian bacon, slices of steak, cooked medium-rare, were splayed on top of the whole wheat English muffins. The Hollandaise sauce was tinted red from the cabernet sauvignon wine. The fingerling potatoes were so sweet and perfectly seasoned with olive oil and thyme that the fishatarian photographer sitting to my left speared some for his grilled salmon salad.

Clifton's Cafeteria

Todd took me out to lunch at a cafeteria called Clifton's in the heart of Los Angeles' jewelry district. I don't know why I had never heard of the eatery that resembled an elementary school cafeteria in the middle of a hunting lodge. "You don't have cool friends," Todd said. "Or they're not cool enough," I countered. At any rate, it's a good thing that Todd's got enough cool for the two of us, the fishing bear and hungry office workers and Latino families who tucked into roast beef, mashed potatoes, blueberry pies and other dishes that reminded me of 45-cent school lunches in South Carolina.

There was something quaint about the egalitarian seating at Clifton's. Everyone had to carry their own plastic tray and find seats either on the main floor or at one of the coveted tables on one of the three tiers overlooking the big dining area. One diner took the Christmas decoration theme too seriously and wore Santa's cap to lunch. I liked his neighbor's ranchero hat better.

The tailipa offered as one of Tuesday's specials was caught that morning by the resident bear.

The green peas and corn that I selected as my two vegetables with my $5.79 fried chicken special came straight out of a tin can. The watermelon juice reminded me that I was in Los Angeles circa 2006 and not in Charleston, S.C., circa 1980. You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the cornbread away from the girl. That is, unless you want a big fight!

You Know You're in Portland, Ore., When...

..a one-armed man pumps your gas because the state outlaws self-service gas stations.
..there is a nightclub called The Bettie Ford Clinic.
..Tori Amos is played on the radio.

..you pass a gourmet shanty town comprising trailers serving Vietnamese spring rolls, borscht and other international delicacies instead of hot dogs.

..you get your friend Missy to pose next to a sign with a silly pun.
..the street signs are printed on only one side and you have to drive a mile to make a U-turn when you miss your exit.

..Adidas' security guard mistakingly writes down your company name as Orkin.

..you have lunch at a restaurant decorated with gothic velvet-flocked wallpaper.

..the wallpaper matches a cheesy velvet painting of a woman breastfeeding her baby.

..you are given an intimidating Bowie knife to cut a Dungeness crab cake sandwich.

..you are treated to cookies served on a doilie after lunch.

..your hotel hangs a portrait of a goofy Ansel Adams in the hallway.

..your hotel also offers a pillow menu consisting of soft, medium, firm, extra firm, neck, body and reading pillows but you crash on whatever is on your bed because you are exhausted.
..you see a canoe strapped to the top of a truck.

..you kill three hours at a wine bar sipping pinot noir from the local Dobbes winery and surfing the 'Net on free WiFi because your flight was delayed due to a wind storm that generated gusts clocking up to 80 miles per hour.

Porn (Culinary and Luxury)

How do I feed thee? Let me count the ways.

West African soup of ground peanuts and butternut squash with a BLT sandwich at Town & Country on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake.

Canter's soup with a matzo ball that was as large as my fist.

Mani's artichoke and arugula salad with shredded chicken and a big cup of matcha latte with soy milk.

M Cafe de Chaya's seitan katsu with Japanese root vegetables.

Alcove's feather wreaths, which were pretty but posed a health hazard as they hung above the baristas who were whipping up foam and making tea for customers.

A Christmas present from a fashion trade show organizer, chocolate is the best swag ever.

Two weeks ago, I went to a party for Coco de Mer, a new lingerie and erotica store opened by the daughter of The Body Shop founder. Talk about my body being electric. This is the tier of merengues and chocolate mousse offered to customers trying on silk lingerie and leather blindfolds in the dressing room. Next to the girly changing room was an equally baroque but tad smaller confession room where the lover can sit and watch the femme fatale change into her skimpies. A Webcam also let the exhibitionist upload video to Coco de Mer's Web site.

I always said that Victoria's Secret was for Midwestern soccer moms and Agent Provocateur was for intellectual sluts. Well, the Agent Provocateur hotties have some serious competition from the Coco de Mer babes. In Coco de Mer’s confession room, someone slipped a sexy photograph of a stocking-clad leg in the arcane typewriter.

Birthday Month

Most people celebrate birthdays. I celebrate birthday months. For the entire month of November, this Scorpio was feted, feasted and festooned with goodies.

After all, as my friend Adam put it, I'm a gastronomista, or "a savvy woman who turns blogging about what she ate last night into a mini-industry." I have yet to sign a book or movie deal. But I have the ghetto photojournalistic shots to prove how tasty life can be.

My friends John and Susan left their newborn daughter at home with her maternal grandfather to take me out for a Korean lunch on a recent Sunday. I was introduced to Saritgol on Olympic Boulevard a few years ago by John and Susan. We ordered the very same dish on our second visit to the restaurant, whose Korean name is translated as thatched roof, evoking the country cooking served in the small, unpretentious, wood-paneled eatery. This is the scallion pancake that we nibbled on before our main dish arrived.

This is a medley of kimchee and side dishes. Though they may look bland on the cream plate, they sure do pack a fiery punch on the palate. I don't know what the Korean name is for all those side dishes, but they are the best part of going out to eat Korean food.

This is our main dish: braised black cod in a sweet-spicy red sauce with daikon.

The black cod and daikon are marinated in the red sauce for hours before they are cooked. The daikon looks like a transparent Mars. While John and Susan ordered the barley-speckled rice, I stuck with the pure white rice, which quickly turned pink after I spooned clumps of the cod and daikon onto it. I was proud of myself for being able to pluck all the kimchee and debone my fish with my slippery metal chopsticks.

This is the impromptu art sculpture composed of Rose-branded toilet paper in Saritgol's bathroom.

I was born in the Year of the Pig, which means my personality is marked by loyalty, intelligence, chivalry and passion. My family always gets me piggy presents. My sister made this sock piggy for me out of a pair of socks and some buttons. Cute!

Tu also gave me some pink slippers that match my new plush pet. With such great friends and a loving family, I look forward to next year's birthday month.