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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1511 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 3, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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What are your have-to-try-this-at-least-once-in-your-lifetime foods, meals, or general dining experiences?

My (basic) contribution is eating at a bouchon.

Brazilian Churrascaria, preferably in Brazil. Vegans need not apply.

Alternatively, Argentinian Steakhouse (in Buenos Aires) and get a steak (of your choice) and local red wine.

I haven't had better meat eating experiences, and I've been around the world.

Argentinian steak was a huge disappointment to me. USDA prime has the best texture and good marbling, lengthily dry aged British beef the best taste, A5 kobe that distinct fatty flavor that melts in your mouth. Argentinian steak reminded me of Italian steak, usually mediocre and from a lesser cow, cooked in a way that was fine but nothing too interesting or special.

eating at a bouchon.

Holy God, yes!

This is what "going out to dinner" across the rest of the Western world aspires to be. Everywhere else fails.

Friday night fish fry in a north woods supper club

There are no answers that aren't basic, or at best pretentious midwit, don't beat yourself up. I'll be even more fundamental.

-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.

-- On a summer day, go to a baseball game. Get a hot dog and a beer during the second or third inning, early enough at any rate that the game is still wide open to possibilities. At any MLB game it will be too expensive, but a local MiLB game will probably be just as good.

-- Learn your grandmother's favorite recipe, from her. The one with a lot of steps that aren't written down, that you have to do by guesswork and feel.

-- Stand in line for at least an hour at a dive/cart/stand. In college on a trip to Berlin we went to the cart that supposedly invented Doner Kebab. The line itself was a festival atmosphere, we were chatting with the people around us, the guy behind me was an Ameri-weeb who was a family guy super fan. It's an experience.

-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.

I took a bite out of a silver salmon that I had just pulled out of an Alaskan river, just because I saw Bear Grylls do it and thought it looked cool.

It was incredible. Core memory.

On general dining experiences, I nominate the Supra, from the Republic of Georgia. It’s a feast/symposium, with elaborate toasting rules, homemade wine and cognac, and a nice assortment of dumplings, meat dishes, bread and cheese dishes, etc.

Japanese all-you-can-eat barbecue changed my life. Gyu-Kaku has solved food. It's over.

We have about three such places within a kilometer. My recent favorite is yakiniku king though it's a little pricey for every week. Dad (I) also gets the all-you-can-drink. That means 3 + beers to make it balance out. I quite like the garlic sauteéd in butter in the little foil pan that you let heat as you're cooking meat/vegetables.

I finally managed to get my husband and kids to go to a Chinese hot pot restaurant with me, and now they're 100% on board with making it a regular thing. The basic concept is this: you have one or more pots of broth at your table, with individual burners built in to keep them boiling, and then you have various raw vegetables, noodles, thin-sliced raw meats, etc, which you cook in the broth and then remove to your plate to eat. At the place we went to, there was basically an open buffet with all kinds of stuff to take and cook in your broth, plus sauces to dip your cooked food in afterwards.

Sounds a lot like Japanese nabe, which we have at home about twice a week in winter Last night's was kimchi nabe. It's one big pot here though that you spoon (or long chopstick) off into individual bowls.

Yeah, I've had a similar thing at Japanese restaurants under the name "shabu-shabu". When I was first introduced to hot pot maybe 20 years ago, there was always only one big pot at the table, possibly divided in half so you could have a spicy broth and a non-spicy broth, but the place we went to the other day offered a choice of the big pot or individual soup pots for everyone.

I'm still not entirely clear on the difference in shabu shabu and nabe except that shabu shabu meat is somewhat thinner, is removed from the pot almost immediately and eaten with a sort of ponzu sauce (and vegetables eaten with a sesame sauce) while the soup continues to simmer. In nabe it's all just in there and you spoon out portions and add more of whatever until everyone's full, sometimes adding either udon at the end or even leftover rice and an egg to stir in and create what's called zousui which is like a brothy rice soup. (This prevents leftover soup from just sitting there).

Then there's sukiyaki, which is beef (while shabu shabu and nabe are usually pork-based). Sukiyaki sauce is also considerably sweeter and some people (who are not me) dip their beef slices in a beaten but otherwise raw egg.

The division for a spicy and non-spicy is new to me, and I think that's a good system. Generally in my experience any broth-level spiciness I would assume to be Korean. The spiciest Japanese condiment is yuzugosho (as far as I know) but I've never seen it in broth. Wasabi is spicy but in a different way.

Certainly, there's a lot more love for chili peppers in China. I was once told a bit of Chinese wordplay about the provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Sichuan that roughly translates to say the first two don't fear spice, while the third fears what is not spicy.

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