Sei & Maine Avenue Fish Market - Washington DC

Yes, this happened an entire month ago, but I never got around to posting about it. This was  the second Memorial Day Weekend we've spent in D.C. (see the first time in 2010 here and here - I'd like to think that I've grown up more since then?).

In a nutshell, food-related events included:

1. US Botanic Garden!
2. Teaism - my first bento box!
3. Hirshhorn Museum - giant butter!
4. Sei - fancy sushi!
5. Maine Avenue fish market!
6. Hot dog from a "70s hot dog" food cart that was bad.
7. National Museum of American History Food Exhibition

Now, in extreme detail!

US Botanic Garden

I love botanical gardens. I love them more than zoos. More than museums. I revel in looking at oddly-shaped leaves and brightly coloured flowers. I saw an avocado tree in real life! A pineapple plant right in front of me! This was fantastic! Sure, plants aren't cute or cuddly but it's so exciting for me to see the species that end up feeding me. Look! Marshmallow plant, even though modern marshmallows don't contain it.

Teaism
SP and I went to Teasim for lunch. I've never had a bento box before so this was exciting! The restaurant is beautifully decorated. In the basement, a constant, relaxing flow of water supplied the granite(?) pool in which carp swam around. So, this probably isn't authentic Japanese cuisine but it was still a neat, well, "fusion".
SP got the make-your-own-handrolls box. Unfortunately, the salmon was smoked. The nori was really crispy though, and I taught SP how to make the cone-shaped maki. The cabbage was pretty good, and I loved the mayonnaise.

I got the cooked salmon bento box. The cucumber was good but not as sour or spicy as usual pickled cucumber (though I typically eat Chinese pickled cucumber). The spinach was kind of astringent. I liked the salmon but I wish it were raw :(

Hirshhorn Museum of Art
Giant butter! I would love to have this as a bench or bed. My entire house in the future will have food-shaped furniture.

Sei Restaurant
For dinner, my family (minus my dad) and I walked around for a good hour before deciding on sushi at this nondescript sushi place halfway between Chinatown and Independence Mall. However, we then decided that we wanted to go to Chinatown to eat. While we were walking around Chinatown looking at menus, debating the authenticity of whatever the restaurants offered, my sister complained about having to walk so much. At some point, she exclaimed that we should just go for sushi. A guy walking past us stopped and advised "You know, if you really want good sushi, you should go to Sei."

Welp. After some walking and much confusion ("The map says it's right there!" "I don't see it. I just see the Spanish place." "It should be right there near the corner..." "..." "Oh! It's hidden!"), there we were, shuffling down some steps into the reception area of Sei, where they have posh business cards. From the outside, all you see is a small patch of white translucent glass with the word "SEI" written in thin letters.

We were seated at a white square table in the middle of the frustratingly dimly lit dining area. We sat on plush white chairs with no armrests ("modern", I guess). There was a candle at the table. I felt like I was in a lounge/club/bar type place. Young professionals were hanging around at the other tables, though I think there was one table with little kids. This place was possibly too classy for me.

They had interesting types of rolls. We ended up trying the fish and chips roll, a salmon roll with strawberry, a typical eel and avocado roll, and another one that escapes my mind (but possibly had scallops?). My sister only eats salmon nigiri or sashimi, so that's what she got. However, she was distraught with the fact that they had already put wasabi on the rice, under the salmon.

I enjoyed the salmon roll with strawberry. It was unexpected. As this occurred over a month ago, I've shamefully forgotten most of the details. The fish and chips roll wasn't greasy at all, so it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the food and experience!




Maine Avenue Fish Market!



The next day, SP and I were walking towards the paddle boat area, when he remembered that there is a fish market in DC. As I love visiting different regions' markets/grocery stores, we decided to check it out. Apparently, in the past, the fishmongers would sell the fish at the port. However, there was some rule that made it illegal to sell fish on the port. So instead, the seafood is now sold directly from the boats that are anchored to the port. Technically, they aren't "on" on the port. I lamented the fact that I was unable to buy fish to bring home (because it'd have to sit in my bag or the back of the car for 2 entire days). However, we did have some delicious oysters (2nd time in my life?) and shrimp. They have both ready-made and fresh seafood.
The oysters were dislodged ("shucked" is the word, I suppose) right after we ordered them. They were very tasty.

We took the shrimp to the park/pathway near the paddle boats to eat. It was a really sunny day although it was a bit breezy, which gave a mild chill. Also, I like cocktail sauce.

National American History Musem - Food Exhibit
We got a pretty bad hot dog at a food cart on Independence Mall. It was supposed to be a "Mexican hot dog", with cheese and guacamole. We were given a hot dog with Cheez Whiz and diced unripe avocado (or maybe it wasn't even avocado. No avocado flavour). That was a letdown.
However, the Food Exhibit was alright. I wish they had more original documents rather than printouts of posters, though.

 I think this would be funny to sell nowadays.

I really liked this one, even though I haven't had a Frito in about 4 years.

 A pringle container!

I have never seen this for sale before, so that was cool.

Who knew there were so many shapes?

I forgot why the pins say this.

 Taco maker.

Bastille Day & Dasiwa

Today was wonderful! It's Bastille Day, so the Eastern State Penitentiary had a revolution-themed performance. I suppose the actors were running late, so they had the guillotining occur first (before the storming of the Bastille). This included the beheading of 5 watermelons. I wanted a chunk, but I was too far in the crowd to get one. The crowd's enthusiasm died down after about the 3rd melon, though.

After a bit of improv by the crew, Edith Piaf (acted by a male, part of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret) finally appeared in heels, a dress, and drawn on eyebrows! The songs were mashed up pop/rock songs, with a melange of French (spoken well!) and English, dipped with political humour. They even mentioned "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", which is a term from The Simpsons! I wonder how many others knew the reference. The show was fantastic, with a climax focusing on the lack of bread (preceded by an original song about bread, with a giant baguette who got shot), culminating in the release of over a thousand TastyKakes (Butterscotch Krimpets) from the roof of the Eastern State Penitentiary.

Unfortunately, SP and I were standing too far away to catch any. Later on, someone threw a Krimpet and it hit me with full force on my nose. For a lump of oils and sugars, that surprisingly hurt! I'm also surprised that they expire within a month.

Edith ended the show with "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien", a song I immediately associate with Edith Piaf. As people were leaving, I looked for more Tastykakes, but there were none! However, I saw a bunch of little kids with piles of them, and it probably gives them more happiness than it gives me (my time for collecting mounds of prepackaged cake treats have ended, I suppose). Besides, SP and I were going to eat a splendid sushi dinner at Dasiwa (honestly, IGNORE the reviews from before 2012...they are seriously out of date)!

Dasiwa was neat! It is half cafe, half sushi place. As I'm not really a fan of cafes, I anticipate just coming here for sushi in the future.

In aspects that seem to be big deals for others, but aren't important for me:

1. Appropriately decorated: Beautiful art on the walls, cute bathroom walls and ceilings (fish paintings), and stylish plates.

2. Great service: The waitress was really helpful and showed us what yellowtail and flounder look like. One of the other guys also had a sense of humour. First, as I was about to take a picture of the food, he joked "$5 extra for a picture!", and as we were finishing up, he told us (quoting SP because I was too busy staring at SP's beautiful face) "I've never seen a young couple with such an eye for delicacies! You know how to eat!".

3. Plating: Nicely done. I got a hibiscus flower that smells like ham.

So now, the stuff that does matter for me: foooooooooooooooood taste! So, I guess I do eat fish and possibly other animals now. We first got the salmon maki (roll), the tuna roll, and the octopus sashimi. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was avocado and cucumber in the rolls too!   The sushi was delicious, but I'm not a sushi connoisseur, so I generally appreciate anything rolled up in vinegar sushi rice and nori. SP, however, has more sushi experience than me, and he thought that it was "great!". 

We got 4 pieces of octopus sashimi, even though the menu said that we'd get 3 - perhaps they just sliced the same weight of octopus more thinly so that we'd have an even number of slices to share. One of the pieces looked super squiggly! Octopus is really chewy and a bit tough. I think I prefer squid over it.

Then, we got the yellowtail roll and some squid nigiri. Yellowtail flesh is differently coloured, so our sushi was quite pretty (although this time, there wasn't any avocado). The squid looked like a slice of onion, but it tasted way better! I am quite pleased with myself, because I managed to nibble on more wasabi (or dyed horseradish; I'm not really sure) than I've ever had my whole life (minus the wasabi peas). I'm actually starting to like it!

Before we left, the chef gave us each a spoonful of scallop with melted butter, roe, scallions, and ponzu sauce (with citrus). I didn't catch everything the waitress said, but it looked fancy. I envision myself eating this kind of thing when I'm a millionaire a few decades from now. Or not; I'll probably still be munching on comforting peanut butter sandwiches while working 12-hour days at the lab. It tasted a bit foreign to me: buttery, sour/vinegary, fatty/oily, and orangy. Interesting mix of flavors and tastes.

As we walked back home, we swung by Wholefoods. I was disappointed that the almond flour was $13.99/lb, but we were both satisfied with dessert - some tea cookies from the choose-it-yourself place. I tried the lemon and rosemary biscuit, which was interesting, and the vegan gingerbread with raspberry filling, which was extremely moist and delicious. SP got a cream filled double chocolate chip cookie sandwich (good), a cookie sandwich with ganache (good), and a swirly hard cookie with a dot of jam (dry and bland).

Sushi! Again!

Last time, I posted about Samurai Sushi but I didn't bring my camera, so I had no pictures. Here is a picture of the salad without the cherry tomato. It has a ginger dressing, which I suppose is what makes it Japanese, because I don't see yellow-green lettuce as something Japanese.

This time, I took a bunch of pictures but the lighting was terrible and everyone wanted to eat. This resulted in blurry pictures. However, I did have a sushi-related epiphany.

So, 6 small pieces of avocado sushi costs $3.95.

The sushi/sashimi boat costs approximately $52.

As a vegetarian, if I spent $52 on avocado sushi at Samurai Sushi, I could savour about 78 pieces of sushi.

Now, that is a LOT of sushi. I love avocado sushi. The avocado is amazingly creamy, and surprisingly goes well with soy sauce. A LOT of soy sauce, actually, because I wanted to savour the moment, indulge, and obtain 420% of my sodium RDA for the day. The avocado was a bit over-ripe but it was still great! I should make avocado sushi at home, actually.

This is the sushi boat. It is not boat shaped because they ran out of boats and apparently we would've had to wait a long time to get a wooden boat... so here is the humble version.

Looks good hm? Well my brother and parents liked it. My sister just ate the rice.

Here is a fried tofu. I like the outside crumb batter thingy, because it's crispy, but doesn't taste oily [although it IS oily]. The sauce is also nice although I don't think I'm too partial to it... I prefer pieces of avocado sushi more.

I know that sushi restaurants are generally more expensive than say, Italian restaurants, especially where I live. I sorely miss ParknShop with its $4 sushi [50c!!], occasionally lowered down to $2. However, we make sushi a lot at home, but it never seems as "legit" as the sushi at the stores, even though we use sushi rice and vinegar and nori. Perhaps we all go to sushi restaurants for the scenery, the dimmed lights, the tea [I'm not a tea fanatic so it's just... plain green tea to me], the cute plates and table-suitable bottles of soy sauce.

I mean, why do some people go to restaurants that sell really expensive yet mediocre food? It's just because they can then say, "Dude, I've been to this sick-famous restaurant...that you can't afford to go to!"

Conversely, going out to eat is considered icky if one is talking about college dining hall food. I don't understand why people think it's okay to speak badly about college restaurants, yet speak well of fast food places or other restaurants that offer the same food.

I suppose it has something to do with marketing; when was the last time a sushi store was advertised as elegant, healthy, and for the 1337? Oh, pretty much always. But, eating avocado sushi is definitely not balanced! With soy sauce, avocado sushi is too much sodium and too little protein.

Well, what about the animal eaters, then? Well, in this case, too much protein and cholesterol (?) and too few vitamins and minerals. Oh, and too much sodium.

It's not advertised that way, though... and I'm not sure why I'm analysing this, because I do like sushi a lot and I should actually be making of list that explain why sushi ought to be cheaper...

Dinner at China Chalet a.k.a. 天府 [Tian Fu]

My dad's birthday is around this time of year so we went out to eat dinner to celebrate it since I'm now a college kid and I can't come home much. Actually, I could if I had the money or the time. The truth is that college kids are poor. Well, most college kids are poor. There has to be some millionaires at Penn...

Anyway, my dad likes Chinese food [what a surprise! Not.] so we went to Tian Fu [天府] because that's where we used to go when we used to live in Florham Park in 2006. All I can say is, at least Niffy didn't yell out, "The food here isn't that good" because that's what she apparently said when my family went to the Greek restaurant a few weeks ago [without me, unfortunately]...

She nearly got hit by a car though, so I guess that's how karma works. It was a black SUV and it stopped for my brother and I as we were crossing the road. Then, it started to go again, and my sister decided to RUN across the road...

Then she proceeded to blame us for not warning her about the car. It was really crazy and confusing. It was like the time she was on the metro platform and I was on the metro and I was trying to keep the doors half open so that she could GET ON to the metro, and then the train started MOVING. Anyway, I keep digressing.

This was cow pieces with peanuts, water chestnuts, pepper, chilies, and oil.

Fish pieces with peppery batter and snow peas and oil. I am not condoning these acts of massacring animals. My mum did tell me that she apparently has had high cholesterol [ish] for the past 7 years, and she's finally decided to eat fewer animals now, instead of having to take meds [sigh. The U.S. and its pharmaddiction], which I support.

Three different animal pieces [chicken, pig and shrimp] with vegetables and, oh, yeah, oil. This one actually was supposed to have crunchy rice with it but there were only three chunks of crunchy rice, which I don't think counts as it being "crunchy rice with meat". It should be "meat with vegetables and a tiny side of crunchy rice". Whatever, it benefits them for advertising...

And there was rice vermicelli with vegetables and oil. Seriously. Why. Do. Chinese. Restaurants. Use. So. Much. Oil. Needless to say, I got pretty much zero protein but I did get all the unsaturated fat I need for the week.

Samurai Sushi

I lacked a camera.

My mum took both my camera and phone to NYC today, so I couldn't take pictures of the food that I consumed. I can, however, describe the sushi with such utter detail that your keyboard will break down due to drool.

Or not, since it wasn't that big of a deal. The only reason we went to Samurai Sushi for dinner is that my sister wanted to eat sushi rice. Oh, and I suppose, also that my dad thinks that cooking is for females.

So, my sister consumed maybe 50ml of Sprite, two pieces of raw salmon, half a piece of another fish, too much soy sauce, and half a bowl of rice. My dad got this plate of sashimi, which came with some miso soup and some salad with ginger dressing. I distinctly remember there being one cherry tomato in the salad, last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. I suppose the staff decided that tomatoes aren't important to their restaurant menu, since the only thing WITH cherry tomatoes was the salad. I suppose this is a wise choice, even though I now have an empty space in my expandable stomach, shaped just like a cherry tomato.

Since I don't consume fish, I got this vegetable sushi. It was a lot of pieces of pickled radish [which I don't really like], pickled carrot [eh, okay], raw sprouts [not enough], raw cucumber [awesome!] and one piece of avocado, wrapped in rice and a piece of nori. I was pretty devastated [okay, overstatement] by the fact that there was only one piece of avocado in each piece of sushi [there were 5 pieces of sushi]. I LOVE AVOCADO! Why give me two pieces of pickled radish per piece of sushi, yet only leave me one meagre chunk of avocado?

The raw sprouts were cool, though, since my mum has never let me eat sprouts raw before. Actually, she never used to let me eat peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, or spinach raw, until I read recipe books and realised that these plants aren't toxic fresh out of the earth.

In conclusion, I lacked a lot of protein in this meal. I think that I should invent gluten/soy salmon sashimi substitute, although I personally don't miss the taste of fish anymore... [but this may be a different story in HK].

Joe's American Bar & Grill

Such an iconic name. I wonder how filled-to-capacity this chain restaurant was, during the 2008 elections?

We went to the Braintree Mall on Wednesday the 21st, after visiting schools in Cambridge, and I honestly think that I shouldn't've ordered. In a family of 6 [for now], we should always order 4 items in an American restaurant. We have never finished 5 items, let alone six. Usually, I'm the one who doesn't order, simply because there is no main dish that I can eat due to the animal pieces. Also, though, I usually am the one who likes side dishes anyway [think salad, the bread, mashed potato... you know].

That day, my dad didn't order but I did, just to "change it up a little", though in all honesty, neither of us should've ordered. I got the spinach and artichoke dip, which is basically ubiquitous in any American grill style restaurant. In fact, if it wasn't for the seafoods section of the menu, one'd think that he/she had just walked into Applebees with different decor. Or Chili's with different decor. Or TGI with different decor. That's the problem I have with American restaurants. Sure, they offer a sense of "homeliness", but they also use the same cookie cutter. Except, Joe's American apparently makes all their food from scratch, whereas TGI reheats it.

My brother got chicken fajitas. I wish I could have a corn tortilla for once in my life instead of flour tortillas...

These are the best oyster crackers. Ever. Someone needs to send me a box of these. NO, NOT THE "Premium" brand oyster crackers [those have PHO]. It HAS to be this brand!!!!

My grandpa doesn't like coleslaw. This coleslaw wasn't as oily as the one from Clark's but I don't think I'm a huge fan of not-sour-enough-and-too-fatty coleslaw.

My brother's clam chowder. Okay, I tried some of the soup part. It was okay. Creamy. I like corn chowder more.

Spinach and artichoke dip with fatty cheese. Funny how we turn two vegetables into heart attacks, right? It was really creamy and definitely tasted more real than the kind from Applebee's. I'm serious. There were actual chunks of artichoke that LOOKED like chunks of artichoke! The pita chips were too salty, though. I liked how they gave us some celery with it, because at least that's a little different from the other stores out there, which probably don't even stock fresh celery.

My mum got this fish thingy with a corn and cucumber salad, which was quite amazing since I never imagined that the two could get moshed together so yummily.

My sister got a cheese pizza, with thin crust. It was amazing crust - look at the grill marks on the back! The topping wasn't that interesting though, and it was drenched in lipids.

Joe's American Bar & Grill, 250 Granite St. Braintree Mall, Braintree MA.

CANDY STORE OUTSIDE!