Fancy Dinner & Notable People

In one night, I met a person from Consumer Reports (regarding food), a sustainable dairy farmer (Ronnybrook Farm), a chef (who incidentally has been on the Food Network), and a bunch of other really successful people in the food industry. By "successful", I mean that they've accomplished things. They've changed the world. Not through pipetting in a lab or trading shares, but through following a vision and a passion. It makes me wonder whether I'm as passionate about anything.

Super appetizers with carbonated punch. Again, everything was really classy and I was the awkward rock that prevents the wagon from smoothly sailing (heh, worst metaphor within a 1 mile radius). First, I had issues figuring out what to wear. As I wanted to travel minimalistically, I brought 3 fancy outfits, 1 T-shirt, and shorts, for 3 days. It turns out that for fancy events, people change into eveningwear, especially after walking around in business casual on a farm earlier in the day. Oops?

And then I had issues getting out of my chair without triggering everyone's Awkward-Alert!-radar.

Ensuite, I took pictures of my food, which might be socially frowned-upon.

然后，I asked for an autograph.

Dinner was self-service with steak on bread, salmon, bread, quinoa, and beets.

Dessert was a cake from the Culinary Institute of America. Apparently, the red stuff is actually ribbon, even though the tour guide told us that for the cake decorating class, everything had to be edible. One of the layers was chocolate, while the other was plain cake with dulce de leche tiramisu(?) filling. I somehow ended up with 1.5 slices of cake, which was a bit too much but I ended up eating it all anyway, since it was really tasty.

There was also some apple tart which was good, and brownies.
Ronnybrook Farm supplied 10 pints of ice cream, which was delicious.

A lot of socializing went on, and I learned a lot about milk (but no sources). Ronnybrook Farm cows are not considered "organic" because they are fed antibiotics only when they're sick. Apparently, Horizon and other organic farms have to kill any sick cows because they aren't allowed to give cows antibiotics, lest they lose the "Organic" label from the USDA. I already read previously that the label itself is difficult and expensive to purchase, meaning that organic farmers don't bother with the label. Also, apparently Ronnybrook Farm cows live to about 15 years, and after they're done with milk production, they're allowed to retire and graze the grass until they die. Horizon cows ostensibly only live 3.5 years. Ronnybrook Farm prides itself in owning about 200 cows who they all know by name. They also haven't bought a cow in 40 years.

I'm taking all this with a chunk of salt though, because it's honestly difficult to buy good milk in so many circumstances (income, convenience, posession of car or bus pass, large scale/schools), and it's also difficult to know for sure what companies are doing.

We also had a presentation about restaurant ownership. The thesis was that the goal is to exceed customer's expectations, and to definitively change how the customer feels about the establishment when he/she walks out. I definitely don't think I've managed that consistently with the cafe I work at. It's actually also applicable to social interactions. If you haven't made a significant positive impression on someone, whether it be in an interview, a date, or performance...well, how much did you care about the relationship with the other party?

It's something to mull over.

Hwang Bu Ja Soondubo Specialty (Korean/Japanese Restaurant)

Last month, my family went to lunch with HM's family. It was the day before I left to come back to Penn, and I completely forgot to document the experience! It was the second or third time I've been to a sit-down Korean restaurant (the first one or two being Korean BBQ when I was...10?), and this one was called "Hwang Bu Ja Soondubo Specialty". It was quite empty during lunch; only two or three other tables were occupied (yet it was Saturday around 1pm). Nevertheless, the owner of the restaurant was friendly, helpful with menu selections, and gave us 4 raw eggs even though there were 9 of us.

The above food items were absolutely delicious, especially the pickled cucumber. I could eat a whole jar of that stuff.

I ordered the Tofu Pot Stew with Sprout Rice in Stoneware. It was a huge bowl of chewy short-grain rice, raw sprouts, tofu, and cucumber. I cracked an egg into it but the egg wouldn't cook! So, I had to press the egg against the edge of the bowl, and it was quite delicious. The spicy sauce was also really good. There was way too much of it so I ended up not finishing it, but that may be because I also ate some of the grilled pancake and I also tried the dish my mum got ("Mixed uncurdled bean curd") and the one my brother got ("Octopus, udon noodle, vegetables and spicy sauce"). I LOVE UDON!

I kind of wish they had a non-animal version of this delectable looking protein item, so that I could try it.

My sister's meal, I think. She took this picture.

The tofu that my mum got. It tasted a bit fermented. Overall, I enjoy Korean food, but I don't think that I am a huge fan.

Hummus (The Restaurant)

At Pennfest, I got to sample pretty much half (or 25%. I don't know Hummus' serving sizes) a meal from Hummus. In fact, I could've sampled a bucketful of falafel and pita if I really wanted to... the next morning, as I walked around campus for MI Green, I saw that the whole platter of pita (kilos and kilos!) was on the floor. Delicious, but social suicide to pick up. The servers were friendly (well, of course they would be; here was the one chance to win the allegiance of some 2000 college students!), and the food was all vegetarian!! It was surprising, because before that, I had passed a whole herd of dead cooked animals in the form of deli food, subs, pepperoni, chicken curry...

I really liked the spring-roll-type-thing, and I'm not sure what the filling was but it was really umami. The hummus was beany and the pita tasted gluteny/yeasty (which was unexpected) and pillowy, which contrasts with the normally more dry pita bread that I'm used to. In all, I did enjoy the food by Hummus.

In other news, SR (who gave me the peanut butter cookie), abides by the vegetarian-most-of-the-time-unless-the-animal-flesh-is-getting-thrown-away. This sort of encourages me to be that type of vegetarian (in that case, I wouldn't be a vegetarian anymore), because it means that less food is wasted. Interesting concept, since I've been trying to figure out the logistics of being a sorta-freegan. More on that when I feel like typing an essay.

Hummus Restaurant
3931 Walnut St.

Qin Dynasty Seafood Restaurant (秦皇食府)

Parsippany NJ.

A few years ago, my parents were unwilling to drive me there to visit someone, but now, apparently, lunch is worth the (longish?) drive in the rain. We went in order to celebrate Mother's Day and my end of the semester as a college frosh. There were tons of people because it was tea/lunch time, and there were people pushing around trolleys of foods. Typical Cantonese restaurant style; you pick what you want, and they stamp at the correct section of a piece of card at the table, and later, you pay for however many stamps of food you got. Pretty neat, because you get to try sundry foods at a relatively low price (Okay, much cheaper in HK, but can't complain).

Xiao Long Bao - the buns with the soup. I didn't eat any but my sister liked them.

The egg tart's custard was phenomenally creamy and flavourful. The spring roll was still drenched in oil (Yes. Dripping.), but it was pretty good. At least I could tell what vegetables were inside it...

My brother liked this.

Pig blood. My brother and dad liked this. Bad picture quality. :( In the background, you can see the sesame ball thingy, which was pleasantly crunchy and not too sweet.

Nicely garnished and seasoned chicken legs.

Halfway through eating my egg tart, I felt compelled to take another picture because the cross section looks just as amazing as the whole egg tart. Notice how creamy it looks!

Fried tofu with one piece of shrimp in the centre. I'm not really sure how they managed to stuff/inject a cube of tofu with one piece of shrimp. The tofu wasn't that great, actually. The fried part was soggy (as it was in sauce...), so there was no real point of it being fried, in my opinion.

Dumplings with glutinous rice skin. For such large dumpling skins, the filling was really scant. It was also a cow flesh filling, along with some peanuts and a few pieces of vegetables.

The good thing about the waitresses was that they would explain pretty much anything on their trolleys. This green ball was apparently made with bitter melon...

...and it was absolutely NOTHING like bitter melon; inside was sesame paste and peanuts, and the green part was just glutinous rice that was deep-fried on the outside.

Rice noodles (chang2 fen3) filled with fried dough (you2 tiao2). Novel concept, nice sauce. I'm not super fond of fried dough, though. I really love rice noodles, however.

My brother and dad love durian. I don't. I never have, and I'm not sure that I ever will. This is a durian pastry.

It looks pretty delicious, actually, and I did eat some, first while smelling, but then without smelling the durian. By inhibiting my sense of smell, the flavour was harder to detect (Monell!), and I felt like I was just eating some sorta sweet pudding. However, I really can not ingest a lot of durian. I've tried it in all these forms, and I still really don't like it; I've had it fresh (the same way I eat any fresh fruit), in candy form (yes, durian candy exists), in chip form (well, okay, they were jackfruit chips), and now in pastry form.

And I still don't tolerate it.

Final thoughts:

Good for large groups: you get to try more dishes, and each dish is pretty easy to split

Great if you want authentic Chinese (actually, Cantonese) food without broccoli and cashews. I'm saying this because when we first moved to the U.S. and got food at Chinese restaurants, there was a lot of broccoli, cashews, and sweet food.

Kids like it (i.e. my sister, who doesn't eat much at home)

Pretty fair pricing.

Go between 11 and 2 on weekends. On weekdays, the variety seriously goes down, and any time after 2, the variety also goes down. If you go for dinner, you end up with the more formal Chinese restaurant style, with ordering actual dishes, and having bowls of rice, and a tureen of soup etc. If you want just casual dining with lots of choices, you should go for tea time/lunch!

Qin Dynasty Seafood Restaurant (秦皇食府), 857 Rt. 46 E, Parsippany

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.

More Fries...

This is partly why I don't like to travel with my family. We went to the Jersey Gardens Mall for the first time today. It was okay. Same old, same old.

And at dinnertime, they all got fries. Seriously. Without knowing that they had all bought fries.

They also didn't finish the fries, even though I ate some. Three different types of fries! This was like fry-tasting! The top ones are from Burger King. They were crispy and bland. The second ones were more diner-like, with the potato skins still intact. The ones from the "fish and chip" store, Nathan's, was really potatoey. They weren't crunchy enough in my opinion... but they were shaped cool, which means that they were definitely made in a factory. There also was some weird corn-flour-bready-thingy that neither my brother nor I could identify. It was like some mystery meat meatball, except that it was some savoury carb thing instead. The coleslaw was icky. I mean, in my mind, coleslaw is always at least six vegetables with a bit of dressing. Not 90% dressing with pieces of old carrot and cabbage...

The tartar sauce, however, was amazingly zingy and I have never had such tangy tartar sauce before. I do not know what made it so savourrryyyyy.

Well. That was fatty. :(

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].

Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

It's actually the 19th but I shall post this as the 18th.

For dinner I went out to eat pancakes with BV. We went to the Ritz Diner... because where else do you find chocolate chip pancakes at 8pm? Yes, PM, not AM. An amazing but sugar-crashing-filled meal. Seriously, by the time I was halfway through the pancakes, I had a huge sugar rush and I felt all hyper and sleepy at the same time. Which is how I felt on the night of graduation. Anyway.

When the waitress asked us what we wanted and we both said pancakes [I got two pancakes, he got three. I know that three is a LOT of pancakes, since last time, I got three blueberry pancakes and even though my brother ate some of it, we still didn't finish it...so that's my experience with food from the Ritz. It's a rule. You can't finish a plate of it in one sitting. This was proven true again since BV didn't finish his pancakes, and nor did I. Again.]

The chocolate chip pancakes are fabled to be amazing. That's what I had learned from people but not from experience two years ago from after Counties in Spring Track. I personally think that they are deliciously fluffy pancakes [not boiling-water-spattering like the blueberry ones] and not too sweet, which meant that the syrup filled all the spongy cavities in the dough. They were also neither extremely eggy nor gluteny, which I like. I noticed that the chocolate chips only appeared on the underside of each pancake, though, which I suppose helps the chocolate chips not stick to the griddle.

The people at the Ritz are nice.

Amazing day.

Clark's

I'm just gonna randomly blog about each day on the day trip we had. Actually, when riffling through the photos from the past year, I found a bunch of stuff in April that I never got around to blogging about since there were AP exams...[did you notice that there is no April archive? That's because I had too much to study] but I'll save those for when the time is appropriate. Anyway.

Apparently, New Haven is famous for its "apizza", which is basically some thin crust pizza with clams on it, and/or other stuff. Actually, anything clammy or with seafood is considered a New Haven or CT delicacy.

While my family was sitting in the Yale info session/tour, I walked around downtown New Haven. The first store I see? Starbucks. I walk around more. I see a zillion restaurants. Some advertised "NY style" pizza and other Italian food. Another was named "College Wine". There was a vegetarian restaurant called "Claire's", which seemed mildly interesting. There was even a "Hunan"-esque shop with bad English, and a Cheese Shop [named "Cheese Shop"].

There were no little shops selling seafood, let alone apizza.

So, that was quite upsetting. I ended up walking into Clark's because the front window advertised "fried clams", which would mean that PERHAPS there was apizza, right?

Wrong. The first waitress had no idea what apizza was... and said that they didn't have anything with clams OR seafood in the restaurant. I asked another waitress, and she said that, no, the nearest apizza was a few blocks away [Later, we drove by on the way to the highway, and we literally jumped out of the car on the one way street and ran over to Sally's Apizza to buy some apizza... but it turned out that Sally's isn't open until 5pm. It was around 4pm at the time.]

However, she DID say that they had fried clams [oh! the sign was right!], and they were actually "clam strips" and not legit whole clams. Either way, I bought them... with fries and coleslaw [it was this package thing] for around $11. This is truly quality over quantity. If you think about the amount of stuff you can get at a gross monopolistical putrid place like McD. for $11, it's probably seven times more than what we got. This is why cuisine is disappearing. People want the cheap stuff since it "tastes basically the same". However, the processes and labours involved are sharply distinct, you could cut a piece of rough celery with it! I actually interacted with the waitresses, whereas at McD it's just... placing your order of reheated rainforest and coal. Sigh.

Both waitresses were really nice, and there seemed to be a huge selection of ice cream and bakery stuff there, too. I didn't take too many pictures.

I ate some fries and the coleslaw with a piece of warm bread [which my mum brought, so it had been in the car for six hours, which explains the high average kinetic energy of the molecules in the bread]. I also ventured to try some batter from the clam since I don't eat clams. I tried the super small pieces, because those are the ones that are basically batter pieces. It was good batter!

My brother actually fell in love with fried seafood. As in, he got fried scallops at Faneuil Hall, and MORE fried clam strips on the way back when we passed by CT again on the way home.

Also, I like tartar sauce.

BOSTON!

I consumed fries. From Monday to Saturday [today]. This is the first time in my life in which I have consumed at least one potato fry for six consecutive days. The irony is that we were roadtrippin', from NJ to NY to CT to RI to MA. And back. Yet, every restaurant served fries with the dish. American cuisine is incomplete without fried strips of potato.

Anyway... there is too much to update all at once so I'll just talk about the "only" New England-related items that I consumed. One is corn chowder, and the other is the Boston cream cake [better known as the "Boston Cream Pie", which is the official dessert of MA.
The biggest problem for me was actually FINDING some corn chowder and Boston cream pie. No kidding. Nothing in Cambridge, MA. Nothing in Downtown MA. Nothing in Chinatown, duh, and by that time I was giving up hope so I got an egg tart [remember: I love egg tarts].

Finally, at the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, I found Quincy Market, which basically was a corridor filled with restaurants. There were a lot of ice cream, bakery and seafood fare there, and I finally. Found. Corn. Chowder. It was, understandably, at a shop named "Boston Chowda". Actually, I ended up with a sample of macaroni and cheese, and of a strawberry smoothie. There was also vegetarian moussaka, but I was too full to eat anything after the chowder and cake... or else I totally would've tried not only the moussaka, but also the whoopie pie thingy which I've never had before either.

I don't like styrofoam :( but everything there had styrofoam containers with plastic forks or spoons. I should bring my own. In college, I'm gonna carry around a metal teaspoon.

I can't believe that I have never had oyster crackers before. They. Are. The. Best. Crackers. In. The. World. YES, they probably even beat Goldfish crackers!! There is no real oyster in them, of course.Blurry shot of the oyster crackers with a piece of potato and some corn and soup. It was soooo creamy, super hot, and very flavourful. The potato wasn't mushy, the corn was sweet, and the whole soup made me really thirsty. There was no weird aftertaste or anything else negative about the soup. I couldn't see any oil or grease, so it was visually appealing too! Quite amazing. I don't even remember the last time I had corn chowder [have I had it before?], but the last time I had clam chowder from a can, I could taste this fatty-ness that came with it. In contrast, the corn chowder was simply poofy corniness [yeah. this description is getting really corny.] and makes me think of comfort food. Also, this means that I have to make some corn chowder at some point soon.So, I wanted a Boston cream doughnut. I was unable to find any in Boston. Okay, fine, Dunkin' Donuts definitely has them, but THAT DOES NOT COUNT, considering I can run to two Dunkin' Donuts from my house within 15 minutes. I wanted authenticity! If anyone knows of a place in which there are BOSTON cream doughnuts, please enlighten me. There was NY style cheesecake, and random funnel cake, but no Boston Cream Doughnut. Sigh. I did find two stores that sold Boston Cream Pie [cake.] though, and I picked the Carol Ann Bake Shop because the shopkeeper appeared to know what he was talking about when I asked him about it. Also, they had this lobster tail pastry that looked like a lobster tail [and it was apparently filled with cheese?] The other store sold Italian food... and the Boston cream cake/pie had almonds on the side. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with it.
HUGE COOKIES!!
HUGE PASTRIES/CAKES!
The Boston Cream cake/pie consists of three things. Chocolate icing, plain sponge cake, and the cream.
The icing was ridiculously sticky and hard. My fork is completely immobilised and not prone to the effects of gravity when stuck into the icing. It was really sweet, which is nice, but lacked chocolatey flavour.
The sponge cake was really bad. As in, I didn't want to finish it, which rarely happens with cake. So, I'm not going to talk about it. The cream... hmm, it was really light and makes me think of clouds. Nothing heavy about it, which makes it more of a custard than a "cream" and at first taste, you think it's sorta watery, but it's actually just really light. It's a bit sweet, but ends up a tad sour, which was unexpected [think yoghurt]. Actually, it's really thin... I'm trying to figure out what it would match up to because it's NOT like yoghurt or icing or egg tart filling. It's more like... American pudding. I think I'm indifferent to it, but the [inferior?] kind I tried before in the form of a doughnut from Shoprite was definitely sweeter and more gelatinous. So, I don't think I like Boston cream cake/pies. At least, from this shop.