THURSDAY THE LONG WAY: A DAY LATE
Thursday the long way is a new feature I intend to use to highlight food from out of the way places including important food memories that have had something to do with forming the way I look at food today, both cooking it and eating it. They may be inspired by recent meals, by the food-media, or by anything at all.
As a kid I couldn't stand fish, until I was about 12, that is, and then things began to change, drastically-- I ate it raw in a Japanese restaurant at a hotel in Thailand on vacation with my parents. In the cafeteria at the French International School I'd seen the 'bento boxes' filled with California rolls packed for some of my Chinese classmates. I don't remember any student ever sharing a California roll with me nor do I remember being overcome with the need to taste one. I recall being introduced to another component of sushi at EFI on the concrete rooftop playground where sometimes during recess my classmates would snack on pacakges of seaweed rectangles. I did taste one of these and wasn't pleased with the aftertaste I was left with the rest of the afternoon.
I don't remember the rice or the type of fish served but my tastes changed when I ate sushi in Thailand. While sushi wasn't something that I ate regularly as a teenager, it's something I've eaten with great frequency over the past five years. I could eat sushi several times a week, twice a day and be very happy as long as I'm not served Mackerel (there's something very unpleasant about the texture of the flesh and the silver skin). In fact, I have lived on sushi this way, including for a long time, a weekly Wednesday visit to Haru for lunch where I'd have a Phoenix Maki roll, a spicy tuna roll wrapped around shrimp tempura with a spicy mayonnaise. Let's forget that Haru is owned by Benihana-- it has my approval. It's not chintzy, their rice is moist and pliable, the fish is fresh and the sushi well-prepared and I could drink the dressing they use on their side salads without any lettuce leaves. I can also eat piece after piece of seaweed as if they were potato chips-- I'm pretty sure it's healthier too.
My best sushi meal in New York thus far has been the tasting menu at Nobu. The sushi meal I'd like to have that's unlikely to happen anytime soon is the $400 meal at Masa, Masayoshi Takayama's 4-star restaurant in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. As I understand it, that $400 is for a meal that the chef decides to create for his customers-- there's no ordering, no choosing, no selecting, just eating and paying. A classmate works there as an administrator and gets %20 off, but imagine, that's still a $320 tab, for one person. I think until my ship comes in or I'm ready to throw all cautions to the wind right now I'll have to just dream about Masa as that's about the only place I can afford to spend $320 on one meal...
As a kid I couldn't stand fish, until I was about 12, that is, and then things began to change, drastically-- I ate it raw in a Japanese restaurant at a hotel in Thailand on vacation with my parents. In the cafeteria at the French International School I'd seen the 'bento boxes' filled with California rolls packed for some of my Chinese classmates. I don't remember any student ever sharing a California roll with me nor do I remember being overcome with the need to taste one. I recall being introduced to another component of sushi at EFI on the concrete rooftop playground where sometimes during recess my classmates would snack on pacakges of seaweed rectangles. I did taste one of these and wasn't pleased with the aftertaste I was left with the rest of the afternoon.
I don't remember the rice or the type of fish served but my tastes changed when I ate sushi in Thailand. While sushi wasn't something that I ate regularly as a teenager, it's something I've eaten with great frequency over the past five years. I could eat sushi several times a week, twice a day and be very happy as long as I'm not served Mackerel (there's something very unpleasant about the texture of the flesh and the silver skin). In fact, I have lived on sushi this way, including for a long time, a weekly Wednesday visit to Haru for lunch where I'd have a Phoenix Maki roll, a spicy tuna roll wrapped around shrimp tempura with a spicy mayonnaise. Let's forget that Haru is owned by Benihana-- it has my approval. It's not chintzy, their rice is moist and pliable, the fish is fresh and the sushi well-prepared and I could drink the dressing they use on their side salads without any lettuce leaves. I can also eat piece after piece of seaweed as if they were potato chips-- I'm pretty sure it's healthier too.
My best sushi meal in New York thus far has been the tasting menu at Nobu. The sushi meal I'd like to have that's unlikely to happen anytime soon is the $400 meal at Masa, Masayoshi Takayama's 4-star restaurant in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. As I understand it, that $400 is for a meal that the chef decides to create for his customers-- there's no ordering, no choosing, no selecting, just eating and paying. A classmate works there as an administrator and gets %20 off, but imagine, that's still a $320 tab, for one person. I think until my ship comes in or I'm ready to throw all cautions to the wind right now I'll have to just dream about Masa as that's about the only place I can afford to spend $320 on one meal...
posted by Turo at 1:08 AM
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