Growing a Green Tongue

Now, I might be beating a dead horse, or growing some kind of green tongue, but I've spent these last couple weeks wandering about vegan and vegetarian food. I used to be vegetarian. It was admirable. But then I realized trying to be vegetarian in an Italian household was problematic for my family's gastronomic identity. There's meat in almost everything. Except, maybe, bread. I held out for as long as I could. A good two years, but then a friend of mine introduced me to Korean Barbecue, and it was all downhill from there. But I think I have enough perspective now to communicate to all of you faithful readers that vegetarian and vegan food can be good food. It doesn't have to be pretentious, expensive, contemptibly portioned or bizarrely flavoured. This week, I could only hope that Kitchener-Waterloo offered up some redeeming spots for vegan and vegetarian food, and if not, then at least at an amiable price.

The chophouses we so cosmopolitanly refer to as restaurants can be great spaces for culinary learning. I've been in the dark for quite some time on the vegetarian and vegan front. But let my meandering be a lesson: if you want to learn about particular food, all you need do is merely go out and eat it. See what you can do with it, look for something you like, and make it on your own (provided there are no paranoid cooks with secret recipes). Lately, if I had a personal, yet somewhat obtuse and unpremeditated, mission, it was to prove to myself that there is vegan and vegetarian food out there that is substantial, and I believe I've found it these last couple of weeks. Kinda. Because when it boils down to it, there's a big wide world out there.

The Duke St. Muse is nothing new. But I don't say this sardonically. It's settled itself for as long as I've seen it just outside the heart of kitchener's downtown and I admire that. However, my own prejudice to vegetarian eating in the past has always denied it a place on my palette. Not today, however. Today, it called out to me. And if it was called the Duke St. Siren I could have made a more clever transition here, but I think I have your attention.

It's a quaint little eatery- its takeout menu says so. I’d go so far as to add that it's unpretentious. But there's a paradox here, because although The Duke St. Muse is quaint, it also has the feeling of being a space that is very public, almost like a strange university cafeteria from A Different World (too old a reference? That's my point). Some call this kitsch; I don't know what to call it. All I know is that its orange and green and off yellow walls combined with its hanging ceiling lamps, wood tables and plastic chairs (we sometimes see in class-rooms), and hybrid African-South Western abstract art call to mind those spaces where social activists, slam poets, and environmentalists like to hang out. But out of my austere criticism of interior design comes a truth that there definitely is a sense of community. I especially got it in the basement where there's even more seating and a mural that looks like it could be put on a brownstone somewhere in Brooklyn Heights (that's another TV reference for you).

Duke St. Muse seems like a place with no focus. Even its menu is a mash-up of styles. Yet, even then there are things that anchor it. It's obviously vegan and vegetarian; it serves vegan and vegetarian things, like sandwiches and salads (staples, I'm sure). But herein lays its redeeming qualities: its culinary compass points far and wide. Yes there's soup, yes there's salad, but there's also interesting eats like burritos, quesadillas, chillis and curries. It combines Indian and South American tastes which I found intriguing and excited to try. Again, most likely because I know so little about vegetarian and vegan food and was happy to discover that such food didn't have to be boring. My only regret was safely choosing the option I did. A familiar sandwich-salad combo, which I seem to have an affinity for lately in such places, even though there was so much more on the menu! I suppose if anything my decision came from my own romance about how a vegan sandwich could be and how it actually was. A lot more plane than I had imagined. A lot easier to recreate than I would have liked. Is vegan food so easy? I guess so. But there was some equivocation on The Duke St. Muse's part; because, though they claim to serve fresh homemade meals (perhaps meals similar to those we make at home) and use local produce, this isn't the whole truth. I paid 6.50 for a California Raspberry salad that was nothing more than a store bought mixed prewashed salad combined with carrot shavings, raw sesame seeds, sparse cashews, canned mandarin oranges and a very familiar raspberry vinaigrette (a generic, too sweet, too sour, brand). There was nothing local about it. First of all, no one grows mandarin oranges in Waterloo, Ontario.

Next, I asked for a vegan sandwich. Multigrain processed bread toasted and stuffed with the same mix that made my salad, a piece of processed soy cheese, tomato, cucumber, and cilantro pesto. It was called the Mumbai, which may have been why I tried it. I partnered it with a 3.50 mango lassi (a kind of mango puree sprinkled with cinnamon). The attempt to toast the bread was a little too much, but I can't be too harsh in this instance, because if it wasn't toasted, it may have become raw and gummy with all the vegetable ingredients packed between its triangular slices. I was a bit remorseful at first, regretting having gotten the thing because it seemed there was too much leaf used just to give the sandwich body, overpowering all its other fillings with blandness. If it wasn't for the cilantro pesto I may have given up early. Luckily, thanks to the spread, the sandwich had a bit of personality. Then again, I'm a sucker for cilantro. The vibrant, bright, citrus smell of cilantro hit me even before letting the sandwich touch my lips. So naturally, I was excited. Excited for food again, for spring, for the summers I would spend bombarding my garden with the herb and harvesting its leaves in early August whilst bees buzzed venerably around me, pollinating white little flowers so I could plant even more in the future. My first bite into it hit me hard in the face; I loved that I discovered cilantro pesto- that I could very well not only save cilantro for bread salad or a mere (listen to me) bowl of pho, but something else. Sadly, the flavour fizzled out like a star in the night, the sensation it left briefly on my tongue overpowered again by all those salad greens.

Nothing stopped me from sucking my thick (most likely not homemade) mango lassi offensively through its straw. It was a flavour I knew too well from the cans of mango puree I'd used in many kitchens before, and passed off as a mango drink. I liked that they had mango lassis. I didn't like that they were so plain and, well, mass produced.

You may not get a lot of locally grown ingredients at Duke St. Muse in the winter (or first day of spring), but you'll certainly find some thrifty uses for food; and for 14 dollars, my meal was pretty substantial. Then again, what I needed was a good diplomatic meal. Something that encompassed the true character of a place like Duke St. Muse so I could see what it was really made of. I suppose I missed the mark, because after what I ate I realized there were potentially better options on the menu, like the daily lunch combo: a pile of curried vegetables and bean stew poured over a big bed of rice. I couldn't deny its popularity; it was the first thing a customer told me about when coming in, and another fought over by three friends who were forced to fight for the last lunch special of the day, it having been sold out. Then there were the heaping 9 dollar vegan quesadillas. But you never know, I may be doing the same thing I did with my sandwich: romanticizing a flashy chalkboard menu. Alas, dear eaters, like Heraclitus said: “an opportunity lost is one lost forever.” But then, I could always go back. OR. You could all go for me.

The Duke Street Muse

6 Duke St. E,
Kitchener, ON, N2H 1A3
(519) 342-0550
www.dukestreetmuse.com

Mon-Fri 10am -7pm

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Contemporary Home Food

I found myself at a crossroads this week, dear eaters. After last week's eating debacle, there was a great culinary weight on my shoulders. I needed to find a place where the meals would wrap their lovin’ arms around me vicariously for you; a place where I could eat good food on all of our behalves and comfort the collective stomachache that had unforeseeably plagued us (okay, maybe just me) for so long. And so I ask you this my fellow gastronomes: what do we do when we need to alleviate the poor feelings in the pit of our stomachs, when flat tires eliminate a good portion of our days, when we wake up wondering what we're doing with our lives? Of course, there are a myriad of possibilities, but for our poor stomachs' sakes, what can we do? I’ll tell you what we can do. We can eat. And we do. We eat good, comforting food. We eat for the sake of feeling like we're coming home and all is good and right in the world. This time, for me, dare I say, for all of us, home was Hometown Eatery!, conveniently located, I might add, at a crossroads. And if that's not meaningful, well I don't know what is. It was a place, if I could describe it in three words, and after eavesdropping on the waitress, of contemporary comfort food. Three words, but three very true words at that.

But what does it mean to be contemporary? It's something tossed around a lot, so much so that I'm willing to bet you're all thinking I'm just trying to sound smart, or lack the proper descriptors to really express Hometown Eatery!'s food. So maybe, just maybe, it's something a little more than contemporary- or a little less; that is, its food that seems to mediate itself between that old nostalgic comfort food and the kind of luxurious food we hear about, or are used to hearing about today and would love to eat. Hometown Eatery does a good job of closing the gap.

	Formerly Yukiko's

Still, I can't deny its au courant or contempo disposition; at least when it comes to the place you sit down and eat in. A picturesque house from the outside, its white semi-stucco walls, warm coloured light fixtures, avant-garde wall facsimiles, novelty kitchen appliances and cowboy plants, combined with those other nostalgic restaurant room pieces like menu chalk boards and swinging kitchen doors only magnify its appeal to the degree, at least to me, where it reminded me of the kinds of dining spaces seen so often in the loft apartments of television shows. Lived in, yet oh so- what's the word? Aw, yes, contemporary. Combine that with small dining room extensions that mimic intimate breakfast nooks and a kind of obligatory jazz music over the radio and you can pretty much get a feel for the kind of place it is. For a late lunch, it was buzzing, and I could only imagine how cramped- or cozy- it might get at dinner.

It seemed friendly enough. Although, I admit, there was an awkward beat when I came in and made my way to the register asking if they had a menu. In a place like this I would have expected at least one of two things: to be greeted and seated, menu placed in front of me; or, playing to some old sentimental idea of visiting my grandmother's kitchen, being told to have a seat and lovingly asked what I would like. If that sounds redundant, trust me, it isn't. My point is, I hate feeling things out when I come into a place, but maybe that's the point of Hometown's hip informality. Regardless, I like to be led to the food rather than stand around haphazardly until I gather my wits. But so it goes.

	Say something funny, listen for a laugh track~

Having found a seat, reviewing the menu and making my choice between pastas, salads and sandwiches, I made my way back to the register and ordered what seemed a hell of an intriguing idea: a grill cheese sandwich with brie instead of the typical cheddar (though that was offered). This is what I mean when I describe Hometown Eatery! as contemporary comfort food. Taking quotidian meals and elevating them to something a little less sentimental and a little more sophisticated seems almost ingenious. It wasn't a lightbulby moment for me or anything, because in the back of my mind I knew things like this existed- I just couldn't believe I hadn't really paid attention to them before. Next, and since I still have some yearnings for authenticity, I chose to have my meal accompanied with a home-brewed ice tea, because isn't that what we need when eating out? A little bit of novelty and uniqueness? Though not as tart and sweet as I would have preferred, it certainly had that mild and therefore humble flavour of being brewed at home. That is, it wasn't loaded with an overbearing, artificial sweetness found in branded ice teas, nor did it leave that chalky aftertaste like so many teas before it, or the paradoxically dry, rough feeling that makes your teeth feel like wet cobblestones when you run your tongue across them after polishing off a tall glass of the stuff. Anyway, and the lemon wedge accompanying it added the tartness I was looking for.

	Grilled brie with coleslaw for a smooth 10 dollars.

I'd lost track of the time when my meal had arrived, a grilled brie sandwich with a side of the luncheonette's original coleslaw, an epitaph to the place's previous identity and creator, Yukiko. It was crisp, much more than coleslaw dictates, but a texture I thoroughly enjoyed, bathed in a mild lemon, mayonnaise and poppy seed sauce that emulsified well and had a good creamy quality rather than wet and vinegary. One thing seemed for certain, Yukiko must have certainly had a delicate palette because it certainly showed in the food. Just eating it made me feel cleaner.

Setting my slaw aside, and giving my sandwich ample time to gain composure, I bit into a mild brie joining two slices of marbled rye bread. The balmy, grassy notes of the brie balanced well with the rye's own grain flavour and their tone never too dull due to the fact that the cheese's rind had been included in the sandwich, contributing a savoury ammoniac flavour to a sandwich that might otherwise have been a little too mellow.

	Chocolate banana cake: 6.95. Shoot.

I wasn't done there, fellow eaters; I was still very much looking forward to dessert and had my eye on a slice of caramel cheesecake. However, after an inquisitive talk with a darling waitress I turned my attention to the in house cakes offered and chose the most popular slice: chocolate banana. Another stellar combination of chocolate cake settled by ganache on a separate loaf of banana bread convinced me that Hometown had a thing for simple pairings. Whatever dryness the cake had was eluded by the rich, creamy ganache, though I admit by the end of it, its sweetness was a little too much to take. That said, the slice was a hearty size, much bigger than slices I've had elsewhere. My only qualm may have been the price, the slice costing as much as a bottle of draft sake (by the way, the place serves an array of local beers; and why not? A brewery's right across the street). Overall, lunch for one may have been a little pricey, but once and a while I suppose it's okay to spoil yourself, especially for such (did I say ingenious?) food.

Home-brew icetea: 2.50
Grilled Brie with slaw: 10.00
Banana chocolate cake: 6.95

Hometown Eatery
30 William Street West, Waterloo, ON
(519) 576-9424
Mon-Wed: 11:30am -9:00pm
Thurs & Fri: 11:30 am -10:00pm
Sat: 9:00am-10:00pm
Sun: 9:00am-9:00pm

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More Adventures in Food Land

Kitchener-Waterloo can be a real food wasteland, or so I cynically came to realize today spending a good part of my day looking for something called yuzu koshou- a kind of green chili paste- and when getting the gull to walk into the only Sushi shop I know that has legitimate Japanese owners, of whom had no idea what I was talking about. We can get tuna but not a green Japanese chili paste? It's mind blowing. Maybe the waitress, who I saw asking the boss across the room, only pretended to remember the name of the paste and dismissed my question. But that's a little naive, even for me, who stubbornly spent 5 hours walking by foot to every Asian grocery and convenient store, not to mention Japanese-Korean restaurant in search of the most obscure thing. Barthes was right, cooking's not the problem, but having access to the ingredient is, even today, a good 40 years after he wrote it.

But, things ain't that bad. I had a little heart left, which was enough to get me some red miso paste. Yeah, yeah, I could have easily dropped 5 bucks buying an obscene amount at the grocery store, but I refused. Maybe on some level I wanted to see if my dream of becoming a humble ramen noodle cook was still feasible, and to do that I had to put myself out there and ask multiple Japanese restaurants if they'd have the heart to sell me a little red paste. One had no idea what I was talking about, saying they didn't use red bean paste in their restaurant- in their sushi restaurant; in their miso soup they serve as a starter. I dunno. Red miso must have been something lost in translation. Between red bean paste, aka miso and "the paste used to make miso soup" the manager's Mainland Chinese history must have somehow interfered with her culinary perspective . . . in a Japanese sushi restaurant. I had to stop to think before I exited the place, wondering if I had exhausted every possible name for red miso paste in both Chinese and Japanese and English, not that Japanese would have helped, or Mandarin apparently. Sometimes I think people just shut themselves off when they see a white guy asking about their food, like I immediately wouldn't know about it or what I'm talking about, but that's a crass judgment, because someone was nice enough to take the time to listen, and what's more, give me some red miso for free. A Korean woman, who I can only assume took pity on me having heard my story of trying to find red miso, which in the end took me longer to find than it did Tripitaka to get the sacred Buddhist scrolls. To top it off, after having spoke with her husband, she gave me copious amounts. It may not seem like it, but to someone as poor as me, that small amount of Miso was the equivalent to 500 dollars of a rich man's salary. I thank her and her husband's restaurant. If they're that sympathetic, I can only assume they know the power of food and and what it does for somebody. Now, I won't tell you that the couple were the proprietors of Iron Chef Fusion Restaurant and owners of some of the biggest hearts I'd seen in a long time, nor will I tell you that you should go support them and eat at their restaurant because this town needs people like them. But I will tell you this, they certainly saved my chicken dumplings. I've visited them in the past- when they first opened- and maybe judged them a little harshly, ignoring the Peter Meehan Principle- only judge a place 8 months down the road when it's had a chance to establish itself. And I may have judged them when I applied for a job and didn't get it, but the Buddha kept bringing me back. I thank you Iron Chef. 君から俺はまだまだ食べることが出来る。


Iron Chef Japanese Fusion Restaurant
117 University Plaza
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Policing the Crisis

*CLOSED*
 
Eating takes me a lot of places. Thrilled to be in a kitchen again, this time as a dish washing golden boy, I did what I always do: ask where people go to eat. What can I say? What better situation to be in than a restaurant to ask about good food? I like to trust the local work, because I assume, as I so often do, that those who place themselves in the world of gastronomica have a strong passion and conviction about what is good and palatable. Alas, sometimes however, palates are accustomed to mediocrity and what may seem good and popular may not necessarily be so.

Told by a young apprentice chef about the best hot and sour soup in town intrigued me. The Chinese soup is definitely well known among the masses, but my experiences with it have been unsettling. I've had it too thick, too flavourless, too lumpy, even with hair petrified in its gelatinous constitution. It wasn't until last year, when I met a dear friend of mine, that I decided to give it another chance. One of my dear comrade's many food vocations was to find the best hot and sour soup in town, and this took us to many places. As is my constitution as a gastroneme, and having overcome my adverse neurosis of the soup, I made tasting the supposedly best hot and sour soup in town my most recent duty. The location was a pleasant surprise as it had been a place that I've always made a personal note of visiting, having been told about it years ago by someone else. And it is when I'm told by multiple mouths about the same obscure place that I get excited.

Kim Seng Seafood Restaurant seats itself ingloriously in the plaza between Westmount and Westwood Drive, Kitchener, its doors devotedly open to the lunch buffet crowd every day, and remaining a ghost town for those brave enough to enter any time after to the lingering family who owns the hideaway and eats together in the late afternoon. Mounted on the place's brick paneled wall is a television showing the ever-present Chinese period drama watched diligently by family, but left alone when the news comes on, later changed by the younger members who come from school in the even later afternoon hungry not for food, but cartoons. Beyond that corner a bar, buffet table and mirror trim surrounding the ceiling as if encouraging whatever diners to police each others’ meals. The floor is red carpet, the chairs black rimmed seats with green ‘pleather’ cushions and pastel print supports, the table cloths nothing more than plastic throwaways readied for mess, and the cutlery a generic white. Beyond the shrines and folk art hung on the walls hangs something I dread: wall menus written in traditional Chinese, unreadable by me and a sure sign of food terrorism, leaving the illiterate Western diner out of potentially better meals from the already extensive 201 item menu. Therefore, let's transition, shall we?

Kim Seng's menu certainly is overwhelming, and exists almost as a catalog of Cantonese and Szechuan cuisine, offering infrequent restaurant fare such as pig's stomach with chili sauce, to more familiar dishes like hot and sour soup. Being the fair diner I am it would have been foolish to avoid ordering what the place's name implies as its specialty (or so my company told me). I mean of course, seafood.

We ordered what we had initially set out to eat- hot and sour soup- warned that the portion of one small is enough for two people eating other choices, so we split it between ourselves. To accompany that we settled for chicken with mustard greens and shrimp with eggplant, a dish on the menu that boasted a hot chilli rating of three and was a seafood dish consisting of something difficult to cook- shrimp. At 5.90, 8.99 and 9.99 respectively we assured ourselves that with some rice (2.00) we'd have a meal that rounded to about 15 dollars per person; and assuming the portion sizes and the dishes we chose, we thought we had made a good choice.

Hot and sour soup- y'know? P.s., like my stylistic cropping?

The soup came first, and man, little homies, it was big. We managed at least three or four small bowls each, which in retrospect we're both grateful for, the soup having salvaged an otherwise poor meal. The soup had good heat and its consistency was charming. It looked thick, but poured fluidly, sans lumps every time we ladled it, filled with a good deal of ingredients- tofu, fungus, pork, bamboo, carrots; the list goes on. I particularly enjoyed its fermented notes. My company thought its sour flavour was too much and resembled the brine used to soak preserves. Maybe I had a hankering for pickles. Regardless, it certainly had flavour, and it lived up to its small reputation. I can't recall a place having better hot and sour soup, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there.

			I told you. Chicken with mustard.Fr realz.

Next, and to our confusion, we received a plate of what looked like curried chicken, smelling strangely like the fare served at sporting events: mustard, processed meat and carbohydrates. My dining partner said it was weird; I rebuttled by saying it was infuriating. Our chicken with mustard greens was nothing more than chicken stir-fried with carrots and green peppers in repugnant amounts of honey mustard. There were no mustard greens about the dish and the attempt to call a dish chicken and mustard greens seemed either a jejune mistake in translation and misunderstanding by an immigrant restaurateur (that's had a restaurant in Canada for a long time) or a gross assumption that we as diners wouldn't know the difference between mustard and mustard greens, two relatively different things with similar names. It tasted strange to say the least and was, if anything, an example of how the palates of a nation’s space can change a culture's food (but that’s enough Gramsci). Unless of course, it's something eaten at arms’ length in China that I know nothing about, but it's the first time I've ever had it. We could only wonder what a stir-fry with ketchup, hot dog and bun might taste like, probably good to the eaters that this restaurant assumes set foot through its doors. That was strike one, to carry on the metaphor.

	I counted five shrimp.

Next, our shrimp and eggplant dish arrived, a dish also slathered with sauce but this time with chili, garlic and black bean. The coup de grâce, though there was nothing merciful about it, was the five shrimp that came with the dish. Though tender, they left little in terms of balance; it would have been better to name the dish ‘stir-fried eggplant with some shrimp accidentally put in,’ but flashy rhetoric seemed to be the foundation of Kim Seng's menu. Who knew how other dishes were prepared and brought to the table?
It took a good amount of effort to find the deep, sweet fermented black bean flavor that presumably accompanied the dish. It was spicy, but any other taste was lost its starchy sauce, and it took a good number of bites to adjust my palate.

Half way through we came to the realization that we didn't have to finish, and that in a Utopian society where all our basic needs are met, there's no need for bad restaurant food. The dishes were no longer worth the price, and the Chinese family restaurant no longer a quaint place. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to go to China, learn the language, come back and tell them how disappointing their food was. But I'm too damn nice.

And if you don't believe me, then by all means, try it yourself, or better yet, buy me lunch and prove me wrong. Maybe this time, you can police a crisis.
Kim Seng Seafood Restaurant(519) 742-8452
11 Westwood Drive Kitchener,
ON N2M 2K5

Sunday-Monday: 11:30-10:30
Closed Tuesday
Wednesday-Thursday: 11:30-10:30
Fri-Sat:11:30- 11:00

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