Poor Ol' Fuji-San

If you’re tired of making any kind of effort to visit any kind of all-you-can-eat sushi place in town, your prayers have been answered, because Itamae sushi is the newest ubiquity bogarting on the phenomenon of cosmopolitanism that has been diffusing the neighbourhoods around Waterloo’s university blocks. That’s right, for all the lucky students, all-you-can-eat is a mere jaunt. 13.99 for lunch, 20.99 for dinner. You’d be foolish not to grab a filling, almost irresponsible, lunch every day. And now, when you do, you don’t have to feel like a contemptible in-debt student at an all-you-can-eat facsimile, because Itamae feels and looks a little more urbane. I’m ashamed to say, I found myself hypnotized by the chic, Orientalized space. Cool browns, blacks, greys, forgiving tiled splash-backs; thick, stocky furnishings, pearled dining tables, waiters setting orders on hand held tablets, faux sushi itamaes in blue hakis with murals of origami met with bursts of warm colours on aesthetics reminiscent of the origami motif of the space. Even its centre made the place exalted and heavenly as the gold ceiling reached up to a point representing none other than Fuji itself. The bathrooms had granite counters, and robotic paper towel dispensers; it was a fantastic feast for the eyes, an alright feast for the stomach. Unfortunately, our orders took a good amount of time getting to us, so much so that Joey lost any truck he had with the wait staff, taking his own order and walking up and handing his tab to every sushi chef, making sure he would get what he wanted. And there were the usual chronic mixups and mystery orders that constantly happen at sushi places too.

Itamae offers nothing particularly new, some different menu options, some half-assed desserts masquerading as haute because they look, like the space, really good. That was my biggest tension. I’m a devote fan of egg tarts, but what we received was a beaten egg baked in an obtusely folded wonton, too eggy and off putting. And the Itamae apple pie? Nothing more than an apple fritter, with no spin on it to imply the character or personality of the place. Just an apple fritter. A boring apple fritter. Everything is hit or miss, and that seems to be the complacent accession of all all-you-can-eat-sushi spots. It can’t all be good. But, I argue it can if it didn’t want to seem like a cash grab all the time. Some sashimi was good, the white tuna, clean and salty, the salmon and red tuna, a little stale and brassy from sitting in a fridge. Some sashimi came room temperature, some uncomfortably cool. The eel on my sushi pizza was another climatic affliction. Cold seafood on hot deep fried rice in other words. We did very much enjoy the lotus rolls, though. A series of rolls rolled with bean paper, reminiscent of a thin cabbage, rather than the usual seaweed. And the mango banana roll was somewhat amusing. Mango stuck out of it like shoots of bamboo, wrapped in usual seaweed and rice. It was an ambitious project. The fruit wasn’t as ripe as we would have liked, and the flavours juxtaposed too much to really want it again. Even if a dessert, which it wasn’t, it still fell very short. But again, the menu’s a big thing, with a lot to try, so you’re bound to accept something. We liked the bacon asparagus rolls, and the curry chicken was enlivened by lime and notes of star anise. The grilled mackerel was surprisingly good for something expected so fast.

Itamae sushi doesn’t need to try at anything. Hell, if it had any professionalism, I imagine the waitress would have stepped aside to let me through a hall of crowded people rather than elbowing past me when I approached. But when customers just want to fill themselves us with alright food, forgoing great taste and service, can you blame them? Still, why not just buy a bag of rice? Let’s hope it’s not a representation of the superficiality of cuisine, or anything for that matter, in our break neck developing city, even if substandard goods are conventionally associated with developers just interested in a quick buck. In that case then, I reckon Itamae is in the right place.

ANY PAYMENT

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In This Corner . . .

If you’re feeling a bit peckish, for both food and self-reflection on your own class position, Luchador food truck might just be the perfect tool for a little culinary reflexivity. The mobile restaurant totes itself as a Mexican fusion machine, and though that may be a moot point for any cuisine in the West, I’ve enough gull to say it teeters more on the side of anything haute. Yup, its new school cartoony mural of little luchadors will dilate your pupils, and its portions will have you feeling the pangs of today’s current food trends and the price you have to pay to be a part of them. Only the most socially obedient can belong to Luchador, because I’m willing to bet it’s a one time visit for a lot of us. Not because of the food. No, no. It’s pretty good. But the portions had me crying and reviewing social constructs of control in a Victorian era residually present today, of all things, in what is supposed to liberate high cuisine from the tyranny of restaurant costs. Oh food trucks, I thought you were for the people? I guess not. Instead I found myself shelling out near ten dollars for two tiny steamed buns postured as ‘tacos’,  and 6 for two tiny slider hamburgers with pudgy finger sausages. If we can agree though that eating anything from Luchador is about taste, and not sustenance, then there’s nothing to argue; I can only hope the masses are as civil as me. I was culled by the coos of the masked Luchador calling my name and telling me that my ‘lil Filipino tortas lonagnizas’ and ‘momofuku steambun tacos’ were ready. I wondered if Dave Chang knew Luchador was alluding his food? I felt quietly had when I discovered how small my portions were. I expected enough food to fill the salt-of-the-earth. Two tiny tacos. Two tiny burgers. By now you all get it. You’re gonna pay for it; and it’s up to you all to appreciate it. I certainly could appreciate Luchador’s finesse for managing some things. Its proprietor is a powerhouse of culinary knowhow. Don’t be fooled by my polemic. A serendipitous chat with Luchador’s owner had me more than humbled, only because he himself was. Articulate, well-versed, aware of the performance of food, Luchador doesn’t claim to be cutting edge. It just looks for what people like and tries it. No rock stars here. Only food industry perspective, which is why I imagine everything turned out so well. 

Luchador’s infusion of flavours were impressive. I could taste the five spice in the background of my bacon-esque pork belly. I could taste the heat and lingering lime of the cold slaw of my sliders. I could appreciate the chewy airiness of my steamed bun ‘tacos’ (a food feat I find finicky). The mallo-like texture of my mini slider buns. The tender give of my charizo like sausages. Luchador corners a texture market, there’s no doubt. Even the pork belly had an interesting crunchy exterior with a fatty interior, albeit a dry one. Still, I was wrestling a hoisin sauce too sweet and overpowering, and sprigs of cilantro that had me wondering why even bother? There was nothing there to lift up savoury flavours that otherwise pinned my palette down. Paradoxically, the coldslaw was a little languid, put over by the rich sausage. It would champion being eaten alone though. I loved the creativity of the stuff.

My meal was a rushed finish, a quash in the portion department, but a strap in attempting to deliver flavor. I’d like whatever else offered to fill a proletariat stomach, but I can’t be too angry about that. Luchador does good by the market; and certainly by food. 

LUCHADOR GOURMET STREATERY
Twitter: @kwLUCHADOR

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Ramen?

It’s been a good 3 years, but I suppose Watami Sushi and Sake Bar has absolved any guilt I’ve held over it during that time, if only serendipitously. Because if I hadn’t respectfully accepted a dinner invitation to the place I would have never discovered its weekly ramen special. That’s right, Watami sushi has heralded itself into the charmed circle of ramen. Seriously. I may have no truck with bougie size portions and fleecing the rising middle class diner with the ideal that sushi somehow equals sophistication and cosmopolitanism (thanks, 80’s Japan), but if any place anywhere brings one of today’s most charged dishes of Japanese cuisine to the backwoods of Kitchener-Waterloo, I can’t help but ethnographically eat it. Thus, with a couple days wait and a quick phone call to the only other digestible dude around with decent ramen perspective, I called Joey and we were off. Coincidentally, hung over and ready to dive in to what we hoped was a good bowl of ramen noodles.

It’s a small choosing, but with a myriad of combo options you can choose from two styles of ramen bowls and a bunch of other stuff on the side. I won’t divulge the possibilities, because as far as Joey and I were concerned, a big 11 dollar bowl of ramen was meal enough, and we were both pretty hungry, if that means anything. And luckily, our own choice of bowl wasn’t denied us, it unfortunately being the only one we could choose from out of the two that day. Ours were bowls of Shoyu Ramen: simple pork broth enriched with soy. Noodle reclamation supported a big bowl of sliced pork, sweet preserved egg, sprouts, chewy seaweed, nori, and canned corned. We didn’t waste any time. Joey’s become a star student of anything gourmand. I thought the broth was salty and a little too slick, but Joey said I must have been kidding, sparing no feelings- ‘It’s super oily.’ Relieved, I agreed. Its potency in taste and texture was almost overwhelming, all because of a strong boil of plain old pork. None of the smokey, cured qualities that you find in other ramen broths, both in taste and smell. That kind of liquid bacon soup was something we missed here. What we didn’t appreciate though was how the broth managed to flavor the noodles; still, we couldn’t forgive such an overwhelming richness. The noodles too lacked the alkaline notes that finished on the tongue. Personally, we always enjoy that strange little bit of chemical, but for the unaccustomed diner, we could see how this wouldn’t be a problem.

Fatty slices of pork would have been welcomed in a less oily broth, but it was another imbalance we weren’t too fond off, especially since there was no special spin on the meat. No flavor, no braising, just a plain topping. The canned corn did a good job of balancing out any saltiness, but I felt the kernels’ soft buttery character should have been reserved for a milky dish of miso ramen only- with a big old knob of butter. Otherwise, the dish just seemed riddled with obligatory toppings you hear about in bowls of ramen. Pairings seemed to lack finesse. That said, there was only one other bowl left to try: miso style. Oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers. And Watami seems the only place making an effort to offer what pop culture sells to us as ramen. Will others follow suit? It’s hard to say, especially since it’s taken this long for something so simple and underwhelming.

Watami Sushi & Sake Bar

15 King St N  

Waterloo, ON

N2J 2W6 (519) 747-1100

Sundays 1pm until the ramen runs out

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Sushi San

Once in a while I have a romantic craving for sushi, satiating myself concluding every time that it wasn’t all that great in the first place. Now, I’ve no real basis for comparison when it comes to the freshest sushi. My lens is adjusted to whatever is landlocked in my city and a little further. I’ve no idea what fresh fish from the coast tastes like. You could easily argue against my complacency though, saying sushi from a place like Toronto is better. But I won’t believe you. I’d welcome the challenge. But I won’t believe you. I can confidently say I’ve eaten at every single sushi place around here without any attempt to eat at every sushi place. It just so happened that way throughout my misspent sushi eating youth. Mr. Sushi was one place, where in the past me and the kid from Hong Kong would spend a good twelve dollars on slices of salmon sashimi and all the miso we could sip. It had a bad rep, it burned down, and it was erected yet again. Has it too been baptized by fire? My curiosity, coupled with my craving for sushi, was looking to find out.

Its newest manifestation was an astonishing change. No dull kitchen atmosphere; no clichéd decoration; a surprising nod, I assume, to the contemporary and Japanese aesthetic. There was an haute cosmopolitanism about the space that I couldn’t get over. Warm browns, cool greys, wicker chairs, dining tables, quarried splash backs, and luminous chandeliers with busy patterns and prints harkening on familiar Japanese principles of art. The space was enough; the menu, a gilded tomb of cherry blossoms and gold lined trims and more so. I hoped its food was as elevated as its space. Its atypical choices, along with usual classics, certainly implied as much. Things like asparagus wrapped with bacon, spicy soba noodles, dumpling quesadillas (unfortunately not offered that day), and a loud amount of seafood themed salads excited me. A unique culinary osmosis pulled popular cosmopolitan works into Korean and Japanese options, the only question was, would they work? We would have loved to find out, but our impatience and early venture to a shyly opened Mr. Sushi had us opting for familiars typical of sushi joints. Regardless, we weren’t too disappointed.
 
We started with deep fried tofu dressed with a sweet sauce. Small cubes minimally placed in a dry puddle of sauce were decorated with a sprinkling of roe, and blocky shavings I considered more embarrassing than aesthetically impressive. The portioning was close-fisted. I wondered if its construction was an attempt to play to the practice of high cuisine having controlled, chaste portions. Ultimately, no excuse would have satisfied my vexation. I could find it larger and more satisfying somewhere else. Tough batter walled around soft tofu and juxtaposed well while chewing, but the lack of sauce made it a bland appetizer I had to leave until later.

The Hoedepbap, a salad on a bed of rice, topped with fish chuck was what I wanted next. I’m keen to the stuff elsewhere and but my plate too was another chintzy construction.  The salad was paired with pungent, unexpected pairings of onions and radish which elevated the heaviness of savoury fish, but the fish was few and far between. Crab meat, sinewy salmon chuck, and white fish were sprinkled too ‘economically.’  The bed of rice on the bottom, however, gave it a nutty under-note with a satisfying, chewy bite.

Our salmon sashimi was stale and earthy, exposed bare in the fridge no doubt, but our spicy tuna roll was a great exception. Rolled in sesame seeds, it was a unique chew with a fantastic roasted quality I’d never had in a roll. Combined with tender fish and soft rice reminiscent of, of all things, mochi, made it a great piece.

Mr. Sushi certainly isn’t at the pinnacle of perfection, but it tries, and I can certainly admire its attempt to try to go there.

Mr. Sushi
140 University Ave. West
Unit 6B
Waterloo, ON
N2L 6JB
226-647-5025

ANY PAYMENT

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Finally

About three weeks ago, Joey and I made the trek to Hogtown together on our own separate agendas, but didn’t part ways for the day until I made sure we stopped somewhere for a good bowl of pork Ramen with the Ill Shing Leung. Being the responsible ramen eater that he is, and well adept at knowing the fantasy of the dish, he suggested we try a new place that has been abuzz with cosmopolitan cooing: Kinton Ramen. Better, so they say, than Momofuku, the powerhouse backed by David Chang himself, and perhaps the reason for a surge of ramen popularity lately. Any place would have been fine, I was just after some perspective, and a good bowl of noodles. I’ve had it elsewhere in the past and haven’t been too dazzled by the stuff, but hoped this time would be different.

So after a good drive to the richer neighborhoods of Etobicoke, and a long ride on trains and streetcars thanks to an impaired subway system on the weekend, Joey and I arrived near Kensington, an unfortunate two hours after our planned arrival, saved luckily by the sharp Shing Leung who made sure to reserve spots for us in the surprisingly packed Kinton Ramen.

Its long wooded hallway, kitchenette bar, and anchored wooden stools matched so many of the planetary Japanese joints that come to exist in the West along with the artifice I’ve come to acknowledge with so much peevishness: the huzzah of order yelling behind the bar from performative cooks. A fun novelty for some, a curious gimmick for others. The paradox of the ramen place, at least here, may be that you’re entertained by the yelling and urged to stay longer in a long cramped place, unlike Japan, where you’re shuffled in and ushered out because of little room, uncomfortable stools, booths and maybe uncomfortable, if not symphonious, noodle slurpings. But for all that was going, people seemed to get along with or without the hoopla. 

My favourite part about the place? The inexpensive portions that do a good job of filling you up. If I was sad about anything it was that I couldn’t eat more, because Kinton offers more than good focused bowls of ramen; there’re dons, dumplings, even chicken wings. So much so, I couldn’t help but strain my eyes to the right of me, intrigued by the patron eating the place’s original fried chicken.

I eagerly chose the most democratic dish in my mind: Shio Ramen, packed with nori seaweed, a delightfully sweet soy sauce marinated egg, bean sprouts, pulled pork, and pork shoulder, all topped with sea salt. The ammoniated smells blooming off my chewy, effervescent noodles were an attestation to the place's ability to make them fresh, the sinuous nature of the things acting as the perfect vehicle for moving broth to mouth. At first a little salty, but disappearing over time by the savoury quality of roasted pork, reminiscent of both the smell and taste of bacon, I was finally able to put ramen broth into perspective, and damn good perspective at that. How can I say I loved it anymore? Breaking my egg and flooding the broth with the runny yellow yoke transformed the broth’s richness and made for a great finish. My only unexpected pang came with the pulled pork; fine in flavor, its texture was a little too deviant, resembling and feeling like tuna from a can, too ground to be pulled, but all in all, an okay thing in regards to the rest of the dish. 

Yes, we came, we ate, we conquered, all going our separate ways, wondering how long it would be until we shared affordable food in a place that waxed little expense. Only in Toronto.

Kinton Ramen
51 Baldwin St 
Toronto, ON
M5T 1L1
(647) 748-8900

Mon-Sun 11:30 am - 3 pm
Mon-Thu, Sun 5 pm - 10:30 pm
Fri-Sat 5 pm - 12 am
Any payment

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The Silk Road

I feel pretty comfortable with all of you, dear readers. That’s why I was turning over in my mind telling you a story of culinary heartache. How a rich second generation Chinese girl from Beijing first introduced me to the food of mainland China, out-ate me, stole my heart, and how that kid from Hong Kong, in reckless panache-y Cyrano fashion, attempted to woo her for me, and the food-hole it all happened in. How we tried, and we failed, and how some fish brought us closer together. Yes, it would have been a romantic backdrop for one of my most treasured places, but a new place caught my eye instead, and if there’s anything food has taught me, it’s that I’ve loved women, but I’ve loved food more, and no heart can ever serve two masters.

Trivialities of aside, if you happen to be one of the privileged fuerdai occupying Laurelwood’s suburbs- buying homes, studying, missing the red land, and yearning for food (I can only imagine) both familiar and done extremely right, then why not give Bogda Restaurant a try? Don’t let its salutation of ‘Central Asia & Japanese Food’ fool you, I did that already. To be brutally honest, its 5 dollar student special attracted me, but its unfocussed, all encompassing menu had me expecting the most mundane culinary delights, like sushi and fried rice, and whatever else existed across the pan-asian menu. Luckily, any prosaic pap was off the menu today, and my company and I were given the choice of 3 things on the menu. Over and over again. But before you prejudge my presumably blind adoration of yet another place you assume I romanticize, only to find out it’s alright after you visit it, let me ask you, is there any place in this entire city that makes hand-pulled noodles? This is obviously rhetorical. Bogda is the only place. And its fusion food fare, ripe with Mongolian, Uyghur, even Turkish influences. If authenticity is a real thing, and we are to kid ourselves that it is, then Bogda is as close as Asian cuisine comes around here. Even if two or three items on the menu (two or three affordably stupefying items) are the only things made as fresh and from scratch as possible.



My heart burst when a plate of pulled noodles was placed between me and my company. I’d spent years searching, summers reading anthropological studies, long nights attempting to make something even remotely close, and here it was finally in front of me. Each exponentially long strand was chewy, buoyant, and fresh, territorialized with knolls like little hands that grabbed every bit of sauce they were soaked in- a true characteristic of fresh made noodles which dry quickly, and are controlled only by the most practiced hands. We ate round ones, ones that were broad and flat; every kind of fresh noodle Bogda’s matriach could create, we ate with jubilation.

Our first dish, ban mian: flat noodles, a paradoxically round udon, was paired with cuts of greens, cabbage, dry roasted chili peppers, Szechuan peppercorns, beef, and a small spirit of ginger all in an acidic savoury sauce that I likened to stewed tomatoes. It made our tongues tingle, moored us with the nutty, spicy elements of the chilis that dominated the sauce’s astringency, and upheaved itself with the citron flavours of the peppercorns and ginger.


Our next astonishing, and large, plate was a lamb stew nested in broad, flat noodles. It was one surprise after the other. Garnished with, of all risky things, fresh leeks, it was a close cousin of our first dish, accompanied this time with generous bits of garlic, cumin, dried chillis, Szechuan pepper, potatoes, and a meaty broth that each noodle playfully dived back into after escaping our chopsticks. The pieces of lamb were so tender I found myself chewing even the bones. The leeks’ pungency cut through any richness, something I never experienced before.


And if those noodles weren’t enough, we were offered a courtesy plate of even more, this time slathered in a simple sauce with slices of carrot, chili flakes, and greens. And though we may have had more than enough to eat, we made it our duty to try the lamb kabobs. Fragrant pieces of lamb welded to the steel skewers they were cooked on. Their earthiness was complimented by the spiciness of the cumin and chili, pearled by the moisture that oozed from each bit of flesh. Fatty at times, and if pulling hairs, a little dry, but good nonetheless. But what do such mild faux pas matter? I finally found the fresh noodles I spent a better part of 5 years looking for. Yes, dear readers, the road to heaven has been a steep one, but it has finally led me to Bogda Restaurant.

BOGDA RESTAURANT
645 Laurelwood Drive
Waterloo, ON
N2V 2W9
 
519-725-0885

Mon-fri 12pm-9pm
Sat 12pm-8pm
Sun- 1pm-8pm

Any payment

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Abandon Ship ***SHUTDOWN

It’s that time of year again. When grizzly winter days eliminate any perspective I have about the food of food reviews past. That’s right. I admit it. Sometimes, I make foolish comestible choices. Sometimes, my culinary stirrings can betray me. As I write this, I can still taste the displeasure on my palate, like some unappetizing apparition (weird, right?). My anger may very well be a projection of my own anger at myself for having chosen such a disenchanting place that had such disenchanting food, which would imply that it was actually the food, and not myself that made me, in retrospect, so angry. Did I just melt your brains? It may very well be for the best, because here comes, as I regretfully write, yet another ‘dooming epitaph.’

Let me wax poetic, dear readers. Something has to entertain you, because it certainly will not be the food. Harsh snowfall produces in me a nostalgic yearning for the Japanese food I remember having many times in my past. In retrospect, however, I think whatever perception I’ve had was only vividly dreamt of through a screen, having been forced to watch a multitude of culinary shows about Japanese noodles- soba, udon, ramen- by that kid from Hong Kong. I’ve never had such bowls in this city. And yet, again, the very screen I type this on, like the television we all use for fantasy, served the very same purpose.

But let’s not blame the internet for my follies. I was foolish enough to fall victim to my own archipelagic cravings, cravings that might forever play out until I’m on a boat, or learning noodle mastery on the island of Okinawa. Cravings, I think, after my most recent culinary adventure, I have finally learned to control.

Sushi Boat’s online menu looked promising, and I assumed I could avoid any trouble if I saw an affordable meal option. That was enough to clinch any prejudgments about the city’s newest sushi place. There were some appealing options. Aside from a menu that optioned pretty inexpensive combo choices that could easily be split between two diners who wanted to try different things, there were some unexampled dishes I hadn’t seen and thought worth a gastronomical shot: like tofu salad, egg corn soup, and Sunomono: glass noodle dishes with varied ingredients tossed with a styled vinaigrette.

	Oh, hi Mark!

But it was when I walked through its doors that I was nagged by the strange feeling that I had been there before. I was jaded. Black and red walls, dim lighting, inappropriate, but clearly unintentional ornaments (like wall stencils of angel fish). It was another sushi place catering to the most alien of culinary tourists. A phantasmagoria of what the Japanese dining space is thought to be like. What’s worse? It was all-you-can-eat. This became a disheartening realization when I was seated and faced with familiar lists of paper awaiting pencils and numbers. I asked for the menu, hoping that what I saw on the restaurant’s mounted plasma screen was actually edible choices and not yet another fantasy screen out to trick customers into believing what was shown was what was served. So I cried, I prayed, and I begged- that’s a small music allusion for you all- for a menu that wasn’t all-you-can-eat, and I was happily obliged.

Unfortunately, what I was looking to eat on the regular menu was also offered on the all-you-can-eat menu. Guilt ridden, I accepted it, and picked up my pencil. While waiting, I was bombarded by yet another screen. A tablet was set down in front of me with even more photos of what was on the menu. I was becoming more and more leery. Could the food actually speak for itself, rather than depending on so many screens? I hoped I was wrong. I didn’t want to disavow Japanese restaurants altogether in this town, but I was prepared to do it.

	Original.

First, I ordered what I initially intended to: the Sunomono, or ‘vinegared things,’ with mixed seafood. An outdated dessert goblet was placed in front of me, cradling a batch of noodles (not glass like the menu said) swimming in a sweet, overbearingly pungent vinegar and topped with strips of crab and a tough rubbery snapper. The vinegar was offensive, the crab imbued with the chemical quality of the plastic it was freeze dried in. Next, my beef udon soup was a mess of overcooked noodles, tough beef bits and a salty broth with a smokey undertow that I hoped was imbued by the tuna flakes traditionally used to make it.

	I've taken better photos. Then again, I've been to better places.

Is there a silver lining to any of this? I’m sure the menu’s not all that bad, there are a few mentionables: like the white tuna sushi, a smooth textured fish that would have otherwise felt great creamed by my tongue if not for an eerie warmth that tailgated it. And the short ribs, though somewhat fatty, offered more meat on their bones than I had seen at other places. I did enjoy the capelin; a deep fried salty whole smelt- that’s a tiny little fish for those of you that don’t know. But this is as tender as I get. My tofu salad was a mere sprinkling of deep fried curd on iceburg lettuce. Chewy and fetid, the outer crust did nothing to compliment its silken interior, nor the entire dish. I couldn’t understand why it existed as an option at all. Tempura was lackluster, and if I remember anything about it at all, it was the unevenly cooked batter across the terrain of some pieces. My sushi pizza was the worst I’ve had. Labelled as ‘rainbow’ it was nothing more than a thin rice base with even thinner slices of fish, and shrimp so thin it looked shredded. Aside from a saturated, oily crust with odd pebbly bits of deep fried rice, it was also drizzled with a sauce that was spicy, sweet, and overbearing. More than anything, I wanted to eat what the cooks on break were eating because, I assumed, it wasn’t anything like what was on the menu, and probably made with more effort and care. I was tired of trying to make sense of the food, like what makes something called a ‘Thai roll’ Thai? Was it the pickled radish? I doubt it. There were no conventional Thai flavours; it tasted too similar to everything else. Too sweet, too salty, too sour.

Sushi Boat was sinking faster than Costa Concordia (too soon?), and I only wondered how long it would stay afloat. I can’t forgive it, even it is an all-you-can-eat place, because there is too much competition around. I’m sorry, dear readers, sorry to have trolled you along like this.

	I bet.

Sushi Boat
465 Highland Road West
N2M Kitchener, ON

 

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大城小事

SOGO cuisine is my Othering culinary fantasy. Please, let me explain.

I’ve grown up lamenting the hard fact that I could never have a life like the characters in my coveted Hong Kong romantic comedies. My particular favourites were the ones about food. Drink Drank Drunk comes to mind. Literally translated as One Thousand Cups, Not Drunk, or, more correctly, Not Drunk After One Thousand Cups. It was the story of a young woman who, notoriously, could not get drunk no matter how much she drank. One night, she finds a poor drunkard, another Hong Kong native, crying in the streets wondering why no one in Hong Kong eats French food, wondering how he’s supposed to live, a social culinary pariah, because he couldn’t get into college and decided on a career as- well- a French chef. Needless to say, the two fall in love and open a quaint sixteen seater in the streets of HK, making pretzels, having awkward moments, not really selling French food, and so on, and so forth.

It was the kind of restaurant that caught my eye in the movie. Something I thought so impractical and impossible in these parts: the trattoria. The real trattoria. My family owns a supposed trattoria. But in my eyes, it’s a restaurant. Yeah, in some small towns in Europe they may exist, a lone chef sleeping in his own restaurant making new dishes almost every day, needing no one else except the company of his own hands. The same goes for, I imagine, Hong Kong, where food is so frequent and cooks so specialized that they all open their own little holes and have their own little dishes. A normalcy, I imagine. But not here. Until today. Today when I found myself stumbling through the neighborhood of a comrade who had moved away. The streets always made me feel a little less lonely when I missed him, but today I found a place that made me miss him even more. A place that could have very well been our hangout, which, up until he up and left, was reserved for a coffee shop run by a mainland Chinese woman that knew us well before she owned the place and made us, with the help of her young daughters, tea for whatever cash we had on us.

I once learned from an old Italian cook that the best restaurant was at home. Whether SOGO cuisine lives rightly by this belief is beyond me, but I took its Chinese name of 美食美客or ‘good food for beautiful guests’ as an apt sign that whoever cooked for me cared. The space certainly made me believe it, anyway. Because SOGO cuisine was my dream come true. It possessed that homey local charm. No more than two months old, it decorated itself with knickknacks, warm colours, a rococo patterned ceiling, white and ‘au so courant’ tables and chairs that seated a mere six guests, and a small, single person kitchen separated by a counter. If it made me think of anything, it made me think of that part of Shanghai that took its urban character from a more nostalgic Europe. Don’t know what I mean? Maybe you should watch more movies.

I might be romanticizing SOGO cuisine a bit too much though, because although it has a single woman manning a kitchen, the food comes and goes pretty quickly, the seating is a mere accommodation to the odd person (yours truly) who decides to eat in. Not to say that people shouldn’t; they should. But receiving my orders in takeout containers even after saying I’d be sitting in made me realize that SOGO treats itself as a place that is almost of the fast food persuasion. Well, I say this, dear readers. It shouldn’t! Sure, the space is small. Sure, it offers only canned drinks and bottles of water. Sure, it’s someone running a restaurant out of her home, but its food deserves more respect than that! It’s a small, cheap menu of curries, noodles, rice, steamed buns, and crepes, but it is welcomed. Its dishes cater to an assumed customer, because at first glance the menu confuses you with Japanese dishes, but if you ask nicely, and come boldly, you can have some rare and spectacular Chinese dishes.

Surprised by my candor, SOGO’s matron offered me a Chinese crepe. Fixed with sesame seeds, spring onions, coriander, a nameless sauce resembling Hoisin, and spice, the crepe was fricasseed and folded over a hot crispy wanton. Unconventional from the crepes we’re used to eating here, it was more egg than crepe, but I couldn’t complain about it in the least. Especially not for 3.50. I went a step further asking for a steamed meat bun having eyed the dough rising in a muffin tin on the counter, and she humbly obliged. However, before I went to my seat, I eyed the cook’s own teapot and asked if she wouldn’t mind giving me some of her tea: a deep oolong. Surprised, she poured some into a plastic cup and handed it to me.

I was astounded by my steamed bun. Another unconventional manifestation of a foodstuff I had eaten for years now. The light and airy bun was cut lengthwise and stuffed with minced pork flavoured with green pepper, coriander, vinegar, sugar, and garlic. Needless to say, I had never had a steamed bun reinterpreted this way. It wasn’t dull with a small portion of meat on the inside of a dull chewy dough, but assembled like a pull pork sandwich, more meat than bun, but perfectly balanced. The crispiness of the outer layer fought well against the moist slivers of pork buffered against soft airy bread. It was another great find for 3.50. I commended the cook. To her, it was nothing; to me, it was everything.

Lastly, I did something very unorthodox. I ordered the menu’s fried udon noodles. Now, I’ve been on a crusade against udon for quite some time now, believing it to be a foodstuff glorified more than it should be. Sometimes in a soup, sometimes as Shanghai noodles, but I can’t particularly say its chewy, elastic character is ever done well. Usually, the noodles are a chore to eat. This time, however, it wasn’t so bad. Fried in another nameless, yet savoury and sweet sauce, my noodles, accompanied with crisp vegetables and fish balls, were fried until soft. No chewy noodle eclipsed the other ingredients with starch here. The textures were well received and the chopped cabbage in the dish added a nice fermented feature to something that otherwise embellished a familiar malt flavor.

12 dollars later, I had stuffed my face. For me, SOGO Cuisine was a miracle, or a symptom of something happening in a suburb that I hope manages to stick around. It wouldn’t be the first place in the same neighborhood that tried to be a single person operation. If I’m potentially sad about anything it may be that it has to compromise a lot of its potential for consumer palettes, but so long as the cook is willing, one can still have access to some pretty incredible dishes. That said, my dear eaters, I implore you to eat as much and as often as you can at SOGO cuisine, before it’s otherwise too late.

SOGO Cuisine

(519) 888-6789

UNIT B11

619 Wild Ginger Ave

Waterloo, ON N2V 2XI

Mon-Sat 10am- 830 pm.

Sun: closed

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Today, I mourned the loss of a brother. Don’t worry, no one died. Unless, of course, you consider my spirit. Can you even anthropomorphize a spirit? Anyway, these are hardly culinary questions that need answering. Although at times, food can do a good job of putting our hearts at ease.

Some days, I get really down on myself. Some days, I get really hungry. And some days, I remember that if I don’t eat, I can get really down on myself. Today was starting to be one of those days. Remembering the terrible news of my dear brother’s decision to move out of town and in with the love of his life made me desperate to fill the emptiness that hung where my own heart once was. Yes, dear listeners, even one thousand crescent kicks under the still moon the night before weren’t nearly enough to quell the feeling that I had been left alone, platonically sojourned in a city where a close comrade and I had drank tea, learned kung fu, and eaten copious amounts of bad Chinese food. Those were my salad days.

And if I can aggrandize this story of brotherhood any further I will mention that I intended to eat my pain away with the worst, most dangerous Chinese-Canadian food I could find. Fortunately for me, a pang of recollection prevented me from ordering the stuff I know sits so heavily in my stomach and not so happily in my heart. And like that, I was called, as if by the Buddha himself, to a place I had been years before, where my dear brother once tried vegetarianism, and your dear narrator came to be comforted by him, all while stuck in an abyss of graduate work. It was then, after some tea and pickled cabbage when I realized that no matter what the world was like at least there was food; and that no matter how hard things may be to take, when everything’s all said and done, the world is still there. And, if we’re lucky enough, the places we go to eat are still there too, offering sanctuary like temples in some kung fu flick.

I won’t keep you in anymore suspense; I’m speaking pretty tongue in cheek at this point anyway. Just let me say this, everything I write is true and comes from what little heart I have left. Tenterhooks, my friends, tenterhooks.

If you’re feeling a little bit of spiritual abandon, or looking, like I did today, for some connection to a more nostalgic past, it might suit your poor spirit to visit Lotus Tea House, a vegetarian restaurant with an already stellar following. It has a quaint townhouse location and, of all things, a retrofitted Buddhist temple, as anachronistic as that sounds. Why bore you with any other trivialities? What with the urbaneness of wicker chairs and somewhat unaccommodating wooden tables (if you’re a group of four), pacifying classical music, creaky wooden floors, salmon coloured, stucco walls, and botany pictures- I must be heartbroken, because I am being far too harsh in this instance.

What makes the Lotus Tea House matchless in quality is the knowledge it offers the masses; shelves where diners can read books about the Buddha, and even donate any Buddhist teachings themselves if they so choose. Upstairs there’s an empty room with a lone Buddha statue where you can even bow three times, if YOU so choose. And of course, there’s its fait accompli: its originally brewed teas. Pots that run the price of, at most, 4.95. Well worth it, if not for the novelty of having a tea that doesn’t steep dried goods, but boils everything together fresh. So I am told, so I have seen. I’ve never looked in the kitchen though. But, the proof in this case is in the pot, because there are instances of whole oranges, mashed up almonds, even apples left in clear glass pots. Of course, there are dried leaf teas if the heart so chooses. I myself am a staunch disqualifier of tea almost anywhere, my old master teaching my dear brother and I about tea when we were young kung fu adherents (he never believed in drinking cold water, only boiling oolongs), so I like to push my snobbery onto the world. Anyway, the tea certainly is unique, and warrants mindful drinking, the almond tea, for example, will gelatinize if you let it sit long enough.

I was intrigued by the icy cold fruit tea: iced tea I assumed to be rhetorically done up on the menu and underwhelmed by in person. I was wrong. It was the best iced tea I’ve ever had in town. It had pieces of fruit, apples, oranges, pineapple, elevating the Ceylon brew to something ambrosial (yeah, I’ve used the word before; but this time, I mean it). And it wasn’t just put there to humour an aesthetic seeking drinker. The lemon undertone I’d usually expect was replaced by an awesome orange citric sweetness, a syrupy pineapple pungency, mixed so well that the beverage had its own frothy head! Never have I come across anything like it.

Healthy Soy Bean was the next item to order; boiled soy bean with a dash of sea salt. In my mind I envisioned it as a block of mere tofu smothered in salt, something I hoped for, my Philippine grandmother lovingly feeding it to me for breakfast in my youth. Alas, I was met with a plate of Edamame beans, that dull, popular Japanese appetizer. Nutty, salty, clean. I can’t complain more than that.

My entree was an exciting array of cranberries, cashew nuts, tofu and vegetable stir-fry, paired with a simple soup and bowl of bean sprouts with a simple spicy, savoury sauce. The soup itself was a humble thing. Its broth, a quiet familiar vegetable flavor, with the odd tomato skin floating about, something I have come to know in the culinary world as always out of place.

I was underwhelmed by my stir-fry. A serving set around a dome of light and aromatically nutty rice, I was disappointed by what I saw in front of me. There was nothing wrong with the portion, there was a substantial amount of food, but I couldn’t hold truck with the lack of cranberries and cashews. I wonder why so many places do this? Highlight dishes with unique ingredient ideas and then give dishes a sparse sprinkling. The combination of sweet cranberries and savoury cashews would have given perfect balance to the already salty and starchy nut sauce that coated the stir-fry. I thought that maybe Lotus Tea House could have been the prodigal son that escaped the banality of Chinese food, but the features of the dish were absolutely overwhelmed with so much traditional flavor. I threw my puritan caution to the wind. I was tired, I was heartbroken, I mashed my rice with my stir-fry, I didn’t care to keep it separate, I turned it to mush, I ate furiously, the waiters couldn’t stop staring. I didn’t care. I blamed it on those one thousand crescent kicks, I blamed it on my broken heart, I was still trying desperately to fill a void. Was it my lost brother I was crying over? Or my food? I didn’t even know anymore.

The Lotus Teahouse

79 Regina St. North

Waterloo, Ont. N2J 3A7

Monday: 11:00 am – 3 pm

Tuesday to Thursday: 11 am – 7 pm

Friday & Saturday 11 am – 8 pm

Sunday Closed

CASH, VISA, OR DEBIT.

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The Immutable Drive For Ramen

*RESTAURANT CLOSED*


Sometimes I have to remind myself that food is just food. That if things go south, no problem. It's just food. It's a mindful exercise I constantly find myself practising, usually after getting bent out of shape over something culinary. I could sit and stew for hours, but I know it's never productive. I just have to move on to the next thing. My mother tells me a large part of cooking is experimenting, so it's bound to go bad the majority of the time. Understandable. But it's hard to take me ma'am seriously when her cooking's some of the most frustrating stuff in my culinary world. An Italian mother bad at cooking? Hey, nobody's perfect. She has her off days. Lately, it seems more than usual. After careful consideration I think it's a mere symptom of my family's being raised to be polite to the chef and just respectfully say the food tastes good- either that, or everyone has a terrible palette. Alas, all I can do is bite my tongue, because no amount of reminders to my mother: that she should write a recipe down to remember it, or that she shouldn't try to cook so much things at once because she always ends up burning something, or that the elements on our stupid five billion dollar poser gas stove are so small they can never bring water to a boil, will ever influence any active change in her. She claims her chicken stock is good, but when its cooled and there's 2 inches of yellow fat like a sheet of ice on the top and a nimbus of chicken slurry on the bottom and dark amber stock between the both, it makes you wonder how put together a stock is when it separates to such a disturbing degree.

Food in my family is too political; if criticism is offered it's not constructive, its only used to show the person who didn't cook how theoretically better they would have made it. Maybe for all of us- I know certainly for me- culinary know how seems to be the only cultural capital I have as of late. And even then it's pretty sub-standard. Yes, food and I have a personal vandetta. Because if I can't wrestle it into tasteful submission, I somehow take it as a sign that I'm becoming weaker, falling apart, losing an arbitrary battle I decided to fight one fateful arbitrary day years ago. Cooking is, after all, how I justify my civility. Who needs to make a torte, really?
But what's a dude to do? Move on with his life? Not this noodle slinging, kung food adherent. Oh no. I just eat more bitter. I stubbornly research, ask around, patiently wait for opportunity. Conventionally, it's admired. We love seeing things work out for our heroes. We never hear stories in popular culture of our heroes waiting without having things work out for them in the end. Samuel Beckett wrote a play where just that happened. He was praised for it. But if the majority of tales were like that, eaters would be hatin' yo. Nobody wants to see that. I certainly don't want to hear that, not after 5 years of attempting to make my own noodles. Pasta, no problem. I'm unmatched. But chewy, bouncy, voluptuous Asian noodles? Ramen or Chinese, or soba? Forget it. My culinary kryptonite. I just can't make the stuff, even after trying for years. Soba, I can kinda do, but it's not good enough. My ramen's too bitter, and my lo mian too boring. What's worse? I have no standard to measure it against. A good cook learns by eating; and the better the culinary environment, the better a shot he has at making something outstanding. The problem with Kitchener-Waterloo, in my opinion, and, at least, from the perspective of East Asian cuisine, is that there is no sense of competition. Everything more or less tastes the same, and no one says a thing. Cooks don't try to out do themselves, there's no need to, because there's always a whole slew of university students in this town to eat, with undeveloped palettes and a general dismissal for good tasting food. They don't care, just so long as their bellies are full. It's heartbreaking. For me anyway, because what it means is that I'm gastronomically sojourned. Can I find ramen to eat in this town? only at one place. Is it worth eating? I'm disappointed to say, no.

I've been peering the option in the window for a good 4 months, telling my closest ramen supporting friend about it, but he only deterred me. He said immediately it wouldn't be good, and my logical gastronomic self was apt to believe him, but the adventurous part of me said to throw caution to the window, as I foolishly do. So when I had 10 dollars to junk, I went for it, and let me tell you: there was nothing good about it. You thought I discovered something great, didn't you? Nope. Not in this city. There are no ramen aficionados. I might be the closest one. I'm the only one who, in the heat of the night, tries to make the damned noodles. Never the stock though. One step at a time.

So let me break it down. The noodles: instant. The broth: a mixture of the ramen packet that comes with the instant noodles and the restaurant's own, dare I say, mediocre chicken broth. How could I tell? The stock had the salty, artificial flavour so familiar of so many instant cups. It wasn't a good, savoury saltiness, like something you'd get from say, cheese. And to add insult to injury, the presentation was a little mash-up of small, chopped, cubed ingredients in a soupy bowl of noodles that, after sitting for a bit, absorbed the stock and became slimy and stodgy (shit, no I didn't). The noodles, like a sack of sand, refused to move in the bowl, though they certainly had the room when the piping hot, promising dish came to me at the beginning.


There were no separate morsels, no slices of meat, lone egg, fish cakes, or tender vegetables decorated around the bowl. It was like someone took Shanghai noodles (the favoured dish of mixed chopped ingredients left over, stir-fried with noodles and slammed on a plate- usually delicious, though humble) and threw it in a bowl of soup. That's right. It had all the characteristics of Asian stir-fry: scrambled egg, diced vegetables, saturated flavour. Let's face it, that's not creative. Not in the least, because you know as well as I know that that kind of old stir-fried rice characteristic is the symptom (that's right, twice in one entry) of a terrible, Chinese-Canadian-American-Othering culinary past; one with a residue I wish never to have cover my meal. But alas, there it was.

That wasn't sweat the waitress saw on my face when she asked me if the soup was too spicy, it was frustration. Will anyone ever care? Will there ever be a cook who shakes the culinary scene of Kitchener-Waterloo?

It's just food Weezee, it's just food.


(Oh, and I won't bother to tell you where to get the stuff, out of sympathy for the place, and the fact that it's the only place that sells a dish labeled ramen. So when you find it, you'll find it... and in all fairness, it was a bold move after all to even attempt to offer it. Wait, did I just answer my question? IS this an example of someone shaking the culinary world? Phh. Yeah right.)

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As Constant As the Northern Star

My animosity towards the all-you-can-eat sushi place in this town is dwindling. This means one of two things: that my own pre-judgments and pretentious assumptions denied my stomach the chance of really getting to know these eating places and limiting my own experience to a few terrible experiences in previous ‘hasheries.’ Today, I wasn’t pleasantly surprised, but certainly tempered against the bias that accompanies my own opinions of sushi in a place that is so far away from the ocean and fresh fish. But what does that mean anyway?

It may be a moot point even discussing Sushi Star, a restaurant that’s been around for a substantial time, and a restaurant I’ve given only the slightest of nods, having heard mixed reviews about it throughout the years. However, dear readers, I like to believe we’ve developed a good amount of rapport between the lot of us and that what I do have to say about the place has some merit.

To say I had a hankering for sushi today would be an untruth. In fact, I can’t claim to be a die hard fan, though I certainly can say I enjoy it, but not as much as the body builders who frequent the all-you-can-eat stops at least 3 times a week to keep their weight up. Today’s venture was a kind of earnest admission in order to see if the all-you-can-eat sushi place is a place even worth going to anymore, or if it’s gone the way of the great portion-givers of the West’s glorified consumer past; I speak of fast food joints, Chinese buffets, pancake houses.

So what can I say about Sushi Star that hasn’t already been said about an all-you-can-eat sushi spot? Believe me or not, there is some interesting personality accompanying Sushi Star’s food. Some peerless exceptions that make you consider the micro cultures that exist around the locales of restaurants. I normally don’t pay any mind to restaurants catering to the palettes of customers thereby changing their menus for profit because I glamorously consider it a kind of selling out, but this is stupid. Because while it could very well be perceived this way, it is exactly that dynamic that allows the all-you-can-eat to stay separate from others and in business.

Yes, there are tables with bamboo appliqués, contemporary paper lanterns hanging off the ceilings, neko fukus, pervasive dinnerware with calligraphic eggplants and Japanese characters of ‘delicious’ printed on them (purchased from the supermarket up the block), roasted rice tea, beige booths and uniformed wait staff, which are all too familiar. And on the other end of that familiar, maybe clichéd, spectrum there are the darker dining rooms in the city full of red, black and fancy wood, but these are nothing more than the Chinese whispers of sushi reviews from the past which are cause for nothing more than snap judgments for every all-you-can-eat sushi place.

Sushi Star has rare oddities, like deep fried milk for dessert, pork bone soup (sans the bones and pork, sadly), sushi rolls stuffed with nothing more than avocado and pineapple (surprisingly refreshing), plum wine (inexpensive plum wine), a selection of kind of real ramen noodles- or lo mein- or lao mian- or pulled noodles- on the menu; even purple yams. I didn’t think I’d ever find such individuality in any all-you-can-eat menu; there was even grilled saury. Never mind the misspellings on the thing, at least it was manageable. I wasn’t bombarded with infinite options like I usually am at other all-you-can-eat spots. And have no fear of being left out if you go for lunch, what’s kept exclusively to the dinner menu is comfortably small. There are only four kinds of raw fish offered (but all kinds of sushi) which I actually appreciate and interpreted as taking seriously the food offered.

Sushi Star really is its own world. It has wait staff that devotedly beckon to every whim and happily write down what you want, rather than giving a slip. I’ve commented on my displeasure at this choice of service in the past, but the wait staff had an exceptional charm.

The food wasn’t matchless, but it did offer up some great distinction: mackerel sushi with dollops of pureed ginger for example on rather thin and well balanced fingers of sticky rice (no wasabi underneath though). What really impressed my company and I was the temperature of the raw fish, never cold, but tempered to the climate of the room. Usually, we as eaters assume cold raw fish means it’s fresh, but in reality a fish pulled out of the ocean never comes from some underwater fridge. Some rolls could have used a little more rice, as the layers were so thin the nori peered through, and our curry chicken was a muddy sauce of salt. But for every yin, there’s a yang; our shredded crab pizza had a thinner base than other places and was easy to put in our mouths, the sauce of red peppers and spicy mayonnaise lending itself perfectly to the charred flavor of rice deep fried in a bread crumb coating. The deep fried scallops were a little leathery, but pea sized and easy to pop into our mouths. Dumplings were peppery but with a refreshing vinegar tang, and our seaweed salad not sweet at all like most places, but rather savory, though sometimes sinewy. The food ebbed and flowed between us. And though it wasn’t perfect, Sushi Star just has too many good qualities to disqualify altogether.

Sushi Star
450 King St. E., Kitchener, ON N2G 2L6
519 584 2341

Mon-thur 11:30-10:30
Fri-Sat 11:30-11:00
Sunday 12:00 – 10:30
Lunch Mon-Thurs 12.99 Fri-Sun 13.99
Dinner 19.99 20.99

All methods of payment accepted

 

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The Ill Shing Leung

	My brother in culinary arms.

Eating with Shing Leung always means spending a whole mess of money; but I can't complain, because he's my brother in eating arms and if not for him, I would have never learned to eat, or known what it meant to eat with other people. What it meant to roast coffee beans with a heat gun, stuff a giant nameless fish with noodles, or learn to squat on the curb over a sewage drain with a bowl of pho and thus prevent a potentially bigger mess. Eating alone can be a very lonely thing, so says Gille Deleuze, or so I heard my professor tell me once because I was too lazy to find the text. Regardless of all that, I've spent a small fortune eating with my comrade for the past five years and earning, what I think is, a rare and privileged education in gastronomy.

Sometimes, when I got the guts, I like to hitch a ride on a bus and take my sorry ass to the big stinky city of Toronto and from there take a subway and go make big trouble in little China, which is my affectionate name for Richmond Hill and Markham, amalgamated in my mind into one place of strip malls consisting of Asian restaurants and grocery stores- and maybe some dental offices, but nothing else.

No way. Okay, gross exaggeration.

There are other kinds of restaurants- but seriously, nothing else. I believe they stay afloat by depending on the inhabitants of both townships to work outside the cities, commute back home, and eat- and buy real estate.

Last weekend was a special treat, because while I haven't been to the Hill in a long, long time, the ill Shing Leung and I decided to have a chow down at Guu Izakaya: a favoured Japanese tapas bar (yeah, tapas, that's right- not that Asian food culture doesn't already manifest the idea of small dishes at a communal feast, but in order to get the ignorant Westerner/hipster to come they need the label of ‘tapas’ so it sounds friggin' trendy, but whatever). I was scared. I'm not cool enough for the bodies that meander through the streets with Neon Trees playing behind them wherever they go; instead I look like (my own fault) a sailor on shore leave: hat on head, bags around shoulders, books on food and porn theory in my hands (still to this day). But that's okay, I've come to terms with it.

I came late, but lucky for me Shing put us on a waiting list so we had the pleasure of our company until, unbeknown to us, we were allowed in and blitzed by the hyper-greetings of the entire staff that worked there, shouting "welcome" in unison (in Japanese). From the front door we were circumnavigated in a room that had a stone wall permeated by small squares of light (and electric ceiling lights) to the front bar where we were seated on the heaviest blocks of wood which were actually used for stools. Aw yes, the experience reminded me of my time working off the shores of Okinawa: big wooden tables on the floor where strangers were forced to eat together and dim lighting combined with the huzzah of voices, more or less happy to be eating, much like the mess hall of a barge. To the point, Guu was a total theatre for whatever Orientalizing mouths dared venture and pretend to see what Japan was really like: not overworked salaryman getting smashed and cooks crying back and forth for the sake of getting food out, but cooks who are happy to sing out what order number is called and do cool Night of Fire dance moves between dishes and around deep fryers so eaters wouldn't be concerned with the tapas’ sizes and prices. Just sayin'. Just sayin' the next afternoon Shingzy and I went to a ramen shop in J-Town (another novelty of Markham with Japanese-Italian food, the typical overpriced Japanese grocery store, and what not) and were not greeted the same way. We were greeted, yes, but quietly and humbly with the same "welcome" phrase in Japanese. The shop wasn't fancy and formal, but humble and popular among people on Chowhound with nice chewy ramen that I suspected wasn't anything to be overly praised because it resembled the stuff of instant noodles, but I digress.

			Click the pic for a video of the real, loud thing. ダブルラブ～

But Guu is popular for a reason, and I must humbly admit I was blown away by the food. Specials and all. All kinds of sake, all kinds of beer, novelty soda for earthquake victims in Japan and of course tea- that I was charged for. Phhh. Whatever. For an Asian place to charge for generic tea always seems like a disservice, or so my comrade and I think- unless of course its prepared cold. We don't know why exactly, there's something faulty in our logic there, but I think if we were to really think about it, our heads would implode.

We did the obvious: order tapas and see how full we could get. Considering the size, the price was fair, running from between 5 and 10 dollars; we tried fare like maguro carpaccio drenched in a ponzu sauce that permeated through each piece leaving the slightest fishy taste, aestheticized by fish eggs (forget about using "roe" here, it was what it was), and tuna marinated in a delightful soy, wasabi (reminiscent of the mustard of Dijon) and sesame sauce. We paid for pickled vegetables: sweet coloured radish, mild sesame cucumber and the like. We were probably the only ones who ordered the stuff. We were also adventurous enough- though to call us adventurous here especially with our history may seem a moot point- to try raw shrimp, propped up against each other heads pointed up in the shape of a fountain, like a group of synchronized singers ready to dive into the soy sauce accompanying them. Cool and slimy. I wasn't a fan, but Shing assured me that was the nature of the little sea beasts. That slimy, fuzzy feeling you get when putting the things in your mouth is more or less the way they are anywhere else. I didn't have the perspective to say otherwise. And before calling it a night and heading off to a burger joint to fill our stomachs we opted for the closest, fast food-esque item: deep fried chicken skin, a more aggrandized form of pork rinds, but still crispy and buttery nonetheless. It became one of our favourites, paired well no doubt with beer. But before that still we actually encouraged each other to try an entree off the menu before the rinds came. Like the old man I am, I cried out for a bowl of Japanese hot pot and rice (having never fully mastered my own and thinking the dish could give me some perspective) and Shing, like the Chinese-Italian wannabe he is, romantically asked for a bowl of carbonara "esco" udon with kimchi. The flavours were surprising, when I was reluctantly trying the kimchi in the dish I was impressed by the rich, sharp smoky flavour within that resembled the carbonaras I usually make myself. Using udon was pleasant fusion, and I only hoped that I could someday do something similar.

My hot pot was everything I imagined it would be: hearty with a deep barley noted broth, combined of course with the usual kombu presence. It was especially comforting considering how much we both yearned to be full. The vegetables, hard egg and strange processed fish pieces were what I needed.

After a staggering 80 dollars and trip to the bathroom, equipped with mouth wash and rustic stone bowled sinks watched over by the voice of Ou Yang Fei Fei singing Love Is Over, we were up and on our way to catching the subway, but not before urging Shing to go Karaoke to the song before we left. I couldn't believe it was playing; more importantly I couldn't believe I actually knew what the hell was playing. I did know one thing though, Guu certainly knows how to work a crowd and pander to an audience who likes to romanticize the East with bubble economy love ballads. Shoot, I wouldn't have been surprised if they served coffee and put gold leaf in the brew, but the people get what they pay for, even if it’s unrecognized, but very much appreciated by this eater, Japanese love ballads.

And yet, that was only one of the many charming food adventures that weekend. We told ghost stories, argued about Bourdain and Brittany Murphy and did it all again the next day at places like Sam's Congee, a joint packed with family and popular, yet temperate congee, deep fried devils and free tea and J-Town, where we paid for our cold malted chas (I’m bein’ fancy- that just means tea).

Yes devoted readers, I can honestly say that if I ever forget why I go out to eat visiting Shing Leung will always certainly remind me.

Guu Izakaya

398 Church street

Toronto, O.N. M5B 2A2

TEL: 416-977-0999

Mon - Thu 17:00-24:00

Fri - Sun 16:00-24:00 

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