An Abject Existence

Lately, life has furnished me with a rather abject existence. Without any culinary compatriot by my side, I’ve found myself free to chase whatever culinary novelty without the slightest inconvenience. And the city’s only policed food truck has occupied me with a fun game of cat and mouse that no doubt those with work will find very inconvenient, especially when the city dictates when and where a food truck will go. Certainly, these particular dynamics make the food truck a frivolous venture unless eaters are free and enthusiastic enough to chase them down, especially if trucks are prevented to really go where the mouths are. The Schmuck Truck seems to be the city’s harebrained pilot project, testing to see if food trucks can be a viable business in our mid-sized city. Good for us, I suppose; especially good for the Schmuck Truck, privileged to monopolize, for now, on what seems to be a cosmopolitan trend. But I’m not losing any truck with the city’s culinary social experiments, finding it preoccupied my time for at least a day. I hope customers don’t have to compromise their location for it, or any food trucks in the future; otherwise, they’ll all run out of gas. But that’s enough of my lazy vehicular puns. Yes, the Schmuck Truck is a novelty for everyone obsessed with purchasing experience and consuming it through travel; but it also offers us what it considers gourmet options worthwhile of the chase, introducing different specialties as much as it can, and wants. That said, its changing menu is small, so that already gets a gold star from me; and its effort at gourmandizing food in a truck is reason for interest. Whether it succeeds or not is the other issue.

There’s typical salt of the earth fare: French fries, hamburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, elevated with creative haute cuisine combinations. I appreciate it all. I wouldn’t expect any less from a food truck. And I wouldn’t expect not to pay a marginally similar price to fixed restaurants. We can dream about the food truck bringing us cheaper meals with all the same pizzazz, but even the streets are rented.

And, of course, as challenging as my taste buds are, I opted for the most lofty entrees. A shrimp remoulade rice bowl: a kind of cold rice noodle salad with a peppery, tomato mayonnaise sauce, shrimp, coriander, and a smattering of lazily chopped vegetables; and an artichoke and spinach grilled cheese sandwich, packed with chopped artichoke, cream cheese, asiago cheese and mozzarella.

All in all, burgers and fries may have been better. Gourmandizing, at least for the items I got, seemed too challenging given the space they were made in (I assume, anyway). The remoulade in my bowl was flat and sour, and there was no cilantro to be found. I would have liked the usual uplifting Asian flavours that the dish attempted to mimic; things like lime juice, lemon grass, and of course, cilantro. It was an unfortunate combination which’s simulacrum just didn’t work. The rice noodles, purposely served cold, were unfortunately subject to being droughty and hardened. Some call this al dente; a stranger called it undercooked. It may work for pasta, but years in a Thai kitchen taught me if rice noodles are cooked and refrigerated they need to be blanched and cooled again if eaten cold because they dry out. The shrimp however, was the savoury savior of the dish- tender and adding flavor to an otherwise bland and sour dish. Micro sprouts added a great fresh earthiness, but weren’t enough to really draw attention away from what was wrong.

Our grilled cheese, sandwiched with rye, had me looking at it leerily. A deep brown had me wondering if the bread was burnt; but the forgivingness of rye absolved any suspicion. My qualm, and the stranger’s I shared it with, was that everything was overpowered with nothing but cream cheese, which was a crying shame, because there were a lot of great ingredients to be showcased.

Luckily, the Schmuck Truck is a fluid thing, and an option can be here today and gone tomorrow, so too can defective meal options. So if you find yourself on the verge of an abject existence, even if for a day, for the sake of novelty why not try and track it down? You never know, our dear city may never see another food truck again.

CASH ONLY

FOR DIRECTIONS AND TIMES CHECK ITS TWITTER: @SchmuckTruck1

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Weezee Cooks: Tamarind Fried Chicken

Some years back on a late, cold January night, after I told the louts I worked with to go home, and re-cleaned a supposedly clean kitchen, my old Thai employers approached me in the wee hours of the morning: ‘Weezee,’ they said, ‘Our friends are coming here tonite- could you cook for us?’ It being 1 am, and me loving my job more than anything, I gave a jubilant, ‘Yes.’ Uncle told me what they wanted, and also told me to fry some chicken wings. Easy enough. Still, in my early years of cooking, I did a whole lot of doubting. I had no idea how to make good deep fried chicken wings, besides throw them in the fryer. That was more or less it. Uncle, on the other hand, showed me how he liked them. How he wanted the batter, and how he wanted them fried. Ever since, I’ve tenderly made them the same, unorthodox way. It was a good night. Late, but happy- and some Thai doctor, no matter how many times I said no, stuffed a 50 in my pocket for doing such a good job.

Some odd seven months ago, I went out to eat with my mother at a familiar Thai-Vietnamese restaurant and ordered tamarind chicken wings. A combination I had never, up until that late moment in culinary life, heard off. They were good: sweet, tangy, tart. I liked them a lot. So much so, I bet my mom I could make the same thing, maybe even better. And, as is my mother’s job to prevent her son’s ego from getting too big, she called my bluff. After that, we more or less forgot about the whole thing. That was, at least until last night, when I was bumming around one of three fridges and found a pack of chicken wings frozen and ready to ruin. But I say ruin with total temerity. Consider it a cool kind of valley speak, ‘ruin’ meaning: elevating to a level of pure radical. The trillest tamarind chicken wings in all the land. Here for me, and here for all of you. The ingredients are easy, the process a tad time consuming if you aren’t privileged enough to own a wok stove. But if you have the patience, you can, like my real uncle says, cook no problem.

Serves 3 (or 1 hungry bro)

Ingredients
12 chicken wings (y’know? The ones you get in club packs? They’re like 2 inches long)
¼ cup tamarind concentrate
¼ honey
1 clove of garlic (minced)
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 teaspoon of chicken stock powder (I know, right?)

Enough vegetable oil and a wok to deep fry the suckers.

Lime and spring onion to garnish.

Directions

Generally, I like to fill a wok with oil and keep it on low heat so I won’t have to wait as long later to make it hot enough to fry in; when I’m closer to cooking, I change the temperature to medium high heat. Anyway, I reckon if I’m doing stuff in the meantime, I may as well be productive. Chicken wing woking takes a lot of timing and speed, after all. Also, I like to let my chicken wings sit out and reach room temperature. This ensures even cooking when fried.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Take your wings and throw them in. If they’re a little wet, even better. What makes uncle’s batter so phenomenal is that it’s tacky, doughy, and gummy. No dusting wings in flour here. That said, take your chicken wings, and mix them as much as you can in the flour. Be tough, try and get the flour wet from the wings. If the wings are covered and not sticky, but dusted, you’re missing the mark. That said, you can just dust them too. You’ll just have a lighter batter. But a good, tacky batter- not a wet one used for fixings like tempura or onion wings- enables the sauce to stick to the wings even more effectively.

After a thorough mashing, put the wings aside.

In a bowl, mix the garlic, honey, tamarind concentrate, and fish sauce. Easy peasy. Set it aside.

Check the wok’s temperature (or whatever pot you care to deep fry in- just so long as the wings are completely submerged). If you have a candy thermometer, even better. If not, just drop a piece of gummy batter in and see if it floats to the surface. If it does, you’re ready. But before that, make sure you have somewhere to set the cooked wings. I like paper towel over a wire rack. Next, gently place the wings in the oil. Don’t crowd whatever pot for the sake of not cooling the oil too much. Fry 'em. 


Wings will usually sink to the bottom and anchor up. When they’re closer to being finished, they’ll puff up and float a little. To be on the safe side, let them fry another 30 seconds after that, making sure they reach a deep golden brown. Use a spider or slotted spoon to move them around and fish them out of the hot oil. Place them on the paper towel and cook the rest.

Unless you have a second wok, this next part can be tricky. When all the wings are done cooking, drain the wok of all oil into a pot- I don’t care where you get it- but move fast. Wash the wok, and thoroughly dry it. Unfortunately, none of us have the luxury of a wok stove with a hose overhead, and a wirey brush we can use to quickly rinse it with (those were my salad days).

When it’s clean, put it back on the heat and heat it to the highest setting. Conventional stoves don’t even begin to match the heat of the wok, so you never have to worry about burning a thing. What you do have to worry about is losing all that heat quickly; that’s why it’s important to stir-fry quickly and have everything at hand. If you don’t have a wok, you can just as easily use a pan.

To test the wok’s sizzle, drop a bit of the sauce in the pan. If it sizzles furiously and you’re afraid it’s too hot and will burn and evaporate and become gummy fast, you’re ready. Drop all the sauce in, immediately after that, all the chicken wings. Coat whatever way you can. Toss the wok, flip with a slotted spoon, just coat those things and let them caramelize. If you can char them, congratulations: you have one hot wok. This step takes you no more than a minute. If you want a wet sauce, use less wok time. If a dryer sauce, more.

Plate, garnish with a lime wedge and slivered green onions, and enjoy. Sweet, salty, tart. Fantastic. Who needs any Ben Thanh?  

Love,

Weezee

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The Fallout

Joey and I were looking for something a little novel and dangerous. It had been a while since our last hankering for anything South East Asian, and Mango King’s washed out, faded, regal sign and frosted windows seemed just divey enough to satiate all our unprincipled peptic passions. There we were, imagining our good time: dilapidated tables, peeling paint, stained ceilings, steam rising from the kitchen, clucking voices floating to our ears. Boy were we wrong. An unfortunately clean, conventional dining hall greeted us. Contrived decoration embellished the room with pastoral landscape paintings, sleek tables and chairs, lumbered trims, faux rock splash backs, a bar with an array of alcohol, a chandelier, and clashing multi-coloured buttercup light fixtures. The only danger may have been the commonplace spread that made it so inviting to so many gregarious eaters. Not Joey and I, though. We were looking for lunch on the cheap, and boy did we find it, with lunch specials that were even cheaper. That may be Mango King’s only selling point, because beyond its more than affordable pricings lay a menu burdened with a miscellany of Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese cuisine. There was nothing really spectacular about any of it, except for maybe the crab meat fish maw soup, which is a fancy word for fish lungs (or bladder depending on how you look at it). But I’m saying this all too hermeneutically, with a little too much perspective. I’ll slow down. 

Lunch specials are always a good thing, because you’re usually spoiled with a huge portion and a little something else. Mango King is no exception. Mine was the beef pad thai with tom yum soup and spring roll. Having spent a good deal of my youth working in the Thai restaurant, I’ve come to expect a little sternness with shelling out a decent lunch combination, so I expected some finesse; and while my order was a visually appealing spread of nuclear orange noodles on an enormously satired white plate- perfect for the haute cuisine world, I couldn’t help but be grossly disappointed with my food.

The tom yum, a spiritless bowl of sweet, sour, salty soup any kid could make at home, stocked with four boring button mushrooms, half a cherry tomato and the stalks- not the leaves- of cilantro had me a little heartbroken, but half expecting it.

The spring roll, though nicely coloured with a crispy exterior, was a muck of gluey insides that I thought could have used a little more time in the fryer. And the dipping sauce, a mere syrup with vinegar, could have had a little more punch.

But the pad thai, the star of the dish, was the biggest disappointment. An unappealing glowing orange mound of piled noodles with unhelpful smatterings of peanuts and cilantro leaves contributed to the dish’s very bland flavour. What little taste that did exist slowly disappeared the more I ate, and the incensed aroma that plumed off of it reminded me of the mysterious smoky character we associate with all that Chinese-Canadian food. Still, all it did was turn me off. Any vibrant, bright taste elements I usually associated with Thai Viet cuisine weren’t there. Unfortunately, a place that now defines itself as Thai Viet Chinese cuisine can’t differentiate from the multitude of dishes it offers, which is a shame, because everything seemed to have tasted the same. 

I ordered an appetizer of chicken wings afterwards for the sake of experiment. They were nothing more than another commonplace dish of deep fried chicken wings with an obligatory serving of overly sweet chili sauce. Nothing magical, nothing new, stuff all too familiar. So much for novelty. So much for danger. 

Mango King 
2480 Homer Watson Blvd 
Kitchener, ON 
N2P 2R5 

(519) 896-8188 

MON-THU 11:00am - 10:00pm 
FRI-SAT 11:00am - 11:00pm 
SUN 11:00am - 10:00pm 

ANY PAYMENT 

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The Ghost Ship

A wacky Black Friday weekend had Joey re-entering the Great White North with a consolidating cold, and I had just the cure for what ailed him. Him and my own trembling heart. Food I had come to know and love quite well, striking the wok for two good years of my life. So it was no wonder when, just a week earlier, we passed what I had reviewed last February as the Sushi Boat, sunk, and salvaged now by the Red Ginger Modern Thai Viet Cuisine restaurant. Yes, another place built on what seems to be one of the city’s many cursed locales. Will it last? Time, obviously, will tell.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I was nagged by the strange feeling that I had been there before. I was jaded, yet again. Black and red walls, dim lighting, inappropriate, but clearly unintentional ornaments. Those fish stenciled on the walls were still there, as if ghostly pulses still stirring from the dreaded place it once was, and, strangely, still was. It was Joey and I, and no one else gazing at a long, somewhat familiar menu. Long, familiar, and more expensive than I would have liked, which may be one of few thrilling setbacks to Red Ginger restaurant. Yes comrades, I’ve had my fill of 3 dollar Vietnamese coffees and can’t help but feel a little cheated when similar restaurants scatter the city’s landscape with much cheaper cheques. So before you enter, be marginally prepared.

Before we were well on our way to ordering, Joey strained with the waiter for soup, soon calmed by my suggestion that he get a small bowl of pho, lest he want something he couldn’t finish. But admittedly, I was wrong. Finish he did, in no time, and while I waited for my papaya salad, sticky rice, and tamarind sauté, the smells were breaking my heart, reminiscing with my past self about the cold days I spent in Mummy’s kitchen- my old Thai employer- warmed by chili peppers, wok hei, and insurmountable amounts of coffee mixed with coconut milk and honey. But pleasant remembrances were few and far between, my glazed gaze broken by the chintzy soup Joey was slurping. Barely any onions, greens, and no coriander to be seen. I told him he’d be better off eating it at my house. But again, eat it he did. 


And it seemed a good eternity before my papaya salad was brought to me, especially since we, like the fish on the wall, were the only other specters occupying the restaurant that night. 

I was visually apprehensive about the look of the thing, piled atop a julienne of crunchy pale green papaya, were dull whole peanuts, squeezed together with immature tomatoes, garlic, more fish sauce than I would have liked, sugar, and the squashed rinds of lime. How those, along with the knarly end piece of garlic wound up in the dish wasn’t beyond me, but it certainly did a good job of adding to my frustration with the pricey appetizer. I hoped my rice would get me back on track to a pleasant meal, but I was served with another fickle purchase. A knobby square of sticky rice, steamed to dryness in some corners lay in wait, and all I could think about were the mounds Mummy and I would pile into a wicker basket and give to customers. Still, I did what I could to enjoy it, rolling it and dipping it in the sweet salty dressing.

There's that rind again . . .

The tamarind sauté was a fabulous change, and not something I catch in many other places. Slices of beef battered and deep fried were stir fried along with red peppers and deep fried onions in a sweet tamarind sauce. Charred by the wok, and nuanced by ginger, each airy protuberant piece delivered that bright sugary flavor I wanted with anything tamarind, and any chewiness helped it all linger. It was a fabulous choice, and everything I expected. Two could have easily shared it, but it was for my stomach only. The Red Ginger on the other hand, isn’t wholly for my heart.

Red Ginger Modern Thai Viet Cuisine
465 Highland Rd W,
Kitchener, ON
N2M 3C6

519-954-8088


SUN-THU: 11:00 am- 9:30pm
FRI & SAT: 11:00 am- 10:00pm

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PHO SHIZZLE

My resolute fight for culinary relativity seems one of my more redeemable qualities. I’ve said in the past that it’s taste that matters, but even that is subjective to my own preferences- my memories, my Faye Wongs; and therefore, you needn’t ever take me too seriously on the grounds of good food. I am a humble eater. I try to give honest reviews. However, there is one sphere in which my orthodoxy remains vigilant, supposedly unchanging- uncompromisable. Except however, in rare, so far, yearly cases. 

I like to devote whatever patriotism I have in my body to where we eat and kung fu. That said, no heart can ever serve two masters, which is why I have a tendency to wane in the prior. My city has great spaces to eat. It can hold its own, and we owe that greatly not to the haute terrors that tyrannically rule our palettes, but the proletariat parboilers, poachers, and pastry bakers  who autodidactically serve novelty to our tongues. Sometimes, however, novelty can be so great, and so alluring beyond food that I can’t help but entertain it.

It was such novelty that brought me to a place in a city I’d never had the intention of eating and writing in. I’ve known this place to exist for a long long time, and it was always a fanciful ambition of mine, albeit rather flaky one, to eat there. But when  a place hashes out novelty restaurants and fine huneyz, who am I, with my limited time on this plain of existence, to refuse? Hey, the heart wants what the heart wants. If I haven’t said so already, I’ll say it now- an opportunity lost is one lost forever. 

Considering only its stellar, phonetically punning namesake, Pho Shizzle Viet Thai has nothing miraculous to offer its eaters. That said, I don’t blame it.
 

Located in Cambridge, Ontario, it holds as much of a monopoly as is possible in a place that is arguably the largest culinary wasteland in my region. In my city, Pho Shizzle might be in danger, but with little competition to encourage it, it has no need for any creativity beyond Viet Thai favourites. Is this bad? Not in the least. Some people dislike it very much. My company couldn’t trust a space with a live fish tank. She claimed there was something fishy about it. And although the tank is a lucky convention in some Asian restaurants, this dynamic is neither here nor there. 

I didn’t mind Pho Shizzle. I don’t mind Pho Shizzle. Maybe I was smitten. Maybe I was in the mood for something a little familiar. A little sexy.  But, if the Viet Thai menu is as big as it always is, any place can be novel. Good or bad is neither here nor there. The Pad Thai didn’t taste like any other Pad Thai I’ve had. But, good or bad is neither here nor there.
 

So, how did I make for an interesting trip, aside from choking on tea? Novelty drinks helped. An iced jackfruit cocktail filled with colourful crushed ice and the kind of fruit syrup your relatives from France bring you home every time they visit. Don’t forget the fleshy husks of mulberries’ yellow cousins, sitting at the bottom, tasting mildly like bananas and reminiscently chemical; chewy and crisp, juxtaposed next to the slivers of tasteless gelatin that made the drink a textural playground, a dream for the child in my heart.
 

I sprung for the pork vermicelli bowl, if not to learn from it. A favourite of mine, its clean soapy qualities are always a return, especially when the side of sweet sauce is poured over every piece of pork, lettuce, sprout, coriander, and mint bound together by slippery rice vermicelli. Every time it’s a good wake up call. I’ve never hated the dish anywhere. With charred pork slices flavoured only by their own juices and the grill, as well as crunchy cucumber sticks, it was a buoyant adventure. Shoot, It was a great Friday. Do I owe it to Pho Shizzle? I do in part. With an entrée that had me stuffed for only 10 dollars, Pho Shizzle had me appreciating the familiar things in life.
 

Yes, young masters, whether it was the food, company, or poetic ambiguity of this roaming review, something about where I was that night had me leaving it loving it.

Pho Shizzle Viet Thai Restaurant
(519) 658-4796
100 Jamieson Parkway #11
Cambridge, ON
N3C 4B3


Any Payment

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Prodigal Sandwich

Years ago, in my most exuberant days of discovering the joys of eating, I was made a sandwich of cold roast beef and cilantro- shoots, roots, and all. At the time, I thought nothing of its frivolity. A mere sandwich made by my friend- that kid from Hong Kong- to quell the growls that surged up from inside us both. We were, in fact, on our way elsewhere to go eat, but wanted something, for whatever reason, until we made the trek in my unreliable, yet affordable and inherited, minivan. To me, at least at the time, and before I was forced by the big-wide-world to have any kind of culinary perspective, food had rules. Recipes and dishes were strict, natural, black and white things. Fusion did not exist. There was a reason I found my cilantro and beef sandwich boring, and that was because it wasn’t natural, as paradoxical as that sounds. Of course, there were a myriad of reasons why it was boring. I didn’t appreciate its flavours, and as a kid from a heritage of rich food, it tasted bland.

Now I reckon if I had eaten a sandwich from Givral Deli that very day I would have understood the transferability of food much differently. It would have been the sandwich that opened my eyes. And in a sense, it did the very same thing today. Ironically, sandwich shops to me today are dull, redundant things, overpriced and patronizing (again, ironically) with things like prepackaged cookies, potato chips, and whatever else. These are conveniences we are used to, and dare I say, doomed to depend on when we want a foot-long. Givral Deli, on the other hand, offers a great alternative with choices that have stood ground for a long, long time.

I won’t bother to tell you why you shouldn’t let the space conclude Givral’s quality, because so many of my foodie forefathers have already written about its green marbled vinyl floor, its green paint chipped walls, its long corridor leading out back, the charming boxes of eggs laid out in front of the counter and the loads of beauty creams behind it. The atmosphere is a pretense we’ve used too many times to judge the quality of a food hole. Let’s save such trivialities for the big cities where such dynamics matter, but not for Grival, please; because it need only depend on its unmatched fare, and even that may be an understatement.

You’d be foolish to never visit Grival Deli at least once, though with the price of a submarine sandwich being 3.25 at most I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to visit all the time. Even though it offers a mere nine sandwich options with a similar flavor base, I’m willing to bet you’re capable enough, food-wise, to fall in love with at least one choice. And if that’s not enough, it offers other Viet street options, like spring rolls and steamed buns bigger than my fist, stuffed with fixings like pork and mushrooms, made by the proud owner herself. If I hadn’t already ordered 5 of the most inexpensive submarines in the world moments before, I certainly would have opted for a bun or two. But now I have a reason to go back.

Though a tight menu, it runs a thoughtful selection. From sardines, to buttery barbeque pork in a special, ‘juicy,’ sauce. Each sandwich is filled accordingly with julienned marinated carrots, wedges of cucumber, red onions, and cilantro- stems and all. This was reason enough to understand those people in the past who’ve railed against the urbanity of putting lettuce in a sandwich, especially when there are so many other kinds of flavourful greens. It’s because of these Vietnamese staples that each sandwich is bright and uplifting, and brought down to earth by the hardy meats placed within, whether the sardine sub, stuffed with whole deboned smelts and flavoured in a simple and light mayonnaise that doesn’t overwhelm in the least, but balances it perfectly. Or whether the chicken teriyaki sub: slathered in an amber caramel coloured sauce that is sweet, salty, and smokey, sprinkled with heat from chopped chili peppers. My only qualm may be that the chicken teriyaki comes dangerously close to flavor with the chicken ‘satay’ sandwich. Then again, it’s understandable that my palette became muddled by five of nine sandwiches with similar fixings. But again, it’s this strong foundation, a signature of Vietnamese flavor, that builds such strong fare. And if you’re worrying about the bread, don’t. At first, I thought the crusty buns were too much to bear, having been spoiled by the soft buns of our conventional sandwich sellers; but after letting each warm hoagie mellow with its own stuffings, I was left with firm, chewable bites.

My sandwich of choice? The cured pork sausage sub. Wedges of pressed pork similar in nature to those cured European sausages we eat so often. Imparted with garlic and pepper notes, the meat gave the sandwich tongue tingling heat that contributed a dyanism to the sandwich’s vernal nature. I was reminded of the days I spent eating lunch with my old Thai employer, dipping deep fried pieces of the same stuff in ice melting chili sauce. That I spent my life so long without such a place is beyond me. And now, thanks to Grival Deli, I can afford, along with the most empty-handed of eaters, food that is not only affordable, but esculent. Culinary. Simply great food.

Givral Deli Vietnamese Subs

(519) 743-5558

203-301 King St E

Kitchener,ON

N2G 2L2

Mon 10-6

Tues 10-7

Sun 10-5

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Like an Old Master

Pho ‘95 is a place that’s managed itself as an effigy in front of my eyes for a long time. A place that, to me, seemed like a kind of Byzantium, shrouded in legend, in urban mystique. An obscure, yet pervasive place that’s existed in the mythos of Kitchener-Waterloo for so long. And yet, for so long, I’ve kept myself out. There were never any real objections to the spot, everyone I spoke with who ate or didn’t eat there always told me that, “Yeah, the food’s pretty alright.” Was that why I never even bothered visiting it, having eaten at literally every other Vietnamese spot in town? Maybe there were more pressing places to go, places readers would value more. Maybe Pho ‘95 is too obvious, and maybe too much of my reputation as a gastronome is at stake. But I’ll be honest, my stomach is tired; tired of hamburgers, Chinese food, café fare, places too barefaced and unfamiliar to my old hungry heart. So I thought, as an homage to myself, and to my humble beginnings, I’d visit a place with the dish that ushered me into food appreciation. Anyway, it only seems fair that this column pay homage to Vietnamese cuisine at least once in its lifetime. And what better place than Pho ‘95? It’s like an old master. One of the oldest, rooted places in town.

Its size stupefying, its small exterior a humbling declaration of its banquet hall interior. It was uncanny. But casing the joint made me wonder, before Pho ‘95 was Pho ‘95, what could it have possibly been? Its yellowed stucco archways and faux stucco maroon wallpaper reminded me of the Mediterranean reception halls of my youth. Through time, it seemed to rearticulate itself into something more static and culturally performative: fish tanks, Buddha statues, shiny Japanese prints, and those oh so typical fake emerald cushioned chairs and tables that set themselves up in every other Vietnamese place around. It screamed Chinese restaurant, but served Viet food. There were even water coolers with signs pointing in things’ direction in case people were tired of the courtesy of tea. Yes, Pho ‘95 seemed a watering hole for all walks of life; where you could get together with hipster and salary-man alike, have a Styrofoam cup of distilled or spring and make trivial talk about Ray Bands, or the Smith reports.
I was impressed by the clientele that came and went. My eavesdropping even led me to discover that there were a lot of regulars, and valued ones at that, because the staff knew exactly what they wanted right when they came in. I was touched by the sincerity of the staff, the novelty of the space, the suits who came for lunch, the vibrant, yet calm atmosphere. I was more than ready to eat.Pho ‘95’s menu is able to bear even the tiniest of wallets, the most expensive dish being 13 dollars, and even an inexpensive bowl of small beef noodle soup, a meal all its own. That said, I sought that which encouraged me into food-dom, choosing to have the beef noodle soup with raw beef, flank, and cow’s stomach. Why go to a pho place and not get pho? I think I did the right thing.Accompanying that, I chose an appetizer of shredded pork skin rolls; a choice, I find in retrospect, for more tolerant palettes. And, as I am the critical gastronome that I am, I made it my responsibility to purchase that most notable of Vietnamese drinks: coffee with condensed milk.


Like a proper meal, my rolls came first. Stuffed with vermicelli noodles, resilient pieces of translucent pork skin, dull iceberg lettuce, and peanuts wrapped tightly in rice sheets, the starchy rolls were accompanied with a thick sauce of what seemed to be Hoisin and more peanuts. The thick sauce adhered well to the rolls; however, the dry elastic nature of each made eating tedious. The sauce did nothing to temper the nature of something so dry. At a time, I found myself taking them apart and placing them in my soup’s broth as if dumplings. I thought they needed some moisture. The sauce wasn’t bad; however, I felt that old, musty Hoisin huzzah could have been paired better with something a little less torrid.
When my soup arrived, I dove in. It had been a long time since I slurped on the dusty flavor of rice noodles in a salty beef broth. A little cloudier than memory served, probably the most intriguing quality of the broth was the grit of separated fat rowing through the bowl. Usually, one would expect fatty pearls in a nice clear broth, but not here; I took it as a sign that the broth, though not strained to an exorbitant degree, had at least been made from scratch. I hoped, anyway. The raw beef didn’t put up much of a fight, separating easily as I chewed. The flank sunk to the bottom of the bowl, tough as usual and lending spirit to the dish. The slices of cow stomach gave perfect balance to a trio of chewy, tough, and tender. Overall, it was well received.

My coffee completed my meal, arriving as lukewarm as I had expected. Something that percolates so long should be served with ice, so I couldn’t complain, because I requested it without.


It was familiar: creamy with a mouth puckering sweetness that fought off the deep tannic character that came with a long brew. Bracing myself for each sip, I made note of the minute eyes of oil reflected in the coffee’s surface- another symptom of a long extraction. I found myself tempering the coffee’s richness with alternating sips from the cheapest of luxuries: tea.By the end, I was rubbing the sugar crystals that settled as sediment in those last few swallows on the back of my teeth. I loved the stuff, and every minute I spent at Pho '95.
Pho ‘95
Tel: (519) 744-0199
331 West King St
Kitchener, ON N2G1B8

Every day 1030-10

Any method of payment

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The Egg Roll King

There was a fire in my belly and the only way to put it out was to douse all those clean eating experiences I had these past weeks with something a little more familiar and pacifying. As far as I was concerned, I had too much energy, and I was a long way off my centre of eating the way I hedonistically love to. I needed something that didn't make me a pushy, health conscious eater. I had to stop this before my poor palette tasted nothing but whey protein and supplement drinks. I needed The Itis. That's right, my dining comrades. We've all experienced it. The cure-all for a stressful day, for a very hungry stomach. Those high calorie meals that lead us to a general feeling of lethargy and well-being. But a good ‘bad for you’ meal.

We all have our own little kinds of sanctuaries in the big bad (I say 'bad' here in the 'cool' bad way) gastropolis of Kitchener-Waterloo, the places wherein we like to divulge our own calorie smashing urges: fast food joints, pubs, buffets, you name it.

For this Bon Vivant of bad, there’s only one kind of place I dare venture. A Place where authenticity is a cryptic word for a more glorified, gourmandizing past. Places where phonetic mis-spellings on a menu still enchant even the most familiar eaters and any thoughts had about the fashion of fusion food are thrown to the wind, because when it comes down to it, in this kind of place everything is bastardized even if a little, but still damn delicious. You all know it too. For some of you (and me), it’s a place you humbly admit is a guilty pleasure. So familiar and inviting it seems that this particular place has been around since time was time, and only the most gastronomically dogmatic try to suppress it. But our Western urges for salty, sweet and savoury keep calling us back. What exactly am I talking about? The Chinese-Canadian eatery, of course.

	Cool shake, bro!

Egg Roll King Restaurant seems a fitting name for a place that dare try to include all walks of Chinese food for Canadiana. Even going so far as to offer up food that is terribly un-Chinese, like French fries, or poutine. Now, I could make this a game of Six Degrees and specifically say that Egg Roll King labels itself as a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant, but that poutine was created in Quebec and that those who originally occupied Quebec were from France and that the French, for a time, occupied Vietnam, influencing its culinary tradition, bringing us greats like Vietnamese coffee, and that therefore poutine, by some act of post-colonial Providence could be considered Vietnamese, but I don’t want to grasp at straws. I just want to praise a place that I consider to be an echelon of democratic eating. Where Canadian food, Chinese food, American food and Vietnamese food all come together not in some elaborate act of fusion cooking, but to live and be eaten side by side in complete culinary harmony. And you may wonder, dear readers, “Why would anyone do that?” Well, my only explanation, which came to me while watching the some odd 20 junior high school students that charged in as soon as the clock struck 3 and started ordering spring rolls and French fries, was that, as history often teaches us, a King gives the people what the people want. For years I myself had wondered the same, thinking the items so unfitting of the style of food offered at these kinds of restaurants must have been jokes, or covers for some other kinds of operations, but it was in that moment that I realized that Egg Roll King just does good business, and apparently has the best and most inexpensive egg rolls in town. Unfortunately, I wasn’t astute enough to try one. For an instant, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, one of those kids would ask for the shark fin soup- something I would have loved to have tried myself, if not for the price. And, yes, I’m probably romanticizing the dish in a place plastered with yellow and lime green walls, plastic grape vines along the ceiling, Buddhist shrines and other ornate trinkets; not to mention plasma televisions tuned into MTV and Teen Mom 2 marathons, but said soup is a rare commodity in these parts. And yes, I could go to a “fancy” restaurant and maybe order it, but that it is side by side on a menu with things like chicken wings and Moo Goo Guy Pan did my heart good, because Egg Roll King offered something for every foodie, student and all-around-eater. It offered me a strawberry shake (that’s right), and a heaping plate of Cantonese rainbow pork corralled in a field of fried rice. Perhaps an unconventional combination, but no less satisfying. Now, I didn’t see how it was prepared, but it had the sweet mellow flavor of fresh strawberries that one assumes will overpower the tongue with an indescribable kind of sweetness when biting into them; but it didn’t. If any sweetness seemed too overbearing, it was immediately subdued by the cool grittiness of the shake’s blended ice. And if there was anything artificial about it, I couldn’t tell.

	One of many manifestations of The Itis.

My rainbow pork, one of the chef’s specialties, was presented to me with the vivacity of a man whose upbeat spirit showed that he believed in his own food. He gasped along playfully with me as I dazzled in the rich, blooming red of the sweet and sour sauce that covered copious amounts of chewy pork, fried in an egg batter and stir-fried with vegetables whose juices deluged as soon as I bit into them and tamed the sweet, somewhat spicy flavor of my pork. What more can I say for such familiar, yet un-appreciated and satisfying flavours? If I didn’t know it was The Itis in me, I’d have thought I was in heaven.

Egg Roll King
85 courtland ave. east
Kitchener, ON N2G 2T6

Monday: 11am - 11pm
Tuesday: 11am - 11pm
Wednesday: 11am - 11pm
Thursday: 11am - 11pm
Friday: 11am - 12pm
Saturday: 11am - 12pm
Sunday: CLOSE

Payment: cash credit, debit.

Bill: Rainbow Pork: 9.95
Side of fried rice: 1.95
Strawberry smoothie: 4.00
Total: 17.97

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Viet Grill and His and Her Sinks

*CLOSED*

You'd think six months in Vietnam would be more than enough time to engorge yourself on some of the most fragrantly masked food in the world. Why one would want to come back from their travels and pay five times as much for a bowl of pho is beyond me. Who are we kidding, no it isn't. I'd probably do the same. You know how I feel about Boston Pizza.

So, upon my friend's arrival home, one of the first things she did was ask me out to eat. I had a couple places in mind. Vietnamese was not one of them. But, she missed the food. Already. So, how could I object? Now, the question was, where? Believe me, it didn't take long. Kitchener Waterloo has an array of Vietnamese food spots. A lot of which come and go, changing with the seasons, unfortunately. Usually, the better ones give way to the cheaper. Here, Vietnamese food, unless combined with other geographic culinary locales, like Thailand (it's usually just Thailand and Vietnamese), doesn't normally do so well on its own, unless it's situated in a prime location. The Vietnamese food genre, at least in this town, has the presence of a fast food industry. There's almost always two particular dishes that sell for cheap and are bought by the general population. The ever popular beef pho, and the even more ever popular pad thai: the big mac of South East Asia, if you will. Generally made from a sauce combination of Ketchup, MSG, and peanut butter. It's hit or miss everywhere. There's only one place where I like pad thai (which, is in fact a Thai dish). Beef pho on the other hand, is generally good wherever you go. There must be some kind of secret beef pho society where everyone gets together and decides how it should taste. But if you're ever trying Vietnamese for the first time, beef pho epitomizes the idea of their cuisine. Filling ingredients, some of which may seem unappetizing, like thin raw slices of beef, in a fragrant, clean smelling broth, made from beef and flavoured with herbs like coriander, mint and purple basil, as well as the allusive Vietnamese balm. I did not make that last one up. It's actually lemon mint. If that sounds squeemish, there are so many pho variations that you're bound to find something you like. What's essential is the fragrant, flavourful broth, usually made by stewing beef with spices like clove and coriander. And I'm personally such a sucker that whenever I go to a Vietnamese place, promising I'll get something new, I almost always crack for a big bowl of pho. The largest anyone has. Which usually sells for under 9 dollars. And it's more than filling.


Viet Grill has been around for months now, and I always made a note of going to try it out. Today I finally had the chance.
The locale of the restaurant's situated in noneother than the Hong Kong plaza of downtown kitchener, my favourite food locale in the city. Unfortunately, with so many different Vietnamese locations throughout Kitchener and Waterloo, this restaurant may have picked a poor spot. It's unfortunate, because the place has promise. Then again, I also thought that for the last Vietnamese restaurant that was in the exact same location about a year ago. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

Viet Grill strays away from the stereotypical decor of fake plastic marble and green tones that usually frequent most Vietnamese joints, though it retains that nostalgic character in its choice of tables and chairs (of which I am grateful for). The place took a more contemporary turn for the masses. Pastel coffee coloured walls, an edgy flat screen tv on the wall (always a necessity in these joints) and an open concept bar/place to pay for your food. Don't forget- the generic abstract paintings, one of which my friend labelled, "balls to the wall," after I had turned the phrase multiple times at the table and we had both likened the painting to a picture of multiple phallus. Yes, I know. I should have taken a photo. Alas.

But friends, here's the pièce de résistance . . .

Usually, I'm not one to visit the washroom in a place. But today was a different story. And before I go on the absolute winning quality of this place's decor, let me first, set the mood.

Remember being a kid, and watching whatever tv show, where a person enters whatever delapitated, run down treehouse, portapotty, or make shift pee hole, full of hesitation, only to discover that on the other side is an elaborate and beautiful victorian lavoratory on the other end? Of course you do, I could name twenty shows with the shtick in it.
Well imagine, the average Vietnamese restaurant, trying to make its way in the Vietnamese restaurant world with all the other established Vietnamese restaurants, and you have to go to the bathroom, but you dread its poor decor, its (potentially) single soap dispenser, and it's yellow porcelain, cramped toilet, only to discover that you enter through the door marked "washroom" to find, no toilet, but yet another room with HIS and HER sinks, BOTH with their own soap dispensers (attached to the wall I might add)! That's right! Even the sinks have heir own rooms! And, beside each sink, a door leading to its respective gendered washroom. Unfortunately, there's only one paper towel dispenser. But imagine! Just imagine, all the chance encounters that may happen there, man meets woman, either embarassed, or in love. A 24 year old cop, a 20 something year old food service worker. Washed out camera angles, seedy cities. Very romantic. Very, Chung King Express. It was decided, with washroom's like that, I'd be back soon.


But who cares about washrooms- what did I eat! You're in for a treat, because the menu's cheap. So affordable, you could feed two people for just over 15 dollars with the portions they pass out at this joint. It was wonderful.
We were greeted by the restaurants more than curtious hostess, immediately sitting us down and telling us what we absolutely had to eat. Whether this was general enthuse for food or money, I wasn't too apt to find out, because I was sure it was the later. Regardless, Viet Grill has a special that runs Mondays to Wednesday and that's a large (I mean large) bowl of beef pho for 4.99. It's so big, my friend added, that you could bathe a baby in it. They're not even that big in Vietnam itself. Sold. Next up for grabs was something that no other Vietnamese place I've been to has. And that was, which my friend had to repeat to me several times in order to remember the name, banh xeo: the sizzling cake. Or, egg crepe, influenced, no doubt, by the French who occupied Vietnam for so long. Essentially, the dish, also extremely large for its price of 7.99, came with a dish of mixed and fragrant greens that you wrap around whatever piece you decide to break off with your hand. The crepe itself was filled with random ingredients such as shrimp, bean sprouts, and pork, all of which could have been left in or out depending on preference, or so we were told. I'll try again next time, because good god, it was delicious. My only regret about the crepe itself was that it was literaly folded over the filling after being cooked, and not cooked to a degree so it would adhere to the ingredients and avoid spilling out when ripped off. Aside from that, its sweet, nutty flavour influenced by the onions fried into it and the sesame oil used to cook it, made it a remarkably flavourful dish, what with the meat fillings and multiple herbs to compliment it. It was love. And the pho? Tasted like pho should taste. full bodied, and fragrant, like a wine. Did that come off to fathead like? It was supposed to. Even with a cold I could recognize the flavours. And aside from the odd pieces of fat tenderly left in the soup broth, it was more than satisfying. The broth alone had a sweetness about it. The noodles, bite. No chewy, annoying tendons. Viet Grill definitely is a diamond in the rough.


So, after a long talk about my poor luck with women, my yearnings to be like the kids in Weird Science, and the wonderful choice of tea paraphernalia Viet Grill served tea in, I was out the door, but not before visiting the washroom one more time. This time, only to look at it. I'm serious; even if you don't go for the food, go for the bathroom. And a stellar 15 dollar meal, after tax.

Yes dear reader, there was nothing left to do but come home, write a satisfying food review and watch Kelly LeBrock to my heart's content, before she let herself go.

His and her sinks. I still can't believe it.
Viet Grill

265 King Street East
Kitchener, ON N2G 4N4

519 571-9339‎

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