More Adventures in Food Land

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

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


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

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Policing the Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

			I told you. Chicken with mustard.Fr realz.

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

	I counted five shrimp.

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

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

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

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

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The Ghost of Diners Past

I do my best as a fellow gastronome to seek out spaces where dining extends merely beyond the natural act of eating and into the realm of experience. Certainly, good food is important, especially when you’re paying for it. However, what has equal merit, at least in the eyes of this diner, is the adventure that comes with finding new places that make life, in its usual boorish routine, a little more livable.

Jimmy’s Lunch was the most visceral dining experience I had in a long time, and I say that with conviction, dear readers. Heed my words, for the faded marquee letters on an outdated (justifiably antiquated) and rundown Pepsi sign flagging whatever passers-by to the existence of Jimmy’s Lunch give presence to an even more poignant message that Jimmy’s Lunch certainly won’t be around forever. I’m glad I found it when I did, having passed by that long strip of road multiple times and turning a blind eye with naïve food snobbery. Indeed, those were darker days. Days when I myself was a less humble eater, unaware of what ghosts gave up in terms of good eating. Luckily, the morning I was driving on my way to buying a good bunch of kumquats I had a hankering for pancakes, and Jimmy’s Lunch just happened to meet the corner of my eye.

Speaking of naivete, I approached Jimmy’s Lunch with the fantasy that beyond its glass door there’d be a quaint, clean diner upheld by some code of puissant eaters who knew food and service, and who put waitresses in cute knee high dresses and doily aprons. What I saw first however, was a bar and stools and a cash register and a grill behind it. What I saw when I adjusted myself and took a seat on a torn stool with fabric held together by tape was a humble place for eating, sharing its space with a maze of dividing walls leading into what seemed like small offices and rooms where one could eat, bet on a horse named Luigi Banzino or have access to a scantly stocked fridge. That said, considering the character of Jimmy’s Lunch, it’d seem unfair to hold it up to the same standards that other other eateries are held up to today. From what I’ve been told, it’s been around for a long while, just shy of 1949; so, it’s fair to say that Jimmy’s Lunch certainly holds its own and shouldn’t be judged by its shabby appearance alone, because there is certainly something more there. Perhaps the character of the regulars, whom I can only assume are slowly fading into the ether; perhaps the stern, yet calm politeness the man behind the counter, in simple jeans, T-shirt and apron gives when he offers coffee in a mumble. It certainly isn’t a place that mirrors the quaint diners in popular culture. However, it wasn’t so dark that it mimicked those cold, awkward places we see on television and know as truck stops. Maybe, in my limited experience of eating in these sorts of spaces Jimmy’s Lunch is what a diner really should look like. An attestation to what diners used to be. A space where beyond its torn blue booths, chipped checkered floor and curling plastic, mock wood trims, some old cooking masters of yesteryear and milkshakes take arms against a sea of food troubles, where modernity has led to diners being nothing more than restaurant chains. If there is anything to say about Jimmy’s Lunch it certainly is that it is rare, and for the most part, slowly fading out of existence lest I, my dear readers, convince you to go and dine there.

Mindful of the vibrations under my stool, caused no doubt from a combination of electricity and traffic passing by in the outside world, I read the menu earnestly. Amongst Jimmy’s emerald green walls, its metallic, diamond patterned back-splashes and wood paneled archways, I made note of the newspaper clippings, old wedding photos and celebrity posters dotting the walls, as well as the old novelty placards of cartoon characters stating the menu options in captive word bubbles. There were the obvious clichéd elements of diners one popularly sees elsewhere today, overshadowed by the clientele of blue collars. Still, something in the place told me it was invaluable if only for its history, so much so that I dared not take a picture with my camera for fear of encroaching on the comfort taken by the men who sat quietly in their own seats deep in whatever business or small talk they immersed themselves in. If there’s an urge to find out what it looks like, you’ll just have to go yourself, dear reader.

My commitment to a stack of pancakes was met with dismay by the cook who told me it was a bad idea, claiming that they only ever turn out black. Thus, having never personally mastered the art of making decent French toast I asked for a stack with some sausages, conveniently the most expensive thing on the menu, but very far from breaking the bank. A humble 6.95. Toast was the cheapest option at 2.25, and if you’re getting technical: jam, a mere .15 cents. Breakfast isn’t your only option either; Jimmy’s is open daily from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. (except Sundays) so lunch is obviously a choice either in the form of hamburger, fries or grilled sandwich (and eggs and bacon, of course). And I’d be hard pressed for words to not at least mention that they did of course offer milkshakes at 2.75 a glass.

I waited patiently for my meal having the feeling I didn’t have much of a choice. The place wasn’t busy, but intuition told me that even if it was, the lone cook at the grill still would have taken his time making my meal and making small talk with the regulars, so regular I might add that they got their own coffee from behind the counter as well as condiments, usually after giving the cook a good pat on the back.

Jimmy’s Lunch certainly has a community, and it seems its success comes from its openness between cook and customer, unlike the staunch service one expects to see in the usual restaurant environment where the motivation for friendliness is a good tip. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, but it seemed Jimmy’s no longer needed the dynamic.

I’d be lying if I said my meal was out of this world. Considering the circumstance however, it did hit the spot. With four stacked pieces of French Toast, four breakfast sausages and a quartered piece of tomato, I like to assume to balance the saltiness of the meat (probably not planned), I met my meal with a great deal of elation. I was given a large slab of butter on a separate plate on the side and the communal syrup bottle no doubt touched by hundreds of hands before me. Flavours were familiar, my French toast embodied the sweet cinnamon character of so many before it. Each piece however had an amazing amount of body, not pressed at all in the process of their creation, which enabled them to soak up appreciated amounts of butter and syrup, and which certainly would explain my full stomach by the end of the meal.

But what made my meal so enjoyable was its familiarity, those feelings of nostalgia registered by the flavours I had tasted so many times in happy breakfasts before. What more can one expect when eating something so every day in a place as modest as Jimmy’s Lunch? The food wasn’t bad, and its ability to fill my ever expanding stomach impressive. My only regret was that I was too full to try a milkshake, or anything else, especially with such low prices. I can only hope that you will do it for me, and in the process tell me what familiar memories the flavours of Jimmy’s Lunch stir up for you. I can only imagine.

Coffee: 1.25

French Toast & Sausage: 6.95

Total (with tip): 11.27

Cash only

Jimmy’s Lunch

Open: Mon.- Sat. 6 am- 1pm; Sun. 7 am- 1pm.

(519) 743-4945

297 Victoria Street North Kitchener,

ON N2H 5E1 

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