So the Buddha Said

Mummy: Ssss. Lowa. Der. You smart, I know you finish Masterz.

Me: I dunno. We'll see. If I do quit, it wouldn't be the first time. But it's easy. It'll be easy.

Mummy: What you mean? Easy? Nooo. Everyone always say getting Masterz hahrd.

Me: Well. I think it depends. Y'know. If you have no heart, it's hard. If you like it, then it's easy.

Mummy: Oh yeah, I see.

. . .

Me: You know, it's lonely alot of the time. I just read all day and night. Nothing else. Sometimes I feel like it's for nothing at all. Like I'm not in school for me. I see how hard my mom works, and I can't lose face. A lot of the decisions I make are in part because of my mom. But I mean, what can I do? She gave up a life to raise me.

Mummy: You listen to me. When I make a soup, you go try and you say: Mummy, needs more fish sauce; then, Uncle try and he say: Mummy, need more pepper. But I try and I know it purrfect. When you make soup, only you know when it purrfect. You understand me? Everyone taste different. You make your own soup.


Me: I worry alot mummy. That I won't be able to finish school. That I'll be on my own. Kicked out. On the streets. And I will be unable to continue my education. Or even get to where I wanna go.

Mummy: You are smart. I know you be fine on your own! I see how you work. Mummy know. You good boy.

. . .

Mummy: Ssss. Aw. Mummy back better now. Thank you. Purrfect!

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Supping on the Air, Braving the Wet, so Long as the Road Lasts

Mon amies, I've mon-a-missed you! Forgive the four month leave of absence, but I had to up and leave to Red China, training vigorously in a church with my Old Master. As a result, I was a little strapped for cash and the more epicurean things in life. That aside, if I could, I'd do it all again. And if you really must know, my tiger style is unmatched; my single broadsword on the other hand, needs some work. And if there is something foodie to have learned from the whole experience, it's that Old Kung Fu Grandmasters love seaweed salad, but not as much as they love a good plateful of curry noodles. That, and drinking (alcohol) only stops you from being able to eat even more.


So, here I am. Prodigal foodie, and prodigal student, back in a last ditch effort to redeem myself against the mishaps of my past education, all-the-while trying to convince professors to let me study food and eat as much as possible. Eat, drink, kung-fu, education- is there any other higher purpose in life? Maybe, but for your dear narrator, there's nothing finer.
But I won't end this post here. No, no. Much has changed in the culinary hub of humble Kitchener-Waterloo. Restaurants refused to heed the advice of the Ghosts of Restaurants past, and more hip, cool restaurants have gentrified in their place. Our own Viet Grill is no more, and it's only been six months. Alas, such is the nature of the beast.
But, let's not talk of these sad things. There are far better spaces to see, eat, and just BE in. Grocery stores have expanded, cafes have percolated in, and every day this town becomes riddled with the most convenient suburban sprawl, wherein the cherriest of Chinese places take reservation. Yes, I liken every culinary Fall to the fondest of school year beginnings. Restaurants come in like a new batch of students. Who will be bad? Who will be good?
So far, Panda King is one of the good ones. Don't be fooled by the sign, or the "Asian Gourmet Express" that is given insignificance under the giant PANDA KING letters above it. This place comes off as a quick food fix, but don't let that lead you to judging the quality. It has to, after all, compete with a number of restaurants in a plaza strip. And with the amount of restaurants that come and go, owners know they have to play hardball.
I was lucky enough to have an hour of spare time before class and to have woken up too late to eat anything, thereby justifying my grabbing a quick bite. But it was nothing of the sort. I took my time, with fathead academic book in hand. It was a toss-up between tomato beef stirfry and Panda King's praised (by employees) lunch buffet. Usually I'm skeptical of lunch buffets, but for a cool 8 dollars and a colorful array (I mean this literally; the food looked bright and appetizing) I couldn't really resist a plate riddled with goods, and some of my personal favourites.
The joint had all the characteristics of a Chinese fast food restaurant today (at least, in Kitchener-Waterloo): warm coloured walls, flourescent lights, plazma televisions, and coffee pots full of hot water and oolong, which I must add as an aside, tasted nothing like the backwashed coffee water used for the tea one purchases at any other restaurant that isn't usually Asian. To reiterate: it didn't taste like coffee. Thank goodness.

If I had known any better I would have eaten faster, because as soon as 12 o'clock hit, the place was abuzz with students, lining up and sitting down, squeezing for any seat. Some even came and left immediately sans food because they couldn't sit down. There WERE some empty eats around my small table, but my fatheaded studiousness may have intimidated the poor kids. Either that, or my Whiteness. Best to bet on the later. Regardless of these awkward ethnic scenes, it was a space I felt at perfect peace in. I took my time eating, because, plain and simple, it was delicious. If I could have stayed longer, I would have; but I felt kind of bad for taking up the space even after my meal was done (which I almost couldn't finish due to the large portions. Luckily, I've been doing 1,000 extra kicks every day.). I'd love to visit again, but there's so much more out there to explore. And my wallet's only so big. Especially these school days. Regardless, I'll do my best to find only the most poignant places to eat for your entertainment. Until then, go to Panda King for the both of us.

This is the epitome of my academic career

Panda King Asian Gourmet Express
117 University Plaza 
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Today Pad Thai, Tomorrow Crepes

Being a bastardized version of a chef living in a region with other bastardized versions of chefs (I, of course, mean cooks), you come across a lot of perks, and peoples. Kitchener-Waterloo is a small town, with a lot of nodes of culture, overshadowed by academics, technology, RIM, the Perimeter Institute, convoluted fatheads, and some genuinely good folk, with moderately good stories to tell. A kung-fu grandmaster comes to mind. Anyway, my point is that a lot of restaurants are in the possession of self-proclaimed cooks, who, as far as I'm concerned, can hold their own against the rest o'them chefs out there. Quite frankly, the only difference may be that piece of paper and the paycheck. Oh, and the guts it takes to open your own place and hope it doesn't sink three years down the line.

My own family is one such example. They're tough folk. They opened their own joint, and have held their own for a number of generations. And they have the Kohler sinks to prove it. My immediate family on the other hand . . . Well, let's just say, my dad still goes to China once in a while to pay his dues to the 49ers.
Luckily, when you're involved with more than one restaurant, you're involved in a lot of food and eating of it.

Thus, I bring you to yet another serendipitous food tasting occasion.
Being a "Thai" cook, I like to pretend I know what I'm talking about, humbly of course, when it comes to the subtleties of cooking a savory dish of the hamburger of Southeast Asia: pad thai. My cousins- my restaurateur cousins- love pad thai. And it just so happens that there are three Thai restaurants- food holes, I like to call them- within a 5 block radius of their restaurant (Maybe. Geography was never my thing. But they're all close, is what I'm getting at). And we've had the pad thai at all of them. None, however, come close to that of the pad thai dish prepared on occasion by the lovely woman who owns Belmont Village's Village Creperie. At least, that's what my cousin always tells me. Her name is Jean. Or so I'm told. So, long story short: I called his bluff, and he did a favour. A week later, pad thai was cooked on a Thursday for someone kinda special. And here's the crux: pad thai in a creperie? That's bogus. Not exactly. The pad thai at Village Creperie is made once in a blue moon. In fact, legend has it that the last time the owner of Vilage Creperie prepared pad thai by request was four months ago. It's not part of the menu. Well, it is. When it's made. But not really. Because, it's not a crepe. and crepes, I'm positive, are French. And pad thai, I'm positive is Thai.
So, after waiting a solid hour until the creperie closed down for the afternoon, my cousins' employee and I headed down to the Village Creperie. A place so fancy and good looking on the inside that the mere value of the placed dropped as soon as my holmly self walked in.

Ladies seem to like it. The restaurant, that is.

So, while tenderly saying hello, grabbing a seat at the bar and flirting with the already engaged waitress behind the counter, we waited for our noodles. My cousin soon followed suit.
Curiously, I had asked how the pad thai came to be, and was informed that the owner's granddaughter had had pad thai one day and begged her grandmother, no doubt a cook, to remake the same thing. So, with the internet and a little know-how, grandma soon mashed together a whole bunch of recipes and created her own signature pad thai dish. All organic. Which is something Village Creperie prides itself on. So, after paying a cool 11 dollars we were given a fancy crepe box packed with noodles covered by a tempest of peanuts. I would have preferred light snow fall, but the dish wasn't compromised by it. How could it be? It was made for me, after all. At least, that's how I like to remember it.
Now where do I begin? The dish was anything but generic. The flavours were there, a little more sweet than I would have liked, but not stereotyped by the combination of ketchup and peanut butter that accompanies pad thais in my neck of the woods. Some say, that in Thailand, they don't even know what peanut butter is! But that aside, flavours of the meal were overpowered by its tanginess. Appreciated at first, but tiresome halfway through the noodles, becoming reminiscent of something that tasted almost artificial and instant. But that may have been its only setback. Noodles were substantial, and with every bite, there was something else in the catch, whether a piece of chicken, tofu, bean sprouts, or snow pees. The only flaw may have been that it depended too much on its sour sweet characteristic, something which is good in small doses. But every dish has its own kind of flavour. That said, I can never be too harsh about someone's choice to make something a specific way. After all, all pad thais shouldn't taste the same, it defeats the fun between feuding restaurants, fights outback with cleavers, and spying on fellow cooks in their trash. If you didn't have some kind of technique or choice of flavour, trying to make or eat the better pad thai would be like watching a kung fu movie where everyone knows kung fu, but nobody ever fights. Not that kung fu is a cultural phonomena in Thailand, or France. Just imagine I said what I did, but with crepes. Or pad thai. And give the Village Creperie a try. You never know, you may go when there's a blue moon, and a whole lot of noodles in the kitchen.
Village Creperie
703 Belmont Avenue W
Kitchener, Ontario
519.576.5796
http://www.villagecreperie.ca/

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