Tuesday, March 27, 2012

1980, Meals and Restaurant Critics of Yesteryear


   
Characters for Meat and Pig (Still Negotiating how to do Chinese brush painting for calligraphy in ArtRage.)


     In her essay "Pork," the intrepid Nina Simonds shared with us memories of her student days in Taipei, Taiwan. At that time, before Nixon and Kissinger made their overtures to the mainland, only Taiwan offered independent visitors the opportunity to experience the everyday life of the Chinese people.  A vignette of her neighborhood butcher at work introduced the importance of pork in Chinese culture, religion, language, cuisine.  She traced the consumption of pig from 2000 B.C. through the Han, T'ang and Sung dynasties.  Her recipes: everything from pork coins served with Mandarin Pancakes and Scallion brushes to two kinds of spareribs.
     Jay Jacobs visited Uncle Tai's Hunan Yuan, then located at 1059 Third Avenue.  The original Uncle Tai, Wan Dah Tai, born in 1919, had come from China to New York in 1967 and introduced New Yorkers to Hunan style food. He won the respect of such food luminaries as the New York Times' Craig Claiborne.  In 1979, he departed for Texas, but left the restaurant in the capable hands and peppery instincts of his Chef Teng, a native of Szechuan, whose food Jacobs, and his two sons, loved.  The restaurant was owned by one David Keh, about whom we will hear more in later years.
     My travels in 1980 took me from New England to the New South.  My old Washington, DC, housemate,  Jill, had moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  She conducted the archaeological portion of environmental impact research for the Tennessee Valley Authority's mining activities, and investigated the region for local produce and bar-b-cue.  Although she was well acquainted with some of the small, part-time smokers north of Knoxville, we checked out Buddy's Bar-b-cue, and I got my first taste of pork,  Tennessee, or rather Alabama, style.
     Somewhere on that peregrination I picked up a paperback copy of Trevanian's Shibumi.  The New York Times labeled it "the most agreeable nonsense in commercial fiction this spring" when first published in 1979.  I fell in love with the book and its hero, Nicholas Hel, and thus, Japan.  The author, Rodney William Whittaker, organized the book along the lines of the Japanese game of go. Whittaker, a film scholar,  had served in Korea.  Nicholas Hel is the illegitimate son of a Russian Countess and a Prussian Count, born in Shanghai between the World Wars.  He and his mother are adopted by the Japanese officer in charge of the occupation of Shanghai.  Hel grows up stateless, but speaking Russian, Chinese, German, French, Japanese and eventually, English.  He's sent to Japan to study go, and becomes culturally Japanese, and eventually a highly paid assassin. He's a Count of Monte Cristo in a very seventies adventure.  Ultimately, he pitted against the American oil interests who dominate the C.I.A.  In a decade which would see a 70% increase in Asian immigration, Nicholas Hel was just the sort of agreeable nonsense to educate me on the Japanese concepts of shibumi (effortless control), sabi and wabi.
     I no longer thought I had something to teach the Oriental, I wanted to be the Oriental.  Is it only stateless bastards and anthropologists who believe that culture can be learned, and isn't racial or inherited?  However, much as I loved Nicholas Hel, I could never master effortless control, especially when it came to food.  Hel and his mistress Hana were well-satisfied with restraint in everything, especially food, choosing small portions of vegetables and brown rice.  My emotions were shown as soon as felt.  I was an enthusiastic cook and an enthusiastic eater.  For me, one taste of something was not enough.

     

     Uncle Tai spread the joys of Hunan style Chinese food to Houston and Dallas, and then in 1987 to Boca Raton, Florida and in 1993 to Atlanta.  He was fortunate to have four sons, each of whom is now responsible for some aspect of Uncle Tai's empire.  Alas, in 2012, a running-shoe store occupies the original restaurant. 
     Jay Jacobs, who also wrote about New York City in Gourmet under the pseudonym Hudson Bridges, died in 2008.
     Rodney Willam Whittaker's literary executor permitted Don Winslow to write another Nicholas Hel story, Satori, which takes him to Mao's China and Vietnam.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

1979, Firsts

After Photograph accompanying Nina Simonds' essay.
     Things are best hidden in plain site.  I page through my copy of Gourmet dated July, 1979, and find I've circled and underlined recipes for Tomato Pesto Tarte and  Mixed Vegetable Coleslaw. The pesto is a keeper, but I never made that recipe for coleslaw ever again.
     I completely ignored Nina Simonds' dumplings treatise, which is both heartwarming, full of history and stomach pleasing.  In 1979, Simonds was a twenty-something, from a tiny New England town, who had gotten herself to Taipei some years earlier to study Mandarin, Chinese cooking, and Chinese culture.  Her piece combined Chinese history with a raft of recipes for dumplings.  It's interesting to note that her readers were meant to find won ton wrappers at Oriental markets and large super-markets. Why did I not notice them? 
     I wasn't paying attention.  I probably didn't read the reviews for Los Angeles restaurants, or notice the ones by Caroline Bates, featuring Los Angeles' Hamayoshi and Hamasushi.  In 1979, Gourmet authors were explaining the basics of sushi to their audience. Just as I had missed out on the advent of Beni Hana in New York, I remained a sushi virgin.
     If anything, I drew even closet to my New England roots.  High technology had taken over the dark satanic mills of New England's smaller cities and there I found work.  Strange it was for an art history major to be teaching people how to make computers.  But it paid the rent on my apartment in an 18th Century farmhouse, still owned by the same family whose ancestors built it.
     My apartment was a narrow bedroom with a kitchen-dining room-living room across the stairs.  A half-refrigerator, two burners and a narrow sink limited my options.  The cafeteria at work and a pizzeria that made great meatball subs had to suffice.

    Happily for the Yelp generation, Hamasushi is still going strong at 347 East 2nd Street in Los Angeles.
     Simonds is now in her early sixties.  She has authored 10 cookbooks, and has a video blog, Spices of Life.  

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Bar Agricole, SF

     
     Given I'm passionate about food and art, couldn't resist a visual review of a new-to-me resto.  We'd visited once before with le chef de agricole, my sister, the farming consultant.  Of course the maitre de bent her ear for a good half hour.  The spousal unit loved the drinks menu and treatments, which have won a James Beard award for their sources and originality, I think.
     
     So being on my own for the weekend, I took myself to brunch.  The best part is the #47 bus picks up and drops off within a half block of home and Bar Agricole.  I sat in the garden/patio. Planters of herbs take up half, cement tables for two and groups the other half.  

     Advance student of menus that I am, I knew exactly what I wanted: beef brisket hash with a poached egg, which you see above. Chicory on top for color and flavor.  And a Rebelde (Rhum, mint, lime), for controversial me. Actually two, and a double espresso. Then back on the bus. Poorer in pocket, two paintings richer on iPad, via ArtRage.  All passions accounted for!