2009: You Know How This Ends

Ingredients for Edward Lee's Gutsy Prokchops. Drawn by Lucey Bowen from John Kernick's photograph in 2009 Gourmet.

     In the March 2009, Gourmet, under the heading "Politics of the Plate," Barry Estabrook wrote about "The Price of Tomatoes."  In an expose of farming practices in Florida, Estabrook asserted that "If you have eaten a tomato this winter, it might well have been picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery."   Thirty years earlier, I worked for a fall, packing apples into crates at the last working orchard in Connecticut.  I got the job because Blue Jay Orchards had to advertise for and hire anyone local willing to do the work before bringing a team of workers from Jamaica to do the job.  The Orchard provided reasonably decent housing for these men, and paid them enough that they could send enough money back to Jamaica to make possible the purchase of a fishing boat or the completion of a small house.  I loved listening to their patois and the hymns they sang from up in the apple boughs.
     Labor, food, journalism --- all is political, isn't it?
     Travel can take Nicole Mones to the glorious Li River for cooking school, and immigration bring strangers to our shores.  In 2009, the products of these currents showed in "Sweet Life," the tale of a start-up restaurant, Street, and the resultant clutch of recipes, many strongly influenced by Asian street foods.  But my favorite, can't wait to get myself there, is Brooklyn-born, Korean-American Edward Lee's 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky.  I think I have to take my the-grits-gene-skipped-a-generation daughter, who has adopted Anson Mills Grits as her own, from Atlanta to Louisville, just for one of his meals.
     For Ruth Reichl and others at Gourmet, the sudden closing of the magazine came as a bolt from the blue.  Management blamed falling advertising revenues, in spite of a subscription base of over a million.   If bringing Asian food, culture and travel to Americans in a literate and visually appealing Gourmet had fulfilled d the goals of its earliest editors and contributors.
     What I miss is the writing.  As we've seen, Gourmet's writers brought  intelligence and information to the table.  I still have a great appetite for those.

Chicago:
Wow Bao at 1 West Wacker Boulevard, is still Wow Bao
Urban Belly at 3053 North California Avenue, is still Urban Belly.

Los Angeles:
Cheun Hing at 8450 Garvey Avenue, Rosemead, is closed.
Din Tai Fung at 1108 South Baldwin Avenue, Arcadia is still Din Tai Fung.
Duck House at 1039 East Valley Boulevard, San Gabriel location is closed.
Elite Restaurant at 700 South Atlantic Boulevard, Monterey Park is still Elite Restaurant.
Garden of Flowing Fragrance Tea Shop at Huntington Museum is Garden of Flowing Fragrance Tea Shop.
Half and Half Tea House at 120 North San Gabriel Boulevard is still Half and Half Tea House.
Happy Family Restaurant at 111 North Atlantic Boulevard, Monterey Park is still the Happy Family Restaurant.
Lake Spring Restaurant at219 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park is still Lake Spring Restaurant.
Monterey Palace at 1001 East Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park, is still Monterey Palace.
Street is still Street.
Tianjin Bistro at 534 East Valley Boulevard, San Gabriel, is still Tianjin Bistro.
Yi Mei Pastries 736 South Atlantic Boulevard, Monterey Park, is closed.
Yun Chuan Garden at 301 North Garfield Avenue, Monterey Park is still Yun Chuan Garden.

Louisville, Kentucky:
610 Magnolia is still 610 Magnolia.

2008: Into the Kitchens

Doorway to spice merchant, South India,  Lucey Bowen, 2008.

     Which of the following would have been the biggest surprise to those early writers and editors of Gourmet of the 1940s?

1. China played host to the Olympics.
2. Dubai became a major hub of world air travel.
3. Pan-Asian cuisine was being adopted whole heartily in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
4. Americans travelled all across Asia to take cooking classes.

     All of these developments, and more, were recounted in the Gourmet's 2008 issues.  A new crop of writers, new destinations; a promising field.  In "Olympian Appetites," Stephen Glain discovers an innovative way to explore China's regional cuisines without leaving Beijing.  He frequents the cafeterias and diners associated with the offices that provinces and cities maintain in the capital.  The consumer benefits from the regional pride of chefs.
     Jay Rayner adopts a snarky attitude to Dubai's emergence from a sleepy pearl fishing village to the entrepot of the 21st Century.  While he searches, fruitlessly, for "real" Emirate dishes he relentlessly attacks the "glorious fakery" of the entire city.  The obvious parallel to Las Vegas is made only by noting that neither have access to much in the way of local ingredients.
    Brought as  bride from New York's East Village to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Andrea Reusing discovered no Asian restaurants. With her Lantern restaurant,  she decided to fill the niche with ultra-fresh and local ingredients cooked in the manner of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and India.
     Meanwhile,  once again, my itinerary prefigured travel suggestions from Gourmet.  A favorite professor from Vassar and his Indian wife were leading a tour of South India, and my husband and I joined them.  The astonishing temples in seaside and tropical setting overwhelmed out senses with delight.  Gourmet's May issues would feature cooking schools in Cochin, Kerala and Tellicherry, all on our itinerary.  In fact, we feasted wonderfully at Philipkutty's Farm and with the incomparable Nimmy Paul.
      I must admit that at the time much of brain was caught up in an entirely different journey, that of retracing the photographic footprint my father made when he captured the Hudson River in his 1941 Great River of the Mountains.
The culture of South India would not come into focus for me until future study and travel in Northern India.

Meanwhile, the fate of restaurants reviewed that year:

San Francisco:
Hama-Ko at 108 B Carl Street is still Hama-Ko Sushi.
Murasaki at 211 Clement Street is still Murasaki.
Okina Sushi at 776 Arguello Boulevard is still Okina Sushi.
Minako Organic at 2154 Mission Street is still Minako Organic.

Boston:
o ya at 9 East Street is still o ya.

Seattle:
Chiso Kappo at 701 North 36th Street is closed.

Chapel Hill:
Lantern Restaurant at 423 West Franklin Street is still Lantern Restaurant.

2006: Reflections

From the Water, Halong Bay, Vietnam, Watercolor with Chinese brush, Lucey Bowen. December 2006

     In 2006, Gourmet looked back, as any 65 year old would.  In the September issue, covers of bountiful produce, mostly from the 1940s and 1950s, prefaced very up-to-the-minute recipes, like "Sumac Skirt Steak with Pomegranate Reduction."  Elsewhere in the same issue a menu for a harvest meal featured an extended, multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-ethnic family fronted an overgrown barn to eat at a rustic table.  Were non-whites now welcome at the American table?

     Change, full dangerous opportunity, is announced with the headline "Strip Steaks; Las Vegas has the best Chinese restaurants in the country, but to get a table you have to be willing to wager a fortune.  Many of the so-called Whales who can eat there are gambling tourists from China itself. Even more change comes with the inclusion of restaurants from Portland, Oregon to Long Branch, New Jersey.  These are not road-food joints, which had been featured in the magazine since 1994.  These are serious restaurants with inspired chefs serving food as innovative as any in Manhattan. 

     Two places where "Asian-Fusion" cooking had historical roots, Hawaii and Malaysia, are featured.  In fact Alan Wong's 11-year-old Restaurant  in Honolulu made it to the top-10 restaurants, just behind Masa, with its very high priced sushimi and sushi.  

     The biggest change, to my thinking, is the mention of war in this magazine of good living.  April's issue included "Culture Notes," headlined "Conflict Cuisine; A Roving Correspondent finds that during the hell of war, the comfort of sharing food becomes even more meaningful."  Journalist Scott Simon wrote that he considered himself "privileged to have had memorable meals in places where the three stars are war, famine and pestilence."  In October's "Memorable Meals," David Halberstam recalled meals shared in war-torn Saigon of 1962-64 with other journalists and soldiers.  (Sadly, Halberstam would die in 2007 in a tragic automobile accident not five miles from my home in Menlo Park.)

     Karen Coates, who would write about Asia and food until Gourmet expired in 2009, travelled to Halong Bay on Vietnam's watery border with China.  While the photographs accompanying the article equal any National Geographic travelogue, her reflections convey her solitary sojourn, her willingness to take risks that the thousands of tourists who flock to the bay will not.  

     Coates' story recalls a hero's journey, The Odyssey.  Without question the most serious contender for Homer and Odysseus is my fellow Vassar grad, the one I love to hate, Anthony Bourdain.  In the June, 2006 issue, Bourdain travels to, no, not Las Vegas, but Miami.  The trope here was Anthony against the "bizarro universe."  He was lured into eating "Grass Fed Vietnamese-Style Bison Ceviche" at Afterglo, to him an outrageously expensive, pretentious place.  He's went off in search of and found great food at the hole-in-the-wall kinds of places that are cooking for immigrants, be they from Central and South America, even Japan, Nigeria and Ghana.

     Meanwhile, with my children having departed for the East Coast and college, I began to swim in an the ocean of Chinese culture lapping at my shores.  Brush and rice paper at hand, I practiced Chinese brush painting and calligraphy, with Yu Chun Hui.  At a local community college, I began to study East Asian Civilization with Douglas Lee.  I continued to use a computer programs and CDs, like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur to learn Mandarin.  These two programs showed significant advances in language teaching since I'd left the field of linguistics decades earlier.  I noted in my journals "I can never be Chinese BUT I can understand more."  How could I not want to learn more about a culture and people that makes up half our world?
     In those community college classes I was always the oldest student and usually the only Caucasian.  Was I a solitary sojourner, creating an aura of singularity, member of an exclusive club of one?  I would next go to Vietnam and Angkor Wat with a tour of Vassar alumni, among whom I was almost the youngest.  Once again my preparation was intense.  I found a Vietnamese student at City College to tutor me in Vietnamese.  Alas, Vietnamese, with its six toned vowels proved far more difficult than Mandarin.  Still, I took pride in learning Vietnam's national prose novel, the Tale of Kieu, whose female heroine is said to pre-figure 150 years of Vietnam's struggle against foreign invaders.  

New York:
Masa at Time Warner Center is still Masa.

San Francisco:
Medicine at 161 Sutter Street is closed.

Los Angeles:

Miami:
Hiro's Yakko-San 17040-46 West Dixie Highway is still Hiro's Yakko-San.

Bainbridge Island, Washington:
Madoka at 241 Winslow Way West,  is still Madoka.

Hawaii:

Alan Wong's Restaurant at 1857 South King Street, Honolulu is still Alan Wong's Restaurant.

2007: Into The West of the East

Soup, duck, stuffed eggs in Forest Foods preparation, drawing by Lucey Bowen, Kunming, 2007.

      If pressed, most of us remember 2007 as the year that the economy tanked.  I remember it as the year I explored western China.  Who travels in a recession? Me.  Studying Chinese, Chinese brush painting, Asian American Women and the Filipino community whetted my appetite for a second trip to China.  When my Number Two Chinese Painting teacher, Ren Ming, announced his annual trip would encompass China's southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, I signed on.
     Ming wanted to revisit the minority cultures he'd seen in 1984, traveling after he finished his art degree.  All of our travel, after the flight to Kunming, was by bus and by train.  Almost by definition, non-Han Chinese minorities reside in remote, mountainous areas.  They eke out a living in agriculture and herding in truly awesome surroundings.  The long bus rides gave me a better chance to get to know my fellow travelers, principally American-born-Chinese, or as they call themselves, ABCs.  To see China with them, and thru their eyes was most revealing.  All at once, they take pride in China's history and its vast territory, while taking a more critical attitude to current conditions than Peace-Corps-trained me ever would.
     This trip finally established a congruence in my travels and one promoted by the magazine.  A month after my trip,  Nicole Mones "The Road to Shangri-La," about Yunnan's Kunming, Dali and Lijiang appeared.  In April, Fuschia Dunlop wrote "True West," about Xinjiang.  The principal minority residing there are Turkic Uyghur peoples, and the principal religion is Islam.  Dunlop feels more like she's in Marrakech than Beijing.
      Two more articles, one on Mughal cuisine in India and the other the cooking of Persia make this subtle attempt to convey the range of people and places Americans have begun lumping together as "Islamic fundamentalists."
     Meanwhile, in the United States, there were more Chinese restaurants than Burger King, Wendy's and McDonald's combined.  By-and-large it will be the Mom and Pop shops that survive the downturn, with a few exceptions, noted below.
 
New York:
Momofuku Noodle Bar at 171 1st Avenue is still Momofuku Noodle Bar.
Momofuku SSam Bar at 207 2nd Avenue is still Momofuku SSam Bar
Wakiya at Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue is Maialino.