Tang

Half of my receipts from Xi'an Famous Foods and my old, old laptop.

I've become a regular at the St. Marks location of Xi'an Famous Foods since its opening two weeks ago. My dad is from Xi'an, and I was always begging for lamb growing up even though my mom, the cook in the family, hated the smell of it.

I was one of the pilgrims who trekked to Flushing regularly just to get a fix of lamb noodles down in Golden Mall's stuffy basement cafeteria. Liang Pi, the proprietor, was always there - bossy, sweaty, genial. After Anthony Bourdain featured Xi'an Famous on his Outer Boroughs episode of No Reservations, I could be heard loudly bitching about the descending hordes of white foodies, but secretly, I was so proud to see a Chinese immigrant restaurateur make it big.

And I sure as hell was happy to hear they were coming to the East Village. I announced to all my friends that there was pretty much no point in me eating anywhere else, and as you can see from the receipts above, I wasn't kidding.

The first night I went, they were selling an unidentified orange drink in those plastic boba cups sealed with little anime characters. People kept asking what it was, and General Manager Jason Wang, Liang Pi's son, kept saying in this gently exasperated tone, "I don't know, it's something my dad made." I bought one, thinking it was probably some weird/tasty Chinese beverage.

It was Tang.

No doubt about it. The same Tang of those obnoxious orangutan commercials you saw during after-school commercials, Tang of the sweet and chemical tang. I thought I'd been hosed like a roundeye until Gaby sent me this essay by novelist Yiyun Li. She writes,

The year I turned 16, a new product caught my eye. Fruit Treasure, as Tang was named for the Chinese market, instantly won everyone's heart. Imagine real oranges condensed into a fine powder! Equally seductive was the TV commercial, which gave us a glimpse of a life that most families, including mine, could hardly afford...Even though Tang was the most expensive fruit drink available, its sales soared. A simple bottle cost 17 yuan, a month's worth of lunch money. A boxed set of two became a status hostess gift. Even the sturdy glass containers that the powder came in were coveted. People used them as tea mugs, the orange label still on, a sign that you could afford the modern American drink. Even my mother had an empty Tang bottle with a snug orange nylon net over it, a present from one of her fellow schoolteachers. She carried it from the office to the classroom and back again as if our family had also consumed a full bottle.

Yiyun Li was born in 1972, making her younger than Liang Pi, but I want to make this exotic Tang narrative fit. I want it to fit because it's the kind of American Dream story I'm still sentimental for (even though my progressive education says I'm not supposed to be). I picture Liang Pi carefully mixing Tang and sealing each cup, preparing to open his shiny new East Village restaurant over Fourth of July weekend. His son Jason, 22, college-educated, and bilingual like me, is not in the picture. Kids like us don't associate Tang with a better life, we associate it with surfing orangutans.

The truth was, our family had never tasted Tang. Just think of how many oranges we could buy with the money spent on a bottle, my father reasoned. His resistance sent me into a long adolescent melancholy. I was ashamed by our lack of style and our life, with its taste of orange-peel water. I could not wait until I grew up and could have my own Tang-filled life.

The Tangy scenario I've imagined feels like the time I watched my dad lug home a case of red wine from a community center wine-tasting class. "Can you taste the butter?" he asked, frowning and sipping, "They said it tastes a little bit like butter, can you taste it?" Children are selfish when it comes to our parents - I don't think we allow them to have fully realized identities, they're just our parents! But this was a rare moment when I saw Dad's life in context: the Cabernet was an achievement, a hard journey ending in a wine-filled, middle-class, American life. And it killed me that he couldn't taste the fucking butter notes.

I had not thought about the boy much until I moved to America 10 years later and discovered Tang in a grocery store. It was just how I remembered it - fine powder in a sturdy bottle - but its glamour had lost its gloss because, alas, it was neither expensive nor trendy. To think that all the dreams of my youth were once contained in this commercial drink!

I hope Liang Pi never realized Tang was just another cheap powdered beverage occupying shelf space between Country Time and Kool-Aid. I hope when he decided to sell Tang, he thought he was giving his customers the best America had to offer.

There was no Tang in the minifridge when I went to Xi'an Famous tonight.
"Did you guys stop selling Tang?" I asked Jason.
"Yeah, it was just something random my Dad did. Why? Did you like it?"
"Yeah, I did. I really did."
"Well, you're definitely the only one. But I'll tell him you liked it."
"Good."

I have a Pepsi with my lamb face salad.

Gravity-Bonging With Shereen, Alex, and Janelle@Desnuda

Back in college, some of my overly intelligent classmates would put their high SAT scores to use toward crafting the most ingenious smoking devices since the dawn of Getting High. One guy even used a magnifying glass to etch an elaborate fresco onto the wood of his home-made vaporizer.

I can only hope a couple of those ambitious peers will grow up to become the next Peter Gevrekis and Christian Zammas, co-owner and executive chef at Desnuda*.

I don't know which of the pair conceived the idea of smoking oysters with Sichuan peppercorns and Lapsang souchong tea leaves via gravity bong, but on the night I was there, I asked Peter with all the wide-eyed earnestness of a school-newspaper reporter,

"So what was your inspiration for this dish?" And he just smirked. Okay then.

He'd already indulged me by whipping out the apparatus in the first place. The oysters were not on the menu that night, but I'd read so much about them that I had to ask. He warned me that he didn't have the right kind of tea that night - his new supply was a mistake: more expensive, not smoky enough - but I didn't care, I just wanted to see how one smokes a bivalve.

So behold, I have the first (really shitty) video clip of the Desnuda smoked oyster!



The finished product:

I think you could read fortunes in those spheres

He was right: the oyster was delicious, and definitely the most interesting I've had, but I could see its potential for improvement. However, the uncommon act of inhaling deeply and then swallowing a slippery body is a novel enough experience that I'd recommend this imperfect oyster to anybody. We get used to certain acts associated with eating - cut, spear, stab, lift, bite, chew. I think it's safe to say the old inhale-n-shoot a la cannonball (uh, definition number 2) is a new verb in fine-dining.

But if you want a real gastronomic reason, Desnuda has that as well. All of the ceviches I tasted were good, but the composition with deep sea scallops was one of the best dishes I've had in recent memory, including Le Bernardin. I'm not going to try to describe all the components of that dish, because I can't remember them all, but I think Desnuda's menu is pretty open to night-by-night improvisation anyway.


As you can see, it includes mandarin oranges and avocado

Full disclosure: I tend to be a sucker for places where I can interact with the person making me food. I'm annoying. I like asking questions and digging for personal opinions. Sitting at a bar and talking to the owner about his inspirations makes me feel hip.

Here's my one complaint. If you're like me, in that you have a bottomless capacity for raw fish, you're just not going to get full here. Even if you bought, like, all six things on the menu. I probably had four of these free cones of truffled popcorn:



But then, Desnuda is mostly a drink and nibble kind of place, and the edibles are lush, the vibe groovy. It'd be a great second date location to bring and impress your cosmopolitan yet slightly anorexic pickup from the previous weekend.


See those straw fans along the ceiling? They are mechanized to sway back and forth. Groovy.

The takeaway: smoke+ gadgets+cannonballing oysters+delicious seafood+acting like you know the chef = panty-dropper.


*Winner of TONY's 2008 Eat Out Award for Most Inventive Use of Drug Paraphernalia.

Cinco de Mayo@Mayahuel

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I'm writing about the newly opened tequila bar, Mayahuel, on 6th and 2nd.

Mayahuel is the much-hyped second operation of the guys behind Death & Co, and I hope that means something to you because it certainly means nothing to me. I'm just parroting what everyone else is saying.

See, I could care less about bars. As obsessively as I follow the Manhattan restaurant scene, I completely ignore the bar scene. When my friends ask how I'm affording my many dinners at nice restaurants, I tell them I've pretty much given up drinking. The night I went to Mayahuel, it was my coworker, Alex, who dragged me there after a late night at work. I was wheedling for Kenka instead, but Alex is a tequila lover and viewed Mayahuel's opening as something like the second coming of Quetzalcoatl. He would not be deterred.

"Does it have food?" I whined.
"No. We can go somewhere else after."
"UUUUUGGGHHHHH."

But shit, I quit my bitchin' after settling into the place. I'm usually not big on decor, but Mayahuel is basically the inside of Zorro's house. Dark confession-chamber type booths, exposed brick, wrought-iron and glass Mexican chandeliers, Jesus candles, and tiles. Gorgeous tiles covering every surface, from tabletops to ceilings, front room to bathroom. If Zorro isn't your thing, there's always the upstairs, which looks more like a vampire den.


One of the hard-to-get booths. I recommend going on a weekday.

The cocktail menu actually got me excited about cocktails. Me, the scotch-on-the-rocks girl. I don't think I can honestly say that I've had tequila in the past two years, at least, that wasn't preceded by salt on a dab of skin (sometimes someone else's) and followed by a wedge of lime. If tequila needs an image makeover, Mayahuel makes a good PR rep.

The menu manages to be very inclusive of differing tastes while working around the star of the show - agave. I started out with the Watermelon Sugar, which I dreaded would be too sweet. It wasn't, and I wondered why more cocktails don't have spicy rims. Too many bad cocktails try to mask the taste of alcohol with sugar, and too many of us young'uns go all our lives never discovering the wonders of salt and spice. At least not anything beyond slushy chain-resto margaritas.

Alex, who likes to taste his tequila, had the Slynx, which was formidable but very sophisticated - the kind of cocktail Esquire's writers cream themselves over.


The Watermelon Sugar would more accurately be called Watermelon Spice

Others in our party would go on to try the Smoked Palomino, the Slight Detour, and the Whoopsy Daisy, but I kind of stopped paying attention after I had the Selena Fizz. It's like an alcoholic egg cream, only way better and actually made with egg white. I could say goodbye to single-malts and drink that svelte, frothy little tutu of a drink every day. I'd embrace the girlyness of it, because the Selena Fizz is a grown-up girl drink. It's not sugary, it's not cloying, and it doesn't come in a fucking martini glass.

The one misstep, the one teensy hiccup, were the palomitas they're serving as a bar snack before the installation of a complete menu. Limp dry popcorn sprinkled with cayenne and cheese? Eh. Severely boring, but also lacking in the sensuousness otherwise oozing from this place.

So yes, I'm all over Mayahuel. If I could be there tonight, I would, but some things are more important. But you should go. And if their kitchen is up and fully operating, you should report back.

Eric@Baoguette

I've been in love with banh mi ever since I discovered, at the broke-ass age of 13, that a $2 banh mi was easily the best deal in Chinatown. Pho came much later, as it was a little farther up my nonexistent allowance scale, but when it came, it stuck. I am not Vietnamese, but pho is now my number one comfort food.

I have dreams of running a banh mi truck out of Midtown, saving my fellow worker drones from sterile cafeterias that feature little else but the word "gourmet," a salad bar, and inexplicably long lines. I would serve banh mi and pho as an upgrade of the classic soup-and-sandwich lunch special, and I'd make a killing, because everyone knows Asian is better.

I'm perfectly happy to let Michael Huynh beat me to this fantasy plan, if it means that he'll open a Baoguette in Midtown East before I languish away or leave. After all, his locations have been popping up like mushrooms after a media shower.

To be honest, I was not overly impressed with the pho at Baoguette Cafe on St Marks, where I went with Eric, my stranger for the night. Pho Pasteur taught me a long time ago that the only way to avoid overcooking the ultra-thinly sliced steak is to add it raw after the noodles have already been taken off heat. It is then whisked off and delivered to the table, where the diner uses her chopsticks to poke the meat deep into the steaming broth and hungrily watches it fade from red to pinky-brown before tucking in. (By this time, the whole thing will have cooled to an edible temperature.)

Baoguette didn't employ this method, so the meat verged on chewy. The bowl was also small for $8, and lacked my favorite goodies. I couldn't help but think the dish had been neutered for the St. Marks crowd. Where was the tendon? The tripe? The fatty brisket? I hate to see Asian foods lose their funk and end up pricier.

My companion, Eric, had the bbq chicken banh mi, which looked pretty good. He said the bread was the best part. Eric is originally from LA, and over dinner we discussed the sad state of Mexican food in New York and the dangerous thrill of eating at a "B" or "C" health-code-rated restaurant in California (Ok, that was mostly me talking and him looking shocked that I was still alive). Then he asked me if I'd ever had the famous chicken and rice food cart on 53rd and 6th.

Me: "No, but is it really that different from all those other chicken and rice carts?"
Eric, nodding sagely: "Yes. It is. It absolutely is."
Me: "Guess I'll have to go."
Eric: "It only comes out after 7 at night though. Most people don't realize that. During the day there's another cart there, an impostor cart, and most people assume that's the one."
Me: "Why don't they move to a different location? After-7 in Midtown? Who's going?"
Eric: "I think people stop there on the way home from bars and clubs downtown. People definitely make it a point to stop there."
Me: "So, what if maybe it just tastes better because you're drunk?"
Eric: "Could be, but I doubt it..."

I remain unconvinced. More information is needed.

Back to Baoguette. We shared the Vietnamese crepe, which is hard not to love: a crispy, greasy omelet folded over pork belly, bean sprouts, and shrimp. Douse it with sriracha and you have the perfect drunk munchie, speaking of things tasting better drunk.

But, get this, what really caught me by surprise at Baoguette was the water. Our waitress poured it into clear plastic cups from a clear plastic pitcher, and everything about it looked unremarkable. But it was infused with lime! I don't mean someone had squeezed lime into this water - it wasn't cloudy or the least bit sour. It just tasted like water, but with the fragrance of pure lime zest. I wish I'd gotten a chance to ask how they did it, I bet it'd make another great party trick.

Baoguette is far from ideal, but I recognize the economics of the situation: expansion outside of Chinatown must be driven by the tastes of non-Vietnamese clientèle (who, if they're honest with themselves, can be suspicious of cheap food) and the premium required to engage this clientèle, which would be the overhead costs in choice white neighborhoods like the East Village. If I'm lucky, Zoe the future restaurateur be making these same considerations. In the meantime, Zoe the consumer has little choice, Baoguette having a monopoly in those markets.

So I will continue to eat my way through their noodle soups and banh mis, until the next savvy competitor comes along...

StephenB@Casa Mono

Here's what I knew about StephenB before last night: 58, divorced lawyer, polite to the point of cautiousness.

Here's what I now know about StephenB: 58, divorced since 2002 over something vaguely to do with cats, tax lawyer, still polite but no longer cautious.

The last part may be a problem. He has a list of places for us to try next: Picholine, Bellavitae, The Modern.

It's not that he wasn't a nice guy. He was. It's not that he was creepy. He wasn't. He was just...sad. By the time our foie gras hit the table, I already knew way more about his divorce than I cared to:

"I think she just got tired of things and never bothered to tell me. My wife and I were married for 23 years, I never thought I'd be here..." he pauses, trying to come up with a positive way to depict "here," "...hanging out."

Indeed, from the way he spoke, it sounded like the divorce was something he was bludgeoned with recently. Dazed. Despite it having been 7 years, this man was clearly deeply lost, and deeply lonely. It was slightly painful to hear him talk about the one other time he'd tried to find a dining companion on Craigslist. The girl - another young 'un - had said brunch in her ad, but suggested a dinner date instead. A meeting in which she ordered 4 appetizers, twice, and a $48 entree.

"I guess she assumed I'd pay for it."
"Did you?"
"I did, because I'm a nice guy."
"How much was it?"
"Over $200. And I don't know how long it takes to figure this out about me, but I'm a nice guy. If she hadn't been so greedy, she could've gotten six months worth of meals out of me. Instead, she blew it by being greedy. She scammed me."

I think we both knew that "nice" was a euphemism for "desperate," and I tried to ignore his statement that "this is so much better than going on a dinner date" and how he seemed to be just a little bit too interested in my romantic life. It'd be easy to say that part was creepy, but I really do think he was just searching for a way to connect, since his failed romantic life was what he was clearly fixated on.

It got me thinking about a lot of other things though, like why dating sites never ask the right questions, why we tend to think of a person's life being either waxing or waning with age rather than a straight line of possibility, and whether you can count on serendipity for something as important as growing with your lover rather than without.

That really is the nicest part of this project: thinking and talking about things that don't come up with my friends. When you know someone too well, you have your petty conversations and in-jokes and gossip. It's rare that someone questions who you are. It's nice to revisit that.

As for the food, I learned that StephenB and I have in common our preference for nibbling on many small plates. Casa Mono (of Mario Batali fame) is known for its relatively large portions for a tapas place, and our five dishes plus dessert was plenty. I let him take the lead, because he had offered to pay.


Duck egg with mojama

I really need to remember my camera more often, the cameraphone is not cutting it. This dish was way better than it looks - runny duck egg, salty tuna loin, savory potatoes.


Bone marrow with watermelon radishes

This will be the last time I order bone marrow at a tapas place. I love it too much and there's never enough to share with someone else. This particular rendition was yummy, but I thought the tomatoes are little bit too astringent as an accompanying side.

One thing I picked up about Stephen by the second plate was that he was very precise when it came to splitting things. Fifty-fifty right down the middle and portioned off onto our own plates. I wonder if he was like that with his wife, whom he admitted was almost his opposite - a photographer to his tax lawyer.


Foie gras with five onions (red, green, cipollini, and two others)

The foie gras with five onions was easily the best dish of the night. But then, it's always hard to trump foie. Stephen also went for the daily special - a chorizo dish that was way too salty.


Pretty, but this was the worst dish of the night.

I eyed the grapefruit sorbetto for dessert, but agreed to split the manchego with quince jelly instead.



Blah presentation, supermarket-quality cheese. Yawn.

At least I wasn't paying for it. Oh wait.

After his sob story about the other girl, I chickened out on letting him pay. Yes, even though he did the ordering (and that chorizo dish was not my idea). Yes, even though a 58-year-old lawyer, even a tax lawyer, makes far more than a 22-year-old Junior Analyst.

"I caught a mistake on my tax return today, so I am in much better shape than I thought. We could split it if you want."

What the fuck is wrong with me? Maybe I thought he'd try to stop me, which he didn't (he did say maybe he'd get the next one - lunch at The Modern). Will it happen? I don't particularly want it to, but I already feel bad about saying no - he seemed so genuinely, happily, surprised by how well this meeting went. I guess even in platonic dating there's leading 'em on and letting 'em down gently. I never thought I'd be in this position with a 58 year old. At least not before turning 50 myself.

Feaster Sunday@Claire's Apartment

My favorite Christians are the once-a-year ones. My friend Claire, wanting to do her first Easter in NYC right, made vague promises of egg-dying at her place in Williamsburg. She didn't ask anyone to bring anything, but we all somehow knew to show up with yummy tidbits and soon we had a Feaster. Jesus has risen indeed.

I always use visits to Claire as a convenient excuse to stop in the Union Square area to buy things for eating or for wearing. This time, I made a beeline for Momofuku Milk Bar.

I don't really like baked goods, or sweets in general, but when I see something like Chinese sausage* focaccia or green curry banana bread, I have to try it. Asians don't bake, so Asian ingredients+yeast+heat is mindblowing to me. Also, AZN pride and stuff.


Chinese sausage focaccia


Green curry banana bread

I also got the pork buns for good measure. People think David Chang is a genius for the pork bun, but I think it seriously needs scallion (the menu says it's supposed to have scallions, but mine did not).

My mother would have keeled over if she'd seen me pay $9 for two tiny pork buns. Therefore, Chang is not a genius for creating this pork bun (nothing in there is particularly new), he is a genius for making basic Chinese ingredients sexy to white people. I don't mean that as either criticism or dismissal; after all, I plan on doing the same and only resent him for getting there before me.



Nevertheless, I got nothing but love for the way the grease ran down my arm.


Small girl, smaller bun, big fatty

The focaccia was good but I wish it had been fuller, crazier. Why stop at sausage? Throw some tea eggs in there! Bits of browned guotie rice! In the end we were trying to figure out how to divvy up the last piece according to where the two last morsels of sausage were buried.

Conversation at one point turned to food neuroses, like how there are people who only eat white colored foods (ask me about this sometime and I'll make like Freud and expound.) Claire and Janelle wanted me to blog a week of eating nothing but green foods. I decided green curry is the only way I'd survive such a sentence. I'd put it in everything, because this banana bread has proven you can:


I regret not getting the kimchi butter to go with this.

I can't be the only one with a face-stuffing pic:




Notice the mountain of individually-wrapped croissants in the back. They did not go unloved.

Eventually we got around to dyeing eggs. Craftmaster Claire found a method that involved wrapping silk ties (or scarves) around the eggs and boiling them so that the pattern from the ties transfers onto the shells.

How cool is this?!



Why would you dye eggs any other way?

Hope everyone's Easters were just as awesome. I decided to go to Casa Mono with StephenB tomorrow night after all. It was kind of a done deal after peeking at the menu, but none of y'all tried to dissuade me anyway. Your collective fault if I get creeped on. Stay tuned.



*Officially making a list of overlooked foods that I will singlehandedly popularize someday. Considering American highbrow obsession with salumi/charcuterie, it's only a matter of time before Chinese sausage gets its moment in the sun. I'll be there to see it happen, my porky pretty.