Editing With Ray@Ushiwakamaru

I worried that I'd met my gustatory match with Ray when he informed me of our plans for the evening over email: bowling, lobster rolls at Pearl Oyster Bar, and then omakase at Ushiwakamaru. All this in response to a mere "Hey, let's grab a lobster roll after work." This was a man with a plan, and the plan was decadent enough to scandalize even me.

Over bowling, I learned that Ray is an architect with some grand schemes. He described his dream of opening a shop someday that would combine "design and delicious," and elaborated on concepts that went completely over my head. I nodded and smiled while trying to guess at exactly what his store would sell (or would it even sell anything?)

I offered up my own simmering idea in response: the Trader Joe's of Chinese supermarkets. Branded products, well-edited shelves, tags that give the nutritional information and usage tips for lesser-known imports, dynamic selections.


Like this, except my shit would be real, and thus would not resort to cheap tricks like cheesy Chinese characters and ching chong font. Image courtesy of Asian Dumpling Tips

"That's it," Ray said, "Eat Shop would have curated products. It would give you the best fucking things you could experience. Which could be anything. I want to do an essay on soda, an essay on ramen, an essay on dining room chairs."
"Like a gallery, then. Each essay being the exhibit of the week." I was starting to see it.
"Yeah. The soda thing, for example: I want to put together a case of sodas of different colors, from different countries. You would buy a case and take it home and experience this essay on soda."
"Would you cool things with the space, too? Demos and samples and events and such?"
"Oh, definitely. I'll have some kind of newsletter for events, build a following of people who are into food and design."
"Like a Third Place. I was reading an article recently on the rebuilding of New Orleans' restaurants after Katrina, and it talked about the concept of a Third Place and how the existence of communities attached to these old restaurants really helped in reviving these places. Everyone sort of pitched in to rebuild. It's an idea that's gotten lost in cities like New York, where restaurants are something you try once rather than go back to over and over again. But I want to build a community around a restaurant. I have this one idea - if gambling weren't illegal, I'd turn my future restaurant into a mah jong parlor at night."
"Zoe, I think we have very similar viewpoints. This is going to be good."

When we got to Pearl's, Ray set about composing our meal. His eye wandered over the fried oysters, the littlenecks, the lobster roll, the salt-crusted shrimp...

"We may have to edit our appetites," I reminded him.
"You're right, you're right." So we scaled back to the seed of the evening, the lobster roll. With some fried oysters for good measure. I didn't take pictures because I was too busy scarfing lobster. By the way, those matchstick fries at Pearl's are killer. If you ate whole cans of French's potato sticks for snack as a kid, these are the fries for you. (But who does that? Weirdo.)


Photo by The Hungry Novelist

"So what's the coolest thing you've ever done?" I asked Ray.
"Like, project-wise?"
"Yeah. Anything creative."
"I haven't done it yet. I hope I haven't done it yet."

It was uncanny to discover we admired some of the same things, only he found more specific inspiration in their museum-like qualities: Tsukiji fish market (in a sense, the Eat Shop of the sea), Ferran Adria (another man who has made a career of exploring "delicious and design").

"What other essays could you do?" I wondered aloud.
"It could be anything, really. Chairs, tables. Toaster ovens."
"Could you do meat on a stick?"
"What?"
"Senior year of college, I wanted to apply for a Watson Fellowship to study meat on a stick in different cultures. I'm really into the convergent evolution of cuisine. I wanted to study how meat on a stick came about in so many different places. Convenience? Mobility? Ease of cooking? Et cetera."
"So did you do it?"
"Actually, I changed it to flatbreads, because I thought that sounded more academic than 'meat on a stick.' Still pretty interesting, though. Flatbreads have such important functions in meals. Like Ethiopian injera, for example, which is used like a tablecloth. But I didn't get the grant - they gave it to the kid who wanted to play Ultimate Frisbee around the world."
"Aw, that sucks. But yeah, you could totally have an essay on flatbreads. Or meat on a stick."

This was clearly one food buddy where I wouldn't have to worry about asking or being asked boring questions.

We finished up at Pearl's and walked to our next course at Ushiwakamaru.

"I really like the chef here," Ray explained, "He definitely has a point of view. He uses a lot of heavier, oilier fish that you can't find at a lot of other places. You won't see much white fish or salmon or stuff like that." By then, I was understanding that for Ray, everything has curatorial possibility.

I ordered the bakudan before we started our omakase tour, because the bakudan at Matsugen had been so damn good.

My friends, this bakudan made Matsugen's look like a puny, precious, affectation.


Looks small, but it was actually quite a generous portion.

When I described the ingredients (uni, salmon roe, seaweed, toro, wasabi, natto, scallions, flying fish roe...) to a friend the next day, he said, "It sounds like the sea threw up in a bowl." It totally looked like puke, too, once you mixed it up and it got all gooey. But I could eat this seagurgitation all day.

"This is definitely one of the top five bites I've ever had, and I don't even know what the other four are." I declared. I've been thinking about it ever since, and some other contenders for the Top 5 would probably be Peking duck (with wrapper, sauce, fixins'), foie gras, and grilled, bacon-wrapped enoki mushrooms. What's the best bite I've ever eaten? I haven't eaten it yet. I hope I haven't eaten it yet.

We then started on the omakase. ("Ten pieces," Ray said to the server, "No...twelve.") I won't bore you with the photos of individual pieces of sushi. Suffice to say that Ray was right - I had a lot of specimens I'd never encountered before, all delicious. The chef won me over early with a huge, deep-fried shrimp head, and y'all know how much I like crustacean goo.



I also took a short video of the chef making sushi. I felt like such a creeper, but I can't help it if I find sushi-making kind of mesmerizing, ok?


Deft hands

"You know, tonight has kind of been like an omakase," I remarked, "With a seafood theme." We talked about other themed outings we could and probably will do: sriracha, performance food (think Benihana, or the smoked oysters at Desnuda), kitsch (pupu platters, Mai Tais, foods with proper names: Clams Casino, Lobster Newberg, Steak Diane, Oysters Rockefeller).

Meals as essays. Essays on meals. If you think by now that we are insufferably pretentious, I can't really blame you.

The takeaway: not having an "off" button when it comes to food is merely gluttonous; combined with not having an "off" button for creative brainstorming, it makes for great eating.

Angela and Dan@Matsugen

This is the post where I'm going to tell you exactly how to eat at Matsugen.

1) Go in high summer, when the heat has robbed you of appetite and you feel thin and tan and want to keep it that way. You'll be in a rare mood for something both light and expensive, because that's the taste of summer in New York.



2) You'll be tempted to order oysters, the epitome of waify decadence, but you shouldn't. They're not so special here. This meal is about deft eating - glamour without actual means - and you're better than this.



3) When I was in middle school, sometimes I'd bring Japanese Jello as a snack. My friends called them cuppy Jellos. This is essentially a $9 yuzu cuppy Jello, with sea urchin.



4) The grilled sea eel with cucumber is a solid piece of fish. But that's all you can really say about it. At this point, you are underwhelmed. You don't feel the way Frank Bruni writes, so you also start to doubt yourself - did you come on the wrong night? Did you order the wrong thing?

5) You are redeemed by bakudan.


Sea urchin, salmon roe, scallops, tuna, quail egg, and natto (fermented soybeans) with nori on the side

Essentially, the most delicious things in the ocean condensed into a tiny, perfect mosaic, lining the bottom of a bowl.



5) Japanese is the only cuisine where it is acceptable to renounce food-sharing. It just doesn't work. Pretty much everything at Matsugen brought out the jealous food-hoarders in Dan, Angela, and me, aggressive foodies all, but bakudan was the worst. Order one for yourself. You will scoop up this delicate, briny umami goo with crisp sheets of nori and it will be gone in two or three transcendent bites.

6) Soba. Get it, because that's the smart thing to do - go with what the restaurant is. Don't order filet mignon at a seafood shack; don't waste your money on Kobe beef shabu-shabu at Matsugen. If JG says it's about the soba, get the fucking soba.


Inaka (coarse) soba with husk, served cold with goma-dare sesame sauce


Seiro (medium-husk) soba served with kamoseiro duck soup


Matsugen special soba with scallion, bonito, yam, sesame, okra, wasabi, cucumber, myoga, shiso, egg, and nori

7) You get to choose the thickness/coarseness of the soba to go with the fixings you want. When in doubt, go for the inaka, the thickest of the three. It has the most pleasant chewiness and earthy flavor, and I don't mean that in a quinoa sort of way.

8) As you swirl and dip your way through these noodles - a plunk in the sesame sauce, a trail through chopped scallions, a dab of wasabi - you start to get that Matsugen, at its best, is all about the joyful verbiage of eating. Which is just my fancy way of saying it's fun. Everything else is just veneer - the celebuchef, the reviews, the expense. Especially the expense, because expensive restaurants can be tragic; it's hard for the taste of food to hold up against the taste of money. If the appetizers had you wondering whether your palate was missing something only rich people could taste, the soba brings you back. These noodles are not hard to understand. They're fucking good.

9) Slurp.

10) They bring you a teapot with the water the noodles were cooked in. The water retains a lot of the nutrients that were shed during cooking, a server will explain. Rinse your bowl with it, drink it down. If you grew up like I did, it reminds you of mom and dad drinking boiled dumpling-water after dinner. Who knew there were nutrients? It's a refreshing sip.


The takeaway: Go to Matsugen. Order the bakudan and a soba for an early dinner. Go home. Make some mac and cheese when you get hungry again before bed. Sleep happily.

Mr. Kool@Zenkichi

I knew I wanted to eat with Mr. Kool* from the minute he offered me his fried rice at Shang. I was there with Chris, and Kool and his companion were at the table next to ours. Rather than glare at the stranger eyeing his food, he shared.

Anthony Bourdain once said that he knew he wanted to marry his wife when she wordlessly swapped plates with him on their first date. I think this is a bit lenient of him, but if a date who shares food can be a potential wife, than maybe a complete stranger who shares food from his own spoon can be a potential food buddy. Or, a prime vector of swine flu. Either way, I was intrigued.

We got to talking, the blog got mentioned, and he expressed interest in my project. A few emails later, and I found myself nestled in a cozy wooden booth at Zenkichi, surrounded by Kool and a few of his equally lively friends, which included an author, his girlfriend, and a reality TV personality.

Zenkichi's claim to fame at this time of year is firefly squid, which are thumb-long squid that gather in Japan's Toyama Bay to spawn.

Oh yeah, they also bioluminesce

Besides being completely unavailable most months of the year, these squid are highly perishable, and thus very rare outside Japan. Putting one in my mouth checked off three food boxes: things that sparkle, things that die for sex, and things that cause my carbon footprint to spike.

Kidding about that last one.

Now, I keep up on my food news, but somehow, the mating calendar of the enope squid managed to slip my notice this year. Thank Tsukiji for Mr. Kool, who knew it was squid season, AND knew that Zenkichi was one of the few places to serve firefly squid in the US.

We ordered omakase for the table, which is how Zenkichi serves up the squid. Zenkichi is worth going to even without the draw of rare expensive edibles, due to its ingenious layout: a network of hallways with individual wooden booths partitioned off. The booths come in varying sizes to accomodate your party, but you can be sure the one they stick you in is a snug fit. The whole space is all flickering lights, bamboo screens, and the buzz of laughter and conversation from booths and people that you can sense but not see. So sexy, swinger events should probably follow this model. Did I mention there's a button for summoning your waiter?

What follows now is a series of food pictures that will have less and less description as the chronology of the evening suggests I got tipsier and payed less attention.

Sakura clear soup: salt-pickled Japanese cherry flower & yuba soymilk velvet in traditional clear dashi broth

This is a simple dish with a fancy name. Clear dashi broth is miso without the clouds, the cherry flower is a cherry flower - a little sour, a little salty, and the yuba soymilk velvet is tofu skin. The whole thing was a pretty, if underwhelming, riff on miso soup.

Raw tasting plate: firefly squid, maguro carpaccio, and young bonito

The best part of this raw plate was unfortunately not the squid. In fact, the squid was probably the thing I liked least all evening. It was...pungent. Zenkichi's website says it comes with miso vinegar sauce, but it still badly needed acid. The chive it was entwined with did not help. Squeezing lemon all over it did, but then I felt like I was missing the point. The best bite of the night was also on this plate. Mr. Kool instructed me to wrap the maguro in the shiso leaf, sprinkle some of that crunchy white stuff on top, and plunk it in soy sauce. Awesome. Shiso again does wonders.


How sad, a leftover squid couple.

I somehow forgot to take a snap of the tiger shrimp citrus salad that came next, but it was yums.

Berkshire pork and nanohana tempura

I'm not sure if this was the best succession of dishes, going straight from salad to deep-fried goodness dipped in a little mound of salt, but this particular morsel was delicious, even if I did have to look up the menu just now to determine exactly what was in it. Mr Kool had spent considerable time in Japan, where apparently table etiquette demands that the considerate host makes sure everyone's sake cups are full. Mr Kool had really taken this lesson to heart. At least all I forgot was the ingredients in our dinner; the reality TV personality forgot English.

Grilled miso cod

Here I suspected the chef was getting a little lazy. Uninventive, but also overcooked for such a standby dish.

My suspicions are confirmed

Yes, people, this is grilled chicken. Nothing more to say here.

This is some kind of steamed fish served with steamed veggies in a sake broth. Again, the sequence of dishes is strange - two grilled dishes and then a steamed one? But this would have been ok if I didn't absolutely hate the sake broth. It was so harsh, it made me long for the tasteless refuge of the steamed bits. Could one of my party have spilled sake into the bowl by accident? Unclear.

Grilled Kobe beef

Mr. Kool really didn't like this, maybe because it was another sign of laziness in the kitchen. Me? Meh. Grilled beef. I'll eat it.


Some forgettable snapper sushi.

The most concise summary of the meal came from Mr. Kool's friend, the author: "This is not omakase."

How true. It wasn't meant to be an insult, but omakase to me means sitting at the sushi bar and pretending to have a personal experience between what the chef serves and what I eat. There's a sequence, there's a spontaneity, and there's a sense of being spoiled silly. In my prejudiced view, there is no grilled chicken served on a communal plate. Omakase is supposed to blow you away. During the course of the evening, as conversation spanned books, drugs, personality disorders, and whatever else you could imagine a bunch of sassy drunk people talking about, I was only thankful that the company made up for the unspectacular eats.

Luckily, the meal ended the way it began - on a high note.

Black sesame ice cream


Japanese cheesecake

I really enjoyed this cheesecake. I had wondered what made cheesecake Japanese, and apparently, the answer is a dense Jello-like consistency.

Takeaways from dinner: having Game is just telling someone things about themselves in a new way, Zenkichi is great for gaming on someone, provided you don't stink up your breath with firefly squid. Jello is underrated.

*A questionable speller who prefers to fly under the radar with a pseudonym. What can you do.

Sunday Funday@Mitsuwa

I made the pilgrimage to Mitsuwa, and emerged slightly shell-shocked. I'm now officially auditioning a side role for Japanese Supermarket Buddy - an infinitely patient and food-loving Japanese person (or expat) who can explain, in detail, what the weird and wonderful items in that store are used for. Or just are, as in nature of existence. When I had trouble, I tried to make it a game: in the "sake snacks" aisle I did my best to pick up three bags of completely unidentifiable edibles. Plant, land animal, or sea animal remains to be determined.

For now, Google is my Japanese Supermarket Buddy. Thanks to the big G, I've been able to identify these mystery leaves:



When I saw them, so reverently packaged, I knew they had to be important. They are none other than whole shiso leaves!

Other clearly-marked things that were no less exciting:


I'd never seen fresh whole wasabi root before. It's like knowing what tigers look like from movies and books and then seeing one at the zoo for the first time: no touching allowed, and it's probably being really boring, but you gotta take a snap!



Mmmm bluefin o-toro. Seems wildly expensive until you remember how much it costs at a restaurant.


The takeout sushi counter to put all others to shame.

The whole time I was at Mitsuwa, I wished people were waiting for me at home, docilely opening their mouths upon my return to ingest my findings like little baby birds. No such luck. I left with meager loot including furikake for making tamago gohan.

And then.

And then I went to the food court. My North Bergen-bred friend Angela, who is the only other person I know who is just as obsessed with food as I am, had raved that the Mitsuwa food court had the best udon outside of Japan.



She wasn't wrong. She never is, unless you count the time my team beat hers in our school's Iron Chef competition, Battle Alligator (HA!).

I slurped it down as shoppers swirled around me, some giving quizzical (families) or scornful (teenagers) looks to the lone girl buried in her udon. Whatever y'all. More than one boyfriend has made fun of the way I wander aimlessly through supermarkets, eyes transfixed on everything but where my cart or myself are going. More than one boyfriend has subsequently gotten annoyed at me for taking too long after tiring of making fun.

Some people like dining alone, others like going to the movies alone. I prefer grocery shopping alone.

Savory Tip

The mecca of Japanese food?

Apparently in New Jersey. From what Noah described, it sounds like an amazing treasure trove of Japanese packaging, with a FOOD COURT attached. Best of all, there's a shuttle from Port Authority! I might have to make the pilgrimage this weekend, if the weather is nice. Who's with me??

Noah@Sakagura

Any of my friends could tell you that I have something called "extreme menu anxiety" in which I am unable to go to a restaurant without first reading every published review, with a good smattering of Citysearch/Menupages/Chowhound/Yelp opinions to round out the picture. Even then, I try to drag as many people as I can with me, and once I'm there, will usually interrogate some poor server multiple times before I order.

I just don't want to order the wrong thing. You know, the thing that chefs throw on the menu to get suckers who don't know better to order, thereby boosting their profit margin and allowing them to afford the less cost-effective but truly passionate dishes on the menu. Examples? Seared ahi* tuna, goat cheese arugula salads, anything with salmon.

Which is why I love tasting menus and omakase. No dodging there; the chef decides what you eat and therefore stands behind everything you eat. And, coming to the point, it's also why I think this buddy search thing might be a really great idea.

Sakagura was Noah's recommendation, and it was a solid one. Here's a guy who is married to a Japanese woman, spent time in Japan, and is discernibly obsessed with Japanese food, and he led me - with all the confidence you could hope for in an eating companion - to an underground lair where all the Japanese nationals go. A place I'd never even heard of before.

Plenty has been written about Sakagura. I won't repeat them here. I'll show you some pretty pictures though:



This is the "Jewel" Oke Bento, which is charmingly described on the menu as "seasonal sashimi, fried tidbits, grilled tidbits." I fucking love that. It's like, "No, I won't tell you exactly what is going to be on your huge round plate, just trust me, it's going to be tasty because it'll be either grilled or fried." You can't say no. (Noah had the same.)

The sashimi was top quality, not too big and slabby. The purplish mounds toward the bottom are three individual rice cakes seasoned with pickled shiso. The grilled bits were tofu, a thin slice of steak, and eel. The fried bits were two fans of tempura'd julienned veggies. The little cup had pickled mountain yams, and in the top left was a melon-ball scoop of taro in what tasted like a sauce spiked with sake.

A word here about shiso. Food writers and Top Chef contestants seem to wank all over shiso, but I'd never encountered it before. One of the sashimi was squid rolled with shiso leaf, and it was a crazy flavor pairing - spicy, herby, oceany. I am now wanking over shiso.

I guess I should also say something about the decor here: it was cool. Honestly, I don't care much about that stuff, but if you do, you'd like it. Woodsy and clean and as Japanese as you can picture in that authenticity-seeking, culturally tokenizing head of yours.

On to dessert!

Noah and I discovered we are both into savory desserts. He ordered a scoop of sea salt chocolate ice cream, which was crazy good. I got this:



It's a black sesame creme brulee, and it was even better. My menu anxiety also stems from not wanting to ever get food envy, so this was a clutch win for the home team.

Definitely a great meal, and not even outrageous at $27 including dessert. For my first "meat up," I really couldn't have asked for better. Noah was engaging, interesting, not awkward, and definitely not sketchy. We talked about his time living in Qingdao, my time living in Oaxaca, our takes on fusion cuisine, law, finance, and eggs.

The takeaway of the day: cooking someone an egg, just the way they like it, is love. No other food is so versatile, yet so particular. My dad cooked eggs for me growing up, forever defining my idea of perfection as whites fried to a crisp brown on the edges, yolk gooey but never runny within. Just a little FYI.

We parted ways at 53rd and Lex with a handshake. Back at the office, I saw that Noah had sent me a link to a Picasa album of food pictures. I sent back an Amazon link to Jeffrey Steingarten, and a promise to update him on Shang, which is my next meat-up. Will I see him again? I hope so, he was fun.

*Which, the way, is just the common yellowfin. Bluefin or bust!