Newsflash: Heckasac is not a Substack now. I mean, if it was you wouldn't be reading it here, right? Also, where did the word "newsflash" originate? No one is ever like, "did you see the newsflash? Crazy!" Ah, Merriam Webster said it is often used ironically when something is NOT surprising. Which I guess is how I was using it.
I've been thinking about meals because
a) I spend 34% of my time thinking about food (a percentage that has been a bit lower lately, maybe because I'm FINALLY a bit sick of cooking
b) I read the Deborah Madison memoir "An onion in my pocket" and the last chapter details memorable meals.
If you don't know who she is (that's her on the right): she's a cookbook author and she started the SF vegetarian restaurant Greens. Which was maybe the first fancy vegetarian restaurant in the country. I have a post-pandemic goal to eat there. I've never eaten there but when I looked inside a couple years ago I discovered it is gorgeous!
She is from Davis (her dad was a UCD botanist) and she was a member of the SF Zen center and a good cook so they kind of ordered her to open the restaurant. I didn't know that after opening it she only ran it for 6 months and has been mostly a cookbook author since. I have two of her cookbooks and they are pretty good. I feel like I should use them more.
Her memoir is great and she is a bit grumpy but in a way I agree with, like wanting food to be simple and not fussy.
But: memorable meals! I will share one. Please share your own. I posted about it at the time, but I still remember it fairly clearly! 2009. Belgium. Hop growing area. We got a tour of the brewery and the guy who conducted it was also escorting a Japanese-speaking visitor with very little English (none of us knew Japanese) and he convinced us to go to a fancy restaurant. I was nervous because I think it had a Michelin star and I didn't know if we could afford it.
Our Saint Bernadus brewery worker companion gave a vibe that we were a bit uncouth from only knowing one language and being worried about the cost, so I remember a feeling of shame mixed with excitement.
The whole agriculture area smelled like manure very strongly, and the big deal was the the hop shoots were coming up at the time (spring). They are a delicacy in the area, and only available for a few weeks. We got (I think we split it due to the price) a pork steak with hop shoots on top. The picture is in this post.
The craziest thing was that somehow the steak had picked up the earthy, raw character of the manure-y smell of the fields (like a steak terroir) in a way that was not gross but uncanny.
Nice to discover the restaurant is still around! Share a memorable meal.
4 comments:
I ate at Greens a few years ago and confess that I didn't find the food mindblowing and was glad it was on the company dime. But I acknowledge that the approach for simple food was revolutionary at the time. The view made it worth it though! I went during sunset.
I didn't know she was only there for 6 months!
Not a meal per se but I think ALL THE TIME about this amazing potato I ate in Peru. We participated in a spiritual ritual that included burying potatoes with embers. When we dug them out they were perfected steamed on the inside and the skins were charred and dirty and crunchy as hell. We ate them with farmers cheese in our hands. I don't even LIKE POTATOES but this was one of the best things I've ever eaten.
That reminds me, my maybe top potato ever was the smoked purple potatoes at Bar Tartine. We need more smoky, charred potatoes in our lives! This one had some type of mayo-ey sauce as well.
Thanks for commenting!
We had a meal in Astrakhan w my dads best friend from his childhood in Armenia, Obon, and his wonderful family, including his daughter who Obon and my dad had tried to get me to marry a few years earlier. Obon’s son had cooked a huge sturgeon in a fire pit behind the house, which was illegal in Astrakhan since sturgeon were too valuable as caviar producers to be eaten by the hoi poloi, and the spread was epic. Spiced peppers, eggplant in olive oil, pilaf, tomato and onion salad, grilled zucchini, tons of smoked meat and bread. This one of the few times I’ve ever been drunk around my family or seen my family drunk cause the toasts were constant. It was an incredibly bonding experience for us all, very loving and fun evening:)
WOW! That is a really good one.
That reminds me of the meal with friend's family in the Vietnam delta where we ate banh xeo crosslegged on the floor (this part of the memory is very vivid to me because I was not flexible enough to sit that way easily and also because it was a tile floor and I was sweating so much from the humidity that it was basically a slip n slide) and we toasted with many Heinekens and they played us music and sang. Truly epic. The banh xeo were made on an outside grill and were so thin and delicate and herb-stuffed that they have truly ruined other banh xeo for me.
Post a Comment