Putting things into perspective

Last night Scott and I were wandering downtown after a couple drinks and some comic book shopping, and stopped into a new little French bistro for dinner. We took a seat in the half-full Chez Joly and ordered up a few items from the modestly-priced menu, had a glass of wine and a pleasant chat with the maître'd for a minute about business and whatnot. I gave him my card and assured him I don't review restaurants (I don't, really).

One thing that struck me as a little odd was that the place was only half-full, on first Thursday, in the Pearl. One of the owners (M. Joly himself) came to greet us and apologized for the loudness. It wasn't busy enough to be considered loud by anyone under 70, and it seemed to me that he was really coddling this image of a bustling bistro when in fact, it was kind of a sad little place that reeked of trying too hard. For the price point, I would've preferred a little more grit, more tattoos on the staff, and any music other than the soundtrack of La Vie En Rose.

Conversely, I'd happily have paid $10 more for any of the items if they had been prepared more thoughtfully. The duck was a skosh past medium-well and any flavor remaining after the skin was removed was obliterated by the surfeit of pink peppercorns dashed across the dish. The moules frites Scott ordered were fantastic, though, and worth it alone. They arrived propped on hunks of baguette, ready to sop up the sexy bivalve liquor and wine broth. The escargots were similarly pleasant, though the pâte (a rillette of chicken liver with pistachios) was unremarkable.

It occurred to me on the way home, my stomach stretched in painful distention, that I can afford to bitch that my fancy dinner in a French bistro wasn't good enough. Somewhere along my life's path, I became some entitled cunt who looks down her nose at frites that aren't shoestring-thin. I wasn't always this way. (There is a point that I'm going to make, here, I promise.)

When I was a kid, as I've mentioned myriad times, I lived in poverty. My family received every form of government assistance offered, and our meals frequently came from the Oregon Food Bank when the food stamps couldn't be stretched all month. The Oregon Food Bank, unlike many other family aid non-profits and food banks, is not affiliated with any church and does not proselytize the recipients of their services. They just feed hungry people. With the downturn in the economy, requests for emergency food are skyrocketing to record levels, and they need your help.

In the name of staying true to my roots, and maintaining whatever shred of street cred I have left, I've decided to participate in the Blog For Food campaign (in addition to making a donation myself). Please click the logo at the top of this page or any of the links I've inlined in this post and make a donation.

To be part of the official Blog For Food tally, please enter "Blog For Food" in the tribute section on the OFB donation page. Donations may also be mailed to the Oregon Food Bank at PO. Box 55370Portland, OR 97238-5370. Please mention "Blog For Food." The campaign will run from February 1 to February 28, 2009. They're trying to raise (a modest) $5000.

Thanks, you guys! Just think, your donation today may help another precocious little girl grow up to be a snarky food blogger like me.

A Tale of Two Cities

...and their respective Meatloaf Sammiches. Warning: iPhone photos ahead! Apologies for the powdered milk patina.

So, I've been out of town a lot for work. It's a controversial project that I can't discuss, but I do a lot of driving and hiking. In the rain. Through brush so thick it bruises me. I love the sugar pine and manzanita on the east side, and the salal and evergreen huckleberry on the west side, but lord if that shit ain't make a tough stroll.

I live on a chintzy per diem on this project and usually eat a lot of trail mix and peanut butter to keep the change, but whenever I'm in Klamath Falls I eat at Mollie's at least once. It's a truck stop across the parking lot from the Super 8, and when I was out here for weeks on end a couple years ago, I used to spend my lonely evenings at the adjoining bar for cocktails, karaoke and dancing with strangers.

Mollie's is a place where you get The Special. You get the "Supper", as in "Broasted Chicken Supper", or "Salisbury Steak Supper". The supper includes a potato "your way" (baked, mashed or French-fried), soup or salad (you always get the salad, with thousand island, because you just do), and a vegetable (usually corn or the peas/carrots centimeter-cubed, but sometimes an over-steamed zuke or broccoli). Or, like me, you buck tradition and get the meatloaf sandwich served open-face and topped with rich brown gravy that may not come from a can.

Note the perfect lake of gravy nestled in the back-of-the-scoop crater.

This sandwich was perfect in every way, except that you couldn't pick it up with your hands and shove it into your trembling face fast enough. The baked-on ketchup skin lets you know that this is real leftover meatloaf, not a shoddy patty with gravy. The minced celery and onion in the meat was a homey touch.

Then there's Kozy Kitchen, which is apparently a chain along the southern Oregon coast. There was one next to my hotel in Coos Bay, but we ate at the one in Myrtle Point (sardonically called "Turtle Point" by coworker Chris). They, too, had a meatloaf sammich-type offering, this time the "BBQ Meatloaf Cheddar Melt". I was skeptical, yet intrigued.

You can hardly stop staring at those chili fries, can't you. I'm right there with you - you can tell how enamored of them I was by the fact that they are front-and-center in the photo and the sandwich is shrinking behind their glory. In fact, when I saw them on the menu I almost just ordered those; instead, I asked for my requisite side-of-fries to be topped with chili and cheese. The waitress forgot the onions, but I forgave her.

This meatloaf sammich wasn't quite what I was craving. It was great, don't get me wrong, but it was trying too hard to be a patty melt or a sloppy joe. The sauce cloyed, the loaf was too crumbly and the fries easily stole the show. I did, however, enjoy the toasted bread that had about a stick of butter on each slice.

I coveted Chris' order of the Country-Fried (or was it Chicken-Fried?) Steak Scramble. I think the difference between chicken-fried and country-fried is in the type of gravy, but this is an unscientific assumption.

Mollie's handily won the meatloaf sammich contest, but Kozy Kitchen gets props for thinking outside the box, and for having a sassy old broad cookie instead of a grumbly felon on the line. Kozy Kitchen also had the Obama burger as the special, which featured bacon, horseradish, fried onions and blue cheese crumbles. I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be some kind of joke, so I avoided asking.

Mollie's Truck Stop
3817 US 97 N
Klamath Falls , OR

Kozy Kitchen
531 8th Street
Myrtle Point, OR

Japadog and Guu

Vancouver is to Japanese restaurants as Portland/Seattle is to coffee shops. Which is to say, there is a fuckton of Japanese food here. We sort of knew this; I mean, we knew we couldn't afford to spend as much time in Japan this fall that we feel the flight warrants, and we heard that Vancouver has the largest Japanese population outside Japan. So we did the math, and it turns out to be true. Lucky us! And only an hour flight from home.

Let me tell you about Japadog. You might remember Japadog from such No Reservations episodes as Tony in the Pacific Northwest. We weren't actually intending to come here. In fact, it wasn't until we were in line that we remembered that Bourdain had been here. So, apparently, had Ice Cube. Ten times. No, starfucking wasn't our impetus, it was the smell of kurobuta pork served up as the Misomayo (hot dog slathered in a mix of miso and kupie mayo, with radish sprouts on top) and Oroshi (hot dog with daikon relish and scallions). I wasn't feeling brave enough to try the Okonomi (pickled cabbage, sweet sauce and mayo with nori shreds), but there's always tomorrow.


Kurobuta is called the "kobe beef of pork", and the dog tasted like a really good weisswurst. The toppings were fresh and not really out of left field - pickled crucifers, onions and sweet/salty condiments are all familiar tastes with a hot dog, but this was somehow still quite Japanese. We were lucky to stumble upon this cart (there is a shocking dearth of street food here), and are a steal at only a couple bucks each.

Japadog
899 Burrard St
Vancouver, BC





Guu Izakaya (the O - distinguished from its three other locations) was one of those places that look so great from the outside that you make an audible cooing noise and can't wait to come back when it's open. We did come back later, and after being greeted with enthusiastic screams of "Irrashaimase!" we were seated at the bar.

An all-Japanese staff, mostly Japanese clientele (the English-speakers next to us returned to Mandarin when the waitress left) and the din of knives, grill and wok really reinforced that we were in the right place. Typical of an izakaya, the menu consisted of small plates: a verdant pea shoot salad with slivers of red and yellow bell pepper, pine nuts and soy vinaigrette; grilled squid legs (the tips of the tentacles were charred-crispy) with sriracha mayo; ethereal tako yaki, perfect tender nuggets of octopus within steamy soft dumplings with golden brown exterior and the house udon (suggested when I asked for their mebutsu) - earthy/smoky from the grill, with chunks of beef and scallion. Many glasses of the house sake were consumed, and we stumbled back to our hotel three hours later with wide smiles. I literally have not had such a bliss-inducing dining experience since Honjin in Tokyo.

I, tragically, forgot my camera and didn't remember until we were done eating that I could just use my phone. Scott pulled his out and snapped a few shots of the smiling chefs. But we'll go back again before we leave - it's worth a repeat. Maybe we'll even be brave enough to try the beef liver sashimi.


Guu Izakaya (with Garlic)
838 Thurlow Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 685-8817

Oh Shit, We Are in Canada! Part I: Jade Dynasty

So, sorry I haven't been around much. I was in the field all last week with no internet (except on my phone, like I'm gonna blog on that thing), and yesterday Scott and I got a wild hair up our asses and came to Vancouver, BC. In this shaky financial climate I find it most prudent to just get the fuck out of Dodge. (Just joking, we're not rich enough or poor enough to feel any of this foolishness, although our mortgage is now mysteriously owned by another bank.)

We actually did premeditate this trip, in that we bought plane tickets and made hotel reservations a few weeks ago. Other than that, we didn't do diddly shit for planning. We literally stepped off the plane, got a car and a map and started driving around town to find something that looked good to eat. We were pretty tired after only getting 5 hours of sleep the night prior, and ended up snacking on some crappy pizza (think Pillsbury dough, pigeons and a Middle Eastern dude behind the counter). We did find a poutine place that was way too tiny for my tired, bitchy mood, but made a mental note to return to it later this week when the crowds thin.

Today we made our way to Chinatown, and after walking around a bit, realized there are really no restaurants around here. Like in Portland, the Asians here don't actually live and eat in Chinatown, they just own businesses and do their shopping for herbs, produce, bootleg DVDs and unlicensed Disney merchandise. We did, however, get extremely lucky to score a table at the packed little hole-in-the-wall, Jade Dynasty.

Shrimp and mushroom shu mai with tobiko

Soft and fluffy barbecue pork hum bao

Dim sum is a regular Sunday brunch that we enjoy, and while we normally just go straight for our favorite shu mai, hum bao and a plate of gai lan with oyster sauce (the Holy Trinity), this time we were overjoyed to discover xiao long bao on the menu. I think I actually squeed my pants a little when I saw it on the menu.

Xiao long bao are also known as soup dumplings, and are my favorite dim sum small bite. They're difficult to find in Portland; in fact, I only know of one cart downtown that has them, and they aren't that great there. These, though, were succulent and flavorful dumplings of seasoned pork with unctuous broth. You dip them in tangy red vinegar, nibble a small hole in the "skin" and slurp out the broth hiding inside, then eat the rest of the dumpling two or three bites. Making a loud slurping sound will signal to the staff that you are thoroughly enjoying them. I recommend a cold Tsingtao to wash down the hot dumpling.

A guy seated next to us was visiting from Puerto Rico. He didn't know what to order, so we pointed him in the right direction. We shared some of our House Special Noodles with him (he gladly passed along some of his way-too-much salt and pepper squid in exchange). These noodles were pretty good - I liked the crispy bottom of the fried noodle, but parts of it were a little on the over-cooked side and tasted a bit burned. This is probably the point, but I still ate around it. The pork, shrimp and scallops were tender and unassuming with baby bok choy and mushrooms, and the classic Cantonese sauce was a familiar taste of soy, rice wine and garlic thickened to gravy with corn starch.


Caveats: Jade Dynasty was a nice place to sit and get away from the herds of junkies, tranny prostitutes and Asian shoppers of Chinatown, but I hear Richmond is where to go for the real action. The food here wasn't anything you couldn't get in any average-or-better Chinese joint in any town with a sizable Asian population, except for the xiao long bao, which were outstanding (despite the amateurishly clunky appearance of these dumplings, they tasted great).

We were annoyed, however, that insead of wonderful carts laden with tubs of congee, foil-wrapped packages of ginger chicken and stacks of small steamer baskets hiding the soft dumplings within, rolling around for you to lazily point and eat (the instant gratification feels so decadent), Jade Dynasty is far too tiny and cramped to accomodate a single cart, let alone a caravan of them. You make your selections on a checklist, and then wait for your food as you would in any other restaurant. The waitress got our sheet mixed up with our neighbor, and he happily devoured our hum bao before we noticed the mistake and had a painful, Rost in Transration conversation with our waitress to straighten it all out. I forgive them for this, though, and so should you, if you find yourself wandering around in Vancouver's Chinatown on a Sunday afternoon, hungry for dumplings.

Jade Dynasty
137 Pender Street
Vancouver, BC
Tel: 604.683.8816
Dim Sum served all day

Happy as a Clam

I am, but not because we ate here.

Let me back up. We went to the beach today, as is our wont on 100+-degree days. Today, by some twist of full moon Twilight Zone disturbia, it took us about three hours to make the 80 mile drive to Seaside, or the "Coney Island of the Oregon Coast", as I like to call it. When we crested the bluffs that overlook the mouth of the mighty Columbia and crossed Youngs Bay to make our way south from Astoria, we were met with cold, gray fog. Uncharacteristically optimistic, I mused that it was suddenly perfect weather for clam chowder. And clam chowder we sought.

But not before I got my sweet tooth on.

Decisions, decisions. I settled for some flavor called Moose..something. Moosefoot?

Ooh, it was so good and drippy and fudgy! Not the least bit moosy.

This store also boasts the largest selection of specialty sodas in the Universe, for better or worse. I love root beer ever so much, but many of these ones were too sweet and lacked the crisp sassafras bite. Did you know that while the root of Sassafras spp. is used for flavoring the beverage (hence, "root" beer), the ground, dried leaves are used to make filé, which is used as an alternative to roux for thickening gumbo.

Candy apples and chocolate-covered twinkies. Is there any better anti-depressant? This kid was so cute, pink cheeked and eager to please. He gave me a free sample of rocky road fudge (my favorite) after I asked if I could photograph him for my blog. If I were 15 years younger I would have such a huge crush on him. Teenagers having summer jobs in candy stores is a good vibe.


The friendly beach town is also the source of many nightmares. Creepy/unintentionally hilarious window displays are pretty much par for the course. The richly-embroidered hats were for sale in the Freedom Sportswear store. This store also had giant, fluorescent yellow sweatshirts that said the oddly specific "Seaside, OR Summer 2008", or just had a silk-screened image of the holy crucifix. Flo yellow is not Jesus' color. He's more of an autumn, really.

Anyways, so we did end up getting some chowder and crab cakes at the Happy Clam.

After tasting samples of the clam and seafood chowders, I opted for the tangier seafood chowder, which included bay shrimp, chopped scallops and cod, in addition to clams (not sure if they were razor or littleneck). The waitress insisted there was no cheese in the soup, but there was definitely something about this chowder. Beer? Mustard powder? It tasted like a good cheddar and beer soup with seafood. The clam chowder was passable - nothing wrong with it, but not stellar.

This photo is a testament to the power of a well-composed shot. Not that I'm bragging. But this this is a handsome-looking plate of food, right? You're drooling a little, I can see it from here. Unfortunately, looks are all it has going for it. The "crab cakes" were a complete travesty, a bastardization of a perfect food, and a disrespect to my Cancer brethren. The insult was that crab had been overworked and diluted with far too much breading. The injury was that the cakes were left for dead in a deep fryer until they turned to leaden pucks of MDF.

The food was really the least of the Happy Clam's worries, though. When you come in, you first notice that the only people here are the two staff and one very young woman (probably the daughter of the waitress?) with her infant in a stroller. The walls are mostly bare, except for some sad-looking paint-by-numbers of broken boats and moorage, a neon Pabst sign and some fake houseplants. There are flies smacking into each other and the window. You just get the sense that this place is poor.

It did, however, provide us with a seat, a view, a beer and some chowder, without having to wait for a table. If you're interested, their menu's (sic) are available at their unsurprisingly design-challenged website, which actually does a much better job of summarizing the Happy Clam experience than any snarky blog post from an uppity city bitch .

The Happy Clam
21 N. Columbia
Seaside, OR
503.717.8900

Clinton Corner Cafe

Portland is a brunch town. God help you if you want to eat some eggs on a Saturday morning. On weekends, even regular blue-collar lunch counters become "brunch places" packed with hipsters willing to wait an hour for some eggs and hash browns. Some places are worth the wait, sure, but if you're more interested in food than in standing around with other hipsters, drinking Stumptown coffee, being seen, then head over to Clinton Corner Cafe.

I shouldn't even be telling you about this place. One time we were starving on a Saturday (late) morning, and the audacity of Broder to expect us to wait for a table, just to eat adorable Ikea food, was fucking unbearable. The cruelty! I may have even been PMSing a little, because I think I yelled and almost cried. We went down Clinton a little further, around the corner from New Seasons, and like a beacon from the heavens, shone the Clinton Corner Cafe. We found it easily enough, on a blinking stoplight corner down the street from one hipster brunch clusterfuck, 26th and SE Clinton.
We had our choice of indoor and outdoor tables. It was pleasant out, so we sat outdoors. Anything to drink? Sure, why not a cup of coffee and a mimosa. The breakfast menu is the perfect size and has standard fare, including my eating-out-brekkie standby: the breakfast burrito. If I recall correctly, Scott had some French toast and bacon. I know this is going to sound back-handed, but they did such a good job of not fucking up, or further pissing me off when I was on the rag, that we went back a couple weeks later. And now we go damn-near every weekend. I consider it a good investment to become regulars at a neighborhood joint.

Yesterday we stopped by for late afternoon lunch. I had the Clinton Club, a double-decker of turkey, bacon, Swiss, lettuce and tomato on (I think) sourdough. I added avocado and stole the sliced red onion from Scott's burger and fries. Linda, my lovely mother-in-law, is a perfect lady and ordered a half a BLT and a glass of the house white. My sammich was delicious, with good palate-scraping toasted bread and perfectly crispy-soggy fries (that's my favorite way of a fry). Was Scott's burger good, too? "Yeah," he said.


We like the Clinton Corner Cafe for its lack of pretense and comfy neighborhood vibe. We love the Clinton Corner Cafe because it lets us cut the bullshit, and just sit right down to the business of eating honest, good food.
Clinton Corner Cafe
2633 SE 21st Ave
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 230-8035
www.clintoncornercafe.net

Good Taste Noodle House

See also Stuff White People Like #71.

I am totally guilty of this, by the way. I can eat completely mediocre food in a slightly dingy joint, but if Scott and I are the only white people, it's Fucking Amazing, and The Best-Kept Secret in Portland. In the case of Good Taste Noodle House, it's not that the secret is well-kept, it's just that it's well-kept from white people. This place really is fucking amazing, though, and not just because it has an entirely (except for us) Asian clientele.

Good Taste Noodle House is, like all of my favorite eateries these days, tucked away behind a mini-mall in Chinatown-East. You turn off the main drag, drive through a narrow passageway, and park in the center of a little oasis of Asian goodness that includes a Thai joint, a small teriyaki joint, a crawfish joint (the fuck?) and a coffee shop, among others. You want desperately to try them all, but patience, my dear. We will try each of them in time.


When you first walk into Good Taste Noodle House, you are first greeted by lovely roasted chicken and ducks smiling at you through a plexiglass box. You smile back, then notice the hindquarters of a suckling pig dangling from a salty hook in the adjacent box. You look around and see people shoveling food into their mouths with lime-green chopsticks, silent but for the sound of slurping.

You take a seat at any of the brightly-lit tables and notice, to your unimaginable delight, that they sell food by the pound (joy of joys!!). You make a mental note of this, should you find yourself needing a whole salty, crispy duck in the future.

I glance at the menu, tempted to ask the beautiful, demure waitstaff to bring me "whatever is your favorite", but instead ordered the crispy duck with shrimp wontons in broth. Scott ordered the ginger and green onion chicken with dry noodles. As we wait for our food, I joke with Scott that I should get the words "roasted duck" tattooed down my shoulder in Chinese characters, and when people ask me what it says I'll tell them it says "beautiful wisdom". We have a good laugh about this.

Oh, good lord look at this sexy bowl of noodles! The silken wonton floating lackadaisically in the intense, unctuous broth. The sliced hunks of duck, all crispy skin and fatty, rich meat nestled atop a wad of chewy yi mein.

Scott's dish came with the same yi mein (a fried wheat noodle, yellow in color from the addition of egg), piled high with soft, white chicken and two dipping bowls: one of a scallion-chicken broth, and the other of grated ginger mixed with oil. Scott thought his noodles tasted a bit funny, and I did notice a bitter aftertaste on them. I think this could be from the cooking water (maybe had an herb or root added to it?) or the noodles may have been colored with lye-water (one of the other possible additives to give the yellow color), which apparently gives a distinctive smell. I chased my bite with a nibble of chicken and a spoonful of broth, and this helped.

As with our stomachs, the place began to really fill up. We got some boxes for our leftovers so someone could have our table.

I implore you to find the Asian people where you live, and find out where they eat. Chances are, it ain't the Panda Express. Good Taste Noodle House is a small peek into another culture - one where English isn't the first language, and one where a good bowl of noodles is tantamount to happiness.

Good Taste Noodle House
8220 SE Harrison St.
Portland, OR