J-Town.

Two days' food here. Yesterday, Wednesday, we went with some friends to the South Street Burger place. It has something to do with New York Fries, as all the fries are NYF. I never cared to find out the exact relationship between the two. It seems odd though. What kind of a burger place needs help from a french fry company? Did they think that the NYF logo gives them a certain cachet?

The burgers themselves were OK, but the service was pitiful. The two people cooking and assembling could not get the timing right, so that three of the burgers and most of the fries were pretty cool by the time they reached us. We only had seven people, and there was no one else in the place, so it would not have been too hard to get everything done at the same time. 

One of our party had the grilled chicken burger. Now, somewhere in my pages is a description of a chicken burger I made. It had ground chicken, a variety of spices, tofu, onion, parsley and ... it was delicious. This one was just a piece of chicken that looked like it had been run over. It is listed under burgers as 'grilled chicken' so I think it is reasonable to assume it will be a burger. Perhaps it is just me.

It may have been an aberration, and I might have to give it another try when there are more people there. But just because you have no customers doesn't mean you put less effort into the food preparation does it?

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I was pleased with the lunch I made for school today. I woke up at 7 am and made for them steamed chicken with ginger and green onion sauce (?), with broccoli rice. For the chicken, I used four thighs I had bought the previous day at Foody Mart. I poached them in a chicken broth with xiaoxing rice wine, a little sesame oil and black pepper. Then I pan fried them for a few minutes each side and sliced the meat off the bone. All done by 7:30.

After school, we went to one of my favourite places: J-Town. You can easily get carried away and spend hundreds of dollars there on pastries, sushi, all kinds of gourmet food items and other Japanese delicacies. At least, I could.

Unusually disciplined, we escaped with less than $ 100 worth of damage, but it was worth it. A spicy tuna roll, a spicy salmon roll, two california rolls, a sashimi platter, a marinated seaweed salad, one onigiri, a small tub of tobiko, half a loaf of their delicious bread, some tofu, and a bag of Tamanashiki short grain rice (from California) which I am very interested in trying. It says that :

"Tamanishiki uses two kinds of super premium quality short grain rice; Koshihikari and Yume Gokochi. They are carefully grown and harvested in the Montna Farms, located in the fertile agricultural land of the Sacramento Valley, California. Hence, it has a unique combination of great flavor and wonderful texture that no other rice can imitate. Tamanishiki is carefully polished so washing is not necessary."

I was tempted to buy the Japanese rice but it was being sold for $ 30+ for a teeny bag.

For dinner we ate the sushi. I made a cucumber and tobiko salad. We had the tofu chilled with a dressing of soy, lemon, ginger and green onion. And a bowl of miso soup with the rest of the tofu and green onion to rinse it all down with.

No pics, as we were all hungry and ate it as it came to the table.

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