Happy Halloween- here’s an H1N1-related treat

Brian and I just wrapped up a nice afternoon, following an absolutely delicious lunch at Han’s in Chinatown (we had our usual, which was braised cabbage with chilis and green onions, and the “kung pao” chili chicken. Also ordered an “egg roll,” which is a flour pancake rolled around an omelet- a real egg roll). Unappetizing cam phone pics of each do neither justice but still look tasty:

Afterwards we strolled down to 1st St SW, south of the tracks, to check out some of the salubrious changes that have transformed this once-scary strip, and we had some lovely Intelligentsia coffees (Americano for Brian, macchiato for me) at DeVille Luxury Coffee. The weather is more than perfect today (14c and nothing but sun as I write this, just gorgeous), so it was a great day.

As we headed home we decided to take a chance at getting our vaccinations for H1N1 today. As everybody who lives here knows, Alberta Health Services has taken the unpopular route for this vaccination campaign of setting up centralized inoculation facilities, and there are only five to serve this entire city. The one closest to our home is at the site of the former Children’s Hospital, now “Richmond Road Diagnostic and Treatment Centre,” and I’d witnessed the queues there earlier this week with my own eyes. Mind-bogglingly long lines, and the waits have been epic. Some people have waited for six hours! But I got a hopeful tweet yesterday to the effect that, even though the lines were closed at 10am, somebody waltzed into Richmond Road at 2, 90 minutes before Friday’s closure, and got in and out in 20 minutes. I was skeptical but Brian convinced me to give it a try today, so we headed over at 2:45. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the clinics close at 3:30, so the worst that might happen (I guessed) was that we’d stand for 45 minutes and then be told to try again another day. So I went along with this plan.

We got to the clinic, parking a bit east on 20th Avenue SW, and were greeted by a security guard handing out numbers at the door. Hmmm. We entered, walked by the flu clinic (this is set up to assess people with symptoms, to take pressure off emergency rooms) and headed to the front of what I’d observed had been a lineup with, oh, 1000 people on Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday. There were FOUR people in the queue. We filled out our forms and because we did ours more quickly than did those folks ahead of us (with little kids), we were ushered into the vaccination hall. I was IMMEDIATELY directed to an empty nurse’s station and that was that. We waited as per normal for 15 minutes as a safety measure with any inoculation, and my arm hurts, but we’re done.

I naturally tweeted our little (well, big, actually) victory and posted it as my facebook status update, and am posting it here. I can’t know if this strategy will work for everyone, but it sure as hell did work for us.

Happy Halloween!

Chagrined update: as of this evening, all H1N1 clinics in the province (Alberta, for which this only applies) are suspended until early next week, when they’ll start vaccinating only high risk groups: kids 6 months to 5 years, pregnant women, and people under 65 with chronic health conditions, which I assume would include my asthmatic self. So I’m extra happy to have got my shot today even if I’d been able to go to the front of the line next week, because who knows what might really happen next week.

On vernacular “ethnic” foods and my problem with “authenticity,” with some insults directed at Japan.

I’ve been seeing inspiration for lots of stuff today, including a manuscript that I’d been trying to wrap up this week (sounding like a proverbial broken record here, I know, forgive me, future self), and it occurred to me that a blog post might clear the ol’ writer’s block. And then I had a BLOGGING writer’s block, which is like, I don’t know, getting an injury while stretching for a workout. No, that makes no sense. I mean that blogging is supposed to impel my creativity and to be my “fun” writing outlet, one not encumbered by having to do real research or literature reviews, but sometimes it feels every bit as burdensome as “work.” Having to be creative in public is daunting, even if only 47 people (self not included) actually ever read this.

But anyway, I fell on a topic over lunch, and of course decided to make lunch my topic and build on that. See, I had a spectacular and obscenely huge donair from Sammy’s, which is a couple of blocks east of my house at 1235 17th Avenue in the retail level of an apartment building. Sammy and his wife are from Egypt but the food they serve isn’t really Egyptian but is what Canadian consumers in these parts have come to expect from “shawarme” (that’s how they spell it; shawarma is from the Arabic شاورما‎ and can be transliterated into many spellings) places; in Sammy’s case, that means chicken, beef and lamb shawarma and beef donair. Now, any meat-on-a-spit sandwich can be called a “donair,” but in Canada, whole, un-ground meat is used for “shawarma” and “donair” refers only to those sandwiches containing a mixture of finely ground meat, bread crumbs and seasoning that is very much like the meat used in American “gyros.” Toppings here are normally lettuce (which I hate), tomatoes, pickled cabbage, pickled hot peppers, picked cukes, sometimes pickled turnips, and  parsley, and then the sauces. Sammy’s offers garlic, sweet (“sweet sauce” is a uniquely Canadian ingredient in the donair world; it’s made from condensed milk, sugar and vinegar and is a lot better than it sounds), hot, a sort of thin tzatziki, and tahini. I get sweet, garlic, tzatziki and hot and it is a huge pile of mess to eat. It is served on Lebanese style pita (not Greek style) and is crisped up after construction in a panini press; unlike gyros, the bread is not grilled on a burger grill before assembling.

Donair is not done this way in other parts of the world and thanks to Rick Steve’s Greece travelogue I caught a few weeks ago I also know that the US style of gyro isn’t traditional Greek either, because what he purchased was made with spit-roasted pork, not beef or lamb and looked killer good. Now, in Germany I practically overdosed on the amazing version of “Döner Kebap” served by swarthy Turkish gents there and it’s in some ways drastically different from that served here. Most different, I’d say, is the bread. Instead of pita, a German-Turkish style Döner is served on bread that I’d describe as Armenian bread, the kind you see in huge sheets at Persian markets, and it’s fluffy compared to pita and it gets crispy and mmmmm so good in a sandwich press. The meat LOOKS sort of like our donair meat but it’s always (in my experience) either chicken or veal and not always or often ground. Toppings are yogurt, herb and hot sauces (hot I do not like, it’s very floral tasting and to my taste it’s distracting) and veg toppings include fresh, not pickled, cabbage. The whole affair is more than delicious and I’d love to have the style here, though I do love our Alberta version too. Now this is the thing: The Döner they serve in, say, Berlin is nothing (so I’ve heard) like what one would find in Turkey proper; the German version is a vernacular transformation, an evolution, of the food. So is what we consume in Canada. So is the American spin on gyros. And I am here to declare that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Part of what is fascinating about travel is not only to taste local dishes but also to see how “local” has transformed imports from other parts of the world. So when I travel I love to taste how locals interpret and modify “Chinese,” for example. And I am always fascinated by how well (or poorly) they might manage “authentic” foods despite not having the proper ethnic credentials, as when I have a really good Thai curry or a really good butter chicken (and I know, butter chicken is probably inauthentic too) at, say, a non-Thai or non-Indian pub. It’s neat and is part of what makes life so damn enjoyable.

So there are different, radically different, spins on many examples of ethnic foods co-opted and altered and made local, around the world, but some examples stand out as massive shape-shifters. Most obvious among these are the huge array of versions of “Chinese” food, but there are others: Donair has been discussed, as has Indian; other examples are the many versions of “pizza” as well as regional spins on what do put on and do with pasta around the world; another would be the more recent and bewildering- I would say “mesmerizing”- growth in rococo sushi, with sushi bars serving creations that would never be seen in Japan and that purists decry for inauthenticity.

I have a huge problem with the matter of Japan here. I know that it’s not the only culture that would complain about its being watered down or altered outside its borders (well, with respect to sushi and to a much lesser extent other of its cuisines). One hears all the time from Chinese and non-Chinese about how such-and-such a dish isn’t “really Chinese,” for example, and how “Indian” food in the UK is almost always prepared by Bangladeshis, but the most screeching heights of this sort of xenophobia (yes, XENOPHOBIA) that I’ve seen is around sushi, and the xenophobes are almost never actual Japanese people. They are rather Japanophiles, almost always American or Canadian men with an obvious fetish for Japanese women, they spend time travelling or teaching English in Japan and return with the most enraging and haughty, disproportionate obsession with all things Japanese and they decry any sushiya that isn’t Japanese-run, and they snicker at what hoi polloi are eating, reminding the lowly non-Japan-visiting, non-Japanese-girlfriend-having locals that “it’s so much better in Japan,” “this i the sort of thing they serve in Japan,” or my pet peeve, “they don’t eat maki like those in Japan.” Okay, I have no problem with pursuing authenticity if it somehow enhances one’s dining experience, and this is (for me) key around issues of table comportment and etiquette. I am really obnoxious about getting people to eat Thai and Vietnamese curries with SPOONS not only because that’s how Thai people eat curries but because in eating curry the right way you actually get to EAT it. Thais don’t use chopsticks for curry because it’s impossible to eat a wet curry with chopsticks. Same thing with eating sushi with one’s fingers: It’s not only perfectly proper; it’s also a superb way to EAT and enjoy the food. So I am not a non-stickler. The problem with the Japan worshipers is that their take on Japan is usually nothing but abeyance to and wholesale acceptance of Japan’s cultural myths of superiority- the same set of myths that made it acceptable for Japan to slaughter millions of Chinese civilians during WWII. I love lots of things Japanese but will not honour creepy, outdated and dangerous notions of cultural superiority and will (for example) eschew vernacular spins on sushi, like huge maki, SOLELY because they don’t abide by Japanese tradition.

Fuck Japanese tradition. My concern is that my food taste good. I’m not going to turn down a donair because they’re not served this way in Egypt. I didn’t refuse to let Brian take me to a Chinese resto in Tobago because the food was modified drastically to suit the tastes of Tobagonians. I am not going to go to fucking JAPAN and not eat pizza with whole garlic cloves or squid on it because that’s not how pizza is done in Italy! And I am sure as hell not going to refuse the out-of-this-world good “w-crunch spicy roll”at El’s Japanese Fusion (my fave sushiya in Calgary) because chef Mike is Korean or because, for Christ’s sake, “they don’t serve rolls like that in Japan.” Arguments like those are the racist remnants of a society that, for all its delights, is xenophobic as part of its essence. I won’t be moved by those arguments and neither should you.

Writing what I know: Calgary coffee and sushi news

Okay, enough introspection and social commentary, for now. Coffee and sushi news abounds, and coffee and sushi, in western Canada, don’t know the meaning of “recession.”

On the sushi front: First, I am sad to report that some time before Christmas, what was once the only Nepalese restaurant west of Toronto, Mt Everest’s Kitchen, closed. They had a good run, open for seven years, but these things happen and I wish Raj and the rest of the folks affiliated with the resto good luck and hope that they will find a home somwhere IN CALGARY in the future. The thing is, I rarely went to Mt Everest’s. I found the food delicious but heavy (as in creamy) and just couldn’t bring myself to eat there very often. Sushi and other Japanese treats? I can have sushi three times a week. Hell, seven times a week if the menu is diverse enough. Love ramen, soba, udon. Love Japanese curry and the Japanese take on fried rice. Love gyoza with the deepest of passions. So when I noted that Mt Everest’s will soon morph into “O Shima Japanese Cuisine” (this will be at 1448 17th Ave SW; the new phone number is on the “coming soon” sign on the door and is not the same as Mt Everest’s and if it’s good I’ll keep you posted). I don’t, of course, know if this is actually a sushi place–and honestly I’d rather have a ramen or a curry house since we have much great sushi in Calgary now–despite this post title, but as I say, I’ll let my readers know the story ASAP.

Second sushi news: My beloved Blowfish, 625-11th Ave SW, 403-237-8588, completed some renovations recently and I had lunch there yesterday. It was tremendous. Here is my review cut and pasted from chowhound:

I had lunch at Blowfish (11th Ave SW, just west of Broken City/Amsterdam Rhino, etc) after too many weeks away and got to check out the renos (it was closed for much of Dec-Jan for them). New lighter paint scheme brightens the joint up; the huge lamps were brought down from ceiling height, and unfortunately due to insoluble ventilation issues they had to close off the opening b/t kitchen and dining room where I used to sit and watch the sushi chefs- it’s now a sort of black-glass window with the Blowfish logo in clear letters- so the kitchen is still visible but no more being handed your plates from the chef directly. So it goes- in most respects I’d call it an improvement.

So I sat at the bar (the bar bar; there is no “sushi bar” per se) and ordered yellowtail belly sashimi and one each yam-avocado roll and spicy tuna roll. I have–I am ashamed to admit this but here goes–I have never ordered sashimi. I’ve eaten it when others have ordered it and it’s not that I’m squeamish; I just have never ordered it, so this was a new thing for me. One order of nigiri at Blowfish is, as many of you already know, a two-piece assortment with one piece done trad “naked” and other duded-up in some way; seared maybe, or with a slice of pepper or something like that. With sashimi an order is four slices of fish and a little of the accompanying shredded cabbage. As with nigiri, half is plain raw fish, and in the case of this yellowtail, half was lightly seared. Spectacular! Beautiful cuts and the seared ones in particular were just delicious- warm on top, cool on the bottom, loved this.

The rolls are always a treat for me but this time they were exceptionally well-formed and gorgeously plated. The spicy tuna has a filling of avocado and some fried bits, tempura batter I think, and the tuna is draped over the outside- this means that Blowfish does not use macerated scraps for its spicy tuna. And the slices were super-thin and draped artfully so that there were three of these thin slices on each bite of the roll- this can’t be easy to do and in fact I’ve never seen a roll arranged as carefully as this. WIth the yam-avocado there is tempura sweet potato inside and thin slices of avocado outside, done with as much care as the tuna had been. On each morsel of this roll is a small dollop of mango mayonnaise. Too pretty for words and, more importantly, the tastes were as delicious as any sushi I’ve had anywhere.

I talked to owner Gemma and she asked if I’d met the new chef. New chef? Apparently the former chef, Tomo, has moved to Canmore. And as much as I loved Blowfish before, it’s done the impossible by improving on perfection with this new chef. I didn’t get to meet him (another problem with the closed-off kitchen) but will look forward to more meals there.

Lunch was $32, pricey lunch but worth every penny.

So there it is.

Coffee news: It’s almost amazing to think that all that follows is, yes, in the midst of an economic “slowdown” (which is precisely what Calgary and Alberta need right now but more on that in later posts) there is so much expansion planned in some areas, but when it comes to coffee and coffeehouses, expansion and optimism are very much the order of the day. I have other insights of a more unsubstantiated and “gossip” nature that I’ll not mention here, but here’s what I know that is more or less public (or at least publically-available) knowledge. I’m not putting links in here since all the businesses I mention here are already linked in my “places I like” section.

1. Caffe Artigiano has plans to open not one, not  two, but THREE new locations in Calgary. First is at Shell Centre, two blocks north of their current location (6th Ave/3 St SW: Shell is 4th Ave/3 St). Second, but perhaps opening sooner given some obvious turn-key elements, is in the former Second Cup site on Stephen Ave next to Dakota’s, near 2 St SW. Third- and this is the one I’m happiest to hear about- is in Mission at the recently-abandoned, horrible My Marvin’s debacle. My Marvin’s was a concept (a Jewish deli) that might have seemed progressive and edgy in 1985 but today it was just tired and I never heard a single positive thing about the resto. Artigiano will be a blessing in Mission and that location will be a dynamic one for them.

2. DeVille Luxury Coffee is chasing Artigiano for third-wave king status by planning two new locations of its own. The first is well under way and will be on the main level of the GORGEOUS new Colours condo tower on 1st St SW. Next door will be the first, post-Dragon’s-Den-appearance of the great grub of Atomic, the bubble tea people; Atomic also has terrrific Viet-inspired subs and I’m so chuffed about this that I wish I were moving into Colours. Too cool. Second location is, or is planned to be, in the new Fashion Central development at Stephen Ave and 1st St- Encorp is managing this project and as they already manage Art Central, where Deville #1 is, it’s not a stretch to believe that DeVille will be the caffe space in Fashion Central. That’s a lot of DeVille in a fairly tight stretch, but it makes sense given their affiliation with St Germain next to Hotel Arts. Convenient deliveries and such. And with that there will be THREE places in Calgary to buy Intelligentsia beans. Cool.

3. Phil and Sebastian still don’t have a retail storefront but word on the street is that they have settled on a location for a roasting facility. What this means for the future we’ll see, but it’s exciting news that is sure to bring them more customers aside from those who line up for drinks at the Calgary Farmers’ Market. More to come about this, of course.

There are a couple of other developments that I don’t know much about. First, there is an espresso bar at Bite Groceteria in Inglewood that should be bringing artisanal beans of some stripe to that coffee-neglected part of town (one cool in all other respects). Second, the suburbs are getting some major love with A Ladybug Cafe in Aspen Woods (2132 Aspen Stone Blvd, which I am told is near 17th Ave and 85 St SW); they have some top-end equipment and do latte art but I am otherwise not sure of suppliers and such. I’d like to check it out if I’m waaaaaaay in the west side.

UPDATE: A Ladybug sources beans from JJ Bean, and their espresso machine is a La Marzocco GB5. We have Lineas and FB80s in Calgary but ths is the first GB5 I’ve heard of.

Fratello’s glam new Slayer machine is done and ready for the cameras. Barista trainer (and barista per se) extraordinaire Joel May tells me that they’ve sold all 10 units in production, and attention to this beauty is popping up all over the world.

Kawa is now open Th-Fri-Sat nights until 11pm. And they have some amazing beers by the bottle now.

Man(zo) at 45

Today’s my birthday. 45.

I’m still happy when my birthday rolls around- all the unsolicited (well, mostly unsolicited, some shamefully solicited too I confess) greetings from well-wishers and just that idea that today is my special day. It’s not the Christmas morning feeling I had when I was a kid, but neither is Christmas anymore.

It’s my special day, still, so I’m going to get all Jean Shepherd-y and reminisce about what it meant for me as a kid. The fondest memories I have were around birthdays, oh, 12 or 13, because those where the Army Navy Surplus years: My mom would take my twin brother and me downtown (that’s downtown Hammond, or as Jean Shepherd would say, downtown Hohman)- my mom has never learned to drive so I suppose my dad or my older brother dropped us off and we’d each have a certain amount of cash to spend on what would always end up being blue jeans from the overflowing piles that they had at Army Navy. Brands that I can’t remember anymore with bell bottoms and rainbow detailing; I remember one that I cherished that had leather strips along the side pockets, pure 1970s chic. We’d snag maybe three pairs each and I was always so proud to show them off at school until the sad day that I realised I’d outgrown them. I also recall money spent at a place called- oh, memory, please don’t fail me- Wayne’s Trick Shop (somebody confirm! Please!) where in 6th grade (for Canucks: Grade 6) I bought a fake booger device and stood in front of Mr Huss’ English class with the plastic appendage hanging from my nostril, getting the peals of laughter that I still live for whenever I’m in front of a group of people…

On my (our, with Paul, my twin brother, who died in March 2005) special day, we would always have lunch at Cam Lan, the first Chinese resto of my life. I remember being about, oh, five years old and being awed at how there were ACTUAL CHINESE PEOPLE roaming around there, a fact I announced loudly to my mortified mother. We’d get one of these private room-like booths and I remember feeling like the worldly belle of the ball on my 13th (I think) birthday when I ordered some exotica called “chicken almond ding” instead of the pork chop suey I always ordered. Paul always got fried shrimp from the American side of the menu (and I remember as a little kid having hamburgers from that side- I can practically taste the oddly sesame-oil accent buns as I write this); my whole family, except for me, was (is?) addicted to fried shrimp, a food I only found palatable drowned in cocktail sauce. But my “authentic” Chinese was, oh yum! What a world awaits me! Birthday magic took place that moment, even though it was marred by my being in the throes of the flu, but I also remember feeling almost cured on departing Cam Lan that cold January day.

Okay, this might not be the sort of prose that I’m best at, but I like to remember stuff. Cam Lan is long gone as is any semblance of retail in downtown Hammond, and the internet is sadly littered with these sorts of reminiscings. But they’re better than nothing.

Back to the present- I’m giving a COSEP (Committee on Scholarly and Educational Presentations, I think) talk at 3:00 this afternoon titled “Coffee Talk: The ‘Third Wave’ Coffee Phenomenon, Connoisseurship, Sociality, and a Sociology of Taste.” I’ve gone completely against my instincts and written the thing out word for word but am sure I’ll find room to ad-lib. For this talk I’m only discussing empirical findings (or insights, or notions) at the end; most of it is about accounting for why “coffee” is a valid topic for sociology and interrogating some lines of inquiry alternative to my own, which is of course ethnomethodological/grounded. This done means that I have a very good head start on prepping my talk for Berlin (I leave in a mere 22 days), so I’m happy to get it out of the way now.

Tonight Brian is treating me to a Flames game, versus hapless Columbus, so I hope the good guys pile on the presents.

Früli

I have a weird relationship with alcohol, and it’s embarrassing, sometimes. See, I’m not a drinker. I can go months without tasting alcohol and, as I’ve told Brian (who’s taking his second course for sommelier certification, which makes this non-drinking thing more complicated since he now has more than 100 bottles), if all the booze on the planet disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t even blink. Do not drink, never have drunk, never have BEEN drunk (tipsy yeah; drunk, nah), don’t understand the appeal, and most importantly I don’t like the taste of the vast majority of alcoholic beverages. Why anybody would screw up a delicious glass of tomato juice for a Bloody Mary escapes me completely, and the reason I can stomach things like melon martinis or lemon drops is because of how little they taste of booze. But that doesn’t make me a girl drink drunk because even those sissy drinks make me kind of sick after more than one.

Getting back to the subject, how is this a problem? Well, it’s hard to be a grown-up without drinking. Now, what “drinking” means is class- and culture-bound, by which I mean I am not, in the life I live now, going to have to “worry” about getting forced into a Pabst chugging contest. But outside of certain contexts (like among devout Muslims), you just have to drink to be around other grown-ups. I’ve been asked point blank (by an idiot, but still) if I was an alcoholic after I ordered a coke at a bar. I look like a cheapskate to waiters when I order water and always feel compelled to assure them that I am indeed a good tipper, just not a wine enthusiast (and I do think it’s tacky to drink soft drinks at a decent resto, but that’s just me). I can’t appreciate my partner’s most loved hobby (wine), and I just feel like I’m missing out. I envy somebody who can really enjoy craft-brewed ale or fine scotch or wine, because I cannot.

Until now! Because I did something last week that I have never done in my 44+ years on this planet: I, John Manzo, BOUGHT BEER! Not at a bar (I’ve done that plenty of times, and pissed off the bartender because I can make one beer last aaaaaaaallllllllll night because I hate the damn thing so much)- at a liquor store! A place as foreign to me as, well, a rodeo I guess. Yes I am that immature and developmentally stunted. I had never bought beer before last week.

What prompted this important stage in my personal growth? Well, I discovered Früli, which is a strawberry flavoured Belgian beer, when it came as the “wine pairing” with Brian’s dessert at our big dinner at Chef’s Table (check it out a couple of posts below this one) earlier this month. This isn’t a wine cooler. It’s a top-quality Belgian “white beer” that has real strawberry puree (not artificial flavouring or some hyper-sweetened crap) added. It’s freaking delicious. I bought it–by the bottle, $3.49 each–at Liquor Depot on 17th Ave and 11 St SW, and this is pricey stuff because the bottle is teensy:

As all my fans and stalkers know, my hands are freakishly huge and so this pic might be misleadingly making the bottle look smaller than it really is, so this is what the contents look like poured into a 16-oz glass:

Nice strawberry colour eh? But yeah, this is too pricey and wee to get drunk on (though it is 4.8% alcohol, which surprised me a bit). But that’s the best way to enjoy this stuff, right? I mean, I have no interest in getting shitfaced, and so for me, as with coffee, it’s got to be about quality and not quantity. I might drink, sometimes, and that’s cool.

Op uw gezondheid!