Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
FOOOOOD
To celebrate my fiftieth, we’ve been having an eating vacation down here in Pasadena. Friday night we had dinner at a frou-frou restaurant in Pasadena called Maison Akira. Karen and I both had a miso-flavored sea bass dish which was fairly good, although neither of us cared for the bed of quinoa on which it was served. To me, quinoa has a musty, “off” flavor that detracts from whatever it accompanies. Maison Akira is a French-Japanese fusion restaurant, which means I was able to eat escargot and sashimi in the same dinner. And I did. The escargot were sufficiently garlicky and buttery, and were a good deal more fleshy than I’m used to, although I’m pretty sure they were not African giant snails. But perhaps a dwarf cousin of the giant snail. Definitely bigger than what I’m used to.
I don’t know . . . a place like that, everything ought to be die and go to heaven. It really wasn’t. The soft shell crab was plainly of the frozen-and-thawed variety, and it showed. Karen and Jake had decent desserts — Karen, a Baked Alaska with green tea ice cream at its core, and Jake, this odd confection crowned with a caramelized sugar globe. I took pictures, but I have to figure out how to upload them to the blog. Perhaps I can upload them to Facebook and then link it? Hmm. Let’s try that. Nope, nothing yet.
Anyway, I had a figs-sauteed-in-Port-wine thing that was just okay. Would have been better were it not for the shredded mint littering the dish. Hey, not everyone likes mint. If I wanted a mojito I would have ordered a mojito.
Yesterday, we went to Duck House in Monterey Park for lunch, which is one of the few places left, I’m guessing, where you can get Peking Duck without ordering it a day in advance. For their signature dish, I’d have to say they deserve only a B-. The skin was crispy and perfect, and yes that’s the most important thing, but the meat was tasteless. But what’s a boy to do — Quan Jude has disappeared from the San Gabriel Valley, and that had always been our place for Peking Duck. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, “You, sir, are no Quan Jude.” We also had a stir-fried lamb dish, tasty but not lamby. I like my lamb a little lamby, otherwise I worry that they’re feeding me beef. We had some excellent crab there, some greasy noodles, and a hot red bean paste dessert that was probably the best thing we had.
But the true star of this eating vacation was Azeen’s Afghanistan restaurant in Pasadena. What a find! We had the sambosa appetizer (like an Indian samosa, but lighter . . . and indeed, much of Afghani food, if this restaurant is representative, is a lighter, more delicate version than its equivalent in Indian cuisine). For main courses we had the mixed kebabs, the eggplant with onions and tomatoes, the spinach-onion-and-garlic stew, and an amazing butternut squash dish. Mark of a superb restaurant: I think we each had a different favorite dish. This is a restaurant that gets everything right, and I’m sure we’ll be coming back.
Not sure what’s on the menu for today. Breakfast, for starters. All this rich food has been doing a dance on my innards, so once I’m back in Bako, I’ll probably subsist on smoothies for the rest of the week. Smoothies, the perfect diet food (you just have to make them yourself to control the ingredients).
D.
