Kajitsu: Fine Day, Fine Meal

I sidled up to the bar, the seats of choice for observing a masterful hand at work. Kevin, my dining companion for the evening, had already arrived and was speaking softly to Chef Masato Nishihara. Unlike Urasawa, Nishihara was not particularly talkative, but both adopted the humble shyness of Japanese artists. Kevin had emailed me a few weeks ago to join him for an impromptu meal at the only Japanese shojin-ryori restaurant with two Michelin stars in America. "Buddhist vegetarian food?" I wondered to myself. Given my recent experience with Vietnamese Buddhist cooking in San Francisco, I jumped at the invitation.

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When eating with Kevin, there is no real choice. We ordered the more extensive tasting menu of the two with accompanying sake pairing ($34). The Hana meal set included nine courses for $70, to which we added two supplemental dishes. While $70 may seem like a steal for a nine course tasting menu, you have to consider how much money you save from having no meat or seafood dishes. While I'm not entirely certain that shojin style cuisine is completely vegan, I didn't detect any trace of animal products in the food.


Terrine of Autumn Vegetables, chestnut crumbs, parsnip puree
Azumaichi (junmai ginjo)

The first course was the prettiest of the evening. Varied and complex vegetable patterns peaked through a gelee, set on a carved plate of wood. The colors were meant to evoke changing seasons. I ate from left to right, while Kevin went the opposite direction. It was a refreshing start to the meal, but too many textures and flavors to form a coherent impact. However, visually, this dish was stunning and showed precise execution that I would expect for the rest of the meal. Kevin remarked at the oddness of parsnip in a Japanese dish. The first sake of the night started fairly sweet, a decent pairing to this floral dish.


Red Miso Soup, maitake mushroom tempura, Japanese eggplant

The dense color of the soup comes from the aging process for the miso, which supposedly enhances the umami flavors and brininess of the soup. While the soup itself was pleasant, the highlight of this dish was the maitake tempura, perched a top a bundle of nasu and elevating it above the liquid. I have never seen maitake tempura, but the crispiness paired with the meaty mushroom and a hint of Japanese mustard convinced me to try this one at home.


Grilled Nama-Fu, miso ($9)

Our set menu was interrupted by the first of our supplements. Nama-fu is wheat gluten, a common vegan meat substitute. It can be formed into different shapes. Here, the lighter block is mixed with rice flour, while the darker one has contains millet flour. Honestly, both tasted the same to me. Both had the texture of a grilled mochi, pliable on the outside, chewy and toothsome on the inside.


Aburi Age ($6)

It's somewhat disingenuous to call this a simple dish. While it may seem simple, the execution in keeping a crisp exterior with a spongy center was elegant in it's simplicity. The pairing with green onions and soy made this one of my favorite selections of the evening. Pictured in the back is also the optional thickened soy sauce and shichimi pepper.


House Udon, goma-dare
Born (junmai daiginjo)

The difference between house-made udon and frozen udon is akin to the difference fresh and dried pasta. Here, each noodle had the proper bite and bounce. Dipped, soba style, in a mixture of sesame sauce, green onion, and chaoyte, it made a little mess on my shirt. But the flavors were so fresh, I could easily eat this udon for a meal on its own. The sake had a dry, rice flavor with a rice aroma.


Slow Simmered Taro, Carrot, Mizuna, Kabocha, Tofu, Burdock
Sasaichi (junmai)

It's impossible to eat at Kajitsu without marveling at the colors of the dishes. Chef Nishihara trained in kaiseki dining, where presentation is an dominant aspect of the meal. Beauty in simplicity could be a mantra painted on the wall in detailed brush strokes. Did I mention that the Chef signed the menu after the meal with a calligraphy brush? This dish is a composite of various vegetables, each cooked separately to varied doneness and compiled in a soy broth. The colors struck me immediately, and I mistook that bright redness for a tomato. I bit into it and found the sweetness of a carrot. The lump in the back is satoimo, taro. I especially enjoyed the topping of yuzu shavings.


Assorted Grilled Vegetables, smoked soy sauce, hibiscus leaf, matsutake mushroom croquet, nama-fu
Kokuryu (ginjo)

The main course was actually the most disappointing. While each component was good on its own right, I felt that the plate lacked a unifying theme. The croquet, an intriguing ball of textures, could have been a separate dish on its own. The nama-fu made a reappearance. Had I known it would've been part of the tasting course, I would not have ordered it separately. However, this time, the cubes of wheat gluten were topped with soba sauce and a dash of wasabi, a flavor profile I though matched better than the soy sauce and shichimi. Since this was the main course, the kokuryu sake was served in a larger glass. Although I can't say much for the pairing, the sake was well-timed because it was my favorite of the night and I had the most of it to drink.



Hijiki Rice, black sesame, konnyaku, puffed rice, house pickles
Daishichi (kimoto)

While you usually won't see a rice course on a tasting menu, I wasn't surprised to see this dish as part of the kaiseki meal. The rice itself was cooked to perfection, as can be expected. Flavors of the hijiki seaweed permeated the rice. I added a few spoonfuls of the puffed rice for texture, but it was unnecessary. Eating the rice with the accompanying pickles, I imagined creating gourmet onigiri, each filled with a different pickled center. The daishichi sake returned to a dryness, considering it no longer needed strong rice notes to pair with a rice dish.


Photo credit: KevinEats
Sweet Potato Kinton, coconut tofu cream

The dessert course was a Japanese confection made of sweet potato with a center of coconut "cream." Biting into it, my first taste reaction was actually renkon or lotus. The waitress didn't mention any lotus among the ingredients, so something about the combination of flavors gave me that sensation.



Matcha, Kyoto Kagizen-yoshifusa candies

According to Kevin, Kagizen-yoshifusa is a renowned confectioner in Kyoto. The tiny candies we received were flavored green tea, plain, and shiso. Each had a burst of sweetness and quickly dissolved to nothing on your tongue, especially when followed by a sip of the freshly made green tea. Chef Nishihara made each bowl himself with exquisite care. Even as the end to a long meal, the tea had an accompanying ceremony.


Chef Masato Nishihara preparing the post meal tea.

Taken from the website, "Kajitsu means 'fine day' or 'day of celebration' in Japanese. We have chosen the name Kajitsu hoping that a visit here will always be a special occasion for our guests."

This principle is reflected in the friendly service we encountered. Considering service, decor, and general ambiance play such a definitive role in Michelin ratings, I can see how this restaurant garnered such acclaim. Yet if I were to compare this two star establishment to the other Japanese two star restaurant I've tried, Urasawa would be a step above. I can't say surely whether that meant Kajitsu should be lowered or Urasawa raised, although it's a moot point now that Michelin is out of Los Angeles. No matter the rating, this is an excellent place to bring a vegetarian or if you feel like a detox. I noticed the lack of meat, but I didn't miss it. Kevin and I thought we would walk out hungry, but we were plenty satisfied.

Kajitsu
kajitsunyc.com
414 E. 9th St. (between 1st and A)
East Village, 10009
(212) 228-4873
$50/$70 tasting menus

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Foodbuzz Tastemaster: Kikkoman Karaage Coating Mix

One of my favorite sides with a bowl of udon is a plate of chicken karaage. Unlike Korean fried chicken, Japanese fried chicken is not inexplicably expensive. But if you're looking to save even more money, here's a box kit.

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Karaage, at its simplest, is soy, ginger and garlic marinated meat or vegetable fried in potato starch and wheat flour. It's a comfort to see that's mostly what the ingredient list on the box consisted of.



Though Kikkoman suggests chicken too, I kept to the classic chicken. I happily noted that the recipe on the box suggests dark meat chicken thigh. Dark meat is certainly the preferred cut for something like this. And if you prefer white meat, you probably should stick to KFC and Popeye's.


The box contains two coating packets, each sufficient for 1 1/2 lbs of chicken. It's a simple shake and fry recipe. Though the serving instructions are to pan fry, and that's what I ended up doing, I imagine that a proper deep fry is really the way to go. In fact, the instructions are so simple, the recipe doesn't merit repeating here. Instead, in the future I think I'll try variations with vegetables like burdock, carrots, and sweet potato. I do have this note of caution however, the top picture of my chicken in the pan is overcrowded. It is imperative you leave enough space in the pan so that the coating comes out properly crisp instead of soggy or powdery.

The chicken fries quickly in two to four minutes. While Kikkoman suggests serving with Kikkoman banded ponzu, I thought the chicken was salty enough in the coating mix and went best with just a squeeze of lemon. Though it may not be traditional, a quick dust of Japanese shichimi red pepper gives the chicken a spicy kick while still keeping oriental in flavor.

*I received my Kikkoman Karaage Soy-Ginger Seasoned Coating Mix as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program.
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KRAKOW: MY LOVE AFFAIR (AND A WEDDING)

I heard the Trabant long before I saw it. I even smelled the Trabant long before I saw it. And when the cloud of exhaust fumes eventually cleared and I did see it, I wondered if it might be wiser to feign illness rather than get in for a tour of the Nowa Huta industrial district on the outskirts of Krakow.

But I needn’t have worried. Driver-guide Lukasz’s wife was expecting their first child any day, and there was no way the dreadlocked gentle giant who just about fitted behind the wheel was going to jeopardise being at the birth by risking a run-in with a tram. How Mrs. Lukasz felt about being driven to hospital in the middle of the night in a plastic car with an engine notorious for overheating and a plastic shell prone to melting, I don’t know. On the plus side, after inhaling all those gas oil fumes en route she wouldn’t have needed an epidural.

The sprawling Nowa Huta (New Steel Mill) was Stalin’s ‘gift’ to Krakow, where the England soccer team will be based for Euro 2012. It was a new workers’ city of towering tenements that aimed to redress much of the socio-economic imbalance in the old town where the stinking rich had for centuries lorded it over the smelly poor. But I don’t suppose Uncle Joe received many thank-you letters from the dispossessed farmers, generations of whom had worked the land owned by the Catholic Church on which building began in 1949.

Crazy Guides (www.crazyguides.com) offers two-hour Trabant tours of Nowa Huta (€33/£28 per person), and if you get a driver-guide as amiable and knowledgeable as Lukasz you’ll agree time does indeed fly when you’re enjoying yourself. Highlights include a visit to an apartment furnished in Soviet-era style where you can toast your good luck with a glass of vodka that you weren’t brought up under Communist rule and watch a propaganda film on a crackly old TV set. Such mind-numbing fare was staple viewing for Nowa Huta’s 200,000 residents, 38,000 of whom worked in the steel mill, but at least they didn’t have to put up with EastEnders, or they’d have been queuing to dive into the blast furnace.

I’ve been going to Krakow for long weekends several times a year since I first went in September 2008 on the recommendation of my friend Justyna Samolyk who’s from there but lives and studies in Belfast. I was back in Poland’s top tourist city three weeks ago (my 17th visit) for Justyna’s marriage to Belfast boy Brendan Bell, another friend of mine, in the splendid Church of St Augustine and John the Baptist. Call me a sentimental fool, but as I was present when they first met in the Oak Lounge of the Errigle Inn on the Ormeau Road it was an especially moving moment to see them exchanging their vows.

A moving moment of an altogether different kind came two minutes before Justyna and her dad walked down the aisle when usher Brendy McKeown, whose sole responsibility on the day was to seat the bride’s family and friends on the right and the groom’s on the left, suddenly realised he’d boobed and triggered a mad scramble to swap sides.

There was no such panic as I sat sipping a beer in the sunshine in the 13th century main square, Rynek Glowny, above, a couple of days before the ceremony. Weddings in Poland are marathon affairs that can last four days, so I was taking it nice and easy when a little old lady came over to my table, babbled something and thrust a pamphlet into my free hand. On the front were two photos side by side, one showing a big fat grumpy-looking guy with “PRZED” above it and the other of his thinner, happier self labelled “PO”. My Polish isn’t great, but I recognise “BEFORE” and “AFTER” when I see them. She’d given me a flyer for WeightWatchers.

This might have had something to do with my liking for Poland’s national dish, bigos, which has left me with a bit of a paunch. Bigos is a stodgy but delicious stew you can stand your spoon up in that contains chunks of beef, pork, venison, wild boar, smoked bacon, several sorts of sausage, sauerkraut, shredded white cabbage, onion, wild mushrooms, caraway seeds, black pepper and red wine. If there’s room, you can add a bayleaf. All this is simmered on a low heat over a couple of days or more, and left-over cuts of meat from other meals are thrown in as it bubbles away. The end result is God’s gift to gluttons, though I prefer to say gourmets.

Every Polish mother takes huge pride in her particular version of bigos, and every young Pole working in Ireland and Britain brings back a big frozen lump of it in their hold luggage after a visit home. As long as their return flights aren’t delayed they’ve nothing to worry about and can look forward to a traditional feast with their friends or housemates. But if that stuff starts to melt and leaks from its Tupperware container, the airport sniffer dogs go nuts. Worse, it takes about three hot washes to remove the stains from clothes, and even then they still smell of stew.

The best bigos I’ve had in Krakow is served not in a fancy, expensive restaurant but in cheap and cheerful Kuchnia u Doroty (Dorothy’s Kitchen) where the locals eat, at 25 Miodowa Street in the Jewish Quarter, Kazimierz. If you’re really hungry, ask for the potato pancakes (placki) with goulash which will have you loosening your belt before you’re even halfway through, so don’t order a starter. If you’re just peckish, have some zurek (sour dough) soup followed by a plate of pierogi (stuffed dumplings). The WeightWatchers lady would approve of Dorothy’s beetroot soup (barszcz) with little mushroom dumplings, but if you go for this, sit very close to the table to avoid getting bright red drips in your lap. Barszcz is delicious, or as online reviewer Natalie wrote, “really tasty with a capital S”.

Another great Kazimierz restaurant is Ariel, above, at 18 Szeroka Street. The website critiques are mixed, with some people loving it, some hating it, and others moaning that it’s a rip-off, but I’ve had dinner there several times and have no complaints about the Jewish cuisine or the prices. In fact, it’s worth the cost of the flight just to try the speciality of the house, Berdytchov soup, a heavenly concoction of beef, beans, honey, cinnamon and paprika, the recipe for which is a closely-guarded secret going back generations. I don’t think even waterboarding would get it out of them. An added bonus of dining in Ariel is the live Klezmer music provided by some of the country’s most distinguished musicians while you eat (try the stuffed goose necks).

Steven Spielberg and the stars of his 1993 Oscar-winning Schindler’s List frequented Ariel when they were filming in Krakow, which is home to the enamelware factory where German industrialist Oskar Schindler employed and protected Jews from the Nazis. Just over 68,000 Jews lived in Krakow, mostly in Kazimierz, before German troops entered the city on September 1, 1939; eight months later, 53,000 of them were ordered out, ostensibly to be resettled in the surrounding countryside. In March 1941 the Krakow ghetto was established in the Podgorze district on the other side of the Vistula river, and the 15,000 Jews left in Kazimierz were force marched there to live four families to an apartment in an area that had been home to just 3,000 people. Conditions became even more appalling in October of the same year when 6,000 Jews from outlying villages were moved in. The systematic ‘liquidation’ of the ghetto took place between October 1942 and the following March when 19,000 people were transported in cattle trucks to slave labour and extermination camps. On March 13 and 14 some 2,000 starving souls considered unfit for work were shot dead in the streets. Today, around 1,000 Jews live in Krakow.

Diagonally opposite Ariel is the Remuh cemetery, established in 1533. Located beside the synagogue of the same name, its gravestones were smashed to pieces by Hitler’s henchmen and used for paving, while the cemetery itself was turned into a rubbish dump. Years later, many of the stones were recovered and put back together, and those beyond saving were incorporated in one of the renovated graveyard’s interior walls, below, as a reminder of man’s inhumanity to man.

If any greater reminder were needed, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau where the Nazis murdered 1.1 million Jews and 200,000 Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies and members of other ethnic groups is a hugely sobering experience that proves overwhelming for many visitors. Tickets including return transport and a guided tour of Auschwitz, 65 kilometres west of Krakow, are available from most hotel reception desks and several excursion agencies throughout town for around €40/£35 per person.

Krakow can be bone-chillingly cold in winter and swelteringly hot in summer. The average high in January is 0C/33F and in July and August it’s 21C/71F (it was  minus 14C when I took my Trabant tour in February and 20C for the wedding last month). The temperate spring, summer and autumn conditions make these the best times to visit, when life is lived outdoors and lunching and dining alfresco are a joy. Better still, the city authorities are intolerant of rowdy stag and hen parties that have made Dublin’s Temple Bar, Amsterdam and Prague such a pain, so you’re unlikely to be bothered by boozed-up buffoons. That’s not to say stags and hens aren’t welcome. Rather, they’re simply expected to behave and show a bit of respect for those who haven’t gone there to have bums and boobs flashed in their faces.

The best-known and most photographed face in Krakow belongs to sculptor Igor Mitoraj’s work, Eros Bendato (Eros Bound, otherwise known as the Big Head), in the main square. It’s hollow, meaning you can climb inside and stick your head through the eye holes for a quirky pic. Another popular pose, particularly with kids, is to stick a hand in one of the nostrils, which makes for a quirky pick. The bronze Big Head, below, serves as both a piece of art and a meeting place for friends who might be staying in different hotels or get separated while wandering around. It’s right in front of the Vis a Vis bar where you can sit and enjoy a pint of lager for just 8 zloties (€1.90/£1.70) — the cheapest beer in the square — while watching the world go by. Next door is Harris Piano Jazz Bar, the funkiest live music venue in town which is perfect for starting or ending an evening.

The old town (Stare Miasto), a World Heritage Site that was spared the destruction of the Luftwaffe’s bombs, is home to some fabulous restaurants. My long-time favourite is Miod i Wino (Honey and Wine) at 32 Slawkowska Street, an olde worlde joint that wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval era movie. It’s not for vegetarians, which is the case with most restaurants, as the menu is almost exclusively meat, poultry, fowl and game. The speciality dish, presented with great fanfare, is “meats skewered on a flaming sword and served by a monk to the sound of a trumpet”. I’m not convinced of the monk’s bona fides, but the dish is exactly as described and its arrival always gets a big cheer, as does the resident traditional music group.

The entertainment is a lot livelier in cellar restaurant Morskie Oko (8 Plac Szczepanski, just off the square) where the focus is on regional cuisine and diners at long tables are treated to up-tempo folk music while whooping dancers in splendid folk costume whirl like Dervishes. Pod Wawelem (26 Gertrudy Street, opposite the impressive Wawel Castle) provided some impromptu entertainment when a four-piece Spanish rock band sat down near me and proceeded, it appeared, to order everything on the menu, washed down with an endless supply of lager. Loaded plates and overflowing litre tankards kept arriving and were emptied in record time, and I got glared at a couple of times for gawping, not at the three big beefy fellas shovelling food down their throats but at the sole skinny female member of the band who was effortlessly keeping up with the guys. I reckon she must have been sneakily  feeding a Great Dane under the table. Either that or she has hollow legs.

As with Pod Wawelem, below, which serves huge portions of just about every animal that stepped aboard Noah’s Ark, it’s best to make a reservation and avoid disappointment if you want to eat in Krakow’s consistently best restaurant, Miod Malina (40 Grodzka Street). I’ve dined there as often as I have in Miod i Wino, and I’ve yet to find fault with anything. The spare ribs from the wood-burning oven are out of this world. So are the banana and apple toasted sandwiches with a honey dip in Cafe Zakatek, a little hidden gem opposite the bike hire shop up the alleyway at 2 Grodzka Street. This is where I have breakfast every time I’m in Krakow, and I swore to myself I’d never tell anyone about it, but the more customers Zakatek gets the more tips the charming girls who work there will get. As long as it isn’t invaded by hungry hordes while I’m sipping my tea and reading my book, I don’t mind revealing the secret.

Don’t bother trying to read in Bar Singer (Plac Nowy, in Kazimierz) unless you’ve brought your night vision goggles. Here it’s all red velvet curtains and candles, which gives the impression you’ve walked in on a seance. However, the only spirits you’ll encounter are in bottles behind the bar, though I have seen a couple of customers who appeared not to know if they were in this world or the next.

That said, it’s by far the coolest — and darkest — bar in town and the preferred hip hangout for artists, actors, writers and musicians, none of whom I know from Adam, but going by the welcome some receive and the number of drinks sent over by admirers they must be somebodies. If you’re into people watching, grab a stool at the bar or grope your way to a table (they have sewing machines on them, hence the bar’s name) and settle down for a fascinating free show while the most eclectic selection of world music plays from the speakers. Those who enjoy a glass of wine should order a double as the measures are so miserly (100ml) they’d make Ebenezer Scrooge blush.

If you’re looking for something to read, the Massolit second-hand English language bookshop at 4 Felicjanek Street, five minutes’ walk from the main square, is a bibliophile’s dream, but resist the temptation of buying too much if you’re flying with Ryanair — one paperback over the baggage limit and they’ll throw the book at you. Occupying a former shop and next door apartment, it has more than 20,000 titles on its ceiling-high shelves. The first time I dropped by there were so many people walking around carrying stepladders I thought they had the decorators in.

Don’t mention steps to the guy who does the cleaning at the 13th century Wieliczka Salt Mine — he’s got 378 of them to sweep every morning before the first busload of tourists arrives. After the anti-clockwise descent to the first level, at 64 metres, visitors (1.2 million a year) have been leaning to the left for so long that they find themselves walking in a circle when they eventually set foot on the salt floor. The tour (buy your €38/£33 ticket in Krakow to avoid the queues at the on-site kiosk) including transport and an English-speaking guide lasts 90 minutes and covers a distance of 2.5 kilometres, taking you to a depth of 135 metres where the temperature is a naturally constant 14C. Farther down, yet still above sea level as the town of Wieliczka is on an elevated site, there’s a private sanatorium for asthma, allergy and skin condition sufferers.

A 30-minute bus ride from the centre of Krakow, the mine is a mind-blowing marvel. The Chapel of Saint Kinga, 101 metres underground, makes the first century Jordanians who fashioned the Treasury at Petra in a sandstone rockface look like amateurs compared to the miners who dug this vast cathedral out of salt. More recently, a statue of Pope John Paul II, carved from a block of the stuff you sprinkle on your chips by miner-sculptor Stanislaw Aniol and installed in the chapel in 1999, has become an even more revered attraction since his beatification four months ago.

The former Archbishop of Krakow died in 2005, but statues, portraits and posters throughout the city, like that above outside the Holy Cross Church announcing a series of commemorative masses, are evidence of the special place he occupies in the hearts of his fellow Poles. Karol Jozef Wojtyla loved Krakow, and was loved in return. I love Krakow, too, which is why I return so often. Like the 40-second elevator ride back to the surface of the salt mine, every visit to my favourite weekend destination is an uplifting experience.

˜ A regular shuttle train connects Krakow’s John Paul II airport with the city centre. Tickets for the 18-minute journey cost 10 zloties (€2.40/£2.10) on board.

˜ See www.cracow-life.com, www.inyourpocket.com/poland/krakow and www.krakow.pl

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Hometown Favorites: PPQ Dungeness Island

I suppose referring to San Francisco as my "hometown" would offend some actual city natives, but I'm sure getting tired of telling people I'm from "right next to Oakland, California." I speak expansively; I like to think that I am a product of the entire Bay Area, despite how little time I spent in the "city" when I was growing up. Still, if I'm looking for dungeness crab in San Francisco, there are only to places I go--R&G Lounge in Chinatown for Cantonese salt and pepper crab and PPQ Dungeness Island for Vietnamese roasted garlic crab.





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The restaurant is located in the Outer Richmond neighborhood. It's not particularly accessible by anything except a car and finding parking could be a real deterrent to coming here. Nonetheless, it looks like they expanded the restaurant since I had been here last, so you may have a much easier time getting a table. I had no trouble calling on Thursday to get a ten person reservation for Sunday evening though.



The above picture is PPQ's famed garlic roasted crab. Even though it isn't dungeness crab season, the flavor was still phenomenal. Part of the crab eating experience is the shell and the work. Personally, I always think that the reward tastes sweeter when it's earned with stainless steel crackers, digital dexterity, and your teeth (a bad idea for your teeth but oh so satisfying).





PPQ also has a peppercorn crab (pictured above), drunken crab, curry crab, and spicy crab, along with several other common Vietnamese dishes. Honestly, I couldn't distinguish much between the roast crab and the peppercorn; both are delicious. The restaurant is confident enough to name the place after its crab.



The other dish that you must get at PPQ Dungeness Island is the garlic noodles. I don't know how the Vietnamese do it, but their garlic noodles are so satisfying they could make a meal in themselves. In a glance, they look like plain noodles with nothing in them, but the flavors of those plain looking noodles will astound you.



PPQ Dungeness Island

2332 Clement St

(between 24th Ave & 25th Ave)

San Francisco, CA 94121

(415) 386-8266

Crab priced seasonally



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Buddhists Know How to Vegan: Golden Era Vegetarian, San Francisco

Let's be honest here. If you're a vegetarian, or even more astonishingly, vegan, you limit yourself from an incredible diversity of food out there. Whatever their reasons for not eating meat, I don't know any vegetarians who can deny the appeal of meat and animal products. I generally have a live and let live attitude towards vegetarians, but my personal stance is that if you're going to be a vegetarian, then give up on the meat substitutes and embrace cuisines that are traditionally vegetarian.



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There are plenty of cultures that are vegetarian, either by ideology or necessity. A good example of perfectly acceptable vegan cuisine would be Ethiopian. Many of the traditional dishes have been refined over generations without meat. Indian cuisine is also very amenable to vegetarian options. An example of bad vegetarian food is fake meat, which tends to predominate Western cuisines. I'm just generally against food posing as something else, such as the M Cafe muffaletta. Tofurkey, Boca burgers, soy cheese, fakon, fake meat is usually awful. If you're going to be a vegetarian, then embrace vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits, all the diversity that the Earth has to offer. Stop trying to recapture something (meat and cheese mostly) that you've voluntarily given up.



There is one exception. Instead of merely tolerating it, I completely embrace Buddhist vegetarian cooking. True, Buddhist cuisine has fake meat too, usually in the form of soy and wheat gluten, but it has perfected the form over hundreds of years. You'd be shocked at how indistinguishable some dishes are to their carnivorous cousins. Usually my Buddhist vegetarian experience is Chinese, but I had an opportunity to explore Vietnamese vegetarian at Golden Era in San Francisco.







The menu consists of common Vietnamese dishes, pho, bun hue, lemongrass chicken (pictured above). In fact, hardly anything from the menu identified the restaurant as vegan. I had the lemongrass chicken, which tasted a little more like pork than chicken, but still tasted meaty nonetheless. It was delicious and it made me think that I could be a vegetarian if I had easy access to this kind of food. The only thing I was a little suspicious of was the fish sauce. As you can imagine, it's very hard to get the fishy flavor without any fish. Instead, it was sweeter than usual and relied on more of a vinegar base than fish.



If you didn't think you could be a vegetarian before, I implore you to search out cuisines that specialize in vegetarian cooking. You really don't need fake burgers and hot dogs, which are often super processed and not any healthier for you. Embrace the flavors and ingredients of the Earth. And if you really need that meat fix, go with people who know what they're doing.



Golden Era Vegetarian

goldeneravegetarian.com

572 O'Farrell St

Btwn Leavenworth & Jones St

(415) 673-3136



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THE MOVIE THAT PUT IRELAND ON THE TOURIST MAP

My favourite line from my all-time favourite movie is: “He’ll regret it till his dying day, if ever he lives that long.” Fans of The Quiet Man will immediately recognise it as having been uttered by fierce-tempered farmer ‘Red’ Will Danaher, played to blustering perfection by Victor McLaglen.

Danaher is the bullying big brother of beautiful redhead Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara) who steals the heart of retired boxer Sean ‘Trooper Thorn’ Thornton (John Wayne) who’d killed an opponent in the ring in the States. Despite Danaher’s best spoiling efforts and aided and abetted by the colourful and conniving villagers of fictional Inisfree in the west of Ireland, Sean, who was born there but grew up in Pittsburgh, woos and weds Mary Kate and then has an epic fistfight with his new brother-in-law.

Based on the 1933 short story Green Rushes by County Kerry novelist Maurice Walsh, The Quiet Man was director John Ford’s pet project and his cinematic love letter to his parents’ homeland. “It will never make a penny,” was one snooty studio reader’s opinion of Frank S Nugent’s 179-page screenplay. I hope he enjoyed eating his hat. The film cost $1.75 million to make, took in $3.8 million in its first year and has earned umpteen times that in video and DVD sales and rentals.

Shot in the summer of 1951 mainly in and around Cong, County Mayo, and released the following year, it sparked a phenomenal influx of tourists eager to see the sights so gorgeously portrayed by cinematographers Winton C Hoch and Archie Stout. Their work earned them Academy Awards (Ford, whose real name was Sean Aloysius Feeney, got the Best Director Oscar) and put the town and county on the map.

REV'S RES: The Reverend and Mrs. Playfair's house

Today, the coachloads of Quiet Man pilgrims who descend on Cong year-round are thrilled to find not much has changed since the cast and crew packed up and headed home. Most of the buildings featured in the film, such as the Reverend Playfair’s ivy-covered house, are still there, and you’ll see fans, many of them moist-eyed Irish-Americans, wandering around doing more pointing than a bricklayer.

The house first appears when courting couple Sean and Mary Kate are out walking under the watchful eye of pipe-puffing mischief-maker, matchmaker and bookmaker Michaleen Og Flynn, who’s following in his horse-drawn trap. Fed up with the rigid formality, Sean spots a tandem bicycle propped against a window, tells Mary Kate to jump on and they go racing off down the street. The house is also seen near the end of the film when the Rev Playfair (Arthur Shields) collects his £15 winnings from his boss, the Anglican Bishop (Philip Stainton), who’d foolishly backed Danaher to win the fight.

Playfair, a former amateur pugilist with a big collection of scrapbooks full of boxing articles and pictures, is the only person in the village who knows about Trooper Thorn killing his opponent, but the tragic secret is safe with him.

Look! There’s Pat Cohan’s pub, where Michaleen’s horse, Napoleon, comes to an automatic abrupt halt, nearly catapulting him out of his seat and prompting the line: “I think ye have more sense than meself!”

PAT'LL DO NICELY: The most famous pub in Ireland

Michaleen was played by rubber-faced pixie Barry Fitzgerald, real name William Joseph Shields (brother of Arthur), who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Father Fitzgibbon in the 1944 tear-jerker Going My Way. However, his ‘gold’ statuette came to a sticky end. While practising his golf swing he knocked the head off it (during World War Two they were made of plaster because of metal shortages) and had to glue it back on.

Cohan’s is where Sean and Danaher take a break from their fistfight, which resumes when the latter comes crashing backwards through the closed front door after throwing a pint of porter in the Yank’s face, for which he gets a piledriver of a punch in his own. The pub was actually a dressed-up grocer’s shop and the interiors were shot in Hollywood, so the punch that was thrown in California puts Danaher on his backside 5,000 miles away in the street in Cong. Cohan’s opened as a fully-licensed bar in 2008.

Nearby is the house where dying man Dan Tobin makes a miraculous recovery, springing from his bed while being read the last rites when he hears the crowd outside running to see the big fight. Hopping down the street pulling his trousers on over his long nightshirt, it’s the biggest comeback since Lazarus. White-bearded Tobin was played by Francis Ford, the director’s brother, and the young priest praying by his bedside, Fr Paul, was Maureen O’Hara’s brother, James.

DAN DOMAIN: 'Dying' man Dan Tobin's cottage

Ashford Castle, on the near outskirts of Cong, is one of Ireland’s poshest, most palatial and magnificent hotels, and for the several weeks of filming it was home to Ford, Wayne and O’Hara. It was also home last weekend to me and my pal John Morrison, another lifelong Quiet Man fan, when we made a pilgrimage we’ve been promising ourselves for years. This was our base while we toured Cong and the surrounding countryside, visiting the places seen in the movie.

The castle dates from 1228 when the Anglo-Norman de Burgo clan who’d recently kicked the backsides of the native O’Connors decided they liked it there and put down roots. Three-and-a-half centuries later, in 1589, the de Burgos got a taste of their own medicine when English nobleman Lord Bingham and his boys decided they liked it, too, and sent them packing. In 1715 the Oranmore-Browne family took over, and in 1852 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness of the brewing dynasty moved in, extending the estate to 26,000 acres and adding two Victorian-style extensions either side of the French-style chateau. In 1939 the castle became a luxury hotel, and in 1970 a large part of the grounds were given over to a golf course.

WHERE STARS STAYED: Stately Ashford Castle hotel

The management are to be applauded for finding and recruiting the most professional, courteous and attentive staff I’ve ever encountered anywhere. As is the case with any successful business, the people customers deal with are the most valuable asset, and Ashford has hired the best of the best.

Several scenes in the film were shot on the castle estate, including that in which fly-fishing parish priest Father Peter Lonergan (Ward Bond) almost hooks the monster salmon he’s been after for years (out of shot, local man Jim Morrin was in the river tugging on the line). If only Mary Kate hadn’t come along moaning about her new husband bunking down in a sleeping bag – “with buttons!” – Fr Lonergan might have landed it. Bond, an epileptic who was rejected by the draft during WW2, was a close friend of Wayne and bequeathed to him the borrowed shotgun with which his buddy had once accidentally shot him.

Danaher’s house, looking much as it did except for the addition of a front door porch and garage door, is on the estate, too. This is where Sean comes calling with flowers in hand and Michaleen in tow to seek the irascible squire’s permission to court his sister, only to be sent off with a flea in his ear as a tearful Mary Kate looks forlornly from the left hand upstairs window. The third fairway of the castle golf course, which didn’t exist in 1951, is where Sean first spots the barefooted Mary Kate herding sheep with a black and white collie (Jacko, owned by local shepherd John Murphy).

MUCH THE SAME: Will and Mary Kate Danaher's house

This area is also seen in the run-up to the big fight when Sean, who’s had enough of Mary Kate’s bickering over her unpaid dowry, drags her along the ground by the collar, followed by the crowd. In a continuation of this scene but in a different location close to the Danaher house known as the Meadow Field, Sean dumps his wife at the feet of her brother who’s harvesting the hay with his workers and says: “You can take your sister back. It’s your custom, not mine. No fortune, no marriage. We call it quits.”

St. Mary’s Protestant church, whose exterior was used in the “patty fingers” scene where Sean is told off by Michaleen for scooping holy water from the font for Mary Kate to bless herself, is on the road out of the estate into Cong. But sadly, wealthy widow Sarah Tillane’s (Mildred Natwick) house, where Sean seals the deal to buy White O’ Mornin’, the cottage in which he and seven generations of his family were born, no longer exists, having been demolished years ago to make way for a car park for visitors to the estate. Saddest of all, the long-neglected White O’ Mornin’, by the Failmore River 13 miles west of Cong, has been reduced to a barely recognisable pile of rubble. It’s a crying shame.

Ten miles southwest of Cong between Maam Cross and Oughterard is Leam Bridge, also known as the Quiet Man Bridge and unchanged in 60 years. This is where Sean sits and views White O’ Mornin’ while his late mother’s voice reminisces: “Don’t you remember, Seanie, and how it was? The road led up past the chapel and it wound and wound. And there was the field where Dan Tobin’s bull chased you. It was a lovely little house, Seaneen. And the roses! Well, your father used to tease me about them, but he was that proud of them, too.” It would bring a tear to a glass eye.

SPANTASTIC: Leam Bridge, aka The Quiet Man Bridge

Drive 22 miles southeast of Cong and you’ll come to the now disused but still accessible Ballyglunin railway station which in the film was called Castletown. It’s here that Sean gets off the green steam train at the start and is immediately surrounded by curious rail staff and villagers as narrator Fr. Lonergan clears his throat and sets the scene in voiceover, saying: “Now then, I’ll begin at the beginnin’. A fine soft day in the spring it was when the train pulled into Castletown, three hours late as usual, and himself got off. He didn’t have the look of an American tourist at all about him. Not a camera on him. And what was worse, not even a fishing rod.”

After asking directions to Inisfree and being sent off in all directions, first by the conductor (“Do you see that road over there? Don’t take that one, it’ll do you no good”) and then by a fishwife (“My sister’s third young one is living at Inisfree, and she’d be only too happy to show you the road — if she was here”), Michaleen appears, lifts Sean’s case and says: “Inisfree? This way.” And so they set off from the station in Michaleen’s trap and the adventure begins, to the comedic melody of “The Rakes Of Mallow”.

WHERE IT BEGINS: Disused Ballyglunin railway station

If you want to see Lettergesh Beach, where the Inisfree horse race meeting was filmed, drive 25 miles west of Cong to Renvyle, where the best view is from in front of Lettergesh post office. It’s during the races that Michaleen and Fr. Lonergan launch their plot, on which the movie hangs, to persuade Danaher to let Sean court Mary Kate.

The Quiet Man isn’t everyone’s cup of tea — or in Michaleen’s case, glass of whiskey. There are those who dismiss it as a mawkish dip into an over-romanticised world of shenanigans and blarney that never existed except in John Ford’s mind, but stroll through Cong on any day of the week and you’ll see there are many more devotees than detractors, all walking around with movie locations maps in their hands and a smiles on their faces.

Yesterday, the biggest smile in Cong was worn by Maureen O’Hara herself as the 91-year-old screen legend joined thousands of fans celebrating the film’s 60th anniversary. Fittingly, by her side were John Wayne’s daughter Marisa and his granddaughter Laura Monoz Bottini, and watching from the sidelines was 78-year-old local man John Joe Mullin, who in 1951 worked in Ashford Castle and served Ms O’Hara her breakfast every morning in the same room she slept in last night. “It was a lovely job and she was a lovely lady,” said an emotional John Joe. “Very, very gracious in her manners.”

Six decades after the cameras stopped rolling, the film clearly occupies a special place in the hearts of the people of Cong because, like Trooper Thorn, and the scenery so spectacularly portrayed in Ford’s fond salute to Ireland, The Quiet Man still packs a punch.

TAKE THAT: Sean lands a right hook to Danaher's chin

I’ll leave you with an anecdote I was told in Pat Cohan’s pub. On a day off from filming, John Wayne travelled to Croke Park in Dublin with a member of the crew to see the fiercely-fought All Ireland hurling semi-final between Wexford and Galway. At half-time, the crewman said to him: “You’re a big athletic man, I bet you’d love to be down there with a hurley in your hand.” Wayne took a drag from his cigarette and drawled: “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t like to be down there without one.”

QUOTABLE QUOTES

1. Fr. Lonergan: “Now then, here comes myself. That’s me there, walking. That tall, saintly-looking man. Peter Lonergan, parish priest.”

2. Fr. Lonergan: “Ah, yes. I knew your people, Sean. Your grandfather, he died in Australia, in a penal colony. And your father, he was a good man, too.”

3. Fr. Lonergan (to villagers): “Now, when the Reverend Mr Playfair, good man that he is, comes down, I want us all to cheer like Protestants.”

4. Fishwife (to Sean): “Sir! Sir! Here’s a good stick, to beat the lovely lady.”

5. Danaher (to Sean): “Yer widow, me sister, she coulda done a lot worse.”

6. Michaleen (to Mary Kate): “Is this a courting or a donnybrook? Have the good manners not to hit the man until he’s your husband and entitled to hit you back.”

7. Mary Kate: “Would you be stepping into the parlour? The house may belong to my brother, but what’s in the parlour belongs to me.” Michaleen: “I will then, and I hope there’s a bottle there, whoever it belongs to.”

8. Mary Kate: “Could you use a little water in your whiskey?” Michaleen: “When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.”

9. Feeney (Jack MacGowran, to Mary Kate): “I saw him today, as I passed by the chapel, a tall handsome man.” Mary Kate: “If you passed the pub as quickly as you passed the chapel, you’d be better off, you little squint!”

10. Feeney (to Mary Kate): “Is that a bed or a parade ground? A man would have to be a sprinter to catch his wife in a bed that big.”

˜ See www.ashford.ie and www.discoverireland.ie
˜ Author Des MacHale’s meticulously-researched books are a must-read for all fans of The Quiet Man. See the amazon website, where you can also buy the DVD, and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle’s novel, The Dead Republic, about a fictional IRA veteran hired by Ford as an advisor on the movie.

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Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco

Most people know San Francisco as a coffee town, but how many know about the wonderful tea options in the city? I recently met up with a friend in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco and he suggested we try Samovar's Zen Valley location.



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Samovar offers a full menu with abundant descriptions of dozens of white, green, oolong, pu-erh teas and herbal tisanes. Unless your beverage is actually brewed from tea leaves, herbal "teas" are actually tisanes. The fact that Samovar noted this distinction in the menu gave me a boost in confidence. Samovar also has a food menu, mostly tea related finger foods. Best of all, they have full tea services, combinations of food and tea centered around various themes. For example, there's a Moorish service with mint tea, hummus, Greek yogurt; or if you're channeling your inner caveman, there's even a Paleolithic tea service of raw foods paired with a Japanese houjicha.







Since my friend and I were just meeting up briefly, we opted to just try the tea. With so many selections, we were quite lost. Luckily, our server Yoshi was informative and friendly, more than happy give us some direction. I ordered a peppermint Japanese roasted green tea (houjicha) ($8), pictured above. The fragrance of the mint is the most impactful component of this multi-layered tea. You get a big whiff of soothing mint bringing the cup to your nose. Though strong, the mint wasn't overpowering. The blend of mint with tea also brings out a curious chocolate tone also.







While the peppermint tea was delicious, we didn't have nearly the same ceremony for it as we did for our next tea. We were intrigued by the special 1989 aged pu-erh that the waiter was promoting, but ultimately couldn't bear to pay the $24 for a pot of tea that we weren't familiar with. We chose an entry-level pu-erh instead. Per our waiter's instructions, the maiden's ecstasy pu-erh ($9) was supposed to be steeped for only 25 seconds. The above picture is us timing our steep with an iPhone to get that perfect tea. After pouring the hot water into the tea pot, we waited the requisite time and did an elegant pour over two cups. It makes for a pretty cool experience. The flavor of the tea was Earthy, but not rich. It makes a good entry to pu-erh teas, which are post-fermented teas that are aged. The actual distinctions and classifications of pu-erh teas are better explained in its Wikipedia entry.



All in all, I had a wonderful experience. Both my friend and I enjoyed trying something different than meeting up at a Starbucks and I'd love to come back for a full tea service. Also, I walked by the Yerba Buena Gardens location and would recommend that as well since it's more convenient but subsequently more crowded.



Samovar Tea Lounge

samovarlife.com

297 Page Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

(It's in a residential neighborhood in Hayes Valley)

(415) 861-0303



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