Weird and Interesting Food Post

To get grossed out quickly, just skip to the very end.

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So, one of my missions while I'm in New Jersey is to try the new foodstuffs.

Honestly, I haven't been doing a good job of going out and finding new things...not yet. But I'll get there.

Here are some interesting foods that I've had so far. One from New York. Two from North Carolina.

This first picture is from East Japanese restaurant housed in the Palisades Shopping Center in

West Nyack, NY. The menu itself wan't anything terribly interesting. What WAS of great interest was the fact that food travels around the restaurant on plates like an assembly line. Visitors of this fine sushi bar sit in booths around the central kitchen where 2-3 chefs dice and wrap fresh sushi rolls, place them on a color-coded plate, put a freshness lid on each plate, and then shoot them on their way around the sushi track. The sushi was surprisingly good for a mall restaurant. We ate afternoon, and typically sushi rolls get stale and dry. Everything on the rack was made fresh, and it didn't look like anything had a shelf life of over 40 minutes.

This is the kind of food service I want in my house some day. From the kitchen I have someone putting together snacks that constantly revolve on a track around my fat, couch-bound ass. Beer? Which flavor? OK...should be coming around on this next lap. Ice cold beer. Sushi. I drool like Homer Simpson at the thought of it.

Let's be serious, though. Any food that comes to you on a motorized track is awesome, right? The fact that it was delicious, fresh sushi just made it that much better.

Sadly, that's it for the New York / New Jersey cool foods. I'll be out and about this week trying to find more interesting foods, though. The next interesting foods are from North Carolina, where I was vacationing with my family over Easter.

On the first day I got to NC, my dad and I went to the Asheville Brewing Company, a place with fresh beer and a very eclectic menu for pub food. Asheville couldn't pay itself a better compliment than by saying it is "eclectic." So its not surprise that any food or beer there is just a little different. And that's why I wasn't terribly surprised to find an interesting slice of pizza for lunch at the ABC.

This is a slice of the Thai Fighter Pizza. (Get it? Thai Fighter? Like TIE fighter? From Star Wars? No?) If this slice of a pizza was a person, it would be the Asian foreign exchange student that stuck around for college and forever teetered on whether or not he was going to be a burnout or a success. In the case of this pizza, its a success.

Its a really different kind of pizza though, than I have ever had before. The base is a barbecue soy sauce base. I have never even heard of people integrating bbq sauce and soy sauce before, let alone as a pizza sauce, but it really worked for this slice. Now, I don't think I'd want bbq-soy on a pepperoni slice, but the sauce and the toppings here really compliment each other.

Instead of what you would find on a typical slice here in NJ, this was spinach, broccoli, and peanuts. And the peanuts were cooked so they were crunchy or even noticeably salty. Just really well done. The crust, too, was different in that it is a sesame crust, very thin, and not particularly grainy or nutty like most whole-grain or nut-based pizza crusts I've had. Almost like a thin, pretzel crust.

Well done, ABC. I doubt that the two delicious Asheville Brewing Company drafts I had influenced my taste at all. On the same hand, when you're having two craft beers with ANY slice, its hard to screw up.

If you're ever in Asheville, head to the ABC and get a slice along with the Houdini ESB. Probably one of the best beers I've had in a while.

[TANGENT]I do NOT recommend the Green Man Brewery & Tasting Room (a.k.a. "Jack of the Wood"). Not because their beer is good or bad. Its just a pretentious atmosphere ("we're better hippies than you...nyah"), and once the bartender snatched a beer out of my hands just as I was going to take a drink of it. Bad form, sir. He said he hadn't carded me yet, so he couldn't let me drink it, even though I'd already paid for it. The Dude does not abide, man. [/tangent]

The day after Easter my sister, mother, and I were putzing around Asheville when they told me they had never had sushi before. So I was convinced to teach them to appreciate this, one of my favorite meals. I can understand people that are intimidated by the sight of sushi and even the idea of eating raw meat. Its is difficult to get them over that hump. So I thought I would order a vegetarian roll along with an eel roll (my first favorite roll).

While I was ordering, I saw that there was a special for quail eggs. When I went on the amazing food adventure quest with Dr. Pat, Duncan, and David our second stop was at a sushi bar to get quail egg shooters, and I've been in love with them ever since.

Its just a little shot with some soy sauce, two quail eggs, a little hot sauce, and some other simple seasonings.

Well, the quail egg offering that I saw on the menu had some other ingredients in it that I didn't recognize from the typical shot. "What the hell," I thought, "these people don't have a great grasp on English....it's probably the same thing." And that just goes to show that I should never assume, especially when dabbling with new foods.

Here is a list of things I saw on the menu that didn't understand, but learned shortly after it was presented to me:

• uni - sea urchin - has the shape and size of a human tongue.
• masago - specialty caviar
• ginjo-shu - sake - hot and very dry and bare-tasting

So, while I was expecting something small and simple and something I could order multiples of, what I got instead was a Frankenstein sushi cocktail. Take a look:

This sushi cocktail was served in a proper glass with about a half pint of hot sake in it, two bulbous, fleshy pieces of uni (sea urchin), two quail eggs, caviar (still haven't learned to love this yet), and adorned with a delicate flower drizzled with more caviar.

It is really easy to look cool when you're shooting anything. Guns, liquor, quail egg shooters, etc. It is NOT easy to look cool when you're trying to convince your family that the sea urchin you're choking down really isn't as terrible as it looks. And doubly not as easy while the polite Asians watch to see if you're a crazy round-eye or someone that truly enjoys Japanese delicacies.

Essentially, it was a very fine sushi cocktail. It was kind of bland. The uni was neat to try, but I don't think I'll be ordering it any time soon. It was actually very delicate, but kind of tasteless. I don't know if they just got some bad sea urchin, or if it wasn't prepared correctly, or if it really is a tasteless meat. It didn't help that I had told my family I would not be drinking that Monday. And then I had more hot sake than I'd ever had in sitting. The quail eggs, my favorite part of the cocktail, were just overwhelmed by all of the other ingredients in the cocktail. Oh well, I'm no worse for wear.

So that's that. Sushi, Thai pizza, and more sushi. I also had some amazing Cuban food in Hoboken, but I didn't take any pictures of it. Maybe if I go back....

BONUS: While I was in Asheville, I found a 6-pack of beer brewed by the Highland Brewing Company exclusively for the Grove Park Inn.

What it was doing on sale at an Ingles is beyond me, but here's a pic of the 6-pack. It was an Abbey Style Brown Ale, the Great Gatsby Abbey Ale. Now, its a given that I'm going to buy any beer that has any reference, no matter how loose, to Louisville (where F. Scott Fitzgerald was inspired to place his character's Tom and Daisy Buchanan's wedding).

The beer was crisp and refreshing, like any good brown ale. What differentiated it from the other brown ales out there was the "bubbly" aftertaste that we experience most frequently in Belgian ales. I suppose that's why they were calling it Abbey Style. Something new to add to the Highland Brewing Company's repertoire. It's good to see they're doing well enough to contract the Grove Park Inn title -AND- to be brewing outside of their regular zone of comfort.

NOTE: I just looked up uni. Apparently its not only sea urchin, but more specifically SEA URCHIN GONADS. So yeah....my stomach just turned. Also read that I ate it out of season. So not only did I eat urchin nads, but rotten urchin nads.