Fork in Asia's Road

John Krich

Sujets

• Restaurante
• Cooking
• Restaurant
• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) PTE LTD
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814382939
• Langue: English

Extrait

The articles in this book are newly revised versions of material originally published in The Wall Street Journal Asia, Saveur, Time Asia, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the South China Morning Post and Won Ton Lust (published by Kodansha America).
2012 John Krich Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Krich, John, 1951- A fork in Asia s road : best bites of an occidental glutton / John Krich. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2012. p. cm. eISBN : 978-981-4382-93-9 1. Food - Asia. 2. Food habits - Asia. 3. Cooking, Asian. 4. Krich, John, 1951- - Travel - Asia. 5. Asia - Description and travel. I. Title. TX652.9 641.30095 -- dc22 OCN769384076
Cover design by OpalWorks Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd
The first of many
for my favorite good eater,
Amita
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Accidental Glutton
Wine In No Bottles China
End of th Chopsticks
FOOD AS POLITICS
Vitamin C Diplomacy South Korea
Feeding the Opposition Taiwan
Liberated Lunch China
Arabian Doubts Malaysia
Separatist Belly Dancing China
Presidential Chefs Taiwan
Five-Ring Fare China
Tom Yam Tuna Pizza
FOOD AS NOVELTY
Stars But No Bucks Philippines
From General Tso to Colonel Sanders China
Where s the Veg? India
The Revolution is a Dinner Party China
Where Hungry Ghosts Go
FOOD AS HISTORY
Dark Legacy Vietnam
Chip Off the Communist Bloc China
Sultanic Snacks Malaysia
Royal Stuffing Laos
Peasant Chic China
The Sawdust of History Macau
Turning the Table Vietnam
Moral Fiber
FOOD AS IDENTITY
Brown Revolution Philippines
For Gods Sake Japan
Pot Luck Hong Kong
A Super Bowl South Korea
Hey Mon! Thailand
Feeds Nine Thousand India
Rice By Any Other Name Japan
Behind th Steam
FOOD AS PROCESS
High Heat, Low Esteem Hong Kong
Where Peking Ducks Grow China
Naked Breakfast Japan
Engineered Dumplings Taiwan
Black Market Michelin Hong Kong
Street Eatin Man Thailand
Is th Goose Cooked?
FOOD ENDANGERED
Bird in Flight Hong Kong
Cooking for Company Singapore
Instant Karma Taiwan
Pack Mentality Asia
Lost in Hysteria Japan
The King and Why Thailand
Revenge of the Snake People China
Half-Baked Research
FOOD AS SCIENCE
Hungry for Answers Hong Kong
Seaweedologists Japan
A Reef Too Far Hong Kong
Hamming It Up China
Dewey Drop Inn Taiwan
Kitchen Gods
FOOD AS CRUSADE
The Food Hunter Thailand
Grassroots Guru India
Culinary Colonizers Thailand
Wok Au Vin Hong Kong
Jiggs and Junior India
Odd Chef Out Singapore
The Hue Home Vietnam
Coda
Slow Food Country Laos
Honorable Munchins
INTRODUCTION
Th Accidental Glutton
Everybody on earth wants my job.
Even the old man in tattered muslin jacket and Mao cap who keeps following me, shoeshine box in hand, down a row of home-style restaurants in Sichuan s peppery capital of Chengdu. This veteran of the Long March in flat ballet slippers has never seen anyone on a trek like mine. He s waited patiently to try to nab a spendthrift traveler s business outside one restaurant featuring all-bamboo cuisine, only to see me dash into a second narrow alley known for its noodles drenched in chili oil, prettified like the rest with incongruous Swiss Alpine scenes plastered floor-to-ceiling, finally to a third for helpings of fresh tofu custard and smoked duck. At last, the old man can no longer contain himself, barging in and up to the Chinese guides at my table to blurt out, What is wrong with this old foreigner? Can he be so hungry? Why does he have so many meals?
In Hong Kong, too, several of the world s surliest waiters actually refused on principle to bring me a number of dishes I wished to sample, figuring me to be another part-mad or wholly misinformed white ghost. Only in gastro-hip Sydney would a pair of Aussies who spotted me scribbling notes between bites of Vietnamese egg rolls get the picture at once and ask, Food critic, eh? No, not exactly, for my bidding, mostly at the behest of the Asian Wall Street Journal, was to point out what was best while putting all into a larger context - a reporter using every little bite into the world s hungriest continent to make sense of history s swiftest and heftiest social transformation.
Call me the accidental glutton. For though I had already written a mythic quest for the world s best Chinese restaurant - more a travelogue with no MSG - I had originally been hired by the Journal s Weekend Section to cover a beat roughly defined by design and city life and jokingly described as sex and urban planning. But after dutifully revealing the fakery involved in Japan s antique furniture trade, the region s edifice complex in erecting ever more skyscrapers, a guest appearance in the paper s Food for Thought column - daring to make light of a posh pan-Asian restaurant - I convinced editors that they may not have been making the best use of my talents (or appetite). Later, I shared duties on a series selecting the ten best restaurants in 25 cities around the Pacific Rim, aimed at getting business travelers out of their hotels and into the heat of true food cultures by relying on word-of-mouth instead of misguided guide books. But my true task was digesting Asia, and its many pungent contradictions, to capture the larger flavor of the times. A western fork in Asia s new road, I tried to stay attuned to the larger meanings of a continent where food seems to stand for all pursuits.
Or was it that Asia devoured me? A decade later, as I write this, I am quite used to removing my shoes before I enter the house, using maids to pack my undies, spending weekends at the latest shopping mall, and looking forward to the gooey seasonal succulence of durian, that famed stink fruit as cultural marker. Who, in the end, had been crazier - the Malaysian zillionaire developer who took me in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes on a tour of ten-cent food-court lunches served on pink plastic, his ruling passion the search for a perfect bah kut teh rib stew and Ipoh hor fun noodle soup? His competing counterpart, an ABN-AMRO Singaporean banker whose weekend hobby was to forsake wife and kids and cruise in an SUV snackmobile for the char kway teow with the most charred flavor, the freshest cockles, served by the cockiest wok-stirring entrepreneurs? Or me, actually spending my working days charting two nations obsession with the humblest street vendors as highest proof of cultural supremacy?
What was a nice Jewish boy doing in eagerly sampling the world s best pork brain porridge? Picking at a pork ear pancake in some Beijing back alley or an indoor yurt whose centerpiece is a whole lamb innards, Mongolian style? A puerco adobo seasoned by the scent of Manila s finest auto body shops? Or other non-kosher items like steamed tortoise in chili paste la Sichuan? Squid eggs in coconut soup? Tendons and toenails and fish ball galore? Rats, bats, boar and roaches on reconnaissance in the backwoods of Lao? Duck tongues with chilies, duck brains to top an all-Pekinese treat? Dancing shrimps with their tails still flapping on my lips? Fish head in shrimp paste plus grouper belly with beef cheeks in casserole served in a famed haunt known only as The Place Under the Big Tree ?
Back in high school, I would have been the guy chosen by classmates as most likely to end world hunger. I d have martyred myself on the barricades of anti-Vietnam war protests if someone had told me I d end up telling readers how to satisfy their disposable income cravings - for the Wall Street Journal to boot. Instead of a street fightin man, I became a street eatin man. I must have done something in a previous life to deserve so many free meals and such constant stuffing.
Maybe it was all an elaborate rationalization, but the more intensely I took up the food beat, the more I became aware of Asia s genuine need for honest reviewing. Readers flooded the newspaper with thanks - in a culture where, up to now, every established restaurant could always paste up some printed notice from a tourist handout or Sunday section that was a badly disguised paid advertisement. Even when I profiled a young woman who had gained notoriety as China s first radio food reviewer, getting drive-time ratings for her fearless opinions, she blithely admitted that, of course, she wasn t going to rave about any chef who hadn t hosted her fre