Wandering Eater

Chinese food without hotpot is like sex without doggystyle, you really
need to try it to put the rest of the genre in proper perspective.
Hotpot offers a sublime communal experience as well as the primal
satisfaction of cooking your own food in a prehistoric bubbling broth.
Similarly, doggystyle offers you the chance to check your email or
high five a buddy with the primal satisfaction of the preferred coital
position of most animal species.

Ok moving on from that, if you’re shy about trying hotpot for the
first time, because you’re worried you might catch a disease or put
the food in the wrong circular receptacle and cause an embarrassing
incident, I’ve created a handy hot pot guide.

Step one: Choose your type of hotpot.

So far I’ve come across Boiled Beef hot pot, Sichuan hot pot, Seafood
hot pot and Sour Fish hot pot. I’m sure this is only scratching the
surface, but all of them are delicious. The below pictures are from Sour
Fish Hotpot.

Step two: Choose your prey.

At sour fish hotpot, this involved a somewhat surly Chinese waitress
bringing us a flopping fish in a bucket. Excuse the blurriness as he
was moving around quite a bit.

Step three: Mix your hotspot sauce. See the below photo of a less
surly Chinese waitress adding a packet of chili to my brother’s sauce
bowl, along with a fair amount of cumin, nuts, cilantro, and green
onions. Once the broth has cooked, you spoon a little broth into the
sauce to make it into a soupy mess.

Step four: Look solemnly at your prey as the surly chinese waitress
puncutates her rage by dipping the likely still alive, filleted fish
into the broth.

Demonstrated perfectly by my brother’s significant other in the photo here.

Step five: Patiently Wait For Your Food to Cook

Activities can involve conversation, downing a few Yanjing beers,
eating other small dishes, cooking additional vegetables such as
mushrooms, potatoes and lotus root, and ignoring the still alive
fishes’ flipper spasms.

Step six: Keep your most eager table mate from Eating the Fish Before It’s Done

Guilty as charged.

Step Seven: Eat

Ideally your fish has softened enough to break into delicious fillets.
You can now start picking at the fish, dipping it into your sauce, and
savoring the immensely fresh, flavorful hotpot. Mix in some veggies as
well and feel free to add more if you’re still hungry. Best of all, no
post-cuddling required!

Few cities in the world are truly unique but London falls into that category. I’ve never been anywhere that combines the first-world bustle of New York City with an obvious history that reaches back thousands of years. As with all Global Cities, it has lost a little bit of its traditional British character and that’s only made it better. Because traditional British character blows my mind as someone raised in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Don’t get me wrong, the Brits themselves are all right, friendly, fun and with a sharp sense of self-deprecation. But the country and the city itself is an important lesson for America and all people’s in general—when you spend several centuries telling yourself you are the pinnacle of the world and the realization slowly dawns on you that you’re not, how do you move on? How do you stop the inevitable downward slide? The natural response when posited this query is change. But if the institutions you’ve venerated as the culmination of the human spirit are what needs changing, how do you do it without giving up your essential spirit and soul? You can’t declare Independence from yourself.

If Americans are in denial about their downward spiral, the Brits are well into acceptance, of both their new found marginality and their essential nature. The most important symbol of this of course is the monarchy, which as an American seems totally ridiculous. We ridicule France, but at least they had the balls to drag their leaders into the square and chop off their heads. The Royals are an institution that dominates the country at ever turn, from the ubiquitous Royal Wedding knick knacks to the various namings of every train station, pub, and public restroom after a various incarnation of William, George, or Elizabeth to of course, the tabloids, who hopefully send Will, Kate and Pippa at least a Christmas fruitcake for you know, keeping them in business. The Brits are fiercely proud of their monarchs, even if in the age of austerity, many I spoke to couldn’t wait for the impending Queen’s Jubilee, celebrating her 60th year in office, which doubles as a public holiday. Hey at least the 99 percent are invited to the party.

So while my friend spotted Prime Minister David Cameroon taking in brunch at Notting Hill like any other (rich) commoner, the monarchs are afforded multiple palaces, security, and public funding for their lifestyle of the rich, famous, and divinely-righted. Maybe the Brits are on to something here. It’s the separation of symbol and governance, contrasted with the U.S., where the President and family must act as chief executive and our internal and external symbol of the American Brand. Both are clearly full time jobs.

One question I never got answered was how new Londerners view the Royals. ,’m talking about the varied immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe, the West Indies and of course, South Asia that are helping London keep up with the New Yorks and Hong Kongs on the cutting edge of urban modernity. They’ve improved the cuisine, filled needed lower end jobs and helped London continue to grow in population and economic output. They’ve suffered the universal negative reaction from Englanders, which I mostly encountered as a few “I’m not racist but…all Pakistanis beat their wives,” commentary that reflects an obvious ignorance, fear, prejudice and probably a shred of truth.

The only nationalism test I witnessed was confined to another regal arena—Wembley Stadium, where the English national team took on world champions Spain in a friendly match. The Hindu Harem and I represented new British multiculturalism as we approached the gorgeous, imposing new stadium, passing vendors selling a variety hot dogs, hamburgers and samosas. The crowd reflected the diversity of the London subway, plenty of shades donned the uniform colors of red and white and 80,000 strong belted “God Save the Queen,” as if about to plant the Union Jack smack in the middle of some new found colony. I guess that’s your answer.

The game itself seeped with excitement. Clearly outclassed by a superior Spanish side who dominated possession, a gritty English side pulled out a 1-0 squeaker, as the extremely English looking Frank Lampard headed home a rebound from the not very English looking Darren Bent for the Lions only goal. After the game we stumbled around Wembley looking for food before finely settling on, what else, a curry house. The food wasn’t great, but nothing tops off an England victory like a couple of Kingfishers.

I’m sure even Will and Kate would cheers to that.

I swung through Holland on my European adventure to visit a friend in The Hague. Like most Dutch cities, The Hague is perfectly quaint. Tall Dutch damsels and sirs pedal bikes slowly through brick architecture and canals. Every few blocks around the corner leads to another cluster of cafes and shops, or perhaps a bar made out of an old butter factory. Even the royal palaces are understated.

Sadly, the Dutch are not known for their food and The Hague didn’t do anything to change that reputation. It’s international status, the International Criminal Court and other institutions reside there, has populated The Hague with a variety of second-tier international restaurants. Where’s a man supposed to get some old-fashioned Dutch cuisine?

Speaking of, what the hell is Dutch cuisine? According to Wikipedia, Dutch cuisine is shaped by the practice of fishing and farming, crops and soil cultivation. Yea that’s pretty specific.

I’m going to have to go to personal experience which involved drinking my way through The Hague and eating on snack food. The best snack food I ate was bitterballen, a deep fried breaded cheese and souffle ball that’s dipped in poupon mustard. With ten hours of drinking, multiple sessions of bitterballen were in order. As a drunken snack, it was spot on.

The balls on the right, not the lame Thai rolls on the left

Thus my new proclamation of Dutch Cuisine: Food for when you’re stumbling out of a pub or coffee shop.

While the Hindu Harem was at work in Paris, I decided to check out a recommend falafel joint a few miles walk from our hotel. Basically this was my excuse to get lost in Paris, and boy did I ever! The Parisians take fucking with tourists as a sport, both in an unofficial and offical capacity. While a passerbyer on the street will intentionally give you wrong directions, that’s not nearly as frustrating as the roads themselves. Streets change names every block, no doubt honoring the many great Frenchmen that painted something, or died of cholera, or whatever.

Just kidding monsiuers. I found the French to be delightful and polite. I just wish they wouldn’t do things like name a street “Rue du Temple” and a street two blocks over “Rue du la Temple.” Anyways when I finally got my rues in order, I strolled through an alley in the evidently Jewish neighborhood. The falafel stand of choice, La’s Du Falafel, was slammed, with both a line for eat-in and take away orders. Across the street, a rival stand obtained its own share of devoted customers and spillover traffic.

As I waited in line, I watched the various hawkers for each restaurant try to woo the passersby. My man was a yarmulked gentlemen who seemed quite keen on offering his falafel to every female passerby he could in the most seductive way possibly. I asked him if there was any bad blood rivalry between the two competitors

“Look at the line to get into my place. Look at his. We aren’t rivals.”

Touche honky.

I eschewed the falafel for a Schwarma which came loaded with cabbage, tomatoes, hummus, garlic yogurt and, delightfully, eggplant. Here are the results.