Aaron is headed out to Taiwan for a couple of weeks. Where should he eat? I assume he will be in Taipei for awhile, but that he will be wandering around the entire island as well. He also wants to know if there are any sites he should absolutely not miss.

And tips?

My mother grew up in Luodong, and we found ourselves wandering around its night market tonight after going to a Tsunah Foundation event. The night market is literally a block away from where my mother grew up, although the surrounding area is very different. “There were rice paddies behind us, and in front of us, across the street… more rice paddies,” she told us, as we drove down the street.

We sat down at two places and ate some great stuff. The first was a dessert: fun yuen (or whatever — I am no pinyin expert) over shaved ice, grass jelly, and condensed milk. The rest of my family had it hot, which was a mistake; mine was much more tasty.

awesome dessert at the night market [see all photos]

The second was a sesame oil chicken in broth — a specific flavor I had previously only tasted at home. We very nearly decided to head back to Taipei directly from the Tsunah event, but I’m very happy that we didn’t! Photos follow… (read more »)

Douglas and Emily at Koi Palace

Douglas Seifert and Emily are in town for the holidays, and as has been tradition for years (with Douglas, anyway), we went out to eat dim sum. I’ve basically stopped eating shrimp because of the horrible way in which it is fished, but I am embarrassed to say that I do still have a bit of it when out for dim sum. Luckily, it’s only once or twice a year… (read more »)

Geoff Nuttall and Vienna Teng at Quince (all images)

The real reason for the dearth of social imagery around here is that I’m burned out. I’m away all the time shooting thousands of images of weird underwater critters, and I don’t have time to do anything with them, let alone the images I shoot of my friends. :(

Anyway, I wanted to post some now, for old times’ sake, of the dinner at Quince (all images).

Excerpt from “Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?” by George Monbiot and published in the Guardian 3rd April 2007.

“If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them. “A study in this week’s edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean’s megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%(1). Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone(2). “You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from eating shark’s fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of respectable newspapers.” [full article]

Two weddings ago, I had half a day to hang out with my sister in Los Angeles. She took me to a great vegetarian dim sum place in the San Gabriel Valley called Mission 261, where we (the two of us, and Daphne Wang) ate ribbit dumlpings [sic] and other delicacies.

vegetarian ribbit dumlpings (rabbit dumplings)

We also had lunch at a great little place in the corner of a strip mall with Sarah Kemble, whose presence in the Bay Area I miss. (read more »)

bev, vienna, pat, karine, peter and me @ sushi yasuda [see all]

My head might be as much as 50% wider than Peter’s head.

Bill Addison over at SFGate spent 10 weeks checking out 85 Bay Area taquerias. I’ve been to many of the places he mentions in the article and agree that burritos here are quite good. The article focuses on brick ‘n mortar establishments, which unfortunately precluded taco trucks from the comparison. I love a good taco truck taco; each time, before I wolf down my first one, there is only that brief flash of worry over the lack of running water in the truck before I forget all about it.

Last night, Dave Patchen, Ilya Levtov and I ended up at Tia Margarita up on Clement, which was (as Dave described it) “like a Mexican restaurant in the Mission, but twice the cost.” Oh well. The food was good. :)

When I was living in SF proper, I went to Taqueria Cancun at least once a week (the one at 29th and Mission, usually), but now that I’m in Oakland, I’ve lost my burrito routine.

Whoah. Nash just posted about burritos as well. What are the chances that we’d both post about burritos on the same day?

a close-up of me eating a cockroach (photo: douglas seifert)

It was teriyaki-glazed, and wasn’t all that bad..

OK, so I lied. I really did not enjoy eating the cockroach AT ALL, and it was certainly not teriyaki-flavored. I’m not sure what kind of cockroach it was, but it looked like a Madagascar hissing cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa). More nasty/interesting food photos from the Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner: [post] [photos only]

Explorer’s Club annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York

[just show me the pictures] Douglas Seifert invited me to attend the 103rd Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner (ECAD), which took place on March 17, 2007, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. The Explorer’s Club was founded in 1904 and is an “international, multidisciplinary, professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.” The annual dinner’s goals are “to review the year in exploration, honor the world’s top explorers, and break bread together.” This year’s theme was polar exploration, and Master of Ceremonies Dan Rather presented the evening’s honorees and award recipients. (read more »)

Darioush Winery in near-infrared

Osvaldo Golijov has been in town for the past week to finish up a project with Francis Ford Coppola up at the Niebaum-Coppola Estate, which I guess is now called the Rubicon Estate. On Monday, Livia, Baby Jack, Corinne and I drove up to the estate to hang out for a couple of days. (read more »)

dessert and drinks, tokyo, japan

On December 16th, Hitomi took us out to have okonomiyaki at a little place in an area no tourist would ever have found. I had never had (nor heard of) okonomiyaki before, and really enjoyed the new experience. And since Hitomi was involved, we went out to another place afterward for a hugely decadent dessert (in a Japanese not-too-sweet sort of way, of course). [see photos at flickr]

Most of my friends are afraid to order Patagonian toothfish (commercially known as Chilean sea bass) when I’m sitting at the table, and ordering shark fin soup could lead to some serious drama.

A few days ago, the SF Chronicle reported that Whole Foods has started selling Chilean sea bass again because they have found a sustainable fishery around South Georgia Island. So go ahead and order Chilean sea bass, but be sure to ask where it comes from and whether it is MSC-certified, first. :)

i love food in japan

The problem with eating in Japan is that sometimes you can’t find anyone to translate the name of the fish you’re eating. :) (read more »)

Reunited with Andy Lan, an old violinist friend from nearly ten years ago, I met up today with him and a few of his friends to read string quintets (2 violins, 1 viola, 2 celli) at a beautiful, Eichler-esque house in San Mateo.

We started by reading an anonymous arrangement of a virtuosic Kreisler sonata (originally for violin and piano), followed by a string quintet reconstruction of Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 34. I didn’t know this beforehand, but the Brahms quintet was completed in 1862 — originally as a string quintet! Anyway, it was really a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed meeting a few more talented musicians in the Bay Area who masquerade as normal folks in other professions during the day.

After reading music, I went with Livia to Han Kook in Cupertino for Korean-food shopping madness. (read more »)

best omakase ever

A few weeks ago, Pat and I went to Sushi Yasuda for an impromptu dinner (most meals here are planned, I’m finding), and half way through the meal, I came to terms with the fact that I was eating the best sushi I had ever had.

I’m skeptical by nature and don’t usually like to make absolute comments, so it was a big deal to find something that was clearly better than all of my other sushi experiences. I raved about it to a bunch of my friends, and as expected, I received nothing short of outward skepticism in return. (read more »)

@ moma

Went to the MOMA and The Modern a week ago. The food was pretty good, but not so memorable. It’s strange that The Modern is attached to the MOMA; entering the restaurant after hanging out in the MOMA is a jarring experience. There are no aesthetic elements that tie the two together.
 

scraping wax

I was in Oakland during the weekend of January 7-8, and I paid dearly for my California experience. But it was worth it.

We had a nice potluck on Saturday night even though more than half of the invited folk couldn’t make it. Earlier in the day, Elliot and Mandy came over for a nice, California brunch (ahhh, California — how I miss it), and Vienna, Heidi, Marty, Bill, Geoff, Livia, Steven, Oliver, Melanie, Cindy, Mister Chris, and Dave trickled in around dinner time for an evening of food, wine, and good conversation. (read more »)

SF BAY AREA PHOTO RECAP! (read more »)