rice

== 18 july 2004, paris ==

sushi really is all about the rice. they always say that on tv and
yes yes i've always believed them but i never really understood how
true it was until i'd eaten sushi made with overcooked, broken-grain
chinese rice. three weeks without asian food and we were both in
withdrawl. so that's pretty much all we've been eating since getting
to paris. so there we are, trying to order in french from a chinese
guy running a japanese restaurant who doesn't speak anything well
except cantonese. god bless him for at least putting the fish names
on the menu in both french and japanese, though. i don't even know
the words in english for half of the crap i usually order at my local
sushi bar -- what is "tataki" anyway? in my book, it's just japanese
for "deliciousness". so yeah, i say to him, "california roll, s'il
vous plait" just to add one more level of international abstraction
to the mix. he has no clue what i'm saying. i'm gonna just point and
then i think, "no! i'll put some of my japanese studies to work!" ha.
"vous-etes japonais?" "mais non, chinois." shit. foiled again. i
point. "ahh! numero vingt-sept!" he replies. i guess he doesn't know
his fish names, either.

everyone's a food critic these days but yeah... that glob of white
paste they were passing off as rice made me sad. especially since the
modest plate of sushi was nearly $70. i wanted to call the japanese
consulate and complain. "hi, yes, these fuckers from hong kong down
on rue berthollet are trying to give your cuisine a bad name. please
send down hattori hanzo and have him cut someone, please." ok fine
whatever, i knew it was hit or miss. we'd gotten great vietnamese the
night before and we are, after all, in the "city you're most likely
to spend a pile of cash for shithole food and lousy service" (a
coveted title that new york usually comes in a close second for).

earlier that day i'd eaten a pain au chocolat at a "japanese french
boulangerie" where all the pastries were 20% smaller, 50% less sweet,
15% more expensive, but the service 100% as rude as the rest of
paris. ooh, but the store had a really cool design, the signs were
all in french and katakana, and everything had amazing packaging! i
love it. i hope they open one in san francisco. and that it's staffed
by koreans. later, after my not-too-sweet pastry, i was eating at a
"microwave it yourself, you tourist asshole" chinese lame-sum
restaurant where the vietnamese hot "rooster" sauce was imported from
california. i guess i'm just having one of those "it's a small world"
moments. i'm sure a crabby, self-centered new yorker (there are about
8 zillion of them here right now, all tawwking at the tawp of their
lungs and wearing fanny packs) would write this off to me being from
a nowhere, non-cosmopolitan place like the west coast. but he'd have
to do it in english cuz that's the only language his "cosmopolitan"
ass speaks.