Category: Food

Off to Penang Again

I’ll be in Penang once again (this time with Mrs. Adamu), so expect more sweet photos. I’ll be doing more of the touristy stuff and less random wandering this time around. Before I go, I’ll show you one highlight of the trip:


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That’s right, they stuck a whole Kit Kat right in the middle of the ice cream cone. Genius!

I got this at the 7-11, which is a lot like the Thai 7-11 except with less sausage-related stuff, more spicy nut kind of stuff, and more Muslim stuff.

The top part tastes like cake frosting, which was kind of a surprise. It wasn’t even really ice cream on top, just frosting with a little bite of Kit Kat. The rest of it was pretty standard, except on the bottom which was full of crushed Kit Kat crumbs instead of the usual bit of solid milk chocolate. All in all, not bad, though my personal favorite is the Cookies and Cream cone available in Bangkok 7-11s.

Here’s the ad copy from Nestle Malaysia:
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DRUMSTICK with KIT KAT

Discover a real “KIT KAT bar” and “KIT KAT ice cream flavour” in your favourite DRUMSTICK.

Available NOW!

Expect more of this kind of thing when I get back.

Banned Imports to North Korea

It has been widely reported that the sale of “luxury goods” (奢侈品) to North Korea has been panned by the Japanese government, but I have seen only example of what “luxury goods” consists of in the English media. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has a complete list avaliable on their web site(PDF), dated November 14. See below for my rough translation of this list.

As you read this list, consider which of them is so essential and valuable that you would not be willing to trade it for a nuclear bomb.

Continue reading Banned Imports to North Korea

A Moment in the Life of Ms. Toshiko Abe: Chinese food with her constituents

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Nagi-cho, Okayama Prefecture: LDP Lower House Member Toshiko Abe (LDP, Okayama 3rd District, pictured second from the right in a smart orange jacket) bumps into supporters at a Chinese restaurant during a trip to her home district.

Life in Nagi (pop: 6,564), birthplace of NARUTO author Masashi Kishimoto, looks so… relaxed. The biggest news story affecting Nagi right now is the cold weather they’ve been having, as far as Google News is concerned.

Check out Abe’s blog to witness her remarkable post-lunch transformation into a Kabuki actor.

Real facts about Shinzo Abe: His favorite foods

Rather than blog about more substantive issues (like the massive fraud perpetrated by the Koizumi and Abe administrations with their faked “town meetings” in which the government paid people 5000 yen apiece to ask the right questions), I’ll use this time during a break from translation to look at the latest “live talk” from PM Shinzo Abe, intended as his modern-day version of FDR’s fireside chats.

shokuiku no hi poster3.jpgAbridged and edited from a video interview (mp4) with Japan’s prime minister on the occasion of the upcoming “Food Education Day” that occurs on the 19th of every month:

Q: What is your favorite food?

Abe: Well, it hasn’t changed since I was a child. I still like Korean BBQ, ramen, ice cream, and watermelon!

Q: Do you eat breakfast every day?

Abe: Well, I was asked at the Diet this soon after I became prime minister. Sometimes I eat light, just tree kale juice, carrots, and apple juice, but since becoming prime minister, I have been making sure to eat rice, miso soup with clams, and fermented soy beans with lots of leeks.

Continue reading Real facts about Shinzo Abe: His favorite foods

My Mexican Experience in Thailand – ¡muy malo!

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As part of the week-long birthday festivities for Mrs. Adamu, on Friday we had the chance to visit Charley Brown’s Tex-Mex Cantina, one of the few places in Thailand that can claim to serve anything close to Mexican food. I ignored Cosmic Buddha’s reservations about the place and decided to go anyway. Some thoughts:

  • I’ll start with something positive: in terms of food, there was nothing Thai about it at all, so my taste buds could forget they were in Southeast Asia for an hour or so. But here’s the bottom line: I’ve had El Paso instant taco mixes in the US that were about on par with this. Seriously, it barely registered as restaurant-level Mexican food. I give the place credit for at least giving it the old college try, but I’d wonder whose white grandmother was making the stuff if I had it back home. No discernible flavor to the meat, and the end product felt very mashed together. My chicken burrito was smothered in cheese on the outside that made it soggy (unexpected bonus – the refried beans tasted just like the beans they serve at Popeye’s chicken!). On top of that, it ended up being one of the most expensive restaurants I’ve ever visited in Bangkok – the bill came to 800 baht (approx US$20) for two dishes offering middling portions and 3 Heinekens. Here’s what it the burrito looked like:

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  • The manager of the establishment, a young British-sounding man named Chris, made a go at being friendly and asked how our meal was. This practice of returning to a table after the meal is served and asking how things are going is standard for the US but is something I had never seen until I came here. Still, it was a little off-putting when he decided to put off bringing us our bill to down a shot with some other ex-pats, who made themselves enough of a part of our dining experience that they earn their own bullet point below:
  • Our experience was badly marred by its intended customer base: Western tourists and sexpats. Mrs. Adamu and I could barely carry on a conversation over a boisterous group of Aussies, and people filtered in and out from a nearby outdoor whites-only drinking establishment. Worse than that, however, had to be the pasty white men and their Thai hooker escorts sitting at the 3 tables around us. Nothing ruins a meal faster than seeing some 50-something ‘Nam vet pawing at his new plaything between bites of enchilada. Oh, and their fat bodies bounced around enough to rattle Mrs. Adamu’s seat since the booth chairs were connected. We kind of knew what to expect after we tried to eat there unsuccessfully on Monday (it’s closed on Mondays, a fact that didn’t make itself known on the online site we checked), since to get there one must wade through myriad cheap crap stores, decrepit beggars, and numerous prostitution venues. The area outside the Nana skytrain station is notorious as a red light district, so in that sense it’s our fault for going in the first place.

    • Recommendation: unless you have no problem with sex tourism and are sure that you’ll never ever visit a part of the world with good Mexican food again, stay away from Charley Brown’s.

    Enjoying Root Beer in Thailand

    Root beer is not popular in Japan, which makes things tough for me as both Japan watcher and root beer lover. During my stays in the country, the high prices at the import stores – formerly the only place that sells the stuff before the rise of discount stores – forced me to regard my beloved root beer as a rare treat to be enjoyed alone or in the company of other foreigners.

    Attempts have been made to add the drink to the usual lineup of carbonated drink products, but the Japanese consumers are apparently having none of it. Why?

    Japanese friends have told me it tastes like medicine. Wikipedia tells me that the specific reason root beer fails to gain popularity outside Okinawa (a legacy of extended US occupation) and US military bases (see previous paretheses) is because drinking it makes you smell like you’re wearing a compress. I have always found the comparison somewhat insulting. I mean, root beer used to be a folk medicine – it’s supposed to taste that way!

    Thankfully, the Thais have absolutely no problem with stinky food (take dorians – please!). It was with great pleasure that I have found root beer to be plentiful here. Not only can one find A&W cans on the shelves of the ubiquitous 7-11s, right next to Coke and some unsettlingly hypersweet Lipton Iced Tea, but the A&W fast food chain is alive and well throughout Bangkok. You might be unfamiliar with A&W restaurants as they have a limited presence in many US states, but they but are, rest assured, a nationwide chain (and big in Canada!). They serve a lot of fried food and are known for having good curly fries (true) and chili dogs (not as true). Here I am hugging a statue of their beloved mascot the Great Root Bear (who knew they had a mascot?!) before enjoying their signature root beer in a frosty mug:

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    Unlike the A&W cans, which for some reason taste almost like Dr. Pepper (blech), the root beer at the restaurant is authentic and delicious. We also had curly fries, which were good as ever, and some fried chicken that was OK but doesn’t hold a candle to some of the awesome fried chicken you get at street vendors around Bangkok. One interesting feature of the menu is that waffles a la mode are offered along with the rest of the value meals, served with curly fries and apparently intended to be eaten as a full-fledged meal. Sounds good to me!

    Flipper is tasty

    Looks like I might have something new to order on the next trip to Tsukiji:

    Occurring annually from September to April, the dolphin hunts are regulated by the Japanese government and conducted by groups of fishermen who herd hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dolphins and small cetaceans into shallow bays by banging on partially submerged rods that create a sonic barrier. The dolphins are then corralled into nets and dispatched in a brutal manner: speared, hooked, hoisted into the air by their tails, and finally eviscerated alive. The methods, say researchers, result in a long and painful death for these intelligent marine mammals.

    The Japanese government has made the unsupported claim that the animals compete with local fishermen for limited supplies of fish and that the drives are in fact a means of pest control. Also, the “Act for Dolphins” consortium maintains that, in spite of the fact that the hunting of dolphins and use of their meat has waned in popularity, the government is actually encouraging the public to consume more dolphin meat; in addition to human consumption, dolphin meat is also used as pet food and fertilizer.

    I know I’m supposed to be outraged, because dolphins are “intelligent” (read: cute), but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to take a nice bite out of some iruka sashimi.

    Ambassador Schieffer: Beef trade resumption “day of celebration” … really?

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    U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer, right, is all smiles as he tries out beef bowl with his wife Susanne, left, at Yoshinoya in Tokyo, Monday, Sept 18, 2006. Japanese queued up before a downtown Tokyo fast-food chain on Monday as the restaurant began offering the first servings in more than two years of a popular rice dish topped with American beef. (AP Photo/Pool)

    Something tells me he didn’t have to wait all night.

    The US coverage of the return of US beef has something of a relieved/celebratory feel to it:

    Sept. 18, 2006, 1:48AM
    Japanese Line Up for American Beef

    By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer
    © 2006 The Associated Press

    TOKYO — The U.S. Ambassador was among customers thronging a major Japanese fast-food chain Monday to savor the return of a popular rice dish topped with American beef that was off the menu for more than two years due to mad cow fears.

    “It was great. It was well worth the wait,” U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer said after eating Yoshinoya D&C Co.’s “beef bowl” with chopsticks.
    Click to learn more…

    Japan and nearby South Korea banned American beef in December 2003 because of fears about mad cow disease. Japan eased the ban in July, and South Korea earlier this month.

    Mad for U.S. beef, herd heads for Tokyo eatery
    POSTED: 9:22 a.m. EDT, September 18, 2006

    TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — Hundreds of people lined up at a central Tokyo restaurant on Monday to savour a dish not tasted for more than two years — “beef bowl” made with U.S. meat.

    Some Japanese had even camped out overnight outside a popular branch of fast-food chain Yoshinoya, which resumed sales of its famed specialty following the July lifting of a government ban on imports of U.S. beef.

    The ban was imposed in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, forcing Yoshinoya to drop its flagship dish of braised beef and onions marinated in soy sauce and laid on top of rice.

    Hardcore fans had shunned the “beef bowl” when it was made with Australian beef because the meat was too lean.

    As happy as I am to see Yoshinoya back in action, I don’t really see the reopening of beef trade a cause for consumers to celebrate, especially in the US. The flap over beef could have served to make the US consider whether its own testing standards were protecting consumers, but that never happened. The US government is shamelessly pro-business and the media is just not interested in covering FDA topics unless they involve a scary new drug that kills a tiny amount of people.

    If you ask me (and you did) the US put way too much pressure on Japan to lift this ban in a relatively small export market (2 billion dollars a year in sales in Japan compared to 40 billion in premium revenues for US insurance companies). The dangers of mad cow are real and every country has to be careful. For the US industry to rush to political solutions (which as an industry supported by massive subsidies is their bread and butter) to the point of getting the president involved and threatening sanctions that would violate WTO rules rather than trying to reassure consumers only harms the United States’ image and makes the beef industry look bad as well. The compromise, which is basically that Japanese inspectors will be able to look around US slaughterhouses to ensure that no spinal tissue is getting into beef headed for Japan, seems satisfactory, but I would have liked to see a little more – perhaps a more constructive attitude toward testing from the American side – maybe not universal testing like Japan, but something more than self-regulation would be nice. Unfortunately, the US saw quick resumption of the status quo as more important than building consumer trust, and I think they’ll suffer for it.

    Gyudon BACK at Yoshinoya for one day

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    Residents of Sakae-cho, Ushiku City, Ibaraki Prefecture line up in the middle of typhoon-induced rain for this one day only offering of their flagship beef bowl “gyudon” product now that imports of US beef have resumed. Security guards were on hand to maintain order as previous limited offerings have resulted in violence from disappointed latecomers.

    There are no such reports of crazed ojisan as of yet, but hopefully our correspondents in Japan will have some news for us later this evening.

    According to Asahi, Yoshinoya will offer gyudon from the 1st through the 5th of October and November before restoring their flagship product in December on a daily basis for a limited number of hours per day.

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    Sankei reports that some gyudon fans waited all night for their chance at luscious beef in a bowl. I’d gladly do the same. Unfortunately there are no gyudon in Thailand, not even cheap knockoff gyudon. Decent katsudon though.
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