MORE PIG THAN POSSIBLE WITH MY FILIPINO RELATIVES

Can I just say, for the record that I love being married? Not just because the blessed and very patient Sybil puts up with my many Bengali quirks, but also because it means I have inherited a huge number of Filipino in laws.

When I say huge number I really mean it. I have discovered that Sybil has a seemingly endless stream of cousins, aunties, uncles and assorted relatives and also seems to be discovering new ones all the time. They are all, to put it quite frankly, mad as a box of ferrets but, at the same time they are also funny, hospitable and so obsessed with food that I can forgive them their eccentricities as easily as Sybil forgives mine.

This last weekend was a long weekend here in the Good Ol’ US of Stateside. Something called Labor Day, which quite apart from proving that Americans cannot spell is also ironic given just how under fire the working man is in this country built on hard labour (that’s better) and enterprise.

It was also a weekend that marked the end of an era, as Sybil’s mum had chosen the date to move permanently back to the Philippines from the US.It’s a long old journey from NYC to Manila and she wisely chose to break her journey in the City of Angels, giving her the chance to visit with her daughter and favourite (and for favourite read only) son in law.

We met her in the morning at LAX and immediately headed towards West Covina, an area of LA county some 15 miles East of Downtown. It has a large Filipino community and Sybil’s Auntie Minda has lived there for many years. It was the perfect opportunity for Syb’s Mum and sister to catch up after a few years and what better way for Filipinos to do that than over lunch?

As we pulled into the parking lot of local Filipino restaurant, Salo Salo, Sybil’s relatives were already jabbering away to each other in Ilocano, the language of their original region of the Philippines. Sybil warned them and me that we should not over do things as this was only one of two lunches we had planned that day.

That useful fact did not seem to matter to anyone, least of all Sybil herself. As soon as we got sight of the menu, she was ordering enough dishes to make even sitting at a table meant for six a tight squeeze. The food began to arrive soon afterwards and it was as good as I had been anticipating. Man it was good.

I have become quite a fan of Filipino cooking in the last few years and the EAT MY GLOBE visit to Manila only served to confirm that it is about so much more than pork, deep frying and deep frying pork. That being said, when it comes to God’s good swine, there are few people on this planet who know how to prepare it better than your Filipino. First up was the “Crispy Meat Platter”. I normally wince when I hear the word “crispy” but I can forgive it if it refers to dishes like the ones placed on our table.

The platter was the size of a small dinghy and contained huge chunks of crispy pata (pork shank that has been braised and then, yep, deep fried) Lechon Kawali, pork ribs and, just in case we thought they had only pigs on their mind, some sensational fried chicken. In fact I thought it was all sensational and my elderly in laws seemed to be in definite agreement.

Sybil’s mum is in her mid 70’s and her aunt in her early 80’s. Their advanced age does not seem to have impeded their appetite any and, more than once, I was beaten to the prime piece of crackled skin by one of them suddenly rediscovering lightning speed in Battle Pig.

Despite her warnings, Sybil was not disgracing herself either. As well as attacking the meat platter with the sort of gusto I had not seen from her since we were last in a jewelry store, she had also ordered more dishes in the form of Fresh Lumpia Ubod (stuffed with hearts of palm) Seafood Pancit and my own favourite Filipino dish of all, Sizzling Sisig.

For those of you who are not in the know, Sisig originates from the city of Angeles in the Pampanga region of the Philippines. On my visit there, I was taken to the small roadside restaurant where the dish was created as the perfect “Pulutan” or food to be eaten when drinking. It was originally made with the discarded bits of the pig, which were fried up with chili and lots of kalamansi lime juice before being served on a sizzling cast iron platter.
The version at Salo Salo was not, I am sure made out of the hooves, lips and assholes of Brer Pig, but still reminded me of why it is was one of the favourite tastes of my whole trip.

We waddled back to our car after lunch, all having ignored the advice not to fill our boots. It made the drive south to Chula Vista a little uncomfortable, all the more so because the volume of cars had slowed the freeway traffic to a crawl. A journey that should take little over an hour took well over three. It did however give everybody the chance to catch up and discuss a topic of great import. For the record, this was about the best way to slaughter a goat or pig. Apparently, in the Philippines, this is done by getting the poor animal pissed and then slitting its throat. Lovely.

Sybil has even more relatives in Chula Vista and they had taken the opportunity to invite all of her mother’s cousins, nieces and nephews over for a party. By the time we arrived, Sybil’s uncle had a house filled with people and a table filled with food. This being a celebration, there was, of course a whole Lechon Baboy (or roasted pig to you and me), which had already been pillaged of most of its crisp skin by the awaiting crowd.

There were more dishes to sample than just the lechon, however. There were stuffed Bangus fish, Caldereta, Garlic Rice and Kilawin, (a dish of raw goat marinated in vinegar, ginger and garlic) as well as big bowls of vegetables, tripe soup and trays of bibingka. It was all a bit much for me and while the others tore into the feast ( managing to do this and to talk at the tops of their voices at the same time) I pulled my fetching new hat down over my head and began to snore contentedly on a nearby sofa.

Sybil woke me up a short while later as I was having a lovely dream about Zantac. It was time for us to move on to our third meal of the day with friends in Chula Vista. We left her mum and aunty where they were to catch up with the hordes of relatives, while we headed off to freshen up at our hotel and run out to supper.

When I knew we would be staying overnight in Chula Vista, I asked my new chum, Chef Marcella Vallodolid (host of The Food Network’s popular Mexican Made Easy show) for some recommendations. She sent me a mail with a handful of choices and when I saw that one of them “Aqui Es Texcoco” specialized in Barbacoa de Barrego (mutton BBQ) I thought it might make a change from all the pork we had consumed.

It certainly did and, despite thinking half an hour before that I would never need to eat food ever again, the smells of grilling meat in the restaurant had me devouring more than my fair share as our order arrived at the table. Of particular note were the quesadilla filled with huitlacoche (corn smut) and the lamb brain tacos, which came to life when doused with lime juice. It was good enough for us all to think that we might need to return soon to explore more of the Mexican cuisine on offer.

This visit however had been all about the Filipinos rather than the Mexicans. It had been all about my newly acquired, barking mad but really rather wonderful family, and of course, it had been all about the pig an animal that deserves our unwavering respect and that can never find itself in better hands after death than those of a Pinoy.

Did I mention that I love being married?

NEWPORT SEAFOOD: HOW LONG WILL YOU WAIT IN LINE FOR LOBSTER?

So, here is a question for the house.

How long would you wait in line to get a meal?

Until I moved to Los Angeles, my answer would have been a loud and clear NEVER. I would have screamed my negative response in your face and probably would have added a slap for good measure just for you having the temerity to ask such a stupid question.

In my nigh on thirty years living in London, I can count the times I have queued to get my dinner on less digits than Dave Allen’s right hand (and may your God go with you).

Each of those occasions occurred when someone else was paying and at one, a non event of a meal with Jay Rayner at Barrafina, we left in dismay after an hour of waiting, with dinner still no more than a hazy promise from the ruddy faced Brothers Hart and my hatred of "No Reservations" places cemented in my psyche.

Moving to Los Angeles, however, with its delight in concepts and love of style over substance, I have found myself forced to stand in line more times in a year than I had previously done in a lifetime to date.

In part, it is down to Sybil’s fearsome powers of persuasion

SYBIL: “Honey, I want you to stand in line for ninety minutes so we can buy a mediocre grilled cheese sandwich from a truck”

ME: “Er, OK”

In part it is because Los Angeles seems to be the spiritual home of the “No Reservations” restaurant, where milling about on the pavement for an hour before the host deigns to call you in for your meal appears to be considered an enjoyable part of the process. I tend to avoid these places like the plague, having discovered that the food delivered at the end of the endurance test will rarely, if ever be worth the time spent in line.

Where I can’t avoid it however is when I want to avail myself of LA’s excellent ethnic dining scene. Many of the Korean, Chinese, Japanese etc places simply don’t take reservations and, while this still sticks in my craw, I am prepared to put up with it for the simple fact that the resulting meals are always decent and often memorable.

I do have my limits however and a recent wait of nearly one hour at Shanghai Dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung pushed me to my very limit and my friends were only rescued from the resulting hissy fit by the fact that I had been before and knew that the baskets of steaming soup dumplings would be worth the wait.

There is a point to this, just in case you were wondering. Yesterday, as Sybil and I returned from a friend’s wedding in Palm Springs, she suggested we stop for “Linner” (a word she appears to have created to insert an extra meal into her day between lunch and dinner) at Newport Seafood Restaurant in San Gabriel. It had been a while since my morning muffin (ahem) so I agreed and we plugged the directions into our GPS system.

As we pulled up to the lot, I could see that it was already full and that there were about two dozen assorted Chinese folk milling about in front of the restaurant. My heart sank, it was, I recalled, Mothers Day here in the US and being a Sunday, the restaurant was operating its standard policy of not taking bookings.

I was ready to turn tail and head for home. But, as you know by now, Sybil is made of much sterner stuff and insisted that we find street parking and go and check how long the wait might be. She emerged from the restaurant clutching a ticket with the number 86 on it and told me it would be a thirty minute wait. I made a loud dramatic audible sigh and tried to persuade her that we should just pop across to the Carl’s Jr. burger joint over the road and get the hell out of there.

She was having none of it. Newport Seafood is, apparently, famous for its preparation of shellfish and one glimpse of an enormous place of lobster being transported head high by a waiter, from kitchen to table, meant I had less chance of getting her out of there than I did of being commissioned to produce my own kids show using belly buttons as puppets.

While I sat and sulked, Sybil put the waiting time to a better use. She grabbed a menu and, by the time we were finally called to our table, she had placed our order and we were told it was already on its way. They were not lying and, within the space of about five minutes our large table almost disappeared under the plates that the waiters dropped on it with a clatter, in rapid succession.

Courses of Salt & Pepper Squid, Seafood Noodles and Crispy Pork Chop were all excellent, but standard enough for me to think that we could have got them without so much fuss and certainly without making me wait in line. It was not until a huge plate of lobster arrived, red and steaming, that I suddenly had to admit that waiting for thirty minutes might be a very, very good thing indeed.

The 5lb beast had been boiled then cracked open and stir fried in a mixture of ginger, chilli, garlic, spring onions and soy sauce. The lobster flesh was still juicy and we sucked it from the carcass using the remaining shells to build an impressive pile of waste on our side plates. Best of all, it appeared that our lobster had been filled with roe and huge pink blobs of it had been used to thicken the sauce allowing us to play “hunt the egg” as duelled for the choicest bits of lobster with our chopsticks.

At $15 a lb, the lobster was not a cheap option and, in fact cost more than the rest of our meal combined. However, it was one of the best dishes I have eaten in 2011 so far and filled us up so much that supper became an impossibility and dinner the next day would be supplemented by boxes of leftover noodles, squid and pork chop.

Was it worth the wait? Well, for the lobster alone, I have to say a resounding yes indeedy. Sybil asked the obvious question as we staggered back to our car. “Would it have been worth an hour wait for the same meal?” I am not sure it would and I am pretty certain that I would not be fun to be around while we found out.

However, I am certain of one thing, the lobster at Newport Seafood in San Gabriel is worth thirty minutes of anybody’s time.

CUT: WHISTLING THE SIDES

A few years ago, I read an old review of a Broadway musical. The critic savaged the play for its lousy acting and poor score, but gave due praise to the costumes and staging. He finished the review by stating “the audience left the theatre whistling the scenery”

It’s a brilliant description of how elements of any production, which are supposed to be in a supporting role, can often be given undue prominence to the detriment of the whole experience. It’s also exactly how I felt as Sybil and I wandered out to collect our car after a hugely underwhelming meal at CUT, Wolfgang Puck’s Los Angeles Steakhouse.

It was my own fault, I guess. Sybil had asked me where I wanted to go for the annual celebration of my journey to the grave and the notion of a large steak in smart surroundings seemed to fit the bill perfectly. It appeared that a similar notion also fit the bill of lots of other people as well. Even well in advance, the only reservation we could get on the big day was so early that I half expected to be offered a Pensioner’s menu as we were shown to our seats.

There are no discounts at CUT however, as I soon began to realise as my eyes wandered up and down the menu in search of the largest cuts of meat. Starters ranged from around $20 to a whopping $30 a pop, while the main events leave $50 behind like a fat man running for the bus. Turn to the selection of impressive looking Wagyu and Kobe cuts brought to the table by our server and you wont see much change out of a Benjamin. While we made our mind up, we finished our pre-dinner drinks and nibbled on some excellent gougère, little knowing that they would turn out to be one of the highlights of the meal.

When I posted about my meal on Twitter before setting out, more than one person suggested that I must try the “Bone Marrow Flan with Mushroom Marmalade and Parsley Salad” an interesting twist on the dish that has made Fergus so famous. Indeed the relationship to to St. John’s most famous dish became even more apparent when the plate arrived. The flan had been set inside two narrow veal bones, flanked by two quenelles of the mushroom “marmalade” (do you think any chefs actually know what marmalade really means any more?) and topped by the parsley salad and a hefty dose of the all purpose "fine dining" veal reduction that I thought had gone out of fashion about ten years ago.

It was a pleasing enough plate to look at and the mushrooms had terrific flavour working well with the sharp bite of the parsley salad. Unfortunately, the star of the show had little to recommend it other than a perfect consistency. There was no recognisable marrow essence that either Sybil or I could discern and it merely ended up as a few flavourless blobs of savoury custard on toasted brioche.

Sybil’s starter was a more standard “Big Eye Tuna Tartare” which was obviously made with fish of impeccable provenance and came topped with avocado and surrounded with Japanese accompaniments. While the fish was of superb quality, the whole dish screamed out for the ignition key of citrus and a hefty dose of seasoning to wake everything up. When I asked Sybil what she thought, her shrug was enough to tell me all I needed to know, if not to justify the $28 price tag.

Sybil is no fan of the cow, and I persuaded her to try the Korubata Pork Chop for her main course, while I finally decided on $59 worth of 35 day dry aged Nebraska Corn Fed Rib Eye as my birthday treat. The pork came with a slight char and had all the intense flavour you would associate with Berkshire pigs. Disappointingly, however, although our server had made a particular note to tell us that it was cooked to medium, it arrived at our table well done and slightly dry. A sign, I am pretty certain, that it had sat for slightly too long at the pass while waiting for my steak to rest.

Quite how underwhelming everything had been so far in the meal would have been forgotten if the main event, the steak had lived up to expectation. This does, after all brand itself a steakhouse and, if Mr. Puck can’t get that basic right, then he should spend more of his time in this particular kitchen and less on the shopping network peddling pots and pans.

Well, whomever he has in operating the charcoal grill and broiler definitely knows what he is doing as my steak came out exactly as requested. For the record, that's medium rare with a char. It had also been allowed to rest for the required time (to the detriment of the pork chop) and the inside colour had spread to an even pink. Unfortunately the perfect execution of the meat meant that the real issue with the steaks at CUT became all too apparent. They lack any apparent flavour. At first I thought it was my own fault for deadening my palate with a strong martini and a glass or three of decent Burgundy, but Sybil was quick to confirm that, although perfectly prepared, the steak had as much taste as if I had sucked on a napkin.

The simple fact, I believe is that the bar has been raised in the steak game over the last few years.  The 100% corn fed cuts that were once the benchmark for a great steak have been left behind by their grass fed or grass fed/grain finished cousins. It seems to be the case in too many of the steakhouses I visit in the US these days, and I often find myself in the unlikely situation of arguing with American friends that I can now get a better steak in London (at Hawksmoor & Goodman’s two branches) than I can at the majority of their US equivalents. Americans don’t want to believe this to be true, of course, but I know where I would want to go if I wanted my last steak on earth and it would not be CUT.

The side dishes, on the other hand, were spot on, with particular attention being paid to superb creamed spinach, which came topped with a fried egg mixed in at the table. Fries were crisp, salty and delicious and, even though I dislike Mac & Cheese, Sybil gave it her thumbs up of approval. One more note before we move on from the main courses. If a restaurant is going to charge $60 for a steak and $12 for side dishes, however good, for shame on them for gouging an extra $2 from you for small pots of the accompanying sauces.

Desserts were a notch above standard steakhouse fodder with a passable Banana Cream Pie whose plate had been decorated with a birthday message, and a chocolate soufflé that completed the only real task of any good chocolate soufflé, that of being both rich and light at the same time.

Service throughout the meal was exemplary and deserved the 20% tip we added to the bill. Along with our pre-dinner drinks and a $75 bottle of Mercurey, that brought our total to a colossal $410 for the two of us, an amount that was made little better than the arrival of a pretty package of leftovers to take away with us and was certainly too much for a meal where the supposed stars of the show had been found wanting.

We left whistling the side dishes. Not really what you hope for when spending $410.

SUSHI MORI: $330 WORTH OF SUSHI BLISS ON PICO

My love affair with sushi has been a long and slow process in the making.

I think the very first time I tried sushi in all its glory must have been in my early twenties at a restaurant called Ajimura, close to London's Covent Garden. I recall not liking it terribly much, gagging slightly at both the thought and taste of raw fish and then getting a dose of the heeby jeebys when presented with a bill for the meal which approached £100 (bear in mind this was 1986).

After that, Sushi and I left each other pretty much to our own devices for the next decade or so and it was not until frequent business trips to New York became a part of my life in the late 1990’s, that we bumped into each other again on a regular basis. There was still no way that I would have described sushi as my “go to” meal at this stage, but I at least began to be aware of the finer points of its preparation and to look forward to rather than dread the suggestions of my NYC based friends that we go and prop up a counter somewhere and utter the words "omakase”.

Move on another decade and regular exposure to good sushi in The Big Apple at places like Yasuda and Jewel Bakko, meant that I was now pretty much besotted, an expensive, but unlikely scenario given my first rather ghastly experience.

Back in London, it did and still does prove extraordinarily hard to assuage my all too common cravings. It is not that there are no good sushi restaurants at all in town. There certainly are, but even the best bear little or no comparison to those I have tried in the US, both in the variety and the quality of the fish they serve. They certainly fill a gap, but you can’t help but get the same feeling when eating Sushi in London that you might get watching Brentford vs Rotherham after having just been to The Bernabeu to see Real face off with Barca.

Then came the Japan stage of the EAT MY GLOBE journey and all bets were off. Japanese cuisine, of course, is so much more than sushi, as I found when I went to seven cities and ate as well as I have done anywhere on earth. But, it was a visit to see the auctions at the legendary Tsukiji market and the opportunity to eat a simple meal of glistening tuna on top of a bowl of rice that convinced me that, if I were presented with the opportunity to choose my last meal, sushi, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Fish & Chips and a 20oz 45 day dry aged steak would have t battle it out for the honour of seeing me on my way.

Now I am based in LA, sushi is everywhere. There’s cheap sushi for a quick lunchtime snack, smarter places for the evenings when only raw fish will do and, at the top of the tree there is Urasawa, with only ten seats and where a meal for two costs the same as a small European sports car. Everyone in LA has their favourite sushi spot and arguments about the merits of the fish and rice preparation can rage for hours at a time and bring lifelong friendships to a shouty conclusion.

Last week as I enjoyed a rather good Soul Food meal with my chum, Aaron Tell, who runs the excellent Savory Hunter blog, our conversations turned to sushi. We agreed on a couple of places and disagreed on a couple more. Then Aaron, a resident of Los Angeles for many years, mentioned Sushi Mori. I had never heard of it, but he assured me it was excellent and then we quickly moved on to the more important task of dividing up some freshly fried chicken.

Today, after I had pushed myself through a long run in the gym and Sybil had done enough work from home to justify a break, we both agreed that we had earned a decent lunch. My mind turned back to Aaron’s recommendation and I suggested Sushi Mori as a suitable reward for our hard work. Sybil had never been either and quickly agreed.

Sushi Mori is situated in an unassuming one storey building at an intersection of Pico Boulevard. The large pole bearing a line sketch of a fish is the only clue to the purpose of the small space and inside there are just a handful of tables as well as the obligatory counter.

Once we had taken our seats and ordered the Omakase, Chef Fumi presented us with a small dish of home made tofu topped with freshly grated wasabi and served with a small bowl of house blend soy sauce. It was a stunning start. The tofu dissolved on the tongue and told us enough about Sushi Mori to know that this was going to be both an excellent and a costly meal. We decided that we could put up with the latter because of the former.

Our appetizers continued with the arrival of a slate bearing Japanese eggplant topped with two types of miso and a small dish containing thin slices of rich monkfish liver. The monkfish liver was still a little cold and lacked the unctuous quality it would have taken on had it been allowed to sit a little, but the two cylinders of aubergine were spectacular with a light smoky touch from the torch with which they had been seared.

As if to confirm our positive opinions, the next dish proved to be one of my favourite of the whole meal. A small earthenware bowl, produced by Mori as all the tableware is we were informed, contained an inch of light fish broth flecked out with thin dices of peppers. Poaching in the liquid were slivers of monkfish, tiny clams and the sweetest small shrimps I can recall tasting. The broth had a strong hit of Japanese black pepper, which Fumi told us was because it was a dish usually served in winter.

We were still two dishes away from seeing any sushi at this point and I would have become a little angsty had the next arrival not been quite as special as it turned out to be. Another seasonal dish this time in the form of meat from a Japanese hairy crab, along with its leg, the cholesterol meat and a light, sweet vinegar dipping sauce.

What followed was equally as good. A fresh Abolone and strips of Shishito peppers in a light coating of tempura batter needed no more than simple accompaniments of a few grains of sea salt and a handful of drops of lemon juice to set them off. So often, when I have encountered abalone on my travels, it has been little more than exorbitantly priced tyre rubber. Here, a deft hand with the fryer meant that, while it still required a bite, it will not still be putting up a fight come supper time.

Starters over and done with, it was sushi time. This is the point in the Omakase where we would be presented with bite sized pieces of fish until either Chef Fumi caved or we did. With Sybil in tow and just warming up, I didn’t like his odds, but after eleven (yes folks, count ‘em, eleven) pieces of achingly fresh fish, we had to wave him away.

While none of it was less than excellent, we both had different favourites. Sybil loved the small sweet shrimp caught, we were told, off the east coast. They were also seasonal Chef Fumi explained, going on to say they would only be around for another week. We both “oohed” and “aahed” over two types of tuna and two different types of Yellowtail, but it was the Japanese “Needle” fish, which made my raise an eyebrow. It was a new one on me and brought with it a stronger taste that made me sure to look out for again.

Each piece of sushi came lightly dressed with the house soy sauce and we would have possibly stopped earlier had Chef Fumi not informed us that he had two types of Uni (sea urchin) available. Well, of course, such a boast demanded that we try them both. As our last hurrah, we were presented with two cylinders of Maki Sushi where the rice had been topped by thin discs of both Uni from Japan and from up the coast in Santa Barbara. While the domestic was good, it paled in comparison to its Japanese cousin which melted on the tongue like fishy Space Dust.

And that was it. Well, not quite. Hermano Primero would have been proud to see me polish off both dishes of a subtle ginger ice cream before we called for the bill. When it arrived, we both sucked in a considerable amount of breath. Good sushi never comes cheap, that much I learned during my first meal at Ajimura two and a half decades ago, but the bill at a Japanese restaurant still has the capacity to knock the wind from your sails.

Here, with tip for friendly and efficient service, it came to a whopping $330. That’s about $300 more than we would normally plan to spend on a Friday lunch in case you were wondering how often we splurge like this. But, after a quick readjustment in our seats and after the quick mimed “how F**king much?” gesture to each other, we shrugged our shoulders and handed over a credit card.

We laughed about it on the way home and by the time we pulled into our driveway, we had decided that it was just about worth the cost for a meal of such obvious quality in both ingredients and execution. It’s just as well because Sybil is now only too aware that there are, as Princess Diana put it so well, three of us in this marriage.

The other is my mistress of some twenty years, Lady Sushi and I ain’t letting her go any time soon.