Category: unsolicited advice

DON and Done

On By Emily KeithIn miscellany, unsolicited advice1 Comment

Don is a new Korean restraurant on Tate St.  I LOVE Korean food.  This new restaurant is owned by the same Korean brothers who own Sushi Republic up the street.  Until recently the brothers operated a smaller sushi restaurant in the location that now houses Don.  In fact, throughout the course of our meal several people walked in expecting sushi and walked out after asking directions on how to get 40 paces up the street.  Fools.  The brothers who own both joints are really great guys.  Once, when my sister Anna and I were dinning in the old sushi restaurant they accidentally towed my car, Anna cursed them out, and they gave us a ride to the tow yard in their really nice Audi sportscar.

Don’t dine at Don expecting the full Korean food experience.  Don serves hot clay pots of rice or ramen.  There is a great Korean restaurant on Spring Garden Rd. called Seoul Korean, they offer a full setting of banchan, kimchi included.  However, the presentation at Don is relaxed and fun.

All bowls are about $8.00 and if you order a rice bowl that includes a miso starter.  The miso was good, not too salty, tofu and seaweed included.  Don’t get too excited.

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Please DO get excited about the main corse.  I had the spicy tuna rice bowl and I LOVE the wooden boxes that surround the too hot to touch clay pot.  These wooden bowls are suspiciously absent at Seoul Korean and that is the making of a dangerous dining experience.  I enjoy grasping a hot bowl of food and the wooden box make it possible when dining at Don.

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Yum. Rice, shitaki mushrooms, carrots, cilantro, daikon and sashimi grade spicy tuna.  I was truly impressed by the quality of the tuna, so fresh.  The spoon is shaped like a paddle and you fold every thing together and the tuna cooks itself in the hot clay pot. 

Aaron ordered the vegetable rice bowl.  This bowl came drapped in newly seared fresh tofu.  Please note the obvious improvement in this photograph over the last one.  It turns out that my man is a fabulous food photographer, he has a very steady hand.

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Rice, tofu, carrots, onion, cilantro, cucumber, sprouts and sesame seeds.  This kind of food is perfect for a cold winter day.  We may return tonight because it is 20 DEGREES OUTSIDE. 

Done! 

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The Worst Pies in London

On By Emily KeithIn hits and misses, unsolicited adviceLeave a comment

Last month I finished reading the trilogy of Ruth Reichl’s food novels.  The first book in the series,”Comfort Me With Apples”, includes a vivid tale of Pasta Carbonara and in true Reichl style the recipe is included among her prose.  Yesterday I started reading the wildly popular “Eat Drink Pray” by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I’ve seen a tremendous amount of people, mostly women, reading this book in coffee shops and airports so I asked Aaron to bring home a used copy from his work.  Pasta Carbonara is the first dish Gilbert eats in Rome and it launches a four month excursion into Italian digestible delights.

Tonight I made Pasta Carbonara for the first time. 

This will not ignite a four month joy ride into gluttony but I’m so glad I splurged on this dish.  I’ve devloped a small obsession with hot carbohydrates that cook sunny raw egg yolks.  The Korean Bi-Bim-Bap is a great example of this terrific technique.

Update: I wrote this immediately after consuming the Pasta Carbonara.  A few short hours later my significant other and I were NOT pleased about this dish.  It made us ill, very very ill.  I’m not sure what happened.  Perhaps we are not accustom to the gluttonous conxumption of bacon, or perhaps the illness was unrelated (doubtful). My best guess is that the raw egg is the culprit.  Thank goodness my siginificat other has a sense of humor about these things!  I used a recipe from a rescpected food blog.  However, over the past month I’ve been quite dissapointed by some of the food blog recipes that I have tried.  I now plan to peruse the food blogs that I love but I will only prepare edited and tested recipes from published cook books or magazines.