My dear friend the troll

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The following piece written by my dear friend Susan for the South China Morning Post (original article here) pretty much sums up the problems with OpenRice… and I have stopped contributing some time ago.  And yes, I Love Lubutin is also a dear friend of mine.

Be wise to the not-so-subtle art of trolling
 SIGNATURE DISH
Susan Jung (foodandwine@scmp.com)
Feb 16, 2012

For a while there a few weeks ago, a certain poster on openrice.com was receiving an unusually large amount of feedback for her restaurant reviews. People were actually opening accounts just so they could post responses - often rude, sexist and vituperative - on the reviews by I Love Lubutin (ILL).

She was, arguably, provocative. Writing in grammatically incorrect English that was littered with misspellings and direct translations from Cantonese, she wrote as much about shopping for expensive clothing and shoes, her efforts to stay slim, and her "sweet sweet boyfriend", as she did about food. Each of her 13 reviews contained comments about whether the restaurant provided a stool for her designer handbag.

Hero to zero

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I'm back in Hong Kong for a few days on business, and as luck would have it, managed to attend the first MNSC dinner of the year.  I was pretty excited to attend the gathering tonight, not the least because we would start off with another face-off - much like the one I participated in at the end of December 2010…

We arrived at Chiu Tang (潮廳), the Chiuchow restaurant in the Cosmo Hotel.  Curiously enough, our evening did not start in the private dining room but in the rather spacious entertainment room next door.  We would hang out here while watching last year's bottom scorers - Pineapple and Dr. Poon - try to pick out the identities of the two wines.  We also did get to taste the wines ourselves…

Not quite foolproof

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Tonight I finally got to test out my SousVide Supreme.  It wasn't the first time I had used this little toy, but my previous attempts have all been soft-boiled eggs.  This was the first time I tried to cook a hunk of meat with it.

When someone first preached to me the benefits of sous vide cooking, it was said that this method of cooking is foolproof.  One can cook something at low temperature for a long time - hours, in fact, without overcooking.  I distinctly remember being told that I could chuck a piece of meat in the water bath before heading out to work in the morning, and come home to tender and juicy meat.

I can definitely say that this is not the case.

Fusion izakaya

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It was a beautiful day in Taipei today, and luckily I had invited a few old friends over to my brand spanking new place for a little afternoon tea.   The Rice Ball eating crew (飯團) has been hanging out for the better part of the last decade, and we've shared many good meals (and desserts after meals) together.  Naturally we whiled away the afternoon sipping on some tea and nibbling on a few snacks... just biding our till dinner.

We were being introduced to Hwa Tze Xun (花 彘醺), which labels itself as "fusion cuisine, sake bar".  Turned out to be an interesting place for casual dining.

Taraba crab feast

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We celebrated a friend's birthday tonight at a long-overdue gathering.   The birthday girl loves crabs, and we were set for a feast which featured a red king crab (鱈場蟹) as the main event.  The venue, however, wasn't what I was expecting.  Seafood 89 (89鮮海產) is a typical local joint serving up fresh seafood - stir-fried or cooked over high heat (快炒) - at very reasonable prices.  A place like this offers zero decor or dining comfort, and at times the table spills out onto the sidewalks.  But it doesn't matter to the patrons, as long as the food is tasty.

I was kinda hungry, and decided to grab something while we waited for our food to arrive.  Patrons are free to help themselves to bowls of braised pork rice (滷肉飯), and I think I scooped a little too much of the braised pork on top.  There was a lot of red scallions in the mix, and a healthy balance between fatty and lean parts of the pig.  Not bad, although I probably should have had it towards the end of the meal.