Lingbo Li
Those who feed us
Sometimes all it takes is a simple lunch to make our day. I ordered a bag lunch from the Harvard University Dining Services website, expecting a tiny afterthought of a chef’s salad. Instead, it turned out to be something I would have been happy to pay for – good mixed greens, sliced cold cuts and cheese, tomatoes, and packaged in a giant paper takeout box. I love it when the dining hall makes efforts like these since it adds an element of personality to what can seem like a giant operation of feeding thousands of undergrads everyday.
I remember my mother used to make the best bag lunches of homemade stir fried rice for me, although back then, I just wanted to fit in with the other kids and their turkey sandwiches. What kind of bag lunches have you eaten?
Tim Cushman’s O Ya in Boston – The Best Meal of My Life
I heard O Ya, Boston’s premiere sushi restaurant, was absolutely superb. I’d heard raves. It was supposed to be an exotic, transcendental experience. It was supposed to push the boundaries of what sushi is. “Get the hamachi with banana pepper mousse,” one friend told me. Another moaned when recalling the fried oyster with squid ink foam, with a similarly moan inducing price tag.
It’s life changing, I’ll-never-eat-sushi-again kind of sushi. Each grain of rice is perfect, instilled with a richness and nuance of flavor I didn’t know rice could hold. Each nigiri is as precisely constructed as a Swiss timepiece and balanced in flavors, and oh, the flavors, the flavors! – ingredients I’d never seen used in sushi before, with a fondness for black truffle, aioli, and smoky pickled onion. With each bite (and they only give you one bite at a time), fireworks went off, every single time, I cried, “This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
I had never really thought about how fish and rice go so well together, but this was the first time I was dumbstruck by this basic fact. Sushi and rice formed a holy communion – they melted together, melded together, moved together. The fish was so fresh it seemed not like fish at all, but a kind of ecclesciastical butter, something that could lubricate the movement of heavens, or convince atheists in the existence of God. The only problem with each artfully made bite was how how tragically quickly it melted away into the paleness of a memory.
The climb to the top included a nigiri made with house smoked wagyu beef – but not just any beef. This beef melted in my mouth like it was freshly caught fish, and astounded me with its smoky richness. I was afraid to swallow. I got lost. I closed my eyes. I shaded my eyes with a open palm, as if the sun was shining in my eyes, unsure what was happening or what I was tasting. I didn’t think anything could top it until I hit even the very last bite – foie gras with balsamic chocolate kabayaki, raisin cocoa pulp, and a sip of aged sake. It was perched on top of a roll of rice, and as the crowning achievement of a spectacular meal, it caused me to cover my face with my hands and moan, head bowed, at a loss for words. My shoulders slumped in defeat. I don’t even normally like foie gras that much. I don’t normally get bowled over by sushi. I don’t normally write such fawning reviews. Amazing.
I walked around post-dinner in Chinatown and couldn’t really bring myself to buy a snack anywhere else. No joke, all other kinds of food seemed distant and unpalatable.
O Ya, opened by chef Tim Cushman and his sake sommelier wife Nancy, is hidden on a bare, deserted street in the Leather District (rubbing shoulders with Chinatown). I got off South Station and no one had heard of “East Street.” I wandered, legs bare and freezing, until a taxi cab driver finally pointed me in the right direction. I spotted the modest sign and plain wooden door, not sure what to expect from such an unassuming location.
I took a seat, and immediately wished I’d skipped the VIP tables and reserved a bar stool instead where I could watch the food being made. Unfortunately, they were booked for the evening. My own 5:30pm Saturday reservation had been made weeks in advance – if I’d insisted on getting a 7pm, it would have a month and a half to snag a prime dining time. Our waitress was competent and professional, if not extremely warm.
By now, I’ve developed a shameless routine when I eat out. I get my Nikon camera out, set up the tripod, set the white balance, and snap a few test shots to figure out the light. The women sitting to our right kept glancing over, amused:
The first dish of the evening was a kumamoto oyster, tiny pearls of watermelon, and cucumber mignonette, slightly sweet and briney.
Next came a hint of the delight of what would come: hamachi with banana pepper mousse. Cushman is fond of torching.
Then salmon tataki with torched tomato, smoked salt, and onion aioli. Another stunner of a bite – the smoked salt and onion flavors made it a knockout.
One of my favorite things in the world is unagi, and this warm eel unagi with thai basil, kabayaki, and fresh Kyoto sansho is no exception. The melding of Thai and Japanese flavors added an unexpected twist on an already unbelievably rich bite.
An example of of how incredibly inventful the food can be: warm chive blossom omelette, sweet dashi sauce, hajiso.
One of my favorites included this fried kumamoto oyster, yuzu kosho aioli, and squid ink bubbles – actually made with a froth of oyster juice, squid ink, olive oil and milk.
A la ratte potato chip with summer truffle.
Hamachi with Vietnamese mignonette, thai basil, and fried shallots – incredibly fresh, love the melding of Japanese and Vietnamese flavors here.
Wild bluefin tataki, smoky pickled onion, truffle oil. Off the hook.
An amazing vegetarian dish of grilled sashimi of chanterelle and shittake mushrooms, rosemary garlic oil, sesame froth, and homemade soy. Each delicate bite made me rethink the taste of mushrooms.
Wagyu beef nigiri that… almost made me pass out from joy. Amazing.
The finale – a seared bite of foie gras, flavored with balsamic vinegar, chocolate, and raisins. You would never think that combination would work, but the names of the ingredients are really good predictions of success at O Ya.
I’m happy to say that O Ya lived up to the hype in every way. Best sushi of my life.
Freshly caught, homemade sushi
There are several kinds of people you meet at Harvard, and Willy is the type who is utterly dedicated to his one central passion in life: fishing. He writes articles about fishing for national magazines, he goes on fishing expeditions, he takes classes involving fish, he takes care of fish at a museum, and he’s bartering with the convenience store across the street with fish. He has so much extra fish that he gives the dining hall dozens of pounds of the stuff every week, so they know and love him there.
Willy and his catch
Recently, he’s been hosting sushi parties where he’ll cut up his catch and serve it nigiri style with sugared and vinegared rice, wasabi, and soy sauce. It’s amazing how much sushi one tuna produces, and needless to say, he was knocking on doors afterwards giving the rest of his haul away.
It was interesting to eat since there was a heartfelt simplicity and story to the meal, and a certain bareness: raw fish that my friend had caught with his own hands, rice, soy sauce, all eaten in a dorm common room. Sushi had gone from being somewhat impenetrable to almost too real, with unshaped flaps of the deep pink flesh piled in a dining hall salad plate and seeing my friend’s hands packing a log of rice with the heat still rising from the bowl.
The Coolest Bartender Ever
Here’s a bartender who can really shake it doing some crazy tricks with his weapons of choice at LAN Club in Beijing. This was where I tippled on a sample of mixologist’s Mao’s summer cocktails while bonding with the super fabulous PR guy about the crappy gay expat scene in China. No matter where I go, it seems, my fag hag abilities are never wasted.
I was actually there on work. My goal: to pick a cocktail as City Weekend Beijing’s drink pick. Here’s the triage of drinks I sampled: a cool cucumber concoction, a cosmopolitan reimagined in raspberry, and my favorite – a killer kiwi number made with a fresh, macerated fruit.
They have a crazy, Philippe Starck-designed interior with all kinds of mismatched chairs, baroque frames, a bathroom fountain where a silver goose spits water onto your soiled hands, and other fantastic imaginings. I sampled my drinks sitting in a giant, red velvet throne with a golden eagle sculpture the size of an 8 year old perched on it, no joke.
Here’s the writeup I eventually sent in, I don’t know what the published version looked like since I headed back for America the next day:
There’s nothing quite like the magic touch of a good bartender. As easy as giving two parts hard liquor and one part tasty mixer a stir sounds, sometimes we need someone like LAN Club‘s Mao, master mixologist. He produces marvels like their kiwi martini (YY70), where he’s taken a whole kiwifruit and mashed it into a fine, lime green pulp, then fortified it with premium vodka, kiwi liqueur, lime juice, and flavored sugar. The result elevates a somewhat belittled, misunderstood fruit into a whole greater than the sum of its parts – and has us swooning over a simple tipple. We love most of all how there’s a bit of pulp just to make it, you know, more real. “I never taste,” Mao declares of his creations. “I don’t need to.” You can snag it for half price on Thursdays, 9pm-2am, or get two for YY70 on their Wednesday martini nights.
Gliding in 4.5 inch heels
I ordered these off of Endless.com specifically for pageant purposes (see my entry on why I’m competing in Miss New York USA)
Now the question is, will I be able to wow judges with my ability to twirl, pose, sashay just so? See this hilarious (and really useful!!) video. I’ve been trying out that “C” shape and it’s definitely helped with making my walk less stomp-y. Feminists hate me.
Lana Lingbo Li
I'm a world traveler / enthusiastic eater who's now blogging and producing videos over at HelloLana.com. Visit me there!
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