Boston Restaurant and Food Blog » Offbeat

Meet Felice, Creator of the World’s First Linux Birthday Cake

Lingbo Li — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:16:43 +0000

My roommate Felice is neither a typical Harvard student nor a typical pastry maker. When I first saw her, she was powder pale, with a green mohawk, combat boots, and no eyebrows. This will be interesting, I thought. Maybe we can do each other’s makeup.

We lived together entirely by accident – my roommate and I at the time were looking for some more people to make a room of 5. She gamely agreed.

Felice turned out to be the brainy lovechild of a punk rock Betty Page and The Odyssey’s Homer. In between translating ancient Greek texts for her senior thesis and poring over orgo homework, she watched a constant stream of L-word spinoffs and brutal slasher flicks.

One day, she’ll be a surgeon, a programmer’s wife, and proud mommy of the cutest pet rats ever.

Felice and her boyfriend, Yuvi Masory, hacker extraordinaire

Felice ended up being my favorite roommate my strange, wild junior year. The five of us in that doomed rooming group were an unlikely melange of misfits – “a flophouse” she aptly described it – and it wasn’t long before chaos swept our cinder block duplex.

One by one, like an Agatha Christie mystery, the room fell apart.

One girl left, amidst a swirl of unanswered questions. And then there were four.

For the rest of us, latent problems became crises. Annoyances became vendettas. I was literally scared to return my room, and when I did, I locked the door and braced myself for collateral damage. By spring semester, the bickering reached a fever pitch.

I spent most of my semester either in class or hopping from one food event to another, spending more time in Boston in a month than most Harvard undergrads do in all four years.

And then there were three.

Felice ended up being the mediator; her room was the bunker, the common room was no man’s land. After she listened to everyone’s problems with saintly patience, we laughed about the black comedy unfolding. In between complaints, I wrote my anthropology essays in her room decorated with 50′s pinups and queer icons as she Skyped her long distance boyfriend.

In a school where people frequently hide their insecurity beneath a shiny veneer of ambition, Felice was refreshingly genuine about both. She didn’t dye her hair funny colors because of some calculated counter culture attempt. She just liked dying her hair.

And she understood, perhaps better than anyone else I’ve met, about what it means to feel profoundly, deeply different without apology. She was silly and joyful about her quirks and didn’t bother to hide them.

She doesn’t collect business cards. (While I have so many lining my tote bag.) She has the same insecurities like everyone else, but doesn’t fall to unwitting flashes of cruelty when she feels down. It’s refreshing.

So when she takes a stab at baking, it is infused with an equally individualistic sensibility.

Yes, that’s a birthday candle betwixt her rouged lips.

For her programmer boyfriend’s birthday, Felice made her favorite stalwart Linux enthusiast a cake shaped like the operating system’s logo. Earlier, we had dropped by IHOP for dinner while he showed me his flashcard generator program, executable via the command line interface.

Different can be beautiful, and delicious.

Flushing Mall’s Improbable Statue

Lingbo Li — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:20:09 +0000

There are some things in life that can only be elegantly described as “WTF?”

This statue (with me hamming it up on the left to convey scale) was found in Queens’ Flushing Mall en route to the Flushing Mall Food Court. Photographer Robyn Lee was equally perplexed.

Yes. WTF indeed.

Crowdsourcing my blog entries

Lingbo Li — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:04:05 +0000

A cool photo my friend Sam took that I'll put here for no real purpose other than looking good in it.

Hi denizens of the Internet, Asian women, unseemly lovers of Asian women, Harvard students, and their ilk:

I want to try something out.

Actually, I want you to figure out what I should try out.

After all, you know better than me what to do with stale cake, why Chinese food is so damn cheap, why I’m wrong for eating innocent whale flesh, and where to grocery shop in Boston.

So I want you to leave me a comment below – it’s easy! it takes two seconds! – letting me know what you want me to write a blog post about.

Have you always wanted to hear what I think about pickup lines? The best places to study in Harvard Square? What that molecular food class at Harvard is like? My picks for hair products, chopsticks, lip glosses (I have many), cookbooks, nonfiction reading, or best-looking celebs?

Whether I’ll do another beauty pageant? My favorite self-tanner? The thrills of slurping Cantonese-style congee?

Part of this comes from realizing that an awful lot of you like to click the “life” tab on the navigation rather than the “food” tab. If you want to hear about life… let me know what topic you’d like to hear about.

I can’t promise that these will all get done ASAP, but I’ll get around to all of them eventually.

A few ground rules:

1) Nothing inappropriate, based on my judgment. I like the fact that my parents and employers read this.

2) Nothing horribly expensive.

3) Um, if I think of anything else, I’ll put it here.

Please! If no one leaves me anything to write about, I’ll eat my foot. Mmm, foot.

Small Asian Girl vs. Pasta From Hell — East Coast Grill’s 100th Hell Night

Lingbo Li — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:18:01 +0000

There are nine circles in Hell, and I am determined to make it to the last, torturous one.

I wade through the murk of the river Styx, then step over the cold, bloated bodies that populate the circle of Gluttony.

Finally, I make it to the Ninth Circle. The red finger paint on the window reads, “BEWARE: Eat at your own RISK.” Sinning souls jockey for space at the bar while yellow strips of caution tape flutter over above their heads. I pick up a menu which has subheadings like “Lucifer’s Liquid Coolers” (spicy cocktails) and “Entrees from Hell” (eclectic dishes with the zing of Cajun hot mustard or bird chile-lemongrass broth).

I’m in Cambridge’s Inman Square, home of East Coast Grill, who is setting their kitchen aflame for their 100th Hell Night (April 12-15, 2010). For three nights, three times a year, they serve the spiciest food that sadism can muster. For decades, the event has attracted spice masochists the world in the past quarter-century who come to sacrifice their tongues to flame.

I figured if there were any small Asian girl who could handle Hell Night, it would be me. I’m brazen with my applications of Sriracha to dining hall food. I’ve eaten Sichuanese hotpot in Chengdu, which essentially drinking scalding, spicy oil. In frustration over Thai dishes not being hot enough, I’ve literally eaten spoonfuls of fish-sauce laden bird chilies to the admiration of waiters and professional eaters.

photos by Sam Lipoff

But only the truly deranged ask for East Coast Grill’s mythical Pasta From Hell. It’s a dish so hot that they make you sign a consent form. A manager personally requested that I not eat it. “I’ll give you a spoonful for free,” he told me. “Please don’t do it to yourself.”

In the interest of research, I have to. I meet Satan to do the deed. His name is Dr. Pepper, and he’s wearing a felt hat shaped like a jalapeno. His shirt printed with cartoon flames and a string of plastic chiles is looped around his neck. Rasta-colored sweatbands encircle his wrists. He seems positively… genial.

There’s a hellish ingredient in what I’m about to consume. It’s called the ghost chili (naga jolokia) – as omnious as it sounds.

It is the hottest hot pepper in the world. It clocks in at about a blistering 1,000,000 Scoville units.

You do not eat it; it eats you.

Dr. Pepper brings over the orange form. It reads “Hell Pasta Consent,” and the final paragraph describes what I am about to experience after eating this pasta of lore:

“Close your eyes and imagine an angry Goliath Birdeater crawling down your throat, the irritating sting of its barbed urticating hairs penetrating the membranes of your tongue and esophagus. The large hairy spider reaches your stomach and sinks its fangs into your intestines… Hours later, it tears out the other end, alive.”

I sign my name.

My dining partners and I had sampled the merely very spicy dishes already without much event. (I was actually somewhat disappointed at the level of spiciness, although the steak and Korean fried chicken were all very tasty.) The pasta came, quivering under its thick application of seasoning. I twirled a generous, wide noodle around my fork and placed it in my mouth.

I chewed. Then I took another bite. It took about 5 seconds for it to hit me. But when it did, I understood what I’d signed up for.

Imagine the hottest habanero you’ve ever eaten. Imagine the rip-roar flash burn of a Jalapeno, the prickly Novocain of a Szechuan peppercorn, the sour sizzle-pop of a hit of Tabasco.

Then multiply that by hundreds of thousands.

Imagine an unchecked forest-fire flame searing your throat and tongue and the roof your mouth to a well-done cannibal’s steak. Water only prolongs your agony. Milk barely dampens the flames.

That, my friends, is the Pasta From Hell.

I barely survived three bites before I succumbed to tears, mouthfuls of cornbread, and half a glass of milk.

But other people were more extreme. The man at the table behind me shoveled the entire thing into his mouth in thirty seconds, then looking pale, ran outside to throw up.

He came back, concerned girlfriend in tow, and declared victory. He’d only thrown up the three glasses of water he’d chugged after the fact.

Dr. Pepper came by with a free t-shirt for the pasta victor and posed for photos. But I knew that the Devil would have the last laugh. Come tomorrow, his digestive tract would burn anew. What goes in, after all, had to come out.

Alligator, yak, and ostrich, oh my: Student Prince in Springfield, MA

Lingbo Li — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:08:15 +0000

You will never go to the Student Prince . First off, it’s a 90 minute drive away in western Massachusetts – so far off, you might as well be teetering on a fiery lip overlooking the nothingness of the end of the world.

Who knows what spiny, lantern-jawed fish are fit to survive so far from Bostonian civilization.

But I braved it anyway. I hoped to do the foodie equivalent of resume padding. It was the last night of February – and the last night that Student Prince would be serving exotic game meats. Lipoff had tipped me off on yak, bison, elk, alligator, and boar in hearty preparations.

The trip wouldn’t have been possible without Lipoff’s battered-but-spunky Peugeot, riddled with quirks. The seatbelt, for example, is backwards: you pull up from the bottom left to affix it above the right shoulder.

After a delayed start, we arrived, 90 minutes later, in Springfield, MA. Student Prince is unabashedly German, and there’s a pleasantly institutional feel to the place. (Meaning established, not infirmary-like.) You think about how many years it’s taken to accumulate the beer steins on the wall, the knick knacks and ski lodge-esque wood paneling, and the loyal clientele – primarily white and older on the night I went, a score of families bonding.

Travel is surreal: I remember the tired, cheesy desperation of the ferry that shuttled me across across the strait from Dover to Calais. This wasn’t hopping between England and France, but the past 90 miles in the Peugeot felt inadequate to match the impossibility of where I sat.

Game meatballs

Alligator tail cutlet with spicy Creole sauce

Lipoff tore through the menu and ordered a storm of exotic meats. The dishes came, uniformly all pretty good – alligator tail cutlet with spicy Creole sauce ($8.95) tasted mostly of the sauce, and had a texture somewhere between chicken and fish. It wasn’t spicy so much as a highly flavored and salty, which made me think of my mother’s cooking. The game meatballs ($5.95) – composed from a variety of exotic game meats – had been finely ground and tightly packed. Swimming in a pool of gravy and sliced mushrooms, they were comfort food. Sautéed sugar snap peas almondine ($2.95) were tender and sweet.

Sugar snap peas almondine

Yes, it came with the little illustrated sign.

But I was clearly here for the game kebob. Chunks of buffalo, venison, wild boar, yak, ostrich, and elk arrived on a bed of spaetzle (a traditional German egg noodle) and a dearth of gravy.

Bison and elk, the framing meats, were the most successful. Finer grained and less gamey than yak and ostrich, they made me reconsider steak. Venison I’ve had before; the wild boar chunk we got had some tendon running through it, and suffered from hard-to-chew tastelessness.

A cross section of the elk - delicious!

Pickled herring was pronounced excellent by Lipoff (I’m not normally the biggest fan) and he also insisted on tacking on another order of fried potato pancakes, which came with apple sauce and sour cream, latkes style. The server tipped us off on eating them smothered with sour cream and doused in white sugar.

Finally, in over the top fashion (hey, I’d come all the way from Cambridge), apple strudel arrived for dessert, crowned with a warm ball of cream and studded with raisins. Being part honorary Jew, I obviously compared the apple strudel to noodle kugel.

Not bad for the end of civilization.

Apple strudel, I love you.

Eating Toro’s beef hearts; Ken Oringer

Lingbo Li — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:13:56 +0000

My snapshot of Toro's sliced beef heart

Thinly sliced beef heart at Ken Oringer’s Toro. My dining partner was a little apprehensive at first, but pronounced the finished product akin to roast beef – I’d say it’s more fine grained. I love how offal can look so innocuous but surprise you with a certain intensity of flavor or texture. Like their sweetbreads – my first, actually. I’ll post pictures of those later.

I got into an interesting debate with a Facebook commenter. See our exchange:

Lingbo Li Ran into tweep @simonepress who was sitting next to me at @tororestaurant – how cool and random! Had the corn, beef hearts, short rib – yum!
Wed at 11:18am via Unnamed App Custom: loading… · Comment · LikeUnlike · View Feedback (11)Hide Feedback (11)

Commenter
My stomach just turned upside down.
Wed at 11:36am ·

Lingbo Li
It was sliced very thin and put on a slice of bread – it tasted more like roast beef than anything else.
Wed at 11:39am ·

Commenter
Try endangered sea turtle eggs. Not bad.
Wed at 12:11pm ·

Lingbo Li
Beef hearts are not endangered… the ethics are completely different.
Wed at 12:31pm ·

Commenter
Well…..it depends the country ur at where the “When in rome” qoute applies. I still get skeeved from the idea of consuming hearts of animals…i can imagine it was once beating.
Wed at 12:33pm ·

Lingbo Li
Thinking something is “gross” is not the same as thinking it is unethical – you can think brussel sprouts are gross, but that’s a personal preference, not a ethical or necessarily cultural one. A piece of beef was once moving as well – it’s muscle, just like the heart is muscle. The ethical argument for eating hearts would be that it’s making use of something that would normally be thrown away, meaning less waste and respecting every part of the animal.
Wed at 1:08pm ·

Commenter
Lemme just think ….what would Hannibal Lector do?

So I’ve gotten comments before on the ethics of what I eat. One person criticized me for eating whale steak (it was from the mink whale, which is not endangered), while some of the stuff I eat is just kind of gross. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to spring for calves brains. I do happen to think that eating offal is one the most ethical and delicious things you can do to reduce waste, but the knee-jerk grossout reaction from some people is saddening.

And if you’re curious who this Ken Oringer is, photographer Andy Ryan took a bunch of photos of the Burger Bash and happened to capture some of me. (I’m not BFFs with Ken! I talked to him for about five minutes. And ragged on his Red Sox chefs whites.)

Photos with celebs are interesting – I always feel like they only exist to simulate a relationship that doesn’t exist, a fleeting fame-by-association.

Me with Boston restaurateur Ken Oringer, photo by Andy Ryan, courtesy of Chris Lyons

Tony Maws’ Fried Pigs’ Tails at Craigie on Main, Cambridge

Lingbo Li — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:52:12 +0000

Despite ordering very, very little at Craigie on Main (a cocktail and splitting an appetizer), my dining companion and I were treated like long lost family.

Northern Lights

I probably have not been so coddled and swathed in love since I wore Mao-printed onesies as an infant. Despite explicitly only ordering drinks, we sat at a table, had a full bread basket brought to us, and finished off with two complimentary petite madeleines (which were unremarkable, but a nice touch).

Parked with one drink each and their famous fried pigs’ tails ($11), we camped out for three full hours.

If this were my restaurant, I probably would have kicked me out.

This is probably why I don’t run a restaurant.

Craigie, for the uninitiated, is a chef-owned restaurant that focuses on nose-to-tail cooking and local sourcing. The chef, Tony Maws, won Food & Wine’s Best New Chef last year. He worships at a porcine altar. I was told they now serve half a pig’s head. (Mark my words, I’ll be back to eat it.) When I ate there before, we were served a stuffed pig’s foot; a risotto dotted with cocks comb and blood sausage; and cured pork jowls. There’s obviously tamer stuff like a reputedly excellent burger, but for someone who is all about the quirky eats, the menu is my idea of Disneyland. I literally squeal and flap my hands – it can be quite embarrassing for my friends.

During our three hours, our waiter doted on us like the kindest and most selfless of grandfathers.

“Do you like your drink?” he asked, looking concerned. I had finished perhaps a quarter of it. It was very strong.

“Oh yeah, it’s fine,” I replied.

“I noticed you haven’t drank very much of it,” he remarked. “Just want to make sure…” Then he offered to make something else if this one didn’t tickle my pathetically-unable-to-imbibe fancy.

I said something about having the alcohol tolerance of a malnourished toddler.

Fried pigs' tails

Those famous fried pig tails? Each bite was unnerving. I hadn’t realized that a pig’s tail is mostly uh, fat. Think of it like a petite, very fatty version of a chicken drumstick or a spare rib – a small bone encased in a rich, lip-smacking casing of fat that leaves you feeling a bit stickier for the wear. Pile them up like ruby jewels, top them in a crown of delicately sliced onion rings, and sauce them in fine ethnic fashion (Vietnamese – garlicky, a bit of a chili kick), and you have what Food & Wine declared one of the best dishes under $12 in the country. I think the dish could have benefited from some extra dipping sauce on the side for the condiment-obsessed. It was the kind of thing where you would want to knaw endlessly on one tail, probably no more. I love fat as much as the next human being, but really, I wasn’t kidding when I said these babies just seem to dissolve into a fatty uber-substance upon mouth contact. I began slowing down around pig tail #4.

When we finally left – it was around midnight – I walked out in a kind of golden haze. Part of me wonders if my blogging ways might have accounted for the superlative treatment. (It turns out that an acquaintance actually works there.) I’ve done a proper meal of a tasting menu there when I just started blogging and had great service, but I’m curious to know what your experiences have been.

Which doesn’t take away from the fact It was a magical evening that utterly overdelivered on service. Which makes up for all those times elsewhere when I sulked into an improperly dressed salad, or tried to flag down an errant waiter.

Hospitality industry, you redeem thyself.

International food porn – Quails on sticks, donkey meat, prawns.

Lingbo Li — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:27:41 +0000

Some underwhelming prawns at Private Kitchen 44 in Beijing.

Donkey meat in Beijing at Noodle Loft… like beef, but with a gamier, greasier mouthfeel.

A roasted quail on a stick in Chengdu.

Now with a bit of love.

The Harvard Final Club punch bowl

Lingbo Li — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:20:07 +0000

Sometimes these all-male organizations have parties that serve some kind of mysterious jungle juice that should never be imbibed.

Actually, it looks like someone mistook the sink for the toilet… FML.

Ok, now back to blogging about chocolate and braised bunny rabbits.

Capsule Review: Yak Butter Tea

Lingbo Li — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:49:32 +0000

Based on a tip by the City Weekend dining editor, I sought out something really exotic for a quick cafe break: yak butter tea. I already had warm and fuzzy feelings attached to yaks since a good friend from high school interned at Shokay, a social entrepreneurship startup that sells luxury goods made from yak down. I wondered if the strangely adorable creatures produced tasty beverages as well.

Tibet Cafe, on the famous strip of hutongs called Nanluoguxiang in Beijing, shines like a cheery orange beacon amidst the trendy boutiques and popsicle stands. I arrived around a slow lunchtime, so I took a seat in a deserted cafe. One cup of the stuff was 20RMB ($3-4), pretty damn steep for a drink, especially in Beijing.

I was pretty excited. Until I took a sip. I immediately cringed. It was like drinking salted curdled milk. It smelled like a pungent whiff of cheese, not necessarily a bad thing, but the flavoring was so strong that even when I went in for a third – and fourth – attempt, I couldn’t force it down without feeling kind of sick. The presentation in a solid black mug with the drink’s foamy white head was comforting, as were the Tibetan tapestries and bright color palette, but I just couldn’t force this stuff down. I held my breath and took a giant gulp or two, paid my bill, and left feeling kind of embarassed.

I guess there’s something for all tastes.

Weird Eats: Bull penis and live scorpions. Also, Starbucks coffee.

Lingbo Li — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:14:06 +0000

My sojourn to Beijing was marked mostly by my daily (nay, twice daily) visits to the altar of that is holy in the Middle Kingdom: Starbucks, charmingly translated/transliterated as “星巴克” (xing ba ke). There, I soothed my cultureshock embattled soul with endless tall iced coffees; occasionally, I’d spring for a muffin or biscotti, which tasted excruciatingly American. It was like imbibing a potent concoction of NASCAR, Elvis, Old Glory, and apple pie.

When I wasn’t ensconced in Starbucks, I’d be wandering the streets, trying to find a nice, small eat. As I made my way down Beijing’s Wangfujin shopping street, I found their “xiao chi jie,” or snack street.

I knew they sold weird crap on sticks, but I had no idea that the scorpions on those skewers are actually alive. Best of all, the sellers would occasionally give the counter a slap, just so the little critters would wriggle their sad, doomed little legs. Can’t you hear their anguished cries? Neither can I.

Just to prove they’re alive, I uploaded a video.

I actually didn’t eat this, since I got a case of sticker shock. 20 kuai! For a kebab!! Of scorpions!!!

But I did what comes next: bull penis on a stick. I’ve totally emasculated that poor animal, brains, balls, and all.

Mmm. Uhhh. This is unpleasant. My male friend also gave it a try.

What does it taste like? Not very good. But it also wasn’t prepared very well – it had gotten very gummy and had an unpleasantly gluey texture. The texture varied from the shaft, which was wider and had a harder, almost cartilage-like core, to the tip, which was just gooey nothing.

I don’t think i want to repeat the experience anytime soon, but maybe I can blame it on poor preparation.

To cap it off, here are some photos from the Forbidden City, predictably overrun by tourists, including this overzealous Chinese woman covered by not only a parasol, but also a towel and sunglasses (not pictured).

Look how intense that is!!!

Lingbo eats bull balls: THE VIDEO.

Lingbo Li — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:03:50 +0000

So in celebration of my homecoming to the magical, wonderful country that is the United States of America (sing it, sister!), I post this video. I edited it while sitting next to a smelly, discontented woman on a 12 hour flight.

This flight also involved me being convinced I had boarded the wrong plane, since I got on and woke up in Shanghai rather than Los Angeles. Oh no, I cried, then went in panic to the flight attendant (who was tall, pale, slender, and pretty, like all Chinese flight attendants are). I got on the wrong plane! I’m in the wrong city!!!

Turns out I just had to transfer twice in my quest to make it back to the east coast of America.

Anyway, I’m delighted to be home… i’m delighted to find clean bathrooms, and English-speaking staff, and politeness to strangers, and TWITTER, and FACEBOOK, and oh my god… You have no idea how great it is to be home. How great it is to know the names of things, and be able to communicate with people, and yes, feel a little skinnier in comparison.

This is my first video that I have ever edited beginning to end, so be kind… the musical selection is the Arctic Monkeys’ “Mardy Baum,” in case you are interested.

So here’s my video of when I ate balls with my BFF Marianna at KO Prime in Boston. This was back in May/June or so, but didn’t get around to editing it until now. Enjoy! Expect more stuff like this to come.

Many thanks

Balls!

Lingbo Li — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:57:55 +0000

I got an email from my waiter at KO Prime which began, “hey! the eagle as landed.” I have only tomorrow night to eat the dish that I suggested (artfully prepared bull testicles), and I’d love, nay, require some adventurous company. Harvard and Bostonian friends, let me know if you’re up for it: lingboli [at] fas.harvard.edu

I eat brains; there is a video.

Lingbo Li — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:24:08 +0000

Your tentacles do not impress me

Lingbo Li — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:10:31 +0000

Look at how cute it is!

I don’t understand why guys who try to impress me with strange they’ve eaten will often say they’ve tried squid/calamari. That is a little like saying they’ve had bone in chicken for the first time.

Just because it has tentacles, honey, doesn’t make you an adventurous eater.

(Also, don’t ever google image “tentacles.” I warned you. Don’t do it!)