The Chinese Food Truck on Oxford St
I first spotted Yang’s after my (baller) Sociology of Organizations class with Professor Ager. “A Chinese food truck!” I exclaimed and did one of my strange, gleeful flails – I kind of flap around my arms as if I’m trapped in a tiny bubble and make high pitched noises. So after class today, I gave it a try.
There were a lot of Chinese people in line. After being removed from the Middle Kingdom for a month, hearing Chinese again was kind of novel and comforting. It brought up no urges to yell at ineffectual service people – instead, I suddenly felt a bit safer and comforted by the sing-song tones of Mandarin. “What’s the best dish?” I asked the Chinese people in front of me.
“They’re kind of all the same,” one man in a stripped button down said.
The woman behind me suggested the crispy fried fish. “It’s very tasty,” she said, using a Shanghainese adjective for “very.” She confirmed she was from Shanghai, but when I tried to volunteering my cultural background and summer work experience, I saw that I lost her. “So you grew up in the United States?” she said afterwards. Oh. I felt too embarassed to switch to English – there is a kind of intimacy that evaporates in that act.
Click on the picture for a full-size menu.
I eventually ordered what the two people ahead of me ordered – shredded pork with Chinese pickle. When I opened up the box, my first reaction was aesthetic. This is a dish that never looks particularly great; the photos here are better than in real life. Chinese pickle – “zhacai” – is a variety of mustard that is commonly used in Chinese dishes, particularly hot and sour soup, and is often served with congee. The flavoring here, despite being such a Chinese dish (I doubt anyone used to American Chinese food would order this) was milder than my mother’s cooking. The saltiness, as well as the sour notes, had been toned down. The vegetables were cooked to a softer texture as was the meat, and there was more cornstarch used. It was overall satisfying, but didn’t really completely hit the spot – the rice wasn’t very sticky. I think I’ll try one of their more American standard dishes like Kung Pao chicken next time.
Find it!
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Yang’s
Oxford Street
Parked outside of Maxwell Dworkin (walk through the Science Center, past Peabody, then up until you hit the engineering building.)
Price range: $5-6 for a very large carton of rice and one entree, about $3 for appetizers.
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The Blue October Pizza at Zing! Pizza
I love a well-made pizza pie as much as anybody else, but I often seek out pies that stretch the definition of pizza (see: my entry on Veggie Planet). If I’m going to go the traditional pizza route, I place huge stock in the crust, which should never be soggy from the sauce nor be overpowered by the cheese, and should have the right amount of crunch (especially thin crust) or a touch of buttery flakiness (Oggi’s).
I serendipitously wandered into Zing! by accident one warm spring evening. I’d decided to trek up to Porter Square, saw the sign, and ordered up a slice of their Blue October which is very similar in basic ingredients to Veggie Planet’s Brunch for Henry pizza. Since one of the pizzas was on the smaller side, the super sweet employee threw in another slice for free – so I ate essentially half a pizza for only a few bucks.
Then I doused some leftover in a shower of red chili flakes, just because I love things that bite me back.
How was it? Really, truly delicious. The butternut squash “sauce” isn’t overpowering at all, and pins down the swirling loops of caramelized onion, mozz, spinach, and bleu cheese with subtly sweet, silky undertone. The thin crust (a nice crunch, of course) nicely showcases the toppings, which have that fortunate quality of surprising you with something a little different in each bite – so good its transcendent of whatever you think of its toppings independently.
If only you were a little closer to Harvard Square.
Find it!
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Zing! Pizza
1925 Mass Ave
617 497 4300
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Lingbo eats bull balls: THE VIDEO.
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
A continent of food porn
First, let’s begin this food porn journey with a blast from the past – my Bostonian past. Remember that time I ate bull testicles? (There will be a video of me saying, “Mmm! Tastes like chicken!” when I head back to school and into the arms of that devious den mother, The Harvard Crimson) I also got a cool shot of our complimentary little peanut butter fudge dessert. Thought it was worth throwing up on here when I was browsing through my 304034 shots of fried rice and cartilage on skewers.
How I ended up at a Teppanyaki place in Puxi, Shanghai one Saturday to take this phot of the grill being set on fire by a long-suffering female chef with yellowing teeth and red lipstick is another story. Often, I stop and ask myself, self, how is it that I am sitting here, outeating a group of rowdy Aussie men I do not know? Oh well, keep picking at that fried banana. Life is strange.
Eggplant is probably one of the most underappreciated vegetables. It can soak up flavors so nicely, especially in a dish like this one, or seasoned on skewers. Better than meat, I say. Found near Century Park in Pudong, Shanghai.
I adore congee. I love it like men love Megan Fox’s bathwater. This was a particularly good pot found in Shanghai’s Dingxi Lu, a wonderful food street. We had prawns and eel in it, not such a fan of the eel which seems grainy, flat, and underwhelming compared to its fatty, barbecued Japanese preparation.
Fried mantou (steamed bun) with a sweet sauce made with condensed milk. Donuts? What are those?
On 1025 Nanjing Xi Lu, find a shikumen (traditional Shanghainese townhouse) lane where there are random cafes and stores hidden amidst the residential housing. One was behind the most unassuming of wooden doors, with nothing more than a plain, lettered sign on the door. A slender girl asked me if I was hungry, so I wandered into the tiniest, dirtiest, and most cramped of kitchens.
A young man was hurriedly stir frying a handful of cabbage with giant cartons of brown eggs at his feet, fish halves, vegetables, oil, and other materials littering the counter around him, all the cutting services still smeared whatever it was before. It made me worry about food safety, so I decided to have dinner there. The waitress recommended this dish.
It was something special. Since it’s Hunanese food, it’s very spicy, but a deeply aromatic, peppery kind of spice, reminding me a bit of Sichuan peppercorn in initial flavoring but without any of the numbing effect. The heat is more insistent and persistent, but not painful. For a humble dish made of cabbage and fatty bits of pork, pretty damn good.
The remains of an epic Japanese meal. My review will be out in the next City Weekend.
Children are most adorable when they’re small, dirty, and have their Crocs on wrong.
Crocs are really, really popular in China. I especially love it when I see couples unironically wearing matching, schoolbus-yellow Crocs with little cartoon character pins in the holes. Or when people wear them as gym shoes – no joke.
Remember my Henanese restaurant friends? I caught them cutting up lamb bones one night, which have a deeply unappetizing scent when raw. These will make the bone soup I love so much. This freaked me out a lot for some reason. Especially the flying bits of debris.