Restarant Reviews Telogram

Our far flung restarant correspondent Mirna has recently sent us a telogram.  These are 11 restaurants in Seattle that she thinks are the best.  Well, I've been to numbers 3, 7, 8, 9 and those are all great.  In fact, 3, 7 8 and 9 are definitely 4 of my favorite restaurants in Seattle.  I might rate the latter 3 as 8, 7, 9.  But that is a nit I don't want to pick here.  

Next about the 6 that are rumored to be wow.  Well, Le Gourmand is almost certainly the best restaurant in the city.  I've heard that from so many people I know to have some impeccable tastes.  in food.  Never been there though.  I could walk there from here.  Its expensive.  Really, we never quite think of it, that's all.

旨味

Elyse and I were talking about 旨味 last night because Elyse had toured a chocolate factory during the day. She had a lot of fun, although she was dissappointed that the Oompa-Loompa's weren't around. Personally I'd feel gyped if I didn't get to see any kind of fantasical midget at a chocolate factory, but then again, the tour didn't require a golden ticket. Apparently, 旨味 came up during the tour.

旨味 is a topic that was either undiscovered when I was in elementary school, or they didn't teach me, or I just forgot. As you may or may not know, there are five basic flavors that your tongue can detect; sweet and salty near the tip of your tongue, sour on the sides, and bitter and 旨味 near the back. 旨味 taste buds are essentially protein detectors.

旨味 is also what separates your homemade stock from store bought stuff. Taste the store bought stuff and you'll notice a real kick at the front of your tongue, along with a fairly intense smell of chicken. Near the back of the tongue - nothing. I have never figured out how the store bought stocks smell like chicken, but seem to contain very little protein. Anyway, a homemade stock won't hit you with the salt, nor will it smell chickeny in the same way, but you'll notice the hearty protein content, which will come through when you use it as a soup base, or reduce it for a sauce.

I first learned about 旨味 while reading an article in the New Yorker about ketchup, by Gladwell, back in 2004. Apparently Heinz ketchup hits all 5 tastes in some sort of magical proportion, which is why they are the only brand on the market. This is opposed to, say, mustard, which has many varieties. The article blew my mind because I had never heard about 旨味! Probably some of you have had your mind blown today, too. Even if you have heard of 旨味, the article is fairly interesting, covering a little bit of the science of taste, and the history of ketchup. You can read the article here,
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/09/06/040906fa_fact_gladwell

Finally, I would like to point out that 旨味 (pronounced umami) is also noteworthy because we don't use many Japanese words in English. The words that we do use tend to be names of foods, like sushi, or sashimi. 旨味 is food-related, but not a food itself.

Cooking videogame review. Seriously!

Recently I discovered that there are a lot of cooking video games for the Wii.  Order Up!, Cooking Mama: Cook Off, Cooking Mama World Kitchen, Hell's Kitchen, and Cake Mania: In the Mix!.  It's surprising enough to find out that there are any cooking games, let alone a whole genre.  

My first instinct was to buy them all and the write a detailed review of everything.  But, then I realized that my second instinct was that these games probably suck.  So I decided to buy just one.

I did a little research.  It all started with the first Cooking Mama game, which sold 1.6 million copies.  Pretty good, for a cooking game.  Those results spawned all of these other titles.  And, according to the reviews on gamespot.com, all the new ones are worse than the original, except Order Up!, which is supposed to be a little bit better.  Almost all of the games are $20, except Cooking Mama World Kitchen, which is currently going for $47 on Amazon.  That is the same price as Zelda, Twilight Princess, I might add.  These cooking game writers have some balls, you have to give them that.

I camped out all night outside of Best Buy, so I could be the first in line when they opened.  Turns out they don't even carry Order Up!  Jerks.  Well, even if these games aren't universally available yet, they are available.  I went home and ordered it from Amazon.

I really enjoyed this game, far more than I should have.  In Order Up! you aren't just a chef, you are a restaurateur.  You need to go to the market to buy spices and learn new recipes.  You can order from a special ingredients guy, and you must clean the rats out of the kitchen, wake up your helpers when they fall asleep.  You can even push the paperboy off his bike, and if you pick up all the papers, he'll pay you.  Just like in real life.

All that stuff is OK, but the real fun is in the cooking.  Now, don't expect to learn anything about cooking from this game.  After playing Zelda, you aren't truly skilled in the art of magical-flute mediated time-travel and rescuing princesses.  The same is true here.  In fact, the only aspect of the game that is really engaging is something you don't often encounter in your home kitchen, but is a huge factor in the restaurant kitchen (like I even have a clue), you need to time everything correctly.  Yes, that's it, the most fun aspect of the game is timing the dishes so they all get done at the same time, so none get cold while you finish the others.

That is an oversimplification, it actually is fun learning to maneuver the Wii remote to slice prime rib and chop up a chicken.  And its even fun adding spices to the dishes, and learning that the guy from Texas will give you a bigger tip if you put BBQ sauce on everything. 

Should you buy the game?  Well, maybe, if you are tired of killing terrorists, and see video games as more of a 30-minute diversion than an engrossing life experience.  You should probably like cooking, too.