Saturday Soon dae

“It’s beans with blood sausage,” Megan said to me, cranking the can opener. “We eat it all the time in Florida. You’ll like it.” I wasn’t convinced. Just thinking about those little lumps of blood dissolving into the sauce around the beans nauseated me. But she was cute, so I consented to a few bites and (of course this story has a happy ending) I really liked it. It’s been 6 years since then, and, inspired by the adventurism of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, and the sophisticated palates of the Fear Factor contestants, I’m willing to try almost anything–even a warthog’s rectum, but only if you clean it and cook it first.

I was particularly pleased the other night, when my Korean friend, who wants to introduce me to as much of her culture as she can, brought me a nondescript styrofoam container labeled “Soon dae and other meats.” Soon dae is a Korean blood sausage, glass noodles and odd bits and coagulated pig’s blood in an intestinal tube. I knew that if it was the headliner, the mysterious “other meats” would be even more offally good. And they were: pig’s ear, liver, intestine, and, we thought, kidney. The liver was crumbly and nearly dry, an almost mealy texture, like halva. Leathery intestine required sustained chewing; fortunately, the flavor was pleasant, probably the best intestine–if that’s what it was–I’ve ever had. The ears…were horrible: pops of cartilage between my teeth, and little flavor beyond a general fattiness.Finally, the ?kidney, which was bland, with a texture just denser than a normal cut of meat.

And the soon dae itself was delicious. I’ve had it before, but this batch was amazing: it was soft, sheened with dark, heavy blood. You’re supposed to dip it in either a salt/pepper combination or a shrimpy red sauce; I tried the shrimp sauce, but it was too strong for the subtle meaty-spicy-bloody flavors of the sausage.

The moral of the story is: if you’re a cute girl, you can get me to try anything.

Bonus photos from the Sunday food-a-thon:

Alien dumplings from Lee’s Bakery:

Green jellied taro dessert with salty coconut sauce:

Carniceria meat counter:

Throat-clearing done. Either tomorrow or Friday, my task begins in earnest.

Inblogural Ball

Yesterday, Crust Hittman, Laura Bombs, Chuck N. Rufus, and I ate everywhere in Buford Highway. Note the preposition: we didn’t dine at every establishment ON that fabled stretch of road, but we ate everywhere within Buford Highway Plaza:

We were performing a rite of sympathetic magic, like the deer slayers of old who painstakingly daubed the ideal hunt on the walls of their dim caves to prefigure and shape the success of their hunt. By eating everywhere here, we would be dining, symbolically, at every restaurant on Buford Highway, and thus blessing my future visits to this 80-mile cafeteria.

We began with Lee’s Bakery, apparently a destination for local foodies, to judge from the AJC review above our table, which prominently touted the banh mi. To maximize flavor experience, Chuck N. Rufus and I ordered different sandwiches, and exchanged halves: I got the grilled pork sandwich (banh mi thit nuong), he the Lee’s special (banh mi dac biet). Both were delicious. The baguettes are light, with a wafer-thin, dissolvingly crispy crust and soft insides: very easy to bite, yet strong enough to support the prodigious fillings. Although I liked the mix of meats, including head cheese and liver pate, in the Lee’s Special, I was more excited by the grilled pork. It was perfectly smoky and nicely textured, with little shiny knobs of fat poking out of either end of the sandwich, and an interesting array of pickled vegetables, jalapeno peppers, cilantro leaves, and a spicy mayonnaise dressing.

All of this for $3.00.  We also ordered Vietnamese iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk (ca phe sua da), one of my favorite drinks, as accompaniment. It was some of the best I’ve had in this city, with a dark, almost grainy  bitterness shot through, but not overwhelmed by, the creamy sweetness of the milk. Oh, num num.

All of this deliciousness overwhelmed Clint and Laura, so we took them home to tend to their affairs and digest. Then, the endurance battle began. Chuck N. Rufus and I first went to the disappointing El Calentano, a restaurant and taqueria. Although the menu lists about five potential taco meats, the waitress told us that they were out of everything except a chorizo/beef mixture and asada, so no cabeza, no lengua: nothing interesting.  She brought out some nice-looking, but stale, chips, bland salsa, and then, finally, the tacos, which were fine, but nothing worth writing about. Apparently, the truncated selection has been the case for at least a few weeks; I will say that I was pleased by the white saloon-style doors through which one must pass to access the bathroom. I felt, for a brief moment, like Yosemite Sam.

After a trip to the carniceria next door (barbecued goat by the pound! but we just got Sangria flavored soda), some conversation about our lives, and some ray-catching, Sr. Rufus and I went, bloated but unbowed, into the last restaurant in the complex: Co’m Vietnamese Grill. We sat down, ordered mussels, short ribs, and spring rolls out, sat at the table for a space and stared soulfully around the restaurant, got our food, and sped home. Actually, that’s a lie: we went back to Lee’s for a second helping of iced coffee, some desserts, and a couple of mysterious, burrito shaped rolls that turned out to be some form of pork meat loaf. Our travels had taken us about 3 hours; we spent the rest of the evening watching NASCAR and Never Cry Werewolf, in which the protagonist has a DVD called Werewolf Bris, which I’m assuming one has before his werewolf bar mitzvah. The mussels were delicious, fat, green-lipped things, smothered with onions, both fried and fresh, and garlic bits. The lamb in the spring rolls was also delicious, though I felt like the lambiness of the meat was overpowered by the flavor of the grill.  Finally, the grilled short ribs on “special” rice, which were amazing: texturally perfect, with a slight chewiness from the fat, they tasted sweet, something like beef rendang. Even though our jaws were tired from our prodigious eats, we finished the whole meal, including the pickled garnishes.

In all, it was a successful day. In the space of an afternoon, I was able to sample several varieties of Vietnamese food I’d never encountered before, and I was able to travel thousands of culinary miles to Mexico and Central America in between that, all in a strip mall that wouldn’t look out of place in a suburb of any city in America. I know that every dining experience won’t be this amazing, or this full of camaraderie, but I’m looking forward to each one. Stay tuned.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, solved.

Pacific Coast Highway is the most beautiful road in America. Route 66 is probably the most famous. Wall Street is (was?) renowned for its financial acumen. But the most delicious road in America is Buford Highway, a strip of highway pulled off I-85 just south of the Atlanta perimeter. It begins unremarkably, a rut of gray and darker gray between Midtown and Buckhead. A liquor store, an apartment complex, the Pink Pony. And then it starts to get interesting: Guatemalan food? Vietnamese billiards? Asian Square? The cultural variety is dizzying, moreso because it’s often so heterogenous: in the same strip mall, you can find pho, Chinese herbal medicine, Korean barbecue, a Hispanic grocery with an amazing taco stand, and a Vietnamese cafe.

This is a problem. In his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Michael Pollan discusses the “big existential problem” that humans face: because we can eat anything, choosing what to eat is difficult. Does what we eat define us culturally, ethically, or morally? Should we eat for deliciousness or for healthfulness? I don’t know the answers to those questions. But I do know that the variety of Buford Highway is paralyzing: I often end up going to the same two or three places because I know them, or I’ve read about them on some website.

Well: no more. My ancestors felt the omnivore’s dilemma much less than I do today because they simply had fewer choices: their geography dictated their dining. I’m taking a lesson from them: I’m going to begin at the first restaurant I find on Buford Highway and dine systematically up one side and down the other, all the way to Duluth. And I’ll take pictures and blog about it on here. Enjoy!