Playtime is over

Outpatient medicine is done...now I'm in a hospital on Ob/Gyn, which means I really haven't been cooking much. My days over the past couple weeks have usually started at 6 am and when I get home I've just been falling asleep. Though I don't have too much to report on the cooking side, I've had no trouble on the eating side. I was back home while my sister was back home a few weeks ago...

Dim Sum at S and T Hong Kong Seafood Restaurant was up first.




Tofu skin salad is the shit.

Philz Coffee...strong...lightly minty fresh.


Dynamo Donuts...fancy, good.


Mom wanted to try Caesar's near Fisherman's wharf. It's far enough away that it's not touristy, but feels kitschy and fun anyway.
Cannelloni alla Romana. Something about the pork filling made it really crazy soft. Good stuff.


My sister wanted all of these:


Yeah they're pretty cool...not $20 for a piece of bread cool...but cool.

My sister and I went to Hubert Keller's Burger Bar before the symphony:


Got the sliders...they clearly charge extra for indecision. Any other burger there would've been a better value, and still more expensive and not as good as Farm Burger or Flip. I would've liked to complain to Chef Keller, but my sister said he probably wasn't there. WHHHAAAAAT?!! Why isn't Hubert Keller always at the Burger Bar inside Macy's? That would imply he's just putting his name on a sub-par product to make a cheap buck! What self-respecting chef would do such a thing?

Made two batches of these:


I think my entire caloric intake the Saturday before I left was from these.

The day after I got back to Atlanta, I got the free preview of this:


Spicy chicken sandwich at Chick-Fil-A. Full service, with a manager acting as "waitress" at a fancy table:


This was actually SUPER AWKWARD. When I made the "reservation" and printed out the little coupon, I assumed I would just be walking in, getting my sandwich to go, and leaving. I went alone. Sitting at this fancy table alone being waited on inside a Chick-Fil-A was possibly the most pathetic experience of my life. It didn't help that there were three other dudes going through the same experience. All of us sitting at separate tables...strategically positioned so we wouldn't have to look at each other's girlfriend-less faces as we ate our sandwiches...alone.

That said, fries and drink and everything else I could've wanted were free. Chick-Fil-A is the best! I went back when it "debuted" (drive-thru this time) and had it deluxe style with pepper jack cheese and all. It was even better that way I think, and actually enhanced some of the spiciness by blunting a bit of the saltiness. I normally get the regular sandwich without the lettuce and stuff, but I think I'm gonna go deluxe with the spicy.

Today I got up super early to watch the world cup. KOREA WINS!!! Whooo!! I wish I were in Korea to get in on the nationwide party that's going on. Instead I went to H-Mart to buy some Korean stuff. I figured there might be a party going there too. When I pulled up I saw a big grill going and was like...awwww yeeah the victory celebration is ON! When I got to where the grills were:


Nothing says KOREA DOMINATES GREECE like a grilled chicken taco and some Jarritos. Turns out they were promoting with a Spanish-language radio station, as the Latino population frequents this particular H-Mart more than the Korean population does (my people shop at the Johns Creek and Duluth locations generally, in addition to being industrious, polite, and good at math). Sadly...this free food was WAY BETTER than 95% of the Mexican food you can get in Atlanta.

And finally, I get to welcome someone to the desperately lonely yet overcrowded world of blogging.
My friend/med school classmate Amanda has started a food blog of her own, but instead of being about generally disliking most people and cooking, it'll be about her crippling addiction to brunch. She'll be reviewing the various places she gets her fix. If High Times had a spinoff dedicated to crack...this blog would be the brunch version of that. It is cleverly titled ATL Brunching and it's currently devoid of any content. She's been hyping the launch of her blog for over a year, and it's finally muscled its way onto the scene. Here's hoping that your audience is more diverse than mine. I recently discovered that the only people who will be reading these words are my sister and her friend who is French and therefore inherently more of a sophisticated foodist than anyone who writes food blogs could ever be. I recently saw a fat dude wearing a t-shirt that said "foodie" in big letters on it. He probably has a blog...and writes a bunch of reviews on Yelp.
Perhaps the most embarrassing reader is my mother. As soon as I found out she reads this thing my first thought was "Oh fuck...I swear on that thing all the time," (sorry mom).

To celebrate her launch, I decided to invite Amanda out for a blogger's brunch to dim sum, after all it's the original brunch. It was brunch before the word brunch was ever uttered (in fact dim sum was brunch long before the concept of the portmanteau word even existed).

We went to China Delight on Chamblee Tucker. I got nervous because there was a giant "China Delight...great for weddings and banquets!" billboard on Buford. For any non-chain restaurant, a billboard doesn't usually bode well. It screams "Hey truckers! Come on in and eat something whose sole virtue is that it occupies space in your stomach while you're on the road...we have strippers too!"

It really wasn't bad though.



No comparison to SF but fairly decent food and reasonably priced on Mon-Sat.


China Delight is coincidentally the name that Amanda goes by in her evening job at some of the finer establishments along Cheshire Bridge road. You know...the kind of place that would have a billboard. (EDIT):Amanda and her lack of humor would like me to clarify that she is NOT, in fact, a stripper (exotic dancer is the preferred nomenclature).

That about covers the past three weeks or so. My next couple weeks will be on outpatient Ob/Gyn so hopefully I'll get a chance to cook more, maybe even hold a "class" or a gathering. Stay tuned mom...and yes, I'm studying hard.

Soup Dumplings

I overheard one of the nurses at my peds clinic talking about a place on Buford that was known for soup dumplings. I couldn't help but ask where it was because I was immediately like "oh damn I like those." We talked about how she was a fan of Joe's Shanghai and I told her about a place my sister took me in SF one time. The next week she told me she went and that it was just completely wrong. Nothing like Joe's...completely lacking in soup inside.

I then heard about a place that happened to be right across the street from my apartment complex which was supposed to have xiaolongbao. I went with some friends:


We also ordered the fish in hot oil and the pork belly with leeks. Both were good.


The dumplings are somewhat un-appetizingly labeled as "Shanghai Juice Dumplings." They looked right. That kinda collapsed bottom look from something that used to be solid now being a liquid. They tasted fine, but weren't quite right either. The skin was a bit too doughy and there was a bit too much meat filling, not a lot of broth.

Guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands and make my own soup dumplings. Out of laziness I decided not to make the skins and just use pre-made wrappers. I knew this'd be risky if they were too thin, but apparently it'd been done with some success according to posts online.

First up was making the soup.


Then turning it into an aspic with some help from gelatin. You can also boil pork skin with the soup but the gelatin was cheaper.


Filling was next...pork, ginger, garlic, scallions, some other junk:


With a little help from the freezer, the aspic was already set a couple hours later:


Then i cut it up and mixed it in with the other filling stuff:



Let's fast forward the horrible inefficiency with which I assembled the dumplings, and straight to the steamer:


Okay they look sorta similar...but awfully collapsed. Hopefully I didn't lose all of my soup...



Good not great. If I ever make these again I'm gonna have to actually make the skin dough, which is a pain. Also I would keep the meat and aspic separate. Use a much smaller amount of meat and individually put a big scoop of the aspic in each one to ensure maximum soup.

Hype Eating

I've been eating some of the most hyped stuff you can find in Atlanta...the kinds of places that are bulletproof among the Yelp crowd. All the reviews are OMG 5 STARS! There's the occasional I'M SO SOPHISTICATED THAT I'M GOING TO GIVE THIS PLACE ONE STAR BECAUSE I'M ABOVE THE HYPE! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! MY OPINION COUNTS MORE BECAUSE IT'S DIFFERENT!

This is why I hate Yelp. I use it on my iPhone because it's the most elegant way to find nearby restaurants, but I don't use it on a real computer at all because that would mean I'd be looking at reviews. The average Yelp reviewer has absolutely no clue what they're talking about, will turn into crazy cat-owning hermits, and live in a fantasy world where the feedback on their reviews and their number of yelp friends convince them that they're a respected food writer. They review fast food places in a non-ironic manner because ironically reviewing fast food places is no longer amusing.

I recently used the Yelp app extensively in my quest to eat a choux cream pastry from every Korean bakery in the Atlanta area (Mission accomplished by the way). The reviews for each and every one of these places were ridiculous and just plain wrong. The app is now getting a bit annoying thanks to the check-in feature. Anytime you're in close proximity to a business you can "check in" there, and there's "regulars" and a leaderboard. There's one dude in Atlanta who's consistently at the top of the board, because he "checks in" at places like apartment complexes and his job. Lame.


That's him. Ladies of Atlanta, if you see this man be sure to ridicule him.

Everyone should try a place if they're interested regardless of the reviews or the hype/anti-hype. I did, took some pictures, and am throwing them up here for the two of you who will see this. This mainly serves as photo-hosting online so that they don't take up any of my endangered hard drive space. This blog has basically become a time-consuming Flickr gallery.

First up is Antico Pizza Napoletana. Hype factor high in the Atlanta area. The website has the occasional Italian word and they write prices in Euros as well as dollars. All this marketing stuff is cute and all, but can they back it up?


Amanda ate this whole pizza.


Audra and I ate this. Pizza came out fast and the crust was excellent.


This thing was good.


So was this.

Next up is Farm Burger. HYPE FACTOR OFF THE CHARTS. They opened up pretty recently and advertise 100% grass-fed beef and natural everything blah blah blah. They also have many varieties of beer in cans, from fancy to not so fancy. Trendy.

Grass-fed beef is good and all, but honestly if someone took roadkill and made it into a freaking amazing burger I wouldn't mind.


This burger also had beef tongue, beet relish and some sort of slaw which was really tasty. The beef was excellent. Fries were okay. The decor is farm-y...but the pictures of cows and pigs on the walls are maybe a bit cruel. I'll probably go back to try their bacon, oxtail relish, and roasted marrow, all of which are available condiments on their burgers. There are some interesting-looking non-fried sides too.

At one point while Bryan and I were sitting at the very end of a large communal table, some girl came up and said "I don't want to be rude," (too late) "but we have a group of six...can you move?"
1. They only had five people.
2. We were already there.
3. Her voice was incredibly annoying.
If it weren't for her voice I might've thought about it for a split second. Also one of the dudes in their party had his collar up. No way we're moving bitch.

And now an item of national hype/intrigue/disgust.
I'm no stranger to weird and possibly disgusting novelty chicken items. Who could forget Chicken Kiev juice box?


Actually that might not have gone down so well.



If you look at the nutrition facts of the double down, in terms of calories, eliminating the bun might have actually brought the count down somewhat.


It seems promising. Chicken, pepper jack cheese, bacon...kinda like a ghetto Cordon Bleu. Unfortunately, all this promise doesn't taste like anything except salt. This was probably the saltiest thing I've ever eaten besides the time a salt shaker spilled open into my soup and I kept eating it anyway.

Okay...that ends the post of food that I have not made myself. All that saved me about 8 megs of space on my computer. Totally worth it.

Should I be more specific?

Perhaps the title of my blog should be:

I Like Fried Food, I Don't Like You...no not YOU dear loyal blog reader. I'm talking about YOU, idiot who has arrived here via a google search for "food I don't like"

That one might be a bit wordy.

I've been eating an awful lot of fried food lately though. Most days I've been managing a Fiber One Bar (or a banh mi if I'm lucky) in the car between clinics for lunch. Haven't been able to do much cooking at night either. Pasta and rice/kimchi have been my dinner staples lately. Somehow I've managed to drop five pounds since rotations started. Though I should view this as the dropping off some unnecessary poundage accumulated during boards study time, I've actually more seen this as license to eat terribly on the weekends. WHOO! Let's round it up:

I had an afternoon at Grady Eye Clinic. I went down the street to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market for a quick lunch. After I ordered the porkchop sandwich, I was wondering why it was taking so long. I was thinking "Hurry up guys...I need to be at clinic by 1, so that they can tell me they don't actually get started until 1:45 and to just hang out and be lazy until then." Turns out it took a long time because...


It was fried! Whooooo! Not much more to say. It was a deep fried porkchop on some bread with lettuce and tomato. I think there was mayo involved too.

I needed a snack on the weekend. Might as well make one:


And if I'm going to make one, it might as well be fried. Fried meatballs. Yup. This one's also self-explanatory.

Okay so not everything I've been making lately has been fried, just in case you were worried about my health.


Take this Nutella ice cream I made. Polish Nutella is better for you than American Nutella, which is why it's totally okay for me to mix it with heavy cream and egg yolks to make ice cream, then top it with more Nutella. It's good for you!

The weather has gotten beautiful in Atlanta. It's no longer raining and cold every day. It's sunny and pollen-y now. Fantastic day to head over to Hampton House and cook up fried chicken.


Made two kinds...Southern style and Korean style. Also sauteed some collard greens. Geoff made potato salad, Dan made guac that you can't see because it's already gone.


Korean style on left...brined the chicken, coated in coconut milk and a special spice/flour blend, and fried TWICE (bonus!) before being coated in a spicy sweet sauce of my own design. Southern style on the right was brined a la Thomas Keller, with some added pickling spice a la Chick-Fil-A. Buttermilk and flour/matzo meal a la Blue Ribbon. It's the bastard child recipe of a bunch of non-Southerners (with the exception of Chick-Fil-A), but I made it here in the South so it counts. I think the Korean style went over better though. Koreans and Southerners are crazy about their fried chicken for good reason.

Erin made dessert:


Perfect strawberry shortcake and vanilla ice cream. Perfect way to end the meal.

Tomorrow I start peds in the afternoons out in Suwanee. It's about an hour away from my apartment without traffic...which means it'll be about three hours realistically. This all means I might be having dinner in the car as well. At this rate I might lose even more weight, which means MORE FRIED FOOD ON THE WEEKENDS! WHOO! Stay tuned.

My long overdue final Korea post

I've been back from Korea for a while, and though I've been pretty busy getting settled into becoming someone who can pretend to be doctory, not a day goes by when I don't absolutely miss the bustle of Seoul. It's not just the TV, which I've been able to keep up with thanks to the interweb, and it's not just hanging out with my sister. How could anyone not miss this?


Loaded chili cheese fries from New York Fries...a source of poutine in a subway station.

Or these:


Genuine churros in the fancy beautiful-people-filled apgujeong-dong.


I'm also nowhere near a doughnut plant anymore. So I can't eat a mascarpone-filled square doughnut, or a citron glazed cake doughnut.


I certainly wouldn't mind warming my hands over a cylinder of charcoal, followed by grilling delicious, cheap, pig skirt meat over the same charcoal (well not the exact same one... a new one).


I wanna duck back into the tent of a food stall and eat fishcake and spicy rice cakes until I explode.


I could even go for more Japanese food in Korea. This bowl of ramen with char-grilled pork was pretty fantastic.


The last meal I ate in Korea was simple and delicious. It was in a "restaurant" that all the employees ate at, right next to the more glamorous food court (everything about Incheon airport is glamorous...how many airports do you know that have 24/7 personal shoppers to help you navigate all the high-end shopping?)

Maybe one of my favorite meals in Korea was at a bo ssam chain. When I got back and told my mom that's where we'd gone, she-in the blunt Korean manner-said their food is terrible, but I liked it. I guess it's not really a fair contest for "favorite meal" because this meal was with my grandma. Hanging around Atlanta, I wanted bo ssam again, but decided that I'd maybe eaten a bit too much pork belly, and that I should use tenderloin instead.


So there it is...tenderloin bo ssam with a quick endive kimchee. Hopefully I'll be able to go back soon and make this for my grandma, but with pork belly because she says you gotta have some amount of fat for it to be tasty.

Second favorite meal? When my aunt basically went insane and cooked five different things that require a lot of time and effort, including braised kimchee and pork belly. It takes a while...


With the help of my semi-new le creuset, I went for it...and thus the pork belly embargo was officially lifted.

Yeah I miss Korea a lot. So much so that I felt like I needed to ease myself back into eating American food at restaurants. I enlisted the help of a high school friend who flew in to Atlanta (for work...and when I say he flew in that's exactly what he did...he flew the plane).


How to bridge the gap? Korean BBQ burger at Flip. Wagyu patty, braised short rib on top...pickled vegetables (which are eaten at every meal in Korea pretty much), and kimchee ketchup. The kimchee ketchup wasn't really noticeable...everything else was tasty though.


Tempura fried rutabaga and zucchini fries have appeared on the side menu. The breading on the zucchini was a bit mealy, but good.

*sigh* What am I to do? I've finished the dramas I was interested in watching, and variety shows only air on Saturdays and Sundays. I need more Korean-ness in my life right now. I googled "Paris Baguette Atlanta" and found three locations...but they had all since closed down.

The new H-Mart in Doraville is close by, and they have:


A Tous Les Jours? Dammit! So close, yet so far away. I guess I'll have to make a trip to LA, Philly, New Jersey, or New York sometime soon. I suppose I could (and definitely would), drive the hour from Lafayette to Santa Clara to hit up a PB.