The Postmortem
Monday December 22, 2008
Thoughts? [3]
With Man Bites World coming to an end and my addiction to blogging now in full swing, allow me to direct you to NoahGaluten.com for all your current and future needs, including the MBW Postmortem.
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Day 102: Slovakia
Sunday December 14, 2008
Thoughts? [14]
Well everybody, it looks like the day has finally come. After 102 consecutive days of eating a different country’s food, I’m out of options. I could do one more drive down to San Diego, try my hand up in San Francisco, or of course, go to New York— but those all, at this point, seem just a bit unreasonable. So barring some unforeseen developments, this is in all likelihood the final true meal of Man Bites World. Considering there was a point where I was concerned that we wouldn’t even make it to Thanksgiving, I’ve got to say I’m pretty happy about how it all turned out. If this is indeed the final meal, I’ll be putting out a postmortem in the coming days, in which I’ll try to sum up my thoughts, give some rankings, list some favorites and even hand out a few awards. But for right now, it’s time to focus on where the heck I found Slovakian food.
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Day 101: Costa Rica
Saturday December 13, 2008
Thoughts? [4]
All right, everyone. Excuse me if I start to get a little wistful, but this meal may very well be the final restaurant I’m going to that’s around Los Angeles. Things are wrapping up here at Man Bites World, and even though my brain has essentially turned to mush after 101 consecutive days of diverse eating, writing and often drinking, I’m still relatively aware of how strange it’s going to be when it all officially comes to an end. Today’s meal has been on the list for a long time, and has even been pushed back on the schedule for various reasons over the last few weeks. But tonight, I’m finally going. In a fitting conclusion to his efforts on the project, Mr. Joshua is joining for what basically amounts to just his second and final inclusion. He was with me for the famed Ghana Day (which I still look back on as perhaps the most fulfilling adventure of the entire project), and now comes along as my sole companion to one more place that I really don’t know much about. Costa Rica Restaurant in Anaheim. There are only a couple of comments about it online, and the only other thing I know is that they’re open exclusively for dinner and close around 1:30 in the morning.
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Day 100: Jordan
Friday December 12, 2008
Thoughts? [4]
For what promises to be the final double-dip in Man Bites World (remember— it’s about the dish, not the restaurant), we return to Sham in Santa Monica today to eat their Friday special— Jordanian mansaf. They don’t serve the most truly traditional version at Sham, because it would be basically impossible in a small restaurant. Ordinarily, it’s a massive, communal dish that’s meant to fulfill the needs of quite a few people. The basis of the dish, essentially, is lamb meat cooked in a sauce made from fermented, then dried yogurt. But rather than served on a bed of rice on top of a giant flatbread, at Sham, it is served simply on rice, in a bowl.
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Day 99: Samoa
Thursday December 11, 2008
Thoughts? [14]
I guess I should have listened to Jonathan Gold. A couple of weeks ago, when things were getting really dire, I cold e-mailed the Pulitzer Prize winner and unofficial Food Czar of Los Angeles, begging for his help. He threw out a few suggestions in an e-mail that was sent around 3 in the morning, including a Samoan place down in Carson, which he warned was terrible, before adding “…but it’s your project, not mine.” Now that’s a ringing endorsement. But before things can get worse, they have to get bad. So we’ll start off with MamaBites and I driving down to Newport Beach for Bahamian food.
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Day 98: Tibet
Wednesday December 10, 2008
Thoughts? [2]
The degree to which Tibet is an autonomous region is up for debate. But I do know that I received a lot of e-mails and comments from people telling me that I should go to Tibet Nepal House in Pasadena for Tibetan food, and that they have a really good and inexpensive lunch buffet. I don’t really believe that buffet food can be very good (or at least as good as it could be), but in all honesty, my finances are in extremely dire straits. Can I afford to keep spending money on this Personal Food Project in Blog Form? Well, I’ve actually gone into debt— so quite literally, no. I can’t afford it. And there’s only so far the “What’s the difference between an X amount and a Y amount of debt?” can take you before you’re really in trouble. So stay tuned. But for now? It’s time for some Tibetan food.
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Day 97: Dominican Republic
Tuesday December 9, 2008
There is a lot of Dominican food in New York. There’s also probably a lot in the Dominican Republic. Sadly, I don’t live in either place, so finding such food has proved quite difficult in Los Angeles. Luckily, my friend Bex has a friend named Alex, who is a New York Dominican, and was willing to get back to her roots a little for us. She snagged her mom’s recipes and helped Bex and our cooking pal extraordinaire Cristina put a meal together for me at their house (conveniently located one block over from mine). Sadly, Alex is so busy working on her dissertation, she didn’t even have time to stick around and eat the food that she helped put together. But she did throw me a couple of great Dominican tidbits before heading out. “We use a lot of garlic and we really celebrate the pig in Dominican food. It’s God meat.” Okay. I’m pretty sure I’m Dominican.
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Day 96: Yemen
Monday December 8, 2008
Thoughts? [3]
I caught wind of a kosher restaurant not too far from my house called Haifa, that serves a “Yemenite beef soup.” So guess where I’m going today? After a particularly long and exhausting weekend, I head out with the equally tired GirlfriendBites to meet MamaBites and the newest addition to our team of foodventurers (and a fellow blogger), Grace. I’ve heard good things about Haifa, and GFB is excited to eat some food that God won’t frown on, so we sit down at a nice corner table and start looking over the menu.
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Day 95: Latvia
Sunday December 7, 2008
Thoughts? [13]
Here’s the newest odd scenario that resulted in me having somewhere to eat: my new friend Abba (who I met when she cooked us the amazing meal for Bahrain Day) saw a Latvian friend of her’s on Thanksgiving who is currently living in Seattle. She asked her if she would be willing to cook Latvian food for me. Her friend said she wouldn’t be able to do the cuisine justice. So Abba’s Latvian friend contacted her own father, who told her that there was a Latvian cultural center in Los Angeles having a function which would include food, then sent Abba an address. After some research, Abba and I could find no proof that anything was going on there at all. But nonetheless, Abba, a few other friends and I all decided to give it a whirl. And again, all we have is an address.
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Day 94: Finland
Saturday December 6, 2008
Thoughts? [3]
Recovering from last night’s glögg party, which involved drinking mulled wine and eating Swedish meatballs and beet salad until four in the morning, took some effort. Somehow, I managed to get up at nine and write about the previous day’s festivities, emerge from my desk, then find GirlfriendBites with our friends Dave and O’Ryan sitting on the couch with food delivered. Thanks to them, I now know that wonton soup and Thai iced tea are great things to have following a gathering of that magnitude. But it’s another day, which means another cuisine, and today that means leaving GFB and O’Ryan alone to clean the apartment (thank you O’Ryan and GFB) while MamaBites and I drive down to San Diego for December Nights in Balboa Park. I’m not totally sure what that is, but I’ve been assured that there is Finnish food available. Good enough for me.
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