One day I had resigned to dallying about in front of a bank for the better half of an hour. I was to meet my wife for an appointment there, yet miscommunication caused her arrival to be much impeded. Her arrival from her urban livelihood came with a whisk of haste, yet I had the chance to observe something that would forever change my culinary perspective in this, my adopted city.
What I acquired in knowledge that day was an ancient chinese secret. As ancient as the post WWII industrialization of that immense nation. I stood in the mist under an umbrella provided by an asian imbiss in front of the bank, sipping a rather acidic and tasteless coffee as provision. I, being one who's main diversion is culinary inquisitiveness, observed with fascination the methods of these settlers in their little lean-to. What I found most curious was a very large canister labeled Chicken Noodles that a woman drained in her wash basin. She had punctured the top of this tin with a tool and patiently let all of the solution drain as she carefully retained bits of noodle in the can. When this noodle and chicken vessel had been drained completely, she properly unfurled the covering and deposited the makings into a large recessed saucepan, or wok.
I am reminded of this story because of my experience at Jimmy Woo. The exterior marquee defined this food as French and Indochine, however once inside and esconced, one look at the menu suggested an almost catalog-like amalgam of things unrelated to France and very related to Thailand and its kitchen. Seeing reasonably priced wines available, we quickly elected Savignon, imagining our mouths to be pleased by the acidic pass-water like flavors of that vine in union with our comestibles. I was unfortunate, for they had finished their stock of this wine and consequently we swiftly decided to take a Bordeaux, and in this confusion we failed to convey our wish for a full bottle and promptly received only two overfilled glasses of a swill that evoked what must have been the scourings of that grape that grow a stone's throw from the main throughway of Bordeaux and digest all of the exhaust from passing motorcars. A bottle that, had I found it at the super market, wouldn't have cost more than 2 euros.
We ordered a starter of spring rolls with a vinaigrette and this came out with 4 different sauces. The chicken and pickled ginger inside seemed to lack flavor but the latter did have a slight aftertaste that enabled me to identify it as coming from a non-potato lineage. The sauces were very sweet and dare I say I detected a refined glace' dissolved within. Two of the sauces, although appearing different, were nearly indistinguishable in taste.
As we reluctantly consumed our libations and the faint whispers of banal commercial soul music played through the UHER VG850 Stereo Receiver (possibly the only quality apparatus in the establishment,) we were not yet disillusioned as a main course was still coming, and I had not yet witnessed the french twosome on port bow leave dispirited without finishing what turned out to be one of the very dishes that we ordered.
A louder yet more watered down reggae began to breathe into the room, possibly as a shallow tactic to arouse our ears in stead of our mounths. My Pad Lao mit Duck came as did my wife's spicy soup. The soup was a morass of spicy oils, tasteless vegetables and a broth that tasted no different from the ingredients within. The fresh herbs affixed seemed to have been applied at too early a moment and the heat from the mixture has dissipated any flavor they may have had to offer. My wife was unable to finish even 1/3 of this soup, unlike the excellent offerings available on sunny summer afternoons at the clandestine thai market in west Berlin. The noodles within were like the angel hair one finds encased in the small plastic packages and could not even resist the pressure of a spoon attempting to lift them before they would fragment.
Here now I can end where I began, as my plate was full of the same ingredient as that canister: noodles. These rice noodles were fulvous and seemed to be saturated with what my wife identified later in her all-night indigestion as a syrup containing that ugly distant and artificial cousin of the wonderful savory crystals one finds in the finest Parmaggiano Reggiano from that area we initiates know as La Bassa, and of course in that green sea weed off the coasts of Japan. These noodles were cut in a pigmy fashion that forbade one from using the provided chop sticks or fork to spin a sturdy wrapping for ingestion. The duck laid atop was very fat and has been merely sliced and unmoved on the mound of sticky rancor. The vegetables comprised tasteless variations of warmer climate staples including zucchini, red bell pepper and carrot. They were negligently half-roasted and seemed to be submerged in the syrup-like heap with remiss.
At the conclusion of our dinner, upon exit for payment we were charged for a full read more
