This is an attempt at a new way of annotating my photos. If you would rather just look at the photos, you can [view the set directly](http://www.flickr.com/photos/remydwd/sets/541846/).
Today, the three of us – Katie, our good friend Thom, and I – trekked out from Astoria at an hour far too early for anyone’s good towards Coney Island, to observe the Nathan’s 2005 Hot Dog Eating Competition.
I raved about Matsu in my recently posted Restaurant Guide for the Winter. Katie and I had long ago decided we’d hit it up for her birthday (which was today – she’s 25. Be sure to wish her a happy birthday!), and go for the adventurous “Chef’s Choice” dinner for the two of us.
While I didn’t have the camera on me to continue the trend of photographing what I’m eating, I can textually describe the entire affair:
First: Seafood soup. Clear broth, with crab + shrimp + whitefish + mussel + scallop. Broth was delicious, fish was too.
Second: Baby clams (each half was about the size of a penny) in a soy garlic sauce. A little hard to eat but extremely tasty.
Third: Shark Fin salad. The delicate flavored of shark fin was matched with sesame, which helped bring down the strong flavour of the shark fin. (Anyone who’s watched Battle Yogurt on Iron Chef with me should get that.)
Fourth: Ebi sashimi with wasabi tobiko on top, and prawn tempura. The ebi was good, but I’ve never been much for prawns.
Fifth: Toro tartar, I think with a little bit of yellowtail in as well. Heaven, absolute heaven. My favorite on the night, because I’m a huge mark for toro.
Sixth: Scallops steamed in sake, and served cold. At this point we started feeling full – then were told that we had sushi coming and then the main course.
Seventh: Sex On The Beach Roll (shrimp tempura inside, rice, seaweed, grilled eel, tobiko, three kinds of sauces.), plus six giant pieces of sashimi (two salmon, two tuna, two something else).
Eighth: Tuna Teriyaki. Whole sushi-grade tuna steak, done teriyaki style, with vegetables and a bed of onions. I know I keep saying this, but man, this was good.
Ninth: The big surprise – one I had known about from Monday, but managed to hide from Katie and she was completely shocked. They had bought Katie a small birthday cake – sponge cake with white icing, and Gary had put fresh fruit on top.
Add on to that a few sodas, two free beers, and green tea – we are unbelievably stuffed. I am in a near food coma, and the bill came to $90 for the two of us (not including tax and the absurd tips we tend to leave).
I don’t think I’ll have a better Japanese meal than this one for the remainder of my life.
Since moving to NYC, one of the minor changes I’ve gone through is the change in bagel preference. Living in Ithaca, one gets very used to the Upstate-style bagel; thick, heavy, doughy, fairly chewy. New York City bagels, of course, are thinner, wider, lighter, and a little less doughy. Everyone sells bagels, and they are cheap and filling.
When we place a Fresh Direct order for groceries, we always tend to order a six-pack of bagels and some cream cheese, for the occasional time I want to eat breakfast. The ones that are delivered meet all of the above criteria for a NYC bagel, and also keep very well in the freezer. Strangely, though, it is impossible for me to prepare myself one without having a minor aneurism.
Why this intense pain in the head? On the packaging, the slogan and product name meld together one of the most mind-boggling sentences in human history since “If it weren’t for my horse, I never would have spent that extra year on college.”
The pitch reads:
BAGELS AREN’T BAGELS UNLESS THEY’RE JUST BAGELS.
Just Bagels, of course, is the name of the product. Still, even knowing this, I am forced to read this as: Instances of object X aren’t instance of object X unless they’re simply instances of object X.
Is this a blow against fancy things, maybe? Are they implying that were a bagel all spruced up with fancy seeds and flavorings, that it would stop being a bagel and turn into some other sort of bread foodstuff, such as a bialy? But they sell six varieties, including Just Bagels Everything. Surely that’s not just a bagel, as the combination of poppy and sesame and onion and garlic disqualifies one from saying it’s just a bagel.
Perhaps they’re speaking to the moral sense of the bagels – a sort of superhero bagel, upholding the standards and beliefs of our fair city. I would find this hard to believe, as they do not seem to have any superpowers to resist my desire to eat them, nor do I gain the ability to fly by eating them.
(At this point in the entry, I’m looking at the dictionary definitions for just in hopes of deciphering further. I would appreciate it if someone called for professional help.)
How about “by a narrow margin, barely”? That doesn’t speak well to the product, though, if it only squeaks by the qualification charts for what constitutes a bagel. Ignoring the disqualification of bagels conforming better to the specification, this throws us into even more mental anguish as we are judging the conformance of a bagel on whether or not it conforms to the state of the bagel.
One final possibility is that they are using “just” as a variant on joust. Perhaps these bagels ride into battle and try to knock each other over when…
…
Needless to say, this is why I often just go out to eat.