Denveater

More Adventures in Mixed-Breed Maki: Fontana Sushi

Of all my cruddy culinary habits, & I've got a lot of 'em, ordering sushi in is surely one of the worst. It flies in the face of the whole extraordinary tradition: of engagement with the itamae, of spontaneity—choosing items per his (occasionally her) suggestions of the moment—of revelation in their pristine state,** fresh from his cutting board to your mouth, even of the importance of tableware to the experience of the meal (which of course gets lost with takeout containers) . And since you can bet the best sushi bars—the ones whose masters would just as soon commit harikari with their own naifus as ever hear the words "California roll" again—don't deign to deliver, you can also bet that the ones that do amount to your friendly neighborhood joints, whose bread is buttered by customers who consider cream cheese a key ingredient in their deep-fried candied bacon-chipotle maki. 

And yet. Precisely because these friendly neighborhood joints aim to please the friendly neighborhood Americans who frequent them in anticipation of the Japanese version of friendly neighborhood American food, they've come to specialize in just that. Since Japanese cuisine inheres in purity & elegant simplicity like no other, & because it was introduced to us much later than many other cuisines with less emphasis on precision—Italian & Mexican, say—the acceptance among serious eaters of the Japanese-American hybrid is coming slower than it has the Americanization of those other cuisines. But so long as we acknowledge & appreciate the difference between a sushiya that's dedicated to promoting & preserving its centuries-old craft in strict terms & a Japanese-American goof—just as we acknowledge & appreciate the difference between a trattoria vera & a red-sauce parlor—we can enjoy what each has to offer. I ain't about to pick a Lovesexy Psychedelic Groove Roll over needlefish sashimi at Sushi Sasa—& the reverse is true when it comes to a place like Fontana Sushi.

So it is that, giving in to my cravings for comfort food, & wanting to try something other than Go Fish (which I generally dig) & Hapa (which I generally don't), I called Fontana up a couple of times recently to see what was what. And while I wasn't wildly impressed overall, I was, at moments, intrigued & pleased, enough to be nice & categorize it under Eateries That Give Me Hope (next time I & it might not be so lucky).

The ebi asparagus roll—not a roll at all but skewered, teriyaki-glazed shrimp & asparagus cuts—wasn't one of those intriguing moments. Nothing wrong with it, really—in fact the sauce had a consistency evocative of homemade, which it damn well should be in a world devoid of cynicism, but mine isn't—but nothing to disabuse me of the opinion that teriyaki sauce just isn't one of Japan's more thrilling contributions to world cuisine, even used properly for grilled items. It's basically Japanese ketchup.

Far more interesting, however, was the Dancing Roll.

With shrimp tempura (the quality of which was admittedly hard to judge in such circumstances) on the inside & red clam over shredded kani mixed with some sort of sweet (not spicy, despite the menu description) soy-based sauce—maybe even that same teriyaki—on top, it was a bit like eating a kaleidoscope, a swirl of balancing flavors & textures. (Let's pretend we don't see that dark spot in the middle of the piece of shrimp or the sunlit spot indicative of loose rolling.)

Ditto the fried oyster roll topped with red snapper, tobiko, jalapeno & tiny dabs of "special sauce," making for a neat mix of sweet-delicate and salty-pungent.

   

But I have to admit to having serious questions as to whether the oysters came smoked from a tin. After all, since Fontana doesn't serve raw oysters in any form (note that raw oysters aren't often used for sushi, since, if Wikipedia is to be believed, they're thought to clash with sushi rice—although, hmm, Sonoda's offers them), it's hard to imagine that the owners—whose emphasis on thrift is evident in the fact that they serve $1 sushi all day, everyday—would invest in such an expensive product only to deep-fry it for the occasional customer who requests either of the 2 dishes incorporating it. So curious was I that I threw the other one, kaki fry, in with my next order.

All I can tell you—& I also admit I may be a victim of my own conviction here, as well as of my New England–based knowledge of what fresh fried oysters should taste like—is that they sure resembled smoked oysters, with the same strange chew, basically chicken-fried rather than in tempura. Surprising how hard it was to say for sure. Regardless, still hot & crisp when they arrived with a side of sweet chili dipping sauce, they were really some fun.  

With shrimp, egg & avocado, the East roll (below right) did not benefit from the balance of flavors the others had, proving very bland. Why the scallop (top left) was napped with wasabi cream was beyond me, since no mention of sauce is made on the menu; why I received red clam (bottom left) when I'd ordered white tuna was also beyond me—not that I'd have minded if one piece hadn't been awfully tough (my teeth slid satisfyingly clean through the other). 

 

The pickled daikon in the Sunshine Roll overpowered the mild salmon within, though not the tuna on top, & I'm a fan of oshinko as a vibrant (& traditional) maki ingredient in any case.

It remains to be seen whether the next round will further raise or dash or my silly hopes for good bad sushi. For a fascinating primer on the bogglingly arcane subject of sushi tradition, check out this Chowhound thread.
 
**Keeping in mind, of course, that pristineness is relative in the landlocked US of A.

Kaos Pizzeria Has It All Under Control

A few weeks back, I feared the name might fit all too well, my 1st pizza from Kaos being, however intriguing in concept, haphazard in execution.

But on 2nd try, the chaos theory didn't apply in the least. Hooray scientific method! And hooray Kaos, which in fact puts the "order" in, well, "order."

Besides the loaf of love that was the garlic bread (most recent Dish of the Week), the Director & I split 2 specialty pies: the wild mushroom with pesto, provolone & mozz, caramelized onions & shallots—a natural combo of rich & earthy—

  

& the pepperoncini with tomato sauce, provolone & mozz, pepperoni & red onion.

You can tell a thing or 2 just by looking, no? For instance, compare the large, lusty slices of pepperoni & mushroom—with good coverage across each wedge—to the pale shriveled pennies most parlors cough up. Or the balance of sauce & cheese: not grossly dripping, not stingy, just right. The crust, too—neither saltine nor doughball (though I still prefer a bit more char). And the relative cut of the onion: thicker in the case of the caramelized sprinkle of yellow onion; the red onion, presumably added raw before baking, thin & barely there as the smoke rings of a temptress in a noir. Downright artful.

Like the pesto, the tomato sauce had that classic savor: slightly spicy, its blend of red pepper & oregano tangible, but not too heavy like the '70s-era spaghetti sauce lesser pizza slingers ladle on. 

Can't wait to try the Sopressata with pesto, potato & a cracked egg to which 5280's Amanda Faison gave high praise, or the white pizza with white anchovies, or my own concoction—blue cheese, roasted garlic, baby spinach & oven-dried tomatoes, baby!—or, hell, just about anything else.   

And since I can't wait, it's a good thing I don't have to—so far the folks on the phone have nailed their delivery times. No rolling my eyes & tapping my foot—just sitting back & feeling well taken care of.

 

Dish of the Week: Kaos Pizzeria's garlic bread

For the 2nd time in just over a month, I've got to give Kaos the kudos. But while the initial props were for the promise shown, now it's for the goods delivered.

Juicy report on the pizza itself to come; for now, though, all glory goes to the garlic bread.

With Caesar salad, French onion soup & roast chicken, garlic bread is part of that battery of litmus tests by which to measure a kitchen's integrity as much as its skills. Deceptively simple as such classics are, they're easily botched—& garlic bread in particular, as a lowbrow token of your average red-sauce joint, seems to lend itself to corner-cutting: cheap storebought baguettes, preminced garlic, unnecessary pile of melted mozz. Pasquini's stale-ass doughsticks are a case in point.

Jon Edwards, Patrick Mangold-White & crew, however, pass the garlic-bread audition with aplomb. Their version is essentially a puffed-up round of chewy focaccia—fresh-baked, brushed, & thoroughly infused with garlic butter & perfumed with a sprinkle of fresh rosemary.

In fact, it's nothing short of an inspiration: I'm feeling motivated now to put it up in a taste test against Virgilio's & Proto's loaves—& I'll be rooting for it.

Dish of the Week: Kaos Pizzeria's Seasonal Pumpkin Pie

Pizza pie, natch, of which I partook while pondering the apparent penchant among southside pizzerias for names that point toward tumult: first The Rebellion, now Kaos. What do they know that we don't? If the next new parlor's called The Apocalpyse, I'm heading for the bomb shelter. That'd be one delivery guy I wouldn't want to come face to face with. Especially if he shows up on a horse.

Anyway, if it didn't quite amount to chaos, the seasonal pizza with pumpkin butter, figs, mascarpone, sage, toasted pumpkin seeds &, supposedly, walnuts—although mine yielded none, unless it was those 2 tan little tidbits at 6 o'clock—was certainly a conundrum. And not just thanks to the missing nuts. You can probably already begin to guess why. 

Because if the pizza had arrived hot, those delightful mini–ice cream scoops of mascarpone would have melted in transit, & I'd have been left with a drippy mess. What I don't know is whether it's deliberately served at room temperature, even to customers eating in; if so, I wish I'd been notified when I ordered it, because it came as a less-than-pleasant surprise, especially insofar as it highlighted the dryness of the uncharred thin crust (which doesn't, thankfully, appear to be the norm at Kaos; see Lori Midson of Cafe Society's black-bubbled looker here). Besides, though the mascarpone—an ultrasoft cheese that tastes of all the fresh cream from which it's made—looks lovely intact, the fact that you have to smear it in yourself so that it mingles & melds with the other ingredients means it's a messy affair after all.

BUT. To suggest—& I guess I would—that this pie wasn't quite a success isn't to say that I didn't really dig the gist of it, especially when I stopped thinking of it as pizza & pretended it was a giant hors d'oeuvre on a cracker. Then I could appreciate the earthy-sweet, spiced, autumnally indulgent combination; in & of themselves, the premium ingredients are a treat, not only the mascarpone but also the pumpkin butter sourced from Denver's own, aptly named PRiMO. 

There's obviously no question that the owners of Kaos know what they're doing & why they're doing it, just as they do at Gaia Bistro down the street (Old South Pearl, that is). For all its problems—which, again, may or may not have been a function of the delivery process—this pizza only proves it, charmingly inventive & delicately handled. I'll look forward to seeing what they come up with for spring—& to giving the ever-changing Chef's Whim a whirl in the meantime, not to mention good old pizze alla margherita e bianco.

Greeks Gone Wild Gone Reasonable

I was obviously pretty sure back in May, before it debuted, that Greeks Gone Wild would mean nothing to me beyond an opportunity to make merciless fun of a terrible name. The implicit cross between Dionysiac cultic orgies & coed porn seemed a totally stupid one for a nondescript gyros-&-wings joint on DU's campus corner to bear.

Since its opening, that post has received a surprising number of hits, suggesting that a lot of locals actually do want to know what the place has to offer. Either that or they're looking for hot girl-on-girl-on-rotisserie action. In any case, I figured it was my responsibility to at least interrupt my stream of mockery with a good-faith wade through the menu. 

I still say the name bites; I still say this is not the kind of place that will ever appear on my radar unless I'm right on its doorstep & struck for the 1st time in 20 years by a craving for fast food (hence the categorization under Eateries I Just Can't Get Worked Up About). But I will say that, as hyphenated-American take-out grubberies go, it doesn't suck, at least not flat out. Really.

While I wouldn't recommend eating in if you're over 25—it's bright, it's plastic, it's blaring & filled with people under 25—I would actually recommend the wings.

No boneless or breaded bastards, they were truly fried right, crackly on the outside & extra-juicy within, & coated but not buried in a medium, well-balanced buffalo sauce—not too peppery, not too vinegary, not too buttery. (There are also mild, hot, Greek & 1 or 2 other options.)

I'm also surprising myself  by recommending the dip platter with pita.

 

The bread was unexpectedly fresh-grilled, & perhaps even brushed with a little butter? And the tzatziki had great texture—thick & creamy—though a little more garlic would've made it even better. You can skip the rest; come to think of it, I suppose you can skip the whole thing & simply order sides of pita & tzatziki. I was impressed just to see htipiti—a lesser-known roasted red pepper–feta spread—& pleased it had a peppery kick, but it also had a salty kick, too hard. Meanwhile nothing about the thin hummus impressed, the flavor being all chickpea, not a whit of tahini, garlic, lemon, or even olive oil. 

As for the souvlaki & gyro plates—

   

They were fine. Not great, the meat perhaps a little underseasoned, but moist. Fine. The Greek dressing a little underpowering, but the salad fine. Adequate. Fine. The best part was still this,

but, you know, overall, fine! Can't complain. Let's not go wild ourselves & word it any more effusively than that.

  

How much more crap can I take (out)? Spicy Thai vs. my vote for the best of the meh: Thai Basil

I think I've now tried every Thai takeout joint within a few miles of my southeast Denver hovel: Thai Basil. Spicy Basil. Spicy Thai. Thai Green Chile. Swing Thai. Jason's Thai Bistro. Thai This. Thai That. Sucky Noodle. Pad Crud. For the most part they're as interchangable as their names. 

I've acknowledged that a) takeout is itself a crapshoot (so to speak) & b) there are a few local joints I've yet to hit that do get the love from writers I trust, e.g. Lori Midson, above all US Thai, Thai House, & Chada Thai. (You might also trawl Chowhound for recs like this from lotuseedpaste, who knows her stuff too.) But those are clearly the exceptions to a citywide rule. If I overstate the case, by all means, give me hell & tell me what I'm missing. Otherwise heed my warning & order in from the above, with the possible exception of Thai Basil, only if you're really lonely & your sole human contact for the eve will be the 2 min. you spend chatting with the delivery guy at the door—who's sure, to offer another apparent truism about Denver Thai, to be exceedingly gracious & kind. One could do worse in one's relationships.

In all fairness, then, to the lovely gentleman who recently brought us dinner from Spicy Thai, I'll admit up front that we only tried 4 dishes. But the fact that each was as ho-hum as the last means I won't be trying any more, at least not any time soon.

The shumai were doughy & dull;

 

the lamb curry bland,

the drunken noodles utterly without finesse, too soupy & spiced way down.

 

Without a picture to remind me I'd have forgotten about the soggy but otherwise characterless seaweed salad entirely. The line between a good seaweed salad & a bad one is thin but distinct; I asked for examples on Chowhound & got some smart replies.

It all made a subsequent order from the aforementioned Thai Basil, mostly merely adequate, seem downright dazzling by comparison. 

Above all, the crispy duck was even richer & tenderer than the 1st time we had it, & the portion for the price, $12.50, popped the eyes.

It came with surprisingly good peanut sauce, less thick & more vinegary than the majority. That may primarily be why I also liked mild red "curry chicken in peanut sauce." Sounded confusing, tasted mellow & creamy, indeed simply combining the two sauces in a way I'm not sure I've ever come across before, though a search suggests it's common.

Should've known better than to order Szechuan eggplant rather than Thai eggplant from a Thai place; it wasn't bad, but it wasn't spicy or sesame-tinged in the least. I'd also have preferred the ratio of eggplant to other veggies be higher, given that that's what I ordered. Still, it was colorful & tangy & well textured.

 

Seared scallops in an almost brothy sweet chili sauce didn't engage my tongue much, but the sheer number of critters for the price, the same as that of the duck, was once again impressive.

Bottom line: if you're stuck at home in southeast Denver & a craving for Thai strikes, get over it. If you just can't get over it, then call Thai Basil & keep your expectations modest. 

Unless, that is, you're one of the 28.8 folks who've given Spicy Thai two thumbs up on Urbanspoon, in which case go right ahead & order up a storm. 

Halfway House of Kabob (via By Jeeves)

Having acknowledged ad nauseum that a meal ordered in is a culinary experience once removed—you can't possibly get the same feel for the kitchen as you do when you're within feet of it—the fact of the matter is most of us rely on delivery from time to time, & a comparison of your options under those circumstances is no less valuable than a comparison of your options for dining out. 

Granted, it would be more valuable if the deliveries from any given place were themselves consistent. Since House of Kabob's just aren't, what can I say except good luck? Sometimes it'll be a score, sometimes a wash.

Of all the Middle Eastern restaurants on By Jeeves' list, I was partial toward HOK insofar as the menu, though laden with familiar staples, doesn't dumb its specials down—think lamb's tongue soup & fesenjan (walnut-&-pomegranate flavored chicken stew). That said, the basics are always a good place to start, since the quality of the foundation obviously determines the extent to which it can be built upon with any confidence or style.

Here's where this House's foundation proves shoddy.

chicken shawarma pita w/ fries

Iceberg has its place in a shawarma, but it's not supposed to have it to itself. Not that the wan shreds of chicken that were hiding in the corners were worth outing; meanwhile, what was glaring were the ungrilled pita & limp fries.

By comparison, the pita croutons in the fattoush were nice and crispy, the veggies bright & crisp. Still, they, like the sandwich, were underdressed beyond a squirt of lemon juice—virtually olive oil–less as near as I could tell. 

Adding insult to that drab injury was the fact that I'd ordered a side of creamy garlic sauce for the very sake of having a little extra dressing to play with—& for $2.95, this is what I got:

So that's what, a buck a tablespoon? And that's what, thawed paste? It wasn't bad, admittedly—you can't argue with raw garlic & salt—but you can argue with the description "creamy sauce."

Fool mudammas, too, lacked oomph.

Beans are beautiful things when properly seasoned; when not, they're just nubs of starch. Three words: garlic, lemon, garlic. In that order. 

All that said, here's where the House's foundation proves solid.

Persian eggplant is described as containing tomatoes, which it obviously did, garlic, which it did—& eggs, which I guess it did, as some sort of binder? There are enough similar recipes online to indicate that's probably the case. At any rate, it was the roasted eggplant itself that mattered, maintaining just enough of its bitterness to give it an edge, a smoky bite. 

The same went for its better-known counterpart, the unusually airy baba ghanoush that came on both the Sultan combo

& the veggie combo,

which not only looked something like a Delaunay 

but tasted as vibrant, too. Moistness was the key asset of virtually every item on both, from the way creamy hummus (I prefer mine more lemony, but sufficient tahini compensated), and the fluffy rice to the peppery falafel & the charred but juicy, if sparse, chunks of lamb, beef & chicken. Only the grape leaves left something to be desired—namely flavor, apparently squeezed out by the too-thick & -tight wrapping. But a little sprinkle of paprika to infuse the surface oil was a neat touch. 

If I can't say I've been overwhelmingly impressed thus far—don't even ask if the pita's housemade—nor can I say I'm washing my hands of HOK. There's still feta-filled sambousek, lahmacun-like arayes, & beef-&-cracked-wheat kibbeh left to gobble down before I give up—or, she says optimistically, move on up to that lamb's tongue soup.

By Jeeves, I think India Oven’s Got It

Given the good 1st impression By Jeeves made on us a few weeks ago even as Hapa Sushi was making a rather poor one, & considering how much we like our couch, the Director & I recently delved into delivery discovery again by ordering via the online/phone service from India Oven. It's a place I'd often wondered about, tucked into its little corner at the south end of the University Hills Plaza, but I could just never overcome my intense fear of nearby Tuesday Morning to make it through the front door.

Well, color me pink with pleasure. Not only was the By Jeeves ordering process once again easy as pie—or at least doodhi halvah (teehee)!—but the order itself was delish enough to repeat the whole transaction a few days later, to only slightly diminished delight.

For one thing, if skimping on takeout/delivery is (at least in my perhaps cynicism-skewed experience) a bit more likely than not, the folks at India Oven buck the norm by adding a few nicely spiced pieces of pappadum to every order along with 3-count-'em-3 dipping sauces: mint chutney, tamarind chutney & raita that, in a new-to-me twist, comes laced with julienned carrots. With our 2nd meal, they even threw in 2 containers of rice: 1 plain basmati, the other saffron, both properly fluffy & aromatic.

For another thing, the salmon saag is a thing of beauty. 

 

A, there's no skimping on the firm, moist, almost sweet-fleshed fish. B, there's no telling exactly what's in the saag that makes its flavor so complexly rich—but I'd swear it's a touch more than its share of ghee. 

Though he ordered it hot, the Director's daal tarka wasn't simply chilefied—it was earthy & gingery too. Or, in his words, “fuckin’ scrumptious.” (That's garlic naan on the side; 

me, I really dig the kabuli naan, 

evenly but not overly studded with dates & nuts to prove lightly sweet, not dessert-pizzalike.)

I forgot to snap the kadai paneer, but it looked a lot like this blogger's, whose handsome photo I've swiped. Full of tomatoes, onions & green peppers—the latter bordering on al dente—it was lighter & fresher-tasting than most curries, & gently scented with cinnamon. I suspect, in short, that it was a very fine example of the dish, if slightly less to my personal taste than its deeper, richer counterparts.

Lamb vindaloo, for example, usually is to my taste, provided it doesn't obliterate my ability to taste anything beyond the first bite—but the Director's was oversalted & the meat tough, making for the only real disappointment of the bunch. 

  

Still, overall, India Oven is already 2nd only to India's Pearl (on which you'll find much here) in my official book. Guess I'd better get over my nervousness around Mammy Dolls & Family Legacy Bibles & whatnot & check the place out in person. 

Hapa Sushi via Delivery by Jeeves: not worth the non-trouble

Let's leave aside the disclaimer that no washoku connoisseur has any business ordering sushi in—that content is & should be inseparable from context in this case, the food from the experience of engaging with & eating according to the expertise of your itamae. A, I'm no connoisseur, & B, to get all poetic on you, one could equally argue that there are no ideas (i.e. mental processing, i.e. experiencing) but in things: if, as I suggested in the above-linked Chowhound thread, delivery sushi is akin to poetry in translation—i.e., something other than the real thing—it's still a thing you can gauge on its own merits. So, for instance, if nigiri brought in from Sushi Den is inferior to nigiri consumed at Sushi Den, it's nonetheless inarguably superior to nigiri ordered in from, oh, say, Hapa Sushi Grill & Sake Bar, the batch of which I had recently was so insipid as to make the thought of an in-house taste test—though eventually necessary & only fair—altogether too dispiriting for the nonce.

In Japanese, happa, 2 Ps, means "leaf," including the ganja, or maybe "explosion." A Google search yielded conflicting translations, though it did help confirm that hapa, 1 P, doesn't mean anything in Japanese. It's actually a Hawaiian word, which per Hapa's website describes "a harmonious blend of Asian and American cultures" but per Urban Dictionary is derogatory slang for a half-breed. Guess which source I trust more.

Actually, the menu explicitly pledges allegiance to a Hawaiian influence or 2, which is kind of cool, but what clinched an order from me 1 night when I didn't feel like cooking & the Director didn't feel like getting off the couch was the listing for umeshiso maki. So far as I've searched, no one else in Denver serves the rolls filled with pickled plum paste & shiso leaf that I thought were a given in US sushi bars. (If any of you are aware of other local purveyors, please send word!)

Though I'd looked into using By Jeeves before, this was my first experience with the delivery service, & I was quite pleased with the process. The "phone waiter" was very nice & efficient (if not exactly a whiz in Japanese pronunication—for one of many instances, hotate nigiri, or ho-TAH-tay nih-GIH-ree, became HO-tayt ni-ZHEE-ree. Kinda cute, actually). The delivery dude arrived only a few min. past the hour allotted, & the service fees were already added in. In short, the whole affair was fairly hassle-free.

Not so the yaki onigiri.

Being unfamiliar with these "grilled balls of rice served with teriyaki sauce," I was intrigued, imagining a sort of naked Asian version of Sicilian arancini; what I got was a clump of plain rice, somehow sticky & dried-out at the same time, except for the quarter-inch bottom layer that was saturated with cloying goo (the inclusion of which was altogether an Americanization according to my fellow Chowhounds, who also assured me the interior should be almost melting).

The sauteed edamame was fine if a bit messy beneath its smattering of "Hapa's seasonings"—a not-so-proprietary blend of garlic & sesame.

And some of my sushi was just fine too. I was indeed delighted to be reunited with my sour-salty

umeshiso maki, & I'm always down with punchy oshinko (pickled daikon) rolls.

I'll sheepishly cop as well to getting a kick out of the Mork & Mindy roll with white tuna (presumably albacore?), salmon, chives & a bit of mandarin orange—not surprisingly a nice combo, given the easy affinity between fish & citrus, though what it has to do with the goofy old sitcom is beyond me (any ideas?).

But the nigiri was flat-out flavorless.

From the yellowtail & the salmon to the grilled scallop (i.e. the aforementioned hotate, which the Director chose over raw on a lark) & even the mackerel (not an easy fish to defang), what should have been the sparkling centerpieces seemed like storebought afterthoughts. Granted, my bad for not just assuming that Hapa would have it all ass-backwards once I saw the way the menu was categorized—whereby the "beginner" rolls are very simple, just raw fish & veggies, while the "advanced" rolls are mostly abominations of baked cream cheese, fried smoked salmon & garlic-basil butter, bearing names as tacky as their ingredients. To willingly request the Climax or the Booty Call is to just ask for it in every sense of the phrase. I'm not objecting to the inclusion of such concoctions on the menu, mind you; again, I'm no purist. What gives me hives is the oh-so-American & no-so-Japanese equation of novelty with sophistication. The difference, it seems, is in knowing the difference. That culinary experimentation is, at least in my book, a good thing does not automatically mean the results thereof are too.

Hapa, you got me up on my soapbox, where I tend to be particularly awkward (hey, does this platform make me look fat?). For that reason alone, I damn thee.

Back-to-back meh: Blue Moon & Twin Dragon

***
"One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail...one beats and beats for that which one believes," says Wallace Stevens in "The Man on the Dump." But sometimes one beats too hard, too fast, causing pain for herself & others. I wrote a blogpost the other day that (lest you arrived here in search of it) I have since taken down for that reason.  

Enough said, besides I'm truly sorry to those I hurt.
***

What with the new kitty, I'm less inclined to budge from the couch than ever, so the Director & I have been ordering in a lot lately, including once from (make that "in a") Blue Moon Asian Cuisine & Sushi. In keeping with the space it's made in—that low-rent chalet on S. Colorado—the food's pretty utilitarian. By the same token, of course, it's also a sight cheaper than most (with a majority of items costing less than, for instance, their Sushi Den counterparts by a buck or more). 

The Dynamite was Dynamite. Which isn't the same as being dynamite. 'Twas what 'twas. 

By & large the maki was quite all right. Keep in mind that, while I know a thing or two about about a fish or 2, I'm no aficionado—not like Chowhound regular cgfan, whose fascinating thread (which links to photos & videos) on a day in the kitchen with his favorite itamae can be found here.

Therefore, I'm all too glad to snarf the stuff the snobs (sympathetically enough, really) sniff at. Hey, we all have our issues, as both the aforelinked & this Chow thread attest; mine just happens to be with bastardized Italian rather than Japanese. Besides, I ordered uni too, but the hostess called back to say the kitchen was out (a claim of which I'm slightly suspicious. Not to be a snob myself, but are Blue Moon habitués really that into echinoderms? Acquired tastes like [at least here in the US] sea urchin tend to develop only with investments of time & money—the very things places like Blue Moon aim to help you save.)

So I was happily stuck with my tricked-out rolls. Ignoring the Director's basic nigiri from 12 to 2 o'clock (see, time really is of the essence at Blue Moon!), going clockwise from about 3, we got unagi (eel w/ avo) maki; east maki w/ shrimp, egg & avo; salmon skin maki; & spicy scallop maki. At the center top is sunshine maki stuffed with salmon, avo & pickled burdock & covered with tuna & tobiko; below that is Manhattan maki filled with spicy crab (maybe actual crab, since it's one of the pricier rolls & since the menu specifies kani elsewhere?) & layered with tuna, salmon & avo. Nothing wrong with a one; all was just fine—the scallop being especially fine, bursting with meat & not especially gloppy, while the sunshine roll's heavy dusting of flying fish roe was nice & messy.

The takeout menu for Twin Dragon boasted its past Best Ofs; though none were recent, a leaf-through pointed to a curio or two—5-flavor pork loin, honey roast pork, creamy walnut chicken (shrimp being the more usual version). And these 

paper- {sic] wrapped chicken.

They were basically chicken meatballs, boomerang-shaped, scallion-spiked &, I'd swear, lightly egg-dipped, then browned to a turn.

The rest of the order, though, took a turn for the worse. I knew I was taking the name "crispy, tangy pork" too literally, but I couldn't help but hope against hope that it wasn't actually just a euphemism for "doughy, sweet & sour pork." It was. Still, the addition of what I guess was some sort of seaweed, almost mushroomy in flavor, was a nice touch.

Similarly, "sesame egg noodle salad" was just overcooked sesame noodles with undercooked veggies & none of the advertised citrus-soy dressing.

Plan on moving an inch again any moment now, so more reports on the big bad world of eats out there soon.