janelle "the word 'hubby' is not a proper noun" p.'s Profile

I think fasting for Ramadan permanently alters Muslims' eating schedule.  Last Saturday, a month past the conclusion of their fasting holidays, the restaurants in Little Arabia (a.k.a. Warren Avenue in Dearborn), were crammed at 4:00 p.m.  4:00 p.m.!!!  On a Saturday!!!  I thought only disgruntled grad students and sleep-deprived med students ate lunch at 4:00 p.m.  But apparently, so does metro Detroit's Muslim community.

Not a single seat was available at my first choice lunch spot, including the six next-in-line-for-a-table stools.  Too hungry to wait, I teetered back out to my car and contemplated my next move.  Then, out of the corner of my eye... a glorious sight!  Golden chickens, threaded onto spits, twirling melodically through a rotisserie.  Behind them, two spinning cones of shawarma, each so massive they had the gravitational pull of the moon.  I was in their orbit faster than a pilgrim to Mecca.

Golden Chicken, like its neighbor restaurants, was busy.  But I snagged a booth, ignored the old Middle Eastern men chain-smoking by the soda cooler, and began to salivate over shawarma.  Although Golden Chicken's menu is not too different from that of the typical Middle Eastern restaurant, their focus is on the chicken.  Rotisserie chicken...  Chicken shawarma...  Yellow rice with chicken...  This is chicken heaven.

You order at the counter.  If they're not too busy, they'll bring your food out for you.  If they're busy, they'll put your food atop the counter, call it out, and you're expected to retrieve your food in a timely fashion.

For $12, the chicken shawarma entree, served with rice or fries and soup or salad, is a bargain that--even when shared--achieved Thanksgiving levels of fullness in two hungry adults.

TJ and I chose salad over soup, as we're not quite ready for soup weather to set in.  This was a huge plate of Lebanese salad, with perfectly balanced oil-vinegar-oregano dressing over crisp Romaine, fresh parsley, firm cucumbers, and crunchy pita chips.  Lebanese salad dressing is always too radically oily, or too radically vinegary, but Golden Chicken's was squarely in the middle--the Joe Lieberman of salad dressings, per se.

Then along came a 15-inch platter of yellow rice and chicken shawarma.  The rice, full of cumin, turmeric, and Swanson corn-carrot-bean mix, was fluffy and savory, with moist chunks of chicken mixed in.  But moistness stopped there.  Despite the block of animal fat continually melting over the spit of shawarma, the meat itself remained as dry as the Sahara.  The oasis that saved the shawarma was the spicy garlic spread, which I slathered liberally over the soft, springy pita bread I folded around a chunk of shawarma.

My take-out roasted chicken ($12) was a juicy success, even six hours later for dinner.  With its charred edges and savory aroma, this is why I'd go back to Golden Chicken.

But next time I want shawarma, I'll go elsewhere... and I'll adjust my eating schedule to avoid the late afternoon Middle Eastern dining rush.

I have a different food philosophy than most.

There are people who think the best meals come from fine dining establishments--places with dress codes, impressive wine lists, and menus straight out of a Top Chef episode.  These people think decor is directly proportional to deliciousness, and that spending more money on a meal makes them more knowledgeable and cultured.  These people scorn anyone who eats off of styrofoam plates or out of paper bags.  When these people try my five-star restaurants, they end up insulting me for having bad taste.

For them, Esswaran is the incarnation of hell.

Esswaran is a little Sri Lankan short eats take-out at the south end of a dingy strip mall.  The whole structure looks like something out of an emerging country.  The restaurant itself is no larger than a dorm room, with a tiny kitchen in back, hot tables lining the walls, and just a few square feet where customers stand.  Seating is nonexistent.  Local Tamil newspapers, once stacked near the door, have been strewn across the floor by the gusting wind.

Each well of the hot table is lined with paper towel and filled neatly with meat and vegetarian buns, dumplings, puffs, fritters, vada, and sweet dough balls.  All of it was prepared earlier in the day, and has been sitting there for hours.  Yet somehow, despite the ticking clock, these fritters remain crisp, warm, and not greasy, escaping the throes of sogginess.

The owner could tell I was a short eats noob--I was probably the first white person he'd seen since watching Sri Lanka play Australia in cricket--and he was happy to explain each item and offer samples.  It took me a while to decide what to order because, really, he could have thrown any of those eats into a bag, and I would have loved it all.  Finally, I settled on:
    5 sweet dough balls
    3 vada
    1 vegetable dumpling
    1 vegetable bun

All of this totaled only $5.  Then I realized I only had American money, only a few $20 bills, and four $1 bills.  I already felt like a fool for having to pay in USD, but the guy was willing to accept just the $4!  No, I'm not going to shortchange someone AND pay in foreign currency.  I'm not that much of a dirty capitalistic American a-hole.  My husband ran out to the car to get the extra $1.  We paid up, then sat in our car and devoured our snacks.

The spicy mashed potato filling in the bun and dumpling was so deliciously savoury and aromatic.  The bun was fluffy and moist, and the dumpling wrapper was crisp and thin, almost like a fried Korean mandoo.  The vada were excellent, filled with fragrant, warm cardamom.  But the sweet dough--an incredible combination of light and heavy that works brilliantly!  They're fresh and crisp on the outside and fried to a perfect golden-brown.  Inside, they're intensely moist and soft, yet dense and heavy.  A muted sweetness laces it all together.  Very similar to andagi (Okinawan doughnuts), but the size of a baseball.

It takes a certain type of person to appreciate Esswaran.  Those people who think good food has an interior decorator will never understand or appreciate Esswaran.  But the few who do appreciate Esswaran have earned my respect for life.

Few things are more lowbrow, unsophisticated, and anti-gourmet than being a regular at a coney island.  But if my love for Ellie's Grill & Coney means the forfeiture of my foodie badge, then I think I'll be okay without local-farm artisan bacon and Anthony Bourdain books.

My favor for Ellie's may seem out of character, as I pride myself on subsisting primarily on curries and rice noodles, and have essentially banished Detroit blandness from my diet.  But Ellie's is different.  Ellie's isn't like the other coneys.

Ellie's is a homespun, cozy Macedonian restaurant, cleverly disguised behind the coney island façade.  Ellie's offers five carnivorously divine Macedonian dishes and a smattering of Polish and Hungarian specialties, all of which are hidden amongst a typical coney island menu.  The coney camouflage helps Ellie's survive in Detroit's culinary battlefields, because Detroiters only patronize restaurants that serve chili-swaddled hot dogs.

But the sultans of swine will strike you down and curse you if you dare go to Ellie's and be so damned Detroit that you order a coney dog.  No, you're at Ellie's for the Macedonian specialties.  More specifically, the Macedonian Mixed Grill.

This impressive sampler platter showcases each of Ellie's four other Macedonian dishes--kebapi, pleskavitze, pork kebab, and pork chop.  These four offensively large hunks of meat are served atop a savory tomato-based rice-potato pilaf, alongside crisp seasoned fries.  Enjoy it with a thick slice of crusty, fresh-baked Italian bread from Cantoro (http://www.yelp.com/bi...), which rivals the famed Zingerman's breads.

Kebapi and pleskavitze are minced pork and beef--kebapi in small football shapes the size of my thumb, pleskavitze like hamburger patties with chopped onions.  Juicy, with a deep, garlicky, salty flavor.  These are the rubbery first cousins of the cevapi and plescavice from Bosnia Specialties Restaurant (http://www.yelp.com/bi...).  While Ellie's kebapi and pleskavitze can certainly stand on their own, a small scoop of creamy, salty kajmak cheese would work miracles.

But the real showstopper at Ellie's is the pork.  Both the kebab and chop are seasoned with an onion, garlic, salt, and paprika blend more magical than fairy dust.  The seasoning helps seal in the juices, resulting in an incredibly tender and moist chunk of swine.

So there I sat, in one of Ellie's formica booths, with savory, fatty, pork jus dripping down my chin.  This is pork jus worth surrounding myself with the coney-dog-munching Detroiters incapable of appreciating Ellie's Macedonian food.  Pork jus worth my stooping to become a regular at a coney island.  Pork jus worth my drop down the gastronomic hierarchy.

Despite the many benefits of my genetic gift of intelligence, my smarts are often a pitfall.  See, with intelligence comes impatience... especially when dealing with the "travel service professionals" at AAA, especially because I know more about their jobs than they do.

In a month, I'll be puttering around Namibia in a manual Volkswagen Polo.  For this desert ride, I need to obtain an International Driving Permit (IDP).  Here in the US, an IDP can only be obtained through the American Automobile Association (AAA) or the National Auto Club; you need not be a member of either group.

I'd never heard of the National Auto Club, but I used to have a AAA membership--which, as my luck would have it, I canceled just weeks before I blew out a tire on the Penna Turnpike.  Regardless, I was familiar with AAA, so I decided to go to them for my IDP.

I did the intelligent thing, and conducted extensive research online about the IDP.  Requirements, forms, necessary photos, dates of validity, countries that recognize it.  I even filled out the form online and printed a copy to take with me to AAA.  I thought any normal, logical person would do the same--learn about what they're getting before they go out to get it.

Well, I overstudied.  I knew more about this stupid permit than the women at AAA did!

At this "full" AAA office (full = insurance + travel services), you're greeted by a crabby front desk clerk who'd rather be knitting.  She wanted me to fill out the IDP form *again*, then take it to her, then she'd look at it and type my name into the queue.  Once in the queue, I'd sit in a waiting area for 10 minutes until some other clerk finished helping all the customers ahead of me in the queue.

Inefficiency in its full glory!  The front desk Q-tip-to-be couldn't just save people time by asking for their name and entering it in the queue *while* they filled out the forms.  No, she needed the forms completed *before* she could one-finger-type their names into the queue.

After hanging in the queue for ten minutes while one of AAA's "travel service professionals" was on the phone with her cat, my name was called.  The first thing the Cat Whisperer asked for was my AAA membership number.  When I told her I wasn't a member, she scoffed and said the IDPs were for AAA members only.  But I knew more about this than she did--I had done enough research to know that *anyone* can get an IDP through AAA.  She called her boss to confirm I was right.

The IDP is a little booklet, into which this woman writes your name and staples your picture.  T.J. and I got the last two booklets in their entire office.  The woman told us to get away from her desk while she filled them out, "because these are the last two booklets, and if you distract me, I might screw them up."  What the effing eff?!?!  If you have difficulty copying someone's name from one piece of paper to another, what have you to live for?

When our IDPs were complete, we told the clerk that we're considering re-joining AAA, and are curious if there's someone in the office we could talk with about membership and obtaining maps of Namibia.  Her response was, "You're not a member, so try Barnes & Noble."

Ignorant, disrespectful buffoon!  I could do her job with both hands tied behind my back, a knife in my throat, and 60 milliamps of electric current running through my body.  She is the reason why intelligence can be so frustrating!

If you need an IDP, you can get one here--with a bit less suffering than trying to re-title your car at the DMV.  But as far as travel planning advice, unless you're trying to plan the geriatric tripartite road trip to Yellowstone, Branson, and Sarasota, the cretins at AAA will be of no help to you.

I was the kid you hated in university.  The kid who sat in the front row at lectures, took pristine notes, went to office hours, and beat the living hell out of the curve on the exams.  But there was one class--fluid mechanics--that turned the tables on me, and mercilessly beat my GPA into oblivion.  Despite my front-row seat, my flawless note-taking, and making myself a permanent fixture at office hours, I left every lecture even more confused than before.

When confronted with a new cuisine, I approach it the same way I did my college curriculum--study the literature, learn from examples (or *samples*, in the case of food), and eat my way into understanding.  Caribbean Chinese food, though, is like fluid mechanics.  It puzzles me, and after trying the cuisine for the first time at Calypso Gardens, I'm even more confused than before.

Caribbean Chinese restaurants are a dime a dozen throughout Toronto's suburbs, often called "West Indian Chinese".  Calypso Gardens was the Caribbean Chinese restaurant I chose, as it was one of the few of them I found open on a Sunday morning.

Calypso Gardens' menu features "Caribbean-style" fried rices, chow meins, and lo meins, each with a long list of possible proteins--beef, barbecue pork, chicken, shrimp, prawns, Chinese sausage, or Cantonese beef, pork, or chicken.  There are chop sueys, won ton soups, "special" dishes like ginger chicken and beef broccoli, sweet & sour prawns, and barbecue duck.  Sounds like a typical Americanized Chinese takeout.  And after sampling a fried rice and a lo mein, it still wasn't clear to me how these dishes were different than regular Chinese food... the only exception being "chicken in the rough", which I recognized as a uniquely Caribbean Chinese dish.

It's not that I was expecting pineapple in everything, or piña colada won tons, or a little tiki to pop out from my pile of noodles... like many of my fellow Detroiters would so ignorantly expect.  But it seemed like the differences between Caribbean Chinese and mainland Chinese were subtle.  Thinner sauces, made with less oil, less hoisin; flavors based on Caribbean dry spices; simpler noodles, without the distracting baby corn.  Or, maybe I still don't understand Caribbean Chinese food.

But what I *DO* understand is that Calypso Gardens' chicken lo mein, with its hefty chunks of juicy, tender, barbecued chicken, has been in my dreams every night since Sunday.  I wake up with a pillow soaked in drool and a terrible craving for that sweet but savory chicken skin, ever so slightly crisp; the soft white meat so rich in flavor that it melts on your tongue; the lightly-seasoned lo mein noodles, al dente; and the intensely tart, fruity, fiery habañero sauce that I drizzled generously over the noodles.

Lo mein will never be the same again!

Maybe that's it...  Maybe I just figured out Caribbean Chinese food...  The Caribbean is so magical that it ruins you on the rest of the world--nowhere else you'll ever visit will compare.  So maybe that's what the Caribbean brings to Chinese food--flavors so magically spectacular that you'll never be able to enjoy regular Chinese food ever again.

*** Cash or Canadian Debit Only ***

Though Detroit's car factories have closed, a new factory has come to town:  Royal Sweets.

Royal Sweets is the Indian answer to mass production, the assembly line, and fast food.  Mass production might work for automobiles, but it fails miserably with Indian sweets, snacks, and short eats.

These are foods not simple to make.  Foods which, in India, street vendors devote their entire lives to preparing and perfecting.  Royal Sweets takes shortcuts, which leave gaping holes devoid of flavor.  Their mass production compromises quality.  Their geographically-broad menu is ambitious, but they should instead do a few things well, rather than many things poorly.

Their 20 short eats need to be buried and never seen again--they're an insult to anyone who knows anything about Indian food.  These are poorly-executed and barely representative of their real, authentic counterparts.  Deep-fried items (aloo tikki, assorted pakora, samosas, etc.) are prepared in advance, and sit in a display case throughout the day, growing tougher, denser, and drier as the second hand rounds the dial.  Unlike wine, fried gram flour batter does not improve with age!

Most of the short eats are served with mint and tamarind chutneys, neither of which should really be called a "chutney".  The mint is a green liquid that tastes like bubbles, while the tamarind was Chinese buffet sweet and sour sauce.  These "chutneys" had my lower intestines declaring war on me.

That sweet and sour sauce doubled as the pani puri's tamarind water.  Usually a delightful little snack, Royal Sweets' puris (puffs of wheat flour) were cold and soggy, and the onion-potato filling was raw and flavorless.  Even the uttapam--my favorite Indian snack--was dry, grainy, and overloaded with tomatoes.  Congratulations, Royal Sweets, for making the first pancake I ever met that I didn't like!

But most regrettable about my visit to Royal Sweets was that I gave in to the temptation of the 30+ varieties of sweets and the 25 varieties of snacks.  Not a single bite of the two pounds I bought was enjoyable.  The snacks were all stale, like if you left a bag of potato chips open in Florida, during the rainy season, for two days.  And all the different sweets I tried tasted exactly the same.  The mango burfee tasted like the chocolate laddoo tasted like the gulab jamun tasted like the milk halwa.  The taste?  Rotten milk.

Chalk up another factory failure for Detroit.

Between T.J. and me, I've always been the one with the travel bug, dragging him aboard airplanes, onto ski lifts, into cable cars.  I was always the one to propose a trip, search for flights, book hotels, schedule activities.  I was the one with my nose always in a Lonely Planet.  I was the one who memorized United's reward mileage chart.  I was the one who could name the airport codes, rainy season, and entry Visa requirements for every country along the 30th parallel.

But after eating at Brampton Roti Shop, T.J. was the one searching online for flights to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, until 3:00 a.m.

Their Trinidadian roti really is THAT good.

"But I thought roti was Indian food?" you may wonder, "Why do they have it in Trinidad?"  Ah, the gifts the British have given us!  On their quest to colonize the Caribbean, the Brits brought with them Indian indentured servants.  The Indians brought their exotic spices, aromatic curries, and springy flatbreads.  And even after the English bid "pip, pip, cheerio" to the West Indies, the Indians--and their foods--remained.

Thus began 150 years of culinary fusion.  This was not the forced fusion of P.F. Chang, but simply culinary nature running its course.

More recently, Trinidadian émigrés to the GTA have opened Brampton Roti Shop, bringing the true taste of their roti to those of us north of the Tropic of Cancer.

The roti (~$7/ea) is a pliable wheat flour bread of two layers, folded into a tidy pillow around a savoury curry filling.  Choose from chicken, goat, shrimp, or potato curry.  I'm partial to the chicken, which has a delicate slow-cooked tenderness.  The potato curry, more tart than the meat curries, is cooked just long enough so the potatoes are mashed, not mushy.

The curries are slightly sweeter than their Indian counterparts, and made with a touch of coconut milk.  A different--though no less complex--blend of spices gives these Caribbean curries a lighter, leafier taste, as compared to the more ghee-heavy, earthy Indian curries.

Although the roti are big enough to knock you into a food coma, don't miss the short eats... chewy aloo (potato) pies, doubles (flatbread, curried chickpeas, and chutneys), and phulourie (garlic-onion fritters).  Street food in all its glory.

Like many of my favorite restaurants, Brampton Roti Shop ignores the green revolution and uses styrofoam plates with plastic utensils.  But more often than not, food not served on styrofoam tastes like styrofoam.  Maybe I'm selfish, but I'd rather have a taste-bud-blowing meal than than save a cubic centimetre in a landfill.

But now, I'm off to hear T.J.'s argument that $450/person is a reasonable roundtrip airfare to Port-of-Spain.

*** Cash or Canadian debit only ***

As useless as learning cursive.

Back when people actually wrote in cursive, our forefathers were firing muskets at Redcoats hiding in the forests of what is now Eastern Pennsylvania.  Today, Redcoats are no longer our tyrannical enemies, but rather the home of Detroit's favorite burger.  The popularity of the original Red Coat Tavern on Woodward Avenue (http://www.yelp.com/bi...) has motivated their expansion to this new second location in the 'burbs.

But expansion, colonialization, and the quest for world domination is risky business.  The British Empire fell into decline post-World War II.  And this restaurant paying homage to the once-great Empire's soldiers is also falling into decline with their second location.

What I've come to expect from a Red Coat burger is a juicy, hand-formed patty of finely-ground beef, grilled to perfection.  But the new location failed to live up to its parent restaurant, delivering a dried-out puck of chuck, well-done half an hour ago.  My favorite toppings, too, were miscues.  The zip sauce lacked its namesake zip, tasting like a bland salve of paprika and mayonnaise.  And the burnt onions lacked their signature saltiness, though their crispness was the only saving grace of the meal.

Even the highly-touted Red Coat onion rings, for which I've joined the choir in proclaiming as some of the best I've ever had, failed to meet the precedence set by the original Red Coat.  The combination of saltless batter and a heat lamp is a death sentence for these little hoops-that-could.

The new Red Coat replaces stellar burgers with a more upscale and modern atmosphere.  But he who cares about a restaurant's atmosphere doesn't truly appreciate food--good food is good food, despite its surroundings; and mediocre food cannot be disguised by a fancy tablecloth or mood lighting.

Bringing Red Coat Tavern to more people in more geographies around metro Detroit is a truly noble cause.  But with burgers and rings that just don't measure up, the new Red Coat's only utility may be to decrease the wait time at the original location.

Red Coat was once King of Detroit's burger scene.  But monarchies, throughout history, have failed.  Only in the constitutional republic can the perfect burger exist, as the cumulative product of free and equal individuals pursuing the good life without government intrusion.

Patrick Henry once said, "Give me Liberty [and a good burger], or give me death!"

Yes, Yelpers, I'm alive.  You can stop sending the "Write More" compliments. ;-)

Although much of my time, as of late, has been consumed by my research, I have set aside a bit of time to consume my weekly Sammie.  Slowly but surely, I've been working my way through their extensive menu.  Today I made it to my fourth Sammie, and alas, it will be my last.

Sammie's has been unable to maintain quality.  Sandwiches are sloppily thrown together, though they still take 20 minutes to prepare.  They're assembled incorrectly, with uninvited ingredients.  Grease is substituted for flavor.  Everything tastes like a soggy, greasy, pile of slop.  I've found them closed during business hours--with no explanation.  And as for the service, you'll feel like you're trying to split a coconut with a very dull blade.

I'm taking bets on how long they remain in business.  I say they're gone by Thanksgiving.  Beer's on me if they last 'til Christmas.

For 99 cents, you can ride the coin-operated horse in front of Kroger four times.  Alternatively, you can get a taco at Maria's Comida.  Even if you're not a lonely woman, you'll get more enjoyment out of the horse ride than the taco.

A quick glance at Maria's menu, and you'll notice a red flag:  their poor tacos are topped with the infamous shredded cheese.

Ah, shredded cheese.  Mexican food's only doorway onto midwestern dinner tables.  Mexican food's crutch when the other flavors are unable to stand on their own.

Though it runs through my veins, cheese has no place on tacos.  Cilantro and onion are all they need.  Alas, Maria's does as its fellow Detroit Mexican restaurants do, piling cheese and the kitchen sink atop the tacos, trying to make them taste like something--anything--other than the cardboard-infused tortilla and styrofoam semifreddo they call meat.

The corn tortillas, which should be fluffy and delicate, are brittle and dry.  Opting for the cold, tough flour tortillas is no better an option.  The ground chicken filling tastes like a recipe out of "Good Housekeeping," from a six-page spread on adaptations of Mexican food for the middle American table.  Top it all off with Maria's "hot salsa", which, deconstructed, is an emulsion of ketchup and Tabasco.

At 99 cents a pop, complaints are barely justifiable.  But there are other ways I prefer to spend 99 cents.  Find me on a mechanical horse at a Kroger near you... or look for me in line at one of the mobile taco trucks in Southwest Detroit, where an extra quarter will buy me a real taco.