The Village Idiots

I thought I would have a bunch of cool things to say, but after thinking about this, I've come to the unoriginal but somewhat unsurprising realization that many of my memorable non-Hawaii restaurant experiences are either Reid's or shared with Reid. I'll let him talk about Schultzy's Sausage in Seattle because I don't share the same passion for ground pork patties and have never aspired to get my name on the wall that lists people who have eaten five of these monstrosities in one sitting. He also took me to this place called Dos Coyotes in Davis, CA, that had the best fish tacos in the world, bar none. There was something about the way they grilled the fish and there was somethng in the salsa. I'm just hoping it wasn't some Northern CA marijuana or something. We would up eating there something like 5 consecutive meals and pretty much detoured off I-5 on a trip from LA to Seattle simply to go to Davis and eat more of these burritos.

I'll keep this post short, but I ahve to mention a non-Reid experience. The best city to eat Sushi in North america is Vancouver, BC Canada. Incredibly fresh and incredibly priced. Tuna and Salmon nigiri are routinely $1 to $1.50 per piece and remarkably fresh. Toro, Hotate, Uni, Hamachi, Unagi are routinely $1.75-$2.25 per piece. Rolls are usually $2-4 and one place called Nikko has the best spicy tuna I've ever had. In downtown Vancouver, there are 1-2 sushi restaurants per block (only a mild exaggeration). The best part? These are Canadian prices, so you still get a 25-40% discount when you convert to american dollars.

Dos Coyotes, rules! If we ever go to the Bay Area, we might have to make a special trip there. Here's a menu of their burritos: Dos Coyotes' Burritos. Notice they have a white sauce in their shrimp and mahi mahi burritos. The sauce is not really thick, and they put enough for flavor versus drowning it out. It's the sauce, rice and grilled seafood that make the burrito so ono. They also have a paella burrito, which wasn't there the last time I visisted, and that looks pretty good, too.

As for Schultzy's, even after eating Italian sausage sandwiches in NYC, I still think Schultzy's is up there. I hope the owner is still sticking with the rectangualr shaped patties.

Enjoyed reading about Vancouver sushi. Sounds good. Hey Marc, do you remember the time I gave you the unagi, avocado tempura? That was killer to, yeah?

Btw, did you find any good deli's in Seattle?

I don't remember the unagi/tempura roll, where was it? It sounds good though. Nor have I found a memorable deli in Seattle, mostly for lack of looking. There are a few places that I've been wanting to try though and I'll try to give you a report.

The sushi chef at Tatsumi's made it (which some scraps of unagi) for the workers. I saved one for you, and gave it to you when you picked me up. Does that ring a bell?

Wow, I just realized that you were in Seattle at Tatsumi in 1991 - 13 years ago!. Getting old. It does ring a bell but I don't remember the roll specifically and it sounds like "break jaw."

Maybe this will help: it wasn't a roll. The chef used the tips of the unagi that couldn't be used for any dish, so they were really tiny. He wrapped a small piece of avocado with nori and fried it in tempura batter. Then he put some unagi sauce on it afterward. I had it in a little container when you came to pick me up in your truck. (I think it was rainy.) With good food, I can remember the details. :)

Please do not remind me of getting old. You know, I remember joking about getting old in my late 20's, and it was funny. But it's become less and less funny.

Well... if you can remember the details then you can't be too old. If you ever start forgetting about food though, I'll be very concerned.

ha!

Hokay, so I went up to Boston to hang w/ Chris and Abra for Thanks'g, & I have to agree: Modern Pastry's cannoli is, in fact, better than the cannoli I've had down here in Manhattan. If I could do buildings the way they do cannoli, I could be happy - a haiku of unadorned but differentiated simplicity. Brilliant, I tell you.

If I could do buildings the way they do cannoli, I could be happy - a haiku of unadorned but differentiated simplicity. Brilliant, I tell you.

No, this is brilliant. If I could come up with a sentence like this, I'd stop there and not worry about fifty thousand words.

Alright, Kevin! Don't you think the ricotta has a "sweet-milk" taste to it? (Chris was teasing me about that description.)

Mitchell: Aw, no, c'mon... I identify less with Ralph Waldo E. & more with Ralph Wiggum ("me fail English? That's unpossible!")

Reid: Yeah, but like I told Abra, maybe that's what makes it live up to the visual promise of what other cannoli (cannolis?) fails to deliver. Maybe that way it can stand alone w/o the chocolate coating that other bakeries use to make it taste like something interesting.

Yeah, I must say, those cannoli: they're sweet, but milky. Like sweet milk, almost. Hey wait, could THAT be a haiku?

Larri and I went to Anaheim this past weekend, and we heard about a place, Cortina's, with some great cannoli. This person from chowhound also raved about the pizza.

Well, the cannoli was very good, and if I didn't have the modern bakery cannoli, I'd say this was the best cannoli I had eaten. Btw, they pipe the ricotta in the shell on the spot, thus lending more support to Chris' theory about good cannoli.

The pizza was also very good, in the vein of Ray's, which means nothing really fancy or unnusual, just solid pizza. The crust was a tad pillowy for my preference, but I still liked it (Larri, my neice and nephew, too).

I really liked their meatball sandwiches, though. For under $5 you can get a small sandwich which is about a 6" sub. Pretty filling. It was the first meatball sandwich that my neice and nephew had, and they really liked it.

We went to other places, mostly cheap burger places. I'll try to post about these later, but I'm sick right now, and thinking about this greasy food is making me nauseous. (See how sick I am?)

One of the recommendations I read about was the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant. People wait in long lines for their fried chicken, and since I'm a big fan of fried chicken, I was looking foward to trying this. The verdict?

I'd say it was one of the better fried chickens I've had--better than KFC or most other fast food fried chickens. The meat was really juicy, almost like rotisserie. The skin was pretty crisp, and not because of huge dollops on batter either.

Speaking of rotisserie chicken, there was another place called Zankou, a fast food Middle-Eastern place, that some people at chowhound raved about. They served a rotisserie chicken as well as special seasoned chicken and tri-tip steak entres or sandwiches. The cool thing is that you can see the chickens slowing spinning in a roster. The specially seasoned chicken and trip tip were huge mounds of meat spinning on a vertical skewer. When an order is made for those meats, a cook comes with a knife to cut off meat, sort of like gyros. The food was pretty good and came at a good price.