Cooking with LMNO

[Ben Shapiro]

Don't listen to that food snob. Enjoy the food you like to eat, until you uncover something else.

I ain't a fancy lady. Pho is like street tacos; cheap, tasty, and filling. I'm happy with my six bucks worth, most places.

You will always have a place in my heart.

If you ever come to Houston. Find out where Airline Dr. starts and ends. It's practically little Mexico.

[Ben Shapiro]

Boston is currently going through a Ramen phase.  Virtually every place that even hints at Asian food (and a couple even that don't) are offering some sort of Ramen dish, either as a special or as a featured item.

I mean, you can't go wrong with noodles, broth, pork, and soft-boiled egg, but there's something about it I can't 100% get behind.  It's most obviously been Americanized, a bit, but... Even though it's considered Japanese, there's a strong Cantonese element here, and the subtlety of its signature mild, rich flavor is almost impossible to achieve, even by trained chefs.

I want to enjoy this dish, but it's usually just flat.

Could be the noodles.

[LMNO]

Nope.  Broth flavor/texture.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Don't listen to that food snob. Enjoy the food you like to eat, until you uncover something else.

I ain't a fancy lady. Pho is like street tacos; cheap, tasty, and filling. I'm happy with my six bucks worth, most places.

You will always have a place in my heart.

If you ever come to Houston. Find out where Airline Dr. starts and ends. It's practically little Mexico.

I will eat my way through it.

I have an addiction to carnitas tacos that knows no boundaries.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Though in all fairness, the best Bahn Mi on planet earth are at An Xuyen.

My impending drive from Everett to Maine will have a Portland detour just for the purpose of loading up at An Xuyen before we head out into flyover territory.

I don't get the whole bahn mi thing. For one thing, they're just OK. Not great, just OK. For another thing, the saturation point came and went and nobody noticed, and there are STILL more bahn mi places opening downtown. And last, six bucks????? FUCK NO. They were fine when they were three dollars, ain't no fucking way I'm paying six. I could get FOUR TO SIX tacos for that money.

[East Coast Hustle]

Sweet Basil is probably the best Thai food I found in PDX, but I'd still consider it to be on the high end of mediocre. Pok Pok is good at what they do but so overpriced that I don't consider them a Thai restaurant, more of a hipster joint that serves Thai food. Best goddamn wings on the planet, though.

TBH, I never found any pho on Sandy that didn't taste like it came from the ubiquitous pho spice packets that so many places use. Obviously I didn't try them all though, so I'll take your word for it. Best pho I found in PDX was.....nah, I never found any pho that didn't pretty much suck. I still love even mediocre Thai food but I'm a goddamn picky bitch about my pho.

Well, maybe my taste buds just suck.  But I really like the pho on Broadway and I am also fond of Pho Jasmine.

Nah, I'm not just being nice when I say that you would know better than I would. I mean, I lived there for 3 years. You've got me beat.

It's just weird that anything else in PDX that's good seems to get CRAZY TONS OF ATTENTION!!!! but somehow SE Asian food just isn't as big a thing there as it is in, say, WA or CA.

And I'm not saying they don't have good stuff, just that I never found it, for the most part. Like I said, An motherfucking Xuyen. Literally, one of my 3 favorite places to eat in the ENTIRE WORLD.

[East Coast Hustle]

Though in all fairness, the best Bahn Mi on planet earth are at An Xuyen.

My impending drive from Everett to Maine will have a Portland detour just for the purpose of loading up at An Xuyen before we head out into flyover territory.

I don't get the whole bahn mi thing. For one thing, they're just OK. Not great, just OK. For another thing, the saturation point came and went and nobody noticed, and there are STILL more bahn mi places opening downtown. And last, six bucks????? FUCK NO. They were fine when they were three dollars, ain't no fucking way I'm paying six. I could get FOUR TO SIX tacos for that money.

An Xuyen. $3.50. Transcendant goddamn sandwich.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Though in all fairness, the best Bahn Mi on planet earth are at An Xuyen.

My impending drive from Everett to Maine will have a Portland detour just for the purpose of loading up at An Xuyen before we head out into flyover territory.

I don't get the whole bahn mi thing. For one thing, they're just OK. Not great, just OK. For another thing, the saturation point came and went and nobody noticed, and there are STILL more bahn mi places opening downtown. And last, six bucks????? FUCK NO. They were fine when they were three dollars, ain't no fucking way I'm paying six. I could get FOUR TO SIX tacos for that money.

An Xuyen. $3.50. Transcendant goddamn sandwich.

I've been there. Not worth the drive IMO. Sure it's cheap, but it's also what, 82nd and Division? Fuck that. I just don't think that much of salad roll fillings on a baguette.

Don't get me wrong, if someone brings it to a party I'll eat it. I'm just not going out of my way for it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sweet Basil is probably the best Thai food I found in PDX, but I'd still consider it to be on the high end of mediocre. Pok Pok is good at what they do but so overpriced that I don't consider them a Thai restaurant, more of a hipster joint that serves Thai food. Best goddamn wings on the planet, though.

TBH, I never found any pho on Sandy that didn't taste like it came from the ubiquitous pho spice packets that so many places use. Obviously I didn't try them all though, so I'll take your word for it. Best pho I found in PDX was.....nah, I never found any pho that didn't pretty much suck. I still love even mediocre Thai food but I'm a goddamn picky bitch about my pho.

Well, maybe my taste buds just suck.  But I really like the pho on Broadway and I am also fond of Pho Jasmine.

Nah, I'm not just being nice when I say that you would know better than I would. I mean, I lived there for 3 years. You've got me beat.

It's just weird that anything else in PDX that's good seems to get CRAZY TONS OF ATTENTION!!!! but somehow SE Asian food just isn't as big a thing there as it is in, say, WA or CA.

And I'm not saying they don't have good stuff, just that I never found it, for the most part. Like I said, An motherfucking Xuyen. Literally, one of my 3 favorite places to eat in the ENTIRE WORLD.

It's probably partly market saturation. Get to a certain point of saturation and nobody fucking cares anymore. Plus it's just brown people, in Portland for a restaurant to make it big it has to be a white person cooking brown people food, like Pok Pok or Por Que No.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Get a white person putting kimchi on a burrito here and charging $9 for it on Mississippi and people lose their fucking minds over it. Meanwhile, that Korean kid making astounding little dishes out of a cart on the PSU campus for $5 gets zero attention.

[LMNO]

Check my foodie privlege?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Check my foodie privlege?

It's Portland culture. I'm pretty sure it's not that racist in most other cities on the West coast. I love Portland but this place is racist as fuck on a deep level, as much as it pretends it isn't. It's almost impossible for brown artists, chefs, etc. to get any buzz, no matter how amazing they are, because of the way the culture is segregated.

[LMNO]

That's fairly depressing.  Though, I live in one of the most liberal states in New England, and there's still a deep undercurrent of racism.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That's fairly depressing.  Though, I live in one of the most liberal states in New England, and there's still a deep undercurrent of racism.

It's sad, because a lot of people pretend it doesn't exist and that we live in a post-racism society, which is so laughably far from the truth I don't even know where to start. Things are better, in a lot of ways, than they have been in the past, but there are still innumerable barriers for people of color in the US.

[Junkenstein]

That's fairly depressing.  Though, I live in one of the most liberal states in New England, and there's still a deep undercurrent of racism.

It's sad, because a lot of people pretend it doesn't exist and that we live in a post-racism society, which is so laughably far from the truth I don't even know where to start. Things are better, in a lot of ways, than they have been in the past, but there are still innumerable barriers for people of color in the US.

There's got to be ways to have fun with this. Ideas bubbling.