Shabu Shabu with Stephen

(Sorry, I’m a little behind in my posting, I’ll be better)

I’ve only had Shabu Shabu once before in my life and really it shouldn’t count because I had no idea what I was doing and was left to my own imagination. It was at a completely empty restaurant on Sawtelle at like 3pm in the afternoon. They brought it out and then just left me there so I threw everything in the pot attempting to make a soup of a sort.

I told my friend and hairdresser Stephen about my little food project and he insisted that we go to his Shabu Shabu place in Little Tokyo. Yippppeee!

Let me just say I’m so glad that I’m here to write this, I’ve never been in the car with Stephen and holy sh*t balls he drives like a maniac. He drives way too close to other cars, blasting Nicki Minaj and on the exit off the 101 he did not feel the need to slow down at all through the hairpin-curled tunnel of doom with complete blind confidence there could be no other cars around each windy bend, I mean why would there be? Obviously he is the king of the road. More like Mr. Toad’s Wild ride at Disneyland.

Shabu Shabu in Little Tokyo normally has a crazy line and super long wait Stephen tells me but on this night we scored with a wait of maybe 15 minutes. They don’t mess around here. In the center of the restaurant you can watch them shaving the beef paper thin.  Stephen prefers the sesame sauce, I typically prefer the ponzu on just about anything but I dipped in both and I also spiced mine up with Ichimi Red Pepper. Stephen taught me to uses my rice bowl as a drip catcher so then your rice turns into a tasty treat of it’s own over the course of the meal.

We got into quite the interesting and random conversation about gender transformation surgeries. “It really is quite miraculous what they can do, make a penis out of a vagina and a vagina out of a penis. “ (Plop goes another thin slice of beef into the boiling water.)

The single greatest story I have to tell is that I have seen close up, I MEAN CLOSE UP, inches away the handy work of a post-op male to female.

The summers of college I stayed with my best friend Erika’s parents in their house off of Mulholland instead of going back to Santa Fe. Her mother was and is like a mother to me, she’s my Mama Luz. THIS WAS MY COLLEGE YEARS and the night before I may or may not have partaken in some MDMA. Okay so yes I was totally doing E all night and was still coming down and couldn’t sleep. While drinking some coffee and trying to get my head on straight, Mama Luz came in the kitchen and told me that someone named “Bunny” was going to come work on the phones in the house. Mama Luz was buzzing with excitement over this and obviously wanted me to ask who “Bunny” was. Head throbbing I obliged, “Who’s Bunny?” Mama Luz was beside herself with information, “Well,” she started with a twinkle in her eye, “Bunny used to be Mike. I called the number for Mike the guy who initially installed the phone system in the house when we moved in and was told there is no longer a Mike there but a Bunny. Mike and his lover had this phone installation business together but now Mike is Bunny!” She repeated it as if I didn’t get it. I got it all right. I just have the worst headache and working on no sleep is all, I can’t really say, “Yes Mama Luz got it, Mike had a sex change but I’m just coming off a gang of Extacy so gimme a minute.”

Before I knew what’s happening the doorbell rings and Mama Luz leaps to get the door, which she never did before. I lift my head up from my coffee cup and presented before me is a Grade A bull dyke. Bunny is sporting some extra pounds around the middle, a white wife beater no bra, a fire red mullet and trucker hat (this was before Von Dutch and Ed Hardy, this trucker hat was NOT worn in irony) she also had rainbow suspenders with two big buttons on them, one said Dykes on Bikes and the other said I’m Not Gay but my Girl Friend Is.

Mama Luz made the introduction of Bunny and myself and then dove in with the questions.

Mama Luz: “Are you and you’re boyfriend still together?”

Bunny: “Yes we did this together, Peter is now Patricia.”

Mama Luz: “So you’re both lesbians now?”

Bunny: “Yes. We spent 20 years together as gay men and now we planning on spending the next twenty as what we really are, lesbian women.”

Mama Luz: “How’d you two meet again?”

Bunny: “We served together in Vietnam, we sucked a lot straight cock back then.

Mama Luz: “Did it hurt?”

Bunny: “Hurt like hell but the doc did an amazing job. Do you wanna see it?”

Mama Luz: “I wanna see it, Lola do you wanna see it?” (Extract thin slice of beef with chopsticks from the boiling water scoop up some rice and into mouth.)

Now I am sitting there frozen trying to keep track of all of this reality that is unfolding before my reality challenged state of mind, meanwhile my head is killing me and now I want to get sick, not from the topic at hand but having coffee in my state was a bad call. 

The thoughts in my head were racing,  “I have but seconds to make a decision here. Will I be able to keep my coffee down to see what Bunny is packing? I by all means do not want to insult her by throwing up all over the place once she drops trou and she won’t know it has nothing to do with her but everything to do with all the E I took last night, by the way, how many did I take last night?  Here’s the hard fact, when will an opportunity ever present itself like this to me again??? That’s right, never.”

Me: “Would it be okay if I saw too?”

Bunny: “Absolutely doll face!” She patted my hand with hers.

We adjourned to the back office where once the door was closed Bunny unzipped her baggy jeans and pulled down her plain white cotton panties. She leaned against the desk spreading her legs and with her right hand parted her shaved vajayjay beef curtains and I have to say it was beautiful. I mean a beautiful as a vajayjay can be. It looked perfect. (Another slice of beef into the boiling water.) The coloring, the fleshy parts, the man in the boat part- it was a full on vajayjay. No scars and no sign that there was ever a penis and balls there. It was INCREDIBLE.  Then Bunny went on to show Mama Luz her tattoos and this dragon that was cut into her back that you can only see if you slap her back. But I wasn’t interested in any of that; I was still amazed at Bunny’s vajayjay…. and that I totally forgot that I wanted to throw up. (Extract beef with some cabbage this time from boiling water, grab some rice and into mouth.)

That’s my Golden Best Story I have to tell. I never expected to share it here or much less while dining upon thinly sliced labia ERRR I mean beef at Shabu Shabu with Stephen but c'est la vie.  I’m so glad that I lived to tell… next time I’m driving Stephen, no really it’s no problem.

A Little Singapore Please

Off to the mysterious land of LA’s Farmer’s Market.for Singapore’s Banana Leaf. Usually when I go to the Farmer’s market it’s to either buy candy, meat or drink wine and eat cheese but this time Singapore here I come! I ponied up and asked what was their most popular dish and I was told it was the Mee Goreng Indo style.  Nothing like Gangnam style this means I get a fried egg on top and two satay sticks. I also at the same time ordered the Chendol, which is really a dessert but I was going sip on it. I have a hard time resisting coconut anything and this was concocted up with Palm Sugar, Coconut, Crushed Ice & Chendol beans. Chendol beans I’m not sure are really beans but they certainly looked like little green worms. I took my seat and dove in. Now here’s a confession. I sorta wolfed it down really really fast. I don’t often treat myself to a plate of noodles, what can I say. All I really remember was it was sweet but with enough salt to balance it and creamy from the egg yolk, crunchy from peanuts and oops it was gone.

Here’s something that did haunt me however. I was seated facing another vendor, a sticker store. An entire store dedicated to and celebrating stickers. First of all do kids really give a crap about stickers these days? I guess so that store is there. I was into stickers as a kid, I was… but that was before the days of internet and texting, it was clearly the dark ages so I was deprived of civilized pastimes.  That simpleton “hobby” of mine involved sticker parties and sticker store visits all to fill my purple “Sticker Book” with as many stickers as I could get my Cheeto-stained fingers on.

Who would’ve ever foreseen the United States takeover by STICKERS? They were so innocent and cute right? Now you can’t buy a piece of fruit with out a sticker. Stickers on delicate peaches, stickers on tomatoes- stickers that rip the skin right off! With every avocado there is a sticker placed exactly on the line in which you want to cut, you don’t believe me look for yourself- but maybe you are one of those people that live without a care and still cut along that line leaving sticker parts on your knife (that you probably put in the dishwasher don’t you? Don’t put your good knives in there!) and sticker parts on you avocado yummy parts. If that’s not bad enough how about anything plastic, anything glass, anything on sale. AUGHHHHH! STICKERS ON EVERYTING.  There’s a permanent sticker on my sun visor in my car reminding me of some safety something or another, I don’t read it because it’s a sticker I can’t remove so it makes me angry. I bet I would cry if I knew how many hours of my life I’ve wasted vigilantly removing stickers with Goo Gone.

At least riddle me this, I know there’s the technology available to make stickers not so sticky, to come off cleanly in one piece, on occasion you run in to those and what a joy they are to remove, WHY CAN’T all sticker be like that? WHYYYYYYYYYYY?

Hey kids out there that are still collecting stickers, come by my place- you can have alllllll the stickers you want.

Oh and the coconut drink was super yummy. 

A Burrito can Make Everything Better

Soooo I cut all my hair off.  There was a tragic keratin treatment involved and a good amount of my hair took a leave of absence, I’m now trying my best to rock a pixie cut. I rationally know the whole world isn’t staring at me wondering what I’ve done to myself (I’ve actually have received a high number of compliments in fact) but I still feel like Justin Bieber so I need comfort food- MEXICAN-and I need it to go.

Los Tacos at 7954 Santa Monica Blvd  in West Hollywood is one of my all time favorite spots in LA. Let me start out by saying that coming from the Land of Enchantment AKA New Mexico I, like my fellow New Mexican transplants, can get a little snooty about Californian Mexican food.  This place I can find no fault and it has never, never disappointed me, they're also open 24 hours which is awesome for obvious reasons. All you need to do is bring cash and dodge at least one meth head in the parking lot asking for spare change.

To do Los Tacos right I feel strongly that you really should be going with beef of some sort or pork. This day I went for the champion… the carnita burrito wet with half red half green sauce (in NM we call that “Christmas style”) and chips and salsa.

I can’t go there and just commit to one single salsa, oh no! I must get all three. The hottest is really just roasted dried chilies, my guess is a combination of New Mexican chile, ironically, dried Anaheim chilies and garlic. The green salsa is tomatillo based with jalapeños and the mild one is tomato based with jalapeños.  I also can’t say no to some  Zanahorias Y Ajo En Escabeche. I all honesty there are few things picked in this world I’d say no to.

This carnita burrito takes me back to a land I love, Mexico. It reminds me of spring breaks in Rosarito with all my Alpha Phi sisters getting into trouble. We were such whoree dorks! We actually came up with a game called “Lipstick All Over Your Face” and it went something like this: Dancing and drinking at Papa’s and Beer, let's say I spot a Hot Guy, then one of my friends would initiate the challenge by calling out, “Lipstick All Over Your Face” him! I would faux-bashfully say no then of course give in, apply a fresh layer of brightly covered lipstick, walk over to the unsuspecting Hot Guy and just start making out with him. Upon completion I abruptly turn to walk away then dramatically turn my head to him and say, “Oh by the way you have lipstick all over your face” and then return to the hoots and squawks of my Alpha Phi sisters. Ah college!  The salsa reminds me of sitting on the beach at The Office in Cabo San Lucas with my juicehead love of my 20’s, Mike who like a sissy only drank frozen strawberry margaritas. So basically Los Tacos, thank you for the big hug and for thinking my hair looks cute.

German on a Whim

Let me just preface this with I understand how spoiled I/Los Angeles sounds when we are whining about how cold it is when it’s 50 degrees outside.

I went on a Match.com coffee date and all the seats were taken outside so we had our coffee at a table outside. At first I was fine thriving off the heat of my big bowl-like cup of hot Joe but in no time it turned into an iced coffee. The guy was really nice and interesting but sadly no chemistry to really keep me warm. After an hour and a half we said our goodbyes and I was freezing! I couldn’t get warm, even in my car with the seat warmers on. I was also starving. When these dates go well typically “coffee” turns into lunch just like “drinks” turns into dinner, but this one stayed true.

Headed home stuck in La Brea traffic I spotted a chalk written sidewalk sign that read “Free Beer.” Ha! I had to see what the name of the establishment was that had a good sense of humor. It was Wirtshaus, a German spot. Ha! I laughed at myself again considering it’s a German restaurant in an Orthodox Jewish part of town… I’ve never been to a German restaurant I’m cold, hungry and beer sounded really, really  good.

First things first, I wanted to go wash my hands in hot water to bring them back to life. Now I don’t make a habit of taking pictures in public bathrooms, in fact I’m a strong believer in the sanctity of the ladies room but I feel like the creative use of old German magazines as wallpaper deserves some recognition. 

I know I’m probably going to like a place when they have a wall dedicated to the list of beers they serve. I ponied myself up to the bar and got cozy. This guy a few seats down had a plate in front of him that looked amazing. It looked hearty and warm, much warmer that the bowl of sour kraut the chick next to him was devouring. Hmm, interesting.

I told the bartender I wanted what he was having. It was the Elk Gulasch with homemade Spatzl. I’ve never had elk before, and I’ve never had spatzle, well and clearly I’ve never had gulasch so this was going to be an adventure. The lucky beer was the dark and lovely Köstritzer Schwarzbier. I love dark beers when it’s cold outside! It’s like coffee, but beer. Mmmm.

I died and went to German heaven (is there such place? I imagine heaven more of a tropical island really) when my gulasch arrived. Oh you beautiful gulasch you! This was the most perfect thing in the world at that very moment… it was warm and hearty and rich. That sauce is divine! So many layers of flavor, the elk so tender, they must braise this stuff for hours upon hours to get that flavor. I feel like they must roast some elk bones and toss them in to simmer along with the braising liquid in order to get that amount of richness and depth. The spatzl was habit forming. It’s toothy feel was so satisfying bite after bite.  I had no idea I would like German food so much, wow.

Wirtshaus is a really cute neighborhoody bar/restaurant with great happy hour deals. If I lived walking distance to it I bet I’d be their German-wannna-be-Norm.

LA Food Adventure Day ONE!!!

So of course I greeted 2013 with a stupid sinus infection. I can’t smell or taste anything grrr! But that’s not going to stop me that just means I have to go full throttle with flavors and some heat. I decided to go to one of my favorite malls ever, Koreatown Plaza at 928 S. Western Ave. LA 90006. I love this mall for people watching and gift shopping and also fancy shopping. The gig is being a white girl they expect you to just go with the sticker price, if you’re Korean they’re open to do a little bargaining.  This was where I adopted my beloved YSL Muse bag and I got a great deal on it too! Anywho…  to the food court I went. 

I wished so badly I could smell everything! I settled on Tofu House for no particular reason other than I had to pull the trigger and not just keep walking around in circles. I didn’t want to scare the entire food court that I had SARS with my sniffling and coughing . The #10 Hot Stone Pot Bibimbap with Tofu Soon was calling my name. I wanted soup for sure but I wanted something more too.

OMG it was huge and heavy and not only was the bibimbap scorching hot but the tofu soon was literally still boiling as I carefully carried my tray away. I love that with Korean hot stone served food they don’t feel the need to point out the fact to be careful that it’s hot. They assume the customer knows that it’s hot because it’s called HOT STONE POT and you can see your frick’n soup boiling. I pray to G*d that some jerk-off American doesn’t stumble in there one day, see what going on, spill it on themselves and then cry lawsuit.

It was amazing! The tofu soon broth was so aromatic I could smell at last! It had the perfect amount of heat (spicy kind) to clear out my sinuses but had a steady warmth that felt so good going down my throat (we’re not doing the whole ‘that’s what she said’ thing still are we?). The tofu was the silkiest most delicate I’ve ever tasted. It held it’s own in the bowl but then once in my mouth it shattered effortlessly like most of my hopes and dreams.

It’s funny cuz I never thought in a million years I was going to come close to finishing all of this food when the tiniest little Korean grandmother sat at the table next to me and her bowl was even bigger! It looked like an above ground pool next to her and let me tell you she finished that whole thing.

Sure enough I almost finished mine too. I guess I was so exhilarated to smell and taste again I didn’t want that feeling to stop! My bibimbap was perfect. I could taste the freshness of the beef, the crunch of the rice was so rewarding and when I could score almost a little of everything in one bite with some of that gochujang hot sauce I was in Korean heaven. This was all for $10!

There’s a store on the third level of the mall that sells house wares and they have those stone pots. Hot stone bibimbap would be a totally fun dinner party idea. Hmmm…

The Beginning

Let the eating begin!!! Can I get a what what for 2013?!!

The Rules: Well I don’t want to get all rule heavy on this, this is supposed to be fun. I’m not going to say “but I can’t go to that sushi spot cuz I already had shabu shabu Week One.” There are way too many cuisine styles in Japan, China, Mexico etc to be doing that. So the rules? Right now there are no rules MUAH HA HA HA!! La vida loca!

Things I Should Mention: I’m not a food critic, just a foodie. I didn’t go to culinary school, just a big fan of Top Chef. I wasn't born or raised in LA, I actually grew up in Albuquerque but have been in love with this city the very moment I learned of it's existence. I've lived here since graduating college. Speaking of college, I’m a horrid horrid speller, if I goof and catch it after it’s already been out there in the judging world…trust me it will haunt me for weeks maybe months and I might have to get a new Ativan script. I’m blue, not sad- but dirty. I have a potty mouth and a dirty mind, just warning you now... or maybe you guessed that already because you a reading a blog titled PUTTING STUFF IN MY MOUTH IN LA.

The Point: To try a new dish or revisit a favorite that makes me feel for that brief moment in time I’m somewhere else. I believe food can totally do that! I’m not going to get all Yelpy and complain about the décor or that the server isn’t kissing my ass every five seconds, I’m going to try my best to just focus on the experience of food, what does it smell like, what does it make me think of, what makes it special, that sort of thing. Again I'm not trying to be all fancy pants with this, it's supposed to be fun! Right Officer Poncherello? (To my proverbial LA girl pocket sized dog at my feet).

Cheers!