Tasty morsels from the table of Thy Tran
With a decidedly new take on the happy meal, the folks over at GOOD have filled their upcoming March/April issue with stories and photos about food along with their usual provocative round-up of art, politics and culture from around the world. Excellent visual design and a refreshingly straight-forward take on sustainability distinguish their pages. My friend Stewf introduced me to GOOD last year, on a camping trip no less, and since then I’ve been a loyal reader.
I’ve always wondered why street food was not as popular in the US. And then I started trying to understand health codes, land use policy, business permits, tax laws, risk management briefs, and sidewalk obstruction ordinances. I soon lost my appetite. The confusion was enough to make me give up on ever enjoying hot rice cakes while sitting on a plastic stool leaned up against a park wall or discovering the best roasted yams ever at the entrance to a post office.
Continue reading “Eating Space: Food in the Open”
On display through the wonderful internets are hundreds upon thousands of photographs of everyday lunches. No soggy PB&J’s here, though. One forum, the Mr. Bento Porn Flickr group, posts their collective creative efforts to make mid-day meals visually appealing, healthful, delicious and, yes, a little easier on the wallet. Their cousin site, Diet Bento, includes impressively low calorie counts for those whose 2008 resolutions (for now at least) include trimming down a little of their own belly fat.
Portable meals have been with us for as long as farmers have trudged off to their fields and soldiers have marched on in war. The Japanese took it a little further, of course. Where other countries preferred banana leaves or woven baskets, Japanese al fresco diners preferred compartmentalized boxes. By the 17th century, bento meals became elaborately arranged celebrations of the full moon and cherry blossoms, a leisurely way to enjoy intermission with friends at the theatre or, like the older form of sushi, essential food for travelers in an age before planes and bullet trains.
(photo by Kevin Rosseel)
The San Francisco Professional Food Society, the Asia Society and the Chinese Culture Center have all joined forces to tackle a question that lingers, like a greasy smog, over Chinese restaurants:
Why is Chinese food so bad in the US?
This Thursday, InsideStoryTime will kick off its 2008 series of literary readings with a food-themed evening. Yours truly will join four other local writers: Julia Flynn Siler, Ron Saxen, Cameron Heffernan and my ramen king friend, Andy Raskin.
Stop by Delirium and make your way to the back room to listen to our stories about the weird, beautiful ways food flavors our lives.
Until then, here’s a taste of what I’ll be sharing:
Continue reading “InsideStoryTime: Gourmets Reading in a Dive Bar”