Slurping My Way Through Chinatown

I love a good theme. Mix tapes containing only songs with cities as their title. Costume parties where everyone has to dress as their favorite rock star. I’m always in. And today? A Chinatown soup dumpling crawl. This afternoon of theme based gluttony was sponsored by a coworker who, earlier this year (during a time of much warmer weather), also brought me the Chinatown pan fried dumpling crawl. He is fast becoming my favorite person.

For those of you not living in an area with a thriving Chinese community might I recommend moving? Because seriously you people are missing out. Soup dumplings are a dollop of meat filling (usually pork) floating in a sea of rich broth encased inside of a thick dumpling wrapper. They are amazing. During our romp around Chinatown there was much talk (between the slurping and moaning in pleasure) about just how they get the broth tucked away in the belly of the dumpling (a more ethnic and perhaps higher brow version of the “how do they get the crème in the twinkie?” debate) and the most likely answer seemed to involve a cube of frozen broth instead of a stock filled syringe but Wikipedia claims that both hypothesizes wrong. Apparently the broth is the result of a meat gelatin alone which when heated melts into a satisfying greasy sauce -- this might not sound appetizing but does explain the richness (and also exactly why the broth drippings were so quick to congeal on my plate). I promise that if you eat a soup dumpling you will not find that last sentence anything other than delicious.

The first stop on the soup dumpling crawl was the overflow location for New York’s most famous soup dumpling-ary Joe’s Shanghai, Joe’s Ginger at 25 Pell. We were brought 2 orders of traditional pork soup dumplings and one order of a pork and crab combo both of which were lovely though there were some incidences of perhaps less than well done pork.

Our next stop at Goodies at 1 East Broadway offered the most impressive showing for soup dumpling variety and we took full advantage ordering FIVE types of dumplings. Sadly when the bamboo baskets arrived at the table all of the dumplings had such a uniform look that we were unable to distinguish the three delight from the seafood until the broth hit our tongues. No matter since all were also uniformly scrumptious. Goodies also brought us a bowl full of fortune cookies at the end of our second stop on the dumpling-fest via which I received this notification.

By 2pm Shanghai café at 100 Mott was so packed that we elected to take our dumplings on the road. And so the crawl ended with the 9 of us munching on pork and pork and crab dumplings in Columbus Park. The broth in the Shanghai dumplings was by far the most flavorful and gently sucking it from our its doughy pocket while sitting under a clear November sky was a wonderful way to end a long American weekend that honors gluttony.

I love turkey and mashed potatoes and most of all stuffing but this year I am thankful to reside in the land of exotic edible delights. God bless New York City.

How We Eat

Lately no one can mention peanut butter around with me without starting a discussion about why peanut butter is so popular in America (and also, how exactly it got to be so awesome.) but is seen as disgusting in many other countries. I start similar debates about pumpkin pie and BBQ and have long kept a mental list of American foods that are rarely recognized as such. As always, Wikipedia does a better job than I(leave it to the masses to make me look bad). And yet my experience has been that when most people think of American food they immediately turn to hamburgers, pizza and French fries. Somehow American food has become synonymous with fast food. I’ve been wondering about how our lack of a well define food culture is likely to effect the everyday American for some time but reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma has turned this occasional pondering into obsession.

It not only seems unfair to exclusively associate American food with Fast Food but also dangerous. Fast Food not only fails to provide nutrition but the way it is typically consumed enforces unhealthy eating habits like eating alone and eating on the run. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Pollan discusses how food traditions affect healthy eating and hypothesizes that cultures who highly value food and the eating experience often have healthier eating habits regardless of the caloric content of their traditional foods. He addresses the common cliché that the French eat high calorie foods and never get fat by pointing out that the French meal encourages eating small bites over long periods of time and consuming higher calorie foods in tiny quantities and on special occasions – the French do not sit alone in their apartments at 3am gorging on pate, baguettes and red wine (though, obviously that sounds pretty awesome and I think we all know where to find me come Saturday morning…). Having pride in the food you cook, serve and eat leads to better food for all.

In addition to the obvious health implications the very nature of fast food (quick, heavily processed, not prepared at home, designed to be as cheap to produce as possible, designed to be eaten on the go, etc) makes it impossible for a healthy food culture to develop around the only food commonly seen as “American.” Pollan argues that the well established food cultures seen in other countries serve their citizen’s especially well because they have been tested over the course of human history and have benefited from a cultural survival of the fittest. By this standard one would think that Fast Food should quickly be approaching extinction. For good or ill in America our immigrant population has made it difficult to establish a cohesive food culture and our general wealth has made food so widely available that rationing and sacrifice are rarely necessary. The dark side of abundance is that nothing seems special or worth waiting for. With so many ready options it is not surprising that as a society we are often at a loss over just what to eat. I suspect that other cultures rarely suffer from the all to common American confusion around exactly which food is likely to kill us next (“Tonight on Dateline, Is water good for you or is this unassuming beverage really part of a terrorist plot to bring down America?”). Pollan points out that Americans have a very short established history with food and thus rely on science alone to dictate what is good and bad without regard for factors like portion size or meal balance. Combine this with our reactionary media and you have a society so confused that many of us have dropped out of the food discussion entirely choosing instead to eat whatever is cheap, readily available and requires the least amount of work. We eat the lowest common denominator and shouldn’t be surprised that the dollar menu has led to an obesity epidemic.

Many have pointed out that Fast Food isn’t even that tasty – sure, the occasional frosty, fries or chicken nuggets are shockingly decadent and often the best way to cap off a night of drinking but few would rave over the taste sensations available at McDonalds. When I was dieting I used to force myself to consciously think about if the caloric cost of any given food item was suitably offset by the enjoyment I was likely to experience eating it. Too often when faced with the bland, boring, processed foods that seems to have taken over the American table the cost:pleasure ratio came out wanting. I wonder if it would be possible to throw out our broken food model and improve health in the US by consciously developing a true food culture. I’d argue that our lack of established food customs gives Americans a unique opportunity to shape meals that work for our bodies, our taste buds our planet and our pocketbooks. This need not be a culture that outright rejects fatty and sweet foods but instead one that treats these foods as so special that they should only be consumed on an occasional basis. Indeed, the point of establishing this culture would be to elevate the American meal to something worth paying for with time, money and calories. Such a system would discourage overeating by associating high monetary and effort cost with foods of higher caloric value. How often would we eat cookies or pizza if we always had to prepare these foods from scratch? How much more enjoyable would these foods be knowing that someone spent the time and money to make them? Who wouldn’t choose homemade chocolate chip cookies over Chips Ahoy?