Ingredient - the video

I've always wanted to have a video demo accompany my Ingredient column in the National Post. Finally, my team and I have finally completed our first one. I invite you all to check it out and tell me what you think. The video is about my guided tour of the fish counter at T&T Supermarket and a quick demo about how to make Cantonese-style steamed green bass. You can also read the column here.

Thank you to producer Maryam Siddiqi for making this project happen.

Gong hay fat choy

Is the myth of the second Chinese-only menu at Chinese restaurants truth or fiction?

Truth indeed. Check out my story about it here. Truth be told, I've been meaning to write explain the secrets of the second menu for a while and it just so happened that my editors have been just as eager to read about now.

A few footnotes:
- the Chinese-only menu is called "to chan" and prounanced "TOE chan." If you want to see the menu, ask for the "TOE chan DAN."
- Unfortunately, I didn't get to lament the sad state of North American Chinese cuisine. Chinese cuisine on this continent needs a massive marketing overhaul but it's so hard to find at times. Nina and Tim Zagat – the founders of the Zagat guides – complained about the how far North American Chinese food lags the real thing.
- My dad has yet to give me his opinion of what I wrote.

On tapas and yuzu ponzu.

I know I'm way late on this one but I finally checked out the much-raved Foxley resto (207 Ossington, Toronto) for the first time yesterday. I normally detest the whole tapas thing – especially pan-Asian tapas, which more often seems like bad Chinese-lite. Going for Asian tapas to me is like thirsting for a pint of beer but being asked to make do with a teacup of Miller Lite followed by a thimble of Michelob. I have to admit, though, I was thoroughly impressed.

Two dishes worth talking about: First, the artic char ceviche ($15) which was loaded with lime juice and chili sauce and topped with klumquats. Sounded great on the menu, and tasted fantastic – if you ate the klumquats separately. They were just too overpowering. I admit the words "ceviche" and "klumquat" on the menu caught my eye (and also the eye of my dining companion) and we were instantly sold upon reading about the item. But the dish would have been perfect without the fruit. And so I thought about the chef's conundrum: Do you always have to have that go-the-extra-mile twist to upsell your customers, even when a humbler and simpler version would work just as well, if not better? In chef Tom Thai's defence, I'll assume he stands by his dish thinks it kicks ass. I wish it did for me, but unfortunately, it didn't.

The standout dish? A Japanese-style grilled mackerel in a yazu ponzu sauce ($8). This was simple made divine – you really can't get more humble than a mackerel fish (which also happens to be one of my favourites) and for this dish, it was simply grilled, then topped with a few finely chopped chilis and lightly bathed with a yazu ponzu sauce – a lemony-like light soy. It was the best east-meet-west dish I've eaten in a long time and yet, so elegantly simple. Grilled mackerel always makes me think of Portugal (where they eat the stuff by the ton, always with boiled potato) and this dish combined the smoky taste of grilling with the light uplifting citrus notes of yuzu ponzu. I plan on replicating this along with the yuzu ponzu at home.

One last thing about tapas: If you haven't read the New York Times piece from early Decmeber about how the tapas trend is killing the entree, you really ought to. Unfortunately for me, I'm one of the few diners who still loves the meat+starch+veg combination (likely because growing up in a Chinese family, I rarely ate that way), but that's a whole topic for another day.