Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

It’s funny how people end up pairing things that don’t do well together.  Like wearing a lime green naugahyde blazer with baby blue corduroy slacks.  Or eating lots of beans before hopping onto a crowded bus.  Or drinking lots of diet cola and then popping a few Mentos.  Or buying a Costco slab of Salmon and making sashimi with it.  What were these people thinking?  They take one bad thing, combine it with another bad thing, and expect the combo to come out smelling like roses? Hmm…

And so it was when I and Christina attended the launch event of the new Mini Cooper S Countryman.  The event was really great, but there were a few things that made us go “Hmm….”

The new Minis sparkled like jewels under the powerful spotlights of the gargantuan, spotlessly clean hangar that housed the event.  The cars were accompanied by a display of private jets, which were supposed to complement the champagne taste and caviar dreams of the…errr… Mini crowd.  Hmm…  maybe the Mini owners invited to the event all have Roll-Royces as second cars.

At the far end of the hangar, event sponsor Jackson Triggs was offering attendees free glasses of wine.  Plus a bunch of beer companies were giving away generous cupfuls of their products.  Hors d’oeuvres were being served by racequeens walking the hangar floor.  Brand new cars, drinks that stain, and food that leave greasy fingers.  Hmm… the car cleaning crew is going to be really busy that night.

The Mini Countryman itself is great.  It has 4 doors, seats 4 adults comfortably, and offers a huge (for a Mini) trunk.  It comes in cool colours and some of the nicest looking wheels this side of a Ferrari.  Great car then, but can it still be called a Mini?  Hmm… Mid-i much better describes it.

But in spite of everything, this car works.  Despite it having attributes that goes against the spirit of the very name of the car, this is the most practical MINI yet.  For guys, the good news is that the car manages to ditch its cutesy looks for something more masculine:

It’s not a bad effort.  The size of the car doesn’t go with the name, but aside from that, all is well.

And as luck should have it, during our trip, Christina and I came across two things in Osaka that shouldn’t have worked, but did.  1.  Fine dining 2.  Food cooked on a big teppan less than three feet away from your clothes.  Usually, 1 + 2 does not equal 3.  In fact, given our subpar experience at the old Teppanyaki place on West Broadway, the name of which escapes me at this moment, we thought Teppanyaki was a pretty silly way to eat a meal.  Our Teppanyai experience in Vancouver included “Chefs” who cared more about performing stunts than cooking, fume hoods that blew rather than sucked, and clothes that wanted to jump off our bodies to escape the place halfway through dinner.  Yep, based on our experience, 1 + 2 = –10!

Yet luckily for us, at Chibo President, fine dining and cooking on the teppan went together just fine.

We came to Chibo President – located in the Daimaru Osaka buiding – to try their famous Wagyu set meals.  And what a meal it was.  Here’s a play by play:

We eyed the young chefs with some suspicion.  Did they have the skill and experience to cook our Wagyu properly?

A lovely starter of superbly tender beef brisket.  Flavourful too.  Hmm, this was cooked in the kitchen, and not on the teppan.  While eating our brisket, we were eyeing the chefs’ moves.  We wondered if we could choose our chef, since the young lady seemed to have much better skills than her young male colleague…

Some vegetarian plate.  Blech, not a fan.

We couldn’t decide if the main ingredient here was the nicely crusted pan-fried salmon or the ragu it was sitting on top of.  The salmon’s crispy outer crust was a perfect foil for the tender flaky meat right under.

Wahahaha.  So, the young lady chef, the one with the best moves, cooked the first of our Wagyu.  She sliced up the beef into cubes on the teppan, browned all sides, gave it a few flips with spatulas that looked liked paint scrapers, and served it.  

If you leave the Wagyu sitting on your tongue long enough, 1/2 of it will probably melt away.  It wasn’t as beefy as Prime beef, but the flavours from the fat was wonderfully sweet.  The smooth sweet unctuous texture more than made up for the slight loss of beefiness over prime North American beef.

Given what we were paying for the meal, we were getting disappointed at the miserly amount of beef that we were served.  I know Japanese portions are well controlled, but we were starting to get steamed about the seeming lack of value… until we saw our lady chef frying up another piece of Wagyu, plating it, and walking it our way…

More Wagyu goodness.  So good, so delicately flavourful that the dipping sauces weren’t needed.

After the beef came this pungent fried rice made with beef fat.  Thumbs up.  Way up.

Miso and palette cleansers to end the savory portion of the meal.

And then some really good Matcha.

Finally, a nice raspberry sorbet to round off the whole meal.

Chibo President.  In this case, 1 + 2 = 3.

Wow, it’s been more than a week since I wrote my last post.  Time really flies when it comes to blog writing, or shall I say when you are not updating your blog   According to my new year’s resolution, I would write a new post this week.  I also mentioned we will write about topics beyond food and so here it is – my first blog post about clothes.  To be precise, this is a blog post about how Christina went completely out of control with buying cashmere sweaters over Christmas.  Yes, this is a confession of a cashmere shopaholic.

It all started about a year ago when everything was normal and I was happy with regular wool sweaters as they are soft, comfy and warm.  One day, I stumbled upon a navy blue, crew neck cashmere sweater on sale at an unbeatable 75% discount.  With this discount, I knew I HAD TO buy it.

What I didn’t realize was since that day, my life was forever changed. Cashmere is one of those items that you think you don’t need until you start owing the first one. Yes, I’m using the word “need” and not “want”. You see, after I started wearing my first cashmere sweater, all of a sudden I found my wool cardigan feel itchy. When I put on my favorite turtleneck wool sweater, I realized it wasn’t keeping me warm. Like falling in love, my brain tells me my wool sweaters are just as good as they have always been, and yet my heart tells me the opposite. The cashmere sweater conquered my heart in the end – actually, I was addicted to it! I was wearing it everywhere – to work, to dinners, even to grocery shopping. One day, ET asked me “Is navy blue that popular this season?”

ET’s question made me realized I must do something about my addiction. I must do the most painful and difficult thing – make a choice. After thinking for a long, long time, I was able to come to a decision. From now on, CHRISTINA WILL BUY AS MANY CASHMERE SWEATERS AS SHE CAN AFFORD! Like someone who is working up to a breakup, I felt light and relieved after I decided.

Fast forward a year later: I was doing Christmas shopping early December on Robson St. and my eyes lit up as I walked by the Club Monaco store. For this season, almost every sweater in that store is made of cashmere! As excited as a child in a candy store, I browsed through the new collection with joy. As disappointed as a child told not to have candies, I was deterred by the price tags. Fear not, I told myself, the sweaters will go on sale over Christmas. And it did. In the week before Christmas, I just “happened” to walk by the store again (or at least that’s what I made ET believed). Some of the cashmere sweaters in the store were marked down by 40%. Most importantly, my sizes were still available in most colours! In 5 minutes, I bought…take a guess…no, not 1, not 2, not 5, yes, believe it, EIGHT SWEATERS! Half of them were cardigans while the rest were pullovers. I bought the same style in different colours – heather gray, oatmeal, pastel blue and salmon pink. All sweaters are in good quality but I especially appreciate the yarn used in the pullovers. The pullovers feel so thick in my hands and soft against my body. Since Christmas, I’ve been walking around in grey, oatmeal, light blue and pink in addition to navy blue

You might ask, did I over do it with my cashmere sweater purchase? Yes, perhaps a little. But I would counter with these reasons: the styles are so classic, the quality are so good and the prices are so affordable. Besides proving that Christina is a little crazy, this story also proves sometimes there is no logic when it comes to things, places or people whom you love. The only little problem though, is that over the years I’ve fall in love with many things and cashmere sweaters is only one of them. One day, I’ll share with you my confession on those items

For guys who think clothes shopping is just an unavoidable chore like toilet cleaning and stick to reading this post anyway: THANK YOU and you must be one of those guys who wait patiently outside of changing rooms playing with your iPhone or Blackberry! For girls who are not big on shopping but are reading these words anyway: THANK YOU as well and I envy the amount of cash you get to save over the years

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! Yup, this is Christina writing a blog post and yup, it’s been awhile since my last one. You see, I’ve become an extremely busy person in the last year. I’ve been busy with work/busy with cooking/busy with dinner parties/busy with shopping etc, etc, etc. No, all these are just excuses! The truth is: I have been darn lazy with blog writing.

One of the great things come with a New Year is it often forces you think about things that you do. I was watching TV a few nights ago and a TV Personality was making her New Year’s resolution. I thought her resolution was quite ambitious:

“By the end of 2011, I will make 1 billion US dollars.”

I don’t mean to be resolution-judgmental, but wow, what a big and shall I say, money-focused resolution? On the other hand, based on her increasing popularity, this resolution might not be unattainable for her.

What I really like was the fact that she announced her resolution publicly on TV. Her belief is if she tells everybody about her New Year’s resolution, she will be more disciplined or even under peer pressure to achieve it. Ding! This could work with me and blogging!

So here is Christina’s Resolution for the Year of 2011:

“In 2011, Christina will write at least one blog post every other week.”

Okay, maybe my resolution isn’t as grand as the TV Personality’s but hey, it’s a good way for me to get connected again with my readers. Since I’ve announced it to you all, from now on, I know I’ll be watched by someone out there to get this done. Otherwise, please feel free to call me a quitter through the blog or when you see me on the street eating and not blogging. Also guess what, I REALLY dislike being called a quitter online or on the street