August 2012

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2012.

The Japanese goth and Miss Lolita

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 in Canada, Richmond | 1 comment

Japanese Goth and Lolita fashion

The Japanese goth and Miss Lolita. Photo by David Lansing.

In the Japanese fashion scene there’s a Gothic subculture as well as something called the Lolita look which is primarily inspired by the anime scene. As Wikipedia says, the origin of the Lolita fashion “is complex and remains unclear.”

Last weekend while Mijune and I were wandering around the Richmond Night Market, I saw these two girls that perfectly embodied both the Japanese goth look as well as Lolita fashion.

According to one story I recently read about the Japanese goth fashion, “The main emphasis of Japanese gothic fashion revolves around Victorian style dressing. Basically the gothic girls attempt to dress up as Victorian porcelain dolls. The attempt is to exaggerate the element of cuteness to the extent that it appears to be childlike.”

Miss Goth was wearing a severe ankle-length wool black dress, a black cameo brooch at her neck, and a rose brocade hair ornament with several crucifixes dangling over her forehead. Miss Lolita wore a very short pink pinafore with a matching bow in her hair and her eyes were heavily made up to resemble an anime doll. They were quite the couple.

I was so transfixed by them that I eventually approached and asked them if I could take their picture. Miss Goth was a little outraged: “We are not like animals whose picture you take at the zoo,” she said. I told her that I wanted to take their picture because I thought both of them were quite beautiful and extremely fashionable (this was true). This calmed Miss Goth down. She then suggested they move to a spot that was getting better light and then she and Miss Lolita stared straight ahead at the camera while I clicked off a dozen or more shots. They were fantastic and I only wish I could have shot them in more situations at the Night Market.

Tags: , , ,

Tempted at the Japanese chocolaterie

Tuesday, August 14, 2012 in Canada, Richmond | 3 comments

La Chocolaterie in Richmond, BC

La Chocolaterie in the Izumiya Marketplace in Richmond. Photos by David Lansing.

Well, this is interesting: About a year ago, maybe less, the city of Richmond decided to hire a food blogger whose job would be to write about the Richmond food scene every day for a year. The blogger would be paid $50,000 plus get an apartment to live in and a $30-a-day food budget. Sweet, right?

Evidently they had over 1,500 people from all over the world apply for the job (why not?). And the winner was a young woman named Lindsay Anderson whose biggest claim to fame was that she’d been the head cook at a tree planting camp in British Columbia (evidently she also had a killer YouTube video applying for the job, which you can see here).

Anyway, I haven’t met Lindsay. But another food blogger I’ve been hanging with, Amy Sherman, has. And Amy says that Lindsay told her not to miss this little Japanese chocolate shop in the Japanese marketplace, Izumiya.

Well, it just so happened that Amy and I had lunch yesterday at a Japanese restaurant that is next door to Izumiya. So after lunch we went looking for the chocolate shop. Which, being just inside the front door, wasn’t hard to fine.

Kayoko Hamamoto at La Chocolaterie

Kayoko showing me my box of chocolates at La Chocolaterie. Photo by David Lansing.

The shop is called La Chocolaterie and it’s run by a husband and wife team, Taka and Kayoko, who both worked as researchers at a confectionery company in Japan for 10 years. Then in December 2010, they moved to Richmond and opened La Chocolaterie.

Here’s their philosophy: To make chocolates “with beautiful colors, elegant fragrance, and delicious textures to satisfy not only the appetite but also the mind.”

Sounds so Japanese, doesn’t it?

When Amy and I showed up, Kayoko, who is as cute as a Hello Kitty doll, was oh-so-carefully cutting up a big block of their signature green tea chocolate into little squares. Had to have some of that. What else? There was raspberry cacao and mango and tomato and ginger and coconut and wasabi and yuzu and lemon basil—the list seemed endless. So I told Kayoko to give me a mixed box—9 kinds of chocolate with 2 pieces each) and just put whatever was good in it. “But make sure you put in some of the green tea chocolate,” I told her. “And the lemon basil. And the yuzu. And….”

Kayoko carefully selected each piece of chocolate and put them in a beautiful square green box, slowly tied a white ribbon around it, and then put it in a plastic bag with a small frozen bag of ice to keep the chocolate from melting before I got it back to my hotel room.

So here’s the deal: The beautiful green box of chocolate is sitting on a table in my hotel room. I haven’t taken the ribbon off because when I bought it, I was thinking I’d take it home with me and give it to someone very special. But now I’m sitting here on my bed typing this up and I’m also wondering what the blueberry chocolate tastes like. And the green tea. Or the lemon basil.

But don’t worry, I’m not going to open the box. Really. I am most definitely not going to open that box of chocolate. I can assure you that I’m pretty damn sure of that.

Maybe.
La Chocolaterie on Urbanspoon

Tags: , , , ,

Chef James at Richmond’s Night Market

Monday, August 13, 2012 in Canada, Richmond | 2 comments

Chef James Xin Jiang Man BBQ

I don't know how Chef James makes any money selling 3 skewers for $7 and 5 for $11. It's a bellyful of food. Photos by David Lansing.

Mijune and I spent more time at the Richmond Night Market this weekend. There are just so many stalls I want to try—you can’t do it in a single visit.

“You like lamb?” Mijune asked me.

I love lamb.

“Okay, then let’s head over to Chef James. He makes the best lamb skewers around.”

Chef James at Richmond Night Market

Chef James with skewers of lamb, his signature item. Photo by David Lansing.

Chef James is actually James Chen. His weekday gig is as a chef at the Fairmont Waterfront in downtown Vancouver. But on weekends, he’s a rock star out at the Night Market. I’ll tell you what—if the Fairmont is hiding Chef James in the back, they’re not taking full advantage of his talents. James is a natural showman. He’s got moves like Jagger. Truly.

Even before you get to his stall, which is called Chef James Xin Jiang Man BBQ, you hear him talking up the crowd, moving them towards him like a carnie at the state fair. “You want bbq, I know you want bbq, so you should come and get bbq because I make the best bbq you can find.”

Xinjiang is in the far western region of China, near Afghanistan, and what Chef James is pushing is a staple of the region’s Uighur cuisine, lamb on a skewer flavored with salt, black pepper, red chili pepper, and roasted cumin seed. It’s the cumin that sets Xinjian cuisine apart from other Chinese cuisine.

Chef James doesn’t just grill up lamb. He’s also got beef, chicken and honey garlic prawn skewers. And they’re all good. But the lamb is the thing.
Richmond Night Market on Urbanspoon

Tags: , , ,

LuLu Island Winery ice wine

Sunday, August 12, 2012 in Canada, Richmond

Fruit wines, LuLu Island Winery

The fruit wines at LuLu Winery in Richmond. Photos by David Lansing

It’s Sunday. “Let’s go drink some wine,” Laura says.

Fine by me.

Her friend, Polly, is pouring today out at LuLu Island Winery. Perfect.

You know how web sites load particular terms into their sites to attract more attention from Google? Well, if you Google LuLu Island Winery, you’ll see that 8 out of the top 10 search terms have something to do with ice wine. You’ve got Canada ice wine and best ice wine and Vancouver ice wine—well, you get the picture. LuLu is obviously known for their ice wine.

Frankly, I’m not a big sweet wine guy. But you know who is? Asians! They love the stuff. And John Chang, who first visited Vancouver from Taiwan twenty years ago, knows that. That’s why he started a winery in 2001 that specialized in fruit wines—blueberry, cranberry, and raspberry wine—and later ice wine. Now LuLu Island is Canada’s largest exporter of wine to China.

Tasting room at LuLu Island Winery in Richmond.

Polly pours me some red at LuLu Island Winery. Photo by David Lansing.

You know who loves ice wine besides the Chinese? Laura! So while Polly was pouring me a mineraly Pinot Gris and a crisp Sauvignon Blanc and a spicy Viognier, Laura was standing in the corner pouting.

“Is it time for the ice wine?” she whined.

Not yet, I told her. I still hadn’t tasted the reds.

Laura pretended to be looking at a Chinese Olympic athlete’s uniform on display while Polly opened a Cabernet Franc. “What do you think of that?”

“I think I like it,” I said, finishing off the taste. “But I’m not sure.” Polly poured me a bit more while Laura pretended not to notice.

When I finished sampling the Meritage, which was really quite delicious, Polly announced quite loudly that it was time for the ice wine. Laura hurried over.

“Maybe we should try the fruit wines first,” I said.

“Really?” said Laura. “Fruit wines?”

I started to tell her a story about drinking Boone’s Farm wines in college and why I thought the Green Apple was superior to Wild Raspberry or Strawberry Hill.

“Fine,” she said in a huff. “Try the damn fruit wines.”

Which I did. When I’d finished with LuLu’s Cranberry wine, Polly started bringing out the ice wines. She had several bottles.

“Oh, not for me,” I said, walking away from the tasting bar. “I think I’ve had enough.”

Just before I got to the door, I turned around. “Just kidding,” I told Laura. She acted like I wasn’t even there. “I’ll drink his and mine,” she told Polly. And she did.

Tags: , , ,

Aunt Nancy

Saturday, August 11, 2012 in Katie Botkin

A Letter from Katie Botkin in Iowa:

Katie in her grandmother’s taffeta ball gown. Photo by Matt Stauss.

My great-aunt Nancy is 82, and she still lives in the house the Swedes, her own grandparents, built in 1885. In 1977, she came back to help take care of her mother and father, and the farm. In fact, she has been taking care of the farm off and on since she was a child. She says she has the “agrarian imperative” that my grandmother never felt, and she still wears her faded blonde hair in two braids folded over the top of her head, and as we sit in the cool interior of the big house, which her father built in the 1950s, she tells me of the time she learned first to braid. She skipped out to tell her father, Oscar, that she could. She expected him to be thrilled with this new skill. Instead, he turned to her and said, soberly, but approvingly, “It is good to be independent.”

My grandmother, who is ten years older, did all the glamorous stuff — worked in New York in the fashion industry, went to Europe, decided she wanted to live there, had exciting boyfriends who painted her picture and bought her silk that she made into ball gowns. One of these gowns fits me, very snugly. Or it did a couple of years ago, when I was almost emaciated. The waist is all of 22 inches.

Aunt Nancy wonders aloud how anybody could be that skinny. And I’ve never thought about it before, but I’m glad that not everyone in the world wants to run away to Paris and be glamorous. I mean, I do, but if everyone did, I would never have experienced the farm, had these memories, come back from Europe to this.

Tags:

« Older entries § Newer entries »