August 2012

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2012.

Pineapple buns at the Lido Restaurant

Saturday, August 11, 2012 in Canada, Richmond

David and the pineapple buns at the Lido in Richmond. Photo by David Lansing.

Saturday morning. Early. Kind of gray out. It’s the middle of August but it looks like it might rain. It’s one of those mornings when you feel like have pastries and coffee in bed while reading the paper.

My buddy David Lang, who is from Hong Kong, keeps telling me I need to go to the Lido Restaurant and order a pineapple bun. A pineapple bun with butter—boh loh yaau as they say in Hong Kong. I’m thinking today is the day.

So I just throw on some clothes and head up the street to the Lido which is in a crappy-looking stripmall midway between the Aberdeen Mall and Parker Place Mall. It’s barely 8am but the place is packed. No big deal. My plan is to order a couple of pineapple buns to go and eat them back at my hotel with a nice hot latte.

There’s a bakery cart right by the door holding dozens of fresh-out-of-the-oven pineapple buns. I tell the boss man at the cash register that I’d like two to go. While I’m waiting for someone to bag them up, I hear my name: “David! David!”

It’s David Lang. Sitting in a booth behind the cash register. He’s already got a pineapple bun in front of him.

David invites me to join him for breakfast, so what the hell. I tell the boss man that I’ll be having the pineapple buns here. Oh, and could I also have some coffee. “Hong Kong-style?” he asks.

David Lang doesn’t wait for me to answer. In Cantonese he tells the boss man to give me Hong Kong-style coffee and to give me two pineapple buns, both with butter. “You got to have butter,” he tells me.

About pineapple buns: There’s no pineapple in them. They are called pineapple buns because their crispy tops resemble the texture of a pineapple. They are to Hong Kong what beignets are to New Orleans. And every bit as addicting.

About Honk Kong-style coffee: It’s like Nescafe made with sweetened and condensed milk and tastes as awful as it sounds. But after awhile, you get used to that condensed milk taste (I remember nomadically traveling around Spain and Portugal many years ago in a VW camper and not being able to get fresh milk reliably so I’d end up making coffee with Nescafe and condensed milk and damn if I didn’t get so addicted to it that I was drinking it that way when I got home a year later).

Now you probably think, like I did, that if you order a pineapple bun with butter that you get a little pat wrapped in foil on the side, or maybe they spread a little margarine over it like you would a piece of toast. But you’d be wrong. They slice the still-warm pineapple bun in half and put a slab of butter in the middle that is about three inches by five inches and maybe half an inch thick. I mean, it’s like half a cube of butter. Real butter. Sweet butter.

And damn is it good.

So my two pineapple buns come and then my Hong Kong-style coffee and David has the same, and I’m thinking, We are set for the day. We have got enough here to hold us over until dinner. But I am wrong.

For David Lang, this is just the start. This is the appetizer. He’s already ordered a big bowl of macaroni and pork in broth. And congee, which is a nasty looking rice gruel. And a ham omelet. And a Hong Kong donut, which looks kind of like a churro. You know, to go with his two pineapple buns with butter. In short, enough calories to fuel a large family for three or four days. Unless you’re really hungry. Which, evidently, David is.

Tags: Canada, pineapple buns, Richmond

The letter in the basement

Friday, August 10, 2012 in Katie Botkin

Photo by Katie Botkin.

A Letter from Katie Botkin in Iowa:

One of the things that I do when I come to the farm is tiptoe around the basement and peek into drawers. The ancient trunks are so fragile that I don’t dare disturb them, but I look at the children’s toys from the 1950s, and crack open one or two of the books on the shelves.

USSR, the story of Soviet Russia, printed in 1944, has the mysterious inscription on the front page: “to Melchior, who once took a mote from mine eye.”

There’s a cigar box at least 50 years old that I discover contains nothing but chalk sticks and sawdust. I find a paint box with crumpled-up envelopes folded inside to protect things. I unfold one and gold paint dust comes off on my hands, and I can read the spidery writing, postmarked 1923.

I think my favorite thing I ever found in this basement was a memo my grandfather wrote when he married my grandmother. It was addressed to his geophysics company, and to the best of my memory, went something like this:

“To seismologists, computers:

“May it be known that John N. Botkin disappeared the morning of —, and turned up irrevocably married to one Halcyon Heline, a farm girl from Iowa.”

Tags: Katie Botkin

Halibut for 14

Friday, August 10, 2012 in Canada, Richmond

Sea urchins, Steveston Fisherman's Wharf

Sea urchins from the Steveston Fisherman's Wharf. Photos by David Lansing.

I probably would have had plenty of time to get my fish & chips in Steveston if I hadn’t got hung up hanging around the fisherman’s market. First there was the guy, a young diver, selling live sea urchins. He only had a few left. And they were three for $10, which seemed like a hell of a bargain to me. I asked him when he’d caught them and he looked at his watch and said, “About three hours ago.”

Then there was the couple selling locally-caught shrimp and the salmon fishermen. But my favorite was the guy selling fresh halibut. There was a Russian woman there and she wanted a 14-pound halibut. Why did she want a 14-pound halibut? I have no idea. But the guy pulled a big fish out of an ice bin, weighed it, and told her it was 14.75 pounds. The Russian woman thought about it for awhile and said that was okay. She’d take it.

Afterwards, I stopped her and asked her why she wanted exactly 14 pounds. She said she and her husband were hosting a party tomorrow night for her sister who was getting married. And there would be 14 people at the party. “One person, one pound,” she said. And with that she walked off carrying the large halibut over her shoulder.

Tags: Canada, Richmond, Steveston fisherman's market

Stories from my grandmothers

Thursday, August 9, 2012 in Katie Botkin

The grandmothers. Photo by Katie Botkin.

A Letter from Katie Botkin in Iowa:

Grandma, my mother’s mom, and Grandmother, my father’s mom, are talking at the table. Grandmother is telling stories of Europe after the war. She went over on a steamer with her mother and her father, who worked with the president’s farm bureau at the time. Her father was interested in what was going on agriculturally in the countries that were just coming out of the war.

“He wore a nice hat, and a nice overcoat, and he looked prosperous. When he told them his credentials, they treated him like a senator or something. When we were in Berlin — I think it was Berlin — Berlin was nothing but a pile of bricks — they gave us our own rail car. It was all done in red velvet,” says Grandmother.

Meanwhile, she had made friends with people on the steamer ship to Europe, and managed to find a job with the American Embassy in Paris. So she ended up staying in Paris for a few years.

“You were very brave to do that, so young,” says Grandma.

“It didn’t occur to me to be afraid,” says Grandmother. She talks about one of her colleagues at the Embassy, a girl who had been living in England. “She said she was always hungry. When she heard there were jobs in Paris, she said, I’m going to get one, so that I can eat,” says Grandmother. “She learned French in something like three weeks so she could take the test to work there. She was very determined and very bright.”

Tags: Katie Botkin

The best fish & chips in Steveston

Thursday, August 9, 2012 in Canada, Richmond

Pajo's on the wharf which some say has the best fish & chips in Steveston. Photos by David Lansing.

It probably won’t surprise you that Steveston Village is known for their fish & chips. I asked Mijune which was the best, thinking I’d try it out for lunch. But Mijune never has a single “best.” It always depends on the circumstances. I told her I’d heard that Pajo’s, which has been around for over 25 years, is widely considered the best. “It’s good,” she said without much enthusiasm. “They’ve won a lost of ‘best of’ awards and they’re always busy.”

“But it’s not your favorite.”

“I like it,” she said diplomatically. “But maybe I like Sockeye City better.”

“Maybe you like it better?”

“Sometimes.” She paused and looked out over the ocean. “But sometimes, if I’m just going to get takeout, I’ll go to Dave’s.”

This was going to make lunch difficult. Should I just pick one of the fish & chips joints or try all three? I figured maybe I should check all of them out and then decide. So first I went to Pajo’s. And Mijune was right—the place was jammin’. So much so that it looked like it might be 15 or 20 minutes before I could even order. So Pajo’s was out.

Fish & chips at Sockeye City. Photo by David Lansing.

Then I went to Sockeye City. Cute place. Right across from the Fisherman’s Wharf. I could eat my fish & chips under an umbrella outside and watch while people bought fresh halibut or shrimp or sea urchins from the fisherman on the dock below.

A young couple was doing exactly that so I interrupted their meal and asked them how the fish & chips were. “Really good,” said the guy, his mouth full of flaky halibut. The woman nodded. The portions were huge. They both had three big pieces of fish on their plate and enough fries to feed a family of four. All on a glass plate shaped like a fish. Very nice.

Then I wandered down the village a few blocks until I found Dave’s Fish & Chips. Again, very busy. On the side of the building, next to the parking lot, was their takeout window. Besides the fish & chips you could get an oyster burger (never had one of those) and poutine! Now I was overwhelmed with choices. I started thinking that maybe I should just get a single piece of fish at each of the three fish & chip shops and see who had the best. But, to be fair, I’d really have to also give the chips, wouldn’t I? I mean, you can’t decide who has the best fish & chips just eating the fish.

But that oyster burger was sounding kind of interesting. And what about the poutine? I haven’t had poutine in ages. Maybe I could just taste the oyster burger and poutine and then check out the fish & chips.