Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog
Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico's Sesquipedalian Sybarite. 1,302 Restaurant Reviews, More Than 13,100 Visitor Comments…And Counting!
By definition, many, if not most noodles are fun. No, not fun as in luxuriating in a tub filled with ramen (albeit non-edible, synthetic noodles) with real tonkatsu (pork bone) broth. Yeah, that really is a thing in Japan. Nor does my contention that noodles are fun have anything to do with the Simpsons episode…
Somewhere in Japan generations of traditional sushi chefs are rolling in their graves…and they’re not rolling sushi. What set them off? No one knows for sure, but it could have been a 2014 article in the San Diego Reader in which Jennifer Duarte, the co-owner of a San Diego based sushi restaurant named Sushi Freak…
In 2019, Mastercard published its Global Destination Cities Index which ranked 200 cities around the world with the most international visitors. Topping the list for the fourth consecutive year was Bangkok, Thailand which boasted of 22-million overnight visitors. Next on the list with around 19-million international overnight visitors were Paris and London respectively. With 13.6-million…
While ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy) may sound like what grade school girls called me many years ago, in Japanese the term ikigai is a Japanese concept combining the terms “iki,” meaning “alive” or “life,” and “gai,” meaning “benefit” or “worth.” Though there is no direct English translation, when combined these terms embody “that which gives your…
In retrospect, the monsters and bogeymen who frightened impressionable children of my generation were pretty lame. Perhaps the most lame of them all was Frankenstein, a lumbering behemoth who walked around with his arms outstretched like a sleepwalking Shaquille O’Neal. Frankenstein snarled and growled a lot, probably because Gene Hackman poured hot soup on his…
Shangri-La. Eden. Paradise. Heaven on Earth. The concept of a remote and exotic utopia, a faraway haven or hideaway of idyllic beauty and tranquility, has long intrigued mankind. Paul Gauguin, the famous French post-impressionist artist thought his persistent pilgrimage for Paradise was over when he moved to Tahiti in the tropical South Pacific. Alas, his…
I have a confession to make. I just don’t get anime…and can’t figure out the pokemon craze. That’s a rather starting admission for an Information Technology (IT) professional to make. Maybe I need help? After all, for your stereotypical male IT professional, anime and pokemon are just steps in the typical progression of IT…
“Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.” ~Norman Kolpas According to most online definitions, the term “soul food” defines the cuisine associated with African-American culture in the southern United States. In wide use since the 1960s, the term originated and came into heavy use with the…
“If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?“ – George Carlin A reader once asked Washington Post humorist Gene Weingarten what he was a snob about. His reply, “I am also a snob about food. The other day, in Baltimore, I passed a sign outside a restaurant that said “Sushi Buffet!‘…
“Ramen is a dish that’s very high in calories and sodium. One way to make it slightly healthier is to leave the soup and just eat the noodles.” ~Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto America may be a multicultural melting pot, but thriving within its most populous metropolises are ethnic neighborhoods–pockets of diversity residing in two worlds,…
“Careful Father, this stuff will melt your beads.” ~Lt Colonel Henry Blake, MASH 4077 Just as Hogan’s Heroes helped establish the perception many Americans (at least of my generation) had about German food, the television show MASH was the first introduction many of us had to Korean food. Set in South Korea during the Korean…
