Happy family
Actual date: October 19, 2008
Rewind is back! More specifically Indonesia Trip 2008 is back!
Happy Labor Day 2010, everybody. Denise has been nudging me to resume posting about our trip in 2008, so here I am doing some of that while enjoying Labor Day. I’ve decided to start putting the “Actual date” info in red so as to minimize confusion for future posts about the trip. Hopefully when you see the line of red text you’ll immediately know it’s a Rewind post, especially since I’ve also got some stuff from earlier this year that I’m behind on that will be making its way here soon. Rewind-splosion. No, we didn’t go to Indonesia again. Yes, this stuff is from 2 years ago. But it’s still way cool and I’m not gonna let good blogging material go to waste. Again, when reading this blog just ignore the accepted rules of time and space and go with the flow. Time travel is a common occurrence in the Pamudji-verse.
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There’s a new show on Cooking Channel called Food Truck Revolution. It highlights what’s apparently one of the hottest new trends in food–food trucks. Taco trucks have been around for a long time–not around here, but in other parts of the U.S.–but these trucks are different. How about sushi, Southern fare, Korean fusion, crepes, buttermilk pancakes, “gourmet” tacos, wagyu beef dishes, etc. from a truck? Suspicious? Maybe, until you see them in action. These are honest to goodness restaurants on wheels, and the food they’re serving up looks amazing.
Aside from the obvious interest in the food, it was also interesting for me to see how these food trucks operate. Many of the owners use Twitter to update their followers on where they’ll be and when. See, I’m usually a Twitter-phobic. It’s typically useless dreck from people displaying the banality of their lives for all to see. After all, how informative, interesting, or profound can you be when you’re limited to 140 characters at a time? But this is a good use of Twitter. With the proliferation of smartphones and almost all office workers having Internet access, a truck owner can tweet their location and that message immediately goes out to everybody following his Twitter account. Mass communication doesn’t get more direct and immediate than that. I never thought I’d approve of the commercialization of social networking outlets and in general it still makes me queasy, but in this case I don’t mind small local businesses using grassroots methods to keep in touch with their fans, especially with the ever-changing nature of the food truck business.
We caught the first episode last Sunday, another episode is coming this Sunday, 8/29/2010 and I believe it also reruns later that night. I don’t know how long this show will run or if it’s just a mini series, but it’s fun so we’ll watch it while it lasts and dream of the day that Jackson gets its own food trucks. There are rumors of a taco truck in Jackson, and I’ve seen a taco truck driving down I-55, but until I eat food from a food truck in Jackson I won’t believe it’s real, and even then we’ll be a long way from where bigger cities are with their food truck scenes. I look forward to a world where I can receive tweets from my favorite food trucks telling me what street downtown they’ll be on that day.
Seoul Restaurant
One last post about my trip to the coast. On my way out I stopped at Seoul Restaurant–unsurprisingly a Korean restaurant. It’s just one turn off the main drag in Biloxi, but when you drive down the street it’s on you might wonder like me if you’re on the right street at all since you drive through a residential area to get to it. Just keep driving for a bit, cross the train tracks, and it’s on the other side of the tracks on the left.
I believe this is the first Korean restaurant I’ve ever been to. To my knowledge there isn’t one in Jackson (please correct me if I’m mistaken–I’d love to go to one here), and I didn’t know much about Seoul Restaurant before I went other than a couple visitor reviews online, so for me this was a bit of a gamble but one I was excited to take. I’m not one to throw my money away at the casinos, but I’ll bet on good food any day.
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Seafood gumbo
I had the privilege of being guests to members of the Pass Christian Yacht Club, which is why we were able to eat at their restaurant. They don’t normally let in riff-raff like me. Upon browsing the menu I was surprised to see how reasonable the food prices were. I guess they get you with the membership dues so they can afford to not charge crazy money for food.
A few of us got the seafood gumbo appetizer. The photo might look like a muddy mess, but if you know what you’re looking at you know there’s probably some good stuff in there, and there was–nice lumps of crab, shrimp, etc. Quite good gumbo. I’ve had better, but this one got no complaints from me.
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Mary Mahoney's
I was down on the Coast with Brian, and he insisted on taking me out to eat at Mary Mahoney’s in Biloxi. Twist my arm a bit harder–I don’t think I’m quite convinced yet. Coincidence (or not) that I had made a mental note about Mary Mahoney’s while doing a pre-trip search for eateries on the Coast. Brian claimed Mary Mahoney’s to be the best restaurant in the area, so of course I was psyched.
Oh, and for the sake of some readers who get excited about restaurant posts only to find out much later that these restaurants are in a different city (*cough* Rebecca *cough*), I’ll try to state the city in the title if it’s not in the Jackson Metro area.
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The spread
We’ve tried the bread at Omonia before, but what really intrigued us was their menu full of tortas, tacos, empanadas, etc. When we stopped by the first time we were stuffed with dim sum so we only got some breads. This time we planned well ahead of time to be there with empty stomachs ready to enjoy a full meal. » Continue Reading…
La Morena
A blogger named YAR who runs the Carpe Jackson food blog told us about La Morena in the comments section of my post about Omonia, so of course we had to try it out a few weeks ago. It’s hidden away in a little nook of a strip mall just off Old Canton Road that looks to be populated mostly by Mexican or Latin American businesses. The storefronts aren’t visible from the street, so you can be excused for not even knowing it was there. I didn’t know until YAR told me, so thanks for the tip. There are only 4 tables, but the bar space makes up for that somewhat. It wasn’t a busy night, so we were able to sit down right away.
As an aside, when it snowed in December we were coming back from a Mexican restaurant. This time when we got out of our car to walk to La Morena we had some snow flurries fall on us. It’s a sign! » Continue Reading…
Patel Grocery
Neither I nor Denise know much about Indian cooking. We love eating Indian food, but we haven’t had a go at cooking our own. With that qualifier out of the way, let me plug this grocery store anyway. Patel Grocery is an Indian grocery store just north of the new Ding How. I don’t think it’s in the same continuous strip mall, but the parking lots are connected. We went in there after having dim sum at Ding How, having just then spotted it for the first time.
Perusing the wares
I think they had 4-5 aisles full of wonderful stuff. Raw spices (whole, unchopped, unground spices), spice mixes, 1001 varieties of rice, heat-and-eat breads like naan, canned ingredients, fresh produce, etc. If you have any interest in Indian food you should at least go in there and look around. I don’t cook much these days since Denise is so good at it and I’m lazy besides, but even I felt somewhat motivated to try cooking some of my own after walking through Patel Grocery (or at least getting Denise to). And if you ever seriously considered cooking some Indian cuisine but didn’t think you could find the ingredients, now you know where to go. Simply. Awesome. Jackson is just full of surprises. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, something new pops up.
Patel Groceries
6800 Old Canton Road STE # 102
Ridgeland, MS-39157
601.952.0332
Ding How
A few weekends ago we revisited Ding How for another round of dim sum. First time around was good if slightly frantic in terms of service, which was understandable considering it was their first weekend of serving dim sum. The manager was so frazzled after that first weekend she considered abandoning the menu system and going to dim sum carts, which I was glad to discover they didn’t end up doing after all. With a large, high-traffic restaurant the cart system works great, but not so much with a cozier layout like Ding How where food might sit on the carts for a long time after cooking. They did, however, trim the menu a bit to make it more manageable, and items are now ordered by relative portion size and price. It’s a lot easier to sift through. » Continue Reading…
Stix
After our baby-doctor visit we grabbed some lunch at Stix. Stix is a hibachi grill and sushi place similar to Kyoto, Bonsai, and any number of other “Japanese steakhouse” places in town. Stix had to close down for a while a couple years ago, but they’re open again now. Not sure how long they’ve been open–this is the first time I’ve been back since my office moved downtown. Or, er, we moved to a new office downtown. The old office is still right where it was. » Continue Reading…