Little Fish

We just went to Little Fish for dinner tonight. It was excellent - enough so that I have to blog about it. :D

For appetizers, we had diver scallops with orange, almond and serrano ham as well as peekey toe crab with red beet, tarragon butter and shaved fennel. The crab was very flaky with an excellent texture - a little plain, but still good. However, the diver scallops were excellent - cooked to perfection with a wonderful flavor, and surprisingly good with the almonds and mandarin orange slices.

For entrees, I had the skate (a type of ray) with truffled spaetzle and shredded leeks. I think this is their most praised entree. This was absolutely amazing! The skate was fried lightly so that it was crispy on the outside but very soft and moist on the outside. The sauce was a salty parmesan broth that complemented it very well. The leeks were also tasty and complemented the strong-tasting fish very well. Pete had mahi mahi with a sweet potato puree which I believe was also very good, but not nearly as good as the skate. I would go back to eat skate at this restaurant any time.

Food and Personality

I think how and what someone eats is incredibly indicative of their character. In fact, in the past, I've used it as a way to decide whether or not I'll go on a second date with someone.

The trend I see is that the more adventurous someone is at the restaurant, the more adventurous the character. Someone who orders chicken all the time is not that adventurous. Somebody who decides to try the goat or the alligator (and they do not have to like it!) probably has a more adventurous personality.

I love to eat, and I love to try different foods - there's no way I could date or see anybody long term who didn't share those interests. For example, I could never date a vegetarian, or somebody who didn't like seafood or red meat or something. Even somebody who was allergic to nuts, or shellfish, or something like that - I would get so frustrated! But that's just me.

I guess I actually know plenty of adventurous people who place limits on their food - often that's health-related, or because they're concerned about the environment, or religious. Sometimes it's because of taste, which I think is fair. And those people are fine - I can like them just fine. But I could never date somebody like that. :)

Korean food in Philly

We've been really getting into the Korean food lately. There's an asian grocery store called H-Mart near the 69th street station, and on the second floor, there's a Korean fast food court. It's great. There's Korean food, Japanese food (with a Korean accent), Chinese food (with a Korean accent), a Korean bakery, and even a place that sells fried chicken (with a Korean accent). We always go to the Korean fast food counter - it's soooo good. They have all sorts of barbecued meats, soups, fish, tofu, you name it. Some of it's not spicy at all, but some of it is pretty spicy (one or two peppers on the menu). I think my favorite is the marinated beef short ribs. TASTY. And it's so cool - all the dishes come with rice (or noodles depending on whether you get a rice dish or a soup dish), maybe soup, and about 3 or 4 other small side dishes. They always give you kimchee, and the other 2 or 3 might be things like pickled vegetables, broccoli, bean sprouts, tofu, whatever. Even better, they recently put up pictures with their entrees, so now I'm not stuck wondering if that's what I got last time, or if that's something I'd like to try. I had been thinking of starting to take pictures with my cell phone and labeling them with the menu order number. Not a bad idea huh?

So for Pete's birthday yesterday, we went to a new Korean place, in the same general vicinity. However, this was an actual sit-down place where you order and they take it to you at your table, and you get tea and water and everything. It's called Moo Jin Jang. I didn't even realize it had my name in it until I got the receipt. I think it was a good omen. It's not a fancy place - there's no alcohol, they serve the tea in big plastic pitchers (not even a teapot), and the menu is this laminated card on every table that lists about 20 choices. The one waitress was the only one that spoke English, and I think she translated for her mom and dad. But everything still looked good. I only recognized maybe half of the menu - all the other items listed things I had never heard of before. I was tempted to try one, but I stayed with tried and true. I ordered the barbecued pork (spicy) and Pete got the beef short ribs. DELICIOUS!! And unlike the little fast food counter, this meal came with about 8 different little side dishes - it was great. We got fish, broccoli, bean sprouts, kimchee, pickled vegetables, hot pickled vegetables, little meatballs (which I think were marinated hot dogs), pickled potatoes, I can't remember them all. It was a lot of food, and of course I took it home. I'm pretty sure we'll go back at some point.

Food at Princess Marina Hospital

My team was on call tonight and it was relatively busy – we got 4 patients, but all of them were handled well. There were some interesting cases, but instead of talking about medical stuff I think I’ll talk about food at the hospital a little bit.

The cafeteria is run by the restaurant Moghul, which is right down the street from our flats. The restaurant serves decent Indian food (so I’m told) but the cafeteria makes very affordable and excellent local (Botswana) food. It’s just one counter long, so there’s not much selection, but it’s always very good, and a full meal is about P14, which is only a little more than $2!

At the cafeteria, you choose from a selection of starches, such as rice, pap (maize meal), sometimes samp, sometimes dumplings (which I think are just these huge balls of steamed or boiled bread), and a one other thing I’m not familiar with – and they cover this with a little bit of sauce. Then you can either get chicken or red meat, and you get a hot vegetable. A common red meat dish is seschwa, which is sort of like pulled pork, but with beef and without the sauce. It looks pretty nondescript and boring, but it’s really really good. The often also have beef stew or oxtail stew. Being a red meat fan, I rarely get the chicken, but it’s often stewed, grilled or fried chicken with sauce. The hot vegetable can be cabbage, spinach (which is not exactly like our spinach), creamed spinach, carrots, and a few other possibilities, depending on the day. But there is just one vegetable made per day.

Further on down the counter, you then get 2 or sometimes 3 different salads – they make regular lettuce salad, sometimes there’s a potato salad, sometimes bean salad (which is basically cold baked beans), and sometimes there’s carrot or beet salad. All in all, it’s a huge amount of food, and I usually eat it all! As a result, my lunches have become the main meal of the day, and sometimes I barely eat any dinner at all because I’m so stuffed from lunch. The only thing is, you have to make sure you get there before 1:30 because the cafeteria starts to run out of food.

More recently, I’ve been going outside of the hospital to eat lunch. Right outside the hospital entrance there are many options for food. Some people have small tables set up where they have food in several pots and the food is very similar to what’s in the cafeteria, but cheaper and with much less selection. For example, for P10 you can get pap, seschwa, and spinach, but those are your only choices, and you get a little less food than you would at the cafeteria (which I actually welcome). There are also people in small huts selling food – there they have some pots too, and you can get a small little bowl of food (like chicken or beef stew or something) for like P4. They also have this pita-like thick bread called papata for P1 which is great to eat with the stew. Some of the huts also sell fresh-fried chips! They are so good. They come fresh out of the deep fryer into your little blue plastic bag, which you then take to the table to sprinkle on salt, vinegar, and hot pepper. It’s soooo good and it’s only P4! Lastly, my favorite is the sausage guy. He grills huge homemade sausages right there outside the hospital, puts them in a bun, and adds whatever toppings you want (mustard and tomato sauce – what they call ketchup here). It’s the most amazing sausage ever, and only for P6.

Another alternative is to walk the 10 minutes to the Main Mall, which is an outdoor mall. There are two pie places there (that sell meat and vegetarian pies) that are pretty good, a bunch of fast food, and again people selling food on the street. There are several sausage guys here, and they have small tables with women selling food in pots as well as grilling up big pieces of steak. They also have a few large groups of people who have set up long rows of tables with food in pots – the equivalent of the pot ladies, but super-supersized. They have even more choices than the cafeteria, and it’s only P12! And you can stuff as much as you can into your takeaway container – I’ve seen people pile it on incredibly high, with 3 or 4 different meats and tons of veggies. Also a 5 minute walk away is the museum - which serves similar food to the cafeteria at basically the same price, but there is a nice environment to eat it in. You eat at outdoor round tables, shaded by these grass roofs, and we often have our bi-weekly feedback sessions there.

Ironically, today, I was actually a little tired of stuffing myself every day and actually brought lunch – a salami and cheese sandwich. I think I just felt like eating something American for once, but it all worked out because when I got home, Lisa had made lasagna (sort of) and salad. So I ate a big dinner. :)