It's It! Sweetly Sandwiched San Francicso Style

Alannah and I recently set out on a mission: To represent San Francisco in Paris. The reason is two-fold.

First, as San Franciscan transplants with an inferiority complex, we're sick and tired of anything remotely American here being described as "New Yorkais." Local writers have recently described a chef from Chicago, a coffeehouse owner from Washington and freakin' burritos as New Yorkais. Dubya. Tee. Eff.

Secondly, we don't really know of many people reppin' the Bay. There's Andy at our local favorite sushi joint Rice and Fish who's doing it right, and there's... uh... wasn't Alice Waters supposed to open a restaurant next to the Louvre some time back? Then you've got your French folk like Loic Le Meur (Seesmic, Sarkozy spokes-ass) and Benjamin Tremoulet (H.A.N.D.) who spent - judging by their products - about four hours in California and decided to build their businesses around their (in)experience and trust funds.

So we've got some projects in the hopper, hoping to bring real streetfighter SF culture to the old-school dining mecca. We talk a lot of shit, but we also put our money where our mouths are. And right now we're finding a lot more shit than places we want to put our mouths.

In the meantime, if we wanna make a wave, we've gotta work on desserts! And we're starting by perfecting a premium, locally-sourced-as-possible version of It's-It ice cream sandwiches, also known as "A San Francisco Experience since 1928." Basically, it's one scoop of ice cream, two oatmeal cookies, and dark chocolate.

Alannah's quite good with dessert. Especially baking. She's gone sans oven for the last torturous month (which is about how long it takes a landlord to replace a faulty appliance 'round here...) and she's finally back in action. The "cowboy cookies" she's been making since childhood will serve as the bread in this dessert sammy.

I, on the other hand, blow fucking donkey dicks when it comes to baked goods and confectionery.

It's-It style ice cream sandwiches, take two: Not an epic fail,
but not great. You don't even want to see Round 1.

This wasn't the case nearly two decades ago. As a young punk, I used to sling out cakes and ice creams to Bay Area yuppies like it was going out of style. I'd spend a good chunk of my summer days inside a walk-in freezer, sculpting melty sugary materials that'd otherwise disintegrate in the ambient temperature. It was a good time, and I loved my customers, from local Ladies Who Lunch to firefighters to Apple and HP execs who'd sneak in between meetings for a sweet treat. One of the more distinguished among them had a particular favorite that I was proud to make: The clown cone.

That's right, I was ice cream slinger and faux-pastry chef at a fucking Baskin-Robbins. Despite being the confectionery equivalent of the guy manning the fryolator – see, any asshat blogger can puff up his irrelevant culinary past – I could write the preamble to the Constitution on the face of a half-sheet cake in buttercream, make waffle cones that could stand up to four gigantic scoops of ice cream plus hot fudge, and most relevant to our mission here, I could turn out a perfect ice cream sandwich in 20 seconds flat.

That was then. This is now. I no longer have the ability to properly hold an offset spatula let alone put a tip on a piping bag. Which is exactly what our first attempt at homemade It's-It called for. We tried the recipe and technique we Googled on Gastroanthropology. And it was a big bag of fail.

This is not to knock Gastroanthropology's technique. In fact, it's not only well-researched and professional, but if we had a proper setup it would probably work. But in a sweatbox of an apartment with merely an icebox for a freezer, it just wasn't meant to be. Ice cream soft enough to be piped out of a pastry bag would actually continue to melt faster than it could re-freeze in our piddly little freezer. And it did. We disappointingly opened up the freezer to find cowboy cookies frozen into a flat puddle of ice cream. At least the oatmeal discs were perfectly round, using the biscuit cutter technique from the above recipe.

Round 2 was much better (see photo above), but it still wasn't quite right. Instead of softening ice cream and piping it out of a bag, we smoothed a bunch of it out into a tray and froze it overnight into a sheet; much as I did back in the day to create full-sheet ice cream cakes. I then punched out discs of ice cream using the same biscuit ring so they'd be the same diameter as the cookies. So far, so good. we then dipped them in melted dark chocolate and put them back in the freezer to set. Only they wouldn't fully set. Cutting or biting into the sandwiches would result in the ice cream smooshing and the chocolate breaking off in chunks.

We put the results up on Facebook, awaiting possible troubleshooting from our foodie friends. Most of them being San Franciscans, they also know what an It's-It is supposed to be like. Our own analysis blamed not only our technique but our ingredients. In trying to make a high-quality, wholesome version of – let's face it – junk food, we just couldn't get certain things right. Using unprocessed organic oats, the cookies were too tough. Single-origin organic Peruvian chocolate? Not as easy to use for coating as the confectioners' stuff cut down with soy lecithin.

And worst of all, we had doubts about using our favorite local ice cream. I first wrote about Mary Quarta's gelato for VINGT Paris and just nabbed today's ROTD for it on Yelp (my first in over two years!) and we've been going to taste her wares at least twice a week since she opened up shop in the Haut Marais. It was the first "complex ingredient" we've decided against making ourselves (I'm even making our cheeses for an upcoming shindig) because it's so good and non-industrial, there's no point.

But gelato is a far cry in texture and structure than standard American ice cream, and it looked as though Mary's sweetness was just too soft and yielding for the type of brutality we'd put it through. We couldn't think of a non-industrial alternative, so we started thinking about how we'll make our own ice cream, solely to fulfill our desire for It's-It.

Then tonight, Round 3 happened.

Yup. Pretty much nailed it.
And we didn't have to throw Mary under the bus, either.

The difference for Round 3? A much longer freeze after sandwich assembly and chocolate coating, which itself was different. Instead of dunking and rolling the sandwiches in melted chocolate, I brushed it on thinly with a rubber spatula. Working with a nearly rock-hard sandwich to start with and making sure it went fully back to rock hard before serving made all the difference in the world. The thinner coating of chocolate didn't break off in chunks when cut or bitten, the ice cream stayed solid through most of the eating.  Alannah's excelllent cowboy cookie remained a constant. It's a bit tougher than a standard oatmeal cookie, but the taste is perfect.

Now that we've got the formula down, we're going to make a few more tweaks: The cookies will have to be slightly crisper (and possibly thinner) for easy biting. We'll have to spend even more on a high-quality nappe (coating) dark chocolate that's thinner but lecithin-free – we will NOT compromise on quality. And now having figured out how to work with Mary's super-soft gelato, we'll stick with it, but surprisingly we're going to have to find flavors even more subtle than her already subdued crème à l'ancienne. Compared to typical American "vanilla" filler ice cream, Mary's is actually too flavorful and overpowers the cookies and chocolate by just a touch.

So here's the rundown of the technique we've got down so far:

• Spread Mary's gelato into a tray and freeze overnight
• In the meantime, make a batch of Alannah's cowboy cookies (possibly increase butter, decrease brown sugar? She's the expert and will figure it out...) flatten using biscuit cutter as a guide, and chill/freeze 'em
• Remove frozen gelato from tray and quickly punch out discs using biscuit cutter.
• Very quickly assemble sandwiches, put into fridge for at least two hours
• Double boil dark coating chocolate
• Brush chocolate on to very frozen sandwiches (also considering dunking via wire basket if we work with a huge quantity)
• Freeze yet again - probably overnight - in tray, sitting on parchment paper
• Eat

It's pretty long and involved, but after blissing out on the fruits of Round 3 tonight, it'll be worth it. And the more we do it, the better we'll get at it. The material cost and the learning curve will be high, but this is going to happen. Cuz that's what it's all about, reppin' the 415: Taking the seemingly casual and humble but obsessing over quality and source, and never compromising.

Quick Hit: Meat Hole

Click for a ridiculously high-def photo

After just over two years in Paris, it must be rubbing off on us: We followed some alarmingly stupid food trend.  The other day, after making doughnuts, we thought "Why the hell not?" and made the infamous Doughnut Burger (aka "The Luther" after supposed aficionado Luther Vandross), which has been immortalized by the likes of Vandross himself, Southern dame Paula Deen, and minor league baseball parks across the US.

Of course, we didn't use factory-churned Krispy Kremes and frozen patties. We used our own homemade doughnuts, of course, fresh beef ground for us by the butcher just moments before, and the same formula for near-perfect fries that we did on Cinco de Mayonnaise.  (Courtesy of the crafty bloggers at  the French Culinary Institute.)

The verdict?  

DISGUSTING.

An utter waste of quality ingredients, to be quite frank. 

I'd already posted a photo on Facebook some time ago, where a discussion ensued among friends...

Some meat for your hole, madam?

...but now, on the eve of a so-called "Street Food" event in Paris featuring burgers (even though it's far from actual street food, considering none of the star chefs involved have ever pushed a cart through Paris), I thought it our responsibility to unleash upon the general public the horrible truth about mixing quality cuisine with flash-in-the-pan trends.  

You're welcome.

Take a Razor to Your Clam

Out of the blue the other day, I got the urge to snack on some clam. But not just any clam, razor clams. The idea came to me randomly. I thought, "I'd really like some razor clams, topped with a ginger-scallion sauce."

This isn't an entirely original craving. We'd had an amazing razor clam/scallion dish at the in-decline Mandarin Kitchen in Bayswater on our London Trip a couple of months before. But for some reason, I suddenly became singularly obsessed with making a David Chang-style ginger-scallion sauce and topping some long bivalves with it.

Alive with pleasure. Squirming, pulsating pleasure.

So we hit the markets in search of a shellfish that is usually used for bait here... Which means it's not easy to find.

We spotted a couple of small bundles of 'em at a fish stand in the Marché du Président Wilson in the posh 16th, but by the time we circled around to get them on our way out (it was a hot day, which doesn't mix with public transit and seafood) they were gone!  Oh well, at least we'd picked up some beautiful, funky heirloom carrot varieties from Joël Thiebault, who has made a career out of raising gorgeous vegetables... and selling their "throwaway" parts to suckers at a premium. (Hey, Joël! Poor people have been eating turnip and beet greens forever!)

Luck turned up at Paris' tertiary Chinatown (in the 3rd arrondissement), where we were able to pick up a massive bundle of Ensis directus for about half the price of what we missed out on in the 16th. Checking 'em out, they were cold, fresh, alive, and – most importantly – plucked from the nearby North Sea, not shipped from halfway around the world as one might suspect in the Asian markets. Score!

Next up: Making a ginger-scallion sauce.

I've heard so many raves about David Chang's sauce as featured in the Momofuku cookbook, which I had picked up back when it came out at our favorite English-language bookstore in town. (Hint: It's not fucking WH Smith or Brentano's. Fuck them with a dusty old hardcover inserted diagonally.)  But I'd never bothered to look at the recipe. In fact, I only got the book because it's good reading, and Alannah and I get giggles out of Chang's fuck-you attitude to the ruling food establishment.

The formula is dead simple: Ginger, scallions, oil, sherry vinegar, soy sauce, salt.

Ginger-Scallion sauce.. the Ramped up version. Har har.

We decided, of course, to mess with the formula, because that's what we do. We replaced half the scallions with some gorgeous red ramps we found during our market adventures. Ramps are a bit more garlicky than scallions, and they also have a bit of an earthy flavor that we dig.  Also, I made a Japanese-pride-fueled executive decision to substitute the sherry vinegar with a mix of rice vinegar and hon-mirin (Japanese cooking wine).  Chop. Mince. Combine for 15 minutes. Done.

The sauce was poured over some cleaned, opened razor clams and placed under a super-hot broiler for just a couple of minutes...

Lap up the juices on these hot, vertical clams

While we were at it, I figured we should have some of the famous ginger-scallion noodles. Which entails all of pouring the same sauce over some hot, cheap ramen-type noodles.

Slurp this

Of course, having so much clam between the two of us, the feast continued for a couple more days. We'd made some deep-fried razor clams to have with our Mexican food, and we went on with our Asian theme to make a simple but gorgeous razor clam stir-fry.

It's as if scallops and lobster mated and put tubular
babies on top of veggies

There was also some more posh-16th-arrondissement market booty to be plundered, so we gently steamed some shimeji mushrooms, laid 'em on top of a bed of shredded steamed chicken... Topped off with more of the ginger-scallion-ramp sauce, of course.

Mmmm... Shroomy

In all, it made for a couple of days of delectable Asian eating, most of which is crazy simple to prepare. The only tough part was having to run around town to procure the various ingredients, but such is the nature of finding (or even making) good ethnic food in Paris.

Rant: Mexican't

This is a bitch & moan post with a cause. Read on for the goods.


Last night we ripped on the state of casual American food in Paris, and suggested how easy it is to make far superior burgers and pancakes than what you can find in the slew of "American Diner" themed hovels throughout the town.

Tamales with chicken and chili filling, masa-crusted razor clams,
fresh guacamole... At nuestra casa.

Unfortunately, this situation extends to all sorts of ethnic food in France. Despite being a beautifully multicultural place, what few plausible ethnic restaurants you can find are often "dumbed down" for the local palate. This makes sense in a reputedly risk-averse society, but at the same time makes no sense in the country that coined the term "vive la différence."

Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of Mexican cuisine, the majority of which is represented by ground beef (!) burritos and insipid fajitas and so-called tacos in factory-made flour tortillas. What the fuck is going on here?  I'll tell you what: The virulent disease known as Tex-Mex, which much like anything from Texas is as irritating and unwanted as a case of syphilis. Only harder to get rid of.  The Tex-Mex trend in Paris has insured that even the most well-meaning of real, Mexican-run restaurants has to sell slushy margaritas and faux burritos to stay in business.

Despite the hardship it presents, the only decent Mexican food in town comes at our own hands. Unlike the aforementioned burgers and pancakes, though, it's not particularly easy. Some of it, like a proper molé sauce, is downright labor-intensive.  But if a guera and a chino gordo (I'm not Chinese, but that's what they call me south of the border) can find the ingredients and take the time to make the real deal, why can't the restaurateurs?

As I write this, I'm eating leftover tamales that Alannah made last night, and even nuked in a plastic tupperware container it's better than anything you can get at the local Indiana Café or Mexi&Co. Yes, the corn husks and masa are hard to source, but they exist.

Admittedly, the razor clams you see above aren't part of the authentic Mexican oeuvre. (Machas, as they're called in Spanish, seem to be limited to Chilean cuisine.) But even the most well-regarded Latin-inspired restaurants here won't dare depart from the established formula and dust some mariscos with masa crocante. They fail to educate or challenge their clientele, and instead bow to their expectations.

Even the faux Mexican isn't creative. In about three seconds, Alannah whipped up an accompanying dessert for last night's dinner. Sliced fresh mangos with a dipping sauce of chocolate, cream, and spices. While not authentically Latin, it at least played within the flavors of the cuisine, while offering something besides the bastardized mediocrity Parisian diners are accustomed to.

Mango y chocolate... Simple but effective.

The flavors were so fantastic, that we're going to develop a cocktail based on this improvised dessert to serve with Mexican food next time we entertain. Screw your slushy margarita.

The Good Cause Part
Luckily, there is one publicly accessible place where the status quo is being challenged.  At La Rotisserie de Sainte-Marthe in the 10th arrondissement, they have a mission: To prevent the gentrification of their part of the quartier, and to preserve the rich ethnic identity of the many small immigrant groups within.  By day they're a restaurant serving 5-euro meals to the locals. By night, they allow member non-profit organizations to take the restaurant over and share full meals (price cap: 10 euros) with the community.

Once a month, the arts collective Sonidero Tochtli hosts a Mexican dinner. This thursday will feature tacos de barbacoa, nopales (cactus) salad and a convivial community atmosphere unmatched by any other restaurant in town. (The €1.50 beer/wine might have something to do with it.)

It's not fancy. It's elbow-to-elbow seating. But the food is fantastic, and it's all done for good reason. We'll see you there.

Rant: Eat American, Même en France

This post was inspired by finding out this weekend that the only place offering a "Foursquare" special in Paris is the middling Breakfast in America. 

One thing that kills us living in France is the dearth of good American food out there. Not that we'd actually go out regularly to eat it. We can just cook it ourselves. It's easy. Which is why we're so perplexed as to why American food is so damn bad in Paris.

And we're not talking "New American" cuisine or California cuisine or any fancy fusion stuff. We're talking burgers and hot dogs and pancakes and eggs benedict. Stereotypical American food. Stuff so easy, I could pull the gimp out of our caveau and he'd be able to cook it ball-gagged and hog-tied, chained to the stove. It's not rocket science. It's American food, for crying out loud. The land where Sarah Palin still gets paid for speaking engagements.

Yet even the American-run joints here can't serve up a burger worth the 14 euro or so (yeah, that's about 20 freakin' bucks) they charge. What gives? It's not a lack of ingredients. It's certainly not a lack of culinary knowledge.

Maybe it's because American food – because it's the simplistic domain of mouth-breathing Tea Baggers – doesn't accord the necessary respect that all food of any origin should receive. And that's to make it with good ingredients and care.

A perfectly balanced American meal of burger, fries, salad, and beer.

So this weekend we decided to take on one of these careless slingers of overpriced American food, the oft-cited Breakfast in America. With two locations in the Marais and the Left Bank – both hangouts of American tourists and expats who don't know any better – they do a brisk business of selling overpriced, highly mediocre American food. People of all walks of life line up for this shit like basement-dwelling nerds drooling over booth bimbos at a Vegas convention, which as anyone who's ever done this knows, never leads to any satisfaction.

Despite the stupid Supertramp-inspired name, most people there seem to be eating the sub-par burgers. And they pay the equivalent of twenty bucks for what, exactly? Nothing better than even the most culinarily inept can make by themselves. Sure, it takes a little investment of time, but you can have a real burger made with freshly-ground meat, real cheddar cheese, grilled sweet onions, hand-cut double-fried fries, and a beer for just a little coin. Use supermarket ingredients (yes, every damn supermarket and corner mini-market in France has hamburger buns) and you're lowballing the craptacular restaurants by nearly 90%. And it will still taste better. We guarantee it.

Burger with grilled sweet onion, fresh tomato, hand-ground beef from
the butcher, and thick-sliced real cheddar cheese.
Material cost: 2 euro. Maybe 3.

For pocket change and a few minutes of your time, you're able to make at home what's served in only the chicest, upscale restaurants here, who have decided to serve a burger simply because it's trendy, not because it's remotely what they do best.  Seriously: Make a patty, cook it medium-rare, throw it between two toasted pre-made buns, throw on your garnishes of choice.  Look at the picture above. It's no pussy-ass "slider."  (Another passé trend that's made it to these shores, of course.) That hamburger bun's the diameter of a compact disc. So you're lookin' at some monster meat.

The next most popular American item is the humble pancake. We could dedicate chapters to the French notion of the pancake, how it's eaten, how it's served, but we're ragging on an actual American restaurant here.

We know pancakes are very subjective. Everyone has a different recipe. Some actually like the mix that comes out of a box. Some like them thin, some like them thick and biscuity. There's no agreement at all on what makes a good pancake. And, ok, they're not 100% foolproof. When making your own, inevitably you have to go through one or two "test" pancakes 'til you get it right.

Admittedly, the first three were spotty, black discs that looked
like a tranny hooker's leopard-skin panties.

But even when burning through a few "guinea pigs" trying to get the skillet to the right temperature, you still only need a ratio of two eggs to two cups of flour, mixed with little dashes of leavening agent, sugar, and fat to make a couple of respectable stacks of flapjacks. (We opted for melted sweet creamery butter and olive oil this time, but that's just getting unnecessarily fancy.)  And contrary to the beliefs of silly expats who go to American epiceries and buy overpriced bottles of fake pancake syrup, real maple syrup is available at all Paris supermarkets... dirt cheap. So cheap you wouldn't mind warming up a whole bottle of the sticky stuff to pour over your short stack.

I'll repeat: It's not fuckin' rocket science.

So yeah, this post is more of a bitch & moan session than anything instructive or remotely informative. Because making a basic hamburger or pancake is one of those skills every red-blooded American (even those who fled the place) should have. Unless you simply don't cook, of course. Then you're off the hook.

But say even if you aren't culinarily challenged. Sometimes you just want a break. To go out, have good food, and be served. Then why go to a place with shit atmosphere and bad service?

As an American, I find it insulting that people accept much of the shit being slung out there, and especially at the prices being charged. Why support these shenanigans? Demand better. Demand the best. Because you're American god dammit. (Or you want to eat like one.)

Fuck Breakfast in America.

If a half Eye-ranian immigrant and his farmgirl wife can pull off the food you see here for what amounts to pocket change (admittedly, with a few 2-euro coins in the mix), imagine what a paid professional should be serving you. Demand. Better.

On the bright side, there are a few upstarts restos out there that are doing an adequate job on burgers and pancakes recently, and at a reasonable price.  We'd share them with you, but half the fun is breaking free of the herd and discovering these little everyday revelations for yourself.

Le Fooding Hype + Video: ...Like a Horse

This last week, Paris foodies have been abuzz about La Semaine du Fooding, one of Le Fooding's events throughout the year that get people to line up, shell out a few euro for a fabulous charity, and indulge in tiny dégustation portions of foods from France's hottest up-and-comers, talents worthy of discovery, and – of course – massive corporate sponsors like Nespresso and S. Pellegrino and the like. Names that normally make us cringe, but when it's all for charity, it helps to have heavy hitters.

Unlike the mass clusterfuck (not the good kind) that was the Paris edition of Le Grand Fooding d'Eté at the sprawling Domaine St-Cloud last summer, which was overcrowded, overhyped and sported an incredibly dull "barbecue" theme, this winter edition seemed much more promising: A limited guest-list (each night's allotment of spots disappeared within minutes), a funky-cool atmosphere at the long-decommissioned swimming complex of la Piscine Molitor, and the titillating theme of "Les Incorrects."

The atmosphere and setting were perfect for an event made for noshing on allegedly "politically incorrect" (or perhaps out of fashion) foods. La Piscine Molitor, in its cavernous urban decay and graffiti-covered surfaces, felt more like an underground San Francisco warehouse party in the mid-90's than some yuppified foodie event – only without DJs or mobs of sweaty kids swallowing pills and each other's tongues. We already felt at home.

The agenda for the night of forbidden foods was as follows: Stinky cheeses (depicted in the program as able to attract flies) unusually paired with Veuve Clicquot champagne; Sardinian chef Tonina Simbula's taboo horse meat dishes; a random creation by a "masked chef" too ashamed for his reputation to be using the ingredient du jour; and cookbook maven Tish Deseine abusing our palates with the now-suspect French staple known as... butter.

Naturally, an event like this brings out not just the food-crazies, but the crazies as well. While no one was throwing paint bombs at us going in (security was tighter than a side-hugger's unsullied slit) the Fondation Brigitte Bardot had a truck outside condemning horse meat. For those unfamiliar with the FBB, it's a more vainglorious version of PETA run by its namesake, either because Ms. Bardot wants all the attention to herself, or because even PETA doesn't want to be associated with a washed up racist who wouldn't look good in their naked protests.

Enough chatter, however, how about some dark, grainy video action?

NOTE: Some pro photog came up and snapped photos of us while I was eating the horse meat. Would love to know if we ended up on some web site or newspaper...

While it was certainly fun to go, we couldn't really reconcile the theme of "Les Incorrects" with what we actually ate.

Not So Stinky Cheese
The stinky cheeses were, of course, of good quality. They just really weren't all that stinky, certainly not enough to draw flies. And while pairing them with champagne may be unusual for the stodgy French connoisseur accustomed only to red wine with a heady cheese, we crazy Californians have been doing all sorts of crazy shit to our cheese boards for years. The only unsettling part of it was being served Veuve Clicquot, which is a fine champagne, but against my just-instated personal boycott of LVMH group products. (Here's why you should boycott the greedy conglomerate and help destroy their cloistered business world.)

Can Horse Meat Be Beat?
Chef Simbula's horse dishes were good. Very good. It was Alannah's first time, but she wasn't put off by the idea of it at all, and she loves animals even more than I do. Frankly, it's nothing special - just very lean, dark and at the same time very tender, not unlike ostrich. Basically it's a healthy red meat. But all the flavor, both in carpaccio and steak form, came from the accompanying garnish. Neither of us would go out of the way to eat a horse dish, but to be frank, nothing would morally stop us.

While we both appreciate the efforts of animal rights activists around the world, we find it hypocritical of anyone who can condemn one type of meat over another if extinction/over-hunting isn't the issue. Is a cow no more cute and worthy of petting than a horse? Is a pig not smarter than most animals we keep as pets? All animals are to be cherished and treated with respect. So perhaps all the activists out there should be more concerned about the horrendous conditions most of our food animals suffer due to our industrialized farming, rather than what animal, specifically, winds up on our plates.

But I digress...

Stay Masked, Please
On to our next station: The masked chef. We didn't bother sticking around for the unmasking, because quite frankly, we didn't want to be disappointed in yet another glammy Parisian chef, so we're better off not knowing where this guy cooks. In a land where food is sport, there's a lot of hype, in turn meaning a lot of disappointment. (Hence why we cook so much for ourselves!)

And this ill-conceived bit of Asian fusion served up to us was not helping matters.

The "forbidden" ingredient on this Friday night was hot dogs. Specifically, Knacki brand hot dogs, found in hypermarkets, supermarkets and mini-marts all over France. While we may be Slow Food aficionados, we have nothing against the humble hot dog, and have in fact gobbled many a wiener ourselves. One of our favorite non-traditional hot dog treatments is our friend Arnold's, well, traditional Filipino spaghetti which leverages the hot dog's inherent saltiness with tangy and sweet. (Of course, we call it Japanese spaghetti.)

Although our masked chef did go for some of the sucré-salé combination, it was a hell of a lot more salty than anything. The hot dogs were steamed in bamboo steamers atop woks (pointless gimmickery, really), blended coarsely in food processors, mixed with mint, nuoc nam (fish sauce), peanuts, scallions and half the garnish menu of a Thai restaurant, served over a banana leaf and topped with fried garlic. It was basically Thai/Laotian larb, only with hot dog in place of the usual meat (which can be pork, chicken, beef... anything.) We called it "WTF is this mess of salt?"

Between the high salt content from the hot dogs, fish sauce, and fried garlic, it seemed more like the un-PC ingredient we were having was salt, with French health minister Roselyn Bachelot wagging one of her ironically sausage-like fingers at us for exceeding the daily guideline.

There's nothing creative about substituting hot dogs for meat in an Asian dish that is typically made from any meat at hand. No transformation. No flavor sensation. (Unless sucking on a salt lick is exciting to you.) And the upsetting part of all this is that it's really indicative of what passes for fashionable food in Paris these days. It's the second horrendous bit of Asian fusion I've wanted to snowball back into the mouth of the chef this week (Alannah was luckily spared of the other one), a horrendous virus spreading amongst all the wannabes who try to do it simply because Joël Robuchon, William Ledeuil and the like have parlayed it into grand success. But what these masters do is take influence and inspiration from Asian cuisine, not ape it or simply substitute Western ingredients here and there. Someone needs to cockpunch the majority of Parisians and remind them that trendy does not constitute good.

End rant.

More Butter, Please
Somewhat underwhelmed at this point, we weren't expecting much from the fourth "course," the promised butter overdose for dessert. We didn't see Irish-cum-Parisian cookbook star Trish Deseine when we got to the station (her Twitter status said she was on her way), which is a shame because she is the only one we wanted to congratulate for living up to the media hype. (There was a man at the station and I can't recall the name on his chef's whites, but I did give him my compliments...)

At any rate, whomever made it, the Kouign Amman (I have no idea how to pronounce Breton words, sorry) was orgasmic. All thanks to the butter. But as Alannah kept raving about it, it was buttery without being heavy. Light as a feather, yet rich as can be. At one point she called it "butter cotton candy." I wouldn't go that far, because it did have enough heft to it to be substantial and satisfying (candyfloss is too evanescent for my tastes) but she was on to something... A contradictory sensation that was, in fact, a revelation.

That was the shocking, cool, learn-something-new-every-day part. For us, cooking with disproportionate amounts of butter is old hat. But to make what seems like a half kilo of butter weigh in at only a few grams... That's a trick we'd love to turn.

Despite having had the best-for-last surprise, and the satisfaction of knowing that - good or bad - we helped out a very worthy charity, I can't help but feel more and more ambivalent toward Le Fooding. Besides the fact that their web site is a largely unusable, Flash-intro-with-no-non-Flash-skip-button piece of crap, their events have been nowhere near the level of hype they generate. (This could be dead wrong, though - the recent New York edition sounded fabulous by all accounts.) While the word is an amalgamation of "food" and "feeling," there's just no feeling to it. The organization has an interesting mission, but it seems more like it's in the trend business (emphasis on the business) than in showcasing groundbreaking food and its purveyors.

Of course, being gluttons for punishment, we'll be back at the next event (if they let us in), and hope that Le Fooding can refocus on its mission, instead of being just another Parisian hype machine.