Tag Archives: fried foods

Hard Alcohol and Fried Food

By Skinnygrlluvs2eat on | Leave a comment

If you regularly read my blog, you know that I am food passionate about ALL kinds of food.  Yes, I dream about and love those five course dinners where each course is paired with a different wine and you blissfully dine for three hours.  But I also crave a great slice of pizza,  really good french fries and an occasional late night fast food meal (see my blog on Taco Bell’s Smothered Burrito).  I also remember, mostly fondly, being, ahem, younger and coming home after a long night of drinking ravenous and eating what most of us know as “drunk food”.  Most, if not all of us, went through that phase where we did a lot of our eating after two a.m.  And let’s face it, what we wanted was fast, fried, greasy and cheesy.  In other words, I get it.    But, as of late, I have become concerned with the youth of our country.  Not because of the usual stuff, but because they really don’t seem to care about food!  How did I come to this conclusion?  I recently moved to Pacific Beach and what I have seen over the past few months makes me worry for our culinary future.

For those not familiar with Pacific Beach (PB) , it lies in San Diego between La Jolla and Mission Beach.  It has the nickname of “Party Beach”.  In fact, until 2007, one could drink alcohol ON the beach!   You can no longer drink on the beach, but quite frankly, there is no need for it.  Pacific Beach is packed with drinking establishments just steps from the sand.   With even more drinking/eating establishments lining the blocks leading to the beach.  As a person that LOVES to go out to eat and drink, moving here was exciting, especially because I had spent so many years in a rural part of Arizona with a dearth of restaurants.   So when I moved here, my husband and I excitedly started trying all the restaurants.  Our excitement quickly turned to disappointment.  Almost every restaurant had the exact same menu: fried food, chicken wings, burgers and a token salad.  Yes, I like ALL of those things, just not ALL the time. Furthermore, while they all had an extensive craft beer selection (with alcohol content posted by each beer!), they had a VERY limited and honestly, not very good, wine selection.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like craft beer, but I also REALLY enjoy a nice glass of wine and in PB that is about as hard to come by as a girl wearing shorts that actually cover her ass (yes, you read that right!).  We soon realized that almost every restaurant/bar in PB was catering to the 20 somethings with chilled Jagermeister on tap, slushy drinks composed of vodka and red bull and just enough fried food offered to soak it all up.  Before I’m pegged as a bitter, older woman, let me say, that I think that one should be wild when one is young and part of that “wildness” is sometimes stupidly drinking alcohol infused slushies chased with shots of Jager.   But, I also remember when I was younger and wilder… And even then, my friends and I tempered our “wild” nights with appetizers and wine at “nice” restaurants.  We were interested in fine food and wine and looked forward to splurging on a meal at a nicer restaurant.  We wanted to expand our culinary knowledge by eating different foods and trying new wines.  This is what I don’t see here.

Is it just in PB?  Or is this the way it is with the majority of younger people?  Do they really have no interest in good food and wine?  I hope not!  Appreciating good food and wine will always help them as they navigate through this world.  Just when I was about to give up hope, we found a wonderful little Italian restaurant with authentic (and delicious!) food plus a really nice wine list.  As my husband and I dined, we looked around at the other patrons.  All were our age or older.  Damn! But as we were leaving, a group of 20 somethings were coming into the restaurant and I overheard one of the girls saying to her friends, “They have the BEST house-made pasta here and a really affordable Chianti!”  And yes, all the girls were wearing shorts that actually covered their ass… There is hope after all!

Posted in: Fast Food, food & wine, Food & wine lovers, Food and Drink, Fried Food, Hard alcohol, restaurants, Uncategorized, wine | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My Best Thing I Ever Ate-Fried!

By Skinnygrlluvs2eat on | Leave a comment

So, of course I regularly watch the Food Network’s Best Thing I Ever Ate… And get hungry. Then lament the fact that I am in a small town and there is NO possible way for me to fulfill my deli craving at 9:00 p.m.  Well, the show has me thinking, what are the best things I ever ate and why. So here is my first edition, the deep fried foods.

Best fried vegetables- I have to go with this hole in the wall sushi joint near my house, Masaki.  They do a vegetable tempura that is deep fried vegetable perfection.  A lot of tempura’s I have had have a slight fishy tatse to the batter. Yes, shared oil! But not here, light, airy batter enrobing perfectly cooked vegetables. They even do the daikon radish & enoki mushroom! But my favorite is the sweet potato. Slightly salty & crispy outside. Sweet & creamy inside. The dipping sauce they serve is also great. A slightly sweet, thin, brown sauce. LOVE these vegetables!

Best French Fry- Now before I call this, I have to say that a lot of this has to do with the memory of my life when I ate them… If you asked me my favorite type of fry, I would immediately say, “Pomme Frites.”  But when I searched my taste memory for the BEST fry, I came up with its very opposite, a short, fat, large steak fry.  My favorite french fry? The Seasoned fries at Tommy’s restaurant.  Oh, the memory of walking back to school at lunch time, clutching that greasy, fragrant paper bag in my hand… They were crisp, creamy and seasoned with a paprika colored salt.  Always had extra seasoning on mine. Really, the perfect fry. At a time in my life when fries and red licorice ropes for lunch was perfectly acceptable.

Best Fried Sandwich- The Monte Cristo at Disneyland.  Yes, Disneyland! I grew up in California, so a trip to Disneyland, while not every weekend, was pretty commonplace. Hell, I still remember when they had the tickets-A through E. My mother had an entire drawer full of the A tickets in the kitchen. I digress. So, there was a restaurant that was in the Pirates of Carribean ride. You could eat and watch the boats go by… It was VERY dark and seemed very fancy to me as a child.  It was here that I had my first and best Monte Cristo sandwich.  Made the right way, dipped in egg batter, fried, then topped with powdered sugar and served with raspberry jam for dipping.  Biting into that was like going on a trip.  The sweet, french toast like first taste, then the salty meat and oozing nutty swiss cheese. Then the next bite adding raspberry jam for a pop of fruit!  I still dream about that sandwich…

 

Best strange Fried Thing- I think of this like a niche market. Not everybody does it, but when you can find it done right… OMG! This has to be the deep fried dill pickle spears at a neighborhood diner.  Cornmeal batter, still slightly cool and crunchy dill pickle, ranch for dipping. I don’t think I need to say anything more.

 

Best Fried Sweet- The apple fritters at the Von’s in Marina Del Rey.  Really, the best apple fritter I have ever eaten. And believe me, I have eaten quite a few.  These fritters have the perfect proportion of apple chunks to doughy batter.  Of crisp edges to fluffy centers. And the absolutely perfect amount of that sticky, really too sweet, icing. Used to go on Saturday at 7:00 a.m. just so I could get my hot little hands on them.  Yes, they sold out that fast… Would always buy four and think I would save some for Sunday. But no, I ate them all that day.  They were just too good.

 

Best Fried Egg- yes, as the final best of fried I am including a fried egg. Why? Well, because creating a perfectly cooked fried egg is hard to do and even harder to find.  I like mine over easy, so I can dunk my buttered Rye toast into the yolk.  The best fried egg I ever ate was at Edie’s Diner in Marina Del Rey (it is closed now).  Edie’s was where we went late night and drunk.  Or early morning and hungover.  Nothing cured my hangover faster than a couple of perfectly cooked over-easy fried eggs, buttered rye toast, breakfast potatoes and LOTS of water at Edie’s.

Well there it is, my first Best Thing I Ever Ate blog.  There will be more. But in the meantime, what was the best fried food YOU ever ate? Let me know. I am always looking for new favorites.

Posted in: Food & wine lovers, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,