Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

food

Crushing On: Hip City Veg

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Myth: Vegan food is always a stuck-up meat imitation or utter rabbit food, and of no interest to people who don’t mind a bit of animal in their meals.

Fact: HipCityVeg is vegan fast food your entire office will merrily devour without question.

I am so utterly addicted to this vegan lunch joint at 18th and Sansom that our relationship has become deadly serious. After heading there experimentally with my wall-sharing colleague MK I have vowed to try every delectable item on their chalkboard menu.

I’m not sure what the next step is for us – usually once things get this serious I write a song about the person and/or food establishment I am crushing on.

I started with a Buffalo Bella – a huge portabella mushroom breaded and spiced up in the buffalo fashion. As a pescetarian, one of the few world-of-meat things I ever crave are buffalo ANYTHINGS – because, really, there aren’t many fish-y or veggie things that work well with the classic breading and sauce treatment. Well, this sandwich fits the bill perfectly – it isn’t trying to be chicken at all, it’s huge and luscious and spicy and will gradually explode all over your desk as you eat it as any good buffalo meal ought to.

Also, the best sweet potato fries in creation, paired with ridiculously incredible cilantro-black bean dip.

Fast forward to my next visit. I ordered the same thing (how can you turn that down) when a random woman in line started enthusing to me about the Udon Noodle Salad.

(This is the sort of thing that happens at HipCityVeg. While you are there everyone likes everyone else, but not in a creepy tie-dyed hippy way. People are just friendly in a way that isn’t brought out by a trip to Wendy’s. Did I mention vegan milkshakes? They are so good.)

Based on the recommendation, I picked up the Udon Noodle Salad on my next visit – and it was AMAZING. As utterly addictive as the Bella. I almost shamelessly drank the dressing out of the bottom of the container once I was through.

Almost!

That is when I made my vow to eat my way through the entire menu.

So far everything has been excellent. I would amend the Arugula Taco Salad onto the greatest hits list with my first two selections, as well as their irresistible Groothie. A few items have included fake “Chik’n,” but I don’t feel like it’s trying too hard to be chicken so much as it’s a convenient protein delivery system, happily accepted.

If you work within a few block radius of 18th and Sansom I highly recommend a pilgrammage.

A Taste of Vegas @ Mesa Grill

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The food of Las Vegas is at once awful and awesome, sometimes within the same meal. It is an unhealthy mecca of artery-busting delights.

Yesterday I had the best bite of food I have ever bitten in my life. It was the Rough Cut Tuna Nachos at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill.

I don’t know if I can properly describe the experience to you. The rarest of rare tuna that almost melted on my tongue, dotted with capers and drizzled with reductions of chilis, avocados, and mangos, served on bite-sized puffed corn chips.

I thoughtlessly stuffed my first serving into my mouth and then halted, closing my eyes and sighing deeply as the flavor of it seeped into my tastebuds.

After that, my eating was much more measured. Each chip had to be perfectly arrayed with the correct blend of flavors, less I wind up with a sub-optimal bite of food. Each time I involuntarily closed my eyes once the taste hit my tongue. The experience was downright sensual.

The dish was $16, and included enough raw cubes of tuna for two. I would have gladly swiped my credit card for a $16 charge for every bite.

We will be going back to Mesa Grill.

PS: They also serve Cosmopolitan‘s #1 Must-Drink cocktail: The Cactus Pear Margarita, as pictured above. It was every bit as good of a bright pink drink as that distinction implies (and I don’t even like tequila).

PPS: Actually, we didn’t have a single thing that was less than amazing in the entire meal. Highly recommended.

Crushing On: Rita’s Water Ice

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Philly is a city full of water ice. As a child in the 80s every block of South Philly seemed to have some mom’n’pop store with a cooler of the poor-man’s gelato at the front.

I remember when Rita’s launched its first few chain locations into Philly proper from their base in the burbs. People were understandably skeptical, since to that point water ice was a strictly homegrown phenomenon, with Pop’s being the major local “brand” with a handful of locations.

I instantly loved Rita’s. Every other water place in town had a white, super-sweet vanilla flavor. Rita’s vanilla was brown, slushy, and had the cloying, nearly-liquory taste of vanilla extract. If I was in the mood for vanilla, I’d demand a trip to Rita’s.

After an entire years sans water ice, yesterday after a dinner date I convinced E that there really was a Rita’s nearby and we needed to find it. Lo and behold, not two blocks into our drive we struck gold.

Gold, and their amazing Juicy Pear flavor.

I’ll always love Philly’s homegrown water ice shops, but as chained franchises go you could do a lot worse than Rita’s.

Crushing On: Del Monte Fruit Chillers

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I like dessert. I love cold dessert.

I also enjoy not blowing up my boyish figure like a Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon. You scoff, but I am fighting a genetic profile full of large Italian asses and midsections that expand post-30, and I refuse to go boldly over that particular hill.

But, you see, I love cold dessert a little too much. I cannot pass a water ice or sorbet store on foot without buying a serving. The average shelf-life of a half-gallon of ice cream in my house is 36 hours.

As with many things, strawberry is the best flavor.

Think about that, and then contemplate what happens when Acme has one of those “2 for $5” sales.

It ain’t pretty.

Enter the Del Monte Fruit Chiller. It is basically the best invention ever. Made by Del Monte (kindergarten flashback: they made your fruit cups), the tiny plastic cups start out as a semi-solid fruit slush. However, a few hours of freezer time makes them yummy fruit ice cups that are as a near a neighbor to a fresh fruit smoothie as they are to a sorbet.

(Hot tip #1: Serve with a dollop of peanut butter for a breadless PB&J dessert snack.)

(Hot top #2: Toss two in a blender with some vodka.)

We absolutely live on them. Yes, the dreaded High Fructose Corn Syrup is ingredient number three. But do you know what ingredient number one is? Apples. Basically, Del Monte found a way to make apple sauce awesome for the post naptime set.

Single-serving, satisfying frozen desserts that are non-dairy, made with fresh fruit, 100% of daily Vitamin C, and 170 calories with no fat. Oh, and less than a dollar each in a four-pack.

Sold.

PS: Beware, dieters and diabetics – thanks to sugar content they are 15% of daily recommended carbs.

PPS: This is not an endorsement of the fruit-pop style Chillers. They are creepy. Stick to the cups.

Seeing Both Sides of Salt

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This weekend the New York Times ran a fascinating, lengthy article, “The Hard Sell On Salt.”

The upshot of the article was that New York City and the Institute of Medicine have come out to urge food manufacturers to tone down salt content in their foods, and that this is a battle that has already been lost repeatedly in the past thirty years thanks to deft lobbying efforts from the food industry.

I’ve seen a lot of social media commentary on the article that pulls this quote:

“If all of a sudden people would demand lower salt because low salt makes them look younger, this problem would be solved overnight,” [Dr. Howard Moskowitz] said.

It’s a great soundbite, comparing the lack of enthusiasm for salt-slashing to the embraced push for lower sugar and fat.

However, the salient point that’s unspoken by the soundbit is that companies embraced the idea of lowering sugar and fat because they had a niche demand as well as alternatives that could maintain the taste and texture of their products.

Not only does low-salt lack demand, and not only does salt drive taste – it turns out salt is more than just taste. It’s texture. Witness the consistency changes when some of Kellogg’s key brands are prepared sans salt:

As a demonstration, Kellogg prepared some of its biggest sellers with most of the salt removed. The Cheez-It fell apart in surprising ways. The golden yellow hue faded. The crackers became sticky when chewed, and the mash packed onto the teeth. The taste was not merely bland but medicinal.

“I really get the bitter on that,” the company’s spokeswoman, J. Adaire Putnam, said with a wince as she watched Mr. Kepplinger struggle to swallow.

They moved on to Corn Flakes. Without salt the cereal tasted metallic. The Eggo waffles evoked stale straw. The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no actual butter, simply disappeared.

Was this an elaborate smoke & mirrors demonstration for the benefit of the journalist? Partially. It’s also an example of how our nation’s bad nutrition habits are completely entrenched in our favorite brands.

Will anyone eat no-sugar, no-fat, no-salt Cheez-Its? Maybe the former two, but the Cheez-It is all about salt, and we love it that way.

The undeniable truth is that the majority of America’s culturally-reinforced consumer diet for everything – soups, crackers, cookies, and lunch meats – is built on a giant pile of salt.