June 13, 2014
Dinner: Ah Loong Grilled Fish Seafood, Jinjang.
I love the picture for many reasons: The demolished plates that once held a feast, including two types of crabs, fried rice, yin-yong sotong, and other dishes I can't remember (was there dessert? maybe, maybe not, we were too caught up from the trauma of stuffing our faces); the crab-shells scattered about like casualties of a (yummy) crustacean war; an empty pack of cigarettes that marked the satisfying end of a good meal.
I didn't know much about Ah Loong Grilled Seafood in Jinjang, aside from its reputation for serving Chinese food with a little MasterChef-fy twist on some dishes (charcoal tofu, anyone?). I do know, however, that I like my restaurants to under-promise and over-deliver.
It's easy to get enamoured by the arrival of famed restaurants helmed by Michelin-starred chefs -- The Nobus, Tim Ho Wans, and what-have-yous -- while forgetting that some of the best dishes are prepared by unseen chefs who are too busy cooking to be interviewed, let alone be featured on magazine covers. Ah Loong -- with its plastic chairs, bare floors, and dodgy toilets -- is a reminder that the best restaurants are those that let the diners do the cracking, and the food do the talking.*
In writing about food over the past few months, I've become wary of the glorification of chefs in today's food writing, and fear that mine will give way to the "pomposity and sermonising" that The Atlantic's BR Meyers writes about in The Moral Crusade Against Foodies.
"References to cooks as 'gods,' to restaurants as 'temples,' to biting into 'heaven,' etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face."
In other words, I worry that one day my head will be so far up my ass that I might call a RM300 meal at Nobu a good deal, describing how orgasmic and transcendental their Black Cod with Miso is. I've no doubt that if I ever do have a bite of it, it will be fantastic, but let's get our heads straight: An orgasm is an orgasm.
So that night was all about forgetting the posh and stuffy restaurants, with its reclaimed industrial chicness, and name-dropped chef: As a group, the LGFT** chatgroup crew been disappointed at the overpriced servings at Hit & Mrs ("cheat my money," as one said), and the miniscule helpings at Torii (we made up for it by drinking).
That night was all about giving M a feast worthy of the group's name before she went off to Africa for a year-long work assignment. That night, we reminded ourselves that the best feasts requires just two simple ingredients: good food, and great friends.
*As it turned out, the dishes spoke in French-accented Chinese: butter escargots with chilli, honey-fried baby squid, butter crabs, and steamed clams. And in case you're wondering what that sounds like, click here.
**Let's Get Fat Together, a group name that M came up with after we decided to go to Wondermama for dessert after stuffing ourselves with butter chicken at Sin Kee.