Thunder and Chinese Food

Okay, so I’ve come up with a few ideas. They don’t look too much like my mock-up of a few days ago, except that the first one is a near reversal of the mock-up (I use an old Hasselblad and everything’s backwards). In the first piece, your eyes are drawn to the left, but to a space that’s kind of confusing, and just not very interesting. It’s that ass in the upper left corner that I want your eyes drawn to–and the images below it seem to have too much weight, drawing you away. Perhaps this is good?

The second piece I feel is easier to look at, and there’s a nice tension between the left and right sides–the eyes are directed into the work through the ass and out the other side–cachoong! I want some fabric in there, though, and is it too simple…?

I want to tell you about my dinner last night, in Chinatown. I’m not going to tell you the name of the restaurant, because you’ll have to promise to take me there in order to get it out of me. $35 prix fixe. My friend Su-Chen organized the dinner, and was one of two people in our group who could communicate with the chef/owner, who speaks only chinese. The eight of us filled the restaurant–Su-Chen, Bob, me, Michael, Denny and Ed, and Jeff and Nick. Jeff and Nick were new to me, and made a striking and dynamic couple–one a furry round software engineer with a goatee and Madras shirt, the other a slim Taiwanese recent MFA graduate with ultra cool brushed metal rectangle glasses and white Guyabera shirt. Anyway, there were 12 appetizer courses, and 14 main courses that I can remember, each a meticulously prepared work of culinary art. The cuisine was based mainly on jiangzhe cuisine, from around Shanghai. Most dishes were lightly sauced, and with a few bright ingredients each, except for a small ham hock cooked in a brown sugar/soy sauce that was the one heavy note, oh wait, and the inside-out fried fish with the sweet tomato sauce. Here are the dishes that I can remember…

APPETIZERS

Boiled peanuts
Pressed sliced tofu
Soft tofu with chinese greens
Drunken chicken
Salty duck
Compressed tofu with malanto greens
Deep fried crispy shrimp
Jelly fish salad
Sliced 5-spice beef

MAIN COURSES

Scallops with egg white
Orange beef
Squid with mystery stems
Kung-pao chicken (you’ve never had it like this!)
Pork with brown sugar sauce
Shrimp
Julienned snow peas and bamboo shoots
Julienned celery and compresses tofu
Tofu and edamame
Wheat glutten cubes with fava and ginko beans
Mushroom and basil skewers
Whole fried fish, with sweetened tomato sauce
Whole duck with yellow plum sauce
Crispy garlic eggplant

DESSERT

Corn and coconut milk soup

Mmmmmmmmmmm….

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