In my reviews, you will notice some of the words and phrases are hyperlinked. I did this for some common (and not-so-common) culinary terms so that the average reader can learn some new food terminology, ingredients, food history, and techniques. But more importantly, the next time you have dinner with the in-laws or significant other, I want you to proclaim with confidence, “This sauce is an abomination!! It’s supposed to be thickened with a Roux!, not corn starch!!!”

TEN ASIAN BISTRO AND SUSHI

For my friend’s birthday, the whole gang went to Ten Asian Bistro and Sushi in Newport Beach. It bills itself as an “Asian Fusion restaurant, that should have been my first clue. Second, it was far from a bistro in the traditional sense of the word. A bistro is usually a small, quaint, moderately-priced restaurant serving down-home comfort food or variations of. This place was huge (with a dance club conveniently attached) and in what must be a first for me, a special charge for large parties that want to sit inside. Because we had a party of 15, we would have to sign a form stating we would spend at least $50 EACH. Let that sink in for a second………..yeah, my thoughts exactly. That’s fucking BULLSHIT. That kind of exuberant pretentiousness can also be found at the AWFUL Linkery Restaurant, where an 18% gratuity is INCLUDED with every check. I will write about my disastrously experience there at a later date, when my blood pressure lowers.

On to TEN. We got to the table and were all introduced to each other. I ended up sitting next to Abilene’s cousin. I think her name is Eleanor, but I could be wrong. I’m horrible with names. Anyways, we decided to share appetizers in order to sample as much as possible on the menu. She ordered the horrendous baked crab/scallops with an “Asian Aioli”. Aioli is a Provençal sauce made from garlic, egg yolk, olive oil. Very basic and usually livened up with lemon juice, Dijon mustard and variations of. It’s basically a dressed up mayonnaise. Ten’s variation consisteded of store bought mayo with a healthy dash of paprika. That’s it. It was a raping of a classic sauce. Not a hint of garlic and the consistency was like slurping on fresh lard. The sauce was a disgrace to the Five Mother Sauces, and I think I just heard Escoffier pounding on his coffin for mercy.

But that wasn’t even the most offensive part. This popular Americanized roll of crab, scallops, fish roe and Aioli can be found on most sushi menus and it’s sometime called a “Dynamite Roll”, “Baked Roll”, or “Chef’s Specialty Roll”, just ask for it and more then likely, they will have it. The best place for such a dish in San Diego is Sushi Ebisu. At Ebisu, this dish is generously served with 8 large Shu Mai-like dumplings stuffed with fresh crab meat and slathered with a nice and simple Sriracha Aioli with Bay Scallops mixed in. Good stuff. But at Ten, they give you FOUR tiny dumplings on each corner of a gigantic dish. In the center is a tiny “salad” of shredded carrots and Daikon raddish which wasn’t even seasoned nor tossed in a dressing. It was rabbit food. The dumplings itself looked shriveled up, overcooked and dried. I’m convinced not only was it overcooked, but it sat under the food warmer for too long. I popped one in my mouth and an overwhelming bitterness cascaded throughout my mouth. “Did they manage to burn this shit?”. Tell me, does that dish to the left look like it was worth $16? I picked up the other dumpling and underneath was a thin crust of failure. Black. A tell-tale sign that it was indeed, left in the oven too long so it not only overcooked the stuffing and shell, but charred the bottom also. I quickly found our waitress and pointed out the suckiness underneath the dumplings and she retorted, “Oh, it’s supposed to be like that”. WTF!!! I wanted to jump up and rip off her revealing low-cut-blouse, push her to the floor and…………..umm…………I digress, I wanted to choke the bitch. How dare she insult my taste buds like that. The only foods worth charring on purpose in this world better have the words, “Blackened” next to it. And it better be followed by “fish”. So I politely told her, “Well then, it’s not what I expected, can you please take it back?”. She took it back, clearly annoyed. Strike One already, or is that three already? On to my Hamachi Tartare dish. they can’t fuck up raw slices of fish,right?

MMmmmm. Hamachi, one of my favorite fish to eat raw next to Toro, just not at Ten. It was listed as a TarTare, classically, the dish would consist of raw ground beef; but in this iteration (and many like it), it’s made up up raw fish. Which is acceptable. Except in this iteration, the cook/chef made a mistake of plating the tender raw fish on a HOT plate. So a protien that is supposed to be served raw is placed on a HOT dish, it doesn’t take a degree in thermal-dynamics to know that a hot plate will gradually cook the fucking fish. Never the less, it passed the all-seeing eye of the Chef-expediter (I’m assuming) AND the server that grabbed it. Do you notice that instead of an opaque look to the fish, there’s a whiteness to it? It’s fucking cooked. Notice those cute little pink balls on top of the slices of cooked fish? Those, are Szechuan Peppercorns , not immensely hot, but they have a lingering bite. And do you know what it’s like to bite into a WHOLE peppercorn, accompanied with a slice of fish? It taste like you are chewing on a peppercorn. The fish gets comepletely lost and all that’s left in your mouth is a numbing sensation. Wonderful. I paid $18 to chew on a peppercorn. “But Tam, you’re a Chef, you should know better,right?”. STFU. It was on the fish, like I’m sure the Chef intended it to be, so that must mean he intended me to eat it. I proceeded to eat the rest of fish sans peppercorn, but it was too late. Everything tasted like a white pepper-formaldehyde mixture afterwards. Also, the Ponzu sauce sprinkled about the plate was too salty. It tasted like straight-up soy sauce. The dish would have sufficed with just a dash of properly-seasoned ponzu and maybe a LIGHT dash of Togarashi for a mild bite, but it didn’t, and I felt like punching myself in the balls. On to the main course, Rack Of Lamb, you can’t go wrong with lamb,right?

Stayed tuned.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that by being a Chef, I get Carte-Blanche privileges when it comes to dealing with people in other industries. Here’s an open rant to quick-thinking, detail-oriented staff at any local gas station….

I was at the gas station earlier and YOU, the 40-year-old-ish lady behind the cash register moved with the grace and purpose-fullness of a retarded sloth. Your hand movements showed no initiative, no motivation, not a single ounce of will to live. Listen, I know you you have a shitty job dealing with smelly truckers and tourists asking you 100x a day, “Can I get the kets to the restroom?” But no-one put a gun to your head when you made that vocational decision (or maybe they did), so while you’re doing it, for the love of God, please smile and do your job effectively. You had a line 10 deep and not once did you call for back-up or show the will to satisfy the customers. You did not smile ONCE in the 12-painful minutes it took for me to get to you. I wish I had the power to fire you on the spot.

Ingenious. I think I might need two.

“Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges makes life worth living.”

So it’s finally my “weekend”. I used the cute quotation marks because it really isn’t a weekend like for most nine-to-fivers. Instead, in the food industry, a “weekend” can be Saturday and Sunday all rolled up into one day. In my case, this week, it’s a Friday. I know, I can hear you all cheering. But it’s not that jovial for me. You see, normal clock-punchers are off Saturday and Sunday. So I’m off Friday, wooopty-do. Most of friends are working. “Go out at night”, you say? I have to work Saturday afternoon, not enough time for curing a hangover. As you get older, it takes more time to recover. I can’t even party two nights in a row anymore without my head feeling like midgets are wrestling inside. But anyways, you want to know what else? I’m off Friday. Great. Ninety-nine percent of people in my business work on Friday nights because ninety-nine percent of the nine-to-fivers go out to EAT on Friday night. So that leaves Tam sitting at home, surfing the net for unusual stories like THIS