Talking SCHOP! A Far East Super Bowl …
It is time for the Super Bowl, and it’s your annual time of the year to scratch off the cobwebs in your brain to translate the Roman numerals that follow. This year is the XLIX. OK, X is 10 and placed before the L, which is 50, 10 minus 50, then I is 1 and placed before X so subtract X from I … the 49th! Heavy sigh.
Thank goodness next year it will be just L. No? They are changing it to the number 50 for greater importance? Intriguing, smh (that’s text language for “shaking my head”).
No matter the Roman numerals that follow, the Super Bowl proves to be a great American tradition that will continue, weather or “deflate-gate” be damned. For me, the Super Bowl is more about the convivial experience, the togetherness and, of course, the food.
This year, I have been invited to a party in Harlem and told not to bring anything. I am looking forward to it. However, should I have been throwing a party, I know exactly what we would be eating and I wouldn’t be making it. You see, I have been sitting on a food secret to share with you exactly for this annual event. Come close. The answers lie in the west … side of Manhattan … but from the Far East … of the world.
I do not deny my love of pan Asian foods. Bright flavors, spice and their myriad textures haunt me on the regular. My favorite local Vietnamese restaurant on 108th Street off Broadway had me returning for their food until one day it was mysteriously gone—gone! My stomach was distraught and lonely until I discovered a new Vietnamese haven just a couple of avenues away, Saiguette (935 Columbus Ave. at 106th Street, 212-866-8886, www.saiguette.com).
As I have recommended at most new places you eat, order the basic items first before you go in on the menu. To me, that is a classic banh mi sandwich with pate and pork terrine. Savory meats, sweet and sour pickled carrots, crunchy cucumber, spicy jalapeno and chili mayo all meet in their house-made rice flour baguette. This and a Thai iced bubble tea (yes, this is not Vietnamese, but good!) would be going home with me.
My first dish from Saiguette would open a Pandora’s box of goodness and repeated visits and orders with my inner food circle. They pulled me out of my banh mi box and into a love affair with so much more, not the least of which is their pho (pronounced: fuh), a beef broth noodle soup packed with flavor, noodles and more, served piping hot to flash cook the raw beef in it. It could also be the grilled lemongrass pork shoulder as an entree, in a sandwich, over noodles, in pho—it doesn’t matter. However, there was one dish that said Super Bowl XL—that said Super Bowl 49—and it was wings!
From their ample-sized appetizer menu, it was the red curry variety that captured my food heart. Sweet, sour, bright, spicy, rich, flavorful, messy—all of it! You will not waste a drop of the sauce dripping from your fingers. These babies will need to be ordered immediately and in large amounts. In fact, my inner food circle orders them in pairs just on general principal!
And while you are ordering the red curry wings, add the addictive crispy fried nem spring rolls with pork, shrimp, vegetables and noodles with nuoc cham sauce, some of their various dumplings, the lollipop sugar cane shrimp, veggie nem, summer rolls, calamari, barbecue spare ribs and a few banh mi to cut up. Your inner food crew and guests will thank for scoring big time!
Happy eating and thanks for reading!
Kysha Harris is a food writer, culinary producer, consultant and owner of SCHOP!, a personalized food service offering weekly and in-home entertaining packages. Questions? Comments? Requests? Feedback? Invitations? Email her at kysha@iSCHOP.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @SCHOPgirl or on Facebook www.facebook.com/SCHOPnyc. For even more recipes, tips and food musings, subscribe to her blog at www.talkingSCHOP.wordpress.com.