I learned early on there isn’t an ‘objective best’ when it comes to #Food. American food media pretends there is but there isn’t. What you like, what makes you happy, what you dislike is as subjective as everything else about you.
Take bánh mì in my neighborhood (Tenderloin in SF). Everybody loves Saigon, and it is the best American sandwich with Vietnamese fillings. It’s huge, and it’s spilling over. I don’t love that in any sandwich so my spot is a Vietnam-sized sandwich with good fillings.
I don’t mean that to say Saigon Sandwich is bad. It’s great. It’s just, the whole package isn’t to my taste. For that I go to Mong Thu, Hello Sandwich or my secret spot (secret because I find it hard to recommend: there is even less English than at the other spots. I end up gesturing wildly to order.)
Many desserts that people love here, I can’t eat at all; while people would find desserts I love to be utterly lacking in ‘sugar’ (East asian dessert be like that)
Some times people ask me for a list of places to eat and I’m like, ‘are you someone who will stand in line for two hours for the best laksa?’ Or ‘someone who just wants a good laksa with no line?’
Most people are in the latter group. But when I come across people I identify as kindred spirits, people like me from the first group, I share a more interesting list.
That’s the fine line in most East and Southeast Asian food in San Francisco for me. A lot of the popular restaurants, they’re doing the food for someone else who isn’t me. And that’s fine! They’ve got to survive. But the spots I love will never make it to any hyped list.
The ‘burbs have less of that because they have restaurants catering to immigrant communities. But in the city I have to be very careful about which restaurants are filtering the foods I like through someone else’s taste.
It’s not even about authenticity. It’s about what they do and how much of a shit they give.
When I have noodles, I expect a restaurant to make a proper broth that hopefully took more than 20 minutes to cook. The spot I love makes their soup over 20 hours.
The difference is obvious to me; to my taste buds, because it’s what I grew up eating. Extremely gentrified spots often take shortcuts I can’t accept.
It’s also confusing on the high end of ‘Asian foods’ in San Francisco. Some places are truly worth the money; some types of Asian cuisines do excel at higher price points. Dimsum, is one of them.
I never have ‘cheap’ dimsum, anywhere in the world. It’s just one of the food groups that is objectively better at a higher price point. That’s different from a gentrified ‘pan Asian’ restaurant serving sloppy gloppy noodles that are no good.
There’s a Thai restaurant in the TL that people love that I can’t stand. You can’t get them to put a single chilli in a dish even if you begged in Thai. They’re Thai and they know what they’re doing but they also know that their selling point is ‘bland Thai food for people for whom garlic is spicy, and we get to be the adventurous Thai spot for them’.
But there are plenty round the corner who can’t do ‘unspicy’ even if you begged. And those are the places I go. Something for everyone.
I have a friend in NYC, and one in Delhi, who I broadly regard to be ‘me but in those cities and for different cuisines’. I just eat everything they like and it’s much more on point than any food critic I can read.
Omnivorous, across diets as well as price points. I don’t like food critics that only do high end food; I’m also suspicious of people for whom only cheap food is good; I want to eat everything, everywhere, especially if I don’t know what it is! (Type of food, not type of protein)
@skinnylatte I'm fine with places having options for those who don't like spicy food (e.g. my wife), but I don't see why you can't do both. Then everybody in a group can be happy.
@Bluedonkey tbh I do not think you can do most Thai dishes well without excessive heat. At least it wouldn’t taste like what I want it to taste like. It’s something I won’t compromise on, so I simply will never have Thai food with people who can’t eat Thai spicy.
@skinnylatte Everybody's idea of excessive heat is different though - my wife will be literally suffering, with her lips swelling up, eating a dish that for me is barely above bland. Two of her nieces were born and raised in Malaysia, one loves spicy food, the other is worse than my wife when it comes to spice levels.
@Bluedonkey i consider Thai and Malaysian food that doesn’t make me cry to be not worth eating, so I would rather eat those with people who agree. I can get French or Japanese food with less spicy people. The spice is central to my understanding of and enjoyment of those cuisines.
For that reason I never want to spend money at Thai restaurants here that refuse to honor my ‘make me cry’ request.
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