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2009-10-12
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Wants and Needs don't necessarily go hand in hand. You want to eat out, but you may not need to do so; You need to exercise to lose the extra weight but you may not want to. It may be relative whether the two should align anytime during one's life, depending on the circumstances, often times, it is one who makes the call, weighing which trumps the other. Recently for me it's the vivid memory of the whole pork knuckle (comes with sauerkraut and beer) during a trip out west. It's not easy to tackl
This day I just happened to stop by this little joint. The name was familiar, and when I knew I wanted mid-morning breakfast, the name of 紅米粢飯 won me over. 甘香齋 has opened for 20 some years in a different location, it's only recently that they have relocated into this new location at Shell Street, neighboring Tea and Herb just down a few stores. They offer convenient lunches with 8 different varieties of vegetables, soy products, and beans to choose from each day, feel free to mix and match with a giant bowl of soup and a choice of white/ red+ white rice to go with each meal. At $25 (for 2 choices) it's quite a steal in the neighborhood.
I ordered up that 紅米粢飯 and have chilled soy milk to go with. ($13 for breakfast, $14 after 11am). I was greeted by a smiley woman who handed me my order. The soy milk was chilled, but not ice-cold. It tasted lightly sweet. The 紅米粢飯 arrived next -- tightly bound in plastic wrap like any other ones. I looked closely from the outside -- granules of white glutinous rice turned slightly purple -- the colour of lilac, with black glutinous rice bejeweling within. The filling was fried dough, pickled mustard tuber and wait...pork floss? I looked again, it really was pork floss. Turned out, it was one of those vegetarian pork floss -- made with the stem part of mushrooms (unlikely ingredient, but think about a fresh mushroom's stem. When you bite into it, it becomes tiny strands!) I unwrapped the parcel and bit into it -- the textures and flavours were exactly the same with the meat-version, so real I seemed to have forgotten the whole not-eating-meat factor. It wasn't an issue at all when I was eating it, bite by bite. The nice crunch on the mustard tuber paired nicely with the gooey fried dough and the glutinous rice exterior, which also offered a slightly sweeter aftertaste than just ordinary white glutinous rice.
While enjoying this, I was offered some culinary tips by the smiley lady -- turned out, glutinous rice, the black one has to be presoaked and cannot be cooked in a rice cooker (I did not know that). To yield fluffy glutinous rice the granules must be soaked before hand and then STEAMED (she didn't show me how, but I figured it's like cooking basmati rice) That, I didn't know in the first place. The lady was friendly all through our conversation and that made my visit a good one with simple food but good conversations, also made me realize that restaurant experiences often don't lead up to the personal conversation of likes, dislikes, and preferences, and smiles are often in very short supply as well. (sincere ones are scarce among the smiles you get). The service, was enthusiastic and it showed me that these people who have run this little shop for the past 20 some years, have done something right, that they have wanted to do it right and felt to align the needs for their clientele and their own to do things the right way -- not to waste, and to encourage themselves to serve on a mission to promote vegetarian meals for the omnivorous clientele. That, is the kind of charity mission I think that will benefit me not just on the front of health, but others as well.
Note: 甘香齋 closes at 3 pm on Sundays and Public holidays. Other days they close at 8 pm.
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