Sik Gaek

[March 11, 2011]

Dear softrice fan:

I wake up in the morning and feel extra handsome today.  It is not because of my natural good looks or the way I am dressed.  My elevation is simply a feeling.  Yet my emotional positivity does not transfer over to sociability.  I am meeting a larger group of people for dinner tonight, which I have not done so since my fall, but the seafood hot pot for live octopus, lobster, and abalone requires more stomachs.  To achieve my mission of sharing the new and different with lover, I conquer my uneasiness.

I do not believe in friendship, but I am open-minded.  If a friend wants to save me as Peter did with Kitty in Ultimate Spider-Man #155, I would accept the invitation as well.  I need amazing friends, not casual friends.  I do not want to be your friend because you are friendly and easygoing.  I want to be your friend because I gave you Hell and you went through it all to be friends with me.  There are no trials or labors to prove your mettle.  Let me feel I am worthy with your presence; live through the crazy by my side.  If you cannot handle my crazy, well then, run back to your mommy and move away to Wisconsin.

Mother Nature is on a crazy this morning.  I go into work and I read news of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake hitting Japan, resulting in a tsunami that slams its northeast coast.  The following videos are the first I have seen of a tsunami.  The live news feed lacks the terror and excitement as carried through from end of the world movies (those prophets are fools; I am not ending the world with lover on it), but effectively communicates the enormity and futility against such planetary powers.

I saw successive waves, expanding as wide as the screen can see, creeping onto shore and washing away everything in its path.  The destruction is a foundation of water, topped with debris and fire.  Within seconds, the tsunami engulfs the farmlands.  There is no time to run.  Those in cars are probably not adhering to speed limits.  I would not.  In the cities, the flooding topples apartment buildings, flips over ships, and rearranges automobiles, as toddlers would play with rubber ducks in a bath.  I cannot comprehend two onlookers, casually viewing the flooding of their city, atop a bridge.  I would react and flee with greater urgency, than to stay and watch.

People watch the news and they are heartbroken.  I have no sympathies or condolences.  I scrutinize the news only as a curious learner, heeding the lessons of a precedent.  If New York had a tsunami, what is my contingency plan?  How would I get from midtown to downtown to save my loved ones?  Where should we flee to afterward?

I am not the only one without answers.  Mandy was supposed to go to Japan for a one-week vacation with two girl friends in two weeks.  The plan is now on hold.  Her contact in Japan says Tokyo has power outages, shortage of food and water, and uncertainty over radiation leaks from their nuclear reactors.  A cancelation is probably the best option, but she is unable to get a refund on her flights from Expedia or MasterCard, and a hotel in Osaka.  Hence, Mandy is hesitant on her decision.

Burger Heaven
Nine East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
212.752.0340
www.burgerheavenny.com

For a midtown lunch, my coworkers – Thomas and Wendy – came along with me to Burger Heaven.  Businesspeople come simply to fill their stomachs, while tourist families take pictures and film their visit here, most possibly, because The Apprentice featured the restaurant and made the chain famous.  Burger Heaven certainly did not make their name from their mediocre food.  I had a Cheeseburger with Muenster cheese, lettuce, and tomato, along with snacking on some fries from Wendy.  The burger is not as bad as Honey claimed, but it does fall below the standards set by Five Guys.

Food: D
Drinks: N/A
Dessert: N/A
Ambiance: D-
Final: D

I had nothing to do for my entire day at work.  I even called Honey to entertain away over an hour of my boredom.  Near the end of my day, as I am ready to leave work and meet up with my fellow diners tonight, my manager emails me to let me know that we have a meeting with the Americas head in half an hour.  I try to go to his room to hasten things along, but he is not even at the office himself, so I wait.  When the time came to meet, I go to the manager, only for him to tell me that he needs five minutes to himself.  Half an hour later, I unilaterally decide he does not need more time to himself, at the expense of my personal time.  I stand in front of his closed doors, so he would notice my presence through a transparent part of the wall.  My obnoxiousness works and my manager finally waves me into his office to have our meeting.

At 6:00 PM, I listen to the voice message that Honey left me as I was in my meeting.  They are all waiting for me.  Her younger sister, Janet, got off work early as a dental assistant in Times Square, and is already with the group.  I have to remind myself that Janet grew up from when I remembered her, at Chinese student events at Pace University.  She was in high school going onto college then.  Janet graduated from Hunter College and is a working professional now.  I know this, but it does not stick.  I call and meet up with my softrice team across the street from Radio City.  Asides from Mandy, Honey, and Janet, there is a surprise guest, Chi, who Janet brought along.

With service disruption on the 7 train, we take the subway into Queens and then transfer back on the 7.  We have to let one train go first and wait for the next, because sardines of people were there before us.  After we get off at Roosevelt Avenue, we walk a few blocks to Sik Gaek.  I do not like its location.  The restaurant is right along the tracks, next to a pile of garbage and a garage, and we do not see the reported nearby cemetery, which would have added an eerie sense of interesting to our adventure.

Sik Gaek
49-11 Roosevelt Avenue
Woodside, NY 11377
718.205.4555
www.sikgaekusa.com

Sik Gaek is the Korean equivalent of a Chinese restaurant, with their culinary specials listed in Korean writings on wooden tags throughout their walls.  The restaurant name means, “dining guest”, and their customer pride shows through photographs of past patrons, posted on the walls along with signed dollar bills.  (The latter decor reminds me of 66 Bayard Restaurant.)  Korean pride extends to t-shirts of their sports teams and posters of their celebrities, which also decorates the restaurant walls.

The five of us sit in a corner table, with a grill at its center.  As a Korean restaurant, the majority of their tables have barbecue grills for Korean marinated meats.  They are set apart from other Korean restaurants for their offerings of live octopus.  Therefore, there is a white rimmed tank to house these octopuses, temporarily, until paying customers order their deaths.  A bigger tank for lobsters underneath serves the same purpose.  I feel bad for their cramped quarters.

Dinner begins inexplicably with three fried eggs.  Before ordering, the waiter fires up the grill, cracks three eggs onto the frying pan, and leaves us without an explanation.  Someone should come over and walk us through the process.  We did not even know if we were to finish cooking the eggs ourselves.  As we peruse the menu, the girls were frantic that the eggs would be overcooked.  I take a long wooden spoon in attempts to flip them over, which signals the waiter to come over to the rescue, flip the eggs, and eventually take them off the pan, onto a plate.  I divide the fried eggs and give everyone an uneven share to start our meal, but I am left wondering why they fried three eggs to serve the five of us.

Acquiescing to our hungers, we munch on complimentary cucumber and carrot sticks with special sauces until our food arrives.  We ordered the Fresh Octopus Hot Pot, which comes with two live octopuses, so we directed one octopus to boil alive in our seafood hot pot later, while having another sashimi-style.  The Fresh Octopus comes out as squirming, dissected octopus tentacle chunks, atop a large lettuce (so they would not stick to the white plate), and mixed in with jalapeno circles and garlic pieces.  This dish comes with two side sauces – sesame and hot.

When the Fresh Octopus arrives, Mandy, Janet, and Chi take out their Blackberries to take a picture of this exotic cuisine.  I am the only one with a decent camera, a red Canon PowerShot SD780 IS.  Honey is the only left out.  She says she can take the pictures from us, but her excuse is invalid because she will not care to swipe our octopus picture for her own safekeeping, and she would not take a picture with her Blackberry even if none of us had cameras or camera phones.  I nudge Honey onwards to start taking pictures of her food and to upgrade to a professional camera.  That is where I will have to go next, and although I am anti-social, I thrive only through competition.

Based on an earlier compliant from Honey, wherein her lunch mates must always give a bathroom comment, I throw my two cents in for our dinner.  I tell Honey that the fresh octopus will come out the same as it goes in her throat.  She thanks me and chomps her first time life experience of a live octopus.

I try my first piece of a fresh octopus tentacle chunk without any sauces.  It tastes like vagina.  I have no other way of putting my first thought.  The suction cuffs do not stick on your tongue as your bite or on your throat as you swallow.  The octopus may squirm on the plate and the chopsticks, which increases the difficulty on firmly gripping a piece, but once it is in your mouth, it does not move.  The chewy texture gains strength as you reach closer to its center.  However, without the condiments, there is not much taste.  The sesame sauce is overly salty, although my octopus did swim a while in it before I was able to fish it out of the sauce.  Nonetheless, I prefer the Korean hot sauce.

A pleasant surprise is Janet.  The youngest of us eats the most pieces of the fresh octopus.  Honey and I try it for the novelty, and cease after we had the experience.  Janet continuously takes more pieces to eat throughout the night.  It is pleasing to watch a companion enjoy her meal, even if it falls bland on my palate.  Janet is comfortably able to take and dish from our conversations too.  I like her.

Our table receives next a complimentary plate of Spicy Rice Cake.  These are cylindrical Korean rice cakes, drenched in their hot sauce, and mixed with vegetables and triangular pieces of egg.  I like the straight-forwardness of this comfort dish.

Honey ordered us a Seafood Pancake, but a better name for would be Squid Pancake.  Other than squid rings, scallions, and shredded carrots, we do not see or taste other seafood in this pancake.  This might not have been the best pancake to order, as the squid does not taste that much different from the octopuses we were already having for the night.  We are overfilling on cephalopods.

Koreans must have a love affair with eggs, because our next complimentary appetizer is two small, black pots of Steamed Eggs.  Someone from our group says this makes five eggs, adding onto the previous three fried eggs, for the five of us.  Such mathematical reasoning makes no sense, but the waiters at Sik Gaek offered us no legitimate logic to follow.  I ate most of a pot of steamed egg, because I really did not like eating the other food we ordered.

Our main dish is the Fresh Octopus Hot Pot.  It comes with a live octopus and a live abalone, boiled alive before our very eyes.  The kitchen chopped the lobster in half before throwing it in with the pot, along with crabs, shrimps, conchs, flukes, clams, whole baby octopuses, squid rings, fishcake, vegetables, mushrooms, kimchi, and udon.  I fish to the very bottom to get udon, as the seafood cooked its life away on the grill fire.  Simple food is the best.

The waiter gave us two plastic buckets to toss out the shells.  Add this on with the plastic short stools at the smaller tables, Sik Gaek has the feel of Hong Kong street restaurants, without the cultural fun.  This cheapens the setting.  The meal is neither classy nor fancy, but that should never have been our expectation either.

The live octopus is about the size of my fist.  I thought the octopus would attempt a breakout, but he simply accepts his fate, only slightly moving his tentacles about his dying compatriots for a last embrace.  It is cruel and unusual to watch these lives boil to their deaths.  This is animal cruelty.  I wonder where the animal rights activists are.  I wonder how the Department of Health allows this.  The only thing I do not wonder is how easily I can push aside my morals and beliefs for another story to share with lover, because I have always been an ends over means god.

The horrific massacre of our seafood dinner gives me pause.  If this is how we treat our food, imagine a world where we are the food supply.  When giant minotaurs rule the Earth, they will butcher humans as their meat.  There will be human packing industries, whereby they will slaughter, dismember, and wholesale our meat and organs to feed their appetizers.  Their delicacies will include our innards, grilled hearts on a stick, brains spread atop bread, testicles, sperms, embryos for nourishment, and live human hot pots, as we cook our octopus tonight.  After they eat the human supply low, the giant minotaurs will initiate human breeding pens, to farm a replenishment of their food supply.  When their patience outgrows the norm of human aging, they will inject growth hormones to accelerate the cultivation of their meat.  When you look at the world this way, does what we do still seem right?

As a stunned table listen to my brilliant worldviews, a waiter returns with gloves and a pair of scissors to cut the octopus, abalone, lobster, crab, and conch.  Honey and Janet voice that they want such a powerful pair of scissors for their household.  The waiter corrects their misassumptions.  He says the pair of scissors sucks.  His hands are the actual providers of strength that tears these crustacean shells in half.  The girls should consider buying his hands, I jest.

I believe in survival of the fittest.  The lives that make our dinner tonight do not have the power to fight back, as they are boiled alive in a pot or cut into pieces, so they deserve to die and we deserve to eat.  This is the tao of life.  If you watch nature, whether it be animals, plants, or germs, life is simply about living on.  Lover encourages me to be a survivor, and she gives me the strength to do so, but I struggle nonetheless over emptiness and meaninglessness as I pursue my essentialism.  I can appreciate the finiteness of life.  Yet I lack insight as to why there is eternity.  Perhaps that is a question even gods do not have the right to ask.  I ought to answer something closer to my relevance.  If life is about survival, what means will I go through to avoid extinction?

Armed with a question to answer, I have direction to reborn myself.  I have died and recreated my identity too many times to address.  I simply am.  Now I shall push myself towards extinction and bring forth a worthy self, deserving of life anew.

Lover thinks I am smart, so I will be her smartest.  Lover wants me to improve, so I will be the best.  I am competitive, dominating, and competent.  I will not let anyone be better than anything I can do in her eyes.  Eating out is the battlefield for my softrice missions.  Think of me when you think of restaurants.  Think of my love messages when you think of business cards.  I will expand my knowledge of neighborhoods, cultures, and people.  Food is the bridge.

To advance (and to advance as fast as I want to), there must be sacrifices.  One such deemed unworthy to continue living is the abalone.  To its honor, its death will advance the story I want to tell lover.  Contrary to Yelp reports, our live abalone did not move like a living pussy.  After the edible sea snail had boiled to death and cut to pieces, the softrice team tasted Korean cooked abalone for the very first time.  I prefer the abalone sashimi I had with Honey at Kanoyama.  This was as rubbery and tough as the other overcooked seafood in our pot, which are unmemorable and forgettable.

Janet is the new girl in my life, so I am nice to her (still).  Thinking I found the last piece of abalone, I give it to Janet.  Suspicious arose whether it was abalone altogether.  Drooling over my handsomeness, Janet returns the abalone for my consumption.  My happiness is her happiness, my satisfaction is her satisfaction, and unwittingly, my pain is her pain.  I place the last piece of abalone in my mouth, and it melts like a rotten, dead, sea creature.  Full of disgusting comfort, I immediately spit it back out into the bucket.  Janet and the team were horrified on my behalf.  This is what I get for being nice.

I needed a team for this mission because Mandy read on Yelp that this seafood hot pot could feed a small army.  Even with the five of us, we had enough leftovers to feed another five hungry eaters.  Yet none of the other tables at Sik Gaek seemed to fit a bigger group than six.  We must be small eaters.  My need to experience a live octopus (and abalone) dinner reaches completion, at the waste of a lot of food and sea life for our escapade.

Ever since my fall, I have not had group dinners.  Tonight was an exception, only to complete what I sought to achieve.  The experience does not revive my interest in having more of them, unless there is an absolute need for it again.  Group dining is simply not quality time spent together or conducive for bonding between members.  It is only about the mission and nothing else.

Misled by Yelp reviews, I spread rumors to the group that the cooks will use our hot pot sauce to make fried rice.  Mandy strengthens this lie, because she had read the same.  Unknowing of such a thing, Janet worries that she has been drinking the sauce all along.  I quickly comfort her with the obvious that there is more than enough sauce left.  We inform the waiters that we were done with the hot pot, thinking they would extend our dinner with the fried rice, but they give us free shots of cucumber juice and the bill.  We were not getting seafood hot pot sauce fried rice, discrediting me and disappointing everyone.

Food: F
Drinks: N/A
Dessert: N/A
Ambiance: D+
Final: D-

The raw, diced octopus tentacles were no longer moving.  Janet and I used our chopsticks to poke the fresh octopus plate.  They come alive again and squirm for our sick entertainment.  Janet even gobbles a few more pieces before we leave.

On the train ride back into Manhattan, the team discusses dessert and karaoke plans.  Although it breaks her heart to part from me, Mandy ditches us to return home.  She does not want to stay out too late.  After all, I am as good in dreams as I am in divine presence.

Little Cupcake Bakeshop
30 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
212.941.9100
www.littlecupcakebakeshop.com

The softrice team makes a stop at the Little Cupcake Bakeshop, for us to pick up desserts and Chi to prove to an unbelieving me that there is a cupcakery in Nolita.  He wins the battle, because Little Cupcake Bakeshop does exist.  (I had walked pass this before, but did not keep it in mind.)  However, I win the war, because with the confirmed existence of Little Cupcake Bakeshop and their delicious sweets, I have a new dessert spot to share with lover.  She and I do love our win-win situations.

Chi recommends the Peanut Butter and Blue Velvet Cupcakes.  Lover likes peanut butter, and the blue velvet is different from the omnipresent red velvet cupcakes, so I do give them considerations.  Additionally, I see a Strawberry Cupcake, which is an attractive light pink color, and lover is a huge fan of strawberries.  I add it to my lengthening consideration list.  A moment later, Honey discovers a Dreaming Princess Cupcake, and I discard my mental consideration list altogether.  Dreaming Princess is such a beautiful name.  Lover is a sweet princess and my dream girl, so I will have a matching cupcake to her merits.  Honey and I order the last two Dreaming Princess Cupcakes, whereas Chi and Janet choose to have two Blue Velvet Cupcakes.

Food: N/A
Drinks: N/A
Dessert: B-
Ambiance: C
Final: C+

We take our cupcakes in a cute, pink takeaway box and go back on the subway to our next destination.  The first stop is Chi’s home, to pick up his car, and then we were on our way to 100 Fun.  Honey did not bring her ID and panicked over whether they would let her in.  It is weird to me that she does not carry her ID with her at all times.  We nicely asked the bouncer and his manager if it is okay for Honey to come in with us, and they let her in with no problems.  You can solve so many things by asking nicely.

100 Fun
932 60th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11219
718.436.8883
www.100funusa.com

The hostess takes the four of us to a small, dark room, right by their open bar.  I feel cramped in the space, wherein the television screen glows directly into Honey’s eyes, giving her a headache.  Their remote controller sucks as well.  For every song, we have to press the skip button to avoid repeating the same song and we have to press the vocal button on each time.  We discover later that the first problem is because we kept pressing for the song, which is why it repeats.  Regardless, the settings are more difficult to navigate than necessary.  I prefer the modernity and ease of K One.

Due to popular demand from my fans to sing Linda Chung songs, I start my concert with the Heart of Greed sub-theme song, Appreciated, a duet by Raymond Lam and Linda Chung.  The music video with screens from the TVB series recalled all my sweet memories of Sheung Joy Sum.  This is my favorite Linda Chung role to date.  Sheung Joy Sum is so cute!  Linda Chung is the best!

Janet follows my performance with Love Without Regrets by Raymond Lam.  She wanted the music video, but I gave her the concert version, thinking it would have the water drenching a half-naked Raymond Lam.  It did not, but everyone enjoyed singing, “let go”, in the lyrics anyway.

Honey and I had Honey Tea.  The drinks came in Little Mermaid mugs.  Ariel makes me smile, because she reminds me of lover.  Chi is an alcoholic, so he drinks beer and shots.  I would play with him some more, but he is the driver.  The group gets two rounds of Japanese Slippers, a sweet alcoholic shot with half a cherry in each.  We all like this drink.

In terms of midnight snacks, we order Fried Fish Balls and Fried Chicken Wings.  The girls liked the chicken wings so much that we eventually place another order for it.  I prefer the peppery fish balls.  You poke a toothpick in one and eat it up.  To consume the chicken wings, you have to work through the bones, which is too troublesome for me.  I would consider eating more of the chicken wings if Janet went through the trouble of deboning the wings and pulling out the meat for me.

Food: D-
Drinks: B
Dessert: N/A
Ambiance: D
Final: C

Since I am the only one in our quartet that knows Chinese, I represent by singing Chinese songs, while the others sing English songs.  To give them more Linda Chung goodness, I sing her Thinking of You Day and Night.  Then Honey requests Fairy Tale by Michael Kong.  She really likes this sad melody.  I am indifferent towards this song, but it is easier to sing, even if it is Mandarin, because it is a slow song.  I have more time to catch my breath.

Chi commented that all Chinese songs were sad and depressing, so I chose some happy songs to sing.  This would be Babaya and Show You, both by Elanne Kwong.  Chi asks what Babaya means.  I do not think it means anything.  It is just fun to sing.  I like Elanne Kwong, but Honey continuously refers to her as the plastic girl.

I end the night with Hint by Linda Chung.  (I cannot wait for her new and third album, releasing at the end of this month!)  We get the bill and see that we under ordered for our money, so we get all shots, eight Japanese Slippers to down and leave.

Honey newly refurbished her house and just installed cable, which comes with three months of free bunny ears.  With much energy flowing from accompanying my awesomeness, we have much more free energy to entertain the night away.  Honey and I go back to her home, watch bunny ears, and eat popcorn.  Life is good.

Always in a puff of smoke,

softrice