Random Pictures From Fresno…

…of food. Did you think I meant friends?

I definitely had to stop by and get grub from the family businesses, East Meets West China Bistro and EMW Tea Co. Multiple times. And every time was delicious.

My dad calls these flat (fat?) rice noodles with beef. It’s a new item. Oh ya, I’m going to be impartial once again, and not post my opinion on the food–just pictures.

Broccoli Chicken with Brown Rice. Brown rice is good for the pooper. So is broccoli.

Lots and lots of milk tea from EMW Tea Co. We made a bunch for the Thanksgiving potluck at church. People started snagging these before we were even allowed to get food–animals!

And here is my poochy, Bananas. She is more special than any other dog.

Free Lunch – Which Wich

Preface: I intended to do a series of reviews of the free lunch we received during lunchtime lectures at the medical school. We’re used to getting a variety of boxed lunches from different sandwich and catering companies at the start of lunchtime meetings for academic and extracurricular groups, in addition to school-sponsored lunch lectures. This was the standard lunchtime lecture. At least, it was the standard before the economic crisis. I found out yesterday that the funding for lunchtime lectures has been dramatically reduced, and now there will be fewer lunch lectures with actual free lunches. Oh, woe is me. I’ll still see how this pans out, though, and try to post as many reviews of free lunches as I can. Oh, and I forgot to state the reason for doing so: some lunches are better than others, and I’d like my preference known so that more of these delicious lunch boxes will be bought over disgusting lunch boxes. Yeah, I know beggars can’t be choosers, but whatever–it never hurts to try.

And so I begin my review series with a high-quality boxed lunch from Which Wich, a sandwich chain that I’d never seen on the west coast. If I could describe it to someone from California, I’d say it was like a better version of Quizno’s: smaller, albeit more stuffed, toasted subs. My chicken sandwich looks like turkey because they seem to use sliced chicken (which I rarely ever see). The meat is chickeny and blandtastic–standard chicken fare. There is a little bit of salt so there is actually some flavor. It comes with prepackaged-standard lettuce and tomatoes, and there’s also mustard and mayo on the side. Even though my description sucks, the sandwich really is good. It might have something to do with the bread, maybe the meat (they do have substantial amounts of meat in their sandwiches), but Which Wich is definitely near the top of my free lunch rankings. Also, as with other sandwiches from other shops, it should be noted that sandwiches that come in boxed lunches are basic sandwiches, and that these shops have way better sandwiches on their regular menus–I’m quite fond of Which Wich’s Cuban sandwich.

Each lunch comes with some chips, pickles, and cookies–a deluxe lunch, for sure. Some places give either a cookie or chips, never both, so I appreciated the added luxury of being able to choose both chips and my oatmeal raisin cookie. And I was also able to snag another bag of pickles. Yes, my life is extremely dull. Whatever. I look forward to (hopefully!) eating more free lunches from Which Wich.

Prince’s Hot Chicken Part Deux

It’s been at least a month since Prince’s Hot Chicken last eviscerated my gastrointestinal tract. Like I said before, I knew that the chicken was good after the first bite, shortly before it scorched my insides. So to test my hypothesis, I returned to try their “mild” variety of chicken. Chris–who came along last time and instantly crapped out their “hot” variety–and his buddy Kurt were also along for the return trip.

The mild fried chicken was just as I suspected: crisp even after a 10 minute return trip, moist, and just spicy enough to give my taste buds a little tingle like it was saying “Oh, herro.” We all thoroughly enjoyed the fried chicken because it was prepared perfectly and because it didn’t demolish our guts. That is, until the next day, when I got a visit by the tabasco rim-job fairy. Oh well, at least this time I didn’t have to sprint for dear life to make it to the bathroom. I’ll refrain from writing that story for the sake of TMI (too much information).

Oh, and I’ve yet to find sides at Prince’s that I like. I got the cole slaw this time and it tasted like shredded leaves in buttermilk sauce. I don’t think the potato salad I had last time was all that great, either. If I go again, I’d probably get sides from somewhere else.

Prince Hot Chicken Shack

123 Ewing Dr

Nashville, TN‎

(615) 226-9442‎

Don’t Read This Post On Boba

Before leaving Fresno, I asked my dad if I could bring some tea and boba back to Nashville so I could share some homemade deliciousness with my friends. He sent me back to Tennessee with a five pound bag of boba, six packages to tea leaves (Earl Grey, House Special Black, Jasmine Green, and Thai), a couple pounds of non-dairy creamer, and a strainer. This is enough to last at least two days in the shop, and I have until December 17th to use it all because I don’t want to drag everything back to Fresno–the boba goes bad a month after it’s opened.

However, I won’t talk about how I made boba yesterday. Nope. I didn’t spend an hour slow-cooking boba until it was soft, tender, and bled starchy goodness. I didn’t take the time to explain to my friends that the boba with crunchy innards they were eating from other bobaries in Nashville were stale because shops are too cheap/lazy to make fresh batches daily, or simply because they used instant crap. I didn’t brew a batch of House Special and Earl Grey yesterday, and I didn’t receive grandiose fanfare for spectacular milk tea. And most of all, I didn’t tell people that my black market boba tea shop would be churning out more batches before Christmas.

So since I didn’t do any of that, the Nashville Department of Public Health has no reason tracking down my underground boba operation to shutdown my medical school backup plan. There’s absolutely no shady business going on at all.

Thanksgiving Onslaught

I’ve had a good week to let my stomach recover from Thanksgiving (somewhat–a few of us went back to Prince’s Hot Chicken for round 2 a couple days ago). Out of all the holidays and special occasions, Thanksgiving is my favorite. It’s a food lover’s day. Christmas is for consumerism, Valentine’s is for lovers, St. Patrick’s is for alcoholics who are in denial, Independence Day is for Will Smith, Halloween is for white people, and my birthday is another excuse to get excessively intoxicated. I don’t really care; I just want turkey and gravy in my belly. And yes, I know I can eat that any day, but I need a day dedicated to eating, napping, eating, napping, and repeat.

I started my Thanksgiving day bright and early at 10:30am to pick up the turkey kit from Whole Foods. However, this dinner was not destined to be; my mom dropped a bomb the night before when she told me that we were going to a Chinese church Thanksgiving potluck instead. At the time, I was overcome by devastation. Chinese and Thanksgiving are polar opposites. It took my family over a decade to transition from Thanksgiving hot pots to Thanksgiving turkeys.

Thankfully, there was actually a mix of Western and Chinese fare at the potluck, and I was happy. My stomach, not so much. It was about to burst even before I started on my second plate and way before I started on dessert. On the way out, I also chowed down on some extra chicken wings. I’m a fatty, what can I say?

Side note: I had just finished my exam on the heart, lungs, and reproductive system. As part of the potluck, some members gave speeches on what they were thankful for. One member detailed his story of surviving a heart attack, getting a stent, getting restenosed, and then finally getting bypass surgery. While listening, all that went through my head was the pathology and treatment for each stage of this man’s ordeal. I couldn’t even escape medical school after flying thousands of miles away. Crap.

On Friday, or Thanksgiving Part Deux, I had a respite for lunch when I got some tacos with my friend Viv. It wasn’t really a break for my stomach, though, because I ordered three tacos and a horchata. Dear Stomach, I’m sorry.

Dinner came around, and I was confronted with another feast. At this point in the 48-hour period, I’m not attacking the food anymore; it’s attacking me. I suffered through another glorious Whole Foods Thanksgiving meal, calling it quits midway during my second helping. I couldn’t even entertain the notion of eating Whole Foods’ oh-so-delicious pumpkin pie. It was good food, but I was on the verge of entering food coma oblivion after my second Thanksgiving. I definitely didn’t prepare enough for so many consecutive feasts. It was sorta like “death by schnoo schnoo” on Futurama.

Now that I’m thinking about all this food, though, I’m getting hungry and long to relive it all again. Maybe I’ll be better prepared when Christmas dinners roll around.

Prefeasting – Noshville

Thanksgiving is an event, like a marathon, or going out: you have to prepare beforehand or expect to suffer some consequences, say, pulling your hamstrings after 3 miles or pulling out way too much money to get a good buzz. Try to tackle Thanksgiving without the proper preparation, and you will be in a world of hurt after your second plate of food. That’s why I prefeast: my Thanksgiving version of pregaming. While technically, Noi’s Thanksgiving potluck would be the actual prefeast event, eating breakfast at Noshville was closer temporally to the actual day of destruction. Therefore, I prefeasted with a couple buddies at Noshville Wednesday morning, after a morning filled with not going to class and sleeping in–quite a busy morning, indeed.

I actually heard about Noshville long before I’d even arrived in Nashville, but hadn’t had the opportunity to try it until last Wednesday. It was also my first time trying Jewish deli cuisine. At this time, I would normally try to make some exclamation of delight in the vein of some Jewish outburst, but I’ll try to avoid being offensive. So instead, HUZZAH for potato pancakes!

There was a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar items on the menu. From what I hear, Noshville is pretty good for its kind of cuisine, which is much better than the Nashville ethnic food standard of “I guess it’s satisfactory considering we’re in the South.“

Corned beef hash with scrambled eggs, potato pancakes, and toasted bagel. Surprisingly, in all my brunch-loving years, I had never tried corned beef hash; I even had to ask my friends what it was exactly (I’m usually an omelette person). And you know what? Even though I’ve never had a single bite of corned beef hash in my life, I thought it was delicious! I’m not so sure about the pickling beef business, but it was a mix of potatos, onions, and shredded and lightly sauteed/fried beef–the most winningest combination ever. It was only ever so slightly vinegary, probably more salted, but it tasted like breakfast. Not something you grab and go, but sit-down breakfast, the best kind of breakfast. Potato pancakes, which I’ve also never had, reminded me of herbed hash brown patties, except it wasn’t an amalgamation of individual fried potato strips, more like a fried potato patty. Each dollar coin-sized patty was crisped, not oily, and tasted good with or without ketchup.

After eating all that and the eggs, I didn’t have the room to finish the bagel. This would be the equivalent of pregaming and then blacking out before stepping out of the apartment. Prefeast Fail. Breakfast was probably more like training, a meal that acclimated my stomach to stretching way beyond its normal boundaries. If I ever wake up and muster up some buddies, I’d walk to Noshville more often. Oh yeah, I’d also need rich buddies to pay for me, too, because it’s a little pricey. I’ll have a future post about looking for a sugar momma.

Noshville Delicatessen

1918 Broadway

Nashville, TN‎

(615) 329-6674‎