Shabbir's Diary

1999 Burning Man Haiku4Beer haiku

In 1999 I started a theme camp at Burning Man called Haiku4Beer. The concept is simple enough: you come to the camp and write a three line poem of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and I give you a cold Japanese beer.

Tono sushi: the best!

I quit commuting and finally moved to DC three years ago this past fall. Since that time, I quit my vegetarian ways and made up for lost sushi eating time, and have been trying every restaurant I could get a friend to recommend. I have found the most inventive chefs in town are Mickey and Hiro, at Tono Sushi.

The other sushi book you must have

After you've started making your own sushi, you'll want to start buying and cutting your own fish. At this point, you need Masuo Yoshino's Sushi: The Delicate Flavor of Japan. It has taught me more about fish and fish cuts than any other resource.

Must-have sushi cookbooks

Sushi by Ryuichi Yoshii is one of my two working sushi cookbooks; get it for your kitchen, not your bookshelf.

Wasabi-flavored capelin roe

For Thanksgiving I made a turkey. But for the weekend after Thanksgiving, I went all out and made gunkan maku-zushi, or battleship sushi. This type of sushi is made with a small, golf-ball-sized amount of rice, a thin strip of nori paper, and the sushi itself. You usually see battleship sushi served for pretty gooey materials.

You want sake! You need sake! Buy it at Naniwa!

I've spent a lot of time looking around the Washington DC area for good sake. While many of the local restaurants have fine sake for consumption on premises, it's a lot harder to find a good grocery store that carries a decent selection of sake.

Han Ah Reum asian market

With the demise of the Asian supermarket Lucky World on Rt. 50, I worried there would be a vacuum in the world of asian grocery stores. I stopped one of the managers in their last month (May 2000) amid empty shelves that previously held a plethora of asian goodies and she said, "business was slow". Luckily, I found Han Ah Reum!

AdCritic.Com gives me what I crave

I just discovered AdCritic.Com through a search I did looking for that famous patriotic Molsen commercial. The site is run by some guy named Peter from Purple Cow.

Sushi in Florida - Fish cocktail surprise

Last week Shabbir and I went on a family vacation to Smyrna Beach, FL, a very sleepy condo town for American vacationers who prefer American food within an hour's drive of Daytona.

You know you need a masu, but where to get one?

masu is the Japanese word for the small, traditional, wooden box for drinking sake out of.  Better Japanese restaurants will keep a stock of them on hand, and allow their regulars to buy their own masu, decorate, and keep it at the restaurant.