The (Impromptu) First Eat

I know I said my next post would be a listing of the restaurants I've passed over the last week or so that have peaked my interest, but everything doesn't always go as planned. After having the opportunity to watch Andrew Zimmern's visit to Birmingham, that I noted in my previous post, I was really struck by some of the places I couldn't believe I hadn't tried. So, since the family and I have been in a power outage the last couple of days, and had to eat out last night, we decided to visit one of his tour stops ourselves. The Oriental Market/Red Pearl Restaurant became the first eat.

All my life, well ever since the place has been there, which has been a while since it was once a Quincy's that went out of business in the early 90s (I remember because I loved their big fat yeast rolls), I have thought it was only a supermarket that sold you know, green teas from Asia and stuff. My normal trip for these types of things is a market in the area of my city known as the Southside, so when I saw that this market had a restaurant on the show I thought, WOW, all this time I had no idea they were serving food too. I've been looking for a new Chinese food staple as well since the establishment I grew up patronizing shut down last year as the couple who ran it returned home, so visiting Red Pearl Restaurant was a matter of perfect timing.

I knew we'd struck GOLD, though, when my guy uttered the words That's that flavor Dragon Express usta have. Why? He's the pickiest non-Asian Asian food eater you ever want to meet. Well, he's a picky eater period, but especially about Chinese food because he swears by the authenticity of all of Asian eateries in the Midwest where he's from. And he stated it about the dish that we ordered for the kids, Chicken Fried Rice Noodles, that contains one of his least favorite foods...eggs. He even ate the eggs!! 

The two of us decided on crab dishes, I the Hot and Spicy Blue Crab and he the Salted Crispy Blue Crab. Blue crab is native to the Gulf region, and is very popular in New Orleans, Gulf Shores, places along the coast. I've grown up eating lots of it since my mom is from a small Alabama town a little over an hour away from Panama City Beach, and begged him to be turned on to it after a cookout/fish fry at my parents home. So we were rather anxious to see what these dishes would taste like with an authentic Asian flare. And boy, it did not disappoint. I often think people on TV make these dishes seem so good, but once I started on my plate and couldn't stopped I realized this is not an exaggeration.

My crab was just the right amount of spicy and onion-y. I was able to try his and the kids plates too, because it is one of those real Asian food places where they bring out enough for the whole table to eat everything and, the freshness of the ingredients, the vegetables in the Chicken Fried Rice Noodles, and the way the salted crab tasted straight from the ocean were things that would make me go running back to try several dishes at the Red Pearl. Needless to say, thanks to day one of this exploration I have found a new (dare I say favorite) Chinese eatery. I'll be back to the store for some seeds for my garden too, thank you very much. Join me over at www.cadiebeasgarden.siterubix.com if you want to find out how the fall plantings of these seeds shipped from Asia turn out.

Oh, and I'm still working on the list...tomorrow, tomorrow. 

Exploring My Hometown With New Vision...Through Food!!

**Note: This is my first post and, ironically, it comes on the same date the Travel Channel has chosen to air Andrew Zimmern's tour of my city on "Bizarre Foods America". Now, this premonition came to me before I knew when they were going to air the show, but I see it as some ironic twist of fate that it'll be airing today, the day I finally had access to the Internet to do my first post. Great sign for me and you as we begin this journey of what it means to explore some place you've known your whole life the way a tourist might, through restaurants and food unique to your city. Here is the link to the article on our local site, al.com: 
http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/07/andrew_zimmern_dishes_about_bi.html#incart_m-rpt-2
Some of the places he visits are actually my FAVES, like The Fish Market and Niki's West. Some I've been to only once, like Miss Myra's Bar-B-Que (the smell of the pit made me stop because I had to try it), and some are on my list to visit during my 52 weeks, like Hot and Hot Fish Club. Either way, it excites me that someone else might see eating around my neck of the woods as "exotic", and hopefully it inspires you to view places you may have seen your whole life in a whole new light and explore them as a traveler would.

I have lived in the same city, Birmingham, AL, all of my life. Well, unless you count my four years in college at The University of Alabama (Roll Tide, shameless plug) in Tuscaloosa, AL and the one year in New York City.
I remember when I first got to Tuscaloosa, though, I had no idea where to eat. I was tired of Chick-Fil-A, one of the common spots at our campus student center, because I had worked there my last two years of high school. Great place to eat when it's once a week, adds a booty++ when you eat it almost everyday. Since my first roommate was a T-town native, she volunteered to take me to a couple of places, and so began my journey of restaurant exposure. I mean, what college student likes to cook in the shared kitchen in the dorms? And since we could eat at places that surrounded the student campus I was like go for it. I got introduced to Taco Casa, mainly because I hated Taco Bell and my roommate worked there, Gutherie's with it's fried chicken finger boxes and "special sauce" (which I loved!). And, I found Ezell's Catfish because I was hard pressed to find some fried green tomatoes on someone's menu. Both of these places native to Tuscaloosa eventually expanded to Birmingham, and, I've kept the affair up. There were places that you could only find in T-town though and those were the fun ones. The diner just across the street from Bryant-Denny stadium, near my communications building, places in Northport and, the world famous Dreamland Bar-B-Q. I also found me some little hole in the wall 'hood restaurants. Needless to say, I became...an explorer. A food explorer.

My need to feed continued once I moved to New York City. I remember when people would ask me how I liked living there I would just go on and on about the food. On my block in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, I could step out my door and have a pizza slice with Jamaican food, or Puerto Rican beans and rice with Jamaican brown stew chicken, the authentic stuff. Then there were places that were more upscale, of course, near where I interned in Manhattan. Trendy places where all of the people from the magazines would eat, to which, since I was not working a "decent" job at the time, I was only privvy to on someone else dime, and they were often delish too. Once I moved to Harlem, I found some of the best fried fish and chips, and continued enhancing my Caribbean palate with Dominican food and Jamaican patties with Cocoa bread. I even got a taste of Egyptian, African and Thai dishes, which hooked me for life to felafels and Thai noodles. And yes I could get some "soul food" in Harlem, but it wasn't anything near the Southern soul cuisine I was use to, so, when I moved back to my hometown to "gain experience", I don't know why this development, this appreciation from food slipped from me. Until, that is, I made my dream of growing my own vegetable garden a reality.

While it inspired me to start a blog about it (www.cadiebeasgarden.siterubix.com, another shameless plug), it's like food also took on a whole new meaning, a whole new flavor. I mean, yeah, I was pregnant, and perhaps that again enhanced the joy of food, but the freshness of the food from the garden made me long for that freshness when I went out to eat, and so I began cooking more at home than enjoying the pleasurable, often entertaining, engaging atmosphere of restaurants. Or, perhaps, what I did is what many of us do. Take for granted living in a place so long and get adjusted to the places we grew up eating and enjoying that we don't venture out in the same way we might if we had no preconceived notion of what was around our block, or, in our metro area to enjoy. Not finding those places with those fresh flavors because we are caught up in monotony. I don't consider myself a "foodie", but, seeing as how I do spend a lot of my time preparing dishes for my family with food from our garden, I do appreciate some good eating when we go out. And it got me to thinking, about exploring my own city for places that maybe I've heard of, or always wanted to eat, or have been tucked away under my nose and made me curious to explore. So I decided to challenge myself to eat at 52 restaurants in my city that peak my interest in 52 weeks. I'm excited about this because in my stomach I've been working on a list that I imagine to be so delicious. And, with no real expectations, I just hope there are no disappointments. 

I'll share a modest list on my next post because I'm certain it will grow on it's own from there. If you care to, please share your thoughts about this, or, whether or not you've ever decided or thought to do something similar in the comments block.

2 Good Eating,

Jasmine