John Wise

This evening we dined at a local Korean BBQ restaurant. The foods above are the side dishes including Kimchi, spinach, bean sprouts, eggplant, potato, Korean radish, zucchini, deep-fried zucchini, dried fish, an apple, and cabbage coleslaw, black beans, bean paste, fresh garlic cloves and sliced jalapeno, rice, and miso soup. Still to be delivered were our main dishes, lettuce for the bean paste, and a mixed greens salad. Included after the meal is the sweet barley drink Shikhye – all this for about $15 a person.

After having lunch I was nearly amazed at the sight of this van, after all, it is 30 years down the road since the hippies ambled across the country. I sure would like to see someone do this to their SUV or Lexus. Heck, maybe if more of those gas-guzzling SUVs had unicorns, fairies, and stoically poised wolves painted on their fronts, sides, and rears, they wouldn’t be so threatening to those of us driving our miserly Asian tin cans.

I’m checking out of Kitchen Classics on 40th Street and Thomas in Phoenix, Arizona with some new stuff for our kitchen. With the new year came a change in our diet, we are adding yet another level of fresh foods to the plan. While over the past few years I’ve embraced more and more vegetarian meals (while remaining a meatatarian when we eat out) my experience in San Francisco at Cafe Gratitude, the vegetarian restaurant Millennium, Santa Cruz’s Seabreeze Cafe, and Dharma’s Restaurant late last year have opened my eyes to just how incredibly good really fresh foods, even raw foods can be and so its time to throw out the old and bring on the sprouts.

As Phoenix continues its rocketing growth towards becoming a metropolis, the face of the city changes with it. Just 10 years ago a visitor or resident of Phoenix and its surrounding communities would typically have quite a hard time finding ethnic services, today as seen here on the corner of Dobson and Southern in Mesa, you have much to choose from. Sadly, while the rents and home prices climb towards Los Angeles levels, our entertainment options remain spotty and cultural identity is still, for the most part, unseen and uncelebrated in our homogenized ‘town’.