I have one every year or two, but I'm just not a fan.

Those are touristy spots so we don't go there, but I know where to get good oysters. Let me know if you need some recommendations next time you're in town ;)

I'm with Jbord here -- quality spots in Chicago that sell oysters aren't going to keep them on the menu and ruin their reputation.

Mmmm...po'boys! I also come from a family that serves scalloped oysters (aka oyster casserole) for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I love them that way. I keep trying to convince Mr. CE to make grilled or smoked oysters but no such luck.

Add me to the oyster lovers club! Grilled, fried or raw…doesn’t matter to me. Fortunately for me, I know a couple of harvesters in NJ. Invariably I will just hit the dock…and also wait for the scallop boats to come in. I then shuck at home.
I can absolutely taste the difference in a fresh oyster versus one that is older.

I've had restaurant and hawker (food court) stall food and you can tell who's been using not-so-fresh stuff. Once I notice it, I usually put it on my not to patronize for a long time list. We're just getting through the pandemic, last thing we need is to get food poisoning. I don't get fresh oysters often, but they have to be fresh. If it smells off or hidden by an unusual amount of sauce (or alcohol), I'd be sending it back just so I don't end up sitting on the porcelain throne for the next few days.

baseball tv tonight so mega casual:
raw organic veggies
raw avocado slices
Chicken apple sausages, stove top
assorted potato chips
leftover reheated French fries

my leftover Turkey & Swiss sub, reheated with added avocado


Good, I just hadn’t seen Mention of it. I’ve always loved rice and I was horrified to go to China and eat meals without rice. The stigma was so annoying.

I definitely eat raw oysters at very specific places. Like others said, it’s just EV- for places to serve bad seafood - online reviews will really hurt them enough to make an impact.

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Southern grocery store hot line cuisine at its finest. Chicken fingers, fried okra and greens from Giant Johnson in Jacksonville Alabama. The roll tastes like Kings.

I think that you have mentioned this before.....where in China is rice not served? Or maybe just you weren't eating rice for some reason & I misinterpreted your sentence. And what is the stigma?

I'd be interested to find out. There are certainly alternative favourites (eg, noodles in the south.... dumplings in the north)

That said, I think the Philippines are bigger consumers of rice than the chinese... I remember it being a big thing a few years back that it made the news.

business meals where the Chinese vendor was ordering the menu, or better having their employee order the menu and handle the cash for payment - rice was stigma as “common” food so business meals wouldn’t have any rice. Surely I’m not the only american who’s had to deal with this in China. That whole private room nonsense that isn’t super common in usa fine dining restaurants unless it’s a blatant chef’s table. Maybe fried rice would be served. I went to China a lot in the 90s up to 2006. Don’t miss going. Internet made it easier to not need to go.

I had rice at every meal while in China (including breakfast ) but I was there as a tourist so no business meals like that.

I have been to a few business meals in mainland China, and there was always rice as a side.

Of course I avoided the restaurants serving dog and other domestic pets. I didn’t eat Cuy in Peru, either.

Lucky you! I wasn’t a tourist so it wasn’t really easy to get it. I can’t even recall if it was served at breakfasts which seemed to be also at restaurants. I would have preferred to have it at every meal. Even the meal with the live drunken shrimps didn’t have white rice. Ditto with the cooked snake dishes. Maybe it was the same meal - that was Shanghai March 1998. There were still a lot of people on bicycles during that trip. It changed / gentrified when I was back in fall 2001.
it is possible that I had white rice with lamb at the Xinjiang cuisine place in hangzhou in November 2005 before I caught the bus to go to PVG (Shanghai airport).
Anyway I’m just glad that I don’t have to return to China for now and if I travel internationally then I have other places I’ll want to first visit. I still really enjoy Chinese food in my own city where I live; there really are a lot of Chinese restaurants here and I still get white rice.

I just don't think it's worth the trouble. A lot of opportunities for a bad result in the chain of events from buying the oysters to getting them to your plate. Unfortunately, other than Rockefeller, there aren't a lot of other options for cooked oysters in our area that I've seen. One of the apps I regret not getting in SC was bacon wrapped oysters - that were then dunked into the fryer to cook both. As I mentioned, my wife only likes them raw. She was willing to try it, but I could tell she wasn't thrilled so we passed.

I tried an oyster once. It felt like I had a mouth full of phlegm. I guess I’m in the minority here. I like scallops, clams and mussels. But not oysters.

I started going to China a few years after that. Business and celebratory meals usually had rice (along with the "family" dishes). Usually it was a large bowl of rice either in the centre of the lazy susan or in a rice cooker/warmer in the corner (private room or not). I haven't been in a few years, but I don't think things have changed that much.

I've found that Japanese restaurants often do great fried oysters. (After all, they do great tempura!) I used to always order them at the long-ago closed Naniwa, and I still order them at Sushi Dokku (not listed on the menu, but they always have raw oysters on the menu and are happy to fry them).

I've been through the exact same thing many many times, though in Hong Kong. Not enjoyable for me either.

How can you remember the experience of a mouthful of phlegm? I wonder if you just had a bad oyster. Was it raw or cooked? You enjoy so many yummy shellfish items. An oyster is so pleasant.

I am sorry that you didn’t just order this as your main course. What did you get as a main? Sometimes appetizers are best eaten as the main. I look forward to you returning and getting this dish.

Lucky you. My hosts didn’t have it. As a guest, I never ask anything of a host unless it’s some form of money discount. And usually I don’t ask for that because inevitably I’ll get some price adjustment. Instead I would compare quotes to get a range, if needed. Anyway you are so lucky to get rice.

Glad to know that someone here went to China / Hong Kong / Taiwan and couldn’t get rice. We suffer together in memory. Plus omg these meals waste so much time - surely after spending hours together we all wouldn’t really want supper together as well. Business manners are not always ftw lol

I bought these pasture raised chickens (I also bought they're eggs which are amazing and only $10/dozen) at the local Saturday market last weekend. They're really nice, although not cheap at $25/chicken. I can definitely taste the difference though and they BBQ magnificently. Served here for dinner last night with a salad of BBQ roasted capsicum, tomatoes, onions capers and a chimmichurri dressing.
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Looks delicious! Although maybe it’s the camera angle, but that leg quarter looks small. 25 for a small chicken and 10 bucks for a dozen eggs is a little rich for my blood. Around here, 18 packs of regular eggs are about 1.89. Eggland Best eggs are about 4 bucks, and organic free range are generally 5 or 6 bucks for a dozen
Honestly with eggs, I taste very little difference. (Perhaps my palate is unrefined😀).

Having more time inside I've decided to start cooking for myself more. Only took me some 25 years but I'm getting there. Here is my double bacon cheeseburger on an everything bagel. Nothing fancy but was pretty good.
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It was about 1.5kg which is a pretty normal size for a chicken.

Some of the chickens I've seen in America look like small turkeys. I can only imagine what they're pumping them with.

The finest antibiotics and growth hormones in the world!

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Fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp tonight.

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Fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp tonight.

Ha! It's such a shame that chickens have become flavourless protein. Aside from the awful conditions that most of those animals live in, it's meant chicken is viewed as not much more than cheap filler with the flavour being whatever you add to it. A quality bird is absolutely delicious.

Personally, whether I would have rice or not depends on what else is being served. Sure you generally feel fuller longer, but if there is a generous spread, I'd rather not take up space with rice. Or if I were about to be quite active. That said, if you prefer having rice, just let it be known. Giving some people the chance to fulfill a desire often leads to good results.

I strongly suspect that those prices are in Australian dollars; AU$1.36 = US$1.00.

Looks good and strangely enough has me craving for tandoori chicken for the coming dinner.

1 Australian dollar = close to 75 US cents (i.e., 3 US quarters) on average for the past 12 months. Not cheap in Australia has me wondering how much the same would cost upon flying into PLS nowadays to consume the equivalent.

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Tuesday night mapo tofu and an helles beer from the Costco beer advent calendar (day 12 I believe). Great combo.
Mapo tofu looks a bit strange with all the extra veggies, but be assured it’s still authentic in flavor with plenty of mala flavor from generous addition of Sichuan peppercorns.

A chicken in a supermarket costs AU$8-$9. You can safely assume that 95% of chickens are closer to that price point than $25.

Tandoori chicken is very good. Tandoori lamb cutlets win though, imo.

Turkey tacos - I made one almost like braslvr albeit no tomato and with a tomatillo salsa instead.
come on giants - bases loaded with one out

I still prefer my other ingredients but of course it’s all a winner.


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So true… my chicken thighs are huge. I actually only brine with salt & parsley, then roast with salt & pepper. Ace flavor.

fantastic! This was my thing last year and I’m cooking my luncheon almost daily and then supper 4-5 times a week. I won’t return to restaurants as much as pre-2020.

How do you do your peppercorns? I have zero luck. I first cook them on stove, then grind with a spoon. Zero tingle. I use the nyt recipe and the food is good yet no mala tingle. Sigh. How do you do it with the peppercorns?
do you have a recipe to share?

here’s the nyt screenshot of ingredients.

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This I gotta try at least once. I would not have thought to put a burger on a bagel, but in reality, I try to avoid bread as much as possible lately. I don't remember when I last had a bagel at any meal.

Shrimp quesadilla, sky, surf, and turf dip (fajita chicken, shrimp, and steak in cheese dip with flour tortillas and pick de Gallo): and a skinny margarita.

Try brining with beer and white wine. You can thank me later. ;)

I was kind of thinking the same thing, not at all how I'd describe an oyster. But it's also strange to me that my wife likes them raw and not cooked.

I had a very nice flounder fresh off the boat that day instead. We ended up getting a different appetizer, but I honestly can't remember what it was - possibly some kind of shrimp. There are no wrong choices when your dinner table is on the same dock where the restaurant's private fishing boat is moored.

Both? I've used beer for both beef and chicken, but never mixed with white wine. Equal parts with salt for a brine? I'm intrigued.

RE: Formal Chinese dinners/banquets

LOL...I've experienced the "no rice" thing many times too. I was fortunate enough to have learned a little and have been exposed to traditional Chinese (mostly Cantonese) culture at a very young age. And, if I recall, a banquet or feast for an honored guest is to enjoy food to its fullest where the joy of dining and the celebration of its great cuisine should be in complete convergence, and rice, meant to fill one's stomach quickly, would be a distraction from the 10 - 15 courses the Chef would have painstakingly prepared for his/her guests.

Moreover, not sure it's applicable now, but it was also impressed upon me that there's an etiquette where where one's chopsticks should never touch his/her lips during the feast, since each dish would be prepared in perfect bite size portions. Finally, at the end of the feast, some fried rice (southern China cuisine) or noodles (northern China) would be served where each person will have a token amount, to show homage and respect to the rice/noodle growers who have provided food for the country over the centuries.

Aside from these rare occasions, I suspect everyone in SE Asia enjoys rice/noodles with his/her meals daily. I know I sure do.

I would have enjoyed a fried rice or noodle ending - it was only occasional to get this. Again the worst was having no rice with the drunken live shrimp meal. Or rather, the meal that included drunken live shrimp.

Not sure about now as weddings for me are now few and far in between, but in my experience, typically the last course for a chinese wedding is usually both (several individual bowls of rice or noodles) served to the table, usually not enough of either for the whole table as most people are usually full at that point or move on to a communal dessert table.

My daughter is making Thanksgiving dinner tonight since we won’t be back until after Christmas.

Turkey
Stuffing with sage sausage
Cranberry sauce
Gravy
Roasted root vegetables
Sour cream apple bread

Thanksgiving should be every day anyway! All that food for dinner... my food baby would have its own food baby. :eek: :D

No argument from me! My favorite eating day of the year is the day after Thanksgiving. I make huge sandwiches from the leftovers…,add some sweet potato pie…and life is perfect!

I remember as a kid having a week's worth of turkey sandwiches :D