Thursday, November 11, 2010

Fatty Love

So I found the perfect food.

No big deal or anything; it's just the planet's most scrumptious combination of flavor and texture in one dish- my food soulmate.

It's a "salad" but not at all the humdrum pile of diet greens that word might conjure. Naturally, there's nothing diet about my food soulmate. It consists of two main ingredients (drum roll please...): fresh chunks of watermelon and crispy melt-in-your-mouth pork belly.


Yup, you read me right. The restaurant Fatty Crab (conveniently and dangerously located a stone's throw from my apartment) serves up this succulent combination of sweet and savory/hot and cold/crispy and soft that is undeniably one of the tastiest things I've ever consumed. For reals.

I'll admit, I hesitated a little before ordering it for the first time. I like watermelon. I like (/would swim in a sea of) pork belly. But together? It's this strange, counter-intuitive combination that makes this salad memorable. Like everything else at Fatty Crab- a Malaysian restaurant where you eat chili-lime-coconut short ribs and soy-fennel-cumin glazed chicken wings with your hands- every bite of the salad is layered with calculated flavors and textures. It's splashed with a rice wine vinegar based dressing that incorporates lime juice, ginger, cilantro, Vietnamese coriander, Thai basil and sesame seeds. In other words, it's fan-freaking-tastic in a way most of us could never hope to recreate at home.

So thank you Fatty Crab and Chef Zak Pelaccio. And, while I'm at it, a long overdue, thank you pork belly.

2 comments:

  1. It's only right that we go to Fatty Cue now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had a watermelon play on caprese salad at a wedding this summer. Watermelon, fresh feta, & basil hors d'ouerves. Grrrreeeeeat!

    ReplyDelete