Sitting in room 141 at the Sheraton in Needham, MA. Right off the freeway in the middle of absolutely nothing. Around the corner is Restaurant Depot, which appears to be a distribution center lined with big rigs. (What is it about me picking hotels surrounded by truckers?)
It’s not a great hotel, but at least there’s a fitness center, and that’s what counts. Plus, it’s close to my meeting in Lexington tomorrow.
Got up at 4:30a this morning, so tired I probably should have just poured coffee straight into my eyeballs. Showered, drove to O’Hare, parked, trained and planed. I have been really lucky with parking today. In the economy lot, I landed a sweet spot right by the train. In Boston, an unheard of metered spot on Newbury St, right in front of “Chillin with my Gnomies.” And for dinner? A spot a mere block away from Jo Jo TaiPei, my new happy Chinese home in Boston.
It’s always hard travelling alone for work. Since I’m by myself, I rarely want to visit the nicer restaurants. Dad suggested Ming Tsai’s Blue Ginger, but that’s not the kind of place where you can order tea and read an e-book. So I did a search on Yelp, and found this place, which was a slice of Taiwanese heaven, all the tasty treats I grew up with, from pig ears to shave ice. They even had oyster omelets, like the one I actually had while in Taipei, but I would have felt weird ordering so many dishes when I was clearly the only one eating. So I settled for mei chai kou rou, or braised pork belly with preserved vegetables. This has been one of my favorite dishes since childhood, one I can never bring myself to make at home because the luscious layers of fat always make me feel extremely guilty. Flavors that remind me of home, so far away from home. I also exterminated all the extra calories I burned running with an order of chong you bing, scallion pancake. This was by far one of the best I’ve had. Chewy on the inside, lightly crunchy on the outside, and tasting of scallions and oil. So wonderful. I figured the scallions and the preserved veg would count as my veggie intake, but really, with that much blatant fat, broccoli would have been useless. Then, because I just had to, an order of zhou er dou, pig ears, to go. Now this one surprised me. I like my pig ears spicy, drowning in chili oil and pungent with spice. These were delicately marinated in sesame oil and I don’t think much else. And, it was a light touch. They were shaved so thin, the texture was perfect. What a great find.
Chinese food down, one lobster roll to go. I’m headed to Captain Marden’s tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be more successful about my diet there, though I’m not sure if I can say no, and mean it, to fried scallops.
