the perils of being a foodie are vast and undettered by sanity

[gyzym]

HERE IS A THING I HAVE NOT YET TOLD YOU GUYS: I have been to Hawaii before! And now I'm going to talk about it, kind of, ish. Sadly, this post is not about:

a) How beautiful it was
b) How wasted that trip was on my 15 year old self (I had a bit of a stick up my ass at fifteen, if by 'a bit of a stick up my ass' you mean 'an inability to take out my headphones and reign in my overwhelming teenaged bitchiness for five minutes')
c) SERIOUSLY SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL OH MY GOD
d) How ridiculously lucky I was to have the experience or
e) All of the totally amazing things I got to do there.

I could talk about all of those things--at length, oh man, fucking Maui, so incredible--but this is a post about chasing dragons.

Food dragons.

So, right, I'm pretty sure the term 'food dragons' is one of those that my family just made up (remind me to tell you guys the bijillipede story one of these days), so I will explain. There are certain things that you eat, okay, that are so good they stick with you, and you remember them fondly--everyone has these things. Normally, you just cook/order these dishes again, and have them another time. But sometimes, for whatever reason--location, restaurant goes out of business, ingredient stops being available, what have you--the item in question is no longer available.

Then it becomes a food dragon, and you are, officially, chasing it.

I have a couple of major food dragons. There was this place we went to for lunch sometimes when I was a little kid that sold the best French fries in the world, for example, and all other French fries still pale in comparison; there's a bar in my college town that sells this cucumber vodka that I long for on a regular basis.

But my greatest food dragon--the one I am forever chasing--is ahi poke.

So poke, right, is a traditional Hawaiian dish, that can be made with many different kinds of fish (everything from ahi to octopus, dfdsfhdskf SO MUCH FISH OH MY GOD *SALIVATES*). Ahi poke is the most common form of it nowadays, and it is...you guys, okay, it is the freshest most delicious raw yellowfin tuna in this world, chunked and covered in this like. This fucking sauce, oh, Christ, the sauce, that somehow manages to be salty and a little bit spicy and, look, AHI POKE IS THE FOOD OF THE GODS.

The first day we were in Hawaii, I ordered it, because the words "raw yellowfin tuna" have been my siren song since I was old enough to know what they meant. And then I literally ate nothing but ahi poke for, seriously, the rest of the trip. You can buy it in the grocery store, okay, I ordered it at every single meal, I ate so much of it that my father was like, "One of these days I am going to turn around and you are going to ACTUALLY BE A TUNA."

I rolled my eyes, because me being 15 wasn't pleasant for anyone, and ate another piece of fish.

But here's what happened, you guys: ahi poke ruined me for all other tuna. I can't eat seared ahi, because even when I order it rare (the words "No, seriously, as raw as you will give it to me, preferably still swimming" have been uttered by me at many a restaurant) it is not rare enough. I can't eat tuna sashimi, because it is never as fresh, and it is never coated in that sauce. I can't make it myself, because every time I have tried it is inferior. I can't eat ahi poke made here in Cleveland--I've found it on menus a couple of times--because it just does not taste right.

Ahi poke is a food dragon to such a degree that I have to actively avoid thinking about it, because it makes me want to do crazy things like spend all my money on a plane ticket to Maui and eat nothing but it for the rest of my days. And by and large, I have shaken my thoughts of it.

BUT HAWAII FIVE-0 IS MAKING IT DIFFICULT. And so mostly this post exists to say: I love this show, I do, I really do, but every time they mention food I think WAAAAAAH AHI POKE FDJHSFHDSKF, and it is making it hard to concentrate.

In conclusion: there will be a new H50 fic up later today, and probably more this week, but I'm weeping on the inside, you guys. Weeping for my lost food dragon, forever ahead of me in the mire of inferior foodstuffs I choke down on a regular basis.

I know. My life is deeply tragic. I'm sad for me too.

Comments

[dogeared.livejournal.com]

Oh I love this story (though not the fact that you can't find the right ahi poke again!). But what an amazing memory to carry all that time!! My aunt lives on Oahu, so when I was little (very little!), she used to come stay with my grandparents in New Jersey(!) for several weeks every summer, and we'd go stay in her apartment in Honolulu—I think we went for maybe six summers. And because I was so young, I just have these little flashes of memories about collecting shells on Waikiki beach with my mom, the hay smell of the grass mats we unrolled to sit on, guava juice and fresh pineapple juice and rainbows and geckos and koi ponds and the cardinals and the aquarium and glass-bottomed boats . . . so anyway, yes, watching H50 has stirred up a lot of that—and made me desperately want to visit again and experience it all now that I'm not much younger than my mom must have been when we went. :D

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

OAHU AND NEW JERSEY, are you secretly Grace all grown up, IT'S OKAY, YOU CAN TELL ME :D :D :D

Oh man, so, the other really strong memory I have of Maui is...we went to this, I don't even know how we found it, I think we were on some tour, but it was this waterfall and this little teeny tiny freshwater pool it fell into. And we were allowed to swim in it--god, in retrospect, this is such a touristy story, but WHATEVER--I swam in this pool, and it was so much deeper than it looked, there was sunlight coming over the edge of the rocks surrounding it, and all this lush, verdant green everywhere, and it was maybe the most beautiful moment of my life.

I am right there with you on wanting to go back now, when I can properly experience it, because it is just such a transcendentally gorgeous place. And, I mean, also so I can eat fish until I fall over and die, but I feel like the post got that across :D :D :D

[dogeared.livejournal.com]

I COULD BE. :> Except that then Danny would be my dad and that's weird, so. :D

Your beautiful waterfall pool sounds like an amaaaazing experience!! So basically, we all need to go to Hawaii RIGHT NOW. Come on, universe. :D :D