Indentured Labour: Camy Shanghai Dumpling House’s secret, part 2

Last time that I mentioned Camy Shanghai Dumpling House, I conjectured that the popularity was due to its open secret status and cheapness. At least now we know where the cheapness comes from: not paying their staff. From the Herald-Sun:

Mr Chang worked 13-hour days from 9.30am-10.30pm with only five-minute breaks, which had to be approved by the boss, for $100 a day.

He worked six days a week and his only holiday was Christmas Day, according to Federal Magistrate Grant Riethmuller. “It is clear that the patrons attended for the quality of the Shanghai dumpling-style cooking rather than the ambience of the premises,” Mr Riethmuller said.

Mr Chang feared if he lost his job his visa would be cancelled and he took action only after he had permanent Australian residency, the magistrate said.

The court found that Mr Chang had been underpaid from December 2004 to January 2008.

Mr Riethmuller ordered restaurant owners Min-Seng Zheng and Rui Zhi Fu to pay $172,677 in unpaid overtime and penalty rates, and $25,000 of superannuation. Their lawyer, Alex Lewenberg, said the owners planned to appeal.

I also praise Federal Magistrate Grant Riethmuller for his knowledge of the premises.

Phở Tam, Footscray

Cafe sua da

I’ve been a bit down on the phở scene in over the last few months.

One of my regular go-to joints, Phở Tam on the corner of Leeds and Ryan streets has been hugely inconsistent on the soup front. They do a great bún riêu and have the hardish-to-find street food bánh bột lọc on the menu. Their phở bộ đặc biệt is above average: always packed with sizeable chunks of tendon, a thick slice of peppery sausage and toothsome strips of tripe.

The broth however ranges from sweet and watery to dense, beefy and rich depending on which day you hit it. I’m convinced that the broth gets watered down on a busy day, especially weekends; an undeniable conspiracy against the nine-to-five working man. The consolation is the above cà phê sữa đá – condensed milk sweet, rich and as predictable as a metronome.

Location: Corner of Leeds and Ryan Street, Footscray, Melbourne, Australia.

Spam Musubi: Hawaiian sushi innovation

Spam Musubi on a plate

I’m starting to think that I may have gone a bit soft over the past few weeks.

I called this non-beer surprisingly refreshing. I enjoyed this slice of spam strapped to brick of rice and served at roughly the temperature generated by salmonella having hot and dirty sex. Frankly, I’m loving for none of the right food reasons and it is blurring my judgment altogether.

The “spam musubi” (above) is big, dumb fun – it’s the eponymous potted spiced ham fried with teriyaki sauce then bound to rice with a belt of nori. It comes with the endorsement of at least one American president and is available around the Hawaiian islands from sushi counters and convenience stores.

I’m surprised that there seems to be no clear history of spam musubi: Was it an innovation that started with the influx of US troops in a similar fashion to the start of budae jjiggae in Korea? Did it come via Okinawa where a similar dish is served or did the two co-evolve? Why was the honorific “o” dropped from “omusubi“? This dish can’t be more than sixty years old, and so its birth is possibly still within someone’s living memory.

A fine selection of local grindz

The Hawaiian “plate lunch” is an excuse to anchor any protein to an icecream scoop or two of sticky rice. They seem to be both cheap filler and endlessly variable. I’d imagine that you could quite easily write about nothing but the numerous variations on the polystyrene clamshell filled with Hawaiian lunch, forever. At least until a heart attack took you out of the game before you reached middle age.

Kalbi, Me Barbecue, Waikiki
Kalbi – Korean beef short ribs on rice with kimchi from Me Barbecue in Waikiki.

"Hamburger Steak", Sueoka, Koloa

Two hamburgers submerged in gravy, celery and onion with rice and macaroni salad, from Sueoka Snack Shop in Koloa, Kauai

Tempura Prawn, Sueoka, Koloa

Some very bready tempura prawns with mayonnaise, macaroni salad and rice from Sueoka Snack Shop in Koloa, Kauai

The Shrimp Station, Kauai

The Shrimp Station, Waimea

Some of the best food in America comes in shacks, lean-tos, vans, makeshift structures cobbled together from plywood and tarpaulin and fryer grease. The American food that Americans aspire to eat and inspires the most column inches in this decade seems to sit either at the bottom or at the top, either food van or haute cuisine, but rarely in the middle.

Talking about the middle seems to be more about despairing about the industrialisation of food, big corn, the banality of the corporate chain restaurant and the emptiness of the American home kitchen. American food is hollow in the centre. As a result, the food that Americans aspire to eat from other cultures tends to sit in the middle – home-cooked is shorthand for “authentic” if some other culture is standing in front of the household stove. Your locavoring Alice Water-y folk will argue otherwise.

It bookends neatly with my approach to food: that strange mix of and top end – although I am a bit tempted by the taro pie on McDonald’s special Hawaii menu here in Kauai because it combines two things that I despise made good by the deepfryer. I’m more here to surf than eat but food from a shack beckons.

The Shrimp Station in Waimea sits alongside the highway en route to Waimea Canyon and picks up the day-tripping crowd in either direction – it’s almost opposite the faded beachside deco majesty of the local cinema and market.

Coconut Shrimp

The drawcard is dealt straight from the deep fryer: Coconut Shrimp. Prawns in a crispy batter with shreds of local coconut, on fries. They’re top notch.

Shrimp Taco

The shrimp taco is a little less inspiring – tasty, fresh salsa but a bit light on the prawn.

Location: 9652 Kaumualii Highway, Waimea, Hawaii
Tel: (808) 338-1242

Asahi Style Free: Happoshu and Beer of the Third Kind

Asahi Style Free

It is a strange quirk of history and economics that a nation’s taxation regimes change the beer that each country drinks. In the US, beer needs to contain at least 25% malted barley and so mass market brewers push the lower limit using rice, corn or anything else that can contain sugars and is cheaper than malted barley.

In taxation terms, Japan has three kinds of beer. Japanese booze blogger Jim from MoIpai outlines:

Regular beer which must contain at least 67% malt is taxed at the highest rate.

Happoshu (which means “Sparking Spirits” 発泡酒 in Japanese) contains less than 25% malt and is therefore taxed at a lower rate (which obviously means it’s cheaper to the customers).

There is a Third-Category “beer” called 第三のビール (Daisan no Biru) which basically doesn’t have any malt and is made from “other” ingredients (I believe corn, peas, soy, etc), which has an even cheaper tax rate.

Along with attempting to juggle a fickle drinking market, Japan’s brewers do so within a three tiered tax regime. Asahi Style Free is beer of the third kind, which is to say, that it is not beer. It’s tax-dodging beer simulacra for drinkers who primarily choose their brew by price. Asahi make the claim that this beer is zero sugar which they do by some sort of prestidigitation around what counts as “sugar” in this chart. It contains no part of some subset of sugar.

The beer is as expected – yes, it’s thin and watery, headless and virtually clear, with a metallic edge and the thinness that you get from brewing with rice rather than some other grain – you can’t confuse it with an actual beer but it is surprisingly refreshing.

Beer and Chocolate: Sapporo x Royce Chocolat Brewery Bitter

Sapporo x Royce Chocolat  Brewery Bitter

This limited release from Sapporo and apostrophe’d Japanese confectioner Royce’ is a strange Belgian nightmare; multiple vices backsliding into a brown can of depravity. Hops bitterness and cacao bitterness are perfect partners, malty and chocolate-y sublime and congruent combinations. Beer and chocolate works together.

But these two really don’t.

The pour is black with a quick-fading, soapy tan head. The taste is like stirring Nesquik through watered down Guinness. This would be a great place to start if you wanted to wean your kids off cola and straight onto stout. It’s sweet like candy rather than rich – the aroma of milk chocolate is there, but it doesn’t carry into anything more complex when imbibed. For a beer that weighs in at 5% alcohol by volume, the booze flavour seems to be front and centre – maybe the chocolate brings it forward?

I’m not at all against a novelty beer and Japan seems to do a good job of filling every drinking niche with unnecessarily innovative liquids. The wonderful flexibility in brewing is that if you want your beer to taste like juniper or coriander or in this case, chocolate, you can just dump it in and see what happens. The style guide can be prescriptive (if you happen to be a brewer that is driven to win awards) but the reward in any brewing should be in the drinking.

Royce’ other crossover product is chocolate coated potato chips. I’d serve them with this beer as a reminder that both ideas are an injustice to their constituent parts.

ABV: 5%

Price: Y264 from a 7-11.