To my mind, the second half of my life began last week when I started taking statins as maintenance medication for high cholesterol.
It was my first time to take a pill other than vitamins, or medicines to fight infection or help me get some sleep. Although the doctor reassured me that we would wait and see if there was any change in three months, it seemed likely that it was the first of many pills I would be taking for the rest of my life—a precursor of the time my day would be measured by tablets and capsules decanted from a large pillbox color-coded by days of the week.
Just as all shopping sprees come to an end and are followed by excruciating repayments and compound interest, the bill has come for the years of blatant abuse of my body. I’ve subjected it to a regime of wild and wonderful things that have been transcendent on the taste buds and have set off fireworks in the imagination, and left it to clean up the party afterwards.
And, so far, it had been doing a splendid job. And then something went wrong in the machinery, as sudden as if a spanner had been dropped in the elaborate system of cogs and wheels and springs that kept me chugging along, due to nothing more than old parts, badly oiled, never overhauled.
Stuff of life
What I will miss most of all is fat. Fat is the stuff of life, the unguent where flavor resides, which makes everything better. Spam sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise on soft whole-wheat bread, the wobbly insides of Peking Duck, the squirt of yellow butter from chicken Kiev, have now been excised from the list.
Even if I wanted to defy the doctor’s orders and live dangerously, my digestive system wouldn’t cooperate. So, it’s been a diet of gently boiled fish and plain rice for a while.
Most healthy food isn’t exciting, and—more relevant to this space—most exciting food isn’t healthy. Just as a blind person has a natural disadvantage as an art critic, a reviewer who can’t eat won’t be as good at his job.
But there are not just blind art critics but blind artists, just as there are chefs who have lost their sense of smell or taste, Grant Achatz of Alinea being a notable example.
My problem, luckily, isn’t about tasting the food; it’s about what happens afterwards. The only difference I can foresee is that coverage of burgers wrapped in bacon and such will be taken up by my younger colleagues.
Different impression
This week we went to Samba, yet another restaurant at Shangri-La at the Fort, this time a Peruvian outlet.
It won’t be the first time I’m reviewing Peruvian in this column, but again I must reiterate that I haven’t been to Peru, and I don’t know what authentic Peruvian food tastes like. From each of the different restaurants, I’ve gotten a different impression of what it’s supposed to be like, so I’m wondering if I’m like one of the five blind men groping at the different parts of an elephant.
But I liked the fact that the menu at Samba requires you to take a little time to study it. The staff will tell you what the “bestsellers” are, and the specials are marked with a little squiggle, but it’s an interesting, sophisticated menu.
We had the ceviche Máncora and the ceviche Limeño, which were remarkably similar in presentation. It’s the same flavoring, except that the Limeño has assorted seafood rather than just fish. I would advise getting one or the other, and then balancing it with the very excellent ceviche Jalapeño, which, I think, is the best of the lot.
We also had the Chicharrón de Cangrejo, crisp fried soft-shell crab, which (the chef materialized behind us unexpectedly to tell us) could be dipped in its own sauce, but also went very well with the leche de tigre, the vinegary sauce of the ceviche.
The sous-vide char-grilled US prime rib was not available, which was probably very good news for my tummy. We ended up having the Peruvian bouillabaisse, the Parihuela, which I can recommend very highly. One doesn’t usually get seafood good enough for the unrelenting honesty of a bouillabaisse, but the fish was firm and tender to the fork, perfectly cooked and well above acceptably fresh.
We couldn’t not get the Lomo Saltado, as close to a national dish as Peru has. Again, I’ve had this five times in the metropolis and they all tasted different. This was definitely one of the better ones, with an intense, smoky flavor to the beef.
Gentrified
The only dish that fell short of expectations was the Moqueca. I know this as a Brazilian dish, which I’ve had and which I’ve made myself, with palm oil (dendé) from the African market in Brixton (London, not Pasig). This version was too tame, too gentrified, it tasted like a generic local dish of seafood in coconut milk.
The palm oil should be front and center, a red stain that gets everywhere, and comes out in the toilet looking exactly the same way it did going in.
It’s another step for me in understanding the immensely complex thing that is Peruvian cuisine, and every new restaurant I try gives me a different perspective and fresh understanding, as well as a lot of dining pleasure (with one notable exception). Until I manage to fly out to Peru, this is as good as it gets.
Expect to pay typical Shangri-La prices, though—not something that is always conducive to digestion.
Samba is at Shangi-La at the Fort, 30th St. corner 5th Ave., Bonifacio Global City. Call 8200888
