Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wednesday, March 25th - Takoyaki, Plane food and Panago Pizza


Breakfast was ... well actually it was lunch, was Takoyaki at the airport. Funny, I spent a few days hunting them down and they were a the airport the whole time. Maybe they're out of fashion there. I still love them. They're like little seafood pancakes but they're 'shoved' with chopsticks into a ball form. The pan is a cast iron griddle that looks like an egg carton but not as deep. The classic batter is with squid and other flavouring (tbd). You spread the batter out all over the griddle right to the sides so that you don't see the cups and it looks like you're spreading a giant square pancake. Then the dude starts moving the batter around with chopsticks and shoving them into the cups. Eventually you have all the batter that's not in the cups in a ball in all the cups and there is no batter on the sides. Then when you have them in pale colour in the balls, you move to a skewer as a tool so as not to mar the balls. You gently poke them to flip the balls to toast it all the way round. The classic is served with a spash of 'brown' sauce, presumbably hoisin or sweet soy and bonito flakes and mayo. I had a 'special' which was mayo and scallions. D had his plain served with greated marinated radish. Their plain had the brown sauce and bonito flakes and no mayo. But they had mayo on the table. Had I noticed that, I would have ordered the classic cuz I wanted the bonito flakes. Anyhoo, if you're ever in the Narita airport, I highly recommend this place. It's on the floor above in the departure checkin area.


D likes them for what they are, classic and hot and genuine but he thinks they mainly taste of the topping of mayo and sauce. I don't mind. The giant ones we saw in the street the other day used 'hotdog' instead of squid :-(.


Lunch lunch was bad and I do mean HORRIBLE plane food. The way out was okay but this was nasty. It was yellow rice with a cream sauce and a slice of bologna and eggplant. Their was a salad on the side that was okay. It had a slice of tuna, salmon and some edamame with mayo.


Dinner was Panago take away. There is a definite dearth of good delivery pizza in Vancouver. When I was working in Burnaby, there was one mom and pop place that was yum but they don't deliver out here and I cannot remember the name. It had 'John' in it had they had a great salmon pizza. Panago is okay and it's everwhere. I had the Shrimp Primo with a sweetish bbq sauce, pineapple and peppers. D had the genoa classic with green and black olives, goat cheese and ham. They have a thin muligrain crust but it's not really that thin. They also charge you 2 dollars delivery fee. Hello? Then you're expected to tip the guy as well. I'd tip the guy more if they didn't charge me that stupid fee.


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