Excuse me, would you be a dear and hand me my coconut?
I don't know why, but for the past several months, I've been on a coconut kick. Of course I love coconut and rum, and I'll never forget the rastaman on the beach selling coconuts filled with chilled 151, but it runs a bit deeper than that.
Laugh if you must, and go ahead and call me a girly-man, but sometime ago I discovered Tree Hut Coconut Lime body wash, so I bought some. Yeah, it's not the most manly item in the medicine cabinet, but holy shiat does it ever smell good. I used to use Old Spice Pure Sport-flavored body wash exclusively in the shower, but when I started using the coconut stuff, one of the hotties at work came up and hugged me from behind, buried her face in my neck, and said Damn Mikey, you always smell so good..., well, that's when I stopped buying the Old Spice for good. And then I bought all of the Tree Hut coconut lime body wash I could get my hands on. In fact, I pretty much cornered the market on it as far as Amazon is concerned, because I got the last batch and they've been out for several weeks. Now it's got me worried--I hadn't been able to find it anywhere, and I was down to a bottle and a half.
Luckily, last night I discovered that the folks at drugstore.com have a stash on hand, so I ordered five more bottles. I know, it's expensive as hell, but I like it. Besides the compliments on the smell, I've had two different chicks in the past week tell me that they like how soft my skin is. Go ahead and mock me, but if the ladies like it, I'm gonna keep using it.
Behold the power of the coconut!
Besides the body wash hoarding, when Dougie was in town several weeks ago, he brought a big stash of Almond Joy fun-sized candy bars for the hotel room, and we nibbled on them all weekend. It was surprising, because when I was younger, I hated Almond Joy and Mounds bars--those would be the first items up for trade after we got back from trick-or-treating. Clearly my tastes have evolved. And anything that tastes like ladies lying on the beach is a-ok with me.
And now that the holidays are here, I suggest you try a tot of coconut rum in your eggnog, too. It's better than bourbon as far as I'm concerned.
Anyhow, with all of this coconut stuff floating around in my circle of influence, I took it one step further tonight.
My plan was to go play in the evening poker tournament down at the Venetian, but for some reason, I had it in my brain that it started at 8:00 pm, but when I got down there around 7:40 or so, I found out that it started at 7:00. And I'm no Phil Hellmuth, so I don't like to make an entrance and come in late to tournaments. If I'm not there when the cards go in the air, well, I'm probably not gonna be there. The rest of the Venetian is just a bit above my pay-grade, so instead of hanging around and letting uncle Sheldon take a shot at my bankroll, I turned around and left.
Since I was so close to Chinatown, I blew past the freeway on-ramp on westbound Spring Mountain, and kept driving, searching for some real Chinese food for dinner, not the usual cashew chicken or sweet-n-sour pork offerings found out in Henderson.
The problem with Chinatown, if you don't hang out there very much, is that at night, every single business looks like a restaurant--unless you pull right up front and look at the smaller English sign next to the front door, you don't know if you're driving up to a massage parlor, movie rental shop, or chiropractor's office. Eventually I found a place with a big sign on the roof that said Satay Malaysian Grill. It looked promising, so I pulled in there.
Once inside the vestibule, there was a full menu posted on the wall. Of course they had the regular Americanized versions of Chinese food available, but there was plenty of authentic Chinese, Thai, and other southeastern Asian dishes to be had. So I went in and had the host put me at a table for one.
I told myself that I'd try all new dishes this time around--no crab Rangoon, no chicken satay with peanut sauce, no pad Thai, no sweet-n-sour. Likening myself to an Anthony Bourdain who pays his own tab, I set out on a culinary adventure, swan diving into the menu like an Acapulco daredevil.
First of all, they had a drink menu. And it was $5 martini night, too. So I got a lychee martini. Hell yeah, that's some good stuff right there. Normally I'm not a vodka martini kind of guy, but sometimes I'll try new flavors, and this one didn't disappoint.
I killed that while looking over the menu for several minutes. I decided to try and order or two of dim sum for an appetizer, and I'm kicking myself for not bringing my new camera with me, because the presentation of the food was pretty cool.
My first dumplings were filled with pork and mushrooms (Siew Mai), and they were damn tasty. The next order was made with shrimp (Har Gow) and although it was good,
While waiting for my dim sum to arrive, I decided to get something besides water to drink with my meal. Of course, there was a Coke fountain available, and I gotta give 'em props for that, but my goal for the evening was to try new things, so I ordered a coconut bubble tea.
What is bubble tea, you ask? Well, Japanese teenagers have been drinking this stuff for years, but it's slowly making it's way to those of us on the trailing edge of food and fashion. Basically, it's a cold milk-tea, and it's got a bunch of blueberry sized tapioca 'pearls' floating around on the bottom. Wikipedia explains it much better than I can.
Anyhow, the drink itself was very good--imagine a runny Starbucks concoction that tastes kinda like tea, energy drink, and coconut all mixed together. But as good as it tasted, I don't think I was ready for the 'bubbles'. They give you a huge straw to drink it with that's just a smidge bigger in diameter than the tapioca pearls, so you suck them up as you drink and chew them before swallowing.
If you're a texture person, this drink ain't gonna make it into your rotation. Seriously, when I was drinking it, the only description that I could come up with is that although it looks like blueberries, it feels like fish eyes in your mouth (don't ask how I know this...) And they're slimy, too, and very chewy. But they don't taste bad. In fact, they hardly have any flavor at all. But it's a weird sensation to chew your iced tea. But regardless of the chewiness and sliminess, the coconut milk tea tastes damn good. In fact, I had two of 'em.
For my main course, I had Beef Rendang with coconut rice on the side. It's described as tender beef stewed with dry curry, coconut milk, cumin, tamarind, and lemon grass. For some reason, I was expecting a plate full of slice beef with veggies, but what I got was a huge hunk of Chinese pot roast.
It was very good, served with red jalapeno slices for extra heat and cucumber rings to cool it down. But it just looked too much like Sunday afternoon roast, although the spices were much different that the onion soup packet that Mamasan used to use every week when we were growing up. I mixed my coconut rice in with it and gave it a splash of soy, and although it was good, I guess I was expecting some more colors and textures. Although it had plenty of zip, it was kind of a boring dish. But at least I got my coconut fix in!
I enjoyed the meal very much, although my main hang-up came from my own expectations. I'll certainly be going back--there is a whole menu to explore, and another interesting looking Thai-Chinese place right across the street, too.
Oh, and as much as I wanted to do it, I just didn't have the room for the coconut ice cream.
Mikey
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