Text 1953, 85 rader
Skriven 2006-06-04 19:36:00 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: A Visit With The Fords 1
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Maryanne and I were fortunate to spend part of Friday and
most of Saturday with Burt & Shirley Ford, who stopped by
on their way to the Cape to go to the Essex Shad Bake with
us on Saturday.

They arrived Friday afternoon, and called us from their motel;
we hooked up a little later, and the four of us (Lynn was at
a graduation party) spent some time catching up and generally
yakking until leaving for Empire Buffet in West Springfield.

It was, alas, generally a disappointment.  Although there was
quite a bit of variety on the buffet tables, there were some
noticeable gaps.

Good:  Salt and pepper fried shrimp were crispy with shells still
on and were pungent with freshly ground black pepper; "Squid and
Shrimps" were a sauteed combo of small shrimp and squid hoods, 
partially sliced through so they curled up with little standing
nubbins, like little off-road tires - quite delicious and tender;
green-lipped mussels with black bean sauce, excellent; fresh peel-
and-eat shrimp were perfectly cooked, refreshingly iced, and BIG
12/18 size!!; fried shrimp were done tempura-style in lacy panko,
excellent.

Indifferent: Most of the rest of the stuff. Burt, in particular,
ate a crab rangoon or two almost wistfully, wishing they were as
good as the ones Michael has made at the occasional echofest; 
pork ribs were pretty standard; egg rolls and spring rolls were
from the East Coast Chinese Commissary that seems to supply almost
every buffet on the Atlantic Seaboard; and so on.

Bad: Stuffed clams were ridiculous - they were stuffed with a 
sprinkling of bread crumbs mixed with mayonnaise, a kiss of
chopped bell pepper, and a lot of chopped onion, not a clam to
be seen - I'm pretty sure that they were just stuffing the tops
of the raw half-shell clams and chucking them under a broiler;
said clams on the half-shell looked scary, all different weird
colors and not at all fresh-looking despite having been well-
buried in bedded ice, I left them alone for fear of unspeakable
restroom tortures that looked likely to follow consumption.

REALLY bad: Stone crabs.  These are usually my abfab item at
Empire Buffet, and is the reason I go there to begin with. They
always have a huge pan overflowing with whole steamed stone
crabs, and I usually make my dinner of three or four of them.
At first, the crab pan was one of the gaps on the steam table;
later, they brought some out and I took one back, hoping to
somewhat redeem my meal.  But alas, I broke  a leg off and  
sucked out the meat, whereupon my mouth and sinuses filled
with the pungent stench of ammonia.  Urggh.  I parted the
carapice from the body of the crab, just a small crack, and
gave the crab a tentative sniff and...AMMONIA!  :gag:  :choke:
And that long-dead-before-cooked crab put me off food for the rest
of the night.

Burt, Shirley, and Maryanne had pretty much stayed away from the
seafoods (though Burt was a real sport and choked down a mussel
in honor of Aunt Ah) and their more traditional Asian choices were
better.  It was overall an OK  meal, though they were most 
certainly off their game.  I'll give them another chance later,
but I was still disappointed.

= = 

After dinner, we returned to my comfortable dump and sat around
the kitchen table, drinking and talking and laughing as we always
do when we get together.  We killed a bottle of NYS white wine
(sweetish and fruity, a good quaffer we all enjoyed) and tasted
some other sundry drinks - the grappa, for example, which burned
like fire but was less harsh than Burt expected.  We also had
some of the very last of the Ukranian birch-flavored vodka Doc
Donald sent to a past echo picnic which Burt pronounced to be less
harsh than the grappa, and which had somewhat less kick with the
grappa still warming our gizzards.  When Lynn came home, we 
also had tastings of tarkhun (Russian tarragon soda)and birch juice.

Eventually, we made breakfast plans for the next morning and said
our "goodnights."



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