A Case of Writerlust: How I Spent My Weekend Vacation (A Slightly Irrelevant Food Story)

Clearly, you can see that I took all these pictures from the last entry with the intent of posting them sooner than four days later. So what happened?

Japan happened, you guys. Japan happened.

I went to Purchase for the weekend again, and in between a bottle of chocolate wine and my very first trip to the gym (which I remember fondly every time I try to lift my arms over my head) I took a trip with the apartment dwellers to a Japanese shopping center somewhere in New Jersey. (I don't know where because no one listens to me and we always get lost.) (You know who you are.)

"Oh, Sam," you might be saying to yourself, "I didn't come here to listen to you talk about anime."

Well, good, because I haven't decided if I'm doing that yet. No, my friends. Today I would like to talk to you about our lord and savior, omurice (オムライス).

But first, a foreword.

Basically, this place is a grocery store. And a book store. And a knick knack store. And I think there's a hair stylist somewhere. But most importantly, it's got the sickest food court I've ever seen.

The view from the booth. Not bad.

I wish I had gotten more pictures (truth be told, I had every intent to take an album's worth, but got so caught up and excited that I forgot I had a camera). I love going here. The grocery section has some of the cheapest, strangest food I've ever seen and everyone is just so gosh darn nice. They pretty much throw free samples of everything from tea to curry to sauced chicken at you and don't even pressure you into buying anything. They have the most amazing selection of mochi and all these other fancy sweet things I don't know the name of but love buying anyway (I bought Dan an arrowroot jelly...jelly...thing... last time we went, and it was weird and delicious and came in the cutest packaging).

But the food court...the food court is something else. I should have gotten pictures of the meals the others got, but I only got a picture of mine, that three days later, I'm still staring at longingly, salivating into my keyboard - and I wonder why my 'M' key is stuck.

The place I get it from is cool as hell. I tried to get a picture without looking like a tourist and failed miserably, but here you go anyway.

I am the tallest person in this grocery store.

That's the menu, you guys. That's how I decide what I eat. There's like four other shops in this food court and I always go to this one - probably because I'm a sucker for window displays, and also probably because I'm not really a ramen person. (I have a love/hate relationship with Japanese food in general.) Everything here is on some kind of rice. Hamburger patty on rice, shrimp mayo on rice, gyoza on rice, rice on rice...and omelettes on rice.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you their Crab-Rich Omelette on Pork Fried Rice.

No, I don't know what weird rice noodle/seaweed dish is, and that's soup,

not tea, which Dan finds out every single time we go in the most hilarious way.

Just...yeah. I normally get something different every time I go here. But now I think I've found it, my answer for the age old question, "You have to eat one thing every day for the rest of your life. What is it?"

I don't know anything about it. The omelette was gooey and warm and the pork fried rice added the perfect amount of flavor to the already flavorful dish and I don't even know what that sauce was and there I go, drooling again. the plate was huge; I had only eaten a dinky little Starbucks Oatmeal that morning and only managed to finish 3/4 of this, and even then I was so fat and full that I had to start turning away the people who lined up to rub my belly for good luck. I was miserable when I had to surrender it to the bus boy. I wanted to take it with me. I wanted to push it around in a pram and baby it. I wanted to give it the childhood I never had, I loved it so much.

Since then, I've found a million recipes for omelette rice, most notably this one, and I'm fully planning on attempting it after I make the massive, three-course dinner I'm planning for next weekend. (The contents of which are a secret until then, but trust me, there will be a huge post afterwards with many pictures. I'm pumped.)

The thing is, I'm not sure if what I had actually counts as omurice, but the general idea is still there. Apparently (and by apparently I mean, according to Wikipedia) this is served frequently at Western style eateries in Japan.

If you ever have the chance to try this dish, do it. I used to tell everyone I wasn't too fond of Japanese food. But I think I might change my answer now.