Lucky Bastards

Having binge-watched the new season of Somebody Feed Phil back in March 2024, here are the Domestic Goblin's favourite episodes:

Season Seven

~ Mumbai

Maximum city.

Mohammed Ali Road:

• Surti Bara Handi offering 12 different types of meat stew.

• Zahid Bhai's Indian Hotel (hotel means restaurant in India) offering Bheja fry (brain curry) served with pav (soft white bun).

• Bombay sandwich cart: consisting of onions, cucumber, tomato, beetroot. Basically a vegetarian sandwich.

• Burhanpur offering mawa jelebi and mawa gulab jamun (syrupy doughnuts, served slightly warm).

Dabbawalas: a lunch delivery service whereby the food are home cooked by women across the city and delivered by men on bicycles to hungry Mumbai workers.

Dehli Darbar serves baby goat in a cashew and almond sauce; mutton pathani gosht; tandoori chicken; rice pudding with saffron and pistachio.

Trishna serves a fusion of Sichuan Chinese and Indian food: calamari; jumbo prawn; lobster with chili garlic; butter garlic crab; chicken Manchurian; prawn Koliwada; fish curry.

Taj Mahal Palace Hotel serves high tea and snacks in the palace lounge: vada pav; steamed layered roulade; bun maska (you can dip in your tea); Indian sweets such as gujia.

Soam: mango lassi, Pani Puri, panki, kichidi (rice and lentil porridge).

Bombay Canteen was co-founded by Floyd Cardoz from the New York episode.

~ Kyoto

Nishiki Market: Sabazsushi (marinated mackerel sushi); deep fried pike conga eel; egg omelette; sake and pickled vegetables; mugwort mochi; koi fish cooked with sake, mirin sweetener and soya sauce.

NB: It is rude to eat while walking in Japan.

Wife and Husband coffee shop: serves the best coffee and also honey toast with cheese.

Effort with sincerity. A samurai shall not tell any lies (Samurai Joe Okada: the oldest licensed tour guide in Japan).

Samurai Joe manages his good health with bread in the morning and whisky at night.

Philosophers Walk.

Kichi Kichi Omurice: very soft scrambled eggs over fried rice with a demi glace beef sauce over the top, cooked and served by the enthusiastic and entertaining Motokichi Yukimura.

Gion, the geisha district of Kyoto. Geisha performance and tea ceremony. An art form of entertaining a guest.

Noma Kyoto pop up by Rene Redzepi: tasting menu consisting of shabu shabu of five very different seaweeds and also Shikoku lemon; prawns topped with a paste of native sea buckthorn, Madagascar pepper and seaweed salt; cuttlefish marinated in whisky vinegar and placed on ice; miso crisp with raw marinated prawn and Peachtree sap cooked in dashi; bamboo served in a cold squid broth.

Ichi-go-ichi-e (a tea ceremony term for really cherishing an experience because you can't recreate the same moment ever again).

Crunky.

Juu-go, a buckwheat noodle restaurant specialising in soba mash and soba. 

Shokunin spirit (an artisan who has mastered their profession). Great pride is taken in even the most menial or lowest of tasks.

Kazariya (located outside the Imamiya Shrine) is

a sweet shop specialising in aburi-mochi (mochi coated in a toasted soybean powder).

LURRAº owned by Jacob Lear serves oysters from the Hiroshima region with a sauce made out of roasted yeast and smoked butter; trout from the mountains of Iwate. A place that has a meticulous reverence to beauty and order.

===

"In Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo

I long for Kyoto"

(Matsuo Basho)

~ Taipei

Pork knuckle soup at Xinzhuang Temple Market in Dadaocheng.

RAW: Guests participate in creating their menu from all the ingredients sourced for the season. There are 729 combinations.

• Fresh squid, peanut butter and fresh sea urchin

• Wagyu beef cured in combu salt with tuna belly oil

• Goats cheese ice cream with caviar on top

Jiufen Street: fish ball soup with pork filling; green tea mochi rice cake with mustard green filling.

Amei Tea House.

Keelung Night Market: one bite sausage with garlic; nutrious sandwich (meat, veg and mayo in deep fried bread).

Longtail Restaurant: 

• Crispy nori rice, Hokkaido uni and ostera caviar
• Shrimp slider on a brioche bun with pickled onions on top
• Wagyu beef tartare with scallion pancake underneath 
• Foie gras dumpling

Scallion pancake with an egg inside.

Pork rice at Wangs Broth served with sides of cabbage and bamboo shoots.

Palais de Chine Hotel: Taiwanese breakfast buffet.

Din Tai Fung: Xiaolongbao (soup dumpling).

===

Bonus mention

~ Bait Maryam in Dubai

Levantine home cooking.

Upon Phil's first bite of Kibbeh Nayyeh (raw lamb, bulgur and spices) prepared by the owner/chef Salam Dakkak, he felt momentarily transported to another dimension. Phil felt the emotion and the love in the food.

===

"A happy, hungry man
Is traveling all across the sea and the land
He’s trying to understand
The art of pasta, pork, chicken and lamb

He will drive to you
He will fly to you
He will sing for you
And he’ll dance for you
He will laugh with you
And he’ll cry for you

There’s just one thing he asks in return
Can somebody, somebody feed Phil

Somebody feed him now..."