Hot, Fast, Dirty: Fast Food is Good for the Soul

Come check out my new project - Hot, Fast, Dirty:  Fast Food is Good for the Soul - news and reviews from the independent fast food scene (with a few good words from the big boys thrown in).  

Largely the Truth will still be updated regularly but HFD offers a tighter focus in a shorter format - (all reviews are 500 words or less) so it will be a nice change of pace.  

I'm aiming for it to be a more collaborative effort as well, so if you've got passions for fast food, writing and humor then click through to HFD and let's talk.

So far places reviewed include some here in Victoria (La Fiesta Cafe) some from B.C.'s interior (Donut King - Kamloops) and some from the good ol' U.S of A (Donut Storr - Westminster, CA).

Follow Hot, Fast, Dirty on Twitter (@hotfastdirty)

At the Vancouver Island Music Fest

CFUV 101.9FM, the University of Victoria campus radio station, has seen fit to turn me loose on another event.  This spring they had me cover the first Victoria Spoken Word Festival and I must have managed to mix just enough insight in with my dirty jokes for them to trust me with covering the Vancouver Island Music Fest in Courtenay.  The event runs from Friday, July 8 to Sunday, July 10 and features headlining acts like hip-hop legends Arrested Development and (my personal favorite) Randy Newman.  I'll be updating the CFUV VIMF blog with posts several times a day and have so far been keeping up a steady stream of photo updates on The Twitter.

All the photos are now up on the Largely the Truth Flickr account if you don't feel like wading through Twitter,

Post I:     Tomorrow's the Big Day            All that boring, "getting to know you" stuff
Post II:    The Road to VIMF                   The old man & the motorhome
Post III:   Getting Started                          The girls in their summer clothes
Post IV:   Oh, the Baton Twirlers              MarchFourth...marches forth.
Post V:    In the Evening                           Folk, blues, hope springs eternal
Post VI:   Arrested Development              Like Public Enemy without the alarm clocks
Post VII:  Saturday Begins...                    Hamburgers, jazz & an inferiority complex
Post VIII: Jon Anderson of Yes               The Long Distance Runaround
Post IX:   Of Roots & True Love      Sunburn & my forbidden love
Post X:    Randy Newman Live!               Taking a good long look at Randy
Post XI:    Sunday Morning Coming Down Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys
Post XII:   Albert Lee, John Jorgenson...    Guitarists extraordinaire
Post XIII:  Holly Cole                                Smoky classics just before the finish line
Post XIV:  David Crosby                          Goodbye to All That

Pieter Vorster of Continual Palingenesis Social Media Socials (I don't know either) shanghaied me into doing this interview. To Stephen Colbert: your window of opportunity is past.

The Moon Under Water Pub & Brewery | 350B Bay Street | Victoria

Update February 26, 2013:  The Moon Under Water is still open but under new management.  I haven't been in a year and a half so can't say how this has affected the quality of the food and beer.

There is no end of talk here in North America about the “English Pub Experience”.  We imagine quaint little buildings in the country where rumpled men in patched jackets talk about the weather, the footie, and make off-color jokes about their wives.   Where a barman with rolled-up sleeves serves pints of nameless “lager”, “ale” and “bitter” from great brass taps and sets them down on the dark, polished bar.  If a disagreement should arise it can be settled with a game of darts or, if absolutely necessary, a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs outside after which the winner helps the loser to his feet and then buys him a drink.

Come in, have a laugh, get stabbed.

When I was living in England with Nicky the television liked to remind us that “country pubs” were closing at about the rate of one a day.  In the pubs that remain you are more likely to find teenagers in short skirts screeching football songs than you are anyone who wants to talk about the weather.  The barman is still there but he’s pouring out pints of Budweiser, Carling and Strongbow Cider to ratfaced men with wispy moustaches and the social graces of fire ants.  If he can be bothered to put down his mobile phone long enough to work the taps, that is.  Disagreements, if they arise, are settled with a knife in your back, or if absolutely necessary, a savage kicking outside by a group of hoodied jackals, one of whom will use his mobile phone to record the event for posterity. 

It makes me wonder where The Moon Under Water fits into all this - advertised as an “English-style” pub it doesn’t look or feel particularly English and the menu is caught somewhere between the Old & New Worlds.  It’s neither Coronation Street nor Clockwork Orange but the food is hearty and filling and their session ales are the best English beers I’ve tasted in the three years since coming home.

Fernwood Bites

...but in a good way

Bacon notwithstanding, I am no great fan of pork.  Maybe because my grandmother – God rest her soul –served us pork chops coated in that tasteless sawdust called Shake N Bake roughly three times a week while growing up.   Or maybe because I have heard a number of my friends and acquaintances who work in emergency services compare the smell of cooked human flesh to that of pork.  It could also be that pork does not digest as easily as other meats, that cannibals refer to human flesh as “long pig” or that I have seen Babe:  Pig in the City 12 times.  Whatever the reason, I spend sleepless nights staring at the ceiling of my bedroom thinking, “I don’t understand what they’ve got against foreskins but I think the Hebrews might be right with this ‘pigs’ thing.”

Considering all this, most of the pork options available at Fernwood Bites, Fernwood’s second-annual celebration of local artisan cuisine, were of little interest to me.  The lone exception was the Cuban-style pork with orange cilantro aioli being offered by The Little Piggy.  It had a wonderful orange zest with a prominent but not overpowering heat.  Though other items on offer caught my eye I have to say that this was my favourite.  It was so good that even Yahweh might sneak a bite while his wife’s back is turned.