Thai Me Up/Pittsburgh’s South Side/Thai

by Imogen V. Shahrazad

Ok, I’ll be honest. I’m a big-time wimp. I can’t handle even the most pathetic level of spice in my food. More than one waiter/waitress has derived great amusement from my request for a spice level or zero or one and a glass of milk to ease the inevitable burn. I swear this is relevant information in light of my relationship with the food at Thai Me Up, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Thai Me Up is an adorable twenty-seat restaurant on E. Carson St. Cheery orange walls and large plate-glass windows provide lots of light and make this a great place for a casual dinner with a few friends or an informal date. The servers are extremely polite and prompt, and you can plan on being out of the restaurant in under an hour if you’re in a hurry. Or you could, you know, hang out. In general, the atmosphere is almost suspiciously non-threatening.

As far as beverages go, Thai Me Up makes the best Thai iced tea I’ve ever had. The red tea is topped with a layer of sweetened milk that doesn’t get gooey or sticky on the bottom of the glass, which is a problem I’ve encountered at other restaurants. Admittedly, it’s so sweet that I find it hard to finish sometimes, but I can almost always convince a friend to finish it for me.

As an appetizer, my dining partner Chaynes and I always split an order of spring rolls. Each order comes with two fried rolls with an assortment of shredded vegetables inside. The sweet dipping sauce makes a perfect accompaniment. Also, they are small enough that they won’t ruin your appetite before your entrée arrives.

Finally, my choice for Best Entrée of ALL TIME is the pineapple curry. Remember how I said spicy food is not my thing? This dish is so delicious that I don’t mind the dripping nose and the tingle of dissolving taste buds that I experience as a result of eating curry. The meal is served as a small mound of white rice in a little bowl and a larger bowl of the curry itself. The curry sauce is a beautiful creamy orange mix of coconut milk and red curry filled with a mix of sliced carrots, pineapple chunks, and in my case, fried tofu. (Others may choose to add meat instead.) This is the kind of dish that proves simplicity works.

In short, Thai Me Up is fun, tasty, has a delightfully naughty name, and definitely worth repeat trips.

Peaches/I Feel Cream/May 5th, 2009

by Imogen V. Shahrazad

Peaches is a naughty lady/bitch guilty of delicious crimes in the name of gender-bending and electrosex. Her albums revolve around very select subject matter: fucking (not sex—this is definitely about fucking), fluid gender identities, and intentionally indefinable sexual tastes that range from men to women and everything in between. The music itself is comprised of the dirtiest electronic beats, often appropriately pulsing over her vocals that alternate between singing and semi-rapping.

I Feel Cream won’t disappoint long established Peaches fans. Admittedly, the beginning of the album is a little underwhelming. The songs are slower and lacking the heat that makes Peaches so sweet. Fortunately, things quickly pick up, as the song “More” promises to “whip this party into shape” and slyly notes, “seems you got a little bit more than you asked for.”

The title track is the album’s standout. One of the most danceable beats on the album oscillating along with Peaches deceptively angelic voice until a shift occurs that sends her back into a seductive growl for a few seconds while a new pulsing beat grows in volume until we explode climactically back into the chorus. Another song of note is “Show Stopper.” Driven by a fuzzy guitar and the Peaches signature growl, she promises her listeners to “rock [them] harder than a martyr in a holy war” and declares herself a “show stopper/panty-dropper/ everybody’s favorite shocker.” One a final note, Peaches provides her own take on the “cougar” phenomenon on the song “Mommy Complex.” As an artist unashamed of her embrace of all things genderqueer and “deviant” by traditional standards, it’s no surprise that she celebrates her age instead of hiding it, a tough choice to make in a world full of barely legal pop-tarts Bogarting all the masturbatory fantasies of America’s lustful youth. If listeners are not wholly convinced of her bad-assery at this point, then they’re not listening. Or they’re assholes.

Peaches is not for the faint of heart or nuns or your mother, but for listeners without prejudice, I Feel Cream is a turn-on and a party starter. It’s up to you to take those feelings and apply them accordingly.

The Quiet Storm/Pittsburgh’s East End/Vegan & Vegetarian

by Imogen V. Shahrazad

The Quiet Storm is a sanctuary for Pittsburgh’s anti-meat crowd. Vegetarians are largely accustomed to walking into a restaurant with friends or family and having roughly three choices: salad, French fries, maybe even provolone sticks. Upon entering The Quiet Storm, veggies sigh with relief and take their time perusing a menu built just for them.

The interior of The Quiet Storm is fun: thrift store furniture and dishes, eclectic local art, and a staff of tattooed hipsters adding further visual interest. Chaynes and I recently visited for a late breakfast, starting with the house coffee, which is a little strong for my taste; however, I also like my coffee fucking pathetic and thick with non-dairy creamer. I think what I had at The Quiet Storm was what we might call Real Coffee. We ordered the same entrée, deceptively listed as the “Home Fries.” At any other restaurant, home fries would be chunks of fried potatoes with (maybe) a few onions or peppers mixed in. At The Quiet Storm, the Home Fries includes “smashed” red potatoes, caramelized onions, “soysage,” scrambled eggs or tofu (we both got the tofu), cheddar cheese, and aioli—all of it mixed in a nice big pile of food.

Why this is The Most Amazing Breakfast of All Time: 1) the scrambled tofu and 2) the aioli. The scrambled tofu is important because it’s easy to fuck up tofu. Anyone who has ever eaten poorly cooked tofu knows what I’m talking about. It can be tasteless and/or very squishy—and sometimes both simultaneously. Carnivores sometimes assume that vegetarians don’t have taste buds anyway and so they don’t bother to make tofu dishes taste like food. Not so at The Quiet Storm—the tofu is perfectly flavored and cooked to the point of being perfectly chewy, matching the “soysage” in texture. In addition, the aioli is probably a sin. Garlic mayonnaise? Seriously, I’m sure God is troubled by its very existence. In past trips to The Quiet Storm, I have asked for a side of aioli to add to dishes that don’t normally include it.

All in all, The Quiet Storm fucking rocks. If you want non-meats done right, visit the restaurant at the corner of Penn Ave and S. Graham in the Garfield/Friendship area of Pittsburgh. Admire the beards and weird tattoos on the very hip staff and clientele. Delight in the coffee. Chew enthusiastically on the soy-based faux meat products.

Gypsy Café/Pittsburgh/Pan-European

by Imogen V. Shahrazad

Pardon the cliché, but Gypsy Café on Pittsburgh’s South Side is buried treasure. Located on Bingham Street on the same block as the City Theatre, it’s easy to walk by the restaurant and never notice. However, it’s well-worth breaking out your treasure map.*

Upon entering the establishment, one is struck by the inviting warmth of the décor. The lighting is gentle and accented by tealights in purple votive holders that complement the exposed brick, gold-framed mirrors, and local art on the walls. Oriental rugs add further coziness, and one wall even includes an old church pew as part of the table seating. Basically, it’s pretty.

While I’ve been to Gypsy for dinner a number of times, I have only been to their Sunday brunch a few times, including this past Mother’s Day. The best part about Gypsy Café brunch is that each Sunday is a different theme; appropriately, the most recent was entitled the Famous Mothers Brunch, and each of the entrees incorporated names such as Carol Brady.

A lover of all things pasta related, I ordered the scallion gnocchi with a side of sour cream, a petite salad with creamy Turkish feta dressing, and a mimosa. The mimosa was a delicious opener, not too heavy on the champagne. The petite salad is a delicate blend of field greens, chickpeas, and thinly sliced carrots and radishes. Occasionally I find that field greens taste like dirt, but these were fresh and light. The creamy Turkish feta is, in a word, incredible. Again, no flavors are overwhelming; rather, they are deliciously harmonious.

Finally, the gnocchi was a gamble for me, as I have a fraught relationship with the flavor of onions. I decided to try it based on the fall/winter special sweet potato and pumpkin gnocchi with sage brown butter, a meal I’d sell a kidney for. Fortunately, I was not disappointed. My mother ate the onions from my plate, and the scallion flavor in the gnocchi itself was subtle. The pasta was dusted in parmesan cheese, and the sour cream on the side kept it from being too dry. In summation, I ate until it hurt to live.

I highly recommend that anyone living in or visiting Pittsburgh plan to visit Gypsy Café. At entrées ranging in price from approximately $14 to $22, it’s definitely not an affordable everyday dining experience (unless you’re fabulously wealthy, or not a graduate student), but it’s a great place for a date or a celebration dinner. I give my solemn promise that you will not be disappointed. If I’m wrong, you have permission to smack me.

*Bad joke. Sorry.

Bat For Lashes/Two Suns/April 6th, 2009

By Imogen V. Shahrazad

I’m entirely convinced Bat For Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) recorded her sophomore album Two Suns in an evergreen forest, after dark, in the space between midnight and a thunderstorm. Indeed, I get the impression that Bat for Lashes herself splits her time between dancing in the moonlight and prowling the banks of slow-moving rivers.

The gentle, folky curves of her voice mask something deep, an instinct for human rhythms. Elements such as the hand-claps in “Two Planets” become body as instrument, and one almost forgets that sounds other than those coming out of the musician herself exist on the album. It’s a dream vision, a call to ancestors, an ear to the ground.

That said, Two Suns is not a wishy-washy, faux-hippie, part-time goddess worshipping “I was inspired by a weekend retreat to Allegheny National Forest” album. This is a serious work of art.
Bat For Lashes makes music for the bare bones of the soul, and we hang our hearts on the deep breath of her vocals, nestled like cubs. Despite her instinctual grasp of something fundamentally nature-made, the theatrical final minute and thirty seconds of the album (the end of “The Big Sleep”) could be a swan song—one imagines a dancer spinning slowly off the stage in a fading spotlight, the audience holding its breath.

Toddlers & Tiaras/TLC/Tuesdays at 10pm

By Imogen V. Shahrazad

When I was a little girl, I read books about cats and horses and barely brushed my hair. In fact, when my mom insisted on combing out the snarls, I frequently cried. I wore gigantic, ill-fitting t-shirts until I was thirteen. So you can imagine how little I could relate to the pageant girls of TLC’s reality show Toddlers & Tiaras.

The show highlights one child pageant per episode in locales as varied as Pittsburgh, PA, to small town Georgia. The girls, ranging in age from barely walking to the brink of puberty, sashay awkwardly across the stage in glittering dresses so expensive their parents missed a mortgage payment, while eager beaver pageant moms (an unmistakable breed, similar to Chihuahuas) mime the girls’ choreography and pray their children’s parade float-sized hairdos don’t fall flat like bad soufflés.

Tacky? Yeah. But, as an unabashed feminist and generally concerned human being, I also find it fairly alarming.

It’s difficult to tell what is worse: the parents’ seemingly blind enthusiasm for kiddie pageants or the kids’ confusion regarding whether or not they actually like competing. At the Stars of Pennsylvania pageant (a glitz pageant, as opposed to a natural pageant, whatever that means), we meet, among others, Meadow, Angela, and Roni. Meadow, a seven-year-old future Stepford wife, has competed in over one hundred pageants. Angela is a sweet eight-year-old from a large family, and Roni is a highly entertaining and petulant two-year-old.

My first concern is financial: while Meadow’s family seems to have no trouble paying thousands of dollars for a dress she’ll grow out of in three months, Angela is only one of five kids in a military family and Roni’s mother requires her own mother’s help to pay for pageant accoutrement—in the form of moving back into her mom’s house because she can’t pay the rent. While there’s no shame in having financial difficulties, is it justifiable in the face of the possibility that these girls don’t even like pageants?

While Meadow is a lost cause (at this point, the poor thing is practically a My Size Barbie), Roni expresses her desire to go swimming rather than continue the pageant (and later falls asleep in her mother’s arms, as toddlers do). Perhaps the saddest moment is when Angela doesn’t win the big crown and tells the camera, in heartbreaking monotone, “I like natural pageants more than glitz pageants.”

Pro-pageant people argue that competition boosts the girls’ self-esteem and provides them a fun hobby, but seeing little girls in sequined dresses, spray tans, and hair pieces cry over losing the top title is, to put it simply, soul crushing. Girls don’t need to hear that their worth is wrapped up in their ability to blow kisses at judges or smile the prettiest; they get enough of that just watching television and living in America.

Little girls need to be what they are: kids. They should play in the dirt with My Little Ponies and read bedtime stories with their parents. They should sing and dance to Yo Gabba Gabba, not struggle through some unnecessarily complicated choreography in a room full of strangers. If my six-year-old sister ever told me she wanted to do a pageant, I’d sob. Loudly.

Oh, and you know the thing that freaks me out the most? Flippers. Flippers are fake teeth the kids can slip on over their real teeth to hide gaps from lost baby teeth. OH. MY. GOD.