Month: January 2022

*Currently, travel to Japan for tourism and other short-term purposes is not permitted and according to the U.S. Embassy for Japan, there is no indication this is set to change in the short term.

The Omicron variant has all but canceled any immediate travel plans we might’ve had, but we can still dream can’t we? No really, we’re asking: can we still dream? Because we definitely need something to look forward to this year and so far 2022 just isn’t delivering.

Covid may be taking our ability to get out and see the world safely but it’ll never take away our lust for new sights, sounds, and experiences. To combine our longing for travel with the best comfort of all, good food, we reached out to Below Deck alum Chef Rachel Hargrove for a foodie’s guide to one of her favorite culinary destinations: Tokyo, Japan.

Chef Hargrove is no stranger to travel. Her job as a private chef on yachts takes her all around the world, and she’s definitely an expert when it comes to food. The chef not only attended the Culinary Institute of America, but she did her apprenticeship at the Michelin-starred Quatro Passi in Nerano, Italy, and spent time expanding her craft and picking up skills in Thailand, India, and Japan. When we reached out to Chef Hargrove and asked her for a guide to one of her favorite culinary destinations, she gave us a quick rundown of some of her favorite Japanese street foods, as well as neighborhoods that are guaranteed to provide a next-level experience — use her advice to plan your next trip (whenever that may be).

You can catch Below Deck every Monday night on Bravo and Peacock.

What is your favorite Tokyo restaurant?

Sukiyabashi Jiro

Sukiyabashi Jiro. Three Michelin stars and omakase, only the freshest. Japan doesn’t chase Michelin stars they chase excellence — that’s why the food and experience is so different.

What district is a must-visit anytime you’re in Tokyo?

Tsukiji Outer Market

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Tsukiji outer market, known for its famous Tuna auctions.

Where is your favorite outdoor area in Tokyo to explore? What should you do there?

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden

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Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is my go-to park There are so many parks in Tokyo! I love strolling through the parks, people-watching is the greatest. Also the trees and flowers… even the birds. It’s breathtaking. There are so many places for food, each borough in Tokyo specializes in different things and each stall has these things that look like flags but actually represent what type of food they prepare.

What are your 10 favorite Tokyo street foods?

1. Takoyaki

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Takoyaki are bite-sized balls of savory goodness, made from a wheat-based batter and cooked in specially molded pans at both streets stalls and tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants.

The balls are filled with tiny pieces of octopus, tempura, green onions, and pickled ginger, and fried until they are a delightful golden color. Watching the cook skillfully flip them with chopsticks is a mesmerizing sight, and almost as enjoyable as eating them.

2. Shioyaki

It may look like a simple ‘fish-on-a-stick’, but there’s more to shioyaki than meets the eye. The fish has been ‘salt-grilled’, a particular Japanese technique that sees the fish, usually heavily-salted mackerel, left to marinate overnight and then grilled over flames the next morning.

Be warned: shioyaki is super salty. But like similarly salty pork scratchings, it’s the perfect accompaniment to an ice-cold jug of beer.

3. Okonomiyaki

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A staple across Japan, okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake made from whatever’s close to hand. The batter is commonly prepared with eggs, meat or seafood, vegetables, and cheeses, but ingredients vary widely.

The batter is poured on a griddle, flipped, and cooked on both sides. Then topped with a special sauce, mayonnaise, bonito flakes, seaweed flakes, and pickled ginger. In some restaurants you get to make your own, mixing the ingredients in a bowl and cooking it on a small grill in front of you.

4. Yakitori

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Whether you’re coming home from a big night or a big match, you can always count on grilled meat on a stick to sort you out. Yakitori is the Japanese version, and while it is small and dainty, it does the trick.

Yakitori is grilled over a charcoal fire. Chicken yakitori is a firm favorite, but pork or beef is popular too.

5. Taiyaki

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A fish-shaped waffle filled with red bean paste, custard, or chocolate. Made in specially manufactured molds, taiyaki is typically Japanese — designed to look as good as they taste. Warm, gooey, and very, very satisfying.

6. Yakisoba

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Tasty wok-fried noodles. Wheat noodles are stir-fried with pork and vegetables, seasoned with a special tangy sauce, and topped with the usual suspects of fish flakes, ginger, and mayo. Sometimes they’ll be topped with an egg. Some vendors offer them served in a hot dog bun.

7. Ikayaki

In Japan, nothing is quite as pleasing as the chewy texture of ikayaki — grilled squid on a stick. Served without tentacles, it is slathered in a sweet soy sauce and grilled over charcoal. Cooks often score aesthetic lines into the flesh

8. Dango

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Popular during cherry blossom season, dango is a sweet Japanese dumpling made from mochiko, a glutinous rice flour. They are sweet, luckily, you get three or five per stick. Dango is eaten year-round, with different varieties eaten in different seasons.

Cherry blossom season, for example, sees the appearance of hanami dango, named after the blossoms and colored pink, white, and green to represent the flowers.

9. Yaki Tomorokoshi

Simple and satisfying, Yaki Tomorokoshi is the Japanese version of corn on the cob. Grilled over an open flame, the corn is slathered in miso, soy sauce, and butter, then served on a stick. It’s guaranteed to be the most delicious corn and it’s on a stick! That means yummy.

10. Yaki Imo

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A distinctly simple Japanese treat of a baked sweet potato served in a brown paper bag. Baked over a wood fire, the skin is pleasingly chewy, the inside soft and fluffy, and they taste… a little like caramel. Made from Satsuma-imo sweet potatoes, only found in Japan.

What are the five best destinations for street food in Tokyo?

Yanaka Ginza Shotengai (谷中銀座商店街)

Togoshi Ginza Shotengai（戸越銀座商店街）

Harajuku (原宿)

Amazing for people watching as well! Hello Kitty everywhere… I might secretly love Hello Kitty.

Nakamise Dori（仲見世通り

Ameya Yokocho（アメヤ横丁）

From a good breakfast spot to a morning activity, what is your favorite way to start a day in Tokyo?

A bowl of ramen

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Always ramen! It was so yummy on the way to school I would always pass by the shop. I would put my Yen in and get my ticket and hand it to the guy. They would make it the way I ordered with scallion, raw egg, bok choy, noodles, and broth, Topped with Bonito flakes and togarashi.

The Weeknd famously launched his career with the 2011 mixtapes House Of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes Of Silence, which were later compiled on Trilogy. Now, The Weeknd suggests that his latest album, Dawn FM, is part of a new trilogy, and fans have ideas about what this new trilogy consists of.

Sharing a photo of himself in his old man makeup today, The wrote, “i wonder… did you know you’re experiencing a new trilogy?”

In response, some fans shared screenshots of a recent post from the r/TheWeeknd subreddit that theorizes The Weeknd’s next album will be called After Life. The post reads, “Many people did not like that ‘Every Angel is Terrifying’ is not a full song, but just a longer skit, but guys please… he literally threw an advertisement for his next album which will be called After Life. After Hours -> Dawn FM (purgatory) -> After Life and After Life will be the closure of the whole new trilogy. In the first track ‘Dawn FM’ when Jim Carrey says ‘enjoy another hour of commercial-free music’ we can hear “‘ree yourself’ and then on ‘Every Angel is Terrifying’ so we get commercial. Abel did not do it accidentally, he marked it on ‘Dawn FM’ to make us pay attention to it. Tell me that i am not the only one who thinks like that. Dawn FM is nearly done, and the After Life is coming guys!”

That’s a theory — that the trilogy started with After Hours and will likely end with an album called After Life — with which others on Twitter seem to agree, so check out some fan posts about it below.

After releasing his “FABEV Freestyle” to continue hyping up his new album, Cordae has revealed the star-studded tracklist. When From A Bird’s Eye View drops this Friday, fans can expect to hear features from rap icons such as Eminem, Lil Wayne, and Nas, as well as contemporary faves like Gunna and Lil Durk. The album also reunites the 24-year-old Maryland rapper with Stevie Wonder, with whom he previously collaborated on the 2020 single “Can’t Put It In The Hands Of Fate.”

From A Bird’s Eye View is the long-awaited follow-up to Cordae’s Grammy-nominated debut album, The Lost Boy. Previously released singles include the flex rap “Super” and the Lil Wayne-featuring “Sinister.” Although it will be his first full-length album since 2019, the former YBN member did drop the Just Until EP in April of 2021 to hold fans over until his new album. He also started his own record label, Hi-Level Productions, although he hasn’t revealed any artists or projects from it just yet. Cordae will support the album with a tour beginning in February.

In addition to his reunion with Stevie Wonder, From A Bird’s Eye View will also pair Cordae once again with lyrical mastermind Eminem, who recruited Cordae and Jack Harlow for the remix to his own 2021 single “Killer.”

From A Bird’s Eye View is due 1/14 via Atlantic. You can pre-save it here.

Rootin’ tootin’ Rep. Lauren Boebert recently tweeted some gibberish and received an Internet earful for it. She previously confused John and Samuel Adams, too, but if you thought she would brush up on her U.S. history as a result, you were not correct. Boebert can’t help herself, as well, so she complained today after New York City’s watershed decision to let non-citizens vote.

Granted, this move only applies to local elections. No one who’s affected by this decision will be able to vote for the next U.S. president without first becoming a citizen. Still, Boebert railed against the measure with an inaccurate tweet to complain about Democrats.

“Democrats want 7,000,000,000 people to be able to elect the US President,” Boebert tweeted. “They want zero boundaries and zero rules. New York City has now even made it legal for non-citizens to vote in elections. No one except for living US citizens should be voting in US elections.”

Naturally, people came for her because Boebert didn’t even read up on the measure’s specifics. She’s also disregarding the “no taxation without representation” phrase that surfaced in the American Revolution in response to the Stamp Act of 1765. Boebert’s also not paying attention to how working non-citizens of the U.S. do pay taxes where they live, so they should be able to vote on their representatives.

Boebert famously passed the GED exam in lieu of completing high school. This didn’t stop people from pouncing on her because, after all, she is a U.S. lawmaker. People are also wondering why she believes that Democrats want almost every person on the planet to vote, since she rattled off a number that’s close to the global population.

Well, at least these responses are not as messy as the goat-photo reactions, so there’s that.

Robert Durst, the focus of the HBO docuseries The Jinx, has passed away while serving a life sentence. The convicted murder and real estate tycoon was 78 years old. Going all the way back to his 40s, Durst has been the main suspect for a series of murders, including his own wife and, later, his best friend, Susan Berman. After alluding prosecution for years, Durst was famously caught and tried for Berman’s murder after making one hell of a slip-up while filming The Jinx.

Via The New York Times:

In a story made for supermarket tabloids, Mr. Durst, a small, rail-thin man, was a cross-dressing fugitive from justice with $100 million in assets. On the run, he became a vagrant urinating in public, sometimes disguising himself as a mute woman. He beat his wife and forced her to have an abortion; beheaded a man he had killed as he sat in a pool of blood, and once wrote a “cadaver note,” telling the Los Angeles police where to find a woman who had been shot in the head. Distraught and alone in a bathroom, he unwittingly confessed to all the killings on a live recording used in a 2015 HBO mini-series about himself.

As for his cause of death, Durst’s lawyers told The Daily Beast that it was “natural causes associated with the litany of medical issues we had repeatedly reported to the court.” So in other words, oldness. Durst was very, very old, and also a convicted murderer, which really can’t be emphasized enough. Easily a top three takeaway.

(Via The New York Times)

Irish post-punk quintet Silverback splashed onto the UK scene when their debut album Fad was nominated for the Choice Prize, Ireland’s top music prize. Their music falls somewhere between the surging post-punk of UK bands like Dublin’s Fontaines DC and Bristol’s Idles, and the classic slacker ethos of Pavement. In short, this is choice stuff.

Today, the band have dropped “A Job Worth Something,” the final single ahead of the January 21st release of their sophomore album, Archive Material. The track is a self-reflective look at the roles that matter most in our society, and it’s presented with rad guitars and driving rhythms. Singer/guitarist Daniel O’Kelly shared a statement on the very personal tune:

“For most of the pandemic I lived with my sister who is a healthcare worker and was working in the designated covid hospital in St James’ Dublin. Unfortunately, I was far less heroic, writing copy for a car insurance company.

This song is about feeling embarrassed about how different our lives were at this time. When it comes to telling my grandchildren what all this was like, I’ll be telling them about my sisters who have more important stories to share.”

Listen to “A Job Worth Something” in the new video above and check out the Archive Material album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “Archive Material”
2. “A Job Worth Something”
3. “Wear My Medals”
4. “They Were Never Our People”
5. “Rolodex City”
6. “Different Kind Of Holiday”
7. “Carshade”
8. “Central Tones”
9. “Recycle Culture”
10. “Econymo”
11. “Nothing To Write Home About”
12. “I’m Wild”

Archive Material is out 1/21 via Full Time Hobby. Pre-order it here.

Pam & Tommy looks fantastic, but even in the extremely unlikely event that it’s a dud, the Hulu series has an all-time great tagline: “The Greatest Story Ever Sold.” Beautiful. The aforementioned greatest story involves Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, who have their sex tape stolen by a mullet-sporting scumbag. If “sex tape,” “mullet,” and “scumbag” all appearing in the same sentence doesn’t get you to watch Pam & Tommy, I don’t know what to tell you. Enjoy your non-mullet programming, I guess.

The Mötley Crüe drummer and Baywatch actress are played by Sebastian Stan and Lily James, who wanted to get in touch with Anderson before filming started.

“I was really hopeful that she would be involved. I wish it had been different. My sole intention was to take care of the story and to play Pamela authentically,” James told Net-a-Porter. When asked if she reached out independently, the Cinderella star replied, “Yes. I was very hopeful that we would be in touch right up until we started filming.”

A friend of Anderson’s informed the Sun that “Pamela has no intention of watching this God awful show, absolutely not. Never. She’s never heard of the actors playing her or Tommy, and doesn’t care to know them. She and her family think the show is a cheap knockoff. The whole thing is a joke to them.” Another pal of hers, Hole singer Courtney Love, wrote on Facebook in a since-deleted post that Pam & Tommy is “f*cking outrageous,” and that its existence was “further causing” Anderson “complex trauma.”

Anderson herself has not officially commented on the show.

Pam & Tommy premieres on Hulu on February 2.

(Via Net-a-Porter)

It’s like watching a scene from an action film, only it’s real.

A pilot flying a Cessna 172 aircraft lost power and crashed shortly after takeoff from Whiteman Airport in California’s San Fernando Valley on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. The FAA clocked the crash as occurring at approximately 2:10 p.m., with the plane coming to a stop at a railroad crossing just blocks from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothills Division station, about 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

Officers arrived at the scene, and at 2:15 p.m.—just five minutes after the plane crash-landed—a train barreled into the airplane, smashing it to pieces. Thankfully, four officers on the scene were able to extricate the pilot from the aircraft, literally seconds before the Metrolink train slammed into it. Video of the rescue was captured on bodycam and by a bystander from distance, and it’s just about the most harrowing real-life footage imaginable.

Watch the cell phone video from a somewhat safe distance (the person filming was nearly hit with flying pieces of airplane when the train hit). The group of people moving away from the tracks just before impact are the officers carrying the pilot.

Frightening cell phone video of first responders pulling a pilot to safety seconds before a train slams into the plane that crashed onto the tracks near Whiteman Airport in Pacoima. @CBSLA #BreakingNow #news #crash #kcal Luis Jimenez http://www.luisjimenezmusic.comu00a0 @composerluispic.twitter.com/D4VhNPGYID

— JASMINE VIEL (@JASMINE VIEL)
1641777634

Then watch the bodycam footage from one of the officers involved in the rescue. (There is no audio for the first 10 seconds, FYI.) Utterly terrifying.

Foothill Division Officers displayed heroism and quick action by saving the life of a pilot who made an emergency landing on the railroad tracks at San Fernando Rd. and Osborne St., just before an oncoming train collided with the aircraft.pic.twitter.com/DDxtGGIIMo

— LAPD HQ (@LAPD HQ)
1641781121

CBSN Los Angeles identified the four officers at the scene as Damien Castro, Christopher Aboyte, Robert Sherock and Sgt. Joseph Cavestany.

“I had requested Metrolink to cease all train activity,” Cavestany told the station, “but apparently that didn’t happen.”

The Los Angeles Fire Department said that the pilot was the only person on board. According to the Los Angeles Times, the pilot was in stable condition as of 8:00 p.m. Sunday evening. No other injuries were reported.

“Seeing what happened, I’m grateful to be alive. I’m grateful the pilot survived as well,” Sherock said, according to the AP.

It’s not every day that you see someone dramatically escape death not once, but twice, within minutes. Especially in such a close call. Best wishes to the pilot, and kudos to the four LAPD officers for their quick thinking and quick-moving heroism.

Phew.

It’s no secret which fast food chain dishes out the best chicken sandwich, but who makes the spiciest? There are a lot of contenders fighting over that top spot. Popeyes’ sandwich, while delicious, is more sweet than spicy, even in its “spicy” variant. McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr’s chicken sandwiches are trash. Burger King, Shake Shack, and Raising Cane’s all make decent sandwiches, but a majority of them aren’t even trying to be spicy. If you like your chicken sandwiches so hot that they make your brow sweat as you salivate between bites and leave your mouth feeling like you’re breathing fire, all you’ve got is Chick-fil-A’s Spicy Deluxe and Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

Both bring some heat, but for fans of hot chicken with a high tolerance for spice, they both kind of miss the mark. It baffles me that we’re living in a time where the fast food space is obsessed with chicken sandwiches to an almost ridiculous degree, and yet we don’t have a single sandwich that is spicy enough to satiate true lovers of hot food. Until now.

Today, master of meats, Arby’s, is launching the Diablo Sandwich line which consists of your choice of a smoked brisket or fried chicken topped sandwich that provides what Arby’s promises will be the “ultimate spicy experience.” I sampled the fried chicken topped version of the sandwich ahead of launch to see if Arby’s can truly deliver what they’ve promised.

Is the Diablo Chicken the spicy sandwich we pepper heads have been waiting for? Let’s find out.

Arby’s Diablo Chicken Sandwich

Retail Price: $5.99

The Sandwich:

Beginning today until February 6th, Arby’s nationwide will be selling the Diablo sandwich, which is so spicy that Arby’s felt fit to provide each customer with a free vanilla shake with every order. This sandwich is a monument to spice! It’s built with multiple layers of peppers; ghost pepper jack cheese, a few shakes of what Arby’s is calling “Fiery Hot Seasoning,” which to me tastes like mostly paprika with a bit of cayenne pepper, diced jalapeños embedded into the cheese, a swirl of spicy barbecue sauce (I’m getting a hint of citrusy habanero here) on the top bun, mayonnaise on the bottom, lettuce and pickles and your choice of a fried chicken filet or 13-hour smoked brisket served on a toasted chipotle bun.

As decadent and delicious as the smoked brisket version looks, Arby’s brisket is a bit on the sweet side, and if I wanted the ultimate spicy experience I knew I needed the more neutral flavor of fried chicken to accompany all of those sources of heat. The result? Well, for starters, this is a sandwich so spicy that you can smell the heat before you bite into it.

The layers of heat hit you in waves, the spicy barbecue sauce eases you into things with the slightest hint of sweetness and spice before that ghost pepper jack cheese meets your palate and provides the fire. The liberal use of cayenne seasoning ensures each bite is as spicy as the next and builds as you go. As you chew through the sandwich the diced and roasted jalapeños offer the occasional burst of extra heat that pleasantly lingers as an aftertaste between bites, counterbalanced by some tangy pickles, which keep your breath from turning to literal flames.

Throughout the meal my mouth felt like it was on fire in the most delicious way. But rather than luxuriating in the heat, I found myself eating this sandwich quicker than I’d usually eat. The heat has this way of pulling you through the experience. I couldn’t take a break, lest I be engulfed.

The sandwich is a legit sweat-inducer but it suffers from a few minor problems that can be easily remedied on Arby’s part. First up is that toasted chipotle bun. Arby’s tried to shoehorn in another layer of spice but this bread comes off as more of a gimmick than an enjoyable part of the sandwich. It’s very dry and I find the orange color of the bread straight up unappetizing. The pickles, while a welcome inclusion, are just a little too thin to really impact the flavor as much as I’d like them to. I’m not sure why this sandwich has mayo (couldn’t taste it, which is great if you hate mayo), and the lettuce is little more than a texture that kind of makes the sandwich taste wet.

And then we have the chicken.

It’s not the best chicken filet in fast food, it’s thin and dry to the point of being stringy. Even though I haven’t had it, I’m willing to bet the better move is to grab the brisket instead. Still, I went looking for the spiciest chicken sandwich in the fast food universe and the Diablo Chicken Sandwich is definitely the spiciest sandwich I’ve had in all of fast food. Ever.

My favorite feature of this sandwich is the vanilla shake pairing. It’s not that the sandwich is so hot that you need the shake to offer relief (some will, my tolerance for spicy food is very high), but the flavors really play off one another in an interesting way, creating a harmonious eating experience that bounces between two extremes.

The sweetness acts as a sort of palate cleanser that washes away the lingering heat so that you can experience it all over again during your next bite. Once your palate is inundated with heat to the point of numbness, a swig of vanilla will put you right back to where you were on your first bite.

The Bottom Line:

Arby’s really has something here. It’s not the best chicken sandwich you’ll ever eat. Hell, I wouldn’t even say it’s top five, but when it comes to delivering on a spicy experience no sandwich in the fast food universe can even compete with this. It is hands down the spiciest fast food sandwich currently on the market. If you can’t handle spicy food, don’t even attempt to eat this sandwich, you’ll need more than a vanilla shake to help you through it.

Find your nearest Arby’s here.

In his third season, Memphis Grizzies guard Ja Morant has risen to full-fledged stardom. Averaging 24.7 points, 6.7 assists, 5.8 rebounds and 1.4 steals on 57.5 percent true shooting, he seems en route to his first career All-Star berth. He’s been awesome and is vital to the Grizzlies’ 28-14 record that sees them just a game back of the three seed out West.

Last week, when initial returns on All-Star votes were released, Morant sat third among West guards, about 118,000 votes behind Luka Doncic for a starting spot. So, on Tuesday, Grizzlies minority owner Justin Timberlake ended his self-imposed social media hiatus to advocate for the high-flying playmaker’s All-Star campaign.

Fan votes compose just half of the criteria for selecting All-Star starters, but Timberlake’s efforts surely won’t hurt. Stephen Curry has nearly two million more votes than Doncic and Morant, while Klay Thompson is fourth, more than 300,00 votes behind Morant. Among fans, it seems like a two-man race between Doncic and Morant to join Curry as a starter.

Morant and the Grizzlies are riding an eight-game winning streak and have the NBA’s fifth-best record this season. They’ll have a chance to make it nine in a row and add another layer to Morant’s All-Star hopes when they welcome Curry’s Golden State Warriors to town Tuesday evening.