Wednesday, July 25, 2007

El Guante says... Eat at Taste of Asia

Kyle Myhre, aka El Guante, recently posted a few points of clarification re: my Q&A in the current issue of The Onion with him. WHICH YOU SHOULD STILL GO PICK UP. I think the more open-ended of those points will be addressed as I post more content from our original conversation on Dane101 and Emcees Without Voices but figured I'd get this thing up quickly, since it's actually about a restaurant that I'd hoped would get some additional exposure from the piece, as he'd strongly endorsed it, and mentioned that its business was being hurt by the construction along East Washington.

As per his blog, in the very last item of the Q&A...

One one blog post, you directed everyone in Madison to eat at Taste of Asia. You said, don't ask questions, but why?

[Laughs] I love Chinese buffets, like good old American, greasy Chinese food. I'm thinking about filming a music video there, or like a YouTube bio. Next time I go, I'll have to talk to them.
...Myhre wanted to convey that the East Washington buffet "Taste of Asia is NOT greasy-- i was saying that most places are-- and i like that-- but what makes ToA special is that the food is a bit more classy."

There wasn't any intent to quote him out of context by clipping his full endorsement, but I understand the concern, so here's the rest of his take on the Taste of Asia, from the original transcript:
Taste of Asia's the best in town because it's not as greasy, it's not just Chinese: they serve Hmong, Laotian, Thai food. We bought a bunch of egg rolls from them for a party we were having, 'cause they were doing a fundraiser: selling these egg rolls to help Hmong immigrants. They're good people, and again, the food is just great. The one thing they don't have is an ice cream machine. If they had that, I'd never leave.

What's an ideal meal there?
I like a lot of white rice, which is boring—but also a lot of broccoli from the chicken and broccoli. They also serve really good sesame chicken and General Tso's chicken, because it's crispier: it's not just soggy breaded stuff. But the best thing they have there are the Hmong egg rolls--not as fried as a traditional Chinese buffet egg roll.
Taste of Asia can be found @ 2817 East Washington. They've got a website, but it doesn't seem to have been updated for a while.

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Myhre also says he's not sure if he booked the Coup's plane ticket. I wrote that in the intro on the basis of a conversation I had with him during Hip-hop as a Movement Week. I was trying to determine if Pam the Funkstress would be DJing, and he was able to rule her appearance out because he'd "booked" the tickets for the band and Boots Riley, but hadn't seen a Pam listed. In scare-quotes, 'cause, as he now posts...
I think I helped book the Coup tickets-- Katrina Flores and the Multicultural Student Coalition may have done that though--i don't really remember. I remember being at the Student Travel place for what seemed like hours, but I was probably just following Katrina's orders. haha.

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