Heyo!
I’m headed to Turkey and Greece this weekend on a solo trip abroad, and I’ve got three big-ass deadlines before I go, so this week’s edition of The Move is short and sweet—probably what it should be anyways; reading sucks!!
Speaking of, if you have anything specific in Turkey or Greece that you want me to eat and review, holler at me in the comments! I’ll be your own personal private eye, only I’ll be investigating canned eggplant and döner kebabs instead of your husband’s murder!
Real quick, if you’re a subscriber, consider upgrading to paid! It’s $5 a month, or $50 a year. Helps me keep this whole newsletter afloat. Yee-haw
it’s nice to make friends with people outside of comedy.
I’m going to do some namedropping here because I’m grateful for these folks:
Blair Socci. Amy Silverberg. Joe Kwaczala. Zach Pugh. Maddie Connors. Laura Peek. Martin Urbano! (I miss Martin). James Austin Johnson, who remains an essential homie despite his rapid success which we all saw coming. Sam Wiles who I don’t talk to nearly enough. Every so often I check in with Steph Tolev, who was very, very good to me when I lived in L.A. Shit, I’m just now remembering Steph and I got Korean BBQ at Soowon Galbi last Thanksgiving. Just the 2 of us.
I got to know these people. I love these people. These are my people.
In Detroit, it’s been nice to meet folks who aren’t in comedy. Specifically, a blossoming friendship with Liana Li, a rad artist and grower here, has made all the difference in my life.
A perhaps intimate and personal revelation: Lately, I’ve needed advice. For the past year and a half I’ve been in a friendship/sometimes relationship that’s just not doing me any good. It’s something that has drained me in just about every way, affected my happiness, my work, and getting out of it has been extremely difficult.
I was stuck, and I needed a new perspective to shake things loose. A reminder: Whatever your social circle is, it’s important to go outside of it. I love all of my comedian friends, and they’re very well-adjusted people, but we’ve all got the same swashbuckling brain.
Anyway, I was feeling a bit rundown emotionally, so Liana and I met up for some Taiwanese pastries and heavy chatter. Peace often arrives in unusual ways, and mine came in the form of sitting on the wheel wells of my Toyota Tacoma while the two of us ate pork floss buns and yakisoba sandwiches.
Introducing The Pork Floss Pastry at Moose Pastry & Tea
Novi is a Northwestern suburb of Detroit, and it’s where Liana lives. Saturday morning, after I took my dog on a hike through Maybury Park, we hit up Moose, a bakery run by Taiwanese chef Douglas Chou.
I spent $22 at Moose on a deep fried hot dog bun, a bao bun croquette with fried mashed potatoes and hoisin sauce, raisin bread made with red wine and sesame seeds, a matcha and red bean bun, a yakisoba dog (stir-fried noodles in a hot dog bun), and a pork floss bun filled with mayo that reminded me a lot of the moo yong sandwich.
Last year, I wrote about the pork floss sandwich I had in Thai Town. It’s a circus sandwich; a wobbly balancing act that amounts to bologna, pork floss, sweet custard, and mayo on shokupan bread. It’s deeply fucked—a strangely addicting, sweet & savory bologna sandwich with conflicting ingredients. Here’s an excerpt:
Moo yong is the Thai name for pork floss, which is pork shoulder that's been cooked with soy sauce, shredded, and dried; the result is a light and fluffy product typically served with congee. So while this simply translates to "pork floss sandwich," that doesn't begin to tell the whole story of this eccentric and affordable luxury. Why does it look so gooey? Is that bologna in there? Is it going to kill me? Let me answer all of those questions.
The moo yong sandwich served at Radna Silom is made with three pieces of Wonder Bread–esque white bread, the soft, squishy, super-sweet kind that your fingertips leave divots in wherever you hold it. Between those slices of bread are thick slabs of cheap, Fud-style deli bologna; what I believe to be a Dijonnaise (I detected a tad of mustard in the mayo); sweet custard made from egg yolks; and a generous helping of fluffy pork floss, which adheres to the custard like confetti submerged in glue.
It's bombastic and glutinous, yet inexpensive—the price comes in at just under $7. Though its combination of flavors and textures reads totally foreign to our American sandwich sensibilities, it's exactly the type of chaos food we love in modern culinary culture. Simply put, the moo yong sandwich is an off-center meal the internet is primed to go nuts for.
The pork floss bun at Moose is much more restrained and sensical. It’s also my favorite thing that I ordered from the bakery. The soft, squishy bun was dusted with meaty, salty pork floss, and the center was filled with what I’m assuming to be Kewpie mayo because it’s so god damn sweet & savory.
I’m excited to explore more in Novi. There’s a big-time Japanese population there. “Big-time Japanese population” might not be the most eloquent sentence written by a food writer, but guess what pal I’m not up for a James Beard Award. *burp*
Not for nothing, the croquette bao bun with fried mashed potatoes, vegetables, and hoisin was also stellar—crunchy, salty, and an oddly fresh snacking sandwich. The yakisoba dog was just as wild and filling as you’d expect a spaghetti sandwich to be. Yakisoba pan is a popular Japanese food, and another great installment of “convenience store delicacies” found around East and Southeast Asia.
It should be said that I wasn’t at all a fan of Moose’s deep-fried hot dog bun, which was far too saturated with oil. I prefer a crispier, crunchier fried hot dog.
Anyway, Moose Pastry & Tea rules. Liana and I ate all of these pastries on the back of my pickup truck while my dog waited for scraps.
The Move is always to have a carb-loaded morning with friends.
Thanks for reading The Move! I’ll be in Istanbul next Sunday, and I’ll try to get some thoughts off for next Monday’s newsletter.
Ciao!!