Smelly clothes

The problem with the Emeryville Public Market is that it smells good. Too good. And if you go there too early--like when every shop is still cooking and grilling to get ready for the lunch rush—all the smoke gets into your clothes and you smell like Korean BBQ all day.

For the uninitiated, the Emeryville Public Market is an international food court where you can get all kinds of food. Mexican, Indian, Greek, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. You can find some good stuff— like the Italian deli, the Vietnamese place, the gyro place, or the aforementioned Korean BBQ.

But you can’t go there often. And that’s because all the food starts to taste the same— probably because all the smells of all the foods just become one big klump of smell that permeates into whatever you're eating. Seriously, you’re not imagining things when that burrito you just got tastes vaguely of the jerk chicken from the Jamaican place across the way.

Today I grabbed food from the Vietnamese place. I ordered the fried rice and chicken curry. Some of the other choices I had were beef in oyster sauce, black been chicken, teriyaki chicken, egg rolls, and hot and sour soup. Is any of that really Vietnamese But the fried rice was good (nice and MSG-y) and the chicken curry was very mild, but good. Of course, afterwards I wished I had gotten some pad thai instead.

FJ