Adda at Tung Nam...

Nothing elevates a purebred adda like delicious mouthfuls. If ever good-food stands for a rich discourse, aftertaste would be its resulting wisdom. So, at Tung Nam, meaty topics and juicy pork were blended to concoct the best adda that one could with like wherewithal. #uncookedwords

I root for underdogs and that largely explains my love of hogs. Besides, a yummy pork dish shows best how an awful animal earns widespread love, though posthumously, if cut and cooked well. And, Tung Nam was chosen thoughtfully as the site of toasting pork at its guileless [and, Chinese] best.

Let’s cut to the chase. A serene Chicken & Mushroom clear soup with a body as sheer as a lacy negligée flagged off the feast promisingly. Chili Pork at Tung Nam is not made of cubes like elsewhere but thin slices that blend with the ingredients like a chameleon in the woods. At a time when a fare is scorned if it fills the bowl, it was a welcome anomaly. Smug is he who discounts this timeless delicacy as timeworn. And, misbegotten. Eating Pork Chou Si was cherishing a fine specimen of oriental modesty served in an artless bowl. Fatty pork strips tossed in rice-wine tickled with a savoury crispiness and, once bit into, burst unhurriedly with the poise of a wine long-aged in French oak. I wonder if it were the third strip or the fourth that nearly yielded the flavorous epiphany my palate pursues so keenly in bites. Chow Si was truly what a sober Adam Jones of ‘Burnt’ would ecstatically cheer as ‘Perfect’. And, THIS IS HOW THE PORK SHOULD TASTE LIKE. Most often it doesn’t. Lending base-note to our placid spread was the mixed Mei Fun that, as stir-fried rice-noodles teeming with fresh pork, chicken, shrimp and peppers, delighted equally with lightness and flavours. And, didn’t make adults with generous appetite weep or thump the table in unfulfillment.

Bowlfuls of greens were summoned soon after to cleanse our carnivorous spread of bloodstain. Besides, they by taste reconfirmed how it was not the greenness but the sameness of how the greens were cooked day after day that had got my goat all along. [And, I didn’t let any bovine indifference set in while chewing my mouthfuls.]

That unusual evening left Truffaut, Kurosawa and Coppola cut open over a meal like the loin of a hog. That said, stating that I didn’t miss the lushness of Malbec offsetting the repast’s quiet elegance would leave me ending with a delicious lie. So be it!