gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

That smells!

I've been bummed out the past few days. Two of my oldest and best friends from CBC.ca - Catherine Jheon and Chris Harris are fleeing the corp for greener pastures. Pasture, I should say, as they are both joining Alliance Atlantis - along with at least five others from CBC.ca. I know where that began, but we'll see where it ends.

Not that I begrudge either of them the move - they jumped on amazing career opportunities, and I'm really happy for them. Just sad for me, and CBC, both poorer for losing them. They are both great journalists, and great people.

So, how to cheer myself up, I wondered as I paced around the building today at lunchtime. The answer, it turns out, was blowing in the wind: the irresistable smell of Don Juan's french fries!

Anyone who's been in downtown Toronto knows Don Juan. His aromatic chip truck has been parked outside the Metro Convention Centre (near the Skydome Rogers Centre and CN Tower - and CBC) for more than two decades.

Don (his first name really is Don, and he really is Spanish) is quite a character, and lives up to his namesake. He chats up the ladies, insults the men, and bare-hands fresh-cut fries directly from the boiling oil to your tray.

Here's our conversation today:

Don (to middle-aged tourist lady in front of me): Thank you so much, my beautiful, you come back and see me soon, maybe tonight OK?
Tourist lady: Titter titter.
Don (to me): Hey ugly, what you want?
Me: Fries and a hot dog, please.
Don: Hey, check out that beauty behind you! Hiya gorgeous! You coming to see me? Maybe later, Ok? What you want on the hot dog, ugly?
Me: Well, I'd...
Don: Never mind, you get everything on it, shut up!

And I did, and I got everything, and it was delicious. Never mind that I don't really like relish, or fried onions, or hot peppers on my dog - it's part of the charming package.

But the real draw is those fries. God, they smell fantastic! They are a comfortable old standby for CBCers. When someone takes them back to their desk, the scent carries you floating past security, up the elevator shaft and to their workstation, where the buyer has already been ripped to pieces by coworkers in a feeding frenzy.

The aforementioned Catherine Jheon - CJ, to me - described the narcotic aroma in a piece she did for Beyond Burgers on Metro Morning.

You can listen to her Don Juan's review here.

This olfactory experience almost makes up for a the way my nose was ruthlessly violated on Saturday.

I was taking my wife and kids on a walk through "second Chinatown", not far from our house. There was a delightful Chinatown Festival going on, with dragon dances, food stands and so on, and we were having a hoot.

Until we got to the corner of Dundas and De Grassi. All of a sudden, a wall of stink knocked us to the ground, sent both children into tears, tore off my nose and killed my wife (well, she got better.)

The culprit: an abomination known - officially! - as Smelly Tofu.

This horrific product is charitably defined as "tofu which has been marinated in a brine made from fermented vegetables for as long as several months."

But ask anyone who has smelled it - and lived - and you'll get more colourful descriptions. My favourite describes it as "a biohazard delight":

My wife Diane, who has survived a close encounter with stinky tofu (or phonetically in Mandarin Chinese - tsoh doh-foo), describes it as smelling like a used tampon baked under the Death Valley sun. When I hear that I have to roll my eyes and wonder, "Why the restraint?" Come on, for schnoz sake, it smells much worse. It’s like making a smoothie out of durian melon, Limburger cheese, kim-chee and nuoc mam then letting it fester inside a porta-potty for a month and then, as you have a taste, your dickhead big brother enshrouds a thick blanket over both of you and rips the worst fart ever.

I'm told the taste is relatively mild, and overall it's no worse than, say, blue cheese. Anyhow, the locals were lined up ten deep to get at the stuff. As for my poor family, we crawled out of Chinatown on our hands and knees and slinked home to bathe ourselves in tomato juice.

I've only seen one "food" item more offensive than smelly tofu: Surströmming (Sour herring):

a Swedish delicacy consisting of fermented Baltic herring. Surströmming is sold in cans, which when opened release a strong, foul smell....similar to fish gone bad or garbage left out in the sun for a couple of days

Surströmming is rightfully called "one of the world's strangest dishes". I heard about it when I was in Stockholm in 1998, building a website for Global Village.

We were attending Womex '98, a giant world music festival, and I was building a "live" website from the location. Turns out it's still online, inexplicably.

Anyhow, one of the features I proposed was a "Swedish Chef of the Day" (props to the Muppet Show!) One of the locals told host Jowi Taylor (to my delight, they called him "Yowi") about this legendary dish of fermented herring, which would rot in the can and release clouds of noxious fumes when opened. (Surströmming is aparently banned in many places, including hotels and airlines.)

I didn't actually have to smell Surströmming, but I met its first cousin. The Swedes are crazy for herring (strömming), and you can buy it on the street corner at one of the numerous fried herring stands. (They love hot dogs, too - Don Juan would be proud.)

On Day Two of Womex, Jowi and I visited one of these stands. Think he enjoyed it?

I still have the video of Yowi's experience, which I've now uploaded. It's hopelessly small and crappy RealVideo, but hey, this was 1998, and besides it's only half a meg to download.

And they say that Scottish food is based on a dare!