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FeedMood Food
Hot (and sometimes bothered) on the trail of aphrodisiac dishes
By TIM GIHRING
Photo by Terry Brennan
Aphrodisiacs remind most people of powders purveyed in naughty magazines or in the back-alley shops of Hong Kong, which take something like rhino horn or tiger penis—name your phallic symbol—and grind one species after another toward extinction for the sake of well, extinction’s opposite. Most of it sounds like more hooey than a pick-up line. But could a billion Chinese be wrong? That’s what I was supposed to find out, by visiting local restaurants and sampling not some Love Potion No. 9 but foods said to inspire romance. And although I was bringing along my girlfriend, not a stranger who wouldn’t realize what hit her till she woke up in Mexico smelling of whale vomit (yes, another reputed aphrodisiac), the test would be true: if any dish could assist in the shedding of even one layer in a Minnesota winter, we’d have ourselves an aphrodisiac.
Photo by Terry Brennan
We order vegetable dumplings with ginger sauce, a ginseng-ginger soup, ginger-broccoli tofu with red peppers, and something called the Pineapple Festival—the dish most laden with ginger. It turns out to be sweet-and-sour chicken spilling out of a decapitated pineapple—the plumy head rests beside it on the plate with a pink umbrella stuck in like a flag, as though Barbados had conquered this fruit for beach bums everywhere. Each bite tastes like a tropical romp in a hammock, and suddenly I’m noticing the chopsticks, wrapped in napkins and standing straight up at each table setting, which reminds me of the Washington Monument, the Foshay Tower, and ancient obelisks. Did anyone ever ask women whether they wanted these giant phallic symbols erected in public, I wonder aloud. “No one asked women a lot of things,” my girlfriend says. I ask her if she’s feeling anything. Nope.
Photo by Terry Brennan
On another freezing night, we test that most clichéd of aphrodisiacs: raw oysters. There’s nothing romantic about devouring the squishy cold blobs. And it’s only sexual if you think like ancient frat boys, who apparently thought that slurping flesh from shells was rather like getting up close and personal with, let’s say, Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings. There’s a macho vibe at the oyster bar in the Oceanaire, the area’s premiere seafood establishment, which flies in a dozen oyster varieties daily to the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Minneapolis and displays this challenge, attributed to Jonathan Swift, on a wall: “He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster.” Many of the male servers sport mustaches and talk to diners about oysters the way baseball coaches soothe rattled pitchers: with a firm hand on the shoulder and a go-get-’em attitude. “Tear it up!” our waiter tells us as he brings over a dozen mollusks, mostly the East Coast variety, which are generally more firm and briny than the fishy-tasting West Coast kinds. And so I tear in, even as my girlfriend, who’s attired in a cute sweater covered in tiny hearts, wonders what’s in it for her.
Photo by Terry Brennan
Tim Gihring is the senior writer for Minnesota Monthly.
Ginger Asian Bistro, 4924 France Ave. S., Edina, 952-746-1988
Barbette, 1600 W. Lake St., Mpls., 612-827-5710
Oceanaire, 1300 Nicollet Ave., Mpls., 612-333-2277
