We had a good meal here the other evening.
http://www.eastsidemarios.com/lang/en/store/33608/home.phtml
I started with :
Mushroom Stuffed Mushrooms
Roasted garlic mushroom caps filled with a mushroom and cream cheese stuffing, all topped with our blend of cheeses and baked until golden brown. Served with grilled Ciabatta bread.
Main course :
Firecracker Shrimp Farfalle
Large black tiger shrimp sautéed in extra virgin olive oil with fresh green chillies, snow peas, Roma tomatoes and basil. Served with bowtie-shaped pasta tossed with our herbed garlic olive oil.
This was very spicy!!
For dessert we shared a funnel cake, with ice cream and caramel sauce.
This was of course served along with lashings of Ciabatta bread and butter.
This is my third visit to this particular branch, and it’s highly recommended.
East Side Mario’s is a Canadian casual dining restaurant, managed by its parent holding company Prime Restaurants, which operates in Canada and the United States. The restaurant specializes in Italian-American cuisine. Individual locations claim to recreate the historic ambiance found at the corner of Canal Street and Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan. The brand is marketed as “A taste of little Italy”. It is best recognized by its old logo featuring the Statue of Liberty holding a large tomato instead of a torch, as well as the jingle containing the catch phrase “Hey, budda boom budda bing”.
It has over 100 locations in Canada as well as some in the United States.
East Side Mario’s was developed through the merger between several restaurants and began as a subsidiary of Yesac Creative Foods.
East side Mario’s
In 1980 three entrepreneurs from Sudbury, Ontario, Canada opened the first Casey’s Restaurant. The restaurant’s success prompted the opening of a second location in Elliot Lake, Ontario. The company moved to Burlington and introduced a fourth partner. The Casey’s brand was developed through the company name of Yesac Creative Foods. In 1982, the first Pat & Mario’s Restaurant was opened in Whitby, Ontario. The objective was to establish a takeout pizza and pasta business. The venture was successful and the Pat & Mario’s chain expanded into the North York area, as well as Florida, U.S.A.
The first East Side Mario’s restaurant was developed and built in Aventura Mall in Miami, U.S.A. To expand the business on both sides of the border, it was necessary for Yesac to raise capital. To do so, the collective brands of Casey’s, East Side Mario’s and Pat & Mario’s were sold to the Prime Restaurants holding company in August 1989. Prime Restaurants has become a major force in the current Canadian restaurant industry largely in part from this acquisition. By 1993, Prime Restaurants had expanded East Side Mario’s throughout the United States through an American subsidiary. Due to the high potential of this restaurant chain, the American subsidiary was later purchased by Pizza Hut and Prime Restaurants retained exclusive rights to the Canadian trademarks. As of February 2000, Prime Restaurants has re-acquired global trademark rights to East Side Mario’s Restaurants Inc. On July 22, 2002, the parent company made an initial public offer for the Prime Restaurant Royalty Income Fund, allowing for public investing into the brand. Currently, management retains 25% ownership under the company Prime Restaurant Holdings Inc.
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April 29th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
In a covered market in the city of Imphal, the air pungent with fresh and fermented produce, a young man holds up his hands to reveal what looks like a cluster of dried, berry-red flowers.
They immediately smell herbal, complex and very powerful. “These are the dry ones. The fresh ones only come during the winter,” says the salesman, Raymond, who, by dint of being a man, has been banished to the fringes of the city’s famous “women’s market”, where his shop sits next to a stall selling dried fish. “It’s the most hot. One piece is enough.”
For generations, the people of north-east India have relished this small, pungent pepper that packs a punch like no other. Known in Assam as bhut jolokia, in Nagaland as naga jolokia and here in Manipur as umorok, the chilli is valued for its heat, its flavour and its purported medicinal qualities.
In 2007, there was quiet celebration in these parts, if only for receiving external confirmation of what everyone already suspected, when the Guinness World Records book declared it was the hottest chilli in the world – almost twice as ferocious as the variety whose fiery crown it took.
But this innocuous-looking capsicum could soon become more famous yet. Scientists working for the Indian military said recently that they had successfully tested a hand-grenade made from umorok. They believe the non-lethal weapon could be used as a form of crowd control by police or paramilitaries, or used to produce a protection device for women.
“We have found it can be used either as a spray or as a hand grenade. We think it is more effective than teargas and, unlike teargas it has no side-effects,” said RB Srivastava, the director of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at Tezpur, in northern Assam. “We think it could also be used by women for protection. I’ve heard that women in remote areas often carry a small bag of chilli powder to defend themselves [against attackers]. I thought that if they used this, they would only need a very small amount.”
Mr Srivastava, who explained that trials of the grenades were complete and he was awaiting word from the armed forces, said the chilli was also used for controlling wildlife by people who spread it along ropes and fences. “It is a very good repellent for wild elephants,” he added.
While umorok has steadily developed a cult following in the US and Europe for its unmatchable heat, cooks in north-eastern India have long used it as a regular ingredient in everyday meals. Many people will grow a plant or two in their vegetable garden. The fresh umorok is particularly loved and people smile and joke as they talk about catching the smell of the pepper as they walk past a vegetable seller. Many also talk of its medicinal properties.
Dr Srivastava said there was evidence that the chilli boosted the metabolism. In Manipur, locals coyly point out that, unlike many varieties of chilli, umorok burns while entering the body but not on the way out.
Hoihnu Hauzel, a New Delhi-based writer, poet and author of The Essential North-East Cookbook, grew-up in Manipur and friends still bring her bags of dried umorok when they come to visit. “People use it mostly for the flavour. It adds extra richness and colour to the dish. It’s particularly good with pork,” she said. “If they cannot get the fresh one, people use the dried chilli. Or else the fresh ones can be preserved in jars of mustard oils.”
Umorok’s rise to fame began in 2005 when researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University carried out tests on a pepper that had been grown from dried seeds brought back from India. The institute’s director, Paul Bosland, found that when assessed using Scoville heat units (SHUs), the chilli came in at more then 1 million. The standard Scoville measure was devised in 1912 by Wilbur Scoville, a US chemist who found a way to determine the heat given off by capsaicin, the active ingredient in chillies. The red savina, a Californian pepper which at the time was considered the world’s hottest, measures 577,000 SHUs. By comparison, a jalapeno measures a paltry 5,000 SHUs. “Oh my gosh, this is hot,” Dr Bosland later recalled of the umorok. After it was listed as a record-holder, it increasingly began to draw the attention of the bold and adventurous who like to test themselves against the hottest chillies. Indeed, the internet is full of painful accounts of people’s excruciating encounters with the pepper.
One of the most unlikely took place last year in Assam state’s capital, Guwahati, where Anandita Dutta Tamuly ate 60 of the peppers in just two minutes before a cheering crowd including the British chef, Gordon Ramsay, who was filming a television series. For unexplained reasons, having consumed the chillies, the young woman then rubbed 20 of them into her eyes. She emerged, seemingly unscathed, saying: “I am very happy to have broken my own record.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/my-encounter-with-the-worlds-hottest-chilli-1958714.html