Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab | [The] Key Lime Pie

NI Score: 9.9

Definition

"The Key Lime Pie" refers to the best food I have ever had in my entire life. It originated from Joe's SPSSC in Chicago. "The Key Lime Pie" is not the same as "A Key Lime Pie". Whenever "The" is used in the context of key lime pies, it is referring to "The Key Lime Pie" I ate in 6/30/2011. All other key lime pies will be referenced as a key lime pie or with a location prefix like "Daniel's Broiler's Key Lime Pie".

Introduction

I am extremely passionate about eating great food and epic food conquests. There are a great number of things I love to eat but The Key Lime Pie changed my life, and the lives of 3 other friends, forever.

Epic Meal Time

We all had key lime pies before and none of us were that enthusiastic about key lime pies. In fact, I was pretty sure that none of us would have ordered it for dessert up until that point. We went through the epic meal routine- ice tea, bisque bowl, Madagascar shrimps, assortment of stone crabs, bone-in ribeye, a D-Dry Age steak called "Boss", Jennies mash potatoes, and sweet corn. It was a lot of food and they were generally 7.5-8s. After filling our capacities, we would have left soon after if it wasn't for a divine intervention.



Divine Intervention
Our friendly waiter [Thanks 1024 Richard! You changed my life!] dropped off two plates of dessert on our table and said it was on the house. We were slightly baffled, though who would turn down free dessert? We might have started on different desserts, but one by one, we all took a bite of The Key Lime Pie.

Again, not really a fan of key lime pies at that point, I was expecting something ordinary that I'd forget.

The first bite went into my mouth.

I thought to myself, "Hey, this is a good mixture of..." and then "WHOOOOOOOA!"

It hit me like a tidal wave.

It was like the pie contained thousands of flavor packets, all exploding in my mouth at the same time.

I was at a standstill afterwards.

My friends and I were all looking at each other with amazement. The pie had a perfect mix of sweet and sour, and the crust was neither too crunchy nor too soft. I could not find any fault with it.

We were ridiculously full at that point but we weren't going to leave without finishing this pie. On my subsequent bites, I tried to prepare myself and told myself to prepare for amazing. It was all in vain. The waves of flavor explosions annihilated all expectations.

I didn't know what to say, other than to proclaim it as the best thing that I have ever eaten.



The Aftermath
Never has there been a dish so out-of-this-world wonderful as The Key Lime Pie. In fact, The Key Lime Pie was so earth-shattering that it transcended beyond the realm of food. It made me questioned whether it was better than my first kiss. It humbled me and made me realize how little I am and how little I know. It affirmed that there are still good things in this life, and that life is good. I am eternally grateful to The Key Lime Pie.

The Key Lime Pie introduced me to the world of key lime pies. Even though I know the majority of key lime pies out there are nothing close to The Key Lime Pie, I would seriously consider trying key lime pies from different restaurants.

My 3 other friends and I will forever use "The Key Lime Pie" as a reference of something beautiful that comes out of the left field that destroys your preconceptions on life.



The Key Lime Pie and I
One might ask, "If The Key Lime Pie is so great, why not eat it everyday?" Well here's a list of reasons:
1) I live in Seattle and I'd go bankrupt trying to fly to Chicago everyday.
2) There is this fear in me that I will be forever disappointed if the next key lime pie is not same as The Key Lime Pie.
3) I want to find The Key Lime Pie elsewhere, or something even greater out there.



Even Greater?
The Key Lime Pie is like an alien that introduced me to a whole new world. But what if there's another world that surpasses my feeble world and The Key Lime Pie's world? What if there is a 10.1? If there's one thing that The Key Lime Pie has taught me is to never be boxed inside my preconceptions.

To my beloved, The Key Lime Pie, I wholeheartedly thank you. I shall go on new adventures, all over the world, in search of things that remind me of you. I shall forever treasure the moment we met and I hope to meet you again in this life.

Purple Cafe & Wine Bar | Risotto

NI Score: 1.9

Update [3/7/13]: The Risotto is no longer the worst dish I have had.

Something is horribly wrong when you cannot remember a worse meal. This something was the Risotto at Purple. You keep digging through your memories- 1 month back, 1 year back, 3 years back, and nothing was that bad.

As a man who is passionate about food, there was only one reason why I would leave food behind- I am stuffed and cannot consume anymore. The Risotto made the 2nd reason- leaving food because it was terrible. A dagger went through my heart as the waitress asked me if I wanted to box the half finished plate and I said no. And I wasn't even full. I would have told them how terrible it was if it wasn't a company meal. I went to Jamba Juice for a Mango a Go-Go to recuperate afterwards.

We were served pretty decent calamari and spread so nothing prepared me from this disaster of a meal. Forgive me for not recalling it precisely as I tried to forget the whole experience. This particular Risotto was made with some sort of New York steak/filet mignon.

How could it go wrong with beef? Purple definitely shattered my paradigm, in the worst way.

The blend of the beef strips, onions, and rice was about blandest thing ever. It was like they steam cooked the beef and made some sauce that tasted like nothing. The strongest flavor was from the onions, which weren't strong at all. The whole thing tasted like some nasty form of oatmeal, except I would have rather ate oatmeal, and I don't like oatmeal.

My co-workers were eager to hear me rate the food since they also didn't finish because of how terrible it was. As my brain began to crunch the numbers I found myself struggling. There is nothing close to this horrible dish that I can relate to. I would have rather had the following, in descending order:

• Dry Chicken Breast
• Top Ramen
• Microwavables
• Raw Broccoli with no dressing
• Stiff Carrots with no dressing
• Plain Oatmeal

So to the best of my knowledge, this is a 1.9, with pretty much nothing around it other than food I hate [which might be food you like]. The Risotto is a strong candidate for the worst food in the entire universe. I hate Purple for adding this bad memory into my life and I hope I won't go back there for any events that I am obligated to.

California Pizza Kitchen | Butter Cake

NI Score: 7.9 - 8.1


I would never imagine finding such a gem in a restaurant chain and I am glad I did. It is something marvelous to behold- the 4 pillars of whip cream surrounding a hot cake topped with Haagen Dazs ice-cream. 


Let me pause here and emphasize that you HAVE to get the "optional" ice-cream for the full experience. If I ate the butter cake without the ice-cream, it'll be like a 7.3.


The ice cream will create a fusion of cold and hot sweets with the cake, [it should be a good sign if you can see some steam when you cut open the cake] which reaches an equilibrium in your mouth. When it is made right, or the way I like it, it should be slightly crispy on the outside while tender and soft on the inside. This amazing intersection of cold and hot, crisp and soft, and sweetness everywhere makes me realize how good life is.


I try to order the butter cake every time I visit CPK. There was one time I didn't, and I left with regret.


There were some inconsistencies within several visits, but the variance is small enough where I am still very satisfied with the sugar-high. Well done, CPK.

The Nathan Index Defined

The Beginning
At one point in my life [probably during my lab years] I started to rate random things on a scale from 0-10, with 1 decimal point. I found it especially useful when communicating how things compared with one another. [E.g. On a scale from 0-10 where 0 represents absolute ignorance of SQL and 10 the best in the world, I am a 2.0.] I like the pseudo-accuracy aspect of the scale where things are not just "better" or "worse", but a person can plot all those things on one scale and see where things are among all things from my perspective.


The Journey So Far
Ratings are subjective of course, but throughout the years my friends and I have analyzed how I go about rating things. I don't think we have figured everything out yet [We don't have the luxury to sit on the couch for extended periods and just think about how we think at our life stages] but here is what we know so far about the Nathan Index:

• The scale goes from 0 to 10.
• I use it mostly to rate food.
• Most of the food that I have tasted falls around 5-7. This is due to my preference for good food and avoidance of bad food.
• I will account for variance by stating a range of scores instead of a score. This is more applicable with restaurant chains.
• Ratings generally do not change.
• Ratings do not change if I crave a certain thing or had too much of a certain thing.
• If ratings do change, it is usually due to a mistake of some sort or a life-altering event.
• We refer to a rating on the Nathan Index as the NI Score.
• A pleasant environment is likely to raise a score higher than if it was in a neutral environment.
• An unpleasant environment usually will have minimal impact on the score unless the food is terrible.
• Value contributes to the score but I am not afraid to shell out some money for good food.
• Health/Green/Sustainability has minimal impact on the score. I just want good tasting food.

Scoring
0.0 - This NI Score represents the worst food in the entire universe. I can't imagine eating something like this and I hope no one will eat this. This is probably something you'd give to your enemy so that they would suffer horribly instead of dying.


5.0 - This NI Score represents the true mediocrity. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It will be easy to forget this food because I am not passionate about it.


10.0 - This NI Score represents the absolute best in the entire universe. Currently the Key Lime Pie is the closest thing I know. You can read more about the Key Lime Pie in another post.


With those points defined, there shall be no 0, 5 or 10 in my lifetime. Upon my death, the scores shall normalize where the worst score becomes a 0 and the best score becomes a 10. You can try to normalize something to a 5 but I would contest that I probably ate a 5.0 and forgot to write about it. Oh wait, I would also be dead at that point.


Known Biases
What I like might not be what you like, so here are a few things to help you find out if the Nathan Index will work for you:

• I generally prefer sweet over salty, sour, and spicy. However, there might be something in the universe that will break my paradigm.
• I grew up eating Chinese food.
• I generally avoid hurtfully spicy food. This means that 3 out of 5 stars is as spicy as I would go.
• I dislike the following food/ingredients [though I will still eat them at gun-point]:
• Celery
• Cilantro
• Durian
• Oatmeal
• Papaya
• Raw Broccoli
• Soggy Ramen
• Sour Cream
• Stiff Carrots
• Stinky Tofu

Modifiers
My friends generally like what I like and hence they are my friends.
They usually take my ratings seriously though some might add some sort of +/- modifiers or margin of error to my ratings for themselves.
The similarity of values between us correlates with how relevant the Nathan Index is to you.
The more your food experience overlaps with mine, the more relevant the Nathan Index is to you.
The more I explore and taste food around the world, the more relevant the Nathan Index is to you.




To Be Continued...
This post is subject to change as we discover more about the Nathan Index.
Hope you'll find The Key Lime Pie in your life!