Going With My Gut

And the 100th Post Goes to... Le Cafe Anglais, London

The first 99 posts of Going With My Gut have been a great ride. Mostly because I'm writing again (thanks for the nags. You know who you are). Eating my way around the world is quite a bonus too.

Highlights so far:

• Writing a guest piece for Guardian UK's Been There on my Top 10 Eats from my first 6 months of travel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
• My Kenyan Goat Feast post coming in among the top 3 for the Farewell Floyd blogging event (in spite of, or due to, grossing out quite a few readers along the way!)
• My evil eye cookies taking 2nd place in Istanbul Eats's debut photo competition
• Sharing my Mum's Singapore Hainanese chicken rice recipe with In the Bag, and my mushroom soup and tom yum soup recipes with Tasty Tools.
• Tickling a few of my friends pink, recounting the late-night adventures of a Hyderabadi Evil Eye Goat. (Yes evil eyes and goats are following me)

Looking ahead, I'm just getting started (still). There's tons to write, and even more to learn from the vast food and travel writing community out there about writing better posts, taking better photos and assembling a better blog. Overall, a great way to stay out of mischief... or at least write about it.

I'm dedicating the rest of this 100th post to my favourite overall restaurant in London: Le Cafe Anglais in Bayswater. I'm not there every week for a shot of comfort food (that honour belongs squarely to Goldmine down the street) but it's my favourite in the sense that it's always such a treat to eat there and just be there. Its big, ballsy, classy-without-being-poncy approach to its food as well as its space encapsulates my favourite traits about any endeavour.

Le Cafe Anglais opened in late 2007 just a few months after I moved to London. It took over a cavernous space in Whiteleys mall previously occupied by McDonalds. With the acclaimed Rowley Leigh at the helm of a mammoth part-seasonal menu and a double-height rotisserie, it promised to be a signficant break from its Chinese diner and kebab shop neighbours. What a fabulous act of urban renewal! Cause or coincidence, I was pleasantly unsurprised to see upmarket food players such as Hereford Road, El Piratas de Tapas and the Whiteleys food hall spring up in the neighbourhood soon after.

The meals I've had at Le Cafe Anglais in the 2+ years since have always been wonderfully delicious and served up by a well-informed and friendly crew well tuned in to the rhythm of a meal. This is regardless of whether it's a splash-out evening -- where Babs and I indulged in a soup on raw oysters perched atop atolls of stringy onions before you the diner pour in a jug of steaming beef broth, and a massive properly-medium-rare long-horm prime rib for 2 -- or one of those days I'm feeling skint but nip into the bar anyway, and scarf a bargainous tender, juicy, saucy and garlicky roast chicken leg and chase it with a refreshing watermelon and ginger juice.

I suspect, however, that what makes the restaurant the accolade hoover it is, is its ability to bring a splash of class to an otherwise simple dish; enough to give it a subtle but impossible-to-ignore makeover, but stopping short at booting it into an alienating price bracket.

I am probably the last person on earth to tell you about its anchovy soldiers and parmesan custard -- a regal riff on marmite soldiers dipped in soft boiled egg. Also, don't miss its other deceptively simple delights, like its fairy-light courgette tempura...

... a pasta ragu made with flaked rabbit and, when that magical time of the year is neigh...

... a mushroom omelette made with whole girolles. So simple, but what a wallop of flavour. Topped in its category only by San Sebastien's La Cepa's smoky grilled boleta dipped in raw egg, I reckon.

In dating parlance, Le Cafe Anglais is that winner you can take home to your family with confidence. It's so put together there's no need to do anything outlandish to impress, and its radiates a shine from the core rather than shimmers with a more frivolous sparkle, warming everyone at the table and putting them at ease.

So that's what I did. I brought Le Cafe Anglais to my family (the other way around, really, but you know what I mean). And Babs's. All 12 of us, sitting down to our first meal together as a joint family the day after we got married, a year and a bit ago now. Back then this was still a nerve-wrecking cross-cultural event -- for me at least -- because they had met only the day before at the registry itself, outside Marylebone town hall. I wanted today -- without the buffer of friends -- to not get tripped up but some dish poorly done, or by shoddy service, or some jarring aspect of the ambience of the place, so that everyone could just focus on getting a little more relaxed around each other.

The verdict? Like what happened in that stately Marylebone room that day and everything after, I'd do it all over again, in a heartbeat.

Le Cafe Anglais
8 Porchester Gardens
London W2 4DB
United Kingdom
+44 20 7221 1415

Haunted by Hummus ala Beit Sissi, Aleppo

If there is any downside to travel, it's that I find myself feeling increasingly haunted by ghosts.

Not ghosts of people long gone, but of dishes long digested. Full sensory hallucinations of treats prepared in a very specific way in lands far far away. I -- pale, wild-haired, gaunt (ok fine, not gaunt) -- cut off from their delicious realms, call out into the dark trying to channel them: "Manoooooooolo Fernandez pooooooollo... Zemmmmmmmaciai pork rib boooorrrrrrscht... Gelateria del Teatrooooo watermelon granitaaaaaaaa..."

And now add to that list Beit Sissi's hummus with grilled lamb chunks and toasted pine nuts, thanks to a quick visit this past September. Creamy. Smoky. Juicy. And maddeningly far away in Aleppo in Syria, tucked into a discreet alleyway in the city's charming and labyrinthian Al-Jdeida neighbourhood.

Once you're through the multiple arches and the door, however, the restored 17th century Arab-style mansion-turned-restaurant throws open a double-storey sundrenched dining room, complete with resident violinist.

Babs and I opened with a mess of mezzes: the hummus as mentioned above, a slightly tart but refreshing eggplant rattatouille, and a dish of silky mallow leaves. All mopped up with a lot of pita bread and even more gusto.

Just as we were feeling pleasantly and sensibly full (as is always the case when we go to Middle Eastern eateries) the main meat dishes arrive.

Cherry kebab -- cooked in a lurid purple cherry sauce and garnished with yet more toasted pine nuts -- is the signature dish of this region. For me anyway, the celebrity cherry sauce tasted too tart, and messed too much with -- rather than complemented or lifted -- the natural taste of the meat.

The house-style kebabs, however, unadorned except for a flap of pita soaking in kebab juice, were gorgeous in the nude and voluptuous in flavour. Beautiful like Botticelli's Venus. Another strong candidate for the haunting list. Wooooooooooo......

Beit Sissi (aka Sissi House)
Sharia as-Sissi, Al-Jdeida
Aleppo, Damascus
+963 21 212 4362

Thali Christmas and Henna New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones.

Thank you to all of you who have spent time with Babs and me here, following our shenanigans, contributing your comments, reactions, encouraging words and ideas, and being patient with all my typos and experiments during this blog's infant phase.

Please forgive the recent silence. We spent the last week and a bit in Bangalore, India, not at all to celebrate Christmas. Rather, Babs's Mum (a native Bangalorean) organised a belated wedding reception for Babs and me, his brother and his Chicago-born Indian wife, and his sister and her Polish husband -- all visiting India for the first time since getting married over the last 18 months.

The ~400 guests -- considered small by Indian wedding standards -- hailed from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mysore, Mangalore, Kerala, Mumbai, Delhi, the UAE, UK, US and Singapore. (More on the event later.)

So the lead-up to D-Day (on Boxing Day) was a nonstop flurry of introductions to my new relatives, me cajoling them for their recipes for their most delicious dishes (I've had some success, so stay tuned!), plunging into the bowels of Crawford Market in Mumbai and Commercial Street in Bangalore to procure fabric for shalwar khameez (Punjabi suits) and saris and Kashmiri shawls and all the accompanying bangles and sandals and purses (oh my), trips to the tailor to get said Indian outfits made, getting my hands henna-ed up for the first time, and multiple late-night airport runs to pick up loved ones flying in from far away.

*Exhale"

Well. And a fresh tender coconut and pomegranates bursting with rubies of every shade of purple, red and pink every day. And briyani. Oil-tankers full it. Enough briyani to feed and fatten all of India and then some for lunch the day after.

*Burp*

It occured to me at some point that this was my first Christmas ever away from home in Singapore. Away from Mum's turkey. An uncle's home-baked ham. An aunt's Hockchew wonton soup. Another aunt's fried beehoon (rice noodles) and lohr ak (braised duck). A cousin's attempt at sushi. Grandma's delectable agar jellies. About 100 aunts, uncles, cousins and their children all trying to remember each other's names. And then there are friends. Rubbing elbows with them while having the one-th too many cocktail. Bumping knees with them waiting for Christmas service to be done.

Instead, for Christmas lunch this year I find myself at Sundeheri at Woodlands Hotel in Bangalore, tucking into a vegetarian thali of (clockwise from top left below) carrot, lentil and coconut salad, coconut and red chili chutney, okra fried with coconut, spiced taro, mallow with lentil, yellow dhal, puri (diabolical deep fried dough pillow cases) and eggplant curry. All served -- in the proper old school South Indian way -- on a banana leaf.

It's all terribly tasty, and I do have Mum and Dad in from Singapore at the table, but it still doesn't feel like Christmas. I guess for me Christmas needs to be spent around not just a familiar set of people (that's some of you reading this), but also a familiar set of food. And -- as much as I hate to admit it -- a playlist of saccharine-sweet Christmas jingles. Just a few. The limit being remix version 4 of "Last Christmas" by Wham!.

This New Year will be spent in Hyderabad, attending Babs's sister-in-law's cousin's wedding. Far away from the New Year's Eve party I've hosted each year since 1995, which I've missed only once before in 2003, when I spent a poorly-thought-out week running around Eastern Europe, filling my lungs with icicles which took a couple of months after to properly dislodge. My sinuses have never been the same since.

Ah well. Nothing like stepping out from the routine of home to make you appreciate it all the more.

I hope you'll continue to drop by here in 2010. Babs and I will be poking around more of India, Ghana(!), Southeast and Northeast Asia, maybe Australia and New Zealand (depending on our cash situation) and South America before we decide where to hunker down and set up camp for the next few years.

In the meantime, my very best wishes to you for the new year. May all our days be delicious ones.

Sundeheri at Woodlands Hotel
5 Rajaram Mohan Roy Road
Richmond Circle, Bengalore
Karnataka, India

Game to Meat Up in Cape Town?

Let's face it. I'm lousy company on a safari or a dive trip.

Mostly because, in the group chat afterwards, when all the wildlife lovers are cooing "Wasn't that majestic... wasn't that just soooo cute..." I will inevitably blurt out "I wonder what that tastes like."

And then a "whoompf" of silence will descend, and everyone will wonder with raised eyebrows wondering "Who brought her?"

Eventually one of the more sociable ones will play along, and the group will discuss what they would and wouldn't eat, and someone will always end up saying "Oh but I couldn't eat that, they're just too cute!"

I've never understood this not eating cute animals business. What does that even mean? They'll eat only ugly schmugly animals? How would animals qualify for the life-saving cute category? If they've done enough Disney roles to qualify for health insurance with SAG?

I tend to think this out loud. More raised eyebrows.

If you're still reading this, and chuckling along, I think we understand each other. Read on. Otherwise, you might want to read some other post. And probably not the one about the Kenyan Goat Feast.

===

So I decided that while we were in Africa, we had to try some game meat. The farmed, rather than endangered variety. (Yes, I will eat cute, but not endangered)

The first and most obvious lead was Carnivore in Nairobi, Kenya, but we found out that Kenya had banned the sale of game meat. (Research suggests that Carnivore also has a branch in Johannesburg, South Africa, which still serves a rotation of game meats.)

Luckily, Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa -- the city's backpacker and entertainment ground zero -- offers 2 delicious and affordable options for those game for game.

Royale Eatery

Hipster-chic Royale Eatery also serves pizzas and very impressive salads, but it is first and foremost a gourmet burger joint, with offerings of beef, chicken, fish and -- what I came for -- ostrich.

South Africa pioneered ostrich farming over 150 years ago, and posh neighbourhoods in ostrich central Oudtshoorn are said to be built upon the feather fortunes. Today, vehicle manufacturers still buy ostrich feathers to be used in the late stages of the vehicle-painting process. Ostrich hides are turned into an array of leather products, eggs are made into monster omelettes and their shells painted and sold as decorations.

Ostrich meat, as it turns out, is a red meat. The best way to describe its taste? You know how Diet Coke tastes like a subtly different version of regular Coke? Ostrich -- similar to kangaroo but with a different twang -- tastes like diet beef. Lovely flavour and bite, with much less of the heaviness afterwards.

The beetroot chutney was a lovely lift to the taste and colour of the well made burger platter. The sweet potato fries were superb, especially with aioli, and sweet chili sauce.

Do also sample Royale Eatery's formidable milkshake menu. I took a shot at the Jack Daniels and Peanut Butter shake. Geeeeeenius. Even more genius than the time I chucked some JD into my 7-Eleven Coke slurpee. I should experiment with chucking JD into more stuff. Recommendations?

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)

Khaya Nyama, which specialises in game meat, is open only for dinner and describes its ambience as "bushman cave". I guess that means this.

To sample a range of game without committing to an expensive steak portion of something you might not like, try the venison carpaccio platter, with a slice of crocodile, ostrich, springbok and kudu (2 kinds of deer).

The 3 red meats, while very tasty, posssibly had too much spices and brine to really bring out the differences between the different meat flavours. The more interesting experience was the crocodile. It looks mostly like a slice of smoked chicken or turkey, but has that slight translucent sheen of fish. Its taste had the same unusual fishy-chickeny combination.

I followed with a whopping serving of grilled warthog ribs. As somewhat expected, it tasted like a more full bodied version of pork (a beefier version of pork?). Lovely. The sides -- maize mash, broccoli, and rice, were hearty but could probably do with slightly prettier plating to match up with the restaurant's fine dining pitch.

Overall, a successful savoury safari. Thanks for keeping me company!

Royale Eatery
273 Long Street
Cape Town, South Africa
+21 21 422 4536

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)
267 Long St
Cape Town, South Africa
+27 21 424 2917

Discovering Gold at Fynboshoek Cheese, Tsitsikamma, South Africa

"Cross the bridge... follow the detour for 4km... look for the church and the school... look for the turnoff 1.2km from the school... go 1.5km... past the neighbour's farm... left at the fork... then go to the end of the road."

We were on a treasure hunt for Fynboshoek Cheese, a South Africa Garden Route locavore haven by award winning cheesemaker Alje van Deemder, who has been personally serving lunches for more than a decade, with just about everything served being grown and / or made onsite.

I trust this is the right way...

Success! We drive up to a mustard house garlanded with many a flowering tree, and get ushered into a breathtaking sunroom, where classical music is softly playing. If they had divans here I could dawdle with a book for many afternoons on end.

There's no menu at Fynboshoek. (The set lunch costs ZAR 110 per person. Drinks are extra.) So we wait, soaking in the view. Then the opening act arrives, with quite a bang: Fried goat cheese canapes, with a dab of jam and sprigs of fresh thyme.

Next, salad caprese, with a sunny homemade mozzerella. And rosemary focaccia, fresh from the oven. Combine with a giant bowl of vibrantly coloured salad leaves for a soul-cleansing gorge.

The headline act: The Fynboshoek cheese platter, with 3 goat cheeses of varying maturity, a couple of cheddars, a smoked provolone ball, and my favourite (on the far left) a cow's milk cheese with cumin. Not being a class-A curd nerd, I sometimes find the taste of goat cheese to be too overwhelming, but the ones put forward here were gentle and gorgeously creamy.

I've never had a meal of cheese, bread and leaves this satisfying.

You can read about the health and environmental merits of eating locally -- where ingredients are grown and sourced from as close to the dining table as possible -- but it's so much more seductive to experience the difference with all five senses.

Out bread was finger-singeing hot, with salty dough and rosemary wafting about the table. The salad leaves were surprisingly sweet, having been spared nitrogen and that awful bitter plastic infusion that comes with supermarket packaging. If you have time after lunch, you can go stroll on the grounds outside the house, and say hello to the goats and cows that provided the milk for your cheese.

The other diners in the sunroom and at a long table outside were quite uniformly of the pastel shirt and shoulder-slung sweater and posh leather loafer variety. So Mr van Deemder -- possibly pleasantly surprised by the diversity of a scrubby Chinese and Indian couple -- tarried over expressos, asking what we were doing way out here in Tsitsikamma.

He was quite amused with our casual quest of eating our way around the world, and he visibly perked up when we said we focused especially on eateries that showcased local ingredients and traditional recipes. We shared laments about how so much of South Africa's best produce (especially seafood) is sent overseas while locals lap up cheaper but lower quality imports. I told him about our frustrated quest to sample Knysna oysters, and he rejoined: "Our squid and cuttlefish is top quality, so it all goes to Europe and Asia. All the squid you find here is from South America."

Tragedy! How does one hijack a South African squid boat I wonder...

The music switches to a jaunty ragtime jazz tune. Do we really have to go?

But I take heart. Fynboshoek is that kind of treasure trove that is more likely to keep keeping on if you spread, rather than hoard, the word. So go. Off-map, off-GPS, to where cheese marks, and hits, the spot.

Fynboshoek Cheese
Off the N2 Highway across from Tsitsikamma Lodge
Calling ahead for reservations and directions is essential
+27 42 280 3879

Wheeling and Mealing at Khan's BBQ, Arusha, Tanzania

How ever the town of Arusha, Tanzania may pitch itself to the world (one reference is apparently "The Geneva of Africa") it is in essence a pit stop. Arusha is where travellers from all over the world break their journey on the overland route between Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam (as we did in late October), or else camp for the night before forging onward to Serengeti National Park or Mount Kilimanjaro.

As such, Arusha's streets are chockablock with buses, safari vans and giant SUVs owned by flush tour operators. And hungry pedestrians in transit.

One enterprise that has embraced this situation with some delicious genius is wheeler mealer Zubeda Auto Spares / Khan's Barbeque. By day, it sells auto parts to vehicles trundling through town. By night, it sells some of the best damn Pakistani-style BBQ chicken parts I've tasted anywhere for the travellers pouring out of said vehicles.

Slot yourself into one of the long bench tables (or simply lower your SUV window if you want to eat in your plush vehicle), place your order, then go build your own salad that comes with each meal. I particularly liked the green tomato achar (pickle) salad.

Beware: this is one of the few eateries in East Africa where when they tell you something is spicy, they mean it's spicy (I learned this the hard teary-sweaty-snotty way).

The other thing the more sensible among you need to be aware of, is that 1 order of chicken at Khan's means 1 whole chicken. We unknowingly ordered 2. Which meant we had the most badass snacks on the bus to Dar Es Salaam the next day.

Twas the proverbial dark and stormy night when we ate at Khan's. In these parts, this often means that power cuts out for hours on end.

So while waiting for Khan's backup generator to kick in, we dined by Maglite and SUV headlight... same way the grill chefs soldiered on.

Having lived in London, I had full appreciation of their stoicism while BBQing in the rain. So we made another pit stop at Khan's on the road back to Nairobi a week later.

As tender, juicy, spicy and smoky as the chicken was, I was glad to be moving on. If Khan's were in my neighbourhood I'd find myself there embarassingly often. Eat frequently enough at a place like this, and you're bound to eventually get a spare tyre for free. And I don't mean the type you can run your car on.

Khan's Barbeque / Zubeda Auto Spares
Mosque St
Arusha, Tanzania
+255 27 2500 458 / 2544 925
Mobile: +255 713 / 754 / 784 652747

(Note: The 3 digit prefix numbers are for different mobile network providers. Calls within the same network are sometimes discounted or free)

Tasty Tallinn: Olde Hansa, AED, and Bonaparte Deli

Picking up where I left off chronologically on this journey, we found ouselves in Tallinn, Estonia for my August birthday weekend. The day itself was celebrated at Restaurant Ö, but Tallinn proved to be quite a tasty town at large. Here are a few highlights, if you are headed that way.

Olde Hansa

Olde Hansa -- a medieval themed restaurant named after the Hanseatic League of merchants -- might lure you in for the first time with touristy gimmicks such as waiters in Robin-Hood-style tights, lute-playing waitresses, elaborate script-font menus, and a sink that uses a tipping kettle for a tap. But it will lure you back because of the sheer quality of its cuisine.

It's a small gesture, but you can usually judge the quality of a restaurant by the bread they serve before the arrival of the meal. Here, the bread here is served not with butter, but with a generous blob of some kind of soft, creamy, savoury whipped cheese. A good omen. Food portions here are large and the cuisine is hefty, so you're going to have to wrestle with how much of that yummy cheese and bread to scarf.

Babs orders a spectacular fish platter called "Neptune's Feast". Old Hansa trumps its own whipped cheese opener by adding fish eggs to it. Medieval magic.

I order a "Game Pot" (I think some minced mix of wild boar and deer / elk), which comes with pickles, berries, cabbage, butternut squash and...just in case everything else wasn't filling enough... a pastry cement bag filled with some kind of chickpea mash or spelt. My point is, my advice above about the bread and cheese comes from experience, not preaching.

If you're dining in a group, you can apparently pre-book a medieval feast. Yet another place where we'll need to come back to with reinforcements! If you make it there before I do, I'd love to hear how it went!

Restoran AED

Call it deja vu. Jump forward a few centuries to Restoran AED (also known as Embassy of Pure Food), one of the most modern and stylish eateries in town, and what you'll find is a seasonal all-organic menu, i.e. food that was grown in ways much more akin to medieval times compared to all the chemical hocus pocus used now.

The dinner menu was out of our budget, but they have some delightful lunch bargains, best enjoyed at an outside table while basking in the Nordic sun and the fragrance of AED's herb hedge.

AED was having a carrot festival at the time. We tried the carrot and sea-buckthorn smoothie, which was an absolutely delicious and slightly less acidic twist on my much-loved carrot-and-orange juice mix. We also tried the carrot cappuchino -- a very clever take on how a drinkable carrot-and-coffee cake might taste.

AED's salads are great to look at, and deliver on taste (don't just push away the flower petal garnish; they're edible too). I can't pass up a smoked duck salad when I see one, and paired it with a beautiful beetroot soup, which I mentioned in my post on Souperb Finds in Eastern Europe.

Babs goes for their smoked trout salad, followed by a spelt pasta with rabbit. YUM.

Bonaporte Deli

Tallin's camera-friendly Nordic sunlight and its heady mix of Scandinavian, Russian, Baltic and medieval architecture make for a great day of walking around its old town. If your feet prove too itchy to sit down to eat, consider grabbing a treat to go at Bonaparte Deli (whose big brother Bonaparte is another very well known stylish restaurant in town we couldn't afford this time around).

Deli patrons -- who wouldn't look at all out of place in New York's Upper East Side trust-fund-financed apartments -- were nipping in and out collecting cake orders the entire time we were browsing. We eventually set out with a very well made anchovy and egg sandwich, and a pretty looking chicken wrap.

Snapped just in the nick of time! A very yummy Bornaparte Deli chocolate roll. Now, to walk some of this off.

Olde Hansa
Vana turg 1
10146 Tallinn, Estonia
+372 627 9040

AED (Embassy of Pure Food)
Rataskaevu 8,
10123 Tallinn, Estonia
+372 626 9088

Bonaparte Deli
Pikk 47
Tallinn, Estonia
+372 646 4024

Empire of the Sun in London: Dinings, Cafe Japan and Atari-ya

If you've been to Japan, you might agree that the apex of its charm and allure is how it manages to have both age-old traditions and cutting-edge modernity co-exist vibrantly, neither falling into the shadow of the other. It's the kimono-clad geisha on her mobile phone with enough features to control satellites. It's the businessmen who dine at sushi and noodle parlours that have cooking methods that go back centuries, who then proceed to karaoke clubs with control panels more complex than Captain Kirk's SS Enterprise.

Fittingly, I have two favourite Japanese restaurants in London, and try as I might, I can't choose either one over the other.

New School: Dinings

For a wildly succesful example of avant garde Japanese cuisine that is a knockout on both beauty and bite, go to Dinings, helmed by Nobu alum Tomanari Chiba.

It was my friend from work Macaloony who first brought me here. She loves Dinings to the extent that she made me promise not to tell anyone where we were going, and storms around the office like a Kabuki demon every time there's a rave review about the place in one of the London papers, cursing at what it'll do to her already strained ability to get a table at short notice.

It's possible she'll disown me or at least disinvite me to her upcoming wedding upon reading this post, but let's face it, by this point I'm nowhere near being the flag-planter and early loudhailer for Dinings.

Ah well, at least we'll always have that farewell dinner this past summer. Good girly times.

Fabulous fish: Seabass carpaccio with summer truffle and ponzu (citrus juice) jelly; Mackeral sushi...made with...egg fried rice?

Meat that melts in your mouth while you melt in your knees: Stewed pork belly (Iberian pate negra, if you're lucky); and wagyu beef sushi, also with ponzu jelly.

If you're not watchful, a session at Dinings can quickly turn into a protein and carb fest. The fruit and vegetable balancers are not to be ignored. I'm a big fan of the beetroot, and avocado...a great cover for the razor clams underneath.

Right. Veggie guilt taken care of. Now for main event.

Foie gras sushi.

I'm not otherwise much of a foie gras fan. It's too rich even for me, and sometimes has too much of a raw livery smell. Combined with humble sushi rice to soak up its richness, however, is clearly one of those loud "Eureka" moments in the kitchen lab.

And then, the encore! Trump the foie gras sushi, by adding unagi (grilled eel) and shaved truffles.

The less innocent among you will know that Japanese porn does nothing in moderation. This evidently extends to the food porn genre. The foie-gras-unagi-truffle sushi orgy leaves you in a puddle of pleasure and with a vague sense of guilt after.

Old School: Cafe Japan

For a traditional hole-in-the-wall experience, go to Cafe Japan on Finchley Road, right by the Golders Green tube station.

Go on a rainy day (and given it's London, there will be many) and slurp up a steaming cauldron of nabeyaki udon. Go at lunch time (because there is never any left by dinner time), and pick at a grilled yellow tail collar, oozing in its own luxurious fish oils. Go at dinner time (because it's brought out only then) and order a slab of grilled butter fish. Go any time, sit at the bar, and have the chef build you a sushi or sashimi platter.

Go twice in the same day, ditching a rainy and muddy jazz concert at Hampstead House in between, much to the disbelief, amusement and slight envy of your more stubborn friends, scrunched between their mats and umbrellas, less willing to cut their losses.

The only disjointed detail in the lways-blissful experience at Cafe Japan is hearing the chef talk to his helpers in English -- because they speak Mandarin otherwise -- but the quality of the food will keep you sufficiently zen to not really care.

Home School: Atari-ya

For the DIY cuisine crew among you, may I suggestAtari-ya, a tipoff from kopibren and Silas. Atari-ya's sushi from their tiny James St Counter is fabulous and good value for money, but the metallic cafe tables and flourescent lights just doesn't cut it for me for atmosphere (and I'm not one to usually harp on about atmosphere while I'm eating).

Much more fun to buy sashimi sliced from giant market-counter slabs, from their larger markets in Finchley or West Acton. If you already know how, you can also buy rice and other relevant sushi and miso soup apparatus and make it all at home. If you don't, all you need is some soy sauce and ready-mixed wasabi for a sashimi feast at home.

Dinings
22 Harcourt Street
London W1H 4HH, UK
+44 20 7723 0666

Cafe Japan
626 Finchley Road
London NW11 7RR, UK
+44 20 8455 6854

The Thais That Bind at Khao San, London

"Here at Khao San we serve only Thai food. We no serve fusion food. Fusion food is confusion food. Here at Khao San we no like to confuse our customers."

So said Pan, the lovely chatty owner of Khao San Thai Restaurant in London, on my first visit to her restaurant, about a year ago now.

With the utterance of Pan's better-than-fiction quip, I knew right away that after 2 years of searching, and tolerating watery curries in the Thai-only-in-concept kitchens above English pubs, and trying to make myself believe the decent but ultimately too-sugary and too-flashy concoctions of the Busaba Eathai chain, I had finally found my place in London to get my fixes for proper Thai food.

In the few months that followed, I was commuting weekly to the Netherlands for work. Babs and I fell into a Thursday night routine. He'd pick me up at Heathrow and I'd call Pan to say we'd be around in 20 minutes.

The order never varied greatly. 2 portions of tom yum seafood soup. Thai fishcakes. Morning glory fried with garlic and chilli. Pad Thai with seafood. Khao San house special noodle -- seafood dry-fried with a very thin rice noodle we Chinese call mee sua.

My joke after ordering, embarrasingly, never varied either: "But Babs, what are you going to eat?"

Above: Khao San's tom yum talay is my best-in-category find in London so far

Above: Khao San's fish cakes, and house special noodles made with mee sua

Khao San's tom yum soup especially -- with just the right level of fire and acidity from chili, ginger, lemongrass and lime, and without the over-sugariness at less authentic establishments (who use sugar to mitigate the heat) -- was always a great antidote to the week of work-canteen lunches, with alarmingly processed meat and soups made from flavoured powder.

Their morning glory was always a bright green, rather than the olive-y brown when an inexperienced cook has fried it too long. And the seafood mee sua was a tasty and lighter alternative to pad thai, which in some places can be too greasy and over-sauced.

If dining with friends at Khao San, eat family-style to try the more indulgent dishes such as their shredded green papaya or green mango salad with dried shrimp, curries (rich with coconut milk) and a whole fish steamed Thai style. Wash down with Thai ice-tea -- its slightly sickly sweetness (from using condensed milk) will help to manage the chili if needed. If in season, try Pan's baby pumpkins baked whole with custard for dessert.

And tell Pan I stopped dropping by not because I got confused, but because I got on the road. And I'll be back as soon as I can.

Khao San
108 Chepstow Road
London, W2 5QS, UK
+22 20 7221 9984

Food Finds in Vilnius, Lithuania

The culinary highlight of our Vilnius visit back in mid August was without a doubt Restaurant Zemaiciai (mentioned in a standalone feature and my soupy roundup of Eastern Europe), which in my mind might just be the nirvana of tavern cuisine. But I thought to also quickly share a few other food finds if you're planning to visit.

Busi Trecias, which translates to "And You're The Third", is Vilnius's first microbrewery. It offers a plethora of flavoured beers while maintaining economies of scale, by ingeniously (or sneakily?) having just a light and a dark brew, then adding a shot of the appropriate syrup for the flavour ordered. We sampled honey, lime and pink grapefruit beer, and enjoyed all 3.

The food menu has dishes with enticing names like "Witch's Tears", which eventually translates to various well-flavoured combinations of meat and stodge. Babs did have, however, a lovely grilled whole trout.

Come to think of it, for all this talk of meat and stodge, Babs and I had plenty of fish in Vilnius. There was a lot of smoked and cured herring about, and it being the start of mushroom season, there were soused girolles aplenty to go with the fish. This particular dish below was the highlight for us at Chaplin Bar (yes, named after Charlie), which had an otherwise ho-hum menu.

Another good place for herring (and food in general) is Cozy, which manages to add a splash of flash and style without compromising on the quality and generosity of the food. Cozy's renditions of the usually unphotogenic pork and mash, and lasagne (below) aren't just pretty to look at, kudos to them. There's also free WIFI, and a DJ bar at night.

Busi Trecias (And You're The Third)
Totoriu g. 18
Vilnius, Lithuania
+37...

Chaplin Bar
Labdariv g. 7/11
Vilnius, Lithuania

Cozy
Dominikony g.10
01120 Vilnius, Lithuania
+37...

My Goldmine in London

To Liz, with much thanks and affection.

It's not many restaurants that recognise me on the phone before I identify myself, have met my entire immediate family, know not to seat Babs and me at a table for 2 because of the amount of food we inevitably end up ordering, been the last stop of my hen night, hosted my office's Chinese New Year dinner, and been known to say (even if it's a PR line, it's still a good one): "We thought you and your friends might show up tonight. Yes we have a table for you."

All that and the food, the food, the food, is why Goldmine in London is (officially, I've decided) the one restaurant I miss most in the world while we're on the road.

Ironically it's also the reason I don't have any Goldmine photos, as I recently discovered with horror. I always thought "well of course I'll be there again soon". And then suddenly you're on a bus to Bruges (read posts on Bruges here and here) and you're not scheduled to be back in London till Fall 2010. I'm still kicking myself. Food bloggers, let this be a morality tale to you all.

My Goldmine story, like its own, begins at Four Seasons.

Spring 2005. Work sends me to London for training. I get in touch with Liz, an old friend from school. She says let's catch up over Chinese food at Four Seasons.

Like a Blighty Bumpkin, I jump into a taxi and head to the The Four Seasons Hotel, wondering if Liz always eats at such swank places. Obviously, she meant the Chinese restaurant Four Seasons on Queensway in Bayswater, where we finally meet, a phone call and much laughter and embarrassment later.

Fall 2006. Work sends me to London for a 3-month project, and leaves me to sort out my own housing. I decide easy access to comfort food is a high priority if I'm going to be a stranger in a strange land for a while. (Now I know it's always a priority in any personal real estate decision.) The budget just about covers a studio in Bayswater, a 5 minute walk from Four Seasons. Huzzah!

So once a week for about 2 months I shout down the phone as I leave the office to pre-order my Four Seasons takeaway box. I jump on the tube, elbow my way through the eternal eat-in queue, do a song and dance to try (in vain) to get the attention of the dragon lady who runs front-of-house, and eventually, get my box (now cold), elbow my way back out the door and scamper off home.

At one of those parties where it seems like every Singaporean, Malaysian and Hong Konger laywer and banker in London gathers, I let on to Liz that I credit my pick of my neighbourhood to her, and her introducing me to Four Seasons.

"Oh God, you don't still eat at Four Seasons, do you?" she exclaims, "the chef's not even there any more. Went down the street to Goldmine. We all eat at Goldmine now. Leave Four Seasons to the tourists."

The Blighty Bumpkin neon sign above my head glows brighter than my 5th gin and tonic on my cheeks.

Any given Sunday, 2008. Babs has since popped up in my life in a big way, and I've transferred to the London office and moved back to Bayswater. Sometimes it's a text message that goes around in the afternoon. Sometimes it's a decision taken at the end of a weekend trip with friends. Sometimes it's even a spontaneous gathering of various parties that showed up at the same time. But its purpose and destination is always the same. Sunday dinner at Goldmine.

Like so many Indiana Joneses sneaking past the Germans to the real X-marks-the-spot in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, we slink as quietly as we can past the crowd at Four Seasons a few doors down to Goldmine, chit chat with the ever cheerful waiter Jeffrey, and get down to the business of hoovering the inventory.

The staples are of course the roast duck (more flavourful and moist than Four Seasons) and crispy pork belly (does this really need further description?). In case you're not dining with someone who knows all the items on, and off, the menu, here are a few of my favourite Goldmine gems:

• Crispy salt, pepper and chilli squid
• Ah-mah chow siew yoke, literally translated as Grandma's fried pork belly. Pork belly chunks refried with dark soy sauce, garlic and preserved vegetables
• Siew yoke mui choi: Pork belly stewed with sweet and salty preserved vegetables. The closest version to how we make it at my parent's house. Heaven when eaten with plain steamed rice.
• Steamed egg with seafood
• Hot plate tofu with minced pork
• Claypot eggplant with minced pork
• Dou miao (snow pea shoots) with broth and 3 types of egg. Absolutely exquisite when they have it
• If you feel like splashing out, try the prawns fried with oatmeal
• If you manage to snag a table during the 15 days of Chinese New Year, pre-order a yu-sheng platter to partake in a quintissential Singapore-Malaysian tradition of ringing in prosperity for the new year. A raw fish salad is tossed (high as you can) as dining companions chant auspicious wishes.
• Wash down with Tiger beer. The Chinese restaurant label might suggest a Qingdao beer pairing, but really the culinary style is Singapore-Malaysian

All I ask is that you tell Jeffrey and team that I say hi, I miss them, and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Goldmine
102 Queensway
London W2 3RR, UK
+44 20 7792 8331

A Few Prague-tical Food Tips

Ah, Prague. A city so breathtakingly beautiful that you could almost wander around all day and forget to think about food, and just revel in the fresh air and romance of it all.

Well. Only almost.

But that's what I had to tell myself at the time. Prague has a thriving gourmet scene, but many of the marquee players were well out our budget this time around. And we got unlucky at 2 Bavarian eateries we tried -- one wasn't serving food in the mid afternoon, and the other served food that was distinctly....meh.

Above: Prague by day -- view from the gardens of Prague Castle

Above: Prague by night -- view from Charles Bridge

Above: Babs peering at the Astronomical Clock in Old Town; St Vitus Cathedral at dusk

Ah well. Aside from sights, Prague did at least deliver on that one other thing for which it's known for the world over: cheap beer.

Touristy bars will charge €2-3 or more for a pint, but locals will not be caught dead paying more than €1. Apparently if you head out into the suburbs, the price keeps dropping every 20 metres.

Staropramen is the beer that's brewed in Prague itself, and after some wandering around we managed to find a basement bar that served €1 pints.

Pivnice Pod Petrinem isn't the prettiest bar, but it's fiercely local. The bar crew look like bikers, the patrons are dressed in an even mix of office clothes and paint-splattered work overalls, and everyone is chain smoking. And judging by the event flyers at the entrance and the posters on the wall, the bar is very well plugged into the local underground scene.

Perhaps a little too well plugged in for my taste.

Most first-time visitors will invariably end up at one of the atmospheric underground taverns around Old Town serving steins of beer with meat and stodge.

If you want beautifully executed Czech cuisine at a great bite-for-buck price, head over to Bar Bar. We were peering at the menu outside when an evidently regular diner said to us "just go in, it's really really good".

Even through there's African themed art on the wall and a few amusing Golem TV-light box installations (left), the restaurant has a lovely understated vibe. As does the food. Until you put it in your mouth.

The duck leg with potato dumpling was excellent -- crispy on the outside, moist and well seasoned on the inside. But the real surprise of the evening was the spaghetti. When's the last time you ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce, herbs and parmesan, and said to your dining companion, "Holy crap you have to try this" ?

Another find was Chabad Kosher Shelanu Restaurant & Deli, a good place to fortify yourself with pastrami and corned beef sandwiches as you're exploring the Jewish ghetto. (If you're going to be in Prague on a Friday night, call ahead if you'd like to partake of their Shabbat dinner.) When out and about, don't miss the heart-wrenching Jewish cemetary, a gothic mess of gravestones because people were buried 12-layers deep.

Admittedly, I've had better pastrami in New York, but yet again, this site in Prague presented its own sight to behold: a Chinese guy managing the restaurant.

A Prague-tical Travel Tip

If you're taking a train to Prague, it's worth checking to see if a JLV service is available from your originating city.

We went to Prague from Zagreb, and paid €100 each for seat-only tickets for a 14-hour overnight journey. We were told we would have to switch carriages (I can't even remember where) as our train would split at 3am. The best part was that our tickets were the old-school completely (illegibly) handwritten kind.

I had pretty much given up on sleep and comfort for the night, and was just hoping we'd get to the right carriages to actually end up in Prague.

Evidently higher beings were feeling generous. When it came time to board, we asked a train conductor to decode our tickets and point us to the right carriage. He said "well actually for just €20 more per person you can get a 2-person sleeper carriage all the way to Prague. None of this changing carriages nonsense". (Pictured left)

With A/C, power sockets, a private sink, and a shared toilet and (fully-functioning) shower to boot.

I couldn't have been happier to hear in the morning that there had been track delays overnight and we'd be a couple of hours late for our arrival.

Pivnice Pod Petrinem
Hellichova 5
Prague 1, Malá Strana, Czech Republic
+420 257 007 327

Bar Bar
Všehrdova 17,
Prague 1, Újezd, Czech Republic
+420 257 312 246

Chabad Kosher Shelanu Restaurant & Deli
Brehova 8
Prague 1, Czech Republic
+420 221 665 141

Restaurant Ö, Tallinn, Estonia

This is a "thank you" post to my parents, who generously sponsored my birthday dinner in Tallinn, Estonia, last weekend.

Not wanting to squander the opportunity to wander off our normal travel budget, I did some digging around before picking Restaurant Ö, based on a recommendation by Estonian food blog Nami-Nami.

Restaurant Ö is an up and coming establishment cheffed by Roman Zastserinski, who is dedicated to bold and beautiful experiments based on what's local and seasonal in Estonia and among its Nordic neighbours. The experiments are evidently successful -- he and the restaurant have been picking up accolades like the locals pick up mushrooms this time of year.

We open with a Poltsamaa martini -- an apple martini with an orange rind twist. I'm liking this place already.

A bread basket comes around, along with a dollop of lovely herby soft cheese.

A little pre-starter from the house: White-fish caviar with cauliflower cream; and beetroot broth. The briny fish eggs were a brilliant splash against the (in this case appropriately) bland cauliflower canvas.

Starters: Scallops with beetroot and fried cheese; amazing king crab with quail eggs (with diabolically soft boiled yolks!) and rhubarb batons.

Intermission: A little palette cleanser from the house -- green apple and pine shoot sorbet. We throw a little local Viiru Valge vodka into the mix.

Absolutely superb. A spa treatment in a saucer. I was tempted to plop some of the sorbet into the vodka, just for kicks (I love a boozy slushy) ... but out of respect decided to leave tonight's experimentations to the chef.

The mains: Rabbit in little fillets, and mixed in with apple and poppyseeds in a tart, with chanterelle sauce.

Pigeon and piglet confit. Perhaps an unusual observation, but given how geogeously luxe the pigeon and pork belly were, what really jumped out was the cabbage, which was pretty much uninterfered with. It was a wonderful counter-balance. Given the central placement of the cabbage on the platter, is it waxing too lyrical to suppose that the pigeon and pork were actually a reverse-psychology backdrop to showcase the humble cabbage -- a staple everywhere in Eastern Europe -- as the true centrepiece?

Dessert: Chocolate fondant, with sea-buckthorn ice-cream. I ordered it mostly because I had absolutely no idea what sea-buckthorn was.

Turns out it's a tart, citrussy berry jam-packed with vitamin C. I went back through my archives and realised I had taken a photo of sea-buckthorn berries at the Central Market in Riga, Latvia, not having any idea what they were (see photo below). So this turned out to be a lovely Estonian take on the traditional combination of chocolate and orange.

All in all, a terribly tasty way to turn 31 in Tallinn.

Restaurant Ö
Mere Puiestee 6E
Tallinn 10111, Estonia
+ 372 661 6150

Restaurant Zemaiciai, Vilnius, Lithuania

Imagine a wooden platter. Strips of fried bread. Chunks of cheese. Cloves of raw and pickled garlic. Slices of pig tongue. Crunchy strips of pig ear. Wedges of snout sausage. A separate platter has a long strip of crispy pork belly, part-cut at intervals, so it's easily torn into chunks. Soused herring and girolles. Goose crackling. Pickles of all sorts.

And that's just the beer snacks. To go with the long line of pints. With doubleshot vodka chasers.

Then out comes the main course. It's called "Pitchfork". Because a life-size pitchfork is used as a meat skewer. Its 3 prongs hold 6 palm-sized steaks; 2 beef, 2 pork, 2 chicken, each about an inch and a half thick. The drippings get caught by a platter of roasted courgettes, eggplant, tomatoes and potatoes on a wooden platter, held below the pitchfork leaned and fixed at an incline.

This is the exact moment I missed you -- my lovely fellow food dorks -- most (among many moments) on this trip so far. This is why we all need to go back to Vilnius in Lithuania, to the cellar tavern Zemaiciai. So that we can order the same. So that I don't have to just gawk shamelessly at the table of 5 portly and increasingly ruddy-faced Lithuanian "uncles" seated at the table next to us. With enough of us, we might even be able to order other things on the menus. Magical things called "Half-metre eel" and "Half-metre sausage".

But you're not here. So on this evening Babs and I are destined for humbler fare. Namely, the Zeppelin platter aka the Stodge Sampler -- potato derivatives done 5 ways: 1) Pancakes; 2) Plain boiled dumpling, 3) Meat dumpling, 4) Curd cheese dumpling, and 5) Mashed, stuffed with mincemeat, then breaded and fried. Served on a bed of mild horseradish, and with a bowl of sourcream.

It's occured to me I've never seen Babs thump his fist on the table to motivate himself to keep eating through the pain -- the result of eating everything on his preceding very delectable herring starter plate. Yes, including the 3 boiled potatos, and all the sourcream in the onion cup.

But he did eat through the pain. We both did. And waddled back to our hostel feeling (and no doubt looking) like Zeppelins. And then! Came back the next day for lunch, backpacks and daysacks and all, just before we got on the bus to Riga.

And this time we sat outside. And got the beer snacks. Wahey!

We stank on the bus all the way to Latvia. And couldn't stop grinning the entire way.

But we still need you to pitch in on the mains.

Zemaiciai
Vokieciu gatve 24
Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 2616573

She Scarfs Seashells by the UK Seashore

A few tempting ideas for the upcoming UK August bank holiday weekend (or any weekend, really), if those of you in the UK want that "getaway" feeling without getting on a plane.

Wheelers Oyster Bar, Whitstable

A mere 90 minutes train journey from London Victoria station, Whitstable on the Kentish coast is a well loved oyster hub. I'd been to the town's annual oyster festival two Julys in a row, only to realise (duh) that given the month, the native varieties weren't in season. The old adage goes: Don't eat oysters during any month without an "R" in it, cos that's when good oyster stewards let them get on with the mating process. (As I understand it, there's a lot of simultaneous spooging and squirting into the sea, and the currents swirl it all together so that the magic can happen.)

So this past spring we went back and hit Wheelers Oyster Bar . Wheelers is one of those places insiders don't want to talk about because the food is fantastic and the dining room is tiny. In short, reserversations are scarce, and it's not because anyone on the Wheelers team is being poncy. It took me 2 bloody years of living in London before a friend who slinks off by himself at odd hours of the weekend to dine alone at Wheelers finally deigned to mention it to me.

Open with a cold platter (pick your size) from the cold bar. Then order up some oysters. Below is a monster of a Whitstable native no doubt fattening since the previous summer. Huzzah!

Good luck picking a main from the mouth watering list. My personal favourites were the skate wing ravioli, and the very innovative take on steak and Guinness pie on a bed of raw oysters.

Bring with you only people you really really like.

A few of my favourite memories from previous Whitstable Oyster Festivals past:

Above: The annual oyster eating competition - a speed round consisting of 6 oysters and half a pint of local brew. Both the years I was there a local named Nate won (time: sub 10 seconds). I ended up at the same lunch table with him afterwards, that first year. Turns out, he didn't even really like oysters! Anyone know who won this year?

Above: Melf, Jas and I take our place in the competition. Jas proves to be the fastest gullet of the East

Above: These oval shaped giga oysters are delish, but not native. Come back in the cooler months for the rounder-shaped natives

The Company Shed, West Mersea, Colchester, Essex

Some time ago, Bab's buddy Paul told me about a magical place...a little seafood shack called The Company Shed where you bring your own booze and bread and condiments, whose connecting causeway to the mainland floods with the tide. I decided to mark my 30th birthday there last August. My birthday wish: May the tide leave us permanently stranded.

The Haward family run this joint; the same good folks behind the just-in-time shucking oyster and clam stall at London's Borough Market on Fridays and Saturdays. I always get a half dozen or so of the largest ones available when I drop by -- the breakfast of champions!

After a 2 hour drive from London, we did get stranded, but only at the front door in the 2-hour queue (they don't take reservations). Our merry little crew kept ourselves sane with little seafood snacks from stalls by the nearby dayboat pier, and intermittently joining the kids to keep a hawkish eye on the fast-moving inventory.

We finally make it in, and let loose like hounds. The cold seafood platter (3 kinds of shrimp, 2 kinds of smoked fish, cockles and crab) is a must, as are the grilled scallops. I love it that they keep the coral on. Nothing to waste!

A toast to turning 30! The world is my oyster. Oh wait, maybe the other way around. In any case, try 'em both ways: cheekily chilled in the champagne we bought, and baked in hot cheese.

Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, Padstow, Cornwall

If you're up for seafood of a much splashier kind, Rick Stein's flagship establishment in his Padstow empire on the Cornish Coast is a good bet. Thanks to old friends SL and P-Diddy for pointing us here as a stop for our South-west roadtrip (back in our yuppier days).

Babs and I played hot and cold with the starter list. A diabolical pairing of raw oysters and chorizo (who knew!), and beautiful plate of sashimi.

When in doubt, get a platter of everything. Babs and I are hopelessly indecisive when it comes to ordering food...

Afterwards, pay a visit to The National Lobster Hatchery, just a few steps from Rick Stein's. This fantastic institution works with local fishermen to collect and hatch lobster eggs, and nurtures baby lobsters through their most vulnerable period before setting them free into local waters. You can adopt lobster, or a family of them, and track their release.

For you fellow seafood fiends out there, this is kinda like the crustacean version of a carbon-offsetting programme. Visit their website for other donation and volunteering opportunities.

Above: Lobsters are so yummy that they even eat each other! So the National Lobster Hatchery keeps each baby lobster in its own individual compartment during their most cannibalistic period.

I mentioned briefly about how oysters mate, but do you know how lobsters mate? Trevor Corson does, and tells it well in colourful but digestible detail in his wonderfully educational and entertaining book The Secret Life of Lobsters. A fun foodie read for that bus or train ride to any of the shellfish spots mentioned above.

Have a brilliantly briny weekend!

Wheelers Oyster Bar
8 High St
Whitstable
CT5 1BQ, UK
+44 1227 273311

The Company Shed
129 Coast Rd
West Mersea, Colchester, Essex
CO5 8PA, United Kingdom
+44 1206 382700

Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant
Riverside, Padstow
PL28 8BY, UK
+44 1841 532700

Travel tip: in advance and you can save up to 43% off the fare sold at the station.

Dubrovnik's Edible Adriatic Aquarium

A few of my favourite fellow food dorks and I recently started an annual summer tradition I like to call "Melfi Mayhem". Using our friend Melf's birthday as a launchpad, we'd pick an idyllic location to eat, drink and be very very merry. The inaugural party in 2008 was on The Almalfi Coast in Italy, and this year we pounded the pintxos bars in San Sebastian in the north-east corner of Spain. We may have to take a meaty meander to Buenos Aires next year, but I have officially submitted Dubrovnik as a location candidate for 2011.

The pitch: Sapphire blue waters for swimming (still with various types of fish to keep you company no less, so go while you can), vermillion sunsets, an on-the-ball but chilled out service culture, and quite the formidable edible Adriatic aquarium, at reasonable prices.

Here are 3 fine fishy finds from the recce trip.

Konoba Lokanda Peskarija

This was a great first stop in Dubrovnik, thanks to the advice of our fabulous hostess at Rooms Olga. Located at the old fish market harbour, Konoba Lokanda Peskarija won us over with big pots of fresh local product at fair prices. Below, I play peekaboo with mussels while Babs parses out the risotto. The style of the risotto is more reminiscent of Portugal than Italian risotto or Spanish paella. Apparently the risotto ala terroir is the squid ink kind; I didn't order it only because I find the stuff really addictive and could end up eating it at every meal for our remaining 4 days (like I did on previous occasions in Barcelona and Venice).

Orsan

You can dine at the water's edge (literally) at Orsan, located at Dubrovnik's local yacht club, another recommendation from the owners of Rooms Olga. The octopus salad was beautifully crunchy, unlike the soggy and slightly powdery renditions in too many London locations. After hemming and hawing over mains, Babs and I embraced our indecision and got the seafood platter, with roasted squid, 2 kinds of fish and mussels. Oh for the days of a yuppy budget. Ah well. Sandwiches and fruit for lunch tomorrow it is, then.

Restaurant Lindo

Between getting a very late start and then getting off at the wrong bus stop -- which meant walking for another 30 minutes slightly uphill in the hot and muggy afternoon heat -- we got to Restaurant Lindo at the fairly awkward hour of 3.30pm for lunch. Their hospitality was as old school as their Croatian menu, thankfully.

The fish soup was simple but strong, and Babs is keen to replicate their home-made bread. Very unfortunately because we were between meal shifts I didn't get to try their slow roast meats (kept in a heavy iron pot and covered in hot ash on an open fire) as those need to be ordered in advance, but I was sufficiently placated by the house-special salad of tomatoes (at the height of their season in town judging by everyone's garden patches), cucumbers, onion, shrimp and a light yoghurt dressing. Think Indian raita pimped up with shrimp. I'll need to try making this when I have kitchen access again.

The waiter offers to fillet our grilled scorpion fish for us. We can't shoo him away fast enough. On the right is swiss chard cooked with potato, a popular local stodge-&-greens-in-one side dish.

After lunch, a little jaunt in a laser. I sit up front, clinging to the mast like Odysseus before sailing into siren-land. We scheme about coming back here sooner rather than later. Next time, up and around the Dalmation islands. With a bigger boat. And friends.

Konoba Lokanda Peskarija
Gorica Sv. Vlaha 77
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 324747
(Couldn't get Gmap to pintpoint well, but this is easy to find. Just ask locals for the old fishmarket harbour, where the tour boats to the islands come and go)

Orsan
Ivana Zajca 2 (at the yacht club)
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 435 933

Restaurant Lindo
Iva Dulcica 39, Babin Kuk
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 448 351
(Follow directions to the President hotel resort. The restaurant is part of the accompanying low-rise retail complex)

Congee-ing Up Memories

There comes a time in every Asian's trek through Europe where you hit your limit of bread and cheese and cured meats, and inevitably start pining for the familiar rice-and-soy-based flavours of the East. Over these last few days in the Baltic states, my craving has been for porridge, and with it all the people at the table at the time. Authentic relief will have to wait, so best I can do for now is to congee up a few memories.

Growing up in Singapore, congee was always associated with rest and recuperation.

Until my Dad started going to church (when I was about age 9 or 10), each Sunday he would make a big vat of bone-still-in chicken congee, and after I got home from Sunday School we'd both spoon and pick through it watching the English Premier League soccer match of the week. Sometimes, if we dawdled, we'd drift into a Tamil or Hindi movie without English subtitles, and make up our own completely ridiculous plot and dialogue. It was a great way to recharge before Monday, for me at least.

Later, when my parents decided that Sunday would be a no-cooking day, congee became a Saturday breakfast affair, brought home as part of my Mum's weekly haul from the Marine Terrace Market . Whether it was with chunks of chicken and cuttlefish, or slivers of pork with century egg , my favourite part was (and still is) a raw egg cracked in. Bye bye hangover.

Whenever my brother or I fell ill, it'd be home-cooked congee on the table. Sometimes plain and soupy, with pickled chinese cabbage. Other times, bonanza! Porridge with the seafoody sweetness of dried scallop. However sick either of us were, there'd always be enough fight left in us to kick up a royal fuss if the other dared to nick some (and we always did).

Not altogether consciously at the time, I ended many a work week and started many a weekend with congee with friends. On many Friday nights, I'd be at a late night eatery in Hougang ordering up a Teochew porridge storm of little savoury dishes like salted duck eggs, minced pork patty steamed with salted fish, braised squid rings, and fried tofu skins braised in dark soy sauce to go with the comforting blandness of rice boiled in too much water. Saturday mornings saw a more Cantonese approach -- ingredients cooked with the rice into a savoury silken mix -- either at the upper floor of Tiong Bahru Market or House of Rice Roll & Porridge in River Valley. The combination of gruel, griping, giggling and gossiping was unfailingly good for the soul.

I lived only for a short while in New York, but in that period dragged anyone who would let me to Big Wong on Mott St each Saturday morning for congee and giant crullers (pictured above). I was pleasantly shocked when I visited this past May to find that their congee prices hadn't changed in a decade...at least not enough to notice. More recently while living in London, whenever I fell ill, I'd drag myself to Hung Tao on Queensway for porridge before slumping off home.

How is it that in all these years I've never learned to make this stuff? Maybe because anytime I'm really craving congee, I'm not in any state to cook. This obviously needs remedying when I reach Singapore in the spring, as part of this round-the-world trek.

In the meantime, how about you? What does congee conjure up for you? What's your favourite place(s) for great gruel or your recommended rice congee recipe?

House of Rice Roll & Porridge
75 Killiney Road
Singapore 239529
+65 6736 1355

Big Wong (recently renamed Big Wong King due to rivalry with a breakaway branch)
67 Mott Street
New York, NY 10013, USA

Hung Tao
51 Queensway
London, W2 4QH, UK
+44 20 7727 5753

A Spot of Dalmation Meat...

...From the Coast. Not the Dog. Which is what a teenage tourist sitting at a nearby table in Dubrovnik thought, with much indignance and too much volume. Babs and I strained not to snigger.

Anyhow, if you're in these parts -- and want a break from scarfing down the Adriatic aquarium (more on that soon) -- there are at least 2 Dalmation meat dishes you should try, which we did at Elirija, a tiny 5-table aromatic oasis of grilling meat in a street-long empire of cheap pizza in Dubrovnik's Old Town.

Cevapcici is ground meat spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper and paprika, a touch of baking soda, and sometimes a drop of anise. Then fashioned into either fingers (as pictured below) or burger patties. Some chefs make it just with beef, others I hear use a beef-pork blend. I've had what is called a Hemingway burger at Cork & Bottle, a little wine cellar in Leicester Square in London, which uses a diabolical blend of beef, pork and lamb for its burger patty. When I eventually try making cevapcici at home, that's the blend I might experiment with. (Whaddaya know, a quick search for cevapcici recipes online showed exactly this pimped up 3-meat blend.)

Raznjici is simply chunks of pork on skewers, with similar seasoning.

Grill both, preferably on an open charcoal fire. Slather on an orangey red-pepper paste that is sweeter than it is spicy. Especially amazing when the grease is balanced out with rough-chopped raw onion. So we stink for hours afterwards. It's worth it.

For a grill with a view, climb as far as the stairs will take you up the city walls to Lady Pi-Pi, a magical grapevine-covered terrace overlooking Dubrovnik's Old Town, named after the statue on your right side of the photo below.

In Zagreb, a hefty cevapcici in a doughy wrap from Mrvica M Grill (a greasy spoon at the elbow of the road from the central bus station and the road from the central train station) at ~€3.50 a person was the perfect antidote to dinner the night before at Trilogija. Situated right by the Stone gate (Kamenita Vrata), Trilojia had interesting ideas e.g. seabass and squid-ink noodles, but unforgiveably bland execution. Given its menu's ambitious prices, the chef ought to be sent to the doghouse.

Elirija
Getaldiceva 10
Dubrovnik, Croatia

Lady Pi-Pi
Vl. Dinko Minjkovic
Peline
Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 9 709 8644

Mrvica M Grill
Kneza Branimira 67, Tržnica Branimirova
Zagreb, Croatia
+385 461 4484

Cork and Bottle (for the Hemingway burger)
44-46 Cranbourn St
London WC2H 7AN, UK
+44...

A Bari Delightful Day

Maybe it's true that everything's better if you have no expectations. Or maybe we were so stressed out by Rome that the return to the charm of a less built up part of Italy was especially keenly felt. In any case, the 15 or so hours spent in the Adriatic port town of Bari -- our transit point between an overnight train from Rome and an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik -- were quite delightful.

Not that I could claim to know it beforehand, but Bari is the capital of the Puglia region and is the 2nd largest city after Naples in Southern Italy. In addition to fishing and trade, the city seems to thrive on a large grid of swank shopping boulevards.

Historically known as the exit doors of Italy where locals and visitors board boats for Greece and Croatia (as we did), the local government has been working hard to promote Bari as a destination in itself. Each September, for example, the city hosts the massive Fiera del Levante trade and industry fair. My ever-hip friend Goz also sent an alert about the avant garde Fame street art festival in Grottaglie -- an hour southeast of Bari -- opening in mid September this year (2009).

With much less ambition and agenda, we had breakfast at 8am at a cafe near the train station, and watched with bleary eyes the locals coming and going as they grabbed coffee and pastries on their way to work.

After, we decided to walk along the coastline in a bid to recce the port. Others also soaking in the morning light included clumps of heroically pot-bellied old men (talking and gesticulating at each other in that classically dramatic Italian fashion), and locals hunting among the sea-wall rocks for little fish and crabs. The man on the right proudly showed me his catch.

Babs joins in on some crab-hunting action with his camera.

I'm not a morning person, but if there's one thing I do like about having time to kill in the early hours of the day, it's checking out and dawdling at local markets, like the one at the entrance of Bari Vecchia, Bari's medieval old town.

Above: A vendor shelling mussels at the fish market in Bari Vecchia

Right across from the market we chanced upon Osteria Con Cucina, a subterranean dining room where we had a scrumptious 4-course lunch and coffee. There was no menu -- the owner just listed a few options for the primi and secondi courses. And there was no option to have only 1 course, as some tourists a few tables away tried to do. Each meal, no matter what you picked, came to €20 per person. This is more like the Italy I know and love!

Even more entertaining was sneaking glances at the big black suited Italian dude at the table next to us, reading the sports pages of the local paper. He scarfed down a platter of raw mussels, then a large plate of seafood linguine. Evidently he had access to a special menu, perhaps one reserved for non-tourists, or regulars, or members of the family, or members of the other family.

After Mr Big Black Suit was done he strode into the kitchen to chat with the chef, then to the bar to chat with the owner (I craned my neck to try in vain to see if he paid like everyone else) before leaving.

Ah well. Back to lunch.

Antipasti: Toasted bread rubbed with olive oil and tomato, with rocket and new potatoes; Bits of ham, olives and 2 types of cheese.

Primi: Bari's most famous dish (and rightly so), riso, patate e cozze (rice, potatoes and mussels) with everything cooked (baked?) in a briny stock. I'll need to try and make this sometime. Below: A very well made pasta with seafood, with clams, mussels, shrimp and squid.

Secondi: Roasted octopus, entirely intact. The waiter chuckled at how gleeful I was looking.

Dolci: Chilled watermelon -- a godsend for a scorching summer day.

The rest of the day was spent reading on park benches, walking around the town's old castles and churches (Wikipedia provides a good list with descriptions in its "Main Sights" section), searching in vain for an internet cafe, and even setting off on an eventually unsuccessful expedition to use the showers at the municipal swimming pool.

Eventually it came time to board our overnight ferry to Dubrovnik, where we again bought deck seats instead of bunks.

We settled in for the night on a couple of wooden benches on the outdoor deck under the stars, using our daypacks as pillows. We were sweaty and sticky, on the 2nd night in a row sleeping on the move. Usually I'd be in a slightly psychotic state by now, but I was still floating on the memory of a very delicious lunch.

It would seem that a little well-cooked pulpo can go a bari long way.

Osteria con Cucina
Strada Vallisa, 23
Bari, Italy

Rome Resting on Its Laurels

Setting the scene: The iconic symbol of the birth of Rome involves feeding -- the mythological founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were raised by wolves, literally. Romulus later kills his twin brother in a fit of one-upmanship.

Just before we left our WWOOFING gig in the Alpujarras in Spain, we bought a tin of sardines, a tin of scallops and a tin of razor clams. They were to be opened during emergenices only.

We opened the first tin in Rome.

We were placed in a B&B room near Rome Termini train station, different from the one we booked. This one had a bathroom you could barely turn around in, and a giant hole in the wall where the A/C vent was supposed to be. Cue hot air and noise from the street all night.

The only things we could see available for the catered breakfast were packets of croissants, which had a 2011 expiry date. I really don't want to know what the pastry was inundated with to give that kind of shelf life.

We knew Rome was going to be expensive, but was this really all that €50 a night was going to get us?

Perhaps not.

The next morning, the Chinese lady at front desk, upon realising that I spoke Mandarin (she had no English and I had no Italian) started ranting about how our inkeeper was "bullying" us. Apparently our original room had a damaged door -- which by this morning had been fixed -- so we should really get on the innkeeper's case and demand to be moved to our original room, instead of putting up with the tiny room that her B&B didn't even deign to rent out, but rather used only for staff to rest in during the day.

And so, in the heart of the Roman empire, counsel from the Chinese empire got us into the room we originally booked. Which, as it turns out, sleeps 3 people more than comfortably, and a kitchen full of toast, sausages, cheese, preserves and drinks for breakfast.

This happening upon our arrival in Rome sadly soured my view of the eternal city for our remaining time there. I couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was always a little something that the Romans were holding out on us. A little more on the plate. A little more information. Heck, in Julius Caesar's case, a little dagger behind the cloak.

In the case of Er Buchetto -- a 3-table hole in the wall -- near Rome Termini, it was just 1 or 2 more slices (or centimetres) of that delectable spicy grilled pork in their sandwich that would have made all the difference.

In the case of Trattoria Da Gino, a well known establishment next to the Parlianment Building frequented by politicians and journalists, it was the the minestrone I actually ordered (ie, with pasta, rather than rice). Otherwise, the lamb and osso bucco were decent bite-for-buck.

And, taking the cake, the waiter at L'Angoletto di Musei a few streets from the Vatican didn't bother to hint at what I was getting when I ordered "Angelo's special pasta". Ok, so Babs and I laughed ourselves silly once I got past the initial shock. But it goes to show.

What probably saved my blood from boiling over (figuratively and literally, given the sweltering 35 deg C afternoon heat) was Rome's gelaterias. San Crispino is the hailed as the Don of the genre in town, but my favourite (and the only real rave I have for Rome in this post) was Gelateria del Teatro, a tiny but rocketing up-and-comer with a mind-blowing watermelon granita. That unmistakeable chilled-ripe-watermelon scent of chlorophyll with a just a tinge of nectar is what I imagine rain in heaven will smell like. Stefano and Silvia, the husband-and-wife team that run the joint, use only natural and seasonal ingredients, sometimes hauled in by Stefano himself from the market on bicycle. All gelato is made in small batches onsite, and you won't get any hassle if you poke your head in the back to see what's in progress.

Above: Babs and I both go for grapefruit sorbet at San Crispino, I balance it out with melon while Babs tarts it up further with raspberry; A cup of watermelon heaven from Gelateria del Teatro

Right now, that watermelon granita might the only reason I would go back to Rome. Otherwise, it just felt like the city was using its ancient and religious sites to milk visitors, without much ongoing investment into striving to provide value for money or excellence in hospitality. Resting on its laurels, as it were.

Er Buchetto
Via del Viminale 2F (near Termini station)
Rome, Italy

Trattoria Da Gino
Vicolo Rosini 4
Rome 00186, Italy
+39 06 6873434

L'Angoletto ai Musei
Via Leone IV, 2A
Rome 00192, Italy
+39 06 39723187

Il Gelato de San Crispino
Via Panetteria 42
Rome Italy

Gelateria del Teatro
Via di San Simone 70
Rome 00186, Italy
+39 06 45474880

Take Me Back to BARCA!

"I think I've died and gone to heaven. I'm not coming back. I love you, have a good life."

So went the text I sent to fellow food dorks Kopibren and Melf the first time I stepped into Barcelona's massive La Boqueria market on La Rambla a couple of years ago.

I can't believe I let myself leave. (Who leaves heaven?!) Twice now. On both departures, the ever-unfolding cornocopia of treats both in the market and the neighbourhoods beyond left a growing, grating, gnawing feeling of unfinished business.

The only comfort - this means I'll have to come back. Again. And again. And again.

Chances are, you'll get to go before I do, so here are some highlights from what stood out most from my grazing haze. I know there's plenty more I've yet to try, so let me know what made it to the heavenly spheres of your list and I'll prioritise it for my next pilgrimage.

Boqueria Boogie

The first thing to do in Barcelona (and possibly also the 2nd, 3rd...and last thing) is to do a slow stroll along all the aisles of La Boqueria. The most cunning of visitors (e.g., my parents) rent a short-stay self-catering flat near the market so that their stomachs as well as their eyes can enjoy a VERY well balanced diet.

Above, left: I'd always wondered what those little caps at the bottom of jamon legs were for. Up in Las Alpujarras, I learned that it was to catch dripping fat. Mmmmmm....

Above, left: These strange looking tubular-with-a-beak shellfish are called percebes, or gooseneck barnacles. They thrive only on rocks heavily pounded by surf, so harvesting them is quite the task. They're considered a big-time delicacy in Spain, usually steamed or served in soup. Apparently the Spanish have eaten through their domestic supplies, and now are heavy importers from Canada

Above: Nice work if you can get it, being surrounded by a mushroom mountain all day

The done thing is to have tapas in the market, but you'll need to get there early, or else be very patient, or else put sharp elbows to good use. To boost your civility batteries, consider digging into some paella on the perimeter on the market. It also helps you to tour the market without going completely mad or bankrupting myself... I mean... yourself.

This time around we went to Bar-Restaurant Galdric which served an excellent and generous paella for 2 for €22. Last time around I plonked down at a stall in the same area but I forget the name. You can't miss it if it's open -- look for the colossal paella pan outside.

Crazy about Chocolate

There are plenty of smoothies, fruit salads and sweets at the market to tempt you for dessert. Or, you could wander a little east along Barri Gothic to Meson del Cafe, and indulge in a little churros and Spanish hot chocolate...the type that's so thick you could pick it up it with a knife...

The Spanish take their hot chocolate pretty seriously. We learned at the Chocolate Museum in Bruges that back in the day when chocolate was the fashionable and exotic import from South America and available only to the aristocracy, Spanish ladies had their servants bring them hot chocolate even during mass. This to-ing and fro-ing caused so much disruption that hot chocolate was banned from church. Church attendance promptly plummeted.

Tapas Tip

Right. Tapas. Whatever list I put together for now will be grossly incomplete. And the thing is, there are plenty of marquee names that will charge you an arm and a leg (e.g. I'm still working up my wallet's nerve to go to Cal Pep) and there are plenty of holes in the wall who will serve mediocre bites, microwaved after sitting on the shelf for a wee bit too long.

So, let me just send you to Cervesceria Cataluna in the Eixample distict, my favourite place for variety and value for money. There's always a waiting list for tables, but the real action is up at the 2 bars. Stalk a bar stool, pounce fast and mercilessly (the locals will give the tourist no quarter) and rotate the 1 barstool among your group if you need to. As long as someone has access to the staff to order food, you be so distracted by the food you'll barely notice you're not sitting down.

I particularly enjoyed the grilled cuttlefish, grilled mushrooms, miniature sirloin steaks and burgers.

Sweet Smelling

I found Papabubble quite by accident, by following the delightful scent of burning sugar down a few doors from our charming Hostel Blue on the bohemian C/ Ample. All the candy is made by hand onsite and make smart looking and tasty gifts for those who didn't make it to heaven.

Walking it Off

In between meals, the best thing to do is to walk and soak in the art and the energy of the vibrant city.

Above: The ongoing building of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia; youths playing football at Parc Guell, also by Gaudi.

Above: This nstallation down by Port Vell gets a cheeky toilet-paper response on Rambla de Catalunya

Below: My personal favourite, even if I'm the the one being railed against

Mercat St Josep (La Boqueria)
La Rambla (Liceu station)

Restaurant Galdric
Passatge Virreina 2
08001 Barcelona, Spain
+34 685 580 922

Meson del Cafe
C/ Llibreteria 16 (Jaume I station)
08002 Barcelona, Spain

Cervesceria Catalana
C/ Mallorca 236
08008 Barcelona, Spain
+34 932 160 368

Papabubble
C/ Ample 28
08002 Barcelona, Spain
(Closed in August)

Martin Berasategui @ Restaurante Kursaal, San Sebastien, Spain

It was a 1-Michelin star restaurant headed by a 3-Michelin star chef, but the overall impact of the seasonal €75 tasting menu at Martin Berasategui @ Restaurante Kursaal in San Sebastien, Spain, felt like one of those boys you meet at a party whom you can't fault but at the same time can't feel any real spark for.

While each of the dishes were well executed technically, with flashes of creativity from the school of foam-this-and-jelly-that molecular gasto chefs, there just didn't seem to be that one true act of chutzpah, or one solid punch of witty humour to anchor the meal.

Or maybe it was an unfortunately over-active night out on the waterfront surrounding the Congress Hall and Auditorium, where the restaurant is located. The din of megaphones and new-age percussions on the performance stages outside jarred heavily with the piped jazz in the restaurant. The grand fireworks display for the visitors outside sadly showed more smoke than light to the diners inside. Molecular gastro chef giant Heston Blumenthal is a strong believer that eating is an experience of ALL the senses, so the cacaphony could well have distracted and destracted from the meal at hand.

Ultimately, you realise that these things are subjective, so you take said boy to one of those "pot luck" parties where your other girlfriends also bring boys they like but ultimately can't date, in the hope that chemistry will be found somewhere on the carousel.

So goes this write-up.

Perhaps you too have a executed-well-but-missing-a-spark dining experience to share?

By the Book

Trio of pre-starter starters: grilled green chili-peppers with sea salt; a shot of tomato consomme; and white anchovy sections with a creamy cheesy custard.

Spider crab in anchovy sauce, with crudites, salad leaves and flowers, and cauliflower cream.

Grilled white asparagus with pod-juice foam; and the first real trick of the evening -- peas and beans in beef-jus jelly.

Pan-roasted fish of the day in fish-skin sauce, with baked aubergine

The main event (at least to us): Crispy-skin roast suckling pig, with gravy made from the pig's ears, and apple cream.

I admit that Melf and I set impossibly high standards for this dish -- we both hold a deep bias that no one can roast pork like the Chinese (the next closest might be the Filipinos). But I held out hope, since I increasingly believe that no one raises pigs like the Spanish. (As I found out later, pigs in the Andalusian countryside at least, get to root around in figs and pomograntes, both of which grow wild and like weeds.)

The result?: Again, respectable, but not quite like the big-league suckling pig purveyors in Singapore or Hong Kong. The gravy was a bright spark, however -- talk about making a silk purse from a sow's ear, eh.

And then a seemingly endless stream of desserts. French toast with licorice ice-cream; spicy peach gnocchi (very reminiscent of Jelly-Belly-style concoctions) and coconut ice-cream.

Pistachio custard with coffee syrup; Berries and cream; and little almond cakes.

Restaurante Kursaal
Avda. de la Zurriola, 1
20002 San Sebastien, Spain

WWOOFING in Spain Part 3 - Clandestine Meatings

So the thing is, our WWOOF hosts at the finca in Spain are vegetarians.

I walked into this eyes wide open. I figured between the veggie diet and doing manual work in the sun for 5 hours a day, it would be my healthiest phase since...ever. I was also curious to see how much I would (or maybe wouldn't, who knows) miss meat.

And it was all good, for any 3-4 days running. Veggie home-cooking was varied, hearty and tasty. But then, on day 5, the inevitable gnawing, rumbling, acid-juices-in-my-mouth-seeping craving for a chunk of meat would descend like a slow madness. I would glance askance at our hosts' dogs Zumbar and Oliva with their scavenged goat bones from the nearby gypsy compound. While the finca chickens hatched eggs, Babs and I hatched embarrasingly evil plots (e.g. what would a wolf-chewed hole in the henhouse need to look like?).

So on our days off, we'd scuttle across the dry river bed and 20 minutes uphill into Orgiva town and beyond, on the hunt for meat. This being Spain, the locals were only too happy to oblige. Here are a few of the high points from our clandestine meatings if you're visiting.

Bar El Tinao, Capileira

Midway through our stint, we spent a weekend away in Capileira, an hour by bus up the Sierra Nevada from Orgiva. I had a good feeling about Bar El Tinao when I saw our hostel manager from Hostal Rural Atalaya walk in with his family for dinner.

Around here, in the old Spanish custom, tapas come free when you order a drink. We got served pork skewers, hot off the grill, marinated with (I think) salt, pepper, paprika and a flash of tumeric. I bit down on one, uttered a slightly embarrassing sound of pleasure, then put my head down on the bar counter to chew.

El Asador, Capileira

After walking a couple of rounds around Capileira (and walking away from any restaurant with a sizeable vegetarian section on their menu) we followed the smell of mea on hot charcoal to El Asador, which listed roasted kid (baby goat) as a house speciality. I'd had curried goat before, but never kid. It tastes uncannily like turkey. If it wasn't for the different bone structure I would have sworn they did a bait and switch.

We also tried the Plato Alpujarran, also known in these parts as "poor man's breakfast". It had spicy chorizo and morcillo (black pudding sausage), 2 eggs, and potatoes fried with onions, peppers and jamon. What on earth do the rich people eat for breakfast?

As an aside, the mountain Spaniards are evidently big fans of morcillo. While sipping expresso and watching the F1 back at Bar El Tinao the next day, I watched a family of 6 order a whole platter of the stuff as part of brunch. I thought 12 links for 6 people was pretty serious. Then the table of 4 next to them ordered the same.

Bar El Tilo, Capileira

A lot of chorizo and jamon is cured up here in the mountains (there are apparently a myriad of pig slaughtering festivals in mountain villages each January, which I will have to weasel my way into at some point in my life). So a sampling platter of the region's pride had to be done. We got this €10 platter below at Bar El Tilo.

Above: Yes, the stuff in the middle is pure fat, which I've heard some locals refer to as "white meat". (Gotta love the Spanish). The mid-July afternoon sun was so hot that the fat started rendering right there on the wooden board.

Pollos Manolo Fernandez, Orgiva

These are the only Manolos I would ever spend any time lining up for.

On Thursdays, when the entire town square in Orgiva becomes a makeshift market, Mr Manolo Fernendez -- with his magnificent smile and even more magnificent 'tache -- pulls up with his even more maginificent rotisserie truck. The wall of chickens going round and round and round is absolutely mesmerising, especially when he flicks ladles of drippings at the grill to get a WOOSH of flame. The smell that wafts down the street is maddening.

Somehow, the cluster (there is no actual line) squished around his little kiosk and spilling into the road managed to keep their civility, even while dodging passing cars. Everyone's honest about their place in the queue, and while waiting I saw a man give his place to a woman with kids and bags of shopping, and she in turn gave her place to an old biddy lady. Another woman in the line even gave the neighbourhood drunk €2 so that he could afford a full €8 box.

At closing time, when the crowd has been sated, a woman poked her head out from the apartment across the street, sauntered across, and picked up a few of his last chickens without any wait. Babs asks me if we should buy that apartment. I tell him not to tease.

Casa Robles, Orgiva

When we asked for a recommendation for a traditional Spanish restaurant in Orgiva, Anthony pointed us to Casa Robles, though he couldn't vouch for the meat. No fear, however. The house special leg of lamb was superb, its savouriness well-mixed with a honey coating. And I figure I can trust an eatery that proactively apologises for the smallness of their (normal looking) spring chicken.

Even though we were there for meat, credit must be given to Casa Robles's use of strawberries -- organic and straight from the garden of owner Mr Jesus Mesa Torres. We tried a very refreshing strawberry gazpacho with crumbled mountain jamon, and couldn't say no to Mr Torres's strawberry flambe recommendation for dessert. Just as well; the full-on performance by Mr Torres himself provided entertainment with dinner.

Above, right: "You must be careful when you flambe...I used to have hair!" quips Casa Robles's Mr Torres while preparing dessert.

When all is said and done (and eaten), perhaps there's something to this part-time vegetarianism thing. It can't hurt your health, and it's less taxing on the environment. It's how people of old use to eat, after all, living mostly on roots and leaves and fruits in between big but infrequent hunts.

But perhaps most persuasive of all is the sky-high spike in pleasure when hunkering down after a period of not meating up. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, eh.

Bar El Tinao
C. Carril
18413 Capileira, Spain
+34 657 626 736

El Asador
Carretera Sierra Nevada
18413 Capileira, Spain
+34 958 763 109

Bar El Tilo
Plaza Calvario
Capileira, Spain
+34 958 763 181

Pollos Manolo Fernandez
Orgiva Market Day (Thursdays)
Next to Bar Augustin

Casa Robles
Avda. Gonzalez Robles, 10
18400 Orgiva, Spain
+34 609 364 412

"

San Sebastian Pintxos Pack a Punch

First things first. A toast to Sunny D for pitching San Sebastian, Spain, to celebrate Melf's birthday and see us off on our big gallavant. The Amalfi Coast last June was a staggering act to follow, but this turned out to be a more than respectable sequel. In fact, by the end of the long June weekend, Sunny D quipped: "this might just be the perfect holiday destination". From my beach mat, I found it hard to argue.

San Sebastian, on the Basque-proud northwest corner of Spain, has sun, sea, sand, and more Michelin stars per sq km than any other city on earth. AND not too many big sightseeing icons that make one (or at least the Melf in your crew) feel vaguely guilty about your neverending gluttonous waltz of food-beach-bar, food-beach-bar, food-beach-bar. AND most people party in sandals and flip-flops (evidently my kind of people). AND, as I kept experiencing, locals in San Sebastian would rather set you in the right direction, than make a quick hapless-tourist buck off you, if they didn't feel like their wares or services were the right fit.

But most of all, San Sebastian has pintxos. Pintxos are the Basque term for tapas, historically referring to the piece of bread or jamon that the bartender would use to cover (tapa) your glass of pre-dinner wine to protect it from flies as well as line your stomach. As time went by they evolved into an art form of their own. In my books they are a tongue-twister (and temptor) of petite punchy parcels of pure pleasure, prepped, plated, and preening for patrons as far as the eye can see, especially in the Old Town area where we stayed. Peruse, poke about for the speciality of the house, pick up and plow into just one or a platter. Repeat a couple of doors down (so pace yourself).

Given there were 8 of us, we got everyone to pick a pinxtos bar, with the following 3 rules:

1. Follow the crowd. If you're a newbie with limited time, there's no point finding out the hard way why an empty bar is an empty bar
2. Listen hard to the languages spoken by the patrons in the bar. Stay if it's mostly Spanish (or the Basque dialect Euskedi), leave if it's mostly something else
3. Survey for 1 or 2 items that stand out; move on if it looks like just more of what you've already had

Given we also got a sangria, beer or the local wine Tixoli at each stop, our jaunt soon descended into a delicious graze-maze-haze. But here are a few spots that stood out, hopefully a helpful starter list for you.

A Fuego Negro

Thanks to Goz (who didn't travel with us) for this recommendation. A Fuego Negro was a glamourous looking avant-garde take on the old-school bar layout, reportedly started by 3 20-somethings who had earned their stripes working with the old guard in their earlier years. Sunny D and Melf strided in and said the magic words in any serious food establishment: "Could the chef do us some of his recommendations please". And so he did.

Above: Foie gras, and a shot glass of mussels marinated in a strange sweet and fizzy concoction of tomato and (I'm convinced) strawberry broth.

Above: Grilled scallop with truffle bits, and a delectable miniature-burger with banana(?) chips

Above: Signature Spanish jamon, and chunks of grilled tuna with some very fashionable foam

Quite the opening act. But as we found out, the old guard was nowhere near throwing in the towel.

La Cepa

Sunny D picked this one after he saw it in an Anthony Bourdain episode. Jamon seemed to be the headline act here (even the beer taps are jamon-shaped). Then I wandered on to the back and found mounds of gourmet mushrooms that made my eyes damn near pop out.

Lovely golden chantarelles aka girolles, and fist-sized porcinis aka boletus aka cepes! We went for a half-&-half sampler for €20. They came sliced, grilled with olive oil, sea salt and bits of parsley and pepper, and a raw egg for dipping. They weren't magic mushrooms, but they might as well have been. Melf describes it best: "What did you order? Is this foie gras?"

Sunny D, Babs and I went back hankering for more the next day. Our waitress recognised us with much amusement and threw in some chorizo on the house.

Egosari

This one was my pick, after spotting their big seafood-on-ice display in their entrance. Their house special is grilled seafood skewers, but jamon, foie and mango also proved to be a genius combination. I was amused at how quail eggs are used as chicken egg substitutes for combining with jamon, chorizo or bacon to form pintxo-sized breakfast sandwiches.

Bar Etxaniz

Bar Etxaniz was a tiny hole in the wall, packed to the gills with such a good vibe that we had to elbow and dodge our way in. I gunned for the cuttlefish cooked in its own savoury ink, while kopibren couldn't resist the rude looking sausages.

Above: The vibe gets very good...and giggly.

La Mejillonera

Mejillon is Spanish for mussels, so this find felt like karmic payback for being deprived of expensive mussels in Bruges a little while back. Each platter here cost only €3, so we tried one with salsa verde, and one with a garlicky gravy. While waiting I peered along the bar's back wall, which showed explanations of how mussels are cultivated in various parts of Europe.

Foundation Fare

These photos below give a sense of the staples found in a myriad of bars. I'm not yet enough of an expert to say which bar to go to for the absolute best version of each, so best to follow (again) the locals, and your gut.

Above: Anchovy cocktail skewers. I really like this fresher, less briny variety compared to the super salty type you use to make paste in a sauce. (Right) pulpo aka octopus, served here with olive oil and paprika. I'd eat these every day if I could

Above: Sausages galore. Chorizo slices, and (right) morcilla aka black pudding aka blood sausage

Above: Cod, hake, tuna and monkfish are the big-fish staples in these parts. Unfortunately all 3 are severely overfished species, so I tried my best to take a see-no-touch approach on these. There were fantastic anchovy, sardine and squid options to serve as worthy distractions

Above: Gambas aka prawns were everywhere, on sticks and in little tarlets. I can't quite fathom the prepping process that must happen all day all night every day and night

Above: Slightly more unusual findings included "fish throats", which I think is the loosest bit of skin in the gill-belly area, judging by the fishmongers I was watching in the morning; and what looked like baby eel or noodles, but are called "gulash(?)" which a bartender said was some kind of local fish.

I found endless more bar recommendations when I really started digging into some background research after this stop, so if you've road-tested other bars that you think should definitely be checked out next time (I'm cradling ambitions of making this an annual pilgrimage), I'd love to hear from you.

Lastly, for the pintxos paragons among you, San Sebastian also offers a pinxto workshop every Saturday, hosted by local masterchefs. The workshop includes a tour of the traditional market, a walkaround of the bars of the Old Town area, and a hands-on session. I kept the brochure in my cargo pants throughout the stint before finally deciding that the €115 fee would have to wait till next time. Ah well. A great excuse to come back. In addition to all those Michelin stars.

¡Buen provecho!

A Fuego Negro
C/ 31 De Agosto / Abuztuaren 31-KO Kalea 31
20003 Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain
+34 65 013 5373

La Cepa
Calle 31 de Agosto, No. 7,
20003, San Sebastian, Spain
+34 94 342 6394

Egosari
Calle Fermín Calbetón, No. 15,
20003 San Sebastian, Spain
+34 94 342 8210

Bar Etxaniz
C/ Fermin Calbeton / Fermin Calbeton Kalea 24
20003 San Sebastian, Spain
+34 94 342 6259

La Mejillonera
Calle del Puerto 15
20003 San Sebastián, Spain
+34 94 342 8465

Maastricht Meander

Maastricht -- nestled in a corner of Netherlands between Belgium and Germany -- was much more about catching up with friends Chris and Saskia rather than going on our usual food excursion. Nonetheless, here are a few places from the weekend that stood out, if you happen to be in the area.

Chris picked us up from the train station in Hasselt, Belgium, and promptly took us to Grand Cafe, where there are more than 300 beers on offer. Among others, Babs tries the Brugse Babbelaar (natch). We also get introduced to bitterballen -- deep fried creamy-flour-&-bits-of-mystery-meat croquettes, dipped in mustard and curry ketchup. These are apprently quite the regional delicacy. According to Wikipedia, "They are eaten in the Netherlands and Belgium, and hardly anywhere else."

Saskia, who works for a company that provides care for the disabled, took us to a cute cafe owned by her company in Maastricht. Called Doe Gewoon, it translates loosely to "Do Normally". The kitchen and waitstaff are mentally challenged, but are capable and independent enough to work under supervision. Their offerings include an open-face tuna and anchovy sandwich, warm goat cheese and apple salad, and Dutch-style beef stew with chips. Frankly, we got better service and food here than at some "normal" restaurants.

During our afternoon meander, we were introduced to a famous bakery in town called Bisschopsmolen (Bishops Mill). An old water mill, dating back to the 11th century, was restored in 2004 and now mills its own locally grown grains that then get baked and transformed right on the premises into delicious treats. I reckon you can trust the quality of a bakery when the cashier sees you snapping with a camera and then happily gestures you into the kitchen to show off the baking team (right down to gleefully pinching their biceps).

We were also treated to some home-grilled hospitality. The highlight of the BBQ was Chris's eggplant spread. The recipe is as follows:

Wash and dry 2 eggplants, prick them in various places with a fork (to prevent the skin from bursting) then put them in a roasting dish and in the oven approx 180 deg C for 30 min until they sag and look a bit smoky. Scrape out the insides and discard the skin. Roughly chop the cooked flesh. Combine with chopped garlic and onions, a dash of basil and oregano, salt, ground black pepper, olive oil and a splash of lemon juice.

Simple, and fabulous on bread.

On our last day at Chris and Saskia's, Sunshine, the youngest of Saskia's current batch of 6 Tonkinese cats, refuses to get off my stomach. Surely your time could be better spent than blogging about food all day, she stares accusingly. I tell her to read it before she knocks it. So she does.

Man. Tough room.

Grand Cafe, Het Hemelrijk
Hemelrijk, 11 - 3500 Hasselt, Belgium
+32 11 222 851

Doe Gewoon
Boschstraat 98
6211 AZ Maastricht, Netherlands
+31 43 3500 169

Bisschopsmolen (Bishops Mill)
Stenenbrug 1-3
6211 HP, Maastricht, Netherlands
+31 43 3270 613

Constant Craving in Paris

First, many thanks to Ann, who housed us in Paris, so that we could go at all. May your generosity be equally apparent in your dishes when you start culinary school in the fall.

"you got very hungry when you did not eat enough in paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. when you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in america would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the place de l'observatoire to the rue de vaugirard. there you could always go into the luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. i learned to understand cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when i was hungry. i used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted..."
-- A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

My Dad introduced me to Hemingway 11 years ago with the passage above, just before my first trip to Paris. The words were striking then, but the spark of truth in them set ablaze raw nerves this time around when Babs and I hit Paris on a tight budget, trying to conserve cash for when we were going to meet up with our fellow food dorks in San Sebastien.

1st row above: Asparagus and €49/kg wild mushrooms; The olive and spice counter at the food hall of Le Bon Marche, reportedly the world's first department store, on Rue de Sevres.
2nd row above: I'm not the only food paparazzi in Paris... but I did manage to catch a (crappy) shot of the Delicious Don of Rue St Dominique, Christian Constant, in the window of his latest venture, Les Cocottes.

This sojourn was clearly going to require superhuman levels of disipline, and a litle strategy.

I cross-referenced food bloggers Chez Pim, Chocolate and Zucchini, David Lebovitz and Dorie Greenspan, to triangulate a view on what was going to get us maximum bite for buck in Paris. I also sent out a Twitter SOS to see what friends who had gone before would advise. Here's a summary of learnings from this reluctantly frugal foodie.

Tip #1: When Tight on Dough in Paris, Eat Bread

Paris no doubt gags with gastronomy, but in reality many locals dine very simply for dinner on bread, cheese, maybe a little something else, and probably a glass of wine. So to buy research time, we joined the locals in the breadlines and bought baguettes, baguettes, and more baguettes, and picnic-ed on park benches, bridges, and by Ann's little balcony.

Above: Deli-bought tomato and mozzarella baguette and rabbit terrine for €6 per person, dined on at the Luxenbourg Gardens (as per Sunny D and Hemingway's advice); Market-bought tomato, comte cheese and onion marmalade baguette, probably for ~€3 per person

Tip #2: Settle in with the Early Settlers

Another good tip from Sunny D was to eat ethnic, specifically from the groups that had well-established enclaves in Paris. Chez Pim and David Lebovitz provided 2 gems: Fabbo pho and falafel, at La Bambou and L'As du Fellafel respectively.

La Bambou in P'lace de Italie -- a neighbourhood chockablock with Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Laotian eateries -- was our first sit-down dinner in Paris. At 9.30pm there was still a line out the door and once we got through, there was a cacophony of Cantonese, Vietnamese, and French from Asian faces. Good signs of street cred.

I ordered the house special pho (a.k.a. with everything -- beef slices, meatballs, tendon, and how could I say no in Paris...tripe). Babs and I also caved into appetizer avarice, and shared a salad with prawns, jellyfish and slices of belly pork. By the time I was digging into the cauldron of beef broth that showed clear respect for lovely bones and boiling time, I was tearing with happiness....and the deliciously fierce red chili slices.

L'As du Fellafel, on the other hand -- and the other bank, in Paris's thriving Jewish quarter -- provided a bargain stand-up dinner of pita overstuffed with moist falafel or meat of choice, with shredded cucumber, red cabbage, smoky grilled eggplant cubes, garlicky tahini and a sweet chili sauce. Oy veh!

Tip #3: For Fine Food, be Finicky

Over the 3 days we were in Paris, I slowly crafted a priority list in my head for the requirements of our headline (waistline?) act. I wanted 1) traditional French cuisine; 2) the traditional French cheffing approach of basing the day's menu on the best of the market offerings; and 3) not having to sell a kidney to pay the bill.

Christian Constant's cafe -- inspired by the recipes of his Basque-region grandmother -- fit the bill perfectly. We trekked a little east of the Eiffel Tower, and down Constant's growing Rue St Dominque stronghold, which houses his gastronomic HQ, fish foundry, cocotte canteen, and Cafe Constant.

Once inside, we dawdled over the chalkboard menu, and finally decided on 1 pre-fixe (i.e. bargain) 2-course meal and another 2 courses ala carte.

Pre fixe menu: A warm rocket salad with prawns and parmesan, followed by a very old school pork loin and lentils

Ala carte: A chunky lobster ravioli in bisque, followed by beef tenderloin on a bed of rocket (always a great pairing) and very creamy savoury mash.

Babs spotted Monsieur Constant making the rounds with the customers, but I have to admit I was very happily distracted at the time.

Afterwards....a delicious afternoon nap at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Bon appetit, frugal foodies. And if you have other max-bite-for-buck recommendations for Paris, please do share your expertise here. Paris may be a moveable feast, but I for one am hoping to go back, this time hopefully before another 11 years go by.

La Bambou
70, Rue Baudricourt
75013 Paris, France
+33 1 45 70 91 75

L'As de Fellafel
34, Rue Rosiers
75004 Paris, France
+33 1 48 87 63 60

Cafe Constant
139, Rue St Dominique
75007 Paris, France
+33 9 75 82 08 07

Brooklyn Beef Brawl

High noon, Brooklyn. Williamsburg Bridge. South side. Broadway. The streets are quiet. An empty plastic bag rustles by. The breeze brings with it that unmistakably delectable waft of...sizzling beef fat. I imagine this must always be the case on this street. Whether it means to or not, Broadway is Brooklyn's Beef Block, a divine bovine response to Manhattan's Museum Mile.

On one corner, weighing in at “family members have been personally choosing its USDA Prime porterhouses each day since 1887...and they take only cash or their in-house credit card” was Peter Luger – the only beef joint I could get anyone to talk about for the last 3 years, be they New Yorkers, Londoners or Singaporeans.

On the other corner, weighing in at “they take whole carcasses – a Volkswagon's worth of organic grass-fed beef – and each week divvy all of it up between their 3 restaurants and butcher store... and make up the menu daily depending on what's in season at local organic producers” were (relative) newcomers Mark Firth and Andrew Tarlow, who owned Diner, Marlow & Sons, and Marlow & Daughters, all on the same street.

Perhaps it was time for a high-steaks duel.

The Peter Luger dining room had the air of a training gym when Babs and I went last week. Next to our table, a Chinese family, a Filipino family and 2 tough looking Russians in track suits and sneakers all had brows furrowed with quiet concentration. A few were showing a shimmery hint of sweat. Their common sport: chewing.

We had picked a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge as our appetizer / warm up, so swung straight for the porterhouse for 2, with creamed spinach and fries on the side.

I was revving up my skepticism. “USDA Prime” is apparently largely based on the quality of fat marbling on the steer, rather than what it's fed or how it's raised. The US industry standard these days, apparently, is to house cows jammed shoulder to shoulder, knee deep in their own poo, chewing and on too much corn and soybeans and developing nasty stomachaches, since it's unnatural food for them, but is apparently great for building up restaurant-friendly marbling quickly. Cue routine doses of anti-biotics and medication as a result. If Peter Luger was using a less industrially-raised type of beef, they sure weren't telling anyone about it on their website.

The dilemma was, this is the crème de la crème of the kind of beef my generation grew up on. So it took just one bite to hit all the neural transmitters. The juicy pink chunk tasted as creamy as its hue looked, with good resistance as well as yield to the tooth. We were sitting down but I still felt my knees buckle.

I was looking forward to seeing what kind of fight young turk chef Sean Rembold across the street would put up.

After an afternoon expedition to Coney Island as a palate cleanser, Babs and I rocked up to Diner just as the dinner shift started. The bartender was still furiously scribbling the specials of the day. A crazy-haired lady dining alone in a booth behind us was poring over a book on chicken pot pies, and the 1961 edition of the The New York Times Cook Book. Good omens.

I opened with the in-season rhubarb-based cocktail, and followed with the slow cooked beef shank with grits, broth, and scallions. It came with a knife, a fork, and a spoon. I ended up not even needing the first 2. The shank simply fell away into meat tendrils at a touch. The rich broth infused the humble grits with a personality trust fund.

This was a new bench mark in comfort food – almost convalescent. Then the peppery green scallions, slicing through the natural grease of the meat, would snap one out of one's gently descending stupor. I sighed with contentment as I pushed back the empty plate, still warm.

My brother was already texting from Boston, demanding to know who was the Baron 'o' Beef on Broadway. I was delighted to tell him to try both on his next trip to New York. And don't forget to suck down some local oysters at Marlow & Sons.

Cop out, he replied.

Possibly. But why force a choice? Is there really a good answer to "which is the Ace of Art", between the Met and the Guggenheim? The beauty of New York was that this town -- even when it's the same street -- is big enough for both.

===

Peter Luger
178 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Diner
85 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11211

La Cantina, Venice, Italy

Ho! What news on the Rialto?

Due south-east of Shylock’s hood
A chef cursed-blessed with Janus mood
Such wizardry with Triton’s fold
Such alchemy with Ceres’ gold
Come ye faithful, he will nourish
Gut and soul with aplomb and flourish
But mind the Furies sic’ed on you
If you ask only for the loo

======================================

Not that Babs and I can claim having any such clue before we crossed paths with Francesco Zorzetto, chef of La Cantina in Venice, about this time last year.

We were close to the end of an Italian road trip, driving from Pisa to Florence to Milan to Lake Garda and finally to Venice. On this particular day, after a late start and a walk through the Ghetto, Babs decided he had had it with maps and guide books.

“Let’s just check out what people are eating and stop for lunch where it looks and smells good,” he said.

We floated along (it was post 2.30pm on an empty stomach so I was fairly light-headed) until the tide of tourist traffic washed us up against a scatter of barrels on the sidewalk, with luncheoners clustered tightly around every one of them like men overboard clinging to driftwood.

I poked my head in the door, spied the work-in-progress (below) for the dinner shift, and promptly plonked down at the table next to the produce.


I figured if I looked sufficiently pathetic (in the direction of the food next to me) and refused to move (until physically escorted out), perhaps the wait staff could be persuaded to not tell me that the lunch shift was over.

The waitress approached gingerly and said “I’m not sure the chef is still serving, but I will ask.”

She didn’t come back. The chef did. And sat down next to me. Without a menu.

“What do you want?”
“Whatever you have,” I countered, almost holding my breath.
“We have some fish. Or some pork – the back.”
“Fish sounds good.”
“Ok. I make for you some fish. You like beer? We make our own.”
“Yes please.”
And off he went.

From behind the counter, he hollered, “Fish…you like raw? Or cooked?”

Babs and I only ever have one answer to such questions.

“Both?”

So he did.


“Raw fish” – local fish and 2 kinds of prawns with olive oil and herbs


“Cooked fish” – Scallops and mussels on the shell. And fried sardines coated with polenta.


Much scarfing and slurping and little conversation ensured.

At this point, a family of tourists complete with matching caps and backpacks trooped in and lined up for the bathroom. Two kids later, Mother Tourist called out to the chef, ”You’re out of toilet paper!”

The chef thundered, “Not my problem! You go somewhere else!” and went back to whatever he was doing behind the counter.


The Moody Chef of Venice


When we were about halfway through the shells, he came back with a bowl of baby razor clams he was snacking from.

“Here. Try.” he said, then headed off again. So we did.

“Is ok?” he asked as we got up to go.

“Is exquisite. Thank you.” I knew was gushing, and but I couldn’t stop myself. I leaned over the counter and showed him the photos I took of his food.

He looked on, bemused, then said, “I have one more thing for you.” He snapped on a Virgin Mary bracelet on my wrist.

Not quite the usual parting shot of a chocolate or breath mint. I still keep it on my work desk, as a lovely reminder that even chefs live not by bread alone.

Research done on Francesco after we got home revealed the extent of his moods and the extent of our luck. Apparently there was no menu ever to be had, and the best way to dine at La Cantina was to leave yourself in Francesco’s capable hands. But exasperate him enough, and he will slam the premises shut and lock up for the day.

I realise by now I’m biased. But if I tickled you, would you not laugh? If I pricked you, would you not bleed? If I and my unruly brood plundered your loo roll (loudly) while you were cooking for paying customers, might you not despair and storm off home for at least a few hours?

La Cantina
Campo San Felice, Cannaregio 3689, just off the Strada Nuova
Venice, Italy
Tel: +39 041 52 28 258
The meal pictured above, with a champagne sized bottle of beer, cost €70

Other links that mention La Cantina:
Insatiable Critic
ViaMichelin