The land of chocolate

Belgium! Doesn’t the word just conjure thoughts of Hercule Poirot or Angelina Jolie solving dangerous exotic mysteries among its many villainous characters and breath taking scenery? Oh, wait, that’s Istanbul. I guess the word “Brussels” tends to inspire more the European-farm-subsidy-committee community than Hollywood.

Yes, I was in Brussels for a lovely 36 hour jaunt. To my surprise Belgian cuisine has evolved since the last time I studied it: the cuisine of world war one. No machine gunning horses or drinking from the skulls of decapitated German teenagers here! The food in Brussels was, without exception, delicious.

Brussels really doesn’t have a whole lot to see, except for some nice architecture, the Grand Place and spectacular carved wood pulpit at the church of Saint Michel and Gudule (note to self, name one of my children Gudule). But the food! We started the day by going to a very good sandwich place, where I had a portugese tuna salad (loaded with olives, tomatoes and pickles) with buffalo mozzerrella on a fresh baguette (very E.U). After walking around for a while and checking out some very cool Belgian clothing stores, we had classic French fries with mayonaisse. The fries were good but the mayo was excellent; creamy with roasted garlic, almost good enough to make you forget you were eating straight mayo (don’t worry, I have sent you all some in the mail!).

For dinner we went to a tapas restaurant. Why did I go to a tapas restaurant in Brussels and not some place that serves chocolate covered mussels or something else terribly Belgian? Because I am a sucker for a food gimmic. Like some sushi restaurants in the U.S and the U.K, this restaurant served its tapas on a conveyor belt. Colored coded (indicating whether the dish was “porky”, “garlicky”, “fishy”, “desserty”, etc-y) individually sized plates would rotate past, which was great at first but once you reached your sixth and final individual plate it became an intense game of strategy to figure out which pork dish would finish the meal. The tapas was fine, nothing terribly special, but the place was fun and would be a good place to take an easily distractible person you don’t have anything to talk about with on a date. We then got Belgian beer, but the one I had was terrible. I know I said everything was good, but, well, technically it was just all the food that was good. The charming “L word” looking bartendress advised me to get this beer that was to my surprise Robatussin flavored. Okay maybe it was cherry but I would have rather chugged a bottle of cough medicine and hallucinated than drink that saccharine beer.

The next day we went to a beautiful Art Nouveau café called “Le Perroquet” for brunch. I had a pita with grilled chicken, honey, yogurt, sprouts and raw vegetables that was exactly what all brunch food should be: sweet, creamy and satisfying (the fact that the bill for the three of us came to like 14 euros for three pitas and three espressos was also great). So then, of course, we went and bought some chocolate. Chocolate shopping in Brussels is somewhat like shopping for clothing in the rest of the world: the high end stuff with icy beautiful sales women, the low end stuff, hell I think there was even an H&M chocolate store (this is Europe you know). So I bought some chocolates at the Neuhaus store, a Belgian favorite, and tried to forget King Leopold’s Ghost. Thankfully the chocolate was so good I didn’t even feel any post-colonial guilt. You hear that Vassar’s English/Poli Sci/Sociology/Film/Women’s Studies/Physical Education department??

All in all I ate way better in the 36 hours I was in Brussels than the 5 days in Prague, Vienna and Bratislava. So from now on whenever anyone calls Brussels boring, I am going to defend the Belgians, because, well, they don’t exactly have the greatest history of defending themselves…

Journey to the east

Woo! Spring break Eastern Europe! Okay, technically it was fall break and I was in central Europe, but I did get to see a lot of glorious Hapsburg palaces and crumbling soviet architecture on my trip to Prague, Vienna and Bratislava.

Prague is a city of beer. Czech’s drink more beer than any other people in the world (so take that the pledge class of Xi Pi Mu at Southeastern University, you lose), and a pint if beer in that city is like one euro. Now for someone coming from Paris, where the price of a pint of appears to be the same as the price of a barrel of oil, the cheapness was shocking (and made me oddly furious at OPEC…). Prague is also home to some very hearty bohemian food: each meal has meat, meat, more meat and of course a delicious helping of cabbage. Even dessert. I know cabbage and chocolate cake may sound bad, but the acrid smoke of every restaurant in Prague tends to help overcome the nausea.

No actually the food was good in most places. We actually had a great meal one day where I had not one but FOUR types of meat in one dish: roasted pork shoulder, roasted duck, bohemian sausage and some other type of pork deliciousness. It was worth signing the contract before I ate it agreeing to never be an Orthodox rabbi (there go my school girl dreams…). Basically I have decided that cabbage is wonderful, and when I get back to the states I am excited to be that guy at the Vassar Vegan stir fry station frying up a bunch of cabbage and getting stared at by normal people.

Next we went to Vienna, which is actually famous for its food. The first night we went to a place with, of course, more dark wood and beer. I had this liver dumping in a salty broth that taste like the world’s most delicious matzo ball. I ordered it again at the same restaurant two days later at 2 am, and got some weird looks, but trust me it was more satisfying than any other late night liver dish I ever had at the Llanerch diner.

I guess you are picturing me in lederhosen running around eating weinerschnitzl and stuffing my face with viennoiserie like liberal arts New York Times reading Hansel, but I can’t say that was the case. We ate some very good sushi and stir-fry at this big market and had excellent street kebabs. Austrians are all right with having three Turkish kebab places on each street, but not letting the people working there become citizens, because, as it says in Austrian law, you can only become an Austrian citizen if you are related to an Austrian (i.e. if you are tall, blonde and weirdly polite). It’s depressing.

Speaking of depressing, who wants to hear about my sojourn to Bratislava! Actually Bratislava was nice. It’s only an hour and a half from Vienna, and was a cool trip because my grandfather was born in Slovakia. Well technically it was Hungary, but the history that area of Europe’s borders are about as loose as Dennis Hastert’s layers and layers of neck. We arrived in Bratislava to see this terrifying city the communists built of about 200 identically ugly high rises. At first I thought the town would be depressing and communist, but then we drove by a mall with what looked like the largest Zara is the former communist world and I felt better. We ate in this weirdly dilapidated section of town, which was strange because we read that there was a beautiful Baroque section, we just couldn’t find it. Eventually we did and it was very pretty and charming. We went to a café called Café Meyer and ordered 6 different types of cake. I don’t know why we thought we could eat that much but despite our better instincts we ate all of them and they were all very tasty. The best by far though was a chestnut cake with cream and chocolate mousse that was, as the Slovaks say “z agshii xoroskijjl majsh!”. In case you don’t speak Slovak that translates in German to “supercakendeliciousnessflaffenguttenneuntyneunluftballons”. It’s all here in this pamphlet.

We finished the trip to Bratislava with a lovely bottle of Polish champagne. What does Polish champagne taste like? Well, I haven’t been to jail, but I imagine somewhat like Dimetapp fermented in the tank of prison toilet plus some sprite tastes like.

The trip was a success. I head some lovely meals and a very fun time. Of course when I got back to Paris I immediately went to the supermarket and bought and prepared something I hadn’t eaten in a week: vegetables.

Also, the next night I had my second interview with “A Chef’s Table”, which I will post a link to when it goes on the radio. Ooh how people listening the Guam public radio are going to freak out when they hear me talking about how much a cup of coffee costs!

Channeling my inner old lady

Okay, I am not usually one for pomp and circumstance. I don’t know why people like Princess Di so much, I don’t think silver wear placement is critical to a meal, and I don’t believe that not wearing “pants” to a “mandatory court hearing” is “inappropriate”. But my experience at Ladurée, the most famous and fanciest patisserie in Paris, was an amazingly impressive whirlwind of marble, $10 cups of tea and pastries that were emasculating-ly delicious.

The Ladurée I visited is on the Champs Elysée. I hate the Champs Elysée; it’s like if Fifth avenue and the French part of Epcot had an over priced badly-dressed-Spanish-tourist filled baby. I literally only go there to buy phone cards at the world’s fanciest Virgin megastore. I would only recommend taking a visitor there if you didn’t think that they could handle the intellectual rigors of taking the elevator up to the top of the Eiffel towers (“what are all them buttons for? Say, I think I can call my ma from up here. Hey ma! Get off the dang toit!”). This Ladurée, one of there three branches, was opened about five years and is covered in fake second empire French furniture and decorations. Fortunately, it’s a beautifully designed interior, and while not really from 1870, it looks nothing like the awful fake French schlock filling the McMansions that I learned to drink cheap vodka in when I was in high school.

My friend Brooke’s mother and grandmother, who were so unbelievably friendly and good natured you’d think they were about to tell you about a guy named Jesus, took me and some friends out to brunch Sunday. First of all, the menu of Ladurée is just shorter than War and Peace, and when one girl told another that the teas were on page 14, she genuinely tried to find it because, well, there very well could have been a page 14. It took a solid hour to decide what the have, but finely a manned up and ordered the Ladurée brunch special. I guess eating petit fours and viennoiserie isn’t necessarily manning up to anything, but if a “vrai mec” orders a steak anywhere that serves meat, then a “vrai mec” should order the pastry in a patisserie, too.

What came were three tears of sugar, sugar, and for good measure butter and more sugar. There was nice red currant jam, and perfectly salty butter for the rolls. Next was maybe the best thing I ate the whole time: a mini croissant filled with apple jam and glazed with sugar. It was basically a high-class crispy cream and was just really delicious. I then had their famous macaroons. The lemon one was filled with lemon cream and was so good it hurt. There was also a coffee one that was very tasty and a chocolate one that had basically a chocolate truffle inside that was so good I am sure it’s illegal in the states (well, everywhere but Hawaii). There were some macaroons that weren’t great though; the strawberry was dull and the violet-cassis, while nice sounding in a 1920’s French prostitute kind of way, didn’t taste like either violets or cassis (God damnit I sound effete!).

So then I had my eggs (yeah that’s right, I will save my masculinity through protein talk!). I ordered scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. The smoked salmon came in tiny little orange jewels of flesh and was sweet, salty and just the tiniest bit smoky, so basically just the way I like it. The eggs were a little runny, which was cool because the liquid was almost orangey, indicating to me that they were as fresh as an egg could be.

Brooke’s mom, grandmother and a girl at the table ordered a smoked salmon club that was also really really good. The table then split more macaroons, of which the cinnamon, grape, and raspberry flavored were the best. I finished the meal with fruit and orange flower flavored oolong tea.

It was, without a doubt, the best breakfast I have had in years. I can honestly say that I have come a long way from eating tater tots and granola in the Vassar cafeteria and watching hung over people awkwardly eat breakfast with last nights hook up.

Now if only I could find a damn New York Times to read I would be set brunch wise…

Hey sorry I havent updated in a while. My parents and my friend were in town. Who knew people liked visiting Paris?

There's an article after this and I am writing some new stuff now. Oh its just so hard to be too busy eating and going to museums to blog.

Chanterelle? Shoot cuz I know her...

When one hears of a semester abroad experience involving someone buying some “sweet ass mushrooms”, it is natural to imagine stoned Americans in Amsterdam falling into canals and doing wildly inappropriate things in the Anne Frank house. But actually I am talking about the less fun but more delicious edible mushrooms.

Fabulous mushrooms here are dirt-cheap! The cheapest is chanterelles, which at whole foods (I mention whole foods not as the basis for any rational price but just because Path-mark and the Piggly Wiggly tend not to sell the worlds finest chanterelles) in America sell for about $20-$25 a pound, but here they are 10-15 euros per kilogram! Okay so that means nothing to a lot of you who both hate the metric system, the European union and mushrooms without psilocybin, but that’s about a quarter of the price. Also, you can by fresh porcini, black trumpet and blue mushrooms here for about half the price.

Mushrooms were about the only thing that grew in ex-soviet countries during the communist era that weren’t some how socialized. Of course, when Borya and Vika aren’t drinking straight sterno and watching their democracies disappear, they are happily foraging for mushrooms and selling them to the French and Italians to make into great cuisine and to the British to boil them into a fine snot (anyone reading this who has had breakfast in the dorms of University of Edinburgh will understand how the Scots can take an innocent mushroom and make it look like an alien fetus). So, in a rare bit of news something is truly cheaper here than in the states.

Basically, when I come back from France and hand you a kwanza present that is brown, mushy and smells like the forest, you’ll know what it is…

La Viande Rose!

Mmm, meat.

Meat is good. I am sure that that was the first sentence ever uttered. I guess I respect vegetarians and vegan’s for thinking about where meat comes from and rejecting it; but on the other hand that’s stupid. Really stupid. Meat is literally the most important part of your diet. Animals, including humans, have for billions of years spent countless hours of effort trying to get meat. People love meat; all cultures, even majority vegetarian ones, have meat dishes. When the Greeks offered sacrifices to the God, do you think they burned tofu and kale? No! The offered huge joints of meat! If Marie Antoinette had said “let them eat meat” instead, the French monarchy would still be around.

I have had many varying experiences with meat in France that I feel like writing about. One was delicious. One was a horrifying example of how people like meat so much that they will make the grossest food I have ever tasted. With that in mind, enjoy these two meaty updates.

Aren’t you excited???